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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/three-page-challenge-live-edition).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes; it’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters, including the ones right here in this audience.

[Applause!]

**Craig:** Ah, god, they are both the greatest and worst audience ever.

**John:** They are a fantastic audience.

We’ve got a full house here at the Writers Guild Foundation Craft Day 2013. Thank you guys all so much for coming. We are in the Writers Guild Theater which is not at the Writers Guild, so about half the people here probably drove to the wrong place and then came to the right place. And that’s great; you’re in the right place because today we are going to be talking about…Craig, what are we going to talk about today?

**Craig:** Well, today we thought we would do one of our Three Page Challenge episodes, but we kind of have a nice thing today. This is a first for us, and it’s a little scary, as scary as it is for the people who send in these pages and have us analyze them and critique them. Today it’s a little scary for us because we have the screenwriters of those pages here today.

We have to look them in the eye, which is not going to temper what I say at all. But, still, it’s a great thing. And so that seems like a fun way to go through this. We have three different Three Page Challenges. And then I think, maybe, if we have some time…

**John:** We’ll have some questions at the end.

**Craig:** From you guys.

**John:** From you guys, here, live in the audience.

**Craig:** No, we have questions for you.

**John:** Yeah, we’re going to just pick random people and ask you questions. So, be thinking about questions you may want to ask me and Craig or the writers of the pages that are up here, or things that you see in the pages that you want to have more clarity on.

Just to give a little backstory here: We’ve been doing the Three Page Challenge since almost the beginning of the podcast. And this came from something you used to do on Done Deal Pro where you’d say like, okay, somebody can send in four pages and I’ll tell you whether your four pages are good. You can sort of tell within the first couple pages if a person knows what they’re doing on the page.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s levels that we can look for. The reason I started doing it on Done Deal Pro is because a lot of people were, frankly, I’m always motivated by a certain sense of evil, as you know, and a lot of people speak as if they know what they’re talking about.

And it makes me a little crazy. And so some people were being very harsh on other writers and I kind of was like — “You know what? You show me; show me in four pages. I think I can give you a sense in four pages.”

And some of these people wrote — most of them wrote fairly mediocre stuff to not-good. Some of them wrote four pages where I could literally say, “You should stop doing this.” You know, it’s like on those singing shows, sometimes people come in and they’re like [hums terribly] and they’re like, “Just everybody agrees — stop.”

But, you know, then there are some people that really did some great stuff. One guy in particular wrote four pages that I liked so much I asked to read the whole script. And I liked the script so much that I sent it to a manager. He has a manager now and he’s working.

**John:** Yeah. The instinct behind doing it on the podcast was we try to talk about screenwriting, and it’s very hard to talk about screenwriting without having something in front of you to talk about. So, you guys have been so generous to send in pages, so thank you to everyone who has sent in pages. If we’re not getting to your pages today, you can go to johnaugust.com/threepage — it’s all spelled out — and there are instructions for how you can send in your pages.

And Stuart, who is there in the corner. Stuart, raise your hand.

**Craig:** Stuart! Stand up, Stuart. Stand up!

**John:** People don’t believe Stuart is real.

**Craig:** That’s him! That’s what he looks like!

**John:** That’s Stuart.

**Craig:** That’s the guy we hired to play Stuart.

**John:** Exactly. The real Stuart looks nothing like that guy who just stood up.

**Craig:** Real-Stuart is an entity.

**John:** Yes. But Stuart reads through all of them and sort of — I will say, “Stuart, send us three samples of things we can read.” And so I don’t look at any of them until Stuart sends them. So, Stuart is the quality control on that. And Stuart picked some great ones for us today, so let’s get started on the ones that were sent in that we took a look at.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** So, Stuart picked these for us. So, don’t blame us if we didn’t pick your pages. Blame the guy who pretends to be Stuart.

**Craig:** There’s a lot of deflection on Stuart.

**John:** Our first three page sample is from, it’s called Enjoy the Show, and Allie and Liz Sayle wrote it.

**Craig:** Where are you Allie and Liz?

**John:** Where are you guys?

**Craig:** Hey!

**John:** Come on up.

**Craig:** Are you guys related? Good. Because the same last name — it just would have been weird.

**John:** Can we get microphones for these guys? All right, while we’re getting microphones we’re going to talk about what we saw on these pages and then we’ll ask you more about them.

So, Enjoy the Show. I will do the summary for people who are not — who don’t have the pages in front of them; like if you’re driving your car you wouldn’t know what we’re talking about, so I’m going to give you the quick summary. Our scene starts in a movie theater arcade. We meet a guy who is at a claw machine and his name is Andrew. And he’s trying to get a Fozzie Bear out of it. And we’re going to learn that he’s trying to get this Fozzie Bear because there’s this girl he kind of has a crush on that he wants to give this Fozzie Bear to.

He’s gone through all his quarters and he finally ends up succeeding and getting the Fozzie Bear. There’s also intercut a woman driving very fast on the freeway. Her name is Brody. When we come back to the arcade, to the movie theater arcade, we see Andrew who has the bear. We see Kellen, a friend of his, and it’s Kellen’s girlfriend that he’s trying to hand off the bear to. And that is what we’ve gotten to at the end of these three pages.

**Craig:** Right. You know, not bad. Not bad. I’m going to go through… — The stuff that I thought that came through that I liked the most was the — an interesting expression of a guy who is going through unrequited love. That’s a pretty familiar circumstance and I thought it was shown in a somewhat unfamiliar way. He singled in on Fozzie Bear like that’s what is going to do it is Fozzie Bear.

I like the idea that he has kind of fetishized this one thing. What was missing for me though was the notion of why Fozzie Bear, frankly. I mean, he’s discarded all these other things. If you look at the first bit here, what’s happening is he’s pounding through all of these quarters and he’s got all these animals on the ground and there’s one animal left, I think, correct? Fozzie Bear.

We don’t know if he’s trying to get — at this point I just assume he’s just, he’s autistic and needs to clean out the claw machine. You know what I mean? And you do have to always think about what the audience knows versus what you know. So, if you want us to know that it’s because he needs the Fozzie Bear, my suggestion is maybe that he starts by getting an animal, pulls it out, and then just hands it to a kid, or tosses it to a kid and is moving to that one. And we see he’s trying to get that one. Instead of getting Fozzie Bear he keeps getting the wrong one. You know what I mean?

So, some way that we can get that the Fozzie Bear is the one. When he’s talking to the Tween with Attitude, this was a nice way, I thought, of getting out the essential details. His best friend has a girl; he’s in love with that girl; he’s kind of hiding that he’s in love with that girl. I love this last line, “I’ll be your girlfriend. If you want to make her jealous.” That was really cute.

But in there I’d also love to know why Fozzie Bear. [laughs] Like, you know, just some indication of why this has become so important to him. Otherwise he’s just going to seem a bit bizarre.

The intercut to me does not work here.

**John:** The intercut to the freeway?

**Craig:** That’s right. The cutaway to the freeway. It didn’t work for me for two reasons. One, we just did an episode about transitions. There’s no transition to this. So, there’s no throw really from where we are to there.

**John:** Craig, you’re wrong. There is actually a throw. So, if you look at the bottom. Actually, I liked the…

**Craig:** “Grips the joystick?”

**John:** Joystick to gearshift.

**Craig:** That doesn’t work. It’s too matchy-matchy to me. It’s too much of a trick. I was looking for a little bit more of some reason to be on the road. And I guess since I never got a reason to be on the road, the transition didn’t work for me going in. I mean, I saw the joystick thing and on the way back coming out of it, again, there’s no transition really back.

The biggest issue with cutting away there is that nothing happens. We see a woman and she’s driving fast. And she drives fast for a while, by the way. It’s very well described, but maybe too much so. So, I guess my question is: Is that something we need or could you even start the movie with her? If she’s going to be showing up in a second, start with this crazy woman on a road, and then cut to the quarters and stuff so that it’s there.

Anyway, it was a strange interruption for me. And then lastly I want to talk about when the girl arrives. So, Zia is the girl. That’s the girl that he wants to give the bear to. And we have Kellen walk in, and that’s the first person you want us to see, which means it’s the first person the movie is concentrating on. And I wanted the movie to be concentrating on her. I mean, I’ve been hearing about her. He’s been doing all this for her. I want to see her walk in. And then I want to make a moment of it.

We talk a little bit about how to expand or contract moments so that they are of different value. And for this character I think her entrance should be of the greatest value, so that should expand a little bit. Let me see her. Show me him looking at her. Show me what that does. Show me a moment where it’s just the two of them. They don’t have to be talking; they could be across the room. But it’s just the two and then this guy comes in, you know. And that disrupts things. And the Fozzie Bear goes behind him. And then there’s chit chat. And then he tosses the bear.

Those were my general… — But, you know, you guys can write. I mean, that’s the good news. It was really well laid out. It was well written. It’s just finding those choices in there for me.

**John:** I want to know who is who and some backstory on this. So, which one of you is Liz and which is Ally.

**Liz Sayle:** I’m Liz.

**Allie Sayle:** I’m Allie.

**John:** And are you in fact sisters?

**Liz/Allie:** Yes.

**John:** Great. It was a simple guess, but you never know. Maybe you just ended up having the same last name and that was how it works.

**Craig:** Or, or…

**John:** Or they could be married.

**Craig:** DOMA.

**John:** DOMA.

**Craig:** DOMA.

**John:** My husband and I have the same last name, people think we’re brothers.

Now, tell us about this script. Is this the first script you guys wrote together?

**Liz/Allie:** No.

**John:** Okay. So, what’s the motivation behind writing this script.

**Liz:** Well, the script is actually about, so the woman in the car is coming to the theater and sort of takes the movie theater hostage. And so we were just in a movie theater and we were like this is a really good place to rob someone. [laughs]

**Craig:** A theater like this one?

**Liz:** Yeah, exactly. It’s like no one would ever catch you. Or, they’re not prepared for it. So, now every time we go to a movie theater — that was like a couple years ago — we’re like every time you’re there you’re like, “Oh, I need to do this, I need to do this.” And so we just sort of need to write this story so we can go to the movie theater without thinking about how to take it over.

**John:** By the way, movie theaters are a great place to — I don’t want to say you should go rob a movie theater — but they are like sort of great for heists because they have a lot of cash on the weekends. There is interesting stuff to do in a movie theater. So, I applaud your instinct behind committing violence in a movie theater on paper rather than in actual life.

Did Craig interpret things correctly in sort of what he was saying? Is Zia a more important character than Kellen? Tell us?

**Allie:** Yeah. I think so. I think what we were thinking is Zia is obviously the girl that he likes. And so by having Kellen come in and do the interaction, showing sort of what’s in between there, but I don’t think you get enough of her, like you were saying.

**Craig:** Yeah. I would keep that interaction. That interaction played very natural and very real. I don’t need to know what “One forty eighty-five” means. I like not knowing what people are talking about and it seems realistic to me. It was just about sort of showcasing her. Reward us for our interest in her is basically what it is.

**John:** Let’s get a little more specific on the page. A few things that stuck out for me that were things to look at. Your first sentence of real description, “Fade In on a metal claw…inside Plexiglas.” Got that. “It drops nothing down a metal chute.”

Now, “It drops nothing down a metal chute,” on the third time reading through it you get what it’s actually saying that there’s nothing in the claw to drop, but I had to read that twice or three times to really get what that is. And the first sentence shouldn’t be that. So, find another way just to convey that idea that it’s an empty claw dropping that has nothing in it to drop as it gets to the end.

The super says “Thousand Oaks, CA 2010.” Why 2010?

**Craig:** I picked up on that, too.

**John:** Is there a reason why it needs to be 2010?

**Allie:** I think we wanted to sort of do the action in it to sort of make you think that it was a real, like something that actually happened. And we just thought that setting it in a very specific time…

**Craig:** Oh, I see.

**Allie:** …that that might sort of make it seem more realistic.

**John:** So, maybe if you got even more specific then we would know that it was more like a real event. So, if you said like “April 22, 2010,” then we would know that there’s a specific reason why we’re there. Because right now I read it as 2010 and I’m thinking like was that a zip code that you didn’t like finish. I didn’t really read it as a year.

Andrew, who is our main character through this first section, he doesn’t get his own cool line of description. You say, “Safe. Doesn’t get a lot of sunlight,” but if this is our main character I think you can throw us an extra line of something more specific about him. Because “doesn’t get a lot of sunlight” could just be like Craig’s kid.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That doesn’t tell us a whole lot.

**Craig:** He’s really white. We were just talking about it. My wife is white and he’s white, white, white, white.

**John:** Andrew is listed as being 19 years old, but the action I see him doing makes him feel a little bit younger. I felt like I watching a high school kid and not a 19-year-old kid. And so just be mindful of that. And if it’s important that he be 19 years old, that’s awesome, but I felt like he could have been younger for the kind of stuff that we saw happen just in these first couple pages.

Near the bottom of your first page, we go to “INT. ARCADE — LATER.” You can do that. So, you changed time. Same place, changed your time. Another way you could do that is just to say “LATER” as a slug line. And that way we don’t have to think, “Am I in a new place?” No, you’re in the same place, you’ve just moved to a later time. Either way works.

I wonder if you could cut the first two lines of Andrew talking to himself. Right now it’s:

That could be the first line of his dialogue, because we get what he’s doing from just that line. So, if you want to cut those first two I think you would be in a good place.

**Craig:** You know, now that you mention that, I actually bracketed that. I’m not sure you need any of that. We’ve seen that before. And I feel like I would much rather have him explain this strange obsession with Fozzie Bear to those other kids, because it’s so specific. It’s not I want to give her a thing, because you could replace Fozzie Bear with, oh, you like Hello Kitty there, you know what I mean?

It’s why-that-one. I’d much rather him explain it to her and just cut these sort of play acting dialogue here which we have seen a lot.

**John:** Yeah. And honestly if you were to cut all that out, if you started with Tween with Attitude’s first line, “Does she have a boyfriend?” If we’ve seen the claw going for these toys and the first line of dialogue is, “Does she have a boyfriend,” that’s really clarified what it is he’s attempting to do.

I agree on sort of like the transition coming back from the car was troubling. And I wonder if ultimately you’re going to be happier keeping all of Andrew’s stuff together and not cutting away to that woman, because nothing actually happens with that woman. So, if we were to follow Andrew’s storyline through in terms of like everything with the bear and trying to get the bear and like his frustration there, that might be the best time and then get to this woman who’s going to be arriving at the theater.

I understand your instinct for trying to show that something is coming, but we’ve sort of barely got stuff started before we jumped away to something else.

And you said you were fine with “One forty eight-five. Beat that.” What does that mean? What is it supposed to me? A score?

**Allie:** We don’t know. [laughs]

**John:** You don’t know? Okay, that’s fine.

**Liz:** She doesn’t know. It’s like a high score in a video game, or something like that.

**Allie:** We just wanted something to quickly establish that these guys are close, they’re good friends, and they’re a little bit competitive.

**John:** Great. And even like something he can point to or gesture, just so it doesn’t… — Because, again, it’s one of those things where if I read it three times and try to make sense of it and I can’t make sense of it, I might stop reading. And anything you can do to keep me from stop reading is your friend in the first three pages.

So, tell us, is the script all the way written or is it still in progress?

**Allie:** The first draft is.

**John:** The first draft. And what ends up happening at the end. Tell us the journey of where these characters get to.

**Liz:** You’re looking at me like you want me to do that.

**Allie:** I mean…[laughs]

**Craig:** Have you read it?

**Allie:** I have. I have. At the end, I mean, we end up blowing up the theater.

**John:** Good. There’s like a teenage Die Hard in a movie theater.

**Allie:** Sort of, yeah.

**Liz:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah, awesome. Then done. Done and done.

**Craig:** Does he get the girl?

**Allie:** Yes.

**Craig:** All right, good.

**John:** Anymore questions for our sisters?

**Craig:** No, no, not at all. Keep at it. Keep at it, guys.

**John:** You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for sending your pages.

**Craig:** Thank you Allie and Liz.

**John:** Thank you guys.

**Craig:** Nice work. Thanks. Good job.

**John:** All right, our next pages come from Kate Gragg. Where’s Kate? Hi Kate. Come here and have a seat.

**Kate Gragg:** Thank you.

**John:** Cheers for Kate. A very brave Kate.

**Craig:** Hi Kate.

**John:** So, let’s talk to you before we start going into your pages. Tell us — do you want to describe what happens in these three pages?

**Kate:** It’s the opening to a TV pilot that I wrote. A woman, Hattie, she’s in a sort of tourist gift shop/car rental place. And she’s having trouble renting a car because all of her credit cards have been canceled because she’s been declared dead. And so she hitches a ride on a church tour bus that’s going to one of those mega churches. And then cowboys show up and it’s basically a stage coach robbery.

**John:** Thank you. We should always have the real people do it because you do so much better a job of summarizing things than Craig and I ever do.

**Craig:** Do you have like a job? Maybe we could just bring you in for Three Page Challenges and you could just…

**Kate:** I would love that.

**John:** That would be fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah. We don’t pay any money or anything.

**John:** So, Kate, is this whole script written, or is it just the first three pages?

**Kate:** It’s written. And I’m going to do the rewriting class at the LA Extension.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** Great. Cool. So, I really enjoyed some elements in your pages here and let me talk about some stuff that worked really well for me.

I liked that it was sort of cross-genres. And so we see these cowboys who we assume are just people talking and stuff on the side of the road, and then it becomes this robbery. So, we’re excited that it’s a robbery and it’s going to a strange place. And so I would have kept reading after these three pages because it’s just so bizarre that this is happening; that this church bus is being robbed.

There are some stuff which got in the way, so let me talk you through some of those things. We first meet Hattie and she is in this car rental shop. She’s trying to rent a car. I didn’t get a good sense of who she was at this moment. And so let’s look at our first line of description:

“HATTIE CONWAY, 26” — I think you need a comma after the 26 — “fidgets with a bucking bronco figurine on a rack of Texas-themed souvenirs, keeping one eye on the CLERK behind the counter as he nods along to a phone call.”

The stuff with the clerk and the nodding along, I totally get that. Fidgets doesn’t feel like quite the right verb. Fidgets is something to me that you do to yourself and it’s not something you do to an object.

**Craig:** Fiddles.

**John:** Fiddles. I think fiddles is a Craig Mazin suggestion that we’ll take.

I didn’t buy the guy saying, “The estate is still in probate.” It felt like too much of a reach. It doesn’t feel like the kind of thing that would actually be said to somebody on the phone. So, I like the fact that, “They say you’re dead.” That’s a great idea.

I would also look at the end of this scene, this first little scene:

“Hattie turns towards the window, ignoring him, scanning for options.”

Now, that “scanning for options is meant to lead us outside so we can see like what she’s seeing from her point of view on the bus, but because you gave us another line afterwards, “I got probation too. Were you down at County?” I forgot that we were looking outside, and so that transition didn’t really work for me. So, if the last line of the first scene was “scanning for options,” and then we cut to the outside, then I’d like, okay, that’s her point of view and she’s seeing what’s out there.

I didn’t necessarily buy her grabbing the t-shirts and trying to get onto that bus. I like that idea that she’s going to try to get on that bus, but what you gave us were those little two half scenes and then suddenly she’s on the bus. And I would love to see more about Hattie and learn more about Hattie by seeing how she talks her way onto that bus, because that is a moment where a character can actually do something rather than just the movie jumping ahead.

And so then once we get to the conversation with the pirate and his buddy and all this action, I was with you, and I was curious about what was going to happen next. I wasn’t sure of quite what tone of movie we were in. It felt like one of those sort of exaggerated Coen Brothers early comedies, but I was curious what it was going to be. Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s the part that I really appreciate here is the tone. I think that there’s the promise of something good here. There really is.

First of all, the notion of a girl who is on the run because she’s dead and the backstory there, I’m sure, is interesting. Joining up with a bunch of cowboy-riding dudes, who I imagine are, well, skinny and fair-faced and chubby and baby-faced, all right, maybe not, but maybe there’s some romance in there somewhere. But, the notion of an outlaw that’s kind of a weird horseback outlaw on the blacktops of Texas — that’s fun. I like that. There’s an interesting vibe to that.

The heat of it, like my favorite line in here is the introduction of Pirate and Buddy, “Staring down a stretch of two-lane backtop, baking in the relentless Texas sun,” and I start to feel like I’m in Thelma & Louise. It’s visual and I really like that.

And because you are finding an interesting tone, you now have to be really careful about introducing anything in there that starts to deflate it. And the things that can deflate tone — and jokes are tough, because a good joke will make tone work, and a bad joke will just deflate it.

So, let’s talk about this very first scene. I agree, by the way, with everything John said. But in a bigger way, I think you have to rethink how you’re revealing this information. This is a big piece of information. “You’re dead,” right, and I think the way you’re doing it is the least interesting way. You know, there’s a guy nodding and then, “They say you’re dead.” Wah. There it is. Blah. You know what I mean?

This is off the top of my head but we’re just on a clerk and he’s got a credit card and he’s like, “Well, yeah, I mean, she owes me a certain amount of money here. I’m trying to settle a bill. Or she owed me money,” whatever the language is. We’re trying to basically create a distraction and misdirection. “And when did she die? About how long ago? Of what, now? I see. All right. Well thank you very much. I should cut this card up, right, because she’s dead. Okay. Miss, here’s your card.”

You know, like just to reveal — some more interesting way of revealing that there is a woman who’s supposed to be dead who is not dead. “Can’t arrest the dead!” isn’t a bad line, except we’ve said “dead” a lot. So, maybe in that area think of the rhythm and maybe, “Can’t arrest a corpse,” something else. Something to just change up that rhythm or that feeling.

The exchange between Pirate and Buddy is — unfortunately Tarantino has kind of ruined this for us all. We don’t get to do it anymore, really. If anything sounds like, “What do they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Holland?” then you come up with another way. And, frankly, I always feel like when we first meet two characters there is an opportunity to learn so much about the differences between the two of them. And maybe even if there is conflict, hopefully, that emerges between those two, plant the seeds of it now. It doesn’t have to be overly dramatic; it could be over a small thing.

It could be two guys arguing over who gets the last piece of gum. But in one way or another there is something — give us a little more meat than just jokes, because it got a little jokey. Similarly, “I got probation too. Were you down at Country?” Too jokey. Right?

“(reading off a notepad) ‘The estate is still in probate.'” That’s not this guy, right?

So, try and find that tone. Really liked her on the bus. Love the image of these people singing. It’s very visual. I like the way you write so visually. And the heist itself was done really well. I mean, for you guys looking on the page, lots of white space. We’re not being jammed with details that we don’t need. “BUS and TRUCK speeding down the road.” I love shit like that.

“Galloping HORSES. BUS and TRUCK speeding down the road.” So many scripts we read about, you know, the bus — you hear the gears winding and the tires and the sky and a bird goes, “Wah.” “Bus and truck speeding down the road.”

“You know what this is. Open up.” Maybe we could do a little bit better there without getting jokey or violating tone. And then, “Hattie has never been more awake in her life.” Eh, I don’t know that. [laughs] You know? My guess is she has probably had some interesting things happen to her, but I think this may be, “Hattie perks up.”

This is one of those moments where I like to sort of take a look at a character and say, “Everybody shrinks back in fear, except Hattie, who sits forward.” Do you know what I mean? To like say, “Oh, she’s different.”

But, there’s a lot of good promise here and I like the way you’re writing it. So, guard your tone. Defend your tone.

**John:** I would also keep Hattie front and center. Because what I notice through this first section is she is responding to other people but you don’t see her taking initiative. And that’s why seeing her take some initiative in the car rental place is important, but even more so how she gets herself on the bus and what she’s like on the bus — don’t let your hero be a passenger, literally, at the start of your story because then we’re not there with her.

And so then you can maybe earn a line like, “Hattie has never been more awake in her life.” Or at least we’ll know who she is when you give us that kind of line.

So, tell us what happens ultimately in your script.

**Kate:** Hattie ends up going back to the very small southern Texas town where she’s from. And she hasn’t been back in a long time. And she, through the course of the story, discovers that her mother who vanished in mysterious circumstances when she was a kid actually ran this secret outlaw ghost town that those cowboys are from. And they want her to be their new leader.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** That sounds weird, and I’m into weird.

**John:** Yeah. It sounds really cool. And so does she know these guys at the start of the story?

**Kate:** No, but they recognize her because she looks a lot like her mom. She didn’t know any of this existed.

**John:** So, once they’re on the bus, they’re going to recognize her as being special and unique. That’s great, and that tells us that she’s a character worth watching.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just be careful about — coincidences can happen. I mean, Dickens built a wonderful career in coincidences. But, when two people are moving towards each other, and it’s coincidental, that can be a problem for the audience. When one person finds somebody who’s moving — you know, somebody is running away, she’s running away. When you tell me that, now I don’t want her to want to be interested in these guys. I want her to be, “Holy shit, I’ve got to get away from these guys.” And they find her and then they’re like, “Oh, look who that looks like.”

You know what I mean? In other words, you don’t want people moving towards each other and going, “Oh, and also we belong together.”

**John:** In a movie you get essentially one coincidence, and that coincidence should usually be the premise of your film. Like that is sort of the Passover Principle. This is why tonight is unlike all other nights, is that this is why we’re watching this movie here and now. And this could be exactly that premise coincidence where like they happen to rob the bus that she’s on and that brings her back into the fold.

But if you can find ways to have your hero create that circumstance, you’re almost always better off. So, if something she did ends up bringing her to that place, then it doesn’t count as a coincidence. It doesn’t count against you as a coincidence.

**Kate:** Great.

**John:** Thank you so much.

**Craig:** Great job, Louisa. I mean, not Louisa. Kate. I was jumping ahead. Kate, right?

**Kate:** Yes.

**Craig:** Sorry, I was jumping into the next person.

**Kate:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Good job, Kate. Good job.

**John:** All right. Our final batch of three pages comes from Louisa Makaron and you’re going to forgive me when I mispronounce your name.

**Louisa Makaron:** It’s Ma-karon.

**John:** Louise Makaron. That’s actually much simpler.

**Craig:** Uh, you spelled it wrong.

**Louisa:** I know. Someone spelled it wrong along the way.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s an airport that spells it right.

**Louisa:** Yeah. I’m from Vegas actually where that airport lives.

**Craig:** You should just change it.

**Louisa:** I think I will.

**Craig:** Just change it.

**Louisa:** People think I’m Irish. I don’t know. I’m not Irish.

**Craig:** What are you?

**Louisa:** I’m Italian. It’s not indicated there.

**Craig:** No, there’s no vowel at the end. You should change it.

**Louisa:** I’m gonna. It’s happening.

**Craig:** Yeah, it makes sense.

**John:** Louisa, what was your decision process for sending in these three pages? When did you decide, You know what? I’m going to bite the bullet and send it in.”

**Louisa:** Well, yeah, motivated by terror mostly. Just like, just do it. I sat there with my finger over the Send button for probably ten minutes.

**John:** And you did it.

**Louisa:** Just send it, you know. Well, just like, it’s good. It’s good.

**John:** And so when you arrived here at the theater you saw that your pages. How were you feeling?

**Louisa:** More terror.

**John:** More terror?

**Louisa:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Right now? Terror right now in this moment?

**Louisa:** A little bit, yeah.

**John:** After us watch us talk to the first two entries, how are you feeling now?

**Louisa:** The same terror, I guess. I feel okay.

**John:** Okay. You should feel okay. You should feel pretty good.

**Craig:** You don’t really have levels of terror. You just have one steady…

**John:** Steady state.

**Louisa:** It’s pretty much constant. Yeah.

**Craig:** Okay.

**Louisa:** It’s how I live.

**Craig:** She has a static terror.

**John:** Yeah. It’s like you’re living in a police state where there’s always sort of unrest inside your head.

Louisa, talk to us about the pages you sent through and give us the quick description of what happens in these first three pages.

**Louisa:** Okay. So, in these three pages we meet Daisy and she’s drawing in a notebook. We see that she’s drawing a how-to manual on how to dodge a bullet, basically. And there’s a knock at the door, or there’s not a knock at the door — there is a sound outside the door and it’s a delivery person, delivery man, and he’s trying to leave a package that’s sort of crudely wrapped and she’s very suspicious of it.

And he gets frustrated with her and he ends up leaving. And she calls the police because she’s very nervous about this package. And then at the end it’s clear that the police know her and she’s called them many times.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** So, the first page, it’s hard to tell where the first page ends on her. But you know, you wrote it.

**Louisa:** I think it ends, “I was looking for the doorbell.” I think that’s where it ends.

**Craig:** Right. So, I really loved this first page. I really did. I liked the way you introduced her. There were details, but not too many details, but the right details that I needed. A fun reveal of what she did, which was really interesting and obviously makes me curious about her and what her deal is. And then the fact that there’s this thud and she’s so weirdly peeking out at this guy and he’s saying, “Umm…I saw you.”

“I’ve got a package for Daisy Morton.” Now, this is where I started getting a bit confused.

**Louisa:** Okay.

**Craig:** This delivery man is like the friendliest delivery man ever, who likes chatting. He’s actually chit-chatty. I’m not a shut-in and delivery men don’t talk to me this much. So, we got into this conversation which I have to tell you was well written. It had a good rhythm and it was interesting. You’re a smart person. I can tell these are smart people talking to each other. The problem is I just don’t know why these two people are talking in this way about this thing.

**Louisa:** Okay.

**Craig:** To me, a delivery man, I get, “I saw you.”

“What were you doing? Leave the package.” Walks away. [laughs] Do you know what I mean? That’s how UPS guys work for me. If he needs a signature, he’s like, “I need a signature.”

“I’m not coming outside.”

“Okay, well, I gotta take the package with me.”

“Don’t take the package.”

Now I understand that there’s a standoff and there’s some reason for them to talk. Create some sort of dramatic compulsion for this conversation to take place.

He was reading a bit like, I was asking Chris O’Dowd from Bridesmaids, like I imagine this incredibly friendly Irish UPS guy who’s like, “Oh, it’s just that ringing the bell is one of the perks of this job, you know.”

**Louisa:** Right, right.

**Craig:** But I don’t think that’s right for this kind of, you know, for what the circumstances are. You haven’t compelled these two people to force to deal with each other, which I think you want to do because that’s what’s uncomfortable for her.

And then also take a look, Daisy, when you are frightened you tend to shorten your sentences. And she’s very short, short, short, short, all right. And then suddenly, “It’s not my birthday and the nearest holiday is National Fanny Pack Day. Not exactly a gift giving holiday. You’re not the usual guy.”

Suddenly, she’s very verbose, right, which doesn’t work because it feels like it’s kind of — again, like I was saying earlier to Kate — it’s like putting a joke in where we don’t need a joke-joke. And then the conversation keeps going. So, it’s almost like a romantic comedy at this point, but why are they still talking to each other?

I did like the ending where she calls about the package. I think the operator, “A very suspicious package was just left on my door and –”

“Daisy, please.” You know, like not, “Daisy? Is this Daisy Morton?”

**Louisa:** Right, right.

**Craig:** They know her. If they know her, they know her.

**John:** Yeah. They would know the number calling.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. I think it would be, “911. Please stop calling us Daisy. What is it Daisy?”

**John:** I’m going to disagree with Craig, which is always one of my favorite things to do on the podcast.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** So, the reason why UPS people don’t ever talk to Craig is because he doesn’t have doe eyes and a cardigan.

**Craig:** That’s not true. At my house…you don’t know how I walk around.

**Louisa:** Constantly in a cardigan.

**John:** I don’t know your life on the other end of Skype there. But I believe that there was — I read this as he’s either flirting or he’s genuinely a bad guy. And that kept me excited and compelled reading through these things.

**Louisa:** Right.

**John:** And so I want to talk about sort of what I was reading and what I felt I could have enjoyed even more. Do you perceive titles going over her opening drawing of this stuff? Or are we just watching her?

**Louisa:** I kind of did. But, you know, it’s not my job…

**John:** It was sort of halfway in between. And so there wasn’t quite enough there that I believe it would mean a title sequence, but there wasn’t enough actually happening that I believe that we’re actually just watching her do all this drawing, finally to be the reveal of she’s actually drawing how to dodge a bullet.

So, I think you need to either make your choice. Either it’s titles or it’s not titles. And if it’s not titles it needs to be a little bit quicker. If it’s not titles, then you can really kind of get much more quickly to she would be doing something in the house and then she sees the guy moving and that sort of starts the whole movie, the whole scene.

I want to talk about point of view and like literally point of view, because we start inside the house and we never really go outside the house. And so the minute she sees him we can sort of go, we can do that POV through the window of seeing that there’s a guy there. And then I would put us at a new place when we’re actually at that door, so we’re inside/outside that door, so we’re really clear of where we are that she hasn’t invited him into the house.

I liked a lot of the conversation between them and sort of who’s the regular guy, I don’t know, ringing the doorbell. That all felt good and I felt Chris O’Dowd, too. I mean, it felt like the right kind of vibe for it.

I agree on National Fanny Pack Day. When you feel it’s reaching for a joke then it’s not going to land quite right. But, it was really nicely done. And I can see this working as the start of this — Daisy’s journey. Is that what the movie is? Is this Daisy’s story from being terrified to stepping out beyond her comfort zone?

**Louisa:** Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah.

**John:** What happens? What happens in the first act that gets her going?

**Louisa:** In the first act, well I haven’t — this is not written, so I have basically like a log line. Through her own carefulness and paranoia she basically ends up getting herself caught up in like a CIA type mission kind of thing. And by the end of the first act we’re in there.

**John:** So just because she’s paranoid doesn’t mean that people aren’t out to get her.

**Louisa:** Right. She sort of ends up being right about a few things.

**Craig:** Self-fulfilling prophecy. Was your intention that the delivery man is flirting with her?

**Louisa:** I mean, no. Not really. I guess not.

**Craig:** Because I didn’t get that.

**Louisa:** He could be.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, this isn’t a story where they fall in love or anything.

**Louisa:** No.

**Craig:** Yeah, so, um…hmm.

**Louisa:** He could be flirting with her.

**John:** He could. So, if you wanted the flirting, it essentially becomes an extra line of dialogue where he notices like her skirt or like her bare legs…

**Louisa:** And a wink.

**John:** The wink, yeah. The little something. He mistakes her fright for coyness. And that sort of gets that going.

**Craig:** Regardless of what you intend here, if they’re not — if this character is gone, never to show up again, this is too much. This is just simply too much. Because we’re involved in their relationship suddenly, you know. And in that sense, that’s okay, we do this all the time. We write too much and then we pare back.

You have to decide what your intention is for this encounter. And if the intention is to show that she is paranoid and frightened of the world outside and is constantly calling 911, make that your focus. Pull out the rest of the underbrush.

**John:** Cool.

**Louisa:** Cool.

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

**Craig:** Thank you, Louisa.

**John:** And you made it. It’s a pleasure to meet you.

**Louisa:** Thank you.

**Craig:** That wasn’t so bad, was it?

**Louisa:** No, it was all right.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** Now, it’s come time in the podcast where we will actually have questions live from the audience. So, I think what’s going to happen is are there volunteers with microphones? This young woman is going to have a microphone. So, if you have a question you will raise your hand and we will send her to you and you will be able to ask your question. Any show of hands of someone who has a question? Gentleman with a black shirt?

**Dave Stone:** Hey guys. Thanks for doing what you do. I really love it. My name is Dave Stone . I’m with Intrigue Films. And I was listening to a podcast where you were playing devil’s advocate about not subscribing to a lot of the structure in screenwriting books and that kind of stuff.

So, I just kind of wanted to ask you, when you guys were kind of starting out and learning, what teachers did you learn from and were there any books that you’re like, hey, this is a good foundational book. Anyways, that’s my question.

**Craig:** Yeah, sure. I think we probably mentioned at one point or another, when I first started out I read two books. I didn’t go to film school like John. I just read two books. I read Syd Field’s Screenwriter’s Workbook, which is not even Syd Field’s Screenplay. It was a very nuts and bolts thing which was good for me just so I could say, “Okay, the first act is roughly this many pages. The second act is roughly this many pages.” But a lot of it just was worthless.

It is, I mean, you know. And then I read Chris Vogler’s book, The Writer’s Journey, which is based on the Campbell stuff. And that’s, you know, also frankly, it’s kind of fortune cookie descriptions of how to do this stuff. The problem with all the books is that they’re post-facto. So, the people that write the books don’t write screenplays. They analyze screenplays.

So, they watch movies and they find commonalities between lots of movies and then they sort of create a paradigm for what’s common about them. And they provide that to you, as if that would help you actually construct it. It doesn’t.

What they are, they’re demolition experts telling you how to build a building. It does not work. The only way that I’ve found to figure out how to build a building as opposed to tear it down is to just build a whole lot of bad buildings. And then when people finally stop suing you, and the roof stops collapsing, then you’re there.

I mean, ultimately I find there is no other way around it. So, go ahead, take a look at the demolition experts. Take a look at what they have to say. Please do not pay anyone to give you advice on your script. I’ve said it a billion times — don’t do it.

But, in the end just know it’s okay after reading those books to not be any further along than you were before you started.

**John:** Yeah, I read Syd Field before I came to film school. Then in film school I was in a class with Laura Ziskin when she taught her first semester film development class. And we just read a bunch of scripts. And you would sort of talk through them.

And I think more than reading any book you should just read a ton of scripts. And really good scripts of the movies you love, or movies that haven’t been shot yet that are really good, and then just like a bunch of really bad scripts which you’ll find all over everywhere.

And you start to recognize patterns. Like these are things that work well in movies. And these are things that work badly in movies. But what Craig says is absolutely true. Being able analyze a script is not the same as being able to write a script. And you actually have to fundamentally do the work and figure out how it is you actually achieve on the page those things you see in the good movies. And how you keep this experience of scene-by-scene and line-by-line, keep the reader engaged.

And that’s a thing that’s very difficult to teach and you just have to sort of see it. So, the way we do these Three Page Challenges, it’s sort about keeping that excitement from scene-to-scene, from page-to-page, and understanding how you get a reader to experience the movie that you see in your head just through the 12-point Courier on the page.

Another question?

**Male Audience Member:** Hi. You reference a lot about how you prefer not have the longer paragraphs where there’s lots to read, you like the white space. How does that work for you if you’re setting up visual gags or something like that in comedies?

It seems to me that I tend to have longer paragraphs than the three lines or five lines or whatever than what I should have based on what I’ve been hearing.

**John:** Yeah, I would say my preference for shorter paragraphs isn’t just me as a writer, but it’s me as a reader. And it’s recognizing that I just tend to skip over longer things. It’s like, oh, my eyes don’t want to look through all those words.

And it’s laziness, but I don’t think I’m uncommon in that situation. And I will skip over stuff if it feels like it’s going to be too hard for me to read, or too much for me to read. And so that’s why I go for those short things.

For comedy I think short is also your friends.

**Craig:** For sure. Yeah, I mean, for setting up visual gags — if you’re setting up visual gags, the idea is that certain things must be there for the audience to see in a non-comic context and then something funny happens and you go, “Oh look, I didn’t realize that that was going to,” you know, you put a banana peel on the floor, and the guys walks around and walks into a pole.

And there are all sorts of ways that you can do that. And it’s sleight of hand with words. But, even more important then to not belabor stuff. Just, first of all, return. Okay? And I like capitalizing things that I want people’s eye to be drawn to.

Sometimes I’m capitalizing the wrong thing, because I want them to be looking here and then I hit them with this one. You know, he walks right around it and, whomp, a bus. You know? I mean, there’s a lot of ways you can do this. But very sparse. I really think in comedy in particular it’s important to be very sparse about that stuff.

It’s like watching a comedy. Keep it light.

**John:** Cool. Another question.

**Brooklyn Accent Audience Member:** How you doing guys?

**Craig:** Yeah! How you doin’?

**John:** That’s a great voice, by the way. We have to comment on that right from the start.

**Craig:** Everybody get out. It’s me and him. Brooklyn. How you doin’? How you doin’? Where you from?

**Brooklyn Accent Audience Member:** Here’s five bucks. Don’t tell your mother.

**Craig:** Where you from?

**Brooklyn Accent Audience Member:** Brooklyn.

**Craig:** Brooklyn! All right.

**Brooklyn Accent Audience Member:** Bensonhurst.

**Craig:** What part?

**Brooklyn Accent Audience Member:** Bensonhurst.

**Craig:** Bensonhurst is where my first apartment was, in Bensonhurst, right there. My mother was in Bensonhurst.

**Brooklyn Accent Audience Member:** 71st and Fourth.

**Craig:** Oh!

**Brooklyn Accent Audience Member:** Hey!

**Craig:** Hey! How you doin’?

**Brooklyn Accent Audience Member:** So, I love what you guys are doing. I think it’s fantastic. Now, speaking of New York, I read a couple of Goldman’s scripts and Woody Allen, and Goldman is specifically different because you can get quite annoyed reading his script. It’s cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

**Craig:** He’s very unique.

**Brooklyn Accent Audience Member:** And Woody Allen leaves you absolutely dry. I mean, when he describes a room he says, “1920s Jean Harlow Room.” Have a nice day. That’s it.

So, then how do you — And he’s contextual funny. How do you navigate those extremes?

**Craig:** Choose between one or the other?

**John:** Yeah. I mean, so Woody Allen scripts are incredibly spare and it’s basically — you think about a Woody Allen movie, they are dialogue-driven. And so therefore he wants you to focus on what the characters are saying and that’s what the movie is largely going to be about.

William Goldman tends, there’s obviously good dialogue as well, but they tend to be sort of more, “I’m going to paint the whole world for you,” and that’s just the style. And it’s understanding what’s your natural writing style, what does your voice sound like, but what kind of movie are you writing.

And when I’m writing things that are dialogue-driven, there’s not going to be a lot of scene description in there.

**Craig:** Yeah. Also remember Woody Allen directs his own scripts. So, he doesn’t need to write a whole bunch of stuff in there, because he doesn’t need to sell it to anybody. He just has this kind of rotating deal. “I make a movie a year,” for better or worse at this point, you know. “But I make a movie a year. And people are going to give me money to make it. And, frankly, I’m more interested in getting actors. Usually I can get actors by saying, ‘I’m Woody Allen. Would you like to be in my movie?’ ‘Yeah.'”

At that point the script really becomes almost like notes. And from what I understand about his process, he’ll shoot and then he’ll reshoot a whole bunch, too, anyway. I mean, it seems like he kind of writes it as he shoots it. So, I wouldn’t draw too many lessons from that specific example.

Nor would I draw too many lessons from Goldman either because it’s just a very idiosyncratic way of writing. And here’s the truth: when you are established you can indulge yourself in whatever style of writing gets you to the movie, gets you to a good movie. And when you’re not, you have to kind of temper it a bit, because other people are reading it and making a choice about it.

With that in mind, you have to feel your own way. I think John’s right; if it’s a very heavy dialogue scene and nothing else is going on, you don’t need to go over the top. If you’re writing a scene where two people enter a ballroom, and it’s amazing, and there’s a dance, and there’s a gun fight — fill that space.

But, you’re going to have to find your own way. Obviously William Goldman didn’t care how Woody Allen wrote and vice versa. So, you shouldn’t probably care either.

**John:** Another question from out there. I see a gentleman right there.

**Gentleman Right There:** Hi, thank you guys for being here. The question that I have is you guys have both worked in franchises with Charlie’s Angels and The Hangover. How do you guys go about serving a franchise while still having your own unique stamp on it?

**John:** So, Charlie’s Angels, I loved the original series so, so much. And so when I went in to meet with Drew Barrymore and Amy Pascal about the movie, I told them — I expressed my love for it. And I felt like the movie could be a giant hug around the original series. We weren’t going to try to push back away from it. We were going to sort of embrace everything that was wonderful and sort of weird about the series and make the feature version of it.

The challenge for me was honestly the second movie. And when it came time to make the second movie, I met with each person involved with it individually and said like, “Let’s talk about what we’re going to do on the second movie and what kind of process we’re going to go through.” And I made everyone sign this little contract saying like, “These are the things we won’t do in the sequel. We won’t do all the stupid things that people do in the sequel that ruin sequels.”

And that checklist became the checklist of the things we did in the sequel that ruined it. It was just a bizarre self-fulfilling prophecy. I really wanted the second movie to be like the second episode of a great TV series that takes three years to shoot and costs $80 million. And I really wanted it to feel like a series, like the next episode. And I couldn’t do it. And it was outside of my power to make that thing happen.

Now, Craig, with The Hangover you came onboard with the second movie and you had a responsibility to sort of people’s expectations and the same filmmaker.

**Craig:** Yeah. For me it was — in a weird way the more relevant example for me for your question is the Scary Movie movies that I did. Because for Hangover it’s very much Todd Phillips’ movie and Todd called me — and when he called me on the second one he said, “Look, I want to make another episode,” actually. “It’s like Law & Order. I want it to happen again.” There’s another murder — or like Angela Lansbury — another murder, again, in my little town.

So, and that’s what we did and I liked it a lot. And the third movie he was like, “Here’s what I want to do. I want to go dark and I want to resolve this and I want to ask a question nobody every asks about characters like Alan. What’s wrong with this guy?”

So, that was following his lead very much, although obviously we worked very closely together to write the scripts. When I came on Scary Movie 3, the first two Scary Movies had been done by the Wayans brothers and they were both Rated R and they were of a certain kind — they were of a certain style. And I came onto Scary Movie 3 with David Zucker who had done Airplane, and Jim Abrahams, and Pat Proft, like all these old guys who had done Airplane, and Naked Gun, the movies that I kind of loved.

And we really said, “Let’s just do it a different way. Let’s make Scary Movie 3 like that. Let’s go old school with it.” And that was more of a big change and that was more of a decision. And I feel closer to those movies, frankly.

And unfortunately the studio, as you see, they let it get away from them all the time with sequels. They do seem to concentrate on the worst lessons. Writing sequels is very hard. It’s very, very hard. It is essentially thankless. And, yet, it’s probably half the jobs that are available. [laughs] So, you have to make your peace with it at some point.

**John:** Craig, did you see the list of the 2015 movies? So, like the summer 2015 movies that are already sort of scheduled out…

**Craig:** Number, number, number, number…

**John:** Number, number, number. It’s like the nadir of numbers.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, look, we’ve had already this year…

**John:** This year was big.

**Craig:** …so many. And they have some that are sequels but they’re not like — Superman is a reboot of a movie that came out three years ago. It’s, eh, a sequel, sequel-ish.

**John:** Yeah, it’s kind of sequel, kind of original.

Let’s do one last question and then we’re going to do wrap up. So, I see one more question.

**Initially Loud Audience Member:** Hey. Wow, that was loud. Would you guys talk about the difference — John, have you ever worked with a writing partner? And I guess that’s part of the question. And then talk about the difference between working with a writing partner and working on your own stuff and how the process differs and how you approach it in each circumstance.

**John:** I have written with a writing partner. So, I wrote a pilot for Fox with Jordan Mechner who is a really terrific writer. And Big Fish: The Musical I’m writing with Andrew Lippa who is the lyricist/composer.

And the challenge for me is that I’m not a very good roommate. I don’t share things well. And it’s like having a creative roommate. And you’re supposed to take this thing that fits in your brain and make it fit in both of your brains and share the same vision of stuff.

Writing partners can be really good for many writers because you have different skill sets. One of you may be good in the room. One of you may be good at sort of buckling down. You can hold each other accountable for actually getting the work done. There’s a lot of good reasons for why people should write with writing partners. I’m just not a person who is naturally especially good at that.

One of the challenges I had with Jordan, who is fantastic and who I adore, was because I was so much more experienced of a writer, that whenever we would come to a disagreement I would just like sort of throw the trump card. I would say, “Big Fish.” And so I would win too many of those arguments and it just wasn’t a fair balanced thing.

And so that’s why if you’re both at a sort of newer level it can be a really great situation. And with Big Fish, we are just completely different skill sets. And so I knew nothing about how to do a big stage musical and he didn’t know how to do this kind of story. And it was a good marriage.

**Craig:** I never realized it must have been very hard for you to invite me into your life as a creative partner of sorts.

**John:** There’s a reason we’re on Skype. Yeah. There’s a reason why I control the edit.

**Craig:** I actually think that one of the reasons our partnership on this podcast goes so well is because from the start, it wasn’t even a decision, I was like I’m not going to make any decisions. It’s actually very… — These things are, because if you want to make decisions and the other person also wants to make decisions, this is a problem. It can be a real, real problem. And I’m super laid back about the podcast to the point of almost being not there. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** He’s laughing like, [faint, sarcastic laugh].

**John:** There is one podcast that Craig was actually not there. We just cut him in and he just says, “Uh-huh, yeah,” a lot.

**Craig:** Good point. Good point.

I did have a writing partner. I started with a writing partner for the first five years of my career. And he’s a great guy. He’s still working today. He has a new writing partner. We stopped writing together I think around 2000. And the fact is that, so I write alone, typically. Sometimes I collaborate with the director. And he has a writing partner because he’s supposed to have a writing partner. He’s the kind of writer that needs a writing partner and wants a writing partner. And I’m the kind that doesn’t.

And neither one is better or worse. I mean, there are some amazing teams who are prodigious and talented on a level I can’t be. Looked at what Ganz and Mandel have done over the years. And Alexander and Karaszewski.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, there’s just a ton of great, great teams across all genres that are really impressive. And you have to ask yourself what kind of guy am I? What kind of person am I?

There are huge benefits to having the partner. The partner is somebody that can tell you, yes, those people were crazy. No, this isn’t bad.

Of course, a partner is also somebody who can tell you, “I just didn’t like what you wrote today,” even though you think it’s awesome. And then there’s just stuff, business stuff. If you become successful as a partnership, it’s difficult to un-partnership. You know, so there’s… — And we’re going to actually talk about this at length in a following episode, unless it’s a prior episode depending on how time works out, with Dennis Palumbo who is a psychotherapist who deals with screenwriters. And has apparently done quite a bit of couple’s therapy with partners.

**John:** Yes. So, a few little wrap up things here today. Did anybody here buy a t-shirt? A show of hands? Oh, yeah, a lot of t-shirts. T-shirts are going to start shipping on Monday and they look really cool. You’re going to see this little card if you bought a t-shirt. You’ll flip this card over and there may be something handwritten on the back from me and Craig. If so, that’s your Golden Ticket and you’ll get a special awesome little thing that we’ll announce later on.

**Craig:** There’s one.

**John:** There’s only one ticket.

**Craig:** Who will get it?

**John:** Guys, thank you so very much. This was really fun.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you.

****************

**Craig:** No, locked in!

**John:** All right, so people are gathering their things. People are taking a seat. And we can probably start. So, how many of you guys have actually heard this show that we usually do called Scriptnotes? Show of hands? Oh, hey, a lot of people. That’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** So, if you are familiar with the show you know that it starts exactly the same way ever time. So, what might be cool is if we’re like kind of quiet and then at a certain point when it becomes really obvious you can all like cheer, or applaud, or make some sort of noise to indicate that there are live people here in the audience. Does that sound cool? All right.

**Craig:** Do you want to point at them when they’re supposed to do that?

**John:** Now, that’s good.

**Craig:** I have no confidence that they will know what the appropriate time is.

**John:** All right, I have a lot more faith in our audience.

**Craig:** Well, you know me.

**John:** All right, so let’s do this. Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

[Applause!]

**Craig:** No, no. Yes! I was right! That was the wrong time! That wasn’t even close to the right time. I feel so good about what just happened.

**John:** Yeah, you probably should.

**Craig:** You know that there’s this ongoing war between us about people are good, people are bad.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** I win again.

**John:** Craig and I are never in the same room when we do this, so it’s really rare that we actually can see each other. So, let’s try this again and let’s try to be quiet until I point to you, all right?

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

[Applause!]

Oh my god, still! All right. Total silence. All right.

**Craig:** You’re going to be quiet until he points to you. This is pointing.

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

[Applause!]

LINKS:

* [Writers Guild Foundation](https://www.wgfoundation.org)
* [Three Page Challenge packet](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/live_threepagers_final.pdf)

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/notes-on-the-death-of-the-film-industry).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 95 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

How are you, Craig?

**Craig:** Doing pretty good. I’ve got my son with me today. He’s not going to be a guest speaker. He’s 11, so he has nothing to say about any of this. He’s in the other room; I told him to read. So my guess is he’s in the other room not reading.

**John:** Is he on the iPad?

**Craig:** Probably.

**John:** Yeah. The iPad is just such crack for anybody… — Really, it’s crack for everybody, but like for kids especially, that sense of like, well, they want the iPad and it becomes the one thing I can threaten to take away from my daughter or actually just take away from daughter to actually have a consequence.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so it goes up on top of the refrigerator when there are problems.

**Craig:** You’re absolutely right. It is crack for kids. If you ever go to a kids’ science museum or something like that, those museums exist simply to allow children to press buttons.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** They love to press buttons and see lights come on. They learn nothing from the buttons and the lights.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** If you have 12, you could have a science museum where they’ve actually Jurassic Parked real dinosaurs to life, and kids would not be looking at the dinosaurs; they would be touching a button that makes a light go on.

**John:** Yeah. And god help you if a button — if the light bulb in the button has gone out, because they don’t see the cause and effect. They really just want the light to come on for that thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. They will whack the button over and over. My son crossing the street today hit the street crossing button four thousand times.

**John:** Yeah. Just because. And a lot of times the street crossing buttons, they have no physical button anymore. They’re just sensing that something has happened. And that can be frustrating. Or, also, the elevators now that do the sense your finger, like you tap it, but there’s nothing to actually press in, and so that doesn’t light up. That’s a frustration for all of us. Like, you know, did it really happen? It’s a tree falling in the forest, but if a button was pressed and it doesn’t give you visible results…

**Craig:** Right. That’s horrifying.

**John:** Yeah. You never know. It’s horrifying.

**Craig:** Horrifying.

**John:** Well, today we’re going to be talking about visible results and things that are unknown. We’re going to be talking about the film industry and the reports of its imminent demise.

**Craig:** It’s over. It’s all over!

**John:** So, over the past couple weeks we’ve had four prominent filmmakers talk about how they perceive the film industry going on a path that is unsustainable and it raises the question are things fundamentally broken. Is this just a change we’re going through? So, we can talk about that and we’ll really dig into that for this hour.

But first we have news and things to talk through.

First off, thank you to everyone who bought t-shirts. A lot more people bought t-shirts than we were expecting, but we will be able to send those out starting July 1.

**Craig:** Amazing.

**John:** Statistically blue outsold orange about two to one.

**Craig:** Good. So, Umbrage-Blue outsold Rational-Orange.

**John:** Yeah, so of course I billed it as Umbrage-Orange and Rational-Blue, which would naturally make sense, orange being the color of outrage and frustration. But, I could understand why people went for the blue even though it’s not really the Scriptnotes color, because it’s just easy to wear a blue shirt.

**Craig:** It’s much easier to wear a blue shirt. Orange is orange, after all. Plus, we did make a huge deal about Stuart saying it was the softest shirt ever.

**John:** Yes. We really did make a big deal out of that. So, we’ll see. And, I mean, Stuart — I hope he’s right.

**Craig:** Boy.

**John:** Now, the shirts were actually by different manufacturers, so they genuinely are different shirts. The orange ones were American Apparel. The blue ones were by another manufacturer, and that’s why they were physically different. And Stuart wanted to describe to me why they were different. And so that’s how he came upon the language of them being the softest shirt he ever touched.

**Craig:** Well, I’m going to personally — I’m grabbing a blue one.

**John:** All right. Now, we also added women’s sizes at the very last minute, like actually the store was already up and I said, well, could we add women’s sizes. And they were like, yeah, we could do that. So, we did that and I’m glad we did because we sold quite a few women’s shirts. Weirdly, of all the categories of all the shirts, the only shirt we did not sell — we did not sell one single women’s extra-small in orange.

**Craig:** An extra-small t-shirt makes no sense for anyone. I don’t care if you’re a dwarf. It makes no sense. Because we all know that t-shirts shrink. Everybody buys a t-shirt a little… — First of all, it’s a t-shirt; it’s not Lycra. We don’t want to wear a sausage casing. So, we want it a little loose. And we know it’s going to shrink, so we always buy up a little bit. Like, do you wear a large?

**John:** I wear a large in American Apparel. A medium in other things.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, I’ll typically wear a large t-shirt. I will never wear a medium t-shirt. I just don’t want a t-shirt touching me that close. Large. That feels right.

But, yeah, women’s extra-small? Who could possibly wear that? A fetus?

**John:** There are women who are quite small. There are women who are quite petite. And Stuart was describing one of his roommates who actually has to buy child sizes because she’s such a small person. So, that’s a real thing.

**Craig:** So, really she should buy the child’s extra-large.

**John:** Now, if you want a Scriptnotes t-shirt for your son, does your son wear adult sizes or does your son still wear kid sizes?

**Craig:** Oh my god, are you kidding me? My 11-year-old…

**John:** Your son is a giant, right?

**Craig:** My 11-year-old son with size 10 feet? Yeah, he wears adult clothing now.

**John:** We are printing one extra t-shirt for my daughter which will be in a child size. And they’ll just throw it on the press and it will be cute.

**Craig:** My son can absolutely wear, I mean, I think an adult medium is probably what he does.

**John:** Yeah. So, shirts are going to be going out July 1. Also on July 1 we will be starting to sell tickets hopefully for the 100th Episode of Scriptnotes, the live taping that we’re doing in Hollywood.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** So, on that day there will be a link for where you can come and buy them and come see us and talk with us. But, this Saturday, June 29, we will be part of the Writers Guild Foundation Craft Day and we’re going to be recording Episode 96 there. So, I f you want to come see us live, that would be a fantastic chance because Craft Day, actually I think this is going to turn out to be really cool. So, I was looking at the description which was more elaborately filled out than last time I talked about it. The other guests at Craft Day are pretty cool.

So, it’s a whole day event. There’s a panel on Why I Wrote It, with Travis Beacham, Evan Daugherty, Karl Gajdusek, Marti Noxon, and Edward Ricourt.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Those screenwriters talking about why they wrote certain things. Why We Chose It, which is people from the Austin Film Festival, The Black List, the Nicholl Fellowship people to talk about sort of why they picked and singled out certain scripts and sort of how that whole process works.

**Craig:** Yeah. And Matt and Greg are sort of — they’re running the competitions, the actual script competitions. So, that would definitely be good for you guys.

**John:** And we’ve said this on this podcast many, many times, the only things you should really be thinking about for competitions probably are Austin Film Festival and Nicholl Fellowships. And those people will be there.

**Craig:** Those are the two guys, yeah.

**John:** And the third panel is Why We Bought It, a panel of producers and execs talking about what’s selling and why they buy the things that they buy. So, those seem like good panels and useful things for aspiring screenwriters.

Now, on our Scriptnotes thing, which is the first thing of the day, we are going to be doing a Three Page Challenge, or a couple Three Page Challenges live there on stage. So, people have been emailing in with their normal Three Page Challenge entries but saying, “I will be there at the live Craft Day.” And so we will be going through that list and pulling out people who are actually going to be there physically so we can talk with them about what they did, what worked great, what could have worked better.

**Craig:** Good.

**John:** So, join us for that.

**Craig:** And that is the idea that before we show up… — I talk as if — I play both the part of the guy that doesn’t know what’s going on, but also when I’m not playing the part of the guy that doesn’t know what’s going on, I actually am the guy that does not know what’s going on. [laughs]

So, is the idea that we’re going to put those Three Page Challenge scripts on your website prior to this event so that people can read them and kind of have them, or are we handing them out there?

**John:** We are literally handing them out there. And in these handouts will also be some stuff which will never go on the website because I don’t want them to be on the website. So, I will be actually giving some Three Pages from my unproduced scripts and you may choose to do that or not choose to do that.

**Craig:** Oh, sure, I might do that.

**John:** And so literally I want to do this on paper with watermarks and saying “Please do not distribute these, because this is just for the people in the room so we can talk about it in the room, but I just don’t want these things going out over the internet.”

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, come to us and see us. Tickets for the Writers Guild Foundation Event are at wgfoundation.org. And there are still some tickets left. So, if you’re interested and you’re listening to this on the Tuesday that we are putting this podcast up, you should be able to get a ticket to it.

**Craig:** And just so people know, the Writers Guild Foundation is not part of the Writers Guild Union. It’s vaguely associated with it, but it’s a non-profit. It’s a 501(c)(3). It’s a non-profit that raises money to support the screenwriting community. For instance, the Writers Guild Foundation supports the Writers Guild Foundation Library, which is at the Writers Guild Building, where people can go in and read classic scripts or not-so-classic scripts.

They do a lot of wonderful things for screenwriters and for screenwriting education. So, it’s charity, people.

**John:** Yeah, like they do the Veterans Outreach Program.

**Craig:** Right, they do.

**John:** Which is partnering working screenwriters with retuning soldiers and veterans to get their stories to the screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. They’re great people. And I’m a supporter, as I know you are. And I’m glad to be doing this for them.

**John:** Hooray. So, let’s get to our main topic today which is the death of Hollywood, which would seem to be something to discuss considering many people listening to our podcast would hope to work in Hollywood. And based on the reports of four very prominent filmmakers — well, three very prominent filmmakers and a producer you haven’t heard of even though you’ve seen all her movies — Hollywood is pretty much doomed.

**Craig:** Right. It’s doomed.

**John:** So, you should maybe steer yourself in a different direction.

So, I guess this all started — this last round I would say was started with the Spielberg and Lucas conversation, because that got the most press attention most recently.

So, this was at the June 12 dedication of the Interactive Media Building at USC Cinema. USC’s film school is amazing now. They’ve built all these great buildings and programs, but the new one they opened up was the Interactive Media Building.

And at this Spielberg and Lucas spoke and they were on a little panel. And so here are some things they said. Spielberg said, “There’s going to be a meltdown or an implosion where three or four or even a half dozen of these mega budget movies are going to come crashing to the ground and its going to change the paradigm again.” So, he was a predicting a…

**Craig:** Multiple John Carters of Mars.

**John:** Exactly. And what Lucas said was, “What you’re going to end up with is fewer theaters, bigger theaters, with a lot of nice things in them. Going to movies is going to cost you $50, maybe $100, maybe $150.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Spielberg says, “Like a Broadway play.” Lucas says, “Like Broadway, or going to a football game.”

**Craig:** Uh-huh.

**John:** Lucas continues, “I think eventually the Lincolns will go away and they’re going to be on television.” And Spielberg says, “That almost happened to the actual Lincoln. It almost went to HBO.”

So, let’s talk about the Lucas and Spielberg perspective on this first because there’s really two threads I see here. First off is Hollywood’s push towards the mega-blockbuster as the main thing they’re making. And with that, they’re not making the Lincolns. They’re not making the prestige pictures to the same degree.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Okay.

**John:** And second topic would be Lucas’ idea that there will be variable pricing or super event pricing for the big movies, which would differentiate them from smaller movies. Like an indie might still be like a $10 ticket, but a giant blockbuster will be a $50 ticket.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Let’s start with the Spielberg idea, because this idea that we’ve become an industry of making these mega-blockbusters that cost $200 million and therefore have to make $400 million worldwide to become considered even a modest success. True?

**Craig:** If it’s at all true, it’s true because of the two people that are complaining about it, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. I mean, this is what blows my mind. First of all, I don’t think it is true. But, let’s just take a step back.

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are specifically the two people that turned modern moviemaking into blockbuster moviemaking. You can’t put it at anyone else’s feet. Those two guys did it. And it is bizarre to me that they have suddenly decided that it’s a bad thing. And I have a theory about why they’re complaining about it, and it kind of connects them to Soderbergh who we’re going to hear from in a minute or two, as well as Lynda Obst.

But, the fact is that people have loved big blockbuster movies. They’ve loved them since Lucas and Spielberg invented the modern blockbuster. That doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t make smaller movies, or medium-sized movies, not does it mean that those small or medium-sized movies don’t find audiences. They do.

We have absolutely pushed the envelope of size. I’ll agree with them on that. Big movies are now enormously big. Much, much bigger than they ever were before, both in terms of their budget and scale and also in terms of the audience they’re pulling in. But…

**John:** Let’s talk for a moment about why they’ve gotten bigger, not just sort of the budget wise, but why we’re pushing towards making these giant things. And the foreign seems to be the consensus for why we’re making these huge movies because these huge movies actually do work overseas in ways that smaller moves don’t tend to work overseas. The argument being that a much bigger percentage of a film’s ultimate gross will come from overseas and it is the giant movies that end up working overseas, whereas smaller movies don’t tend to work overseas.

**Craig:** Kind of. I mean, let’s remember that all things being equal we’ll make more money here than there because we get a bigger percentage of it here than we do there.

**John:** Bring it back.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, it’s not quite a one-to-one comparison. I think that the reliance on size probably has something to do with our sense of divided attention, our need to make the movie going experience somehow special or an event for people when they go.

And, also, it’s hard to kind of overlook what James Cameron has done. James Cameron has only made two movies, I mean, two real movies. I mean, he’s made documentaries and things, but he made Titanic and Avatar if you look at the last, whatever it is, about 15 years I guess.

**John:** Yeah. And they’re the biggest movies of all time.

**Craig:** They’re the biggest movies of all time. It’s almost like everybody is looking and saying, well, some people are making movies, some people are making huge movies like say The Avengers or Iron Man. And then there’s one guy that seems to be making some other product that is so mind-boggling to people that they just buy it, they buy tickets for it at a rate that is hard to comprehend.

It’s natural that of course people are going to want to try and make some of those bigger movies, and yes, some of them will do amazingly well. Some of them will crash and burn. I will tell you that when they do well they ultimately make more money than the crashes and burns lose. And yet studios simply can’t live on cake alone. They do make other kinds of movies, thank god, because you know what? I don’t write those big huge movies. Neither do you.

**John:** I really don’t either. So, let’s talk about — Scott Mendelson in Forbes had an article questioning Lucas and Spielberg’s rant a bit. And he made a good point that, you know, Spielberg is saying that we’re going to have some of these big movies tank and then everything is going to change. But really if you look at the last few years we’ve had some of these big movies tank and it hasn’t had that effect at all, really.

So, if you look at Jack the Giant Slayer, John Carter, Battleship, Green Lantern, Rise of the Guardians, all those movies were pretty spectacular disappointments/disasters. But they didn’t end up sinking any of those studios because studios had other movies to do. And I would question the degree to which any one studio would fall based on making two or three big movies that didn’t work. Executives would go away, but I don’t know that the film industry would go away or those individual producers.

**Craig:** Even the executives aren’t going away. I mean, Battleship happened and nobody got fired. Because the truth is the same people over there are overseeing the Fast and Furious movies.

**John:** Yeah. And there are also some old fashioned movies that we’re still making that are doing well. 42 is an example of a movie that made almost $100 million which was a very good classic American movie. We’re making originals that succeed. So, The Purge was an original idea that did well for us. Now You See Me was not that expensive, did well. Identity Thief, an original movie that made a lot of movie. Spring Breakers made a lot of money.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, we are still making some original movies. So, they may not be the movies that Spielberg and Lucas are trying to make and there may be a selectivity bias.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Look, The Blind Side, it was literally a blockbuster that was made for $40 million and was absolutely not some sort of big enormous movie.

Look, let’s talk for a second about this whole question of “I think eventually the Lincolns will go away.” No. Here’s the thing: The Lincolns won’t go away. Well, maybe that kind of movie will go away. See, the thing is, you can’t make a movie like Lincoln with the kind of budget that Lincoln requires unless you’re Steven Spielberg.

See, the thing is nobody wants to take that chance to spend whatever… — I mean, Lincoln had to have cost a lot of money.

**John:** Yeah, 60 is a number that’s popping into my head but I don’t know that it’s accurate or not.

**Craig:** My guess is more, but let’s just say, $60 million is a lot of movie to make for a period historical drama. It’s a lot, because you just don’t know if it’s going to attract that many people to the theater. I went. I liked it. But, this is just life. And it’s not charity; if moves were charity than Spielberg should take his considerable fortune and just start making charitable films. But he doesn’t; in fact, he’s a business man who owns a huge part of a theme park based on blockbusters that he’s currently decrying.

You can still make Lincolns; you just can’t make them for $60 million. You can make them for $30 million, the way that Kathryn Bigelow is doing it when she makes political movies. You can do period pieces and historical studies. John Lee Hancock who did Blind Side has a lovely movie that’s going to be out this fall about the writing of Mary Poppins. And it’s essentially a biopic of Pam Travers, the author of Mary Poppins. That’s about as small as it gets, you know. I think it probably costs about $40 million, I’m guessing, maybe $35 million. Absolutely.

**John:** They’ll make it.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah. If you want to be Steven Spielberg and have this huge cast and $70 million of stuff, then maybe no.

**John:** So, let’s feed this back into the previous rant which is Steven Soderbergh’s rant, which was April 27 of this year at the San Francisco International Film Festival. And so he was giving the big keystone speech of it. I guess it was — I don’t know if it was opening night or closing night, but he was giving the big speech.

And the speech is, I think some people criticized it as being rambling because it did sort of go all over to different topics. I’ve narrowed it down to a few key points. One of the things I took away was, “The simplest way that I can describe it is that a movie is something you see and cinema is something that is made.” So, he’s talking about we need to stop thinking about cinema as being just what happens on the big screen but like making movies for HBO, we need to consider that, “Well that can be cinema if the goal of what you’re doing is to create a singular vision. Cinema is specificity of vision. It’s a way of approaching everything that matters.”

It’s about making a movie that is unique to — I’m now paraphrasing — but unique to your vision versus somebody else’s vision.

**Craig:** Uh-huh.

**John:** And that, I think, is a meaningful distinction and it may be a reason why just because we stop making Lincoln for the big screen, maybe — or we stop making Spielberg’s Lincoln for the big screen — and we start making it for HBO, that doesn’t mean that culture has failed or that moviemaking has failed or cinema has failed. We just put it to a different screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s true. I have no problem with — I don’t connect the value of movies or cinema or whatever synonym he wishes to use and attempt to bifurcate. I don’t attach quality to medium, if it’s wonderful and it’s on TV or it’s wonderful and on film, on screen in the theater, great.

My issue with him is that he says, “That cinema is a specificity of vision. It’s the polar opposite of generic or arbitrary and the result is as unique as a signature or fingerprint. It isn’t made by a committee. It isn’t made by a company. And it isn’t made by the audience. It means that if this filmmaker didn’t do it, it either wouldn’t exist at all or it wouldn’t exist in anything like this form.”

Well, that’s just classic director chauvinism and it’s remarkable for a man that doesn’t write any of his own movies. So, here’s a guy who picks up a screenplay somebody else writes and has decided that it’s happening because of the specificity of his vision. Well, that’s a neat trick. [laughs]

Yeah, there is a committee. It absolutely is made by a committee, Steven Soderbergh. It’s made by you. It’s made by your screenwriter. It’s made by your producer. And it’s made by your cast and your editor. Yeah. There is a committee. You may consider yourself the ultimate arbiter. You may be the chair person of that creative committee, but it’s a committee. There are other people involved whose visions are integral to the movies you make. And to suggest otherwise, frankly, is just dumb.

**John:** Okay, I will push back from his perspective is that regardless of whether you’re talking one filmmaker or this core group of filmmakers, he is arguing that the studios aren’t even trying to make movies that are cinema. They’re not even trying to make movies that have a unique vision. Instead they are trying to, far too often, make the biggest thing they can possibly make that could have been made by anybody rather than it could only have been made by this person, or this group of people.

**Craig:** Uh-huh.

**John:** So, an example, as I was trying to think of like, well, what could he be talking about, what are the counter examples to his argument.

**Craig:** I have one.

**John:** So, look at Christopher Nolan.

**Craig:** Yeah, Inception. Like, explain Inception.

**John:** Well, exactly. And sometimes those exceptions are interesting test cases to look at sort of what studios could be doing much better. So, I think if studios were taking more gambles on filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, filmmakers like Rian Johnson, I think we might have a more interesting batch of movies coming out, a more unique batch of movies coming out, and some really terrifically successful movies coming out.

**Craig:** Yeah, but they do. I mean, my point is that Sony releases Looper. And the releasing of Looper is where all the money is. It probably costs more to advertise it and release it than to make it. Warner Bros., I mean, you could say, “Well, is it a risk that they’re taking on Nolan?” No, Nolan is a cash cow for them and they’re doing him a favor and it totally paid off because Nolan is a genius.

But, by the same token, I think all studios constantly make these bets. If they’re trying to do something, the studio is trying to do something and it’s a programmer, then it’s a programmer and I understand that. And Soderbergh isn’t in that business. Very well. But, you know, somebody took a gamble on him making Ocean’s Eleven which was a big, huge movie.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** I don’t — so much of this, frankly, just seems like older men grouching because shit ain’t going the way it used to go for them. I’m just going to be really, really frank. Because I do think there are problems in our business right now. I don’t like a lot of the stuff I see. I don’t. I’m not talking about the movies; I’m talking about the way the business is moving. But I also find this weird grouching from guys that used to basically just do whatever they wanted to do and now are having to deal with a little bit of reality, it’s a little bizarre to me. You know, particularly in the case of Spielberg and Lucas, it is like, guys, you know, you could make any movie you want! You could! You just don’t.

Or you complain that nobody saw Red Tails. Well, whose fault is that? I mean, that’s our fault now? That’s Hollywood’s fault that nobody went to go see Red Tails? We’re sorry. We didn’t want to go see it. We’ve all made movies people don’t want to go see. It happens.

Soderbergh said he was retiring years ago and made more movies since his retirement announcement than anybody, some of which I’ve really liked, some of which I haven’t. Who cares? The guy has cemented his place in film history. He’s made a lot of terrific movies. But what is he complaining about here? He just seems angry, frankly, that people aren’t going to see his movies. You know, if people were just going to go see his movies more, my guess is that he would be happier with the way that Hollywood is going.

**John:** I think you’re cherry picking Soderbergh a little bit here, because he does literally say, “So, here’s a thought. Maybe nothing is wrong. Taken from a 30,000 foot view, nothing is wrong, and my feeling that studios are kind of like Detroit before the bailout is totally unsupportable.” He does allow for the possibility that he is just seeing this wrong. And I think that is a very valid perspective is that when you had the ability to make any movie, and now you don’t have the ability to make any movie, of course you’re going to perceive that something is fundamentally broken.

But, it may just be that something has fundamentally changed, which I think is a good segue to the third or actually the fourth filmmaker who sort of enters into this conversation is Lynda Obst. So, Lynda Obst is a producer who has made many, many movies for Hollywood. Sleepless in Seattle, but also a lot more.

She has a book out called Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business, which I have not read. You haven’t read it either, have you?

**Craig:** No. I don’t think it’s out yet, is it?

**John:** I think it’s shipping now.

**Craig:** Oh, okay.

**John:** If it’s shipping then I’ll put a link to it, but if not…

**Craig:** Hopefully they fix their strange error. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. But Obst has been doing a lot of press for it the last two weeks and so I went through and sort of found some of the things, including an excerpt from her book.

She explains the book or sets up the book as being an exploration through interviews with studio executives, producers, and writers, searching for answers about how the film industry has changed. She says, “I set off to figure out what the hell was going on because I couldn’t figure it out myself. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t able to get the same kinds of movies made that I was able to get made in the first half of my career.”

She describes a massive upheaval which separates the “old abnormal” from the “new abnormal.” So, trying to pretend, it wasn’t like everything was always perfect back before. It was really, really messed up. It’s just messed up in a different way now. And she talks about the three ways that are sort of trending in Hollywood right now, which are the tent-poles, the big giant super blockbusters, the tadpoles which are the small budget indie films, and television, which I think are useful ways to think about sort of what is actually happening and getting made these days.

**Craig:** To an extent. Again, I don’t want to come off as somebody that’s cheerleading an industry that is doing just great. It’s not. There is — the real truth here — what they’re all dancing around is the elimination of that middle, you know, just as we talked about the screenwriting business being one of the elimination of the middle. So, now you just have A-list and new guys.

Similarly in movies, we have the mega movies, we have the little movies, and that middle, which is where the business used to churn out lots of interesting — or not interesting fare — but lots of stuff, seemingly has gone away, particularly in the areas of dramas for adults.

And yet, Argo. And yet, year after year we see interesting films come out that challenge that completely. Zero Dark Thirty and so on and so on. So, they happen. They just don’t happen as frequently. And so interestingly the business has shed a lot of people. A lot of people that used to work, frankly, don’t work anymore. Yeah. There’s a grumpy vibe in the air, no question. No question. But…

**John:** Well, let’s talk for a second, because you can say, yes, we’re making Zero Dark Thirty. And, yes, we’re making Argo. And, yes, we’re making Silver Linings Playbook, which are wonderful. But, because we’re making fewer of those movies it also means we’re developing fewer of those movies, which from a screenwriter’s point of view makes it much harder to be one of those very few projects that is developed to come into one of those projects.

And so I think romantic comedies is a really interesting place to take a look here because Silver Linings Playbook is arguably the last romantic comedy that has done anything like business in the last two years. And we used to make romantic comedies all the time.

Two possibilities of why we don’t make more romantic comedies. First off is that they’re just not working domestically for whatever reason. Second possibility is that they don’t travel overseas at all because they’re too specific to an American audience. And so we’re not able to make that piece of the pie in the overseas that you would be able to make in other kinds of movies.

**Craig:** I don’t believe that. I don’t. I don’t believe that the reason that romantic comedies have fallen off is because Chinese and Indian audiences are less interested.

First of all, the emphasis on China is absurd. They let so few movies in anyway. India has its own very vibrant film market. I mean, if I’m worrying about overseas markets, I’m worrying more about Russia, and Germany, and Brazil, and France, and England.

But, that aside, I think the reason that romantic comedies have fallen off somewhat is because we got sick of them. We are waiting for the romantic comedy genre to be reinvented and reinvigorated. And, also, romantic comedies traditionally have been so actor dependent, particularly on American falling in love with a woman. And Julia Roberts was kind of our last great romantic comedy star. Reese Witherspoon kind of had a little bit of that. Jennifer Lopez, sort of, a little bit. Everybody just seemed kind of pale imitation of Julia Roberts who was queenly in her reign.

It’s funny, whatever you think about Julia Roberts now, or her films that she’s made recently, Julia Roberts at run is a great Hollywood run. She is a first ballot Hollywood Hall of Famer. A classic movie star. And we haven’t had that kind of actor in awhile to sort of say, “I want to see this person in romantic comedies.”

And that may have something to do also with the fact that women actors are just less interested in playing those parts. That culturally we’ve just — not as interested in romantic comedy. We should ask Aline that question.

**John:** I would also posit that the rise of the television romantic comedy has taken the need for that out of the market. So, you look at the New Girl, you look at Girls to some degree, you look at the Mindy Kaling show, we do our romantic comedies on television right now which makes it more difficult to find what is special and unique about the two-hour big screen romantic comedy that’s actually going to be worthwhile and make us want to go out and see that versus seeing an ongoing series of it every week on television.

**Craig:** I don’t know. I mean, what was Cheers if not a romantic comedy? And what was Friends if not a romantic comedy? And romantic comedies, there were more sitcoms and so many of them were “will they/won’t theys” and romances at their heart. I’m not sure that sitcoms really fulfill what people go to see romantic comedy for. It just feels like we’ve outgrown that particular specific romantic comedy formula.

They still happen, you know. I mean, they’re out there, but they seem… — You know, it’s funny, you look at what Bridesmaids did and you think, hmm, maybe that’s just a more interesting kind. Because isn’t that a romantic comedy?

**John:** Yeah, it is a romantic comedy.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** Underneath all the other layers it’s a romantic comedy.

**Craig:** Right. It’s just not a romantic fairytale comedy, which is what all of our other fairytale — that’s what you and I grew up on and that’s what Julia Roberts kind of hit her stride with was fairytale comedy.

**John:** Yeah. At some point he will recognize that she’s pretty and everything will end up happily ever after.

**Craig:** That’s right. She makes a wish and there’s a downtrodden, misunderstood woman who is ignored and overlooked even though she’s HOT, and because she wears glasses, and her hair is weird. And then there’s a man. And then they fall in love. It’s all Cinderella. It’s all fairytale stuff. And frankly it’s all sort of pre-feminist and maybe that’s why now everybody’s kind of grown past it. Who knows?

But, you know, we’ll try and blame the marketplace on that, and I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think you can definitely look at the marketplace and say, “Okay, we’re not making All the President’s Men,” those kinds of…

**John:** We’re making fewer of those.

**Craig:** Much fewer. Many fewer. Many fewer, I think.

**John:** Many fewer. Yeah, probably, either way.

**Craig:** But, you know, some of this stuff it’s like, okay, you know, Lynda Obst seems to be, you know, she talks to — there’s this moment here in the book where she has this long conversation with Peter Chernin who is a very powerful man. He used to run Fox. For awhile he was considered the heir apparent to Rupert Murdoch himself. And now he’s a very powerful producer at Fox.

Curiously she credits him with Identity Thief, [laughs], a movie he had nothing to do with at all.

**John:** Nothing. She’s confusing it with The Heat which is the next Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy movie.

**Craig:** Ah, yes. She is confusing it with The Heat. Well, good for her to do her homework there.

**John:** Fact checking!

**Craig:** Yeah, fact checking. I mean, she is in the business, right? She knows that…okay. Anyway, she seems sort of stunned by Peter Chernin’s great revelation that the DVD market has gone away, [laughs], when the rest of us have known that for awhile now. Yeah. The DVD market, that’s really what’s going on.

**John:** So, in the excerpt that we’re both citing, there’s an excerpt in salon.com that I’ll put a link up to. She sits down with Peter Chernin and she adjusts herself on the couch quite a few times and leans in as he talks. But, some of what Chernin said I think is actually a useful synopsis of some of the changes that have happened.

**Craig:** Chernin is spot on.

**John:** Chernin is a very smart man.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so they’re describing this as The Great Contraction, and essentially the studios were relying on DVD profits to really bankroll most of what they were doing. And as the DVD market suddenly went off a cliff they were — it was much harder to turn that money around. It was also much harder to predict how much a given movie would make. And so they describe studios kind of getting frozen because they didn’t know whether to green light that movie or not green light that movie because they didn’t know how much they could actually hope to bring in on something.

And I’ve definitely felt that. Over the last few years there have been so many more movies that have seemed like they’re approaching the starting line and then they can never actually cross over that point because they just don’t know what the math of that is.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s absolutely true. It’s not… — He… — And maybe she’s misrepresenting; he goes a little too far when he says the studios are frozen, they’re terrified to do anything because they don’t know what the numbers look like. They have models. They mock models up. They have models based on comps.

Those models are, I find, very restrictive when we’re talking about smaller movies. So, for instance, on Identity Thief, you know, I thought, okay, well this is pretty good. We’ve got the director of Horrible Bosses that just made $100 million, and we have Melissa McCarthy who was just in Bridesmaids, and we have Jason Bateman who was also just in Horrible Bosses. This should all add up to something good. And they came back and they were like, “Movie that’s not a sequel, that’ snot based on anything, that’s rated-R, that’s a comedy, that doesn’t have what we consider to be a huge level star with box office draw across the world. You get $32 million. That’s it.” [laughs]

And, you know, it was like, “But we need $34 million to make the movie.”

“Well, you’re getting $32 million.”

**John:** Now, at any point did you see a spreadsheet or this was just the number they came back to?

**Craig:** No! Are you kidding? No. I did not. And here’s the thing: There are people who see spreadsheets, so I would talk all the time with Scott Stuber and Scott is the producer. He’s seeing lots of spreadsheets, but he’s probably not seeing the real spreadsheet. There’s like spreadsheets and then there’s spreadsheets, and then somewhere I feel there’s a man in a small room on an island who has the true spreadsheet.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Just one man.

**John:** Yeah, people think that numbers are real, and numbers are only real if they’re actually backed up by findings. Otherwise they could just be people putting numbers into a spreadsheet to justify the decision that they’ve already made.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that’s a reality of all industries. But, our industry in particular because you really just don’t know; you have no idea of what’s going to happen and you don’t know — you could have a movie that will do tremendous box office, but the weekend that you released it something else horrible happens in the world and then nobody goes to the theaters.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that’s the reality of our fragile business.

**Craig:** It’s always been that way. And so I think everybody’s always been scared, but the one thing that Peter really nails — Peter Chernin — is that when the DVD business, and let’s extend it back to the VHS business, because the VHS business was a huge boon for the studios as well. When that happened it transformed 1980. Basically you’re looking at — roughly I’m saying, roughly — 1980 to let’s say 2005. It was a 25 year run where volume would make you money. Where just having titles made you money.

**John:** That was like the Jeffrey Katzenberg era of Disney where he was like, “Let’s make 35 movies a year.”

**Craig:** Exactly, because in the end it will make us money. It doesn’t matter if one loses, one wins. And it wasn’t about franchises. It wasn’t about, “Let’s get six or seven of these.” It was about, “Just put stuff out because then it’s on DVD or on VHS and it will sell and it will sell and people will buy them and rent them.” And there was just an enormous business around it and there had not yet been an internet avenue to circumvent all of that. So, there was, you know, there was always FBI piracy warnings on VHS cassettes, but who is sitting around copying VHS cassettes? You know what I mean?

It was just lame. They just didn’t happen that much, because it was annoying to do.

So, he’s right that there was this amazing 25-year run. And not coincidentally when we look at guys like Spielberg and Lucas, their rise coincides perfectly with the rise of VHS. I mean, they started a little bit ahead of it, but when they finally hit their stride with their blockbusters, Star Wars, Empire, Return of the Jedi and with Spielberg, Raiders, and Close Encounters, and I mean, everything basically. ET.

**John:** Poltergeist.

**Craig:** ET. Poltergeist. All of these huge, huge movies. The tail that trailed behind these comets of movies was enormous. It was just a comet tail made of cash and that’s gone. In a weird way what’s happening is we’re kind of rolling the clock back to the way things were before Lucas and Spielberg, I think.

And studios, you know, used to bet, you talk about big bets now, studios used to bet their entire business on a movie.

**John:** Yeah. They bet their entire studio on The Godfather, or to some degree Jaws. I mean, if Jaws had failed Universal would have been in real trouble.

**Craig:** And Heaven’s Gate did fail. And a studio collapsed.

**John:** That was UA right?

**Craig:** I believe that’s correct. I believe that’s correct. It was United Artists. And also the studio that made Cleopatra.

**John:** It was some iteration of MGM maybe?

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t know. I should know it. All I know is that had it done worse than it did that studio goes away.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They used to bet an entire studio on a movie. Are you looking it up?

**John:** I’m looking it up right now. The 1963 film of Cleopatra was for Joseph Mankiewicz, released by — oh, it was Fox.

**Craig:** It was Fox? All right. So, Fox. And Heaven’s Gate was United Artists. Yeah. Killed them.

**John:** So, let’s talk about a few other things that were brought up by these four filmmakers. And part of the reason why I wanted to have this conversation is because a lot of times journalists will say, “Hollywood is dead. Hollywood is dying,” or you’ll have anonymous cranks will say, “This is all ruined for these reasons.”

So, when four prominent filmmakers say it I think it’s worth paying attention to. Authority doesn’t make it right and that’s why I think it’s important to dig into it.

One of the things I didn’t think was right was Lucas’ postulate that ticket prices will split and that we’ll get big prices for the big movies and small prices for smaller movies.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** I don’t see that ever happening.

**Craig:** No. I mean, now I start to feel like this dude is out of touch, like he’s just got too much money and doesn’t understand why people go to the movies and what the movie going experience means for them.

Movies exist for families to go somewhere with air conditioning and have a good time. It exists for teenagers to be able to entice girls to kiss them, or boys. It exists for fathers and sons to go watch stuff getting blown up and for nerds to see nerdy stuff on film. [laughs]

It speaks to the childishness in all of us and the childlike awesomeness in all of us, but it is a popular thing. It is for masses of people to go and sit together in a room and appreciate something together. That means that it will always be affordable. Always.

We may complain about ticket prices, but look, ticket prices go up a little bit here and there, a little bit here and there. It’s the stupid popcorn and the soda where they’re killing you every year. The ticket prices haven’t gone, I mean, how much have they gone up since, I don’t know, ten years ago?

**John:** I doubt they’ve actually gone up that much more than inflation. Here’s why I think he’s fundamentally wrong on this, and everything you said in terms of like the reasons why people go to the movies, beyond just to see the film is to actually just be out of the house and be with other people in a way that’s meaningful. Compare it to like a Broadway show. Well, a Broadway show is a thing that’s happening live in front of you that if you do not see it at that moment it doesn’t count.

It’s the same with a sporting event. And there’s a reason why people can choose to watch the game at home on TV, but they choose to go to the stadium to watch it with other people because it’s a different experience and they can see something different. And that’s why they’re willing to pay $60 for a ticket for that where they could watch it for free on television.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** That’s a different experience. It’s a social experience. A different thing. I don’t think movies are ever going to hit that level.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Now, where there is variable pricing is what’s actually right now. You can choose to see it in IMAX in 3D and pay the extra money to do that. And that’s your choice to do that. But we still always give you the option to not do that. And I think we’re going to have to keep giving people the option to not do that because if we try to only say like, “This movie can only be seen in 3D and IMAX and we’re going to charge you $25 for it,” that movie will not succeed.

**Craig:** I totally agree. And I also want to point out that his analogy to Broadway is additionally bizarre because if I go see a play, and Hugh Jackman is playing Curly, I’m seeing Hugh Jackman, I’m seeing a famous person. You know, you watch people line up for red carpets at movie premieres to see the famous person. I’m not seeing famous people when I go to the movie. I’m seeing a movie of a famous person.

There’s a connection — there’s someone performing for me. It’s intimate. Broadway theaters are very small, actually. I mean, you know this. They’re small. It’s intimate. You’re in a room. There’s nothing like that.

I agree that the issue of variable pricing will be connected to formats, things like IMAX and 3D and all the rest versus regular formatting. But, what it comes down to is this: If you make a movie and you struggle to get people to show up, it is natural for you to say, “There’s something wrong with Hollywood.” And if you’re making a movie and people do show up, I think it’s natural for you to say, “There’s nothing wrong with Hollywood; there is just something right with me.”

Neither of those things are true. [laughs] Hollywood keeps humming along and doing what it’s doing and trying to figure out how to keep its head above water, and it will. You know, they’re still profitable. I think a lot of these guys are crying because they used to make 15% or 20% and now they’re making 5%. You can keep it in at Wells Fargo.

**John:** So, to wrap up this conversation I want to have one last thought experiment of what if sort of Lucas and Spielberg are right, or sort of all these people are right, and the system is fundamentally broken and fundamentally is unsustainable at this level. What would happen? Would we stop — like let’s say three out of four of the big studios lose the ability to make the giant movies, or lose the ability to make sort of movies in a meaningful way? What happens?

**Craig:** Oh my god. I wish that happens. Because if that happens, John, then you and I and our richest friends should get together, pool our cash, and make a studio that does nothing but make $20 million movies about interesting things. And we will make a gazillion dollars.

Because the fact is you can talk about the business models and the flow and the ancillary markets, here’s what ultimately doesn’t really change: the audience’s appetite for certain kinds of movies. You may have to change the nature of those movies, like we were talking about, romantic comedies, and make it like this or make it like that, but people don’t just want The Avengers. They want to see The Avengers once a year. That’s enough for them. They don’t need it every week.

What are they going to see in February? [laughs] By the way, that’s what I am. I’m a February screenwriter.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Oh my god, it fills in February. And I have to say, I don’t mean to sound disrespectful towards George Lucas or Steven Spielberg or Steven Soderbergh. I’m not as good as they are, obviously. They’ve all three of them made classic films. They’re brilliant men. They’re geniuses. I’m just me, right, I’m just Craig Mazin, which is the saddest thing in the world.

I just don’t think that they’re right about this. I think it is natural to begin to lose your optimism about systems that you are no longer the preeminent center of. And those gentlemen were the preeminent center of their environments. Steven Soderbergh basically was the center of the kind of what we’d call mini-major boom. His movie gave birth to Miramax and the mini-major boom. And Lucas and Spielberg…

**John:** And you look at what Soderbergh did with Section Eight, which is when he moved over to — he and Clooney moved over to Warner Bros. and actually started making really interesting moving for Warner Bros.

**Craig:** That’s right. And then he made Solaris. And it’s like, “Oh okay. They don’t all work.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But Warner Bros. let him make Solaris. Think about it! What is he complaining about, you know? He made The Good German?

At some point they have to say, “Okay, we can’t keep making The Good German and Solaris.”

**John:** Yeah. Enough black and white Tobey Maguire films.

**Craig:** Right. “So, you have to give us, like remember the fun funny one, with the adventure and the heist, the Ocean’s Eleven one? Go get Ted Griffin to write a genius script and go make that.”

But, I don’t know. I don’t mean to sound disrespectful to them. I just think that they’re being — that they’re confusing their personal frustrations, perhaps, with how the business is going with some sort of cancer of the business. It’s not cancerous. It’s just in a weird place. It’s a phase. Everything is a cycle.

**John:** I think it’s fair to diagnose it and say it’s changing. And if it’s changing into a form that is away from what you want it to be, then you can say, “Well, it’s falling apart.” But it may actually be falling together into its next form.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And that’s a hard thing to recognize when you’re at the middle of a transformation. Is this a transformation that’s going to be productive or a transformation that’s going to be ultimately destructive? And the answer is probably both. There are going to be reasons why you wish things wouldn’t have changed and things that will be new that will be very exciting that will happen because it changed.

And the filmmakers who are coming of age into this business, this is the normal for them. And they will find ways to thrive in that new form of normal.

**Craig:** God help them.

**John:** Yeah. Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** I do!

**John:** Oh, tell me.

**Craig:** You’re bummed out, aren’t you? [laughs]

**John:** No, no, I’m excited. I’m excited when you’re prepared.

**Craig:** It’s a blast from the past for me. Have you heard about the 17-year cicadas?

**John:** I am so excited about them.

**Craig:** Where I grew up on Staten Island we had them, not only did we have them, I mean, we HAD them. So, New Yorkers don’t really get these 17-year cicadas. The deal with these things are they are a particular kind of cicada called Brood II, I think. And they come out, they mate furiously — furiously — for like two weeks. They have babies. The babies sort of drop into the ground and burrow into the ground like little — I don’t know what you call them — little grubs.

And they stay in the ground eating stuff subterraneanly for 17 years, at which point they emerge, fully grown, and have sex and die. And so every 17 years for two weeks there’s this wave of these cicadas. They are incredibly loud. And they are legion.

So, Manhattanites and Brooklyn and Queens folks, they wouldn’t get these things because there’s no ground; it’s all asphalt and concrete, but Staten Island, oh my god. And they’re out right now. So, 34 years ago when I was 7, 8, sorry 8, they came out and I just remember being agog. I have a very, very clear memory of my backyard on Staten Island, 154 Kelly Boulevard, look it up. That was my house.

In the backyard my dog, Woofy, yup, that’s right, jumping in the air and biting them out of the air. It was like a floating buffet and just eating them out of the air by the mouthful. It was amazing.

**John:** [laughs] See, I grew up in Colorado and we didn’t have anything like this. So, we had grasshoppers but it’s a completely different thing. We never had the searches, and swarms, and waves like that.

I’m kind of sad to miss it. It sounds actually horrifying. I don’t like insets.

**Craig:** It’s cool. No, I mean, but they really, there were so many of them that at some point it was just a joke. You would literally walk out your front door with a broom and just start brooming them away like snow. Yeah. And this noise was so loud.

**John:** I’ve heard several theories about sort of why this 17-year cycle happens. And the fact that it’s not a prime number is actually meaningful because other things that happen in cycles are much less likely to hit it. And so like something to do with bird cycles, and like the reason why they all come out at once is because they can just be in such vast numbers that your dog can eat 100,000 of them and it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever.

**Craig:** Just ate so many. Did you say it was not a prime number?

**John:** 17 is a prime number. Sorry.

**Craig:** It is a prime number. Yes.

**John:** So, the fact that it is a prime number, therefore it won’t fit into any other cycle.

**Craig:** That’s right. It will sort of be on its, well, no, I mean, once you double it then it gets…it’s not prime, well, I don’t know.

**John:** Exactly. But something would have to be on a 34-year cycle to be able access the cicada pace.

**Craig:** Exactly. And it was, and I remember, they were white on the inside. I remember you would eat them. Ugh, so gross.

Yeah, so anyway, 17-year cicadas. I think they’re going on right now back in my hometown, back in Staten Island. [New York accent] “Oh my god, you see all these cicadas out? Unbelievable.”

**John:** Right now everybody is Google street viewing your old place. They can see the mansion you grew up because as we’ve established you grew up very wealthy; the wealthy son of two teachers in Long Island.

**Craig:** Take a look. Tell me that does not look like the house De Niro was in when Ray Liotta shows up to give him the gun parts in the third act of Goodfellas.

**John:** Good stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah. [New York accent] “Oh my god, what’s your One Cool Thing? You got one?”

**John:** I do. It’s Feedbin. So, I’ve been using Google Reader for many, many years to look at RSS feeds. And for people who don’t’ use RSS at all, RSS is this really smart technology that you sort of which had taken off in a bigger, more important way. Although, you’re actually using it at this moment because every podcast you’ve ever listened is actually carried by RSS.

But RSS is a way of going to websites and it pulls all the new articles from websites and aggregates them into one place. And so Google Reader was the preeminent RSS reader. And like most things Google, they came in, they did a much better job than everyone else, and everyone was like, “Oh, we’ll just use Google Reader for everything.” And so all the other services died away.

Google Reader announced earlier this year, “You know what? We’re going to stop with Google Reader.” And everyone goes, “Ah! What are we going to do? What are we going to possibly do?” And so they’re shutting down Google Reader June 30 or July 30, but very, very soon.

So, I’ve been looking for an alternative and a very good alternative has emerged called Feedbin. And Feedbin is a replacement for Google Reader. You throw all your feeds at it, so all the blogs you read, the websites you want to check out. It will pool them all together so the next time you go to Feedbin you will have a list of all the articles from all those blogs and sites that are waiting for you.

It’s very useful. It feeds into the Reader App on the iPhone. But actually the web interface for it is quite good, too, on the iPad, or on the Mac, or any other PC. You can just go to the web interface. And so I would recommend it. It’s $2 a month, which for the service it provides is worth it for me.

**Craig:** $2 a month. You’ll never miss it.

**John:** Now, Craig, do you use RSS? Or do you just actually go to individual websites?

**Craig:** I go to individual websites. Even when RSS was a thing, I never really… — Briefly I had a screensaver that basically collected a bunch of RSS feeds and would give me headlines and things. But, nah, I just go to websites.

**John:** It’s interesting because as Twitter rose, RSS also fell down a little bit because you could follow the website on Twitter and so then you would see like, oh, they have a new article and it sounds interesting. You could click through the link. What’s useful about this is it actually is pulling in most cases the full text of things. And so there are certain sites where I haven’t actually been to the site in years because I just always looked at the feed form.

**Craig:** Yeah. What I’ll do is I tend to go towards, sometimes I’ll use Fark, because they’re a pretty decent aggregator. Lately I’ve been going to BBC for news.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I can’t take American news anymore. I’m out. I’m done. I can’t take any of it. I can’t — you tell me the one good American news outlet. I can’t find it.

**John:** I don’t know that I have a consistent good answer.

**Craig:** It’s just horrifying. It’s gross. It’s one of our great American failures. Ugh.

**John:** Ugh.

**Craig:** Blah!

**John:** But at least we have the movies. And I think we’ve established today that we will probably still have the movies in some form…

**Craig:** We will.

**John:** …maybe 17 years from now when the cicadas come out again.

**Craig:** When the cicadas come back, there will still be movies.

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

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Take care.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* The Writers Guild Foundation presents [The Screenwriter’s Craft: Finding Your Voice](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/the-screenwriters-craft-finding-your-voice/) featuring Scriptnotes Live
* John’s blog post on [this summer’s two live shows](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-live-in-la)
* [Why Spielberg And Lucas Are Wrong About The Film Industry ‘Implosion’](http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2013/06/20/why-spielberg-and-lucas-are-wrong-about-the-film-industry-implosion/)
* [Independent Film in Hollywood and France](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/06/the-ingredients-for-a-healthy-cinema.html)
* Watch [Steven Soderbergh’s ‘State of Cinema’ address from the San Francisco Film Festival](http://www.indiewire.com/article/watch-full-video-recording-of-steven-soderberghs-impassioned-state-of-cinema-address-from-the-san-francisco-film-festival)
* [Lynda Obst: Hollywood’s completely broken](http://www.salon.com/2013/06/15/lynda_obst_hollywoods_completely_broken/)
* [Cicada Mania](http://www.cicadamania.com/) is dedicated to cicadas
* [Feedbin](https://feedbin.me/): A fast, simple RSS feed reader
* [RSS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS) on Wikipedia