John August

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Comments for Jane Espenson

Resources, Television

Jane Espenson runs a [terrific blog](http://www.janeespenson.com/) offering advice on writing TV spec scripts. If you’re at all interested in writing for television, it’s worth checking out.

Jane’s site has two quirky aspects. First off, she consistently notes what she ate for lunch. Second, she doesn’t offer any online mechanism for reader feedback. Not only are comments turned off, but she doesn’t even provide a contact email. Instead, she lists a post office mailbox. You’re supposed to write a letter the old-fashioned-way.

That’s her prerogative, certainly. But it makes it difficult to point out simple errors she might want to correct. For instance, [this post](http://www.janeespenson.com/archives/00000338.php) from last week:

I’m sure there are many of these out there, but tonight I’m just presenting the first documented clamshell that has captured my attention. Remember these lines?

You smell like aftershave and taco meat. (Blades of Glory)
You smell like beef and cheese. (Elf)
You smell like sweet red plums and grilled cheese sandwiches. (The Wedding Planner)
You smell like old people and soap. (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

That last one is from my script for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is the Gene Wilder version, and doesn’t feature that line.)

A simple mistake, easily corrected. But how am I to tell her? I suppose I’ll need to write her a letter, and find a stamp with which to mail it.

This got me thinking: Since she and I probably have a significant overlap of readership, why not provide a feedback mechanism for her? So here’s what I’m going to do.

Next Monday (April 30th, 2007), I’m going to print out this post and all attached comments and mail it to Jane. So if there’s anything you’d like to ask her, or a response to something she’s written, just leave it as a comment on this post.

Remember, these comments are for Jane’s blog, not mine.

Me? I’m having Quizno’s for lunch. A mesquite chicken sandwich, no bacon.

Seven Things I Learned from World of Warcraft

Geek Alert, Videogames

Those who’ve seen my movie, The Nines, can infer that I had a bit of a World of Warcraft problem back in the day. “The day” being a period of about four months in which most of my waking hours were spent either playing the game or wanting to. The luxury and danger of being a screenwriter is an abundance of unstructured time. WoW can eat hours in a gulp.

Moderation just didn’t work. I had to give it up cold-turkey, canceling my account and throwing out the install disks. With my newfound time, I had a kid, wrote a couple of movies and directed one of my own.

I have few regrets about giving up Warcraft. But in retrospect, I did learn some valuable things from my time in Azeroth, lessons that have stuck with me. So I thought I’d share a few.

1. Kill injured monsters first
====
W __When facing multiple bad guys, the temptation is to go after the one who’s hitting you hardest. This is often a mistake. That injured razorback, the one who is running away? He’ll be back in 15 seconds, likely with other baddies in tow. So take a few clicks to kill him now. Once he’s dead, you can focus completely on the guy who’s smacking you.__

The real world may not have druids and paladins, but it’s chock full of monsters. They’re called “term papers” and “errands” and “mysterious car problems.” At any given moment, there may be one monster that looms larger than all of the others, who clearly needs to be attacked. But before you do, look around for injured monsters — the half-finished tasks that probably need only a few more minutes to complete. If you don’t deal with them now, they’ll be a constant distraction, and may eventually come back stronger.

This “injured monster theory” is why I try to return every phone call the day I receive it, and respond to every email within 24 hours. If a warning light comes on in my car, I go to the mechanic that day. Whenever I find myself thinking, “I need to remember to…” then I know I’ve failed. I don’t need to remember. I need to do. I need to finish.

2. Grinding is part of the game…
====
W __In WoW parlance, “grinding” is the process of killing a bunch of fairly easy monsters, one after the other, strictly to rack up loot and experience. There’s no adventure to it, no real challenge. It’s tedious and mindless, but it’s often the fastest way to level up, which is why everyone does it.__

Daily life is full of mindless tedium, but there’s an important distinction: grinding has a point. While the task may be dull and carpal tunnel-aggravating, there’s a clear goal. You’re doing X in order to get Y. You’re xeroxing scripts in the William Morris mailroom in order to get a job as an assistant. You’re proofreading your script for the seventh time in order to send it to your friend, who works for that producer. You have to be willing to do serious grunt work in order to move ahead.

3. …But grinding is not the game
====
W __It’s easy to confuse what you’re doing with why you’re doing it. Just remember: you’re not paying $15 a month to kill the same set of spawning critters. Grinding is a means of achieving a specific goal, whereas the game itself is supposed to be entertaining. So once you level (or get enough deer skins to fabricate that armor), stop grinding and start exploring.__

I worked for a year as a reader at Tri-Star, writing coverage on 10 scripts or books a week. It was good money, $65 a shot, but it was wearying. Most of the scripts were terrible. Apart from offering lessons-to-avoid, there wasn’t any point in reading them other than the money. But I convinced myself I was “working in the industry,” so I kept reading them, one after the other, dutifully writing up my synopses and comments. Executives would congratulate me on my witty notes, and there was some suggestion that I could get a job in development. So I quit.

In place of reading, I got a mindless internship in physical production at Universal: filing, copying, researching clearances. I didn’t use my brain once. That left me with abundant energy when I got home from work, and with it I finished two scripts.

Both jobs were quintessential “day jobs.” In theory, writing coverage should have been the better job, because it was closer to screenwriting. And truthfully, I did learn some valuable things–for the first month or two. After that, it was a whole lotta more of the same. The second job was a better fit because there was no confusing it with my true ambitions.

4. Give away stuff to newbies
====
W __You start the game with almost nothing: a weapon and the shirt on your back. Each new piece of gear you accumulate is tremendously exciting. Cloth armor seems luxurious. But as you level up, that early gear becomes increasingly irrelevant and basically worthless. It’s not worth the trip to the store to sell it. So don’t. Instead, run back to the newbie lands, find the first character of your class, and hand him all the stuff you don’t want. It will take two minutes of your time, but give the newbie a tremendous head start. (Not to mention building your karma.)__

This site, johnaugust.com, is really just me running back to the newbie lands and giving away what I can. There’s no financial incentive in it for me. I could certainly put my advice in a book and charge $15.95 for it. But I see it as the take-a-penny, leave-a-penny flow of information. On a daily basis, I find myself searching the web for answers on topics in which I’m a newbie (Flash programming, DC mythology, teaching toddlers to swim) and leaving thankful that someone out there took the time to write a tutorial on exactly what I needed. So in exchange, I write up what I know about screenwriting.

If everyone took the time to build a site about the areas of their expertise, the world would be significantly cooler.

5. Keep track of your quests
====
W WoW is refreshingly open-ended–you could spend all your time skinning bears, if you felt like it. In order to provide a sense of structure, the game helpfully provides quests: multi-step missions, generally to collect, kill or deliver something. While the system does a solid job tracking these official endeavors (“13 out of 25 tusks”), most of the time what you’re really trying to do (“find a better shield”) is frustratingly amorphous. The trick is to identify these unofficial quests and break them down into distinct steps:

* browse the auctions to compare prices
* pick preferred shield
* sell off unneeded linen to raise needed cash
* bid

At any given point, you may have 10 of these pseudo-quests, and unless you take charge of them, you’re liable keep running around, cursing your stupid shield.

[GTD](http://davidco.com) enthusiasts would label these WoW quests “projects,” and each of the bullet points “next actions.” That’s geekery, but it’s an acknowledgment that most of life’s work consists of a bunch of little activities in the service of a larger goal. You don’t write a script; you write a scene. You don’t design a website; you tweak the CSS so the navigation looks better. No matter what the project is, you can’t finish until you get started, and you can’t get started until you figure out the steps.

6. Storage is costly
====
W __Perhaps sensing that messy teenage boys are a key demographic, World of Warcraft won’t let you leave something on the ground. If you don’t pick up that fallen warhammer, it will vanish, never to return. So one quickly learns the importance of storage: belts, bags, backpacks and chests. Unfortunately, there’s never nearly enough space, and adding more becomes ridiculously expensive. (That’s by design, clearly. The developers want to minimize hoarding.) So always keep in mind the carrying costs. If you never use that second bow, get rid of it, and use those slots for something you need.__

Unlike World of Warcraft (or hard drives in the 90’s), digital storage is now cheap. Crazy cheap. I remember having to carefully comb through my hard drive, trying to figure out exactly what I could purge in order to install the newest version of Quark XPress. Today, I have 80 gigs available on my startup drive, and this was the first time I checked in over a year.

But while the cost of bit storage has plummeted, the cost of storing atoms is still huge. My neighbors just had a [POD](http://www.pods.com/) delivered, essentially a cargo container that gets trucked off. I’ve watched as they’ve filled it with furniture and boxes, all the time wondering, “Is all that stuff really worth keeping?” It’s like paying rent on things you already own.

Last year, we cleaned out our garage. Instead of a traditional yard sale, we did a virtual version. We took pictures of everything we were getting rid of, built a page in [Backpack](http://backpackit.com), and sent the link to all our friends. Whoever wanted something could email us and take it. They got a free desk, and we got a free garage.

7. Overthinking takes the fun out of it
====
W __Remember, the game is supposed to be fun. Yes, you can spend hours pouring through the forums, finding exactly the right talent tree. Or you could wing it: explore some new lands and kill some big monsters. Obsessive planning won’t make the game more enjoyable. It will just make it more like work.__

I’m often asked about outlines and treatments, and whether they’re necessary before sitting down to write a script. They’re not. Like a map, they can help you figure out where you’re going, but when you follow them too closely, you’re apt to miss a lot of amazing scenery along the way.

On a bigger level, as you look back at any period of your life, you don’t remember what a solid plan you had. You remember what you did. You remember the adventures, the scrapes, the unanticipated detours that turned out to fascinating. So don’t plan your way out of an exciting life.

If you agree, feel free to [digg it](http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjohnaugust.com%2F%3Fp%3D718&title=Seven+Things+I+Learned+from+World+of+Warcraft).

Trusting your audience

Rave, Television, Words on the page

Spoiler Warning: If you have “Heroes” sitting on your TiVo, watch it first.
====

Last night’s “Heroes” did something I wish more shows would try: they trusted their audience to fill in missing scenes.

If you’ll recall, near the start of the episode, bad guy Sylar escaped, locking Claire’s Faux-Daddy in his cell. Sylar then went to Claire’s house, to chit-chat with Mom and await Claire’s return — presumably so he could eat her brain. Growing bored, The Man of Endless Eyebrows eventually revealed his menace and got all telekinevil.

Something had to happen, or Mrs. Bennett would certainly end up dead. But the options were few. Claire was off visiting Trailer Park Mom in Kermit, Faux-Daddy was locked in the cell, and Hiro was trapped in a thunderously dull subplot about his father.

So it was a genuine surprise when Faux-Daddy showed up, guns blazing. A few steps behind him, we saw the not-really-mute Haitian Guy who works for him, and realized, “Aha!”

Simply by putting Haitian Guy in the room, the writers were able to omit the seemingly obligatory scene in which Haitian Guy finds Faux Daddy, frees Faux Daddy, and nods silently as Faux Daddy shouts that, “We have to get to my house, now!” As television viewers, we’re sophisticated enough to figure out what we missed — and therefore, not really miss it. But too rarely do shows really trust us to make these logic leaps.

My kudos to the hard-working writing staff for not writing that scene. (Or, if they did, kudos to the editors for omitting it.) I almost guarantee they got a network note saying it was unclear how Faux Daddy got out, but one benefit of being the hottest new show on television is the ability to ignore notes.

Sundance, expanded edition

Projects, Sundance, The Nines

Throughout the week, I’ve been trying to convey the Sundance experience with the [Twitter feed](http://twitter.com/johnaugust), but there’s only so much one can communicate in a sentence or two. So I thought I’d fatten out a few entries to give a better sense of how Sundance really went.

* Checking through the itineraries and packing lists. Do I take a printer?

I didn’t, but it would have been a big help. We had to keep relying on itineraries printed out before we left, even though dates and times were continuously changing.

The publicists needed 100 copies of the [production notes](http://www.lookforthenines.com/the_nines_production_notes.pdf). We printed and copied them in Los Angeles, not realizing that 100 copies of a 20-page document is a pretty heavy box. It would have been smarter to make the copies in Park City.

* Marveling that the gate agent in Burbank exclaimed, “John August of The Nines?” when she scanned my ticket. She had me sign it.

This was weird. It was so out-of-the-blue that I signed my “check signature” rather than my “poster signature.” Can I confess that I have no idea why anyone would collect signatures? Why not just ask for a lock of my hair? (If I had hair, granted.)

Or, “Pardon me, would you mind if I took a scraping of your skin? I’m hoping to clone you one day.”

* Picking up rental SUV. Increasing carbon debt substantially.

I needed something fairly big for hauling around cast and family. What’s weird is that I never drove it. My up-at-Sundance assistant Tim became my de facto driver, which was terrific. He could drop me off and pick me up as needed, saving the massive hassle of trying to find a parking spot in the super-crowded little town.

* Mooching wireless access.

The condo we were staying in didn’t have internet access of any kind, so the best we could do was piggyback on the nearby Marriott’s wireless network, which was frustratingly inconsistent. Far too often I’d spend five minutes trying to get connected, only to give up and read web pages on my Treo.

I’m certainly not faulting Marriott; it’s not their responsibility to offer their non-guests Internet access. But as I would look at the list of other password-protected networks in range, I promised myself I would leave a second well-firewalled port open on my own networks. And it seems like there’s an opportunity for wireless providers to reach outside of Starbucks and start providing hubs wherever people are likely to gather, like a ski resort.

* Checking in with the Sundance folks. Putting faces with email addresses.

There are zillions of behind-the-scenes people who keep Sundance running, and to the person they were terrific. Assistant/driver Tim works for the institute in Los Angeles, so it was helpful that he was already a familiar face to them.

* Buying snow pants for the baby.

It’s discouraging to pay $40 for a piece of clothing she’ll wear three times in her life. But those pants let her run around outside, which was essential for all of our sanity.

* Figuring out how to make clip DVDs, and silently cursing those who said, “No, everything is still on beta. Seriously.”

While it’s easy to rip a DVD, it’s much more difficult to snip and assemble just the pieces you want and have it look good when burned again. Software like Handbrake specializes in making video fit on an iPod, but I never got the footage to look decent when put back to DVD.

* Listening to Ozomatli warm up, right outside my window. This is gonna be loud.

I really like the band. I would go see them again. But the inescapability of it made those four hours a feat of endurance.

* Wondering if the two-story tent for the UTA party is structurally sound. And if Heather Graham knows she dropped her purse.

The only reason we got into the party — as opposed to the hundreds of others freezing outside — was that my agent escorted us in. We even made it to the upper-level VIP area thanks to Ryan, who used his star power to overwhelm the poor girl responsible for keeping the cool kids separated from the rest of us. (Ryan is a cool kid, yet fights for the side of good.)

After, say, 15 minutes of staring down on the gathering masses who didn’t have charming stars to pull them upstairs, I realized that (a) my drink was dissolving the Saturn-sponsored cup I was holding, and (b) that I was having a lousy time. The bouncers had no idea how we were supposed to exit. It had apparently never occurred to them someone might want to leave. The place was an industry roach motel.The Nines’s afterparty was in the same space the following night, with about one-fourth the people, which made it much better. That and the fact that I had just premiered a movie, and many people were telling me I rocked.

* Meeting with producers to divvy up the tickets. A lot of little Sophie’s Choices.

Sundance gives you a set number of tickets for your movie, plus the option to buy an additional number. (The exact quantities depend on the venue.) We knew going in that we wouldn’t have enough to accommodate everyone we were expecting, so we urged friends and family to sign up for the online ticket lottery.A fool’s errand, as it turned out. I don’t know a single person who got a premiere ticket that way.

I abdicated all authority for rationing the tickets to my producers, who in the end were able to accommodate just about everyone, including Doug Liman, who showed up moments before the screening. I hadn’t seen him since Go, so it was an odd but appropriate place to catch up.

* Suggesting that if you’re going to tonight’s screening, please ask a question in the Q and A. 15 bonus points if you use the word “paradigm.”

In the end, no one got the 15 bonus points. Several reader/admirers did come up after screenings to confess they couldn’t figure out a way to incorporate the magic word.

* Loving that random pedestrians gawk at Ryan, knowing he’s somebody but not sure who. “He was in The Notebook.”

This was on Main Street, which is the nexus of all that is unholy at Sundance. On Sunday afternoon, we had to walk up and down Main Street, visiting all the photographers for magazines and agencies. While the photo shoots themselves were painless, the process felt a little Devil Wears Parka, all bustle and schwag, with coffee and liquor always at hand.

At one of the storefronts, Ryan and I did a short interview for MTV news. The minute it was over, Ryan predicted that all they would use was speculation about whether or not he was going to be The Flash, a movie that doesn’t exist and to which he’s not attached. Sadly, [he was right](http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1550751/20070125/story.jhtml). Non-existent comic book movies trump everything, apparently. I need to remember that.

* Getting sick of people asking, “So are you nervous?” Answer: Increasingly.

This is one of those un-answerable “When did you stop beating your wife?” questions. If you say yes, then the response will be, “Oh, you shouldn’t be nervous. It’s going to go great!” If you say no, then prepare to hear, “God, I would be. Eccles Theater is huge!”

Here’s my advice to readers whose friends or loved ones have movies premiering at a festival: tell them how good they look, even if it’s a lie. One false compliment will do more to ease nerves than hours of verbal reassurance.

* Watching lights dim.

The premiere itself went great. All my fears of the tape breaking were for naught. Geoff Gilmore introduced the movie, and set just the right expectation: this is a challenging, potentially frustrating film. (Subtext: This isn’t LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE.) I thanked but didn’t name the people in the credits, and gave a special shout-out to the husbands/wives/partners/roommates of filmmakers who make it possible to do our thing.

The Nines isn’t a comedy, but the first section in particular has a fair number of jokes. Jokes that a director completely forgets are jokes until he sees them with an audience. So that was heartening. There are also a few jolts in the movie, and with more than 1,000 people in the audience, the gasps were substantial. Also cool.

Having screened the movie with an audience before, I knew to anticipate a certain uneasy quiet afterwards while viewers pondered what they just saw and whether or not they dug it. I was worried the crickets would persist through the Q & A, but to my relief the questions came quickly. One hearing-impaired viewer asked about Elle Fanning’s character using sign language. I found myself remembering the real reason I made that choice for the character: so she wouldn’t have as much dialogue.In my defense, I didn’t know we’d get Elle Fanning, who is not only dramatically capable, but can imitate David Caruso.

One guy asked how I felt about Jesus. This was a recurring motif in the three Q & A’s I did. The movie takes a metaphysical turn at one point, and viewers inevitably try to look at it through their own personal philosophical-religious lens. By all means, that’s sort of the point. But trying to peg the movie to any one set of beliefs is only going to be frustrating.

And as for Jesus, I never met him, but I have to say I prefer his early work.

* Floating outside my body, listening to myself answer questions.

Monday was all about press interviews. Usually, they’re a grind, and you find yourself repeating the same 10 sentences over and over. But partly because of the nature of the movie, reporters asked more interesting-slash-challenging questions than they usually do.Typical press junket question: “When you heard Johnny Depp was playing Willy Wonka, how exciting was that?” Your answer is clearly supposed to begin, “When I heard Johnny Depp was going to be playing Willy Wonka, I was incredibly excited because…” Because it meant that eight months later I’d get to sit in a cramped hotel room with you, Tom, feigning interest in this charade of journalism. Whereas I usually become a question-answering robot, this time I felt fully present — and yet, floaty. I heard myself being more eloquent than I expected, given four hours of sleep. Or maybe the lack of sleep was making my blathering sound coherent only to me.

* Keeping silent on issues that would make Whitney Pastorek happy.

Whitney Pastorek is the EW.com writer who was incredibly effusive in her [teary-eyed love](http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2007/01/sundance_jan_19.html) for the movie. There were a couple of self-identified superfans up on the mountain, and while everyone likes to be told their movie is genius, there’s a dark side. Praise is like sugar. It gives you this hit of energy, but twenty minutes later you’re hungry for more.

Between Google Alerts and the publicity office, we were soon getting a steady stream of the split opinions we anticipated. There were raves and excoriations, and like a fool, I read them all. Did I go into the festival knowing that some people would really dislike the movie? Yup. Did that offer any consolation? Nope.

The particular issue that would make Whitney Pastorek happy would be an announcement that we have a distributor, and I can’t say anything specific on that subject as of blogtime. But Whitney, from me to you, stay strong.

* Gabbing with Leonard Maltin. Yup, I know him.

Film critic Leonard Maltin is best known for his work on Entertainment Tonight, but he also hosts the weekly 466 screenings of new films at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.Still getting used to the new name George picked. I like it, though. It’s basically a Q&A with an alumni filmmaker. I’ve brought three movies to his class, and he’s always been a pleasure, even when he clearly didn’t like a film.

I ran into him in front of the Egyptian theatre, where I was trying to meet up with a CNN.com reporter whom I’d missed earlier. Leonard and I exchanged hellos and happy festival wishes. (He hadn’t seen The Nines.) I said goodbye, only to find him on the same tiny plane back to Burbank. Awk-ward.

And that was my Sundance. I still don’t feel I’m really home. I keep reaching for my festival badge, which has hung around my neck for all my waking hours. But I was ready to come back. After a week of puffy parka-ville, I can walk outside in just a t-shirt. That’s huge.