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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/two-entjs-walk-into-a-bar-and-fix-it).

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

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

****John:**** And this is Episode 106 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, I lived your fantasy last week. I got to go in and be on the air on SiriusXM On Broadway.

**Craig:** You’ve beaten me to the punch. My turn is going to be in a month, but I’m very excited. And you were interviewed by Julie James.

**John:** By Julie James who is a super fan of Broadway.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, sometimes you have those people who are like remarkable interviewers and you have deep insights on things, but it’s also great to have people who are just like ridiculous fans of a thing. And she’s a ridiculous fan of Broadway, so it was very fun to be interviewed with her and Andrew Lippa for a good 45 minutes. So perhaps as you are driving around this long Labor Day Weekend you had a chance to hear us.

We’re recording this before the Labor Day Weekend, so of course you didn’t hear it, but —

**Craig:** I haven’t heard it yet.

**John:** But if you can travel through time and imagine you may hear us talking about Big Fish.

**Craig:** Right. Julie James is the sort of person that could probably interview, I don’t know, the guy who mugged her and still seem pretty supportive.

**John:** She would be very up about it all.

**Craig:** Yeah. She’s great.

**John:** You and I record our podcast ourselves separately with our own computers and our own little microphones and it’s a very stripped down operation. So, it was fascinating to actually go into a place that does this for a living and has a whole machine to do this stuff. Because I’ve done the NPR interviews and NPR is in the basement of a college and it’s professional but it’s also sort of downscale.

This is like in the fancy McGraw-Hill building There are these glass booths and basically there’s a window and then there’s a foot of air and then there’s another giant piece of glass, so like everything is just deeply soundproof. You could easily be murdered in one of these things and no one would ever hear you.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But it was just so fascinating to see. It’s essentially the same thing that we’re doing, just ramped to a much higher scale.

**Craig:** Yeah. And really what it comes down to is that the amount of money and effort that is required to take something from say 85% good to 100% good is a lot.

**John:** It is.

**Craig:** That’s where all the, you know, in our little things of like my air conditioning coming on, or the bus outside, or we were just talking about little mic bumps and things, all that goes away. But, yeah, it’s very expensive to do it truly properly.

**John:** Yeah, but lovely. One thing I did notice is the same sort of across the board is they have the same headphones that I believe you and I both do have which is the — I’m going to look up the name of it — the Sony MDR-7506.

**Craig:** Yes. That’s what I’m wearing right now.

**John:** For the professional cans. I have to say, I mean, it could be a One Cool Thing, I guess, but if you want a good pair of headphones, just get these. They’re really good. And they’ll always sound really good.

Today on the podcast we are going to talk about a wide range of topics. We’re going to talk about these comments that Kevin Spacey made at the Edinburgh Television Festival. Because really when I think of television I think of Edinburgh, Scotland.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** He made comments about the present and future of television, which I think are worth discussing.

LA’s Mayor, Eric Garcetti, had comments about runaway production and what that means to Los Angeles and how it can be fought. So we’ll talk about that.

We need to talk about the upcoming WGA election.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** It’s not even upcoming, it’s the currently upon us WGA election.

**Craig:** Yes, the imminent election.

**John:** Yes. And we’ve talked about this on every incarnation of the podcast, but this time you will really lead the conversation because I know nothing.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** But first we have some follow-up. So, last week on the podcast, it was Three Page Challenges we did. And so one of them was by this guy Keith Eiler. This was the one that was set in space and had something with Oblivion in the title. And so he tweeted us to say like, “Hey guys, thank you so much for looking at my script on the show,” but he gave us references for what the title meant and for also what this one dialogue reference meant.

So, this is how his title came to be. It’s this Marcel Proust quote. And I’m going to start to read it and then we’re going to have a little discussion. This is a quote from Marcel Proust:

“What best remind us of a person is precisely what we had forgotten (because it was of no importance, and we therefore left it in full possession of its strength). That is why the better part of our memories exist outside us, in a blatter of rain, in the smell of an unaired room or of the first crackling brushwood fire in a cold grate: wherever, in short, we happen upon what our mind, having no use for it, had rejected, the last treasure that the past has in store, the richest, that which, when all our flow of tears seems to have dried at the source, can make us weep again.”

Wow. So, a couple things about that. First off, the underlying idea behind this longer quote — I just sort of gave you half of it — is that it’s those things you don’t kind of remember remembering are what are sort of most significant, and sort of like really capture that emotional memory of things, and that’s a really nice idea. And I think it’s a nice idea to have in a script. I think it’s a nice idea for someone to in easier ways say in a script. And it’s a nice thematic idea. I really like that as a thematic idea.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I found that quote to be impenetrable though.

**Craig:** Well, it’s difficult. You know, you’re translating it from French. And when we look at writers who wrote in English at Proust’s time, they tended to be impenetrable, too. There was a very purple prosy thing that was going on for awhile there. I’m glad it’s sort of gone. [laughs] It was almost like your quote needed to be really complicated in order to be any good. That’s one of the reasons why I was always I guess attracted to Nietzsche’s writing because even translated from German by the great Walter Kaufmann, there’s just a clarity to it.

**John:** Yeah. I think it’s honestly why all high school students love reading Hemingway because they’re, “Oh, short sentences.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s the same semester you always have to read Hemingway and Faulkner and you’re like, “Oh my god, please just let me read two Hemingway’s and not have to go through a Faulkner.” Because Faulkner does that same thing which we just saw in Proust’s quote which is it’s a bunch of clauses strung together by commas. And by the time you’re in the fourth or fifth deep one of these it’s like, wait, what was the subject of this sentence? I can’t actually follow the thread because we’re just not used to having to dig that deep into sentences.

**Craig:** Right. And then people sometimes claim a certain merit in understanding these hard to untangle paragraphs. But, I’m not really sure that that’s meritorious. I mean, the sentiments though are great. And Proust, I guess, is most famous for his notion of sense memory, his Madeleine cookie and all that.

**John:** What I would also say in general, if this quote is an important part of the idea of your movie — Keith, awesome that you did not try to put that in the first page. Because I’ve seen so many terrible scripts where the first page would be that impenetrable quote, and when I get to that first impenetrable quote I’m like, “Oh my god, I don’t want to read another word, because it’s going to be all like this. It’s all going to be about that thing.”

So, let’s say if you have this idea of the things you don’t remember are the memories that actually carry emotional weight, and I may be butchering what the actual intent of that paragraph was, but that’s what we got out of it, is you’re going to need to find ways to thread that through your script in ways that characters can state them, that characters can, you know, once they come to realize. But a character can express that idea, embody that idea. You need to be able to find moments that can make that actually come to life. And space would seem to be a really difficult place to do that. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but that would be an extra challenge I would see if that is thematically the idea you want to get to.

Space is going to probably make it more challenging than less challenging.

**Craig:** It could, yeah. And I think also you just have to give yourself up to a certain amount of let’s call it non-linearity and irrationality. Because the purpose of the quote is essentially that our conscious rational, logical mind isn’t really processing the memories that matter. That this is going on in the zany or uncoordinated part of our minds.

So, it seems that the movie would probably have to end up being a bit more lyrical and a bit more poetic and non-linear than a traditional narrative. But, you know, just because you don’t want to sort of — it’s difficult to relay a sense of subconscious thought through a very conscious, ordered, intentional plot.

**John:** Exactly. I would agree with you. And since movies are about images and sounds, it’s not going to be as rewarding just to have a character say the modern English version of that. In a play, however, I bet you could have a character give a monologues that is essentially that point, or gets you to that point, which is incredibly powerful and moving, but that’s a play.

**Craig:** And you’re there with the person in the room.

**John:** Absolutely. And you’re watching them experience that thing at the same time.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, let’s get to today’s work and today’s discussions. First off, let’s start with this Kevin Spacey video. You can see the video. You can see the transcript of it.

Essentially Kevin Spacey was speaking at the Edinburgh Television Festival and he is known for House of Cards, his most recent season, which is one of the acclaimed Netflix shows that sort of broke the model of how a television show is supposed to work in that the Netflix shows, including House of Cards, including Orange is the New Black — which I finally started watching — do not work under the normal pilot season. They’re not shot with pilots and then they go to series. They are just fully formed things that exist all at once and that you don’t have to watch them week by week. They simply exist in their entire 13 episode wholeness the moment they debut.

So, his arguments summarized is that this is how — this isn’t just the future of television but this is actually the current present of television and that if television does not adapt to it, if broadcast networks don’t adapt to it they will quickly be extinct. And I liked it because it was similar to points that you and I have made on the show before is that stuff is changing. If you don’t acknowledge that it’s changing you’re the dinosaurs who are going to become completely extinct.

**Craig:** Yeah. He makes, I think, a bunch of great points and then takes it one step too far.

**John:** Oh, Kevin Spacey!

**Craig:** Oh Kevin Spacey! So, the points that I think everybody makes in general that the notion of having an entire season on demand instantly for people who are subscribing to the service makes complete sense. We know that for sure. Even though —

**John:** Although we didn’t know that when it first happened though.

**Craig:** No. We didn’t know, but we now know it for sure.

**John:** The Arrested Development model.

**Craig:** Right. And that’s not particularly news because we know it. I mean, he’s involved in one of the shows that sort of proved it. But, we know it to an extent. In other words we know that people will do it, but they’re not doing it, and this will tie back to my bridge too far, they’re not doing it anywhere near the way that they watch the models of programming that Kevin Spacey sort of is saying are already outmoded. They’re not. [laughs] Not even close.

But we know, okay, it can work, at least on some level that can work. The best point he made, the most important point he made was the one about the stupidity of pilots and pilot season. And the argument is that the necessity of a pilot causes certain creative decisions to be made which are not ideal. They demand that the writers pack a whole bunch of stuff into one hour, or if you’re a sitcom, 22 minutes, including who the characters are, what their deals are, what their problems are, what the situation is, da-dada-dada. Right?

Everything is all there in the pilot. That’s why pilots suck more than anything. They are an unnatural demand on the writers. And his point was we didn’t want to write a pilot because we actually wanted the luxury of being able to reveal things as we chose, as we decided. And I thought that was a great point. And he connects it back to the insane inefficiency of the pilot system, which is remarkable.

**John:** So, two points. I would agree with you that his best point is that the existence of pilots forces creative decisions that are not good for television series. And that having written several pilots and having been through that development process, you are forced to wedge in so much that you would choose not to put in there.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** This last thing I did for ABC, Chosen, I definitely felt that where essentially like, “Okay, that stuff you have for episode two, let’s cram that into episode one.” It’s like, oh my god, there’s no room to breathe in this show anymore because they keep trying to pack in more plot and more “this is what the show is, this is what the show is,” because the pilot has become this marketing document for the network essentially saying like please pick up our show because this is how exciting it’s going to be. The pilot is completely atypical of what the actual series might be week to week, which is a huge problem.

What I would say though, an observation about the inefficiency of the pilot system, it’s probably hugely beneficial to the employment of writers. I think because we overshoot the number of pilots we make, I think a lot more people end up being employed writing pilots and getting the chance to make pilots than otherwise would be if we actually went to a full, okay, we’re just going to make series.

**Craig:** Yes. And no. Yes, in the sense that you’re right, strictly they are employed. No, in the sense that whatever you make to write that one pilot isn’t that much, and worse, by creating a system that is particularly inefficient for scripted narrative programming the networks find it much, much easier, I think, to punt and just put in stuff that’s much easier to develop, like reality, which you can make a pilot for cheaply and remake, and remake, and remake.

And it’s unfortunate because the real money for writers is when the show is a hit and on. And we’ve lost ground to non-scripted stuff I think in part because the pilot system is just so absurd.

**John:** I agree that the pilot system is absurd but I would still push back on some of these points. The inefficiencies is essentially research and development. Television does research and development the way that movies never do is that we say like, “Well, what if we made this show?” And so you get to see, well, what would that show be like?

The pilots are a very imperfect version of what that show would be like, but I think it gives us a lot of new and medium writers a chance to actually make their own thing, that would be much less likely if we went to a full “we’re just going to make 13 episodes of a series” situations. Because the people who get to make 13 episodes of a series of their own creation are the Jenji Kohans, are the people who have the power, and history, and clout to do that.

So, it’s going to be harder and harder for me, when I was doing my first TV show, to be doing my first TV show because it’s a bigger gamble to say we’re going to do 13 episodes of a show versus a pilot.

**Craig:** I agree with that. I think the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. Maybe not demanding that pilots do the work beyond what a good first episode of a series ought to be doing. Where I think that Kevin Spacey takes the unnecessary leap, and you see this sometimes — people get really excited when something new comes along. They get so excited that they over swing.

Here’s the truth: House of Cards, while a success for Netflix, is a success question mark. No one really knows, I don’t think, how many people actually watch the show. More importantly, we do know this — a tiny fraction of say — A House of Cards audience is a tiny fraction of say Modern Family’s audience.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The truth is that the network model that Kevin Spacey seems to think his show has already made obsolete is so vastly more profitable and more watched than the Netflix model. We don’t need to engage in these things where it has to be this or that. The truth is the network model still works in a fascinatingly successful way.

Similarly, people — while he points out is it still a film if you watch it on TV at home? Yeah, sure, it’s a movie, but people still go to the theater. So, while we open ourselves to change, and open ourselves to adapt to the technology that’s available to us and what the audience is telling us, we shouldn’t over-correct and just decide that everything that exists and is incredibly successful is now obsolete.

**John:** I would argue about whether you can blanket statement say that broadcast television is more profitable than Netflix or those situations because they’re actually very difficult to compare. The Netflix model is really very much like what HBO does. And when you talk to HBO and they talk about sort of how they make their money, they will tell you quite honestly, “Our research has found that if there’s one show that people want to watch on HBO they will keep subscribing to HBO.”

So, they don’t necessarily need to have a bunch of eyeballs as long as they have one show that each of their current subscribers or each of their hopeful subscribers really wants to watch and will therefore pay for HBO to watch.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so it’s a remarkable luxury to be able to say, “We don’t have to appeal to a broad cross-section of Americans as long as we can get this number of people to be watching HBO because this show exists.”

**Craig:** That’s right. It is apples to oranges. But, just as it’s apples and oranges to compare the amount of money that, I don’t know, the paperclip industry makes to the computer industry, I think it’s fair to say the computer industry probably makes more money.

When you talk about big hit network shows that are rerun and go into syndication and are purchased on DVD and are watched by, I don’t know, 15 million people on a given night, and the ads that are sold, the amount of money is astonishing. Granted, it’s not what it used to be, but it’s astonishing. Netflix was a company that was nearly out of business two years ago. So, hard to say — it’s hard to say. All I think I can say for sure is that stories of network television’s demise are — how does the phrase go?

**John:** Greatly exaggerated?

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Yes. I would thoroughly agree with you on that point.

So, let’s go to a topic that you can lead the discussion on because I’m just ignorant — the WGA elections are happening right now.

**Craig:** Right now.

**John:** And so people should have a packet in their mailbox of candidate statements and ballots and things that they should be looking at. So, if you’re a WGA member, what kinds of things would you encourage them to be looking at?

**Craig:** Well, it’s an interesting year. This is, every two years there is an officer election. So, there is a board of 16 members and then there are three officers. On I guess even years it’s just eight members of the board are up for reelection. On odd years it’s the other eight members of the board, plus the three officers. The WGA West has an interesting constitutional clause that says that we can’t do what’s called white ballot voting. And white ballot voting is one candidate to vote for. The framers of the union felt strongly that there should always be some sort of competition. And there always has been, until this year.

So, this year we have Christopher Keyser, our incumbent president, running unopposed. And we have Howard Rodman, our incumbent vice president, also running unopposed. How is this possible? It’s possible because basically the people that were nominated to run against them declined. Essentially they turned it down. And at that point the Guild felt it had done its duty.

And so it goes. It’s a little strange. I mean, look, the truth is Chris and Howard were going to win anyway.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, a lot of times what happens is they just put a straw dummy candidate up just to fulfill the constitutional. So, obviously you’re voting for Chris Keyser. You have no choice. I would urge you to anyway. And you’re voting for Howard Rodman, you have no choice. I would urge you to anyway.

Where things have gotten a little interesting is in the Secretary-Treasurer race between Dan Wilcox and Carl Gottlieb. Carl Gottlieb is a legend. He wrote — talk about two wildly different movies — Carl Gottlieb wrote Jaws…

**John:** I’ve heard of Jaws.

**Craig:** Carl Gottlieb wrote The Jerk. [laughs] Now, how is this possible that you could somehow figure out a way to write two of the most amazing movies of the ’70s in two wildly different genres? Well, Carl did it. And I am very proud to say that I served with Carl and that he is not only a gentleman and a brilliant writer and a legend, but Carl has probably the most institutional wisdom of any of the people that currently serve the Guild. He’s been involved forever.

He’s running against Dan Wilcox who I don’t think wrote Jaws or The Jerk. Dan has sort of lobbed this bizarre, I don’t know what is going on here, so Dan Wilcox wrote this statement basically saying the Guild doesn’t have enough meetings and the meetings don’t go long enough. Well, let me tell you something. Having served on the Guild, the best news of all would be that maybe they got rid of a few meetings, that the meetings weren’t 12 hours long.

These meetings were atrocious. When you get, you know, you’re talking about 19 people in a room, plus staff, slowly belaboring nonsense. It’s the worst. I think the fact that meetings are running more efficiently is wonderful.

He was also complaining apparently that some people weren’t showing up, but then he goes ahead and he supports Thania St. John who is running for reelection who has missed more meetings than anyone. I have no idea what Dan is talking about. I’ll be honest with you: he’s a nice man but I found him to be an unimpressive board member when I was on the board. He doesn’t particularly propose anything or change anything or do anything. He’s just kind of — he reminds me of the way I think Guild politics used to be but isn’t any longer.

I strongly support Carl. And, by the way, so do Chris Keyser and so does Howard Rodman. And Chris and Howard, by the way, are from either side of the Guild political spectrum and they get along great and they both support Carl. I think that that one is a slam dunk.

**John:** Now, let’s talk about what this elected board will be facing and addressing, because how close are we getting to contract negotiations, other issues that are going to be pressing on us in this next term?

**Craig:** One of the favorite rhetorical tricks that candidates will use is to say things like, “Don’t think that when you’re voting here you’re voting to say what the negotiations are going to be, the contract, because the negotiations are on this date and the contract is this date,” and blah, blah, blah.

You’re always voting for that. Because the truth is once you elect somebody chances are the incumbents will be reelected. Beyond that, while a particular board member may not be around for a particular negotiation, they’re there when the negotiating committee is appointed. There’s an enormous influence that you have. You’re always voting for negotiations. Never let anybody tell you you’re not. You always are. I hate that. It’s the worst lie. That’s the one that drives me the craziest.

So, yeah, this is entirely about negotiations. And, of course, given that we’re going to have the same president and vice president combo, I think we can expect a certain amount of continuity. There are certain candidates that I think would be terrific to continue or be new to the board considering that we are heading towards negotiations.

So, Billy Ray has been, I think he’s chaired the negotiating committee now twice. He’s essential. We have to reelect Billy. Billy is important. And, by the way, not every — there are 16 directors on the board and about three of them usually matter and the rest of them are just sort of voting along with the other three. Billy Ray is one of the important ones. Have to, have to reelect him.

I’m a big fan of this kid Ari Rubin. He’s a kid. I mean, I say kid because now I’m getting older and he’s probably thirty-something. He’s famed screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin’s son. And he’s just very enthusiastic and very much wants to kind of present a positive, I guess, energy from the Guild to the membership. You know, a lot of these people just get grumpy after awhile. He’s not yet grumpy. And I think he’s very reasonable. He looks at both sides of the issue, so I like Ari Rubin.

And Lee Aronsohn, I think, is well worth electing. Lee Aronsohn was Chuck Lorre’s right hand guy. I think he is sort of retired now, but he really understands the boots on the ground in TV today. And it’s just so important that we have people — and we have a lot of people on the board that frankly just aren’t really connected on a day-to-day basis to the way the business really works. Lee certainly would be.

And then I recommend strongly the reelection of David Goyer, again, who understands both screenwriter issues, and we have precious few screenwriters on the board, and television issues, and the business as it is currently.

And how could I not mention that Patric Verrone is running again.

**John:** There’s some institutional knowledge of a different kind…

**Craig:** Yes. [laughs]

**John:** …of Patric Verrone, who was the president of the WGA through — president or chairman of the board? I guess president.

**Craig:** He was president.

**John:** President, during the most recent strike.

**Craig:** Yes. Patric just apparently can’t get enough.

**John:** Yeah. A person I know personally who is running is Jonathan Fernandez who was actually in my picketing group.

**Craig:** Oh yeah, I like Jonathan.

**John:** My picketing group at Paramount. And he’s fantastic, and smart, and considerate. And walks that sort of smart middle ground in that he was very involved during the strike but also very interested in having the strike be over. I know he came to you for counsel as well about…

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** …sort of the issues that would be facing the board during these next two years.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think Jonathan Fernandez is terrific. Yes. So, I’m going to say my personal I’m voting for them: Chris Keyser, Howard Rodman, Carl Gottlieb, Ari Rubin, Jonathan Fernandez, Billy Ray, Lee Aronsohn, David Goyer. I am fans of all them.

And, by the way, when it comes to voting for the board, you can vote for eight people. You don’t have to vote for eight people.

**John:** It’s that classic thing where voting for fewer people in a weird way makes your votes count a little bit more because you’re not diluting your vote.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I would say my general criteria as looking for people to vote is trying to find people who sort of proxy my views on how things should be, but who also bring a diversity of experience and opinion to how to do things. And so as you say institutional knowledge for Carl Gottlieb is fantastic. Enthusiasm and new perspective is great for some of these younger members.

But, the WGA is also a collection of film people and television people. And we need to have both in there. And classically screenwriters have been underrepresented in board affairs.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** So that’s why I’m excited to have screenwriters as candidates.

**Craig:** Not many of them, but yes.

**John:** But Goyer and Fernandez both count as that, which is fantastic.

**Craig:** Goyer, Fernandez, and Billy Ray for sure.

**John:** Yeah, yeah. Let us go to a small intermezzo, a small — what do you call those little palate cleanser…?

**Craig:** A sorbet?

**John:** Sort of a midway sorbet. We got a question from Hillary Dixon Rust who is a gentleman. He asks, “Ever taken the Myers-Briggs test? If so, would you share your types?”

**Craig:** Yeah, I have. Have you?

**John:** Of course. I knew you had. Of course I have, too. So, the most recent time I took it I am an ENTJ. What are you?

**Craig:** [laughs] ENTJ.

**John:** Yeah. That doesn’t surprise me at all.

**Craig:** Look at us. Shouldn’t we be fighting or, I don’t know what it even means. Sometimes I’m an ENTP.

**John:** Yeah. I think I occasionally turn out to be a P.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But I would say when I first took the test in college I was definitely an I. And that is one of the things, extroversion, really any of these scales, you can slide a bit on them and it’s going to be fungible. But it was a very deliberate choice to sort of force myself to be more extroverted.

**Craig:** Interesting.

**John:** And so the person I am now is not the person I was in college.

**Craig:** You know what’s so interesting about what you just said? I could have said and can say the exact same thing. It’s so weird to me. I was also, and I remember doing it in college and I was an I. And just so people understand the I/E thing, so Introvert/Extrovert, the specific way they’re talking about it is what energizes you, being around people or being on your own? And it did change for me. It really changed for me.

I am in the exact same boat. We’re the same thing and we’ve followed the same progression. How weird.

**John:** Yeah. And so things like when we hosted the live 100th episode of Scriptnotes or when we did the big thing at the Academy, that would have just absolutely terrified me and it would have caused panic. And instead it gets me really amped up and adrenalized and I love it. So, it’s a very different thing.

**Craig:** My introversion manifested itself differently. I just would have been angry and dismissive. [laughs]

**John:** You were surly, you’re saying?

**Craig:** Incredibly! But I’ve become so much more happy. Out of curiosity, do you know what Mike is?

**John:** Mike, I don’t know what his full thing is but he’s definitely on the introvert side — my husband Mike. And your wife, Melissa?

**Craig:** Melissa is, I think, an opposite of me in every — no, no, she’s an E also, but I think she’s like ESFP. I mean, she’s just completely opposite.

**John:** Completely opposite, yeah. She’s the other side of your Velcro?

**Craig:** Totally. Totally.

**John:** Yeah, it’s interesting. And so it’s great to have some balance in your relationship and the ability to do different things. And it’s also important I think for people to realize that those aren’t like, it’s not fate. It’s not destiny that because you’ve scored a certain way on this little test you took that this is how you must behave in life. It just sort of shows your general patterns on how you’re going to behave in situations.

**Craig:** And god forbid that you should take this test and then decide you have to act like the way the test tells you to act. That would be the worst possible outcome.

**John:** Yeah, please don’t do that.

**Craig:** Don’t do that.

**John:** So, back in college you were introverted but you also had a famous roommate. I don’t know if you want to get into your famous roommate now. It’s probably too long of a topic.

**Craig:** [laughs] No, I can do a very short version. My freshman year roommate, so the roommate that was assigned to me by Princeton University was Ted Cruz who is currently a United States Senator from Texas and putative presidential candidate. And I hated him. And I talked about it —

**John:** But now he’s one of your best friends on earth, right?

**Craig:** [laughs] No, I still hate him. And I talked about it with a reporter and it was awesome. I was called… — There are some corners of the internet where people just get wild. And politically I’m very much in the middle. I pick and choose from right and left depending on the topic. I’m not a — far from a leftish, far from a rightist. But I was accused of being a leftist, a Marxist, gay, bisexual. I like that it was both gay and bisexual.

**John:** That’s perfect. Well, they see your wife and your kid and say, “Okay, maybe once.” [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] They didn’t really know about that.

**John:** Oh, you have two kids, I’m sorry. Twice.

**Craig:** Yes, twice. I was a Marxist and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was pretty wild. People are nuts! Anyway, I thought it was fun in a weird way because I have been inoculated to a certain extent from the pain of public criticism, but these people are just cuckoo. I mean, it was actually funny.

But, Ted Cruz was my roommate. I did not like him at all in college. I actually asked that they give me a different roommate. I made it as far as November and I couldn’t take it anymore. And the university declined my offer, my request. So, I was stuck with him for an entire year. And then I haven’t said a word to him since.

**John:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** Bad guy. Don’t like him.

**John:** Let’s transition from a discussion of national politics to more local politics which is the LA Mayor Eric Garcetti made comments, Variety picked up the story but other people picked up the story as well saying that it is a priority of the city government to stop runaway production or to try to keep more production of Hollywood features and television shows shooting actually in Hollywood where the film industry began.

This is obviously an evergreen thing that comes up. It’s an evergreen problem. I think the only thing I saw which was a little bit more specific from his comments was that we’re going to focus on the things we can actually hopefully win which is things like one-hour drama pilots and trying to keep them in town.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I’m deeply torn and conflicted about this because whenever I see the political solutions being proffered for runaway productions it’s always like, “Well, we need more tax incentives.” Well, that’s just an arms race and it’s an arms race that everybody loses because if California creates these giant tax incentives well, okay, first off, why are we doing it for this industry rather than other industries. But, you can look at sort of the tax incentives that local governments offer for retailers saying like, “Hey Walmart, please build a new Walmart here.” And so they build this great Walmart here and they close the other Walmart which becomes this wasteland. And it’s not good for everybody.

**Craig:** This is intractable. It is. And this article bummed me out because I got excited at first. And then I kept reading going, okay, it was like a kid opening up a gift and it’s just nothing but tissue paper. And then finally you hit the bottom of the box and you’re like, “Oh, god, there’s nothing in here but tissue paper.” There is no answer in this article.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah. There’s like a receipt for something that is not actually in —

**Craig:** Yeah, gift receipts for a sweater that at this point you actually would want and you didn’t even get. So, the idea of these tax incentives is that a state basically says if you shoot a movie here then what we’ll do is we’ll collect a bunch of tax from all the people that work on the movie and then we’ll give it back to you, the production, so that employees work, essentially.

“We want our people working here in the state. And our feeling is if they work and they get paid, even if we give you back our state revenue from that stuff, that they will then go and buy stuff and that will just be better for our economy.” That’s the theory. And frankly I’m not sure that there is enough evidence one way or another to show that it works or doesn’t work. There are enough places doing it that makes me think it does work.

But, the problem is that there are so many places doing it that it becomes insolvable for California. First of all, California is the most poorly run state in the country. I really do believe that. Sacramento is horrible. I mean, I’m really involved in school funding issues and public school funding issues and California is ridiculous. It will continue to be ridiculous.

On this issue, I think this is a — stand in line, by the way, of how many things California bungles, including the fact that we’re saddled with this cuckoo nuts referendum system so now we have this multibillion dollar ridiculous high speed bullet train that nobody wants that is too expensive. I mean, it’s just we’re a dumb state and we’re getting dumber. And we’re also enormous and unwieldy. So, much like turning the Titanic, it takes us a really long time after we see the iceberg to figure out what to do.

You have all these other states that seem to be more nimble. And also, frankly, aren’t as worker friendly. So, when we say, “Oh look, let’s go shoot everything in Atlanta,” the way that so many movies are right now, it’s not just because Georgia is saying we’ll give you a bunch of money back. Georgia is saying we can give you a bunch of money back because frankly all these people that are working are working lower rates, not a lot of union stuff, right to work states where you don’t have to be in the union. It is a race to the bottom.

It’s a race to the bottom for the states and it’s a race to the bottom for the workers. The only people who are enjoying this and laughing about it are the studios. And they couldn’t give a damn.

**John:** I think you’re sadly kind of right. So, let’s talk about this from the writer’s perspective because in a weird way the writer seems to be the most insulated from this because, well, we can write anywhere. And a lot of us write in Los Angeles, or we write wherever, and it kind of doesn’t matter so much to us, except, it sometimes really matters for the project. So, I’m going to fictionalize certain aspects of this meeting so that people don’t figure out what I’m actually talking about.

But, a couple of weeks ago I went in to meet on this project, an adaptation that I really liked that I do hope to do at some point. And the original project is set in a specific location. And there are good creative reasons why the place where it is set should maybe not be the place where you would want to set the movie version of it. And in a general sense, there are reasons why you may want to move it just for good creative reasons.

One of the producers said, so we started to talk about good creative places to put, like rather than there you could set it on the east coast, it could be this, it could be a Bostony kind of thing. That could be really interesting. Yeah, that totally works. And one of the producers said, “Well, no, we should put it in Louisiana so it’s cheaper.”

And I nodded but didn’t sort of say yes or no. But that was a case where the suggestion came to make a fundamental creative choice, and really a terrible creative choice for this project based on where he perceived we could shoot the movie for less money. And that is exactly what you don’t want.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** As a writer, or as a filmmaker, as anyone, a producer, anyone who cares about making the best movie, the best TV show, you should choose the location you shoot it in for what it actually makes sense to — for the project you’re trying to do. And so if you’re trying to do a New York set thing, great, shoot New York, and it’s lovely that there are tax credits here. But if you’re set in Los Angeles, or you’re set in California, or like it doesn’t matter where you’re set, don’t just go to Atlanta or Louisiana or that other place just for those tax reasons because it kind of hurts you on some levels.

**Craig:** They don’t care. I went through this on Identity Thief. It was —

**John:** So, Identity Thief was Georgia, correct?

**Craig:** Identity Thief was shot in Atlanta.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** The movie was obviously always meant to be a road trip. And I sat and I remember talking about it at length with Jason and with Seth Gordon about the kind of road trip we wanted to do. And the one that we wanted to tell, because it’s important, I mean, everything is intentional. And we sort of wanted to show a cross country road trip that we hadn’t really seen.

You know, for instance Due Date had just done a really good one from Atlanta to LA and they kind of cut through that southern swath and through the Grand Canyon. It was such a great look. And they got near the Mexican border. But what I hadn’t seen was a trip that I had actually done when I was younger, which is kind of a Boston to Portland kind of feel, that cutting across the top of the country, through the rust belt, and through dairy country, and then out through kind of big sky and all the rest of it.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And ending up in the Pacific Northwest. And so much of what the characters look like and dress like and how they live, plus Boston is such a great town in terms of look.

**John:** Oh, it’s great.

**Craig:** And Portland is really interesting. And Portland is also interesting because of the communities that are just off it that are actually kind of trashy and depressed.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I was screamed at. [laughs] I’m not joking. I’m not going to tell you who screamed at me. Screamed at. And when I tell you screamed at, I mean over the phone I was screamed at and I was told the movie has to be shot in Atlanta or it’s not happening. And the road trip, given that the whole thing had to be shot in Atlanta, the physical production people were quite convinced that we could fool the audiences by making a road trip from Miami to Atlanta. [laughs]

And I was like, that’s a day. First of all, everything looks the same. That’s the whole point. So, how will you know you got anywhere? Forget what it does to the characters and all the rest of it. And it was an enormous fight and in the end the best I could do was get to, okay, it’s a drive from Miami to Denver, but not really Denver, Atlanta. And then pay for a second unit to sort of fake our way through St. Louis.

It was depressing, because frankly what ended up happening was the Denver scenes were just generic because frankly Denver and Atlanta are kind of generic looking cities.

**John:** They really are.

**Craig:** So, that stuff was just sort of generic. The Florida stuff was generic. And the road trip was boring. You know, you didn’t get a sense of scope or feel or the bigness of what it means to be out on the road in the middle of nowhere, just big, big…it just killed me.

**John:** The only sort of big wide moments you had were some of those giant tree-lined highways. And you used those for like the times when they’re walking around a bit.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But that’s as much sort of scale —

**Craig:** It’s generic, you know?

**John:** So, I was pretty sure that Identity Thief went to Denver. And what was so weird is that We’re the Millers also goes to Denver. And it’s like why are there two R-rated comedies that are about road trips to Denver?

**Craig:** Because they shot We’re the Miller in Atlanta and they knew that Identity Thief had successfully confused enough Americans to think that Denver was Atlanta. Because most people don’t know what Denver looks like and most people don’t know what Atlanta looks like.

**John:** Oh, poor Denver.

**Craig:** I know! But, look, it’s ridiculous.

**John:** So, We’re the Millers at least did shoot some in New Mexico because there is a little bit of scenery at some places in We’re the Millers.

**Craig:** Right, because the story actually takes them into Mexico and you can’t fake that in Atlanta. But this is the thing, it just bums me out. It bums me out. And it’s not like we were saying we have to shoot the movie in Los Angeles. And it’s not like we’re saying we can’t shoot a big chunk of it somewhere where there are tax breaks. Nor are we saying, “Okay, the movie that costs $32 million, if we do it the way we want to would cost $52 million.” It wouldn’t. It would have probably cost $37 million.

**John:** It would have been just fine.

**Craig:** It would have been just fine. But they just…they kill…anyway, they screamed at me. [laughs] And I screamed back. It was fun.

**John:** So, one of the interesting things that comes up is that the half-hours never get that pressure to shoot — or almost never get that pressure to shoot somewhere else. So, Ugly Betty famously did move from Los Angeles to New York, but it was also set in New York, so I was willing to cut it some slack there. But New Girl, no one is telling New Girl, “Oh, you need to shoot in Atlanta.” That’s because comedies rely on having their writers right there. Because comedy is about sort of all that stuff you do on the set to try different things, to get things to be funny.

It’s a much more live process than the one-hours are. And so I guess we could make a whole bunch more half-hours and then suddenly we would have more production happening in town. It wouldn’t be the worst thing.

**Craig:** Also, those half-hours are set based, so they’re stage based. And there is an economics behind the stage rentals, too. I mean, companies don’t want to give away the stage space that they own for free, nor do they want them sitting empty. So…

**John:** So they want to lease it to their own productions and so they’re paying themselves.

**Craig:** They lease it to their own. They lease it to other. I mean, it’s kind of crazy how some of these shows end up where they end up. But, yeah.

**John:** They end up in a certain studio, on certain stages because that’s what was available when they shot the pilot. And suddenly like 12 years later they’re at this weird place.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like I remember Seinfeld was shot at CBS Radford.

**John:** But you look at Shonda Rhimes’s shows, and they could — most of them could shoot anywhere, but they’re better for shooting in Los Angeles because she and the creative team have the ability to impact the show because they’re locally —

**Craig:** Well, the other thing is when you’re talking about a long-term television show there are costs that begin to accrue when you’re dealing with an out of town production: putting everybody up and feeding everybody and flying everybody back and forth, and every guest start and every actor and all the rest of it. At some point it outweighs the benefits. But a movie, a one-shot deal, oh my god, they just can’t help it.

And the way they jam you on these locations — you want to know why comedies all look like crap, it’s not the directors or the DPs. It’s the locations. And Atlanta is a beautiful place the first time, or the fifth time, but not the 50th time.

I remember I was standing with — I went out to Atlanta. I’m standing where they were shooting the car chase for Identity Thief. And it was literally the same intersection where they had done a car accident scene in Due Date just a year earlier.

**John:** Oh my.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s just like, ugh, god.

**John:** Hmm.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Well, we didn’t solve that problem.

**Craig:** No. And it’s not going to get solved.

**John:** It’s not going to get solved. I think my only bit of suggestion and hope is that maybe rather than focusing on tax incentives or sort of getting our A-list people to say, “We need more tax incentives,” is to get our A-list people to say, “No, screw it, I’m not going to shoot this thing over there. I’m going to shoot this here.” And maybe with more powerful TV showrunners and writer-directors, some of that will happen. It’s certainly not a guarantee.

**Craig:** It does happen for people who are powerful and for budgets that are larger. But, for so many it doesn’t happen.

**John:** It does not happen.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Let’s do our One Cool Things.

Craig, mine is actually a collection of One Cool Things. This was a listener suggestion as well. You and I have been doing One Cool Things since quite early on in the podcast. I think episode 10 or so we started doing them. And a listener wrote in and said, “Hey, why don’t you put together a page of all your One Cool Things in one place so we can see them all?”

**Craig:** Neat.

**John:** I was like, that’s a really good idea. So, Stuart and Ryan did that. if you go to johnaugust.com there will be a link to a little sidebar page that shows all the One Cool Things from the beginning of the show up till now. And we will be continuously updating it so you’ll see what I recommended and what Craig recommended.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** If there’s a link that works for something you can buy, we’ll try to do that. If it’s something you can buy on Amazon it will be to that. And those things you click through for Amazon we get like a small percentage so you’re helping pay for the show while you’re getting cool things. So, that’s this week’s One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** That is a cool thing. My Cool Thing this week is something that you might have seen already. It’s been sort of making its way around the internet. Have you heard of or scene Slow Ass Jolene?

**John:** I am obsessed with Slow Ass Jolene to the degree that I actually took two of the tracks from Big Fish and did the same technique on them.

**Craig:** So, Slow Ass Jolene, someone took Jolene by Dolly Parton and slowed it down I think 25%. And it’s amazing. And it’s amazing for so many reasons. First of all, let’s give Dolly Parton credit for being one of the greatest singer-songwriters ever.

**John:** No question.

**Craig:** And Jolene is a heartbreaking song. It’s just heartbreaking. It is about as tragic a song as I can imagine. Maybe more so because it’s so understated. It’s not like, you know, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is really trying to be tragic. This song is just a quiet, simple woman asking — no, begging — another woman not to take her man. And it’s so understated.

And the interesting thing about Dolly Parton if you were to say to me what is the weakest part of Dolly Parton, as a package, obviously not the songwriting, and not her pitch. Her pitch is outstanding. The quality of her voice, which is just the quality of her voice, is a little tinny. It’s a little shrilly/tinny, and it’s very country. And it’s very pleasant. But, for instance, it’s why Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You turned the world around whereas Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You didn’t. Not just tempo and tone, but it’s the timbre of her voice.

But when you take her performance of Jolene and you slow it down 25%, first of all the true tragedy of the song really starts to blossom, and because her voice has been knocked down to like a male tenor, what you hear is how good of a singer she is. How good she is! She’s so good. And, of course, it goes without saying long before the era of the noxious auto tune and all that. It’s a beautiful song and whoever did Slow Ass Jolene is kind of a genius because it’s sort of this wonderful serendipitous representation of something that was pretty terrific to begin with.

**John:** I agree. And so we will link to Slow Ass Jolene. I’ll also link to on Kottke they had a post that did the same technique to a bunch of other songs you’ve heard of, including like a Prince song that became an awesome slow jam. And Mazzy Star’s Fade Into You, which is sort of bizarrely hypnotic when you actually take it down a notch. And if I’m brave I may even put a link into Fight the Dragons which is one of the title songs, sort of main songs in Big Fish.

I happen to on my hard drive have a recording of Andrew Lippa, our composer, singing the song to the full track, full orchestral track, and you do that, it’s a 12.242 reduction. It pulls it down two semi-tones, and it’s kind of great.

And so I sent it to Andrew saying, “My friend Leon did a cover of our song,” and I sent it to Andrew so he could listen to it, and he’s like, “Who is Leon? I don’t get this?” And he was fascinated. I was like, “No, no, that’s you.”

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s you!

**John:** He did recognize his own voice.

**Craig:** No, you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t.

**John:** No. It’s great.

**Craig:** Yeah, so Slow Ass Jolene.

**John:** Hooray. So, if you would like to listen to Slow Ass Jolene or any of the things we talked about on the podcast this week, links are always at johnaugust.com/podcast.

If you are listening to this show on iTunes and you happen to want to leave us a comment, or review, that’s awesome, so why don’t you go do that. I am @johnaugust on Twitter. Craig is @clmazin. And we’re here every week. So, we will see you guys next week.

**Craig:** Bye!

**John:** Bye, thanks.

Links:

* Listen to John and Andrew on [SiriusXM On Broadway](http://www.siriusxm.com/onbroadway) with Julie James
* [Marcel Proust Within a Budding Grove, Part two](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/496922-what-best-remind-us-of-a-person-is-precisely-what)
* The (http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/aug/22/kevin-spacey-tv-golden-age) and [transcript](http://www.theguardian.com/media/interactive/2013/aug/22/kevin-spacey-mactaggart-lecture-full-text) of Kevin Spacey’s speech at the 2013 Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival
* [WGAW Announces Candidates for 2013 Officers and Board of Directors Election](http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=5259)
* [Myers-Briggs personality types](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator) on Wikipedia
* [L.A. Mayor Declares State of ‘Emergency’ As Movie, TV Production Flees Hollywood](http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/l-a-mayor-declares-state-of-emergency-as-movie-tv-production-flees-hollywood-1200589182/), from Variety
* [One Cool Things](http://johnaugust.com/onecoolthings) from Scriptnotes
* The New Yorker on [Slow Ass Jolene](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/08/slowed-down-dolly-parton.html)
* Kottke on [How to make your own slow jams](http://kottke.org/13/08/how-to-make-your-own-slow-jams)
* Outro by Scriptnotes listener Latif Ullah

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/adventures-in-semi-colons).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 105 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Yeah, I really miss Moviefone guy.

**Craig:** Moviefone guy was awesome. He was enthusiastic about anything, didn’t matter what. “You have selected Care Bears at 9:40am.”

**John:** [laughs] I think if someone is going to a Care Bears movie at 9:40pm, it’s really troubling. That’s an example — I haven’t even thought about Moviefone, but an example of like technology replacing something. Like who would use Moviefone now?

**Craig:** Moviefone, there must be a word for technology that in and of itself was revolutionary but only occupied a very thin wedge of time before it washed away by even more revolutionary technology.

**John:** Revolutionary obsolescence. So, that tiniest little sliver of time which was very, very important. You had actually sent me a long time ago the David Fincher directed You Will commercials.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Which we’ll find a link to those. They’re so amazing. So, basically this is 1993, I think. AT&T hired David Fincher to direct these commercials about like how in the future these amazing things will happen and AT&T will be the company that will provide them for you.

And the truth is AT&T didn’t really provide almost any of the stuff that they say in the commercials, but a lot of it is almost exactly right. And so like video calling, except they’re using a phone booth and it’s like, what? Or you’ll send a fax from the beach and it’s like, well, you’ll send email; that’s better than a fax.

**Craig:** Right. You’ll send a PDF.

**John:** And I love seeing a young Jenna Elfman tucking her baby into bed on the little video phone.

**Craig:** That’s right. Normally futurists get it completely wrong. In this case they were spot on.

**John:** They were spot on except that David Fincher foresaw a future in which everyone was living inside Blade Runner. And it didn’t happen quite that way.

**Craig:** No. Turns out we just don’t want that.

**John:** No. It turns out we basically want to stare at our iPhones the whole day.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But we’re not going to do that right now because we have a lot to talk about.

**Craig:** So much.

**John:** We’re going to do three Three Page Challenges today. But first off we need to like not bury the lead and there is going to be a New York City live show coming up.

**Craig:** Ah yeah!

**John:** There were legends and rumors about it on the last podcast, but it’s actually really happening now.

**Craig:** I’m going back home, to my hometown. We’re gonna do it!

**John:** [laughs] It’ll be Monday, September 23, at 8pm. It’s going to be at the New World Stages on 50th. It’s just amazing that it’s actually all worked out. And so I think we’re going to be selling tickets starting tomorrow. So, if you’re listening to this podcast on the day it comes out, on Tuesday, I think on that Wednesday we’ll be selling tickets.

But, if not, then Craig or I will tweet about it. And so you will see like, ooh, this is the date that they’re actually selling tickets.

**Craig:** Where could we get the tickets?

**John:** You can follow the link that will be on johnaugust.com that will take you to the right place. And so we’ll have the actual click-through code to do that. It’s a Telecharge theater, so we have to sell them through Telecharge. So, tickets are actually $10 rather than the $5 I would love them to be, which was LA, but it’s also New York, so everything is more expensive.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But for your $10 you’re not only getting me, and Craig, and a live show, and sort of the other surprises that come with that; you’re getting actually Andrew Lippa who is the lyricist and composer for Big Fish who I’ve been talking about on the podcast for forever. And there will be a piano there, so I think there’s going to be some singing.

**Craig:** Ahh!

**John:** I think Craig is going to have to do some singing.

**Craig:** [sings] I don’t have to.

**John:** It’s always been rumored that Craig will sing on the show and this time it’ll happen.

**Craig:** Well, just, I mean, if I’m going to be on a Broadway stage.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** A Broadway-ish stage.

**John:** Did I tell you what stage we’re actually going to be on?

**Craig:** You mentioned that this is the stage where people here songs like, “Everyone’s a little racist, today.”

**John:** Well, see, that’s the amazing thing. So, we’re in this theater complex that is also hosting Avenue Q, a pretty amazing show. Peter and the Starcatcher, another show I love. But, those shows actually have shows that night, so we couldn’t be on one of their stages, so we needed to find a stage that was going to be available on Monday at 8pm. And it turns out to be Gazillion Bubble Show.

**Craig:** Ooh, I don’t know the Gazillion Bubble Show.

**John:** The Gazillion Bubble Show is a popular family entertainment that is designed for people with young kids who should not be going to a show at 8pm. The people who should be going to a show at 8pm on Monday September 23 are screenwriters and people who are interested in things that screenwriters are interested in.

**Craig:** Great. I am super excited. Just so excited. I really am. I mean, it’s a big deal to see my peeps and your peeps. Hopefully given that it’s a city of 14 billion people on a small island, that people will show up.

**John:** Yeah, you’re exaggerating a little bit, but I think people will be able to come. Los Angeles we sold out in four minutes. I really don’t think we’re going to sell out in four minutes, but I would say that it would be useful to follow Craig or I on Twitter so that we can tell you if there’s something, there’s a reason to move quickly on tickets, because we just don’t know. We have no idea how many people are coming to that show.

**Craig:** If we sold out in LA in four minutes, I think it’s fair to say that we might sell out in New York in eight minutes.

**John:** I would hope that just for everyone wanting to be able to come that everyone can come who wants to come, but I do want people to be able to come who want to see it. Plus Andrew Lippa has like a bunch of people who want to see him for Broadway reasons, so that’s going to create seat competition too.

**Craig:** I would like to make one request: No weirdos.

**John:** Yeah. No weirdos.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know what I mean, I don’t mean quirky. I mean, if people just don’t like you, don’t come.

**John:** So, there won’t be a bar in our actual facility, but there will be a cash bar down the hallway. And so you can go and hang out and see people who saw Avenue Q at the same time, too. And so we’ll go down there and it’ll be fun.

**Craig:** Neat.

**John:** Like all things, it will be tighter and more packed because it’s New York City, but it should be a good time.

**Craig:** Tighter and more packed. More expensive. The usual.

**John:** Usually. Sometimes.

**Craig:** More Jewish.

**John:** Speaking of things that are small and packed full of value, those USB Scriptnotes drives — I’m desperate for segues at all points. That’s really a defining characteristic. I’m always looking for the segue to get me out of this talking competition.

**Craig:** I gave you one. I said more Jewish. There’s so many ways you could have gone with that.

**John:** How could I go from Jewish to a USB drive, Craig Mazin?

**Craig:** So, for those of you looking to save money or perhaps if you’re looking for a good deal… — Oh, you can’t do that; that’s racist.

**John:** I can’t do that.

**Craig:** But you know what? [sings] Everyone’s a little bit racist, today.

**John:** If you’re being specifically anti-Semitic, is that racist in general?

**Craig:** It is. Because, the Jewish people are both people of religion and they are also an ethnic group.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And I can’t argue with you because you’re Jewish.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s right. Ha!

**John:** Trump card thrown.

**Craig:** Finally! It’s the upside. Uh…

**John:** So, can you hear the sirens on my side?

**Craig:** You bet. Oh, and it feels good, man. It feels good.

**John:** Yeah. I’m above a fire station here, which has usually actually not been so bad at all, except for all the tourists who want to like get their photo taken in front of the New York Fire Station. It’s like, I kind of get it, but at the same time, get out of my way.

**Craig:** Right. Well, you are officially becoming a New Yorker.

**John:** Yeah. That’s really what it has come down to is I’m annoyed by all these things. I think I may have already told this on the podcast but for someone who doesn’t live in New York, I live in New York a lot now. And I remember thinking when I was here for rehearsals this last time, “Who should I vote for for mayor?” And then I realized, oh, I don’t live here.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can’t vote.

**John:** I can’t vote. But what I will do, and can do, is tell you that the USB drives that hold the first 100 episodes of Scriptnotes, a bunch of people bought them which is fantastic and we’re so glad you bought them. They’re being made now. And they will be in the mail soon. We hope to get them out the door this coming week. I don’t know that we’re going to quite hit that date, but they’ll be coming out really soon.

And so after we said this is the cutoff and we’re not making any more of them, we really aren’t going to make any more of them, but we made enough that I think we’re going to have some left over. So, at a certain point we’ll reopen the store and sell some more of those ones, because I know that people keep joining the show late and the USB drives are a helpful way for people to catch up on 100 episodes of Craig.

**Craig:** Yeah. Of awesomeness. Sheer awesome.

**John:** Of awesomeness.

**Craig:** Pure awesome.

**John:** You had news, too. Is that correct?

**Craig:** Yeah, a little housekeeping of my own. Last podcast we were discussing the Olympics in one of our little side trips. And I mentioned that the Olympics were started in Greece, cradle of civilization. How strange then that they should be taking place in Russia where they’re strangely being uncivilized towards our LGBT — am I leaving one out? LGBT, yeah, that group.

**John:** That’s the group.

**Craig:** Friends. And Lexi Alexander, a Twitter follower of ours, pointed out in fact I was an ignoramus, [laughs] because while the games did, of course, originate in Greece, when they originated they were religious in nature. They were for men only. The men competed in the nude. And women were barred from watching. And if, in fact, they were caught watching they were put to death.

So, on the one hand, yes, Lexi is absolutely correct — my view that the Olympics were somehow borne of enlightened civilization. No, they were not. On the other hand, the Olympics are even gayer than I thought.

**John:** Yeah, they’re gayer and more horrible than you ever thought. [Crosstalk]

**Craig:** [laughs] Exactly. So, really, Russia, if you want to be true to the Olympic spirit, which was borne from nude men wrestling, I don’t know, rethink your dumb decisions.

**John:** Oh Russia.

**Craig:** Oh Russia!

**John:** But it’s not like we can even point to like this is a time where Russia was fantastic and like go back to that time. No, there have been problems kind of from the start.

**Craig:** Yeah. They’re consistently wrong about stuff. Consistently.

**John:** Yeah. I feel like the US has had some really good strong golden periods where you could point to significant flaws and sort of how some stuff was working, but the overall spirit was really good, like, “Oh, that’s a promising country.” And rarely can you say, “Wow, Russia is where I really want to be.”

**Craig:** They haven’t had their Golden Age, have they? [laughs] It’s been one awful situation after another. And vodka seems to make the pain go away.

**John:** Yeah. I think it was a Simpsons line. “Oh alcohol. The cause of and solution to most of life’s problems.”

**Craig:** “All of life’s problems.” Yeah.

**John:** All of those problems.

**Craig:** In Russia [crosstalk].

**John:** Today we have — did you have more to do business, or can we get to the Three Page Challenges?

**Craig:** Should I come up with something? Nah, whatever. Let’s do it. Let’s just go ahead and let’s do it.

**John:** Stuart did us right this week. And I thought we have interesting things to talk about.

**Craig:** We do.

**John:** So, should we start with Oblivion?

**Craig:** Why not?

**John:** Or Bury My Heart? Let’s start with Oblivion.

**Craig:** Do you want to summarize, or shall I?

**John:** I will summarize this one.

**Craig:** Very good.

**John:** This is An Oblivion Prolonged. It’s by Keith Alan Eiler. As always, we need to thank, and I feel like sometimes we don’t — this has gotten to be so routine that we’re not acknowledging and thanking people for their bravery and courage in sending in these three pages of their scripts to us.

**Craig:** Indeed.

**John:** Because that’s really kind of amazing that they’re trusting that we’re going to talk about their work on the air and hopefully get productive feedback, but also let the whole rest of the world see what they wrote. Anyway, so thank you Keith for sending this in.

So, story starts, exterior the Mars Space Station. And so this is a space station that is above the planet, but we’re actually inside a psychologist’s office. And Dr. Anderson is doing a consultation and a meeting with a guy named David Troxler, who is 40. And they’re talking about Troxler’s relationship with his wife and just other difficulties on the station. And clearly something is going not great but not terribly. They wouldn’t want to end up like Perkins.

And so Perkins is actually a guy we see running frantically down the space station hallway. We’re watching him from the security camera’s point of view. He’s dressed in pajama bottoms. Like, he’s freaking out.

We’re also meeting some other people on the space station, Jake Martell, who is watching this footage, and Perkins is talking about himself and sort of what he did in the past. “It’s weird just to be watching, seeing it all outside myself through different eyes.” It’s basically near the end of one of their rotations on the station and it’s clearly time to consider whether to re-up or not re-up. And that is about as much as we know of the situation on the station at the end of page three.

**Craig:** I detected that you were struggling a bit to summarize this. [laughs]

**John:** Yes, you did. It’s not just because I read it this morning and now we’re late at night.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** It was hard to grab onto specific memorable story details from these three pages.

**Craig:** Yeah. There was, actually all three of the Three Pages that we’re going to discuss today tied back somewhat neatly to our discussion last week about confusing the audience and finding that line between mystery and confusion. And here I think we fall pretty rapidly into confusion territory.

On the one hand I commend our author, Keith, for being ambitious here in the way he’s presenting this. And it is an interesting situation. We’re looking at a space station and then when we go inside the space station we see that there’s a therapy session going on. It reminded me a little bit of the opening scene of Blade Runner where the replicant is being interviewed and it was somewhat disturbing.

But a couple of things sort of jumped out that kept stopping me. A small thing — we don’t use “pre-lap” generally in feature films. We use “off-screen” usually.

**John:** I use pre-lap all the time.

**Craig:** Oh, you say pre-lap? It’s the first time I’ve seen it in a script, but that’s fine. Then it’s a choice. It’s no big deal.

Dr. Anderson, I mean, and the descriptions of things are interesting and well written. I thought the dialogue was interesting. But I couldn’t quite follow what was going on here in this discussion. It seems that Troxler is having issues with his wife, Ellen. He refers to the Kepler problem, which Dr. Anderson doesn’t understand, nor did I.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Dr. Anderson is uncomfortable. I’m not sure why. He brings it back to a discussion of the wife. Troxler, “a smirk briefly plays on Troxler’s lips, then fades.” Not sure why. And then Dr. Anderson starts talking about a conversation that he’s had with Troxler’s wife, which also sort of surprised me because generally therapists don’t do that.

Bu then Troxler sort of laughs at the thought that she’s starting to lose it. And now Dr. Anderson is comfortable and now all the weirdness has gone away. I’m not sure why. And then they refer to Perkins. When we go to Perkins, what we’re seeing actually is a video of Perkins freaking out. And then we reveal that he’s in a sick bay room with Jake Martell, possibly a doctor, I’m not sure, or an assistant or so forth. And he’s watching this video with Perkins and Perkins is talking about, “I guess I won’t be joining you out there.

He says, “I bet it turns out to be a latchup with that five series.” I just don’t know what’s happening or what’s going on.

So, by the end of page three I was confused both by the circumstances, I was confused by some of the in jokes that I think I was supposed to get but didn’t. And I was confused mostly about the emotional state of a bunch of these people. So, I’m not sure what to think.

I mean, it could be that by page four through eight everything clicks in and I get it. But, I don’t know, what about you.

**John:** So, yes, clearly I share a lot of your concern that I had a hard time knowing what was going on. And our mutual friend, Rawson Thurber, he has this term which I trot out every once and awhile, is “obscurity for death,” which is like I don’t understand what’s happening and sometimes I worry that this writer is using our confusion as sort of like a smokescreen so we think that more is happening than is really happening.

Some basics, some fundamental things I was confused about, which is just from a writing perspective: how big is this space station? If you’re going to show us an exterior of the spaces station, give us a sense of size and scale because after these three pages I don’t know if there’s 100 people on the station or 1,000 or ten. And so I have a very limited sense of what this is.

I’m thinking it’s a pretty big space station if they have a separate psychologist’s office. And if someone has like — one of them has like a living room. So, it’s like, well, if you’re big enough to have — or Troxler has a dining room. If you’re in a station that is big enough that you actually have a dining room, like not a dining hall, but a private dining room, that’s a pretty big thing.

I didn’t have a good sense of what kind of world I was in. And that was frustrating to me.

All that said, this guy could be Shane Carruth. This guy could be a guy who makes Primer or Upstream Color, both of which are like really hard to follow at the start, but are actually genius.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so I want to fully acknowledge that this could be just terrific and it’s just very hard to follow in this Three Page little sample.

Looking at some specific things on the page, though. First off, Craig is right, and pre-lap is not the right word for Troxler on page one. Pre-lap is if a person is going to start talking before the cut, and it’s sort of important that they’re talking before the cut. But that would mean that he would have to be the first person talking after the cut, and that’s not happening here. So, it’s really off-screen is what you’d want there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** “EXT. MARS SPACE STATION — SPACE.” Eh, we’re in space twice. To me, I say you can get rid of the day and night kind of thing when you’re in space. You’re in space.

Let’s look at the very first sentence: “We see a faintly lit space station over the desolate surface of Mars.” Well, here’s a case where we don’t need “we see.” It’s just, “A faintly lit space station over the desolate surface of Mars.” We need no subject. We need no verb. Just give us that fragment because that’s what we need. It’s just sort of the noun phrase explaining what this is.

**Craig:** And also say “The faintly lit.” It’s a small thing, but if you’ve established that Mars Space Station exists in the slug line, then I would go to “the.”

**John:** Yeah, “the.” Or, you might just give us space and then reveal. Like, why don’t you be a little bit more cinematic in that very first moment of like how you’re showing what this is? And give us a sense of the size, because right now I don’t know what I’m looking at. And that’s frustrating for the reader who is starting this thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** We may title this episode Adventures in Semi-Colons, because semi-colons prop up as a problem here.

**Craig:** Yeah, I noticed this.

**John:** The same first paragraph. “Round and round, never stopping; providing artificial gravity to its inhabitants.” Okay, a semi-colon is almost never the right choice. They’re a very powerful tool but they’re almost never kind of the right thing you want to use, especially in screenwriting.

First off, it’s not even the right grammatical form here because that should be an independent phrase after the semi-colon.

**Craig:** Two independent clauses. The second somehow commenting on the first.

**John:** Yes. That’s not happening here.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** A comma would work here.

**Craig:** Or a dash, or an ellipses.

**John:** Yes. Or, most cases where I’ve seen people try to join thoughts together with a semi-colon, a period would have been a much better friend. Screenwriting is about short sentences. So, keep those sentences short.

We’re inside the psychologist’s office. “This is a practical square room with tile carpeting, plain walls, and an airtight hatch for an entrance.” That’s D&D description. That’s very much like, you know, you’ve entered into a 40 foot by 40 foot room with a pit on the far side. It’s not painting the world in a special way. And so this is not a terrific way to start a block.

**Craig:** I agree. But, I’ll also qualify the criticism a little bit by saying this may be the style of this movie. In other words, this movie may be a kind of very antiseptic, cold sort of thing.

If you notice — Keith, I assume this is intentional. I hope it is, otherwise I’m angry — Keith is constantly commenting on the colors of things.

So, I just wonder if this is part of the vibe. Because everyone seems sort of oddly Valiumed and even the descriptions of the rooms are Valiumed. So, maybe that’s part of the style of it. But, I agree, and unfortunately it makes for a very challenging first three pages.

**John:** It does. And I haven’t read the script for Moon. I really liked the movie Moon. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the very first pages of Moon kind of felt like this, because it’s just like people plotting through a normal routine.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But then again you have to be able to get people to read page four. And so there’s always that issue. I agree with you on the Kepler problem. It’s really a challenge when you’re starting off a movie by referring to someone who is not even on screen and like are we supposed to get it, are we not supposed to get it? Now I’m confused. Should I be looking back ahead to see if I’ve missed something? That’s a frustration is when you’re referring to something we have no idea of what you’re actually taking about. And then when the character is in the world, or ambiguous about how they’re responding to it, it’s not going to be your best friend.

On a general character sense, I have a hard time believing this doctor/patient relationship. Now, maybe it actually all makes sense. Maybe there’s a really good reason why these things are this way. And later on in the film I will understand what was actually happening, but in the moment I saw it I didn’t believe it. And so much of screenwriting is maintaining the reader’s trust. And that being confident in the writer’s ability to get me to the next point. Like my placing my faith in you is merited and when I don’t believe this thing that seems like it’s a psychologist/patient relationship, then I’m a little suspicious as I go onto the next page, and the next page.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is a tough one. It may be mumblecore in space. And it may be awesome, like you said. These are challenging pages. They’re challenging to the reader. That’s not always a bad thing, but I would say I guess to Keith hopefully that was your intention. Because if it wasn’t, then we have a problem. If it was, well, you’re there. And then you understand that you’ve made your bed a certain way and you’re going to lie in it. And some people are going to be into it and some people are just going to check out and it’s not going to be for them.

But as long as this is what you intended, I would have to say you’ve achieved it.

**John:** Yeah. One thing I actually really liked, on page three, was I really Perkins’ line, “I bet it turns out to be latchup with that five series.” That’s the kind of, like, it’s something that’s out there in the world I sort of believe that they’re talking about. It’s when characters talk about football and I don’t really know what they’re talking about, but I believe they know what they’re talking about. So, like “latchup” is a strange word, but I believe it’s a word that exists in their world.

I’d much rather have that kind of, like I don’t know what they’re talking about, because I believe they know what they’re talking about, than referencing some character who is not there and I need to start thinking about them.

**Craig:** You know, it’s funny. I know what you mean, but I didn’t like it here because it felt a little precious, it felt a little forced. Look at me, I’m using lingo that they don’t understand, especially because even what he was saying, to me this was the part where the dialogue got a little chunky. “Guess I won’t be joining you out there tonight, Jake.”

That’s just not a very good line.

**John:** No, it’s not.

**Craig:** And then, “I bet it turns out to be…” Why are you saying what you bet it turns out to be? You’re not joining him out there. You’re upset. You just watched yourself freaking out. It seemed like a weird moment to do that. But, you know, then again, this is… — Clearly there’s a very specific tone here and this is one of those areas where I don’t want to criticize something because I might not like the movie, because other people might love it.

This isn’t a question of the writing that much. It’s just the tone. So, I do know that the “dining room/kitchen area is basic white, but with pale red, blue and yellow accents to give it some color.” That better be intentional. Keith, just let us know that the color thing is something you’re doing on purpose.

**John:** Yeah. I would hope so.

**Craig:** I mean, different colored jumpsuits and everything has a color.

**John:** Aren’t you always — I think I’m just now by default suspicious of anything set in a space/science-fiction thing that’s all going to be some kind of weird dream. This is called An Oblivion Prolonged, but then I saw Oblivion and it’s like I went through that whole movie like, okay, well I’m going to figure out what the twist of this is because there’s clearly a twist, and clearly people are like not talking about something they should be talking about.

I think we need to do something about that. I feel like we need to stop making that movie or figure out a way to get around that.

**Craig:** Moratorium on scary nightmarish space stations. Well, I mean, it’s a good analogy for alienation and existential dread.

**John:** And the police state, I guess, too.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The sense of constant surveillance.

**Craig:** Yeah. Hell is other people. I mean, yeah, there’s something useful about it, but you’re right, we have seen it and it can verge on pretentious occasionally, hurtling over the line into full pretentiousness. But hopefully this works out.

**John:** Cool. Let’s do Bury My Heart next.

**Craig:** Bury My Heart, written by Minhal Baig. I’m hoping I’m pronouncing that right. Minhal Baig.

**John:** That’s how I would do it.

**Craig:** Okay. Fantastic. So, we open, we’re inside a hotel room. Someone is changing their clothes inside, but we just hear that, and we’re looking at stacks of cash piled inside of an open briefcase as well as a gun and bullets. Then we move away from there. Now we’re outside of a strip club at the same time. A black Mercedes is parked across the street from the strip club as its closing up and the performers are leaving.

Inside the car we meet Max in his 40s. He’s a stoic type. And he’s looking in his rearview mirror, watching women passing by. And here comes Rachel, 20s, texting. She sees the car, stops, and then keeps moving. And then a different girl, also in 20s, a little sloppy and drunk perhaps, leans over the open passenger window and basically sort of propositions Max.

He asks her to get in the car. She sits down. He gives her a black duffle bag. She opens it up and it is full of cash. $50,000 to be precise. She wants to know what’s the catch, why is he giving her this money. He takes out a gun, puts her hands around it, puts the gun against his chest, and essentially is asking her to kill him. She’s scared, leaves, and he seems upset about that.

And this is Bury My Heart. Minhal Baig.

**John:** Bury My Heart. So, let’s talk about — before we get into the specifics of the writing, let’s talk about if this were the first three minutes of a movie, that’s interesting. I mean, I’m curious what his deal is. I didn’t necessarily believe how it happened here, but I think that provocative act of like trying to get a stranger to kill you in the start of your movie is interesting.

So, I think it’s an interesting way to start a story. Is it the right way to start your story? Who knows. But I thought it was an interesting way to start the story.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I had a hard time reading these three pages and sort of getting the through thread of what was important, what was not important. And I think the specific words on the page were not helping Minhal to create this provocative image. Because I got confused a lot and had to sort of keep backtracking to make sure I was actually following what I was supposed to be following.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let’s dig in on that. Right from the very start. We’re in a hotel room. “An empty bedroom, but clearly lived-in. The light from the bathroom streams in.” So, if you’re in a hotel room, are you in a bedroom? Well, it’s a bedroom if there’s a separate sort of room, but then it’s a more fancy thing. Like weirdly bedroom right in the first sentence through me. Because you think of a bedroom being in a house or a bigger place, but it’s just an empty room if we’re in a hotel room.

Or just be in hotel room and then we don’t have to say anything more in that first sentence.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The second block stopped me, too. “There is the sound of someone changing their clothes inside.” We’re in the bathroom. “There is the sound of someone changing their clothes inside.” I don’t know what that sounds like.

**Craig:** I don’t know what it sounds like, either. I’m not sure, inside what? Inside the bathroom?

**John:** Inside the bathroom. “The light from the bathroom streams in. There is the sound of someone changing their clothes inside.” But it didn’t —

**Craig:** No. We could hear zippers. We can hear, maybe, you know, or shuffling around, the sound of somebody shuffling around in the bathroom.

**John:** Then we go to “EXT. STRIP CLUB — SAME.” But is it really the same? I think it’s actually meant to be later that night. I think it’s meant to be that same night.

**Craig:** Well, that’s the thing. I was already really super confused because I’m not sure why we even watched this bedroom — not bedroom — hotel room scene.

**John:** Yup. Well, I don’t know either because, so, in this bedroom we see stacks of cash piled inside an open briefcase.

**Craig:** But, no, but it’s not. Because he gives her a duffle bag later. I actually went back to check. It seems like there are two things of cash. So, already I’m just puzzled. And not in a good way.

**John:** Not in a fascinated way.

**Craig:** Right. Grumpy.

**John:** As we get to the strip club, “As the club closes up, its PERFORMERS file out and AD-LIB good-byes to each other. The bouncers lock up.” Well that’s just under-written. First off, the performers, like performers — I had to think, like, oh, we’re at a strip club, so it’s not like Cirque du Soleil. If they’re strippers then say their strippers, or dancers. Performers felt like a weird word for that.

I think asking for ad-libs in the second block of stuff is not ideal. And so if it’s meant to be small chat, whatever, but just don’t say the word ad-lib because I feel like —

**Craig:** I’ve never written “ad-lib” in 18 years.

**John:** Yeah. I think ad-lib is not your friend. It’s certainly not your friend on page one.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So, some line from somebody. Like just let us know who is important. Or, if nobody is important just let them file out and don’t sort of give them non-words to say right there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** “MAX, 40s, having mastered cold, emotionless reservation, sits at the wheel.” I don’t know what reservation is. If it’s meant to give us a sense that I guess he’s reserved, but reserved isn’t really reservation. They’re not really the same word.

**Craig:** And, also, he’s mastered it? I don’t even know what that means. Meaning that — we’ll never know that. I guess the point is you can just as easily say, “Max, 40, sits at the wheel, grim, or flat affect, or cold, distant.” But I just hate this sort of like, oh, here’s a backstory that we haven’t earned.

**John:** I mean, just like he’s Ryan Gosling in Drive, but older. I’m of the school that I’m fine cheating a line of description on an important character the first time we meet them because it — someone who’s watching a movie gets to see an actual real person there and gets to make their generalizations about them through that. Because we don’t have an actual person in front of us, I’m okay cheating a line of dialogue that gives you a little bit more than you could actually see or hear. I’m fine with that.

But this didn’t do it for me.

And, the next block we have our adventure in semi-colon there. “From his rearview mirror, he sees a few DRUNKEN WOMEN pass by; one talks loudly on her phone, another walks in a helpless zigzag on the sidewalk.” That semi-colon should be a period. There’s no reason to — the second clause is not commenting on the first clause. They’re separate thoughts.

**Craig:** Also, we’re writing movies, so we don’t say things like, “from his rearview mirror he sees…” We say, “In the rearview mirror, drunken women pass by. Max eyes them.” Or, “Max checks his rearview mirror. In the mirror…” Make it visual. Let’s not get prosy about this sort of thing.

Also, I should also add, shooting things in a rearview mirror is annoying. It’s not just annoying to shoot, because you’re now spending time lining up extras to hit a mirror reflection, it’s also annoying for the audience because a rearview mirror is tiny. A lot of times they’ll take the rearview mirror out of the car anyway because when they’re shooting through the front they don’t want a rearview mirror in front of people’s faces. So, just be aware of that, also. Imagine this in your mind and imagine an audience watching it.

**John:** Yeah. The bigger challenge we have sort of in this page is like Minhal needs is INT/EXT Car, because basically we’re moving back and forth from perspective of being inside the car and watching what’s outside the car. You can make the argument like once we’re inside the car we stay inside the car, once we’re outside the car we stay outside the car. I think INT/EXT Car would be more helpful for him, where he’s actually split the scene header. You describe we’re going to be moving freely back and forth inside and outside the car, especially because on page two someone comes up to the window.

And right now he has it as “INT. CAR — CONTINUOUS.” But really that girl has come up to the car and is outside the car. That is your friend is INT/EXT Car.

**Craig:** Right. He jumps to “EXT. CAR — CONTINUOUS.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I can’t let you go past, “RACHEL, 20s, fresh-faced, sharp and prurient.”

**John:** I circled prurient, too.

**Craig:** Prurient is the wrong word, sir. You do not mean prurient.

**John:** What do you think he meant? Do you think he meant prudent?

**Craig:** I do not know. I know that he didn’t mean prurient because that’s impossible based on what she’s — so prurient means sort of sexually licentious.

**John:** And I don’t think of a person being prurient.

**Craig:** No. It’s an attitude.

**John:** Thoughts being prurient thoughts.

**Craig:** Right. Prurient attitude, prurient thoughts, prurient display. But she’s texting on her phone. There’s nothing prurient about it. I just think he doesn’t know —

**John:** [laughs] You don’t know what she’s texting. She’s texting some really dirty stuff on her phone.

**Craig:** It’s not the right word. It can’t possibly be the right word. Again, all this happening in the rearview mirror.

And, of course, Rachel — who is called out in all caps, so she’s somebody that we’re supposed to care about — just is texting, stops, she’s caught like a dear in the headlights, but he’s looking at her in the rearview mirror so she’s behind the car.

Really, just I’m so confused.

**John:** She’s caught in the taillights, Craig.

**Craig:** [laughs] She’s caught in the taillights, I just… — And then she moves on, so I guess she, what does that even mean? Why? What is she caught by? She’s just behind a car. There’s nothing to catch her attention at all.

**John:** Yeah. So, I get what Minhal is going for here, it’s just it’s hard to follow on the page. Essentially, like, so she recognizes that car, she recognizes who must be in that car, and goes the other way. But that’s not what we actually got on the paper here. And that’s not good.

**Craig:** No. And we need to shift to her perspective for that. We’re not going to see that from his perspective of her. We need to see her approaching the car, see something off with it, stop —

**John:** Stops. React.

**Craig:** And then move away in fear.

**John:** And you know what would really help us know that Rachel is an important character is if she said something to anybody in these first couple of paragraphs.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Because she clearly just left this club, so let her say something to somebody so we actually establish like, oh, she’s an important character who has a voice and is not like all the other people who are here. But then it’s frustrating because the one who actually is doing the work in this next scene is just called “Girl.”

**Craig:** Girl.

**John:** And it’s like, but she has lines? And so really if a character has more than two lines they should never just be generic. They should never be girl.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** For many reasons. First, like for reader’s clarity, this is an important enough character that this person should have a name. But also think about casting this person. Like, “Oh, I’m going up for Girl.” It’s like, well that sounds like you’re an extra, but no, you actually need someone who can act in this moment because it’s going to be a weird thing where like this guy is giving you money to kill him.

This isn’t an extra. This isn’t somebody you’re spending a week trying to cast. And you’re not going to find the right person by trying to go after Girl.

**Craig:** And my impression was that she’s a prostitute and she’s getting into a car with a man because she presumes he’s out there looking for a hooker. They have a sort of interesting chitchat.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Although she seems a little oblivious to the fact that he’s creep, which generally isn’t — hookers are sort of good at noticing creepy.

**John:** Good radar.

**Craig:** Yeah, because they deal with this sort of thing all the time.

**John:** But, not this girl because she is “full of youthful sloppiness.”

**Craig:** Ah-ha.

**John:** That’s her line of description.

**Craig:** By the way, all kidding aside, Minhal might have intended that she’s not a hooker and that in fact she’s just a girl who is sort of interested in this guy in a car. But I have no reason to believe that. I mean, he’s in his 40s and she’s in her 20s and it’s night outside of a strip club and he’s alone, grimly, in a car.

So, one way or another this stuff isn’t matching up, and I’m not sure which is intended.

**John:** Yeah. So, what you’re referring to on page two, which is actually my favorite part of the whole thing, is she’s looking at the empty passenger seat and she says, “That taken?” He unlocks the door for her in reply. She opens the door and sits down next to him.

Great. That was an interesting way to get her into the car. And so I liked that moment. I wished the whole thing had moments like that because that would be awesome.

And I didn’t buy, on page three, I liked it up until the point where there’s the gun. “He takes out his gun and clasps her hands around it.” And she says, “Gunplay, huh? I like that.”

**Craig:** No she doesn’t. She’s scared out of her mind. First of all —

**John:** Who would say that?

**Craig:** Before he pulls out the gun, where a normal person would start peeing, he puts a bag on her lap. And her, “What’s this?” That’s all. This is a weird guy you’ve never met and he’s put a black duffel bag on your lap and her response is, “What’s this?”

**John:** You were expecting that there would be a head inside, weren’t you? Weren’t you expecting body parts inside?

**Craig:** Well, no matter what I’m expecting, I don’t think the girl would say anything at all. I think she would be puzzled. And I think then Max would say, “It’s yours. Open it.” And now she would be concerned. But maybe I should open it because I’m scared, and she opens it, and there’s all this money. And I don’t think she would say, “Jesus Christ, there must be like,” I mean, she’s like, “Good golly gee.”

No, I don’t think she’s going to say anything here. This is an example of a scene where you really have to think about the notion of who’s in charge of the scene, who’s driving it, who has power, who is afraid, who is not. Because this is potentially good stuff here, but she’s just yapping away throughout the whole thing here.

And then when she finally gets to “Gunplay, huh? I like that,” we’re like, well, this is not a human.

**John:** Yeah. So, let’s envision together the scene I kind of think that Minhal set out to write, which could be actually really kind of cool. And I think that would actually start with there’s a guy parked outside a strip club, women are coming out, at the end of the night they’re doing their normal stuff. Probably a little chitchat between them in a way that’s actually meaningful so we have some sense of who they are, a little bit of the reality of the world.

One woman knows not to go to that car and goes the other way, but another girl who we’ve established a little bit before she got to the car does go to the car. And in that car something like this scene happens where this guy puts the gun to his chest and basically wants to die.

**Craig:** Yeah. If I were doing a quick rewrite I would actually not start with the car at all. I would start with the strip club, it’s closing, and strippers are coming out. And I would give them little bits of bye-bye dialogue. And I would be following Rachel, who is the person we’re supposed to care about. And I would have her walking and texting. And then I would have her stop and notice the back of a car parked there on its own. And then something about that, she turns and walks the other way, a little frightened.

Then, I would show another girl, one of the other girls who is chitchatting or smoking or something, seeing that car, and sort of walking over to it curiously. And that’s when we would meet Max.

**John:** Yeah. I agree with you. I think it’s a much better way. Because your characters are taking you to the source of danger and you’re not splitting your focus. You’re focusing on one thing and letting that thing that you’re focusing on carry you to the next thing.

**Craig:** Right. And it’s just also a way for, when we have — let’s rename girl. Let’s call her —

**John:** Veronica.

**Craig:** Veronica. Veronica, by seeing the car, and seeing the man, and making a choice to walk over, tells me a ton about Veronica. Before she ever opens her mouth I know that she’s smart, calculating, a hooker, making a decision about a guy, could probably use the money, weighing things and, “Eh, screw it, let’s do it.” But, this is a business transaction for her. The other way is just some girl I don’t know who goes, “Hey Mister. What you doing out here?” [laughs] Well who the hell are you? And why?

So, multiple issues here for Minhal. But, you’re right, the story bones here are promising. So, I think Minhal, man or woman, not sure, either way, Minhal, you have a good idea here for how to open a movie, which is a man propositioning a hooker not for sex but to kill him. And that’s an interesting mystery to start with, why, and all the rest of it.

Not so sure that the plan is very well thought through. I’m not sure what hooker would actually go along with it. But that aside, the issues that we have really are issues of structuring and introduction and revelation and staging.

**John:** I agree.

Let’s go onto our third one for today which is from Brie Williams. We don’t have a title but we know it’s from Brie Williams. So, Brie Williams, thank you for sending it through.

I’ll synopsize here.

We start exterior of Tolly’s BBQ Drive-Thru. And there’s a big plastic pig and a car is there to place an order apparently. And the woman’s voice inside says, “Two rapes and a murder.” And the drive-thru speaker person is confused. “Can you repeat?” “And grand theft auto.”

And then we actually come around to see that Claiborne is the person inside. It says, “BUNNY CLAIBORNE (40s), dark flyaway curls and a white button-down shirt.” And she’s on a car speaker phone. So, she’s talking about two rapes and a murder. She’s not trying to order two rapes and a murder. She’s talking about a grand theft auto charge and talking stuff down. Making some jokes. And then she finally orders a small rib bucket.

In the car she’s actually gotten the BBQ, she’s gotten it on her shirt, she’s gotten it on her bra. She’s like taking the shirt off as she’s going through apparently to work, which is at the exterior of the Harris County Criminal Courthouse where we find her. Establishing shots where we get then to a voiceover which is really truly a pre-lap, where she talks through the defense of her client.

And she makes the point that this guy is clearly squirmy and not a guy you’d want to have around, but just not being the kind of guy you want to have around doesn’t make — is not a reason to send someone to the death house.

Leaving that Claiborne has conversations with a guy named Lonnie, the armed guard, about his wife and her skin disease. And that’s the end of our three pages.

Craig, what did you think?

**Craig:** Well, this was trying to be interesting and it was trying to be funny and I’m afraid I wasn’t very interested and I didn’t laugh.

Now, I want to talk about some of the mistakes that I think happened sort of tonally and some structural mistakes, because I have no idea where this is going to go, but not a big fan here.

Some issues right off the top. I had a real, real problem with the first page, just figuring out what the hell was going on. And once I understood what was going on, it would still be very difficult to actually execute. The idea is that we’re opening on the drive-thru window speaker and we’re hearing Claiborne and then in parenthesis underneath, (OS — from inside car), which is a no-no, “Two rapes and a murder.” And the drive-thru speaker says, “Excuse me? Two apple pies?”

That was, I felt good at that moment. [laughs] I thought, okay, that’s actually quite clever. I like where this is so far. And then it went kind of downhill because then we go inside the car, we meet Bunny Claiborne, the drive-thru speaker is inside her car now saying, “Could you repeat?” Then a phone voice says, “And grand theft auto.” And I’m like, wait, oh, and now she’s on the phone. She’s having a discussion with this guy on the phone.

Her discussion, her character is revealed in this little paragraph, and I’m going to read it: “Oh please, the grand theft charge is bullshit. He moved the car to transport the body. It’s not like he killed her for the car. I mean, have you seen the car? (laughing),” on the same line. “It’s a fucking Dodge Dart.”

Now, am I supposed to hate her? [laughs] Because I hate her now. I find this to be false bravado. It’s very put-offish. And so I’m finding her icky. And also, frankly, the staging of this, again, doesn’t work because people don’t do this.

If they pull up to a window they put the person on hold. They say, “Hold on one sec.” Blah, blah, blah, and a blah, blah, blah, and then they go back to their conversation. They don’t keep talking while the drive-thru speaker guy is talking. It just doesn’t work. I didn’t buy it.

Now we’re heading down, we’re in her car, we do a bit of physical business where she’s unbuttoning her shirt because it’s got BBQ stains on it. She’s swerving around. Okay, so she’s a bit of a mess, I get it. And then we get to the courthouse and over an exterior shot establishing the courtyard plaza of Harris County we have this endless pre-lap.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Generally speaking, you get a sentence in. This has three sentences, the second of which is quite long. So, you have an eight-line long dialogue brick that is meant to be read off-screen.

And then we go inside and we have her delivering the rest of this speech, which frankly I didn’t find very good. I wasn’t — I thought she was making a point that wasn’t particularly sharp. And what was concerning to me was that clearly the movie means for us to believe that this is a sharp, smart argument that she’s making. But all she’s really saying is, “He’s a squiggly guy, but it’s your job to look at the evidence.” You’ll see that everything the prosecution has presented doesn’t amount to capital murder, it amounts to Zacharia Lee is a bad guy.

Now, but surely they presented something else. [laughs] It couldn’t just be that. This is not a great defense she’s mounting. And then people laugh at her line, “Being squiggly.” It just seems like everybody is kind of broad and goofy here. And we finish with this conversation where we spend half of our precious page three chitchatting with Lonnie the armed guard, even though she’s walking on her out, they have this eight-line long exchange that doesn’t particularly go anywhere.

And we do have a — you will point out the completely incorrect semi-colon on the third line as well, but I just couldn’t get a handle on this. What about you?

**John:** Craig, I don’t know how many Three Page Challenges we’ve done — maybe 60 do you think?

**Craig:** A lot, yeah.

**John:** A lot. I’ve never heard you be more wrong about three pages.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** In the entire history of our podcast. If this were a video podcast people would see me being dumbfounded at your responses.

**Craig:** Really? Exciting!

**John:** Yes. I thought these were incredibly promising pages. And so all the technical things you pointed out are actually true. And so parentheticals don’t belong within the block of things. And parentheticals with character names belong up on the line with the character name. Those are simple, basic things that Brie should know and embrace and it will take her five minutes to internalize and she’ll never make those mistakes again.

I thought the first bit was funny. Not like hilariously funny, but here’s what it was: It was funny in exactly the kind of way of like a Kyra Sedgwick TBS show kind of way, where she’s like a tough Texas defense attorney who has a messed up personal life. And I thought for what that was, and I got what that vibe was, I thought it was actually a pretty good job. And so the squiggly thing that you thought was terrible, I actually marked, I wrote in my little erasable pen I wrote, “Terrific. I really liked it.” Except I scratched that “Scattered LAUGHTER in the courtroom,” because it’s not true and it shouldn’t be there.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because it’s not there. It should be cut.

And, I agree with you, again, about sort of, this felt like a walking into the courtroom conversation rather than a walking out of the courtroom conversation. Because if you’re leaving a building you’re not going to have a long conversation with somebody.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** But if you’re going through security and have to like put your stuff through the bag stuff.

**Craig:** Right. You’re slowly dealing with the nonsense of putting your crap through the thing.

**John:** Then four-eighths of a page on that I totally believe if its helping establish what this is. I thought like here’s the dialogue in this:

I get what she’s going for there. It’s just like that guy who’s like over-engaging, over-sharing information. This feels like it’s a comedy/drama designed for TNT. That’s what I was getting out of this, or an adaptation of one of those detective novels that I would never read.

**Craig:** Okay. [laughs] I…

**John:** You disagree?

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** Which is fine.

**Craig:** I’m sorry. And, l mean, listen Brie, the good news is that you got one of us here for sure. I get sent things like this a lot. There is something off about the way the character is being presented. It doesn’t — it feels a little forced. It feels a little fakey somehow. There is a fake brassiness to it.

I mean, I could see Melissa McCarthy playing Claiborne, but not like this. Yeah…

**John:** Yeah. I think this is like Erin Brockovich as a defense kind of attorney, or that kind of idea. And that’s a reasonable idea. It’s not going to be to Craig Mazin’s taste. But, I thought —

**Craig:** Which we all know is horrendous. [laughs]. I mean, look, yeah, I don’t know. The technical issues that I have, that you have as well, and those are all technical issues, really my issue is I just didn’t like it. And that’s not really, I mean, in the end that’s not why we do these. So, I have to say, Brie, not everybody will like it. Or maybe just I won’t. [laughs] No.

**John:** Because here’s the thing: I bet if we read the rest of this script, and I’m really curious now at this point whether it’s designed as a one-hour or designed as a feature, because I could see either way out of these three pages what’s going to happen here. But my hunch is that if it’s all this quality and actually has a story with a structure, if she can really tell a tale with this character, not just like have this character enter into situations, I suspect it will interesting. Doesn’t mean that it gets made, but it has some kind of voice to it which was nice.

**Craig:** Yeah, I agree with you. There is a clear voice here and I actually think that this could be — I could like this, actually.

**John:** Also, my hunch is given the obvious technical mistakes here that Brie may be new to screenwriting and may be learning sort of how it all works.

**Craig:** And also to be fair to Brie, I sort of write things like this, vaguely like this, so sometimes I think — we rarely get this kind of sort of R-rated character-driven comedy kind of thing for Three Pages, so I may just be harder on it because —

**John:** It’s in your ballpark.

**Craig:** Maybe because I’m hard on myself, so when I read things and I go, okay, well, there’s no way that she would be having this discussion while the drive-thru speaker guy was there. That’s psychotic. Nobody does that. So, then I’m just grumpy about that and I’m not really paying attention to the fact that actually you could probably fix that very, very easily.

**John:** Yeah. And I think when I was listening to your critiques I was like, well yes, but those are really easy things to fix. And so it doesn’t mean that they’re not actual problems, because you’re not wrong about sort of these technical things, but they were in no way the deal killers that they were for me that they were for you.

**Craig:** Yeah, it may be that I just get fussier about this kind of screenplay stuff.

**John:** I get it.

**Craig:** Sorry Brie.

**John:** I hope Brie knows that one of us loves her.

**Craig:** I do. [laughs] Yeah. I do.

**John:** [laughs] It is time for One Cool Things. I’ll start.

This is a book that’s structured as a website. So, you can either look at it as like an e-book or you can look at it as just a website that you go to. Regardless, I think it’s worth literally almost everybody going to.

It’s called Practical Typography. It is by this guy named Matthew Butterick who is a typeface designer. And this website/book advertises itself as typography in ten minutes. Basically if you just read this little page, it will take you ten minutes to read, you will do a much better job than 90 percent of people who work with type because it has very simple guidelines for like do this, don’t do that, really straight forward things about like this is how long a line of text should be. And if it’s going to be longer than this it’s going to be very hard to read, which is absolutely true, and so much of what we do in print and on the web would be improved if everyone just followed some of these guidelines.

So, it is a simple website that you can go to, click right through, and follow the links. And I think everyone will benefit from it.

**Craig:** Neat.

**John:** Neat.

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing this week was a recommendation from one of our Twitter followers and it’s a game called Gone Home. It’s by an independent game company called the Fullbright Company, I believe, and not only is it a good game, and it’s available for — it’s not a mobile game. It’s for PC or for Mac. And I think it costs $20.

And it’s a game that you could probably play in two or three hours. Theoretically you could blow throw it in an hour if you want. Very simple set up. You are a girl who is coming home from a trip overseas to your family’s new home that they just moved into and no one is there.

And you start to move through the house and it is creepy and scary, but I will tell you the following things without spoiling anything. It’s never what you think it’s about until sort of two-thirds of the way when you realize what it’s about. There is no shooting. It is a discovery. The game is a discovery. And it’s beautifully done. Beautifully done.

And it struck me when I finished playing it that for the first time I thought to myself there could be a real future in this as just a genre. The genre of a story, like an episode of television, or a movie that you walk through and discover as a game.

Because we’ve always struggled with the notion of interactive movies, or interactive entertainment because it’s authorial. We’re presenting a story to a passive audience. And I believe that. And similarly games struggle with it, sort of famously BioShock, the existence of BioShock is to provide a commentary on how you who play games think you’re engaging in an interactive narrative. You’re really on rails being forced to do what the game demands you to do.

What this really surprised me with was its ability to just let you, in your own way, experience a story. Let you walk around and find it and uncover it like a detective, almost like if you’d imagine piecing together… — And, you know, naturally it’s contained in a house. But, I thought, you know, I could see people actually making movies like this where you walk through the movie on your own.

And so I was very inspired by it. I thought it was really well done. And if you have twenty bucks lying around and feel like trying this game out, please do. It’s called Gone Home and we’ll throw a link on for you.

**John:** Fantastic. Now, Craig, while you’re in New York City for the live Scriptnotes taping, have you already seen Sleep No More?

**Craig:** Last time I was in New York I tried to go see Sleep No More and it was sold out, so I’ve made — I’ve got to figure out what night I’m going to go, what night I’m free when I’m there and jump on tickets early, because, yes, it’s life-changing from everyone’s review.

**John:** Your description of Gone Home really reminds me of Sleep No More in the sense that you are just wandering through a space and you can sort of construct the story that you want to construct based on what you discover. And you can open books, and read things, and piece together what’s really, well, maybe what’s really going on. These scenes will just sort of like drift through and you can see them. I think you will dig it.

**Craig:** Awesome. Yeah. I’m going to go for sure.

**John:** Great. So, recaps and reminders for this episode. There will be a live Scriptnotes on September 23 at 8pm here in New York. Tickets will be going on sale probably tomorrow. We’re positing this on Tuesday, so they should be up for sale on Wednesday. But follow me, I’m @johnaugust on Twitter, or Craig, who is @clmazin on Twitter, and if there are differences or new details we will tell you about them on that.

If you have a question that you would like us to address on the show, you can write to ask@johnaugust.com and Stuart will filter it appropriately. If you have a Three Page Challenge of your own that you would like to submit there are instructions for how to file a Three Page Challenge. Go to johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out, and you’ll see the instructions there. There is boilerplate language we ask you to put on there so you will not sue us and not be angry if we don’t get to your submission, or don’t like your submission, or whatever.

But, that’s it, I think. Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

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

**John:** All right, bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* David Fincher’s 1993 AT&T [You Will ads](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TZb0avfQme8), and on [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will)
* Follow [@johnaugust](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) and [@clmazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) for Live from New York details
* [Andrew Lippa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lippa) on Wikipedia
* Screenwriting.io on [pre-laps](http://screenwriting.io/what-is-a-pre-lap/)
* The Oatmeal on [semicolons](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon)
* Three Pages by [Keith Alan Eiler](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/KeithAlanEiler.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Minhal Baig](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/MinhalBaig.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Brie Williams](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/BrieWilliams.pdf)
* Matthew Butterick’s [Practical Typography](http://practicaltypography.com/)
* [Gone Home](http://thefullbrightcompany.com/gonehome/), from the Fullbright Company
* [Sleep No More](http://sleepnomorenyc.com/)
* Outro by Scriptnotes listener Stephen Moore

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/enders-game-one-hours-and-alt-jokes).

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

**Craig Mazin:** [sings] My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 104 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, how are you?

**Craig:** I’m feeling pretty good. I got into golf.

**John:** Uh-oh. Oh no! It’s the end of you, isn’t it?

**Craig:** Or the beginning?

**John:** Well maybe. You and Derek Haas are going to be doing nothing but play golf all weekend.

**Craig:** Derek Haas, Alec Berg, Jeff Lowell. I have so many friends. So, Chris Morgan, the screenwriter of Fast & Furious 3 through infinity —

**John:** Yes. He’s essentially written the good Star Wars of the Fast & Furious movies. Like, if you want to take a look at 3 through 6 being the good part of that series.

**Craig:** Well, you may not realize, but you just took a shot at Derek Haas who wrote Fast & Furious 2, otherwise known as 2 Fast 2 Furious. But that one, you know the problem with that movie?

**John:** Once again my ignorance has come at the expense of Derek Haas.

**Craig:** And the problem with that movie? Too fast! Too furious! [laughs] There is a limit to how fast and furious you should be.

**John:** Yes. They took it back a notch and saved the franchise.

**Craig:** That’s right. Chris Morgan is responsible for the Appropriately Fast & Appropriately Furious movies. Chris Morgan and I made a pact to start learning how to play golf, so we are taking joint lesson. And so after the podcast I’m going to be a middle aged man, go to the golf course, and practice. How about that?

**John:** That sounds wonderful for you, Craig. I will never golf. And in all the time that I’m not golfing I will do other things. For instance, I should probably watch Orange is the New Black, because if one more person tells me I need to watch Orange is the New Black —

**Craig:** I mean, honestly. And the thing is I really like Jenji. She is a cool — do you know her?

**John:** I don’t know her at all.

**Craig:** So cool. She’s the coolest person. And it’s funny, like when I met her I thought, “Uh, you know, if I,”… — just very quickly, we all are susceptible to prejudice, right?

**John:** Yeah, based on her name.

**Craig:** Jenji. Already I’m like, oh god, what is this all about. And, you know, she did Weeds and it’s sort of like, okay, so it’s like Jenji and she’s doing a pot show and I don’t know…

The coolest person. I mean, really funny, down to earth, smart, not pompous. Very much — you know, sometimes you meet writers and you can just tell right away they’re kindred spirits, they’re craftspeople, they care. They have all of the same insecurities and fears and all the rest of it.

And it’s funny, I meet people sometimes who are just much, much better than me, but they’re jerks. Sometimes I meet people that are much, much better than me and they’re awesome. Those are my favorite people. So, Jenji Kohan, very cool person.

So, yeah, I have to watch Orange is the New Black. But I haven’t yet.

**John:** Yeah. At some point we will.

**Craig:** I haven’t watched Breaking Bad yet either, so there you go. Boom!

**John:** There you go!

**Craig:** Boom!

**John:** I always feel like people can spoil whatever they want from Breaking Bad because it will make no sense to me whatsoever. But what would make sense would be to actually talk about the topics we’re talking about today which is we want to talk about Orson Scott Card and the whole situation with Ender’s Game.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We want to talk about the strong possibility that we are going to do a live show in New York in September, which is a new development.

**Craig:** Very exciting.

**John:** We want to talk about ensemble comedies. We want to talk about tone and audience. I want to talk about alternate jokes and how those come about when you’re showing things to an audience. It’s sort of like that whole process of showing to an audience and what you take and what you don’t take. So, it’s sort of a smorgasbord episode today.

**Craig:** I like that. Anytime we can provide — I always learned it as smorgasbord [pronounced shmorgasbord].

**John:** Yeah, I think they’re both. It’s a natural thing to put the “sh” in there.

**Craig:** I think it’s more Jewy to say shmorgasbord.

**John:** Yeah. It’s probably actually correct though.

**Craig:** It might also be correct. I don’t know. But before we do that I have a bit of business.

**John:** Go for it, Craig. Take control.

**Craig:** [laughs] I just so love saying that. So, here’s my bit of business — it’s not really business, it’s just umbrage. Let’s just start the show with a little bit of umbrage. For those of you out there in Twitterville who send me lists — these lists, these internet lists — top 50 movies of the summer; 50 most surprising films of the summer; the summer’s winners and losers; this year’s underrated movies; this year’s overrated movies…

Stop.

Please stop.

I hate those lists. I hate all of them. I hate them when I have movies on them, when I don’t have movies on them. I hate them when my movies are in the good part of it or the bad part of it. I can’t stand it. There is some factory somewhere that churns out these lists.

**John:** It’s called BuzzFeed.

**Craig:** Oh god. It seems like every day a new outlet is created so that somebody can make $100 writing a list. And the lists sound the same. They are absurd. And the reason that it finally hit me… — So, my kids both are involved in musical theater. And last night they had their cast party. They did Les Mis this year. And they had their cast party. And all these kids there, ranging in age from 7 to 17, were at a house. And I’m watching them and it’s drama kids, you know; they are so excited to be with people and they’re so happy.

And they were so innocent and pure and they had done something and tried really hard. And I thought, you know, sometimes we forget — those of us who are in our forties now — that we’re part of that, too. We’re drama people. You know, we’re show people. And show people are special people.

And no matter how it turns out, we put ourselves into these things. We try so hard. And then just reading these lists — it’s like somebody out there has turned it into this awful, endless competition. The lists, I think, are great if you are an agent, or you sit on the board of directors of a studio, but for us, no. It’s gross.

I actually don’t like reading about someone’s failure. It doesn’t make me feel good. I don’t like it. I immediately feel empathy.

So, if you guys out there like reading those lists, fine, I’m not judging you. I’m simply saying don’t send them to me anymore; they kind of make me pukey.

**John:** I would actually differentiate between two different kinds of lists, and I think we should send neither of these kinds of lists to Craig Mazin, but there are two different things you can look at with these lists.

There are lists that are actually based on some sort of quantifiable information. So, you can say like the most expensive movies of the year, or the highest grossing movies of the year, or the best reviewed movies of the year, which to some degree you can do. You can take that sort of rating information and put it into a numerical form.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But a lot of these lists are just basically like one random person made a list of a couple movies. And it seems to have value only because it’s a list.

**Craig:** Right!

**John:** And that’s just not actually anything we need to be wasting our time with.

**Craig:** And a lot of these lists have strange judgment calls. For instance, when they do the lists of like Winners, the Summer’s Winners and Losers. So, some of the “winners” aren’t really winners, and some of the “losers” aren’t really losers. It’s just the person — it’s just gross.

It’s gross.

**John:** It’s opinion disguised as fact. Because it’s on a list then therefore it’s not just this one guy’s opinion.

**Craig:** I know. I just don’t like… — I remember years and years ago I met this guy and he was Canadian and he said, “Americans are obsessed with lists.” And it’s true; we are constantly — I mean, the internet has become a list engine. It’s so weird.

Anyway, so that’s my bit of business. It’s really more opprobrium. I may start using opprobrium instead of umbrage. I may switch.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah, and when they do history of Scriptnotes they’ll say, like, “Well sometime in the hundreds he switched from — ”

**Craig:** “The great schism occurred.” Yeah. Opprobrium.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** So, my bit of outrage this week: On Friday I sent through — this is a bad thing to do; never do this. But I’m angry, so I sent like three tweets and then I went off to ten hours of rehearsal and didn’t check Twitter the whole time. And then like a bunch of people responded and I hadn’t responded, so I was just like one of those dicks who starts a little argument on Twitter and then goes away.

**Craig:** Nice. I like that move.

**John:** I’m not usually the throw the grenade in and run away kind of guy, but this is what I said — these are my three tweets, in this order.

One: Feel bad for the hundreds of people who work their asses off on Ender’s Game just to have all the attention go to one whack job.

Second tweet: I don’t know if the movie is any good, but it deserves to be judged on its own merits, not just the writer of the source material.

Third tweet: I guarantee studios are going to start taking a closer look at novelists, worried about potential shit-stirrers.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think all those things are correct, except I kind of quibble with number two.

**John:** Okay, so let’s get into it. Let’s go into the background on where we’re at right now with this move, Ender’s Game, which is based on a famous science fiction book by Orson Scott Card. He was probably best known for this work and his work as a science fiction author until he not just revealed but sort of very publicly had some really strongly anti-marriage equality views and sort of anti-gay rights views that rankled many people.

And then this last week, you know, I didn’t follow it closely, but either he said something new or somebody dug up something that he said about Obama that was like really, really inflammatory towards like gangs, like Obama gangs of youth being armed and such.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** They weren’t kind, well, whatever he said you could tell that the people actually making the movie wanted him to just fall in a hole and never be seen again.

**Craig:** Yeah. Orson Scott Card, if we’re going to say anything to his credit in a weird way is that he is — this isn’t like Paula Deen where comments that were made privately were then exposed publicly. This dude makes public comments intended for public consumption. It’s just that the comments are, to me at least, awful.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** He seems to believe some things that I think are awful. [laughs] And, yeah, so on the one hand, of course, studios are — no matter what Oscar Wilde says — there is such a thing as bad press and this is bad press.

**John:** Let’s talk about it from a couple of angles. Let’s talk about it from the perspective of like, “Oh, crap, we made this movie and now we can’t promote this movie because all the headlines are going to this other guy who has nothing — ”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, there’s that angle.

Second, I want to talk about the idea of the boycott, like actively boycotting this movie and what are the ramifications of that and sort of what the choices are within that.

And the third topic, the third section of this, is as screenwriters can you adapt something that comes from a person who is considered toxic. And I would put him in the toxic category at this point.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, should we start with the first part which is you’ve made this movie and now this has happened. What do you do?

**Craig:** There is no way out. There is no answer to this. You can’t shelve it and pretend it’s going to go away; it will actually get worse with this guy. He seems to be — he either resents the movie’s existence in a passive-aggressive way after taking the money for it, and so is actively trying to undermine it. Or, he simply has no sense of self-preservation when it comes to the movie. He doesn’t really care about the movie at all. He cares far more about his deeply held awful views.

So, if you hold the movie to make the problem go away, it won’t go away. And, of course, the internet has this amazing memory. The other issue for the studios that makes this intractable is that it’s science fiction and it’s Orson Scott Card, precisely the kind of author that the internet has its huge eye on all the time, because a lot of the people who write about this stuff are geeks. I don’t use the term pejoratively.

So, they’re well aware. And he can’t hide. [laughs] You can’t hide him. The truth is all they can do is what they’re doing. Put the movie out, and it’s over, and you move on.

**John:** Yeah. I’ll be curious to see how many reviews get through the whole review without ever mentioning the controversy. Because in some ways you should review the movie without talking about the controversy surrounding it, but to not acknowledge the controversy around is to like be ignoring culture.

**Craig:** Not one review. There will not be a single review that doesn’t mention it.

**John:** And so people who wrote back to me on Twitter saying like, “Well, I don’t want to spend any money that’s…” Well, let’s not get into the boycott part. But like, my first tweet was like I feel so bad for everybody involved making the movie. Because let’s say you are the screenwriter of the movie, or the producer of the movie, the director of the movie, the star of the movie, that credit — you know, if the movie does really well, somehow does really well, it’s still going to be associated as like, “Oh, that was the movie that was controversial because of what that underlying novelist said.”

If the movie tanks, which is a strong possibility, too, it’s like this anchor sort of on your thing. No one is going to remember like, “Oh, you were really good in that movie that was — ”

Maybe they will remember. “You were really good in that movie that was a disastrous bomb.” It helps you not a bit.

**Craig:** No. And, look, any movie that gets made in Hollywood you can be assured that quite a few people employed by the movie are gay, very liberal, and they cared about their jobs and they worked very, very hard, and they have pride. It’s the Bridge over the River Kwai. You’re proud of this thing that suddenly you also feel should be blown up but not blown up.

And I do feel bad for them, because I’m sure that on the one hand they go to see the film and they’re very proud of the work they did. And on the other hand they’re like, “Ugh.”

**John:** Yeah. I mean, if you’re the guy finishing up the visual effects on this movie now, are you like, “Oh, god, I’m working on this movie that I know has this toxic cloud around it which is very, very dangerous.

**Craig:** Yeah. And it’s the vision of somebody that detests me.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** That part is weird, you know.

**John:** So, let’s talk about this boycott reaction. There’s this movement to, like, “Well I’m going to boycott this movie.” And I’ve seen mainstream articles about it, mainstream journalists saying, columnists saying, “Oh, just boycott the movie.”

And boycotts to me are always a very frustrating attempt to solve a problem that cannot actually be solved. And this I feel is a similar kind of case. So, as a gay person I’m incensed by what he says. I think he’s a — I strongly disagree with what he’s doing. Yet, as a person who makes movies I know that my boycott of this movie has almost zero impact on his actual pocketbook. It is not hurting him at all.

**Craig:** That’s fair.

**John:** So, the perception that like he is the person who benefits from the success of the movie is not accurate. The only thing I could say is that if the movie were to do spectacularly well the people who believe the same things he believes would say, “Oh, it’s because of those things.” There would always be like this false causality there.

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t think that that would really —

**John:** So, here’s my sort of thought experiment that I want to sort of propose. So, let’s say there’s this guy, Randy Fakename. And Randy Fakename is an associate producer. He’s the kind of guy who puts a movie together but doesn’t really know how to produce. Anyway, he takes two dogs that were barking a lot and throws them off the balcony of a building and kills them.

**Craig:** [laughs] Cool guy.

**John:** He’s just an awesome individual.

**Craig:** [laughs] I like this guy. He’s a problem solver as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** He’s a winner. And, you know what? He’ll go to the press and he’ll say like, “You know what? I don’t regret it all. Give me another dog and I’ll throw it off the top of a building.”

**Craig:** That’s right. That’s right.

**John:** So, let’s say he has now just made a new Harrison Ford movie. Would you go to his movie?

**Craig:** Well, I don’t think so. I’m different than you, I think.

**John:** The thought experiment is basically how closely involved to the core of a movie does a person have to be for their evil, or your perception of their evil, to keep you from seeing that movie?

**Craig:** It’s not a utilitarian thing to me. I don’t look at it in terms of cost-benefit and who’s hurt and who’s not hurt. I just look at it in terms of this: If I go to see a movie I’m essentially paying for an experience that is at least in some part an emotional experience. And I’m not going to enjoy the emotional experience if it’s already emotionally tainted for me. It’s just a personal thing.

If I do not like — I can’t bring myself to watch Roman Polanski movies. The old ones, yes, pre-forced sodomy on a teenage girl, yeah. Sure. But after that, I can’t do it. It’s weird. It’s just like an emotional thing. I detest what he did and I detest him for it. And so it’s ruined for me.

**John:** Okay. So, let’s say this guy wasn’t just an associate producer. This guy was the second visual effects designer on the movie. Would that keep you from seeing it?

**Craig:** I’m sure I wouldn’t know about it, but no, it wouldn’t because I don’t feel like he made any artistic decisions that steered the authorship or the vision of the movie.

**John:** And I would argue that that is the same situation you really find yourself with Ender’s Game at this point. This is a guy who wrote this thing, 30 years ago? Quite a long time ago. Had, I believe, essentially no involvement with the actual movie that has gotten made.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, to boycott this movie because of something this guy did in the meantime after writing the source material is like, you know, it feels really strange to me.

**Craig:** What you’re saying is absolutely reasonable. And I guess what I would say in return is it really comes down to how you feel emotionally about it on your way into the movie. And emotions are not rational. And if you are comfortable being able to divide your opinions about this man and bifurcate that and see the movie and see the movie as something separate from him, then great.

The interesting parallel to this is what’s happening with the Olympics in Russia right now.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And I’m kind of curious what you think about that. I have my own strongly-held opinion on it, but I’m kind of curious what you think.

**John:** I don’t know what should be done about the Olympics themselves. I think it’s incredibly problematic that you have a country that is inviting the world to it and yet denying the fundamental rights who are going to be attending the Olympics. That is incredibly troubling.

This response of like “let’s boycott Russian vodka” is absurd.

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

**John:** That I find is ridiculous because it’s like, you know, if a tree falls and kills somebody and for that reason now you’re going to stop using paper.

**Craig:** Boycott trees —

**John:** Exactly. It actually doesn’t hurt the people you want to hurt and it actually hurts a lot of other people.

**Craig:** Yeah, boycotting vodka is a bizarre move.

**John:** It’s a largely symbolic move that doesn’t actually affect anything.

**Craig:** But I do think that — maybe I’m, I know that a lot of athletes, a lot of gay athletes are like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t take my Olympics from me, dude. I need my medal.” And I get that. I honestly believe that every western country that believes in the equality of people based on sexual orientation or gender shouldn’t go. I do believe that. I think that if 20 western nations said, “We’re not going,” that it would force Russia to examine itself.

And it is gross to me that you have people…I mean, I just read something the other day. So, you can’t have rainbow colored finger nails at the Olympics. The IOC is the most cowardly organization.

But, I actually think we shouldn’t go. That’s my opinion.

**John:** Yeah. I’m not all the way to not going, but I haven’t sort of deeply thought through the ramifications. To me we’ve had Olympics in places that are troubling many times before. We’ve had them in Beijing. And it’s not like Beijing is a bastion of tolerance and wonder.

**Craig:** I agree. I don’t think we should have had those either. [laughs] No, really, to me the Olympics goes back to Greece and the cradle of democracy and what we call western civilization. And I find that this thing where we now, yeah, so Beijing? What? And the thought still that the western world thought it was fine to go have the Olympic games in Germany with Hitler, it’s just insane! It’s insane. And everybody was like, “Eh, well, it’s the Olympics.”

It’s crazy.

**John:** Yeah, we’re not going to be able to change that.

**Craig:** No, you know what? You know why? The problem is that the Olympics have become such a huge business. Really you should be able to put the Olympics on somewhere; it should be like, yeah, ad hoc, we’re doing it over here. And it’s the winter Olympics. There are plenty of places with snow. And we’re doing it over here. And, okay, I’m sorry, there won’t be a huge freaking show in the beginning. And we’re not going to have all the…blah. But you’ll still be able to ski and luge and stuff.

That’s my feeling. And ice skate.

**John:** All right. Getting back to Orson Scott Card.

**Craig:** Oh, yes, of course.

**John:** I don’t know how he feels about ice skating at all.

**Craig:** I know how he feels about it. “Too gay!”

**John:** Let’s talk about the way forward, because my third tweet was I genuinely do think that studios are going to be taking a closer look at who the authors are of the books that they’re buying, because you don’t want crazy town.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I can see like Stephanie Meyer was kind of terrific. I mean, Mormon but, you know, good fans, and sort of all that stuff. So, her Twilight books, wow, she’s exactly the kind of writer you want. JK Rowling with Harry Potter. Wow. Exactly the right kind of writer you want. But you could just as easily find that sort of crazy nagging awful person. Anne Rice was sort of a difficult author to have.

**Craig:** Very. Very.

**John:** But Anne Rice is just like paradise compared to Orson Scott Card.

**Craig:** Which is saying something.

**John:** [laughs] Yes. When Anne Rice is like a bastion of sanity and reasonability. That is going to be a source of wonder. And so I really do think we are going to start seeing studies taking, “We like this book. We like this book in galleys. And let’s get on the phone with a writer and let’s do a background check on this person to make sure that there’s not something terrifying there.”

**Craig:** I think so. I mean, the truth is — and this is why I have no problem with people who say, “You know what? I’m not seeing this movie.” The studio knew. Everybody knew. This is not new to Orson Scott Card. He didn’t just suddenly sit up and start saying this stuff. He’s been saying this stuff for years. For a long, long time. And I remember when the book was optioned I remember talking to Dan Weiss about it. I think he wrote an early draft at some point. Everybody knew.

And they’re like, “Eh, you know what? Money.”

**John:** Well, were they also maybe hoping he would die before they actually made the movie?

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t think that that was high up on their list of expectations. You know, it could happen, but the truth is it wasn’t going to change anything. I mean —

**John:** By the way, that’s probably an episode of Castle that’s coming up soon, where the author was killed for his unpopular views so that the movie version could succeed.

**Craig:** If I had ever seen an episode of Castle I would be so on top of that.

**John:** You have two friends who work on Castle and you’ve never seen an episode?

**Craig:** No. [laughs] No. No. I’ve seen every Game of Thrones.

**John:** Yeah, well, come on. Who hasn’t seen Game of Thrones?

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s about it for me.

**John:** I mean, let’s think about the background check. Because if they’re doing the background check on the novelist which seems to be a reasonable case, well why wouldn’t they do a background check on Craig Mazin to make sure that you aren’t a crazy person that they’re bringing in to work on this movie? Because even if like someone else came and rewrote the movie, the fact that your pen went though it —

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** Your crazy views.

**Craig:** But they do. And that background check is a foreground check. I mean, we who work in this business, everybody knows. I mean, this podcast is listened to. I meet executives all the time who bring it up. If either one of us were using this podcast to espouse views that large quantities of people found deeply objectionable, we would — yeah, absolutely. We wouldn’t have to do a background check. We’d be gone.

Because it is — look, they’re making a movie. They’re spending millions of dollars. And the last thing you want is something that’s basically getting in between the audience and the movie.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And something else that’s changing the narrative. And, look, I know a lot of people look at this PR from corporations and properly are cynical about it, that they’re trying to control a narrative and force product down your throat and all the rest of it. And that is their agenda, I’m sure. But my agenda as a screenwriter is to provide the emotional experience I intend for the audience. That’s it.

And if something else is in the way, including what people think about me and my politics? That’s no good.

**John:** My probably biggest experience with the inability to control the narrative was on the second Charlie’s Angels. And so Demi Moore we cast as the returning Angel who had gone bad. And like she’s perfect casting and I loved her. And I remember sitting in her hotel room on my birthday and watching her drink like so much coffee but still kind of loving it because it’s Demi Moore and she actually sounds like that in real life.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, I was so excited to have Demi Moore be in the movie. And then she and Bruce Willis split up and she started up with Ashton Kutcher and it so it was right as the movie was coming out. All the media attention was on Demi and Ashton and Bruce Willis.

And it was like, “No! Focus on our movie!” And literally every — even from the premiere, like there were barely photos of like the Angels. It was only about Demi and the fact that both Ashton and Bruce came to the premiere. It was like that was the story. It was maddening.

**Craig:** It is maddening.

**John:** Also the movie wasn’t good, so that was a problem, too. But, controlling the narrative was a huge frustration. And it wasn’t an Orson Scott Card situation, but it was, you know…

**Craig:** No, it’s the same thing though. It becomes, you know, when the story isn’t the story. I’ve seen Gigli, it’s not a good movie. But it doesn’t deserve what it got. It got that because people loathed that coupling. For whatever reason that coupling drove them crazy. And I can’t understand it. I find it all gross. But, you know, it’s the way the world works. And in this case I think Orson Scott Card has made his bed, happily. He seems totally content to have made his bed, by the way.

So, tip of the hat. If you’re going to be kind of a hateful whack job, at least be a —

**John:** Own it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Be accountable to your own hateful whack-jobbery.

**John:** I find it sad that his movie which could be good is going to get dragged down by it.

**Craig:** Oh, that is absolutely the case. It is sad and like you I feel terrible for all the people who worked so hard on it. I don’t feel, you know, the company knew what they were doing. But the people who were hired to work on it, I feel sad for them.

**John:** Yeah. All right, to happier topics.

**Craig:** Yay!

**John:** We are talking very seriously about doing a live show in New York, because you are going to come out here to see Big Fish.

**Craig:** I am coming out there to see Big Fish.

**John:** So, it’s the week of September 20th is when you’re coming out here. So, a day during that time, and we’ve discussed the Monday quite strongly but nothing is sort of locked in stone, but if you are in the New York area and would like to come see us, keep listening to the podcast and watch us on Twitter because we will announce times and dates and venues once we figure out what that is.

So, Craig, you’re going to come see the show. You’re going to hopefully have an awesome guest. What else should we do at a live show?

**Craig:** Well, you know, if we’re lucky enough to do the live show at the theater…

**John:** Which is a hope.

**Craig:** …then maybe, well, I don’t know. I don’t know if the theater affords us any opportunities that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to have. Perhaps, perhaps, I’m just saying if one of your actors wanted to come and sing a song?

**John:** It could be kind of fantastic.

**Craig:** It would be awesome!

**John:** We have numerous incredibly talented people involved with the show, from Andrew Lippa to our great cast, and director. And even little Zachary Unger, I just sent you the link to him singing the National Anthem at the Jets game last night.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** Talent top to bottom. So, anyway, if you are in the New York area and want to come see a show, sometime the week of September 20 would be a week that you might be able to see us. So, just like an early shot across the bow warning that this is a thing that could happen.

Now, something that happened at our last live show, our big 100th episode was that we hid, actually you picked the chair and I stuck the little note underneath, we hid underneath one seat a Golden Ticket and promised on that Golden Ticket that we would read the script of the person who was sitting in that chair.

And the person whose chair that was was a guy named Matt Smith.

**Craig:** Matt Smith. And he’s real; that’s not a pseudonym.

**John:** He’s an actual genuine person. And this week you and I had the pleasure of having a good half hour Skype conversation with him about his script.

**Craig:** We did.

**John:** So, when we talked about it with Matt we decided it wasn’t a think we wanted to sort of get into on the show because it’s a full on script and it really wasn’t ready for everyone else to see it. But I think we talked about some good things. So, in a very general sense I want to talk about the kinds of things we noticed and challenges you deal with when you deal with certain situations in his script and many others we read.

So, he wrote a one-hour drama/comedy ensemble show.

**Craig:** Television show.

**John:** Television show. And I think we actually had some interesting conversations about sort of the nature of an ensemble show. And one of those being that you have to very clearly differentiate each of our character’s voices, because a challenge we had was remembering who each individual person was because it sounded like other people could have the exact same lines of dialogue.

**Craig:** That’s right. So, when you start an ensemble you almost necessarily need to sit down and give yourself an organizational chart of the characters you’re tracking. If you’ve got ten or 12 characters that you’re supposed to care about in a soap operatic kind of way, or god forbid you’re in a Game of Thrones situation where you’re juggling 40 or 50 characters, and throwing characters in at a faster rate than you’re decapitating them, you really need to organize them by purpose I guess is how I would put it.

Because there are characters whose purpose are to be heroic. There are characters whose purpose is to be villainous. There are characters whose purpose is to be mysterious, manipulative, funny, but generally speaking even though there are characters who can change back and forth depending, roughly they need to have their own kind of space so that when you move between the stories you don’t feel like you’re watching three of the same movie with different characters. You’re watching three different kinds of things within a larger environment.

**John:** Absolutely. One of the things we recommended to Matt — which I would recommend to anybody who is trying to write a pilot, like an original pilot for a show — is really take a step back and write up the character bios for those people. Pretend that you are pitching this show to a network and have to be able to provide all the sort of supporting documentation.

So, on the site, on johnaugust.com site in the library I have these sort of pitch documents for the shows I’ve done. So, for D.C., for Ops, for, and I think I have The Chosen stuff up there, maybe not quite yet. But you end up writing these things that describe who the character is, and not just who the character is at the very start of the show but what the arc is they’re going through over the course of the first season. And it gives you a much better sense of like the function this character serves in the show overall and the function they can serve within your episode.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And once you know sort of what this character is capable of doing, you’ll start to realize in an ensemble show you’re not going to have probably three different love storylines happening in an episode. One might be the through line of a love story. One might be like the little caper plotline. One might be something suspenseful. There’s different stuff happening with the different characters through it.

Because if we see three love stories we’re going to just get confused; we won’t know what the actual —

**Craig:** Get confused — we’re diluting the impact. I mean, love stories follow a particular path. And they either end up with the people in love or not in love and they have their ups and downs. But that means that if you’re running three at the same time you’re going to be essentially duplicating your drama.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If you watch a show — like Dexter is a very traditional ensemble cast show. Maybe it’s not about a traditional subject, but the way that they structure it and execute it is extraordinarily traditional. Masuka is comedy. And then you’ve got buddies arguing about their job and you’ve got family squabbles. And you’ve got the main mystery and you’ve got personal drama. And it’s all divided up essentially.

**John:** Yeah. I haven’t seen Dexter, but the sense I get of it is while there is a main titular character, everybody else in that show has a very clear function about what they’re supposed to do. And that’s what I would argue for any, especially one hour. You need to know what the functions of the people are so that you can actually get through an episode and sort of have a follow through line.

**Craig:** And for the soap operatic series and ensembles tend to be that way, a villain is just as important if not more important than the hero because oftentimes it’s the villains that drive the story by creating the circumstances that challenge the hero. The hero must be active and must make their way through and perhaps that’s who we identify with, but it’s the villain that builds the problems.

**John:** Yes. The obstacles that need to be overcome. Desperate Housewives is a great thing to take a look at in terms of how they’ll pick somebody to be sort of the nemesis for a time and she’ll often then shift into being a heroic supporting character for a time, but they’ll very cleverly sort of build how they’re going to let the characters function within their world.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And important thing to do. The other thing you note about Desperate Housewives is it has a very clear and very specific tone. And I think any time you are writing an original show, or any original movie, but particularly if you’re writing a show that would hopefully end up on a network, you need to figure out what that network is. And it needs to actually be able to fit on that network.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so if you’re writing something that is designed for Nickelodeon, it has to fall into the nice little boxes of what Nickelodeon is. If you’re writing something that’s going to be going on FX it probably can’t have anything to do with a Nickelodeon show. And if it did have anything to do with that Nickelodeon show it wouldn’t work.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It has to be completely different rules for how those things function.

**Craig:** There are gradations that are achievable in tone based on the nature of your characters. For instance, Freaks and Geeks comes to mind. There were kids who were older and kids who were younger. High school, I mean, Matt Smith’s case, his show was about a summer camp where kids ranged in age. Freaks and Geeks is about high school where kids ranged in age. It’s acceptable to have different kinds of storylines for the 17 years olds and different kinds of storylines for the 13 year olds.

But, even within those gradations, while the 13 year olds may be less interested in sex, and more interested in fitting in, it still has to happen within the same general tone. You can’t go into really broad comedy if the rest of it is not broad. It has to kind of all feel like… — Because the truth is these people meet each other. They all have to be able to share a scene together and believably so, even if they rarely do.

**John:** If you look at a show like Modern Family, Modern Family has some slightly racy things, but they’re slightly racy. And they’re racy in a way that it’s going to go over a kid’s head and so you don’t feel awkward watching it with a young person in the room. That’s a show that very smartly sort of splits that line. So, it’s possible to do but it has to fit in the same universe.

No one is going to watch only half the scenes. It all has to sort of fit together. And Modern Family, I think what is so genius is those kids can actually have scenes with adults and things don’t fall apart.

**Craig:** That’s right. All the characters, I mean, Eric Stonestreet is broad on that show but he’s not unacceptably broad. He’s broad in a way that makes sense. And when he’s with the other characters who maybe aren’t as broad, it also makes sense. That’s the key. You just have to be able to imagine all of your characters together having conversations. You should be able to draw a line between every character and believe that a conversation could occur, that they’re all in the same world.

**John:** Yeah. So, then when it comes time to actually write your one hour pilot spec, I would strongly suggest, and this is very classic TV advice but I will give it here, is that you write your act breaks first, which is that you figure out, you know, a lot of shows are going to have five act breaks, sometimes there are six act shows, but those are the moments you’re writing up to that would lead to classically a commercial break.

And those are the moments of suspense, or a question that is going to get answered on the other side of the break. And that seems really artificial the first time you do it, because like well why am I writing up to this out, this thing, but you will come to cherish it because it provides a really nice structure for one hour of television. You get to know this is how much I can do in each of these little chunks. This is what the — it’s like you have this one little movie of like there is this ten-minute movie that has all this information in it. And then you get to move onto your next thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s like being able to open a scene again. It’s incredibly helpful. So, I would say you figure out your characters, get that on paper, figure out your characters on paper. In your pilot episode, figure out your act breaks, and then really dig down and figure out what the scenes are within each of those acts and start writing them.

And too often you get sort of captivated by like, “Oh, here’s an idea. Here are some characters. Here’s what they can be talking about,” without actually knowing how it’s going to work as a show.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, with television everything sort of screams for cliffhangers because people show up to movies, they’ve paid their ticket, they sit down. Walking out of a movie is kind of a big deal. So, but then again, the commitment is short, relatively short. Television, you can turn it off anytime, or just change the channel, or hit pause and maybe never come back to it. The game is not only keep watching within an episode but then show up next week for the next episode.

It’s a game of cliffhangers. And even when it’s not a cliffhanger-y show, you can see that they — watch Modern Family. It’s a sitcom. It’s not a thriller. It’s not Game of Thrones. No one is getting killed. But there are little mini-cliffhangers throughout.

**John:** Yeah. It ends with a “how will this turnout” moment.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s what’s getting you back to the next bit.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s designed to tease your curiosity. And when you’re doing an ensemble show with lots of characters, it’s inevitable that certain storylines will appeal to certain people more than others. And I’ve had that experience before where I kind of, even in Game of Thrones sometimes I’m like, eh, I’m tempted to just fast-forward through this conversation because really I don’t care that much. But, then I’m happy that I stayed with it.

It’s okay that some stories appeal to people more than others because everybody is different about that. As long as there is something that is pulling them through.

**John:** Agreed. So, anyway, I want to thank Matt Smith for sending us the script because it was actually a good conversation. I hope it was helpful to Matt. It seemed like it was.

**Craig:** And I’ve got to give him credit. He was really, you know, I love it when we talk to people and they have a really good professional attitude where it’s not all, “Oh gods,” and emotions, and huffing, and it’s very much about being open-minded. I love that.

**John:** Yeah, listening, hearing, responding in ways that helps both sides get more communicative. It was great.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, thank you Matt for sending your thing through.

**Craig:** Good job, Matt.

**John:** And who knows, maybe we’ll do a Golden Ticket at our next live show.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Hmm.

**Craig:** Let’s not over-promise.

**John:** That’s not a promise. [laughs] Yeah, it was your idea last time, so maybe we’ll under-promise this time.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah, there you go.

**John:** I can pretty much guarantee that we will not be providing food and alcohol at this next one.

**Craig:** Not to them, but to me. I at least need a glass of wine and some crackers.

**John:** Perfect.

So, Craig, one of the things I’m working on now for Big Fish, because we are sort of up — like, you know, we did our five weeks in Chicago and we sort of really know the show. And over the summer we did a tremendous amount of work and stuff is really good and it’s exciting, but one of the things I’m now spending a lot of time doing is for the jokes of the show I want to make sure we have alternate jokes for the show for the things that just don’t work.

So, in Chicago I rewrote a lot of jokes. And every night you could see what things worked and what things didn’t work. But now there’s new things that I need to write new jokes for. So, I wanted to talk to you about that process because I don’t know for like the Hangover movies or the other movies you’ve worked on, do you come in with a list of alternate jokes? Or do you do stuff on the set?

**Craig:** Usually we don’t write alternate jokes. Usually what we do is on the day we find them because it’s frankly just much easier to writer alternates once you see the scene with the actors in the place. Little things happen. Obviously the actors, when you’re dealing with people like Zach they come up with stuff, or Melissa, or Jason, they come up with things. An then you sort of try and work with those. But, I know then you have those moments that I think people think happen all the time that don’t happen that often.

Like, for instance in the Hangover III when Alan returns to his house and finds that there’s an intervention going on, when he walks in the door he’s yelling at his mother for lunch and I wrote probably 30 different things that he could yell. And then we would try different ones. So we have, once we get into the editing room, we know we have choices. And then we run them for test audiences

What’s tricky about alternate jokes is that — and this is particularly tricky for you I would imagine — is that not every audience reacts the same to the same joke. I’ve seen individual jokes kill in one room, get okay in another, and so the problem is it’s very hard to actually get any kind of sense of a controlled experiment.

**John:** Yeah. That’s definitely the experience I’ve had with this. And I was struck by the idea of alternate jokes because I was looking at, I’ll try to find a link to it, but one of the writers on Happy Endings, which was a show I enjoyed on ABC, was posting some pages from a script. And if you look at how they actually write their scripts there’s like a character has a line of dialogue but then slash, and then a whole different line, slash a whole different line.

And basically they’re going to bang through it and they’re going to shoot all those different things that that character could say.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that’s a show that tends to get into a lot of lists of things, so it’s sort of natural for that, but it’s also a very common thing to see in sitcom land — all those slash jokes stacked up in there.

**Craig:** And it’s easy to understand why. Because you have a staff of writers and there are times when you go, “Okay, we have a great setup here. Let’s play who-has-got-the-best-punch-line.” And you’ll get two or three jokes that really work great in the room. And so you should try all of them because you can’t really, you’re not going back and reshooting a sitcom, you know. You’re not adding stuff in.

So, in the moment if you have three or four, why not? But, you know, for you it’s a tough one. You probably have lines that are very consistent and then you have lines that aren’t. And that’s the thing that’s so fascinating to me. I just don’t understand how it happens, but it’s that weird crowd psychology that just sometimes everybody together laughs at something and then sometimes everybody together doesn’t. It’s so weird.

**John:** Yeah. And so the goal with a show, you said a controlled experiment. And in some ways a Broadway show should be incredibly controlled because literally the entire thing is on an eight-count. There is not a lot of room and maneuvering ability. So, there is a reason why sometimes a joke will be ten words rather than 12 words. So, it’s like, that is going to fit the vamp in the music.

But why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t work is a fascinating thing.

**Craig:** Fascinating. You can almost feel it before it happens.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But then also I have to say, you know, so for the movies that I do with Todd Phillips, the two of us will stand there on the side of the theater watching it when we test it. And so many times we’ve looked at each other like, “They’re laughing at that? We thought that was going to die.” We liked it, but we thought it was going to die. And then there are other times where we’re like it’s a joke that we love and it gets nothing. We’re like, “What?!”

So, there are surprises. But more often than not you can almost feel it just like you have a relationship with every specific audience. Isn’t it weird? I can’t explain it.

**John:** Yeah. You also notice that sometimes audiences are just primed to laugh. So they’re laughing now because that last thing was funny, but if they haven’t laughed for awhile it’s going to take a bigger thing to cross over that threshold and get them to start laughing.

**Craig:** Yes. Well, now that is a time tested truism. And we know when, look, I’ve been writing movies that are like “ha-ha” comedies for a long, long time, so I know the first test screening is always going to be difficult. And every writer who works in this space I’ve ever talked to, we all have the same experience. You know going in that the first one is tough because you’re going to lose them, necessarily, because you know you’re trying things. And when you lose them every time you have diminished their confidence in you.

**John:** That’s right.

**Craig:** So, so much of the editing process is pulling out the underbrush and the stuff that’s hurting the confidence, the contract between you and them to the point where if you can get seven or eight really good jokes in a row, that ninth joke, they’re going to give it to you because it’s like, well, these are funny people.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You can really feel that, by the way, more than anything in movies like, okay, the Scary Movies I did, which are nothing but jokes. That’s just a vaudeville show. Boy, it makes all the difference.

**John:** Yeah, getting rid of the bum joke is a crucial thing. With Big Fish it’s an interesting case because the movie that I wrote 15 years ago, it’s not really funny ha-ha. There are some jokes-jokes in there, and there are things that you could laugh out but it’s not structured like a funny ha-ha comedy.

And so it’s interesting going to a theater situation in which by necessity — by expectation there is going to be more of that. There is going to more of an expectation that like something shouldn’t be kind of amusing funny, it should actually be funny-funny and that it needs to actually get a laugh. And so I’ve enjoyed it mostly.

But it has been a really interesting experience to sort of continuously workshop this. I called it Iteration on the blog when I wrote about it this week is that, you know, with a movie, well, you get two iterations — you keep revising and refining, revising and refining the script. And then you shoot it and then in post you get to revise and refine, revise and refine. But you’re limited to really what you shot. I mean, you could go out and shoot some new stuff, but most cases you aren’t really going to do that. So, you can make the best version of the movie you shot.

And in a television show you can shoot a new episode, but you’re never going to go back and reshoot the pilot. Very, very rarely do you go back and reshoot the pilot.

With this, it’s like every night we’re reshooting the pilot. And that’s a wonderful opportunity but it’s also just like, oh my god, I’ve seen this show so many times and it’s a gift to be able to keep going back in, tweaking it, and perfecting and refining, but at a certain point, god, you’d just love to write the next thing.

**Craig:** Well, for sure. I mean, the nature of what you’re doing seems tortuous on that level. You know, I guess the closest experience that I have is just sitting in an editing room and reworking a scene over, and over, and over. I mean, in film, obviously editorially there is an enormous amount you can do to save something. And just by changing the perspective, or in the case of jokes, a lot of times the problem is too much or too little setup.

And so you can change things that way. It’s just a different changing process. But, for a live performance, I mean, I guess the nice thing is when it’s working you know.

**John:** Yeah. When it’s working it’s great. And I really do miss post-production. I miss being able to sit down at — I won’t call it an Avid, I’ll call it a non-linear editor — but I miss being able to sit down and just perfect things that way because that’s my nature is I want to be able to tweak and do those things. You can’t with like live people in front of a live audience.

But, you get the next night, so that’s been nice.

**Craig:** And one more problem for your experiment is that the lines that you’re trying out are being performed. You know, when we’re working with lines in movies they’re done. They are imprinted. So, I have a choice of four lines and a choice of ways to edit them. But you write a new line and the actor delivers it and you’re like, “Okay, they didn’t laugh, but the thing is I didn’t like the way he said it. You know? Can we try it again but say it this way?”

**John:** If you could just get rid of actors and audiences, live theater would be fantastic.

**Craig:** The best possible world for artists is a world in which no one sees anything but we’re still rewarded for it.

**John:** You know, if you could just be the kind of artist who just writes words, and they print it on paper, and then people buy the paper. Like I want to be that kind of artist. [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah, no such luck.

**John:** We have no such luck. What is that, like a novelist? That would be fantastic.

**Craig:** We did it to ourselves, didn’t we?

**John:** We did it to ourselves.

Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** Oh god.

**John:** Did you forget?

**Craig:** Eh, yeah.

**John:** Mine was sort of half-assed, like right at the very end, too. Because I am in New York City and I thought I had a DVR in my room, but now I don’t have a DVR in my room for like this whole issue and I had to get angry on the phone, but I do have my Apple TV. And on my Apple TV I connected to Netflix and watched both seasons of Portlandia which is — if you haven’t seen Portlandia it’s kind of a must-see.

God, here I am bitching about Orange is the New Black and everyone needs to see that, but Portlandia really is great. And we’ve been talking about comedy, the way Portlandia gets to a joke is just fantastic and wonderful and it’s just a delightful half hour. So, if you are somewhere with Netflix access I highly recommend Portlandia which is on Adult Swim, no, not Adult Swim. I don’t even know what channel it’s on.

**Craig:** Isn’t it on IFC?

**John:** I think it’s on IFC. You’re right.

**Craig:** Well, I can steal a One Cool Thing from one of our Twitter followers, and it is a One Cool Thing, and I’m totally buying it. It is a Microsoft — and you will rarely hear me say, “One Cool Thing, Microsoft,” but I use an ergonomic keyboard.

So, in my office I have a laptop. I have my MacBook, but in my office I have the cinema display and an external keyboard and an external track pad. And I like using an ergonomic keyboard, a split keyboard basically. It’s just easier on my wrists. And Apple doesn’t really make one.

For years there was a company called Adesso that used to make one, and I think they just stopped or went out of business or something. And so I picked up the Microsoft — it’s their standard big huge chunky split keyboard, and it works fine with the Mac. You can map the keys and stuff and it works fine. But, it’s ugly and it’s clunky.

Enter a newly announced Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard which is beautiful looking. It really is cool looking. We’ll put a link up in Scriptnotes. So, I’m going to buy that. The one annoying thing about Microsoft, and it’s like I just wish they would — but they can’t — it’s not even a question of learning; they just have no — tone deaf, they’re just tone deaf.

So, Microsoft has an online store and their online store has like “Featured,” and it’s whatever featured article. Well, they’re not ready to sell this keyboard yet. They keep saying at the end of the week. It’s now Sunday. Maybe it’s available today. I don’t know, as we’re recording this. But, it’s not even listed under “Featured” or anything. It’s just people are reporting on it because they made a press release, but on their own site they don’t say, “Available this date,” or, “Look at this, coming soon.” Nothing.

It’s just — you can’t even find it on Microsoft’s store. Doesn’t exist on their store, until the day they decide it does. It’s just so dumb!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Why are they dumb?

**John:** I don’t know why they’re dumb. I think it’s really a fundamental question. If you actually had the answer and a time machine, the computer software industry would be very different.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re just dumb. But, I’m going to buy this keyboard. It looks beautiful and so I guess congratulations and boo to Microsoft, as always.

**John:** [laughs] So, to wrap up the show, I would remind people that if you want to come see Big Fish on Broadway we start September 5 is our first performance of previews. We start real, our grand official opening is October 6. But, for all September and that first week of October there is a discount for our listeners which is almost half off if you use the magic code SCRIPT either at Ticketmaster or at the theater box office, or at the Neil Simon.

Craig is going to come sometime, but I will be here. So, if you’re coming to see the show, let me know. So, you can email ask@johnaugust.com. Or, me at @johnaugust on Twitter. And let me know that you’re coming and what date and I will try to find you.

What worked out best in Chicago, ultimately, I tried to find people at their seats and it was a disaster. But, because I actually look like myself, I look exactly like the person you would see if you were to Google me, people would see me and they would wave, and I would come over and introduce myself. So, that worked out well. So, I look forward to seeing more people there.

Craig is @clmazin on Twitter. But let’s remember, do not send him lists.

**Craig:** Stop it with the lists.

**John:** You can send him things that are interesting. You can send him things that could be One Cool Things.

**Craig:** I love everything that people send me. I just can’t stand the lists.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We are on iTunes which is how a lot of people usually would find us. But, if you’re not subscribed to us in iTunes you probably should subscribe to us on iTunes. Just search for Scriptnotes in the iTunes store.

You can find information about everything we talked about in this episode and links to all the other episodes on johnaugust.com/podcast.

And I think that’s it.

**Craig:** Good. Good episode.

**John:** I thought it was a good episode for zero preparation.

**Craig:** And you stayed awake.

**John:** I stayed awake. I had coffee at hand the entire time.

**Craig:** Fantastic. We’ve done it again. We’ve done it again, Magoo.

**John:** Hooray. Craig, thank you so much. Have a great week.

**Craig:** See you next time.

**John:** Bye.

LINKS:

* The [Ender’s Game](http://www.if-sentinel.com/) movie
* AV Club on [Orson Scott Card’s recent comments](http://www.avclub.com/articles/oh-hey-orson-scott-card-also-wrote-about-obama-bec,101703/)
* Big Fish’s Zachary Unger [sings the National Athem](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEnK734bIpg) at this weekend’s Jets game
* [Happy Endings script pages](http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/07/a-happy-endings-writer-tweeted-a-bunch-of-rejected-jokes-after-the-show-officially-ended/) with alternate jokes
* [Portlandia](http://www.ifc.com/shows/portlandia) on IFC
* [Microsoft Sculpt](http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/13/4617468/microsoft-sculpt-keyboard-and-mouse-aim-for-ergonomic-cool) ergonomic keyboard (from [@jeremycohen](https://twitter.com/jeremymcohen/status/367453556967620609))
* If you’re coming to Big Fish on Broadway, [email](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) or [tweet](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) us to let us know!
* And feel free to [Tweet Craig](https://twitter.com/clmazin), too. But no lists.
* Outro by Scriptnotes listener Olivia Neutron Bomb