The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/20522).
**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.
**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin.
**John:** This is Episode 567 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, when do you want to cast a recognizable star, and when do you not? We’ll talk about how much fame you want and need in a given role. We’ll also talk about cutting characters, juggling multiple projects, and staying nimble.
**Craig:** Oh, nimble.
**John:** Nimble. In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, Megana says I’m too good of a liar. We’ll see whether she’s right when we play Two Truths and a Lie.
**Craig:** That’s worth the $5 subscription right there. You know why you’re too good of a liar. You know why.
**John:** Why is that? Why is that?
**Craig:** It’s because you’re synthetic.
**John:** No, it’s because I prepare. We prepare the outline overall, but I will say that I spent at least 45 minutes yesterday thinking through some options for Two Truths and a Lie.
**Craig:** Wow.
**John:** It’s going to be a barn burner, because usually you play Two Truths and a Lie with strangers. It’s an icebreaker. We all know each other pretty well, so I have to really think about what you would know and expect.
**Craig:** Oh, boy. Megana.
**John:** Oh, boy.
**Craig:** Megana, why do I feel like the two of us have just been set up? We’ve just been set up.
**Megana Rao:** He just admitted it.
**Craig:** He admitted that. He said it exactly. He laid it out how he set us up. Listen, if you’re not a Premium subscriber now-
**John:** This is my magic trick really, because a magician sets up your expectations, like, “I’m going to perform a trick for you,” and then you have to see if you can identify when he’s performing the trick.
**Megana:** I still feel good about our odds, Craig.
**Craig:** I love your optimism, but I think we’re dealing with a criminal sociopath. If you’re not subscribing to the show by now, I don’t know what you’re waiting for. Don’t you want to see John just pick us apart like the budding Hannibal Lecter that he is?
**John:** That’s what it is. A reminder about our live show, October 19th in Los Angeles at the Dynasty Typewriter.
**Craig:** Hey, can I get tickets to that?
**John:** No, you cannot.
**Craig:** What?
**John:** It is sold out.
**Craig:** Of course it is.
**John:** You cannot get in-person tickets, but for the first time ever, we are going to have a livestream of the show, so you can watch it. No matter where you are in the world, you can watch it live. The streaming tickets are $25. You can find them at dynastytypewriter.com.
**Craig:** Here’s the thing. It doesn’t go to us. It goes to charity.
**John:** What is the charity that we’re doing this with?
**Craig:** Hollywood Heart.
**John:** Tell us about Hollywood Heart, Craig.
**Craig:** Hollywood Heart is I think our, I don’t know, seventh or eighth benefit show for Hollywood Heart. They’re a wonderful organization here, based here in Los Angeles, that we were introduced to by a friend of the show, John Gatins. They run a summer camp for underprivileged kids. It is centered around arts, I believe. They just do terrific work. Everybody deserves a chance to get outside, have some fun in the summer, learn, be safe, and get exposed to arts and culture, which are not frivolous, but rather really the only thing that keeps our humanity intact.
**John:** Agreed. If you would like to support that but also see us live on stage, you can go follow the link in the show notes or just go to dynastytypewriter.com and click a little thing there for live show tickets.
**Craig:** Hey John, what did you think the odds were that I was going to say I have no idea what the charity is and I don’t know what Hollywood Heart is? Come on. Be honest. What’d you think? 50/50?
**John:** No, I think you definitely knew what Hollywood Heart was, but I thought there was maybe a small chance you didn’t know that there was a Hollywood Heart benefit rather than a Writers Guild Foundation, which we’ve also done events for.
**Craig:** Megana, just to point out, that’s the second time John has attempted a setup. We know what the theme is. If this episode isn’t called John Sets Craig Up, I don’t know why it should be called anything else. That’s what this episode is.
**Megana:** I wonder if I can get a little tally to ding every time it happens.
**Craig:** A little setup chart, ding. So far we’ve got two setups.
**John:** We’ve got a third setup here, because Megana put this follow-up question in from a listener. Megana, do you want to read this?
**Craig:** Megana setup.
**Megana:** Craig from Sydney wrote in and said, “I would like Craig to clarify something. In Episode 564, Craig says editing is a puzzle. Yet in previous episodes, Craig says a jigsaw is not a puzzle.”
**Craig:** That’s right.
**Megana:** “Both involve taking small fragments of an overall image and arranging them to make a complete image. Can Craig please explain his nuanced view and bias against jigsaws?”
**Craig:** Craig from Sydney, first of all, I see you. What are you, some sort of industry lobbyist for the jigsaw factories, for Big Jigsaw? Let’s absolutely demolish your premise. You say that editing, like jigsaw puzzles, involves “taking small fragments of an overall image and arranging them to make a complete image.” Hey, Craig from Sydney, when you get a jigsaw puzzle, the image is on the box, is it not? You know exactly what you’re supposed to put together. In editing, you don’t. In fact, you can put it together any way you want. You are creating something ultimately that will be an image, a moving image with Kuleshov effect positioning and contrast. It’s just simply not the same at all. I can make anything I want out of editing. I cannot make anything I want out of a jigsaw. In fact, if I try and put this piece with that piece, and the box is like, “No, that’s not where we wanted you to put the old mill piece,” then I can’t, because jigsaws are crap. I reject your premise. I reject you. I may not ever visit Sydney now. Actually, I would love to go to Sydney. It looks beautiful.
**John:** Sydney’s great. We like Sydney.
**Craig:** It would be incredible. Also, I don’t reject you, Craig. You’re a Craig. I love you, Craig. You’re a Craig, which is different than Craig, but still, you’re a Craig from Sydney, and I love you.
**John:** While I greatly enjoy jigsaw puzzles, I will agree with Craig in that I don’t think the analogy really holds, because editing is not merely a visual puzzle. It’s really a narrative puzzle. It’s like, “How do I get this meaning to come across as a series of images and sounds that I can put together? How do I make this make sense?” Editing is much more like writing, which is just how to make these thoughts to actually cohere correctly in the receiver’s brain. I don’t think it’s a great analogy, honestly.
**Craig:** No, it’s not. Craig, I need you to work on your analogies, because you’re representing me in the land down under, unless you’re from Sydney, Ohio, in which case I don’t know what to say.
**John:** There’s a lot of Ohioans. Let’s talk about our main topic here, which is about stars. We’re going to title this episode No Stars, Please, but I want to make it clear that I’m not anti-actor, I’m not anti-celebrity, I’m not anti-star. We love movie stars. Movie stars are great. If it sounds like I’m crapping on anybody individually or collectively, certainly that is not my intention.
**Craig:** This feels setup-ish right here.
**John:** I want to talk about the fit of an actor and a role and why sometimes you don’t want a big star in certain roles.
**Craig:** That’s fair.
**John:** I think that is a thing you run into. I remember having a conversation with a casting director early on, maybe even for Go. We were trying to put the right people in the right spots. For international financing, we needed a big male star between 30 and 50 in the movie. There wasn’t a role for that person. It was going to break everything to try to do that. The casting director said, “Yeah, it’s so frustrating that people want to wedge somebody into a part which is going to actually be wrong for the movie.” Let’s talk about star, actor, role fit.
**Craig:** First question is not do we need a star, but should we have one. Everybody I think probably defaults to the belief that everybody wants a star, but there are certain situations where you really don’t. That in and of itself if a strange kind of alchemy where you ask yourself, given the nature of the work I’m doing here, whether it’s a television show or a movie, and the characters and the tone, would having a star in this role swamp everything? Would that person draw so much attention and focus to themselves that the souffle will collapse, and worse, will it puncture the tone we’re going for? Will it puncture the reality of what we’re trying to do?
There are levels of stars. There’s Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, which they are luminous to the point of swamping everything around them. Brad Pitt was just in a movie where he… Bullet Train. Bullet Train! Great title. He’s on a train. He’s killing people. It’s like John Wick on a train. That’s great, but really if you had asked anybody, “Do you know that train movie?” they’d be like, “Oh, the Brad Pitt train movie,” not the anyone else train movie and not what the story of the train movie is, because he just… Honestly, you needed him for that. Otherwise, what was the point? What was the point of making that? You can’t make that movie with just a guy. Then there are things where you really have to avoid that phenomenon or it’s going to sink everything.
**John:** Let’s talk about the situations where you do want the star, where you do want the Brad Pitt in the role. How does having a star help? A lot of cases, it’s easier to get made because those stars attract money. You could make the movie Bullet Train at the budget you want with Brad Pitt in that role because everyone’s just like, “Oh, there’s a safety of having Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt will be able to open that movie. Brad Pitt can do the marketing for it,” and just what you said, “Let’s go see that Brad Pitt movie.” The title of the movie’s important, the concept of the movie’s important, the trailer’s important, but also that star is the anchor that you’re centering everything around. That’s a great reason to put that star in a role.
The other reason, maybe because they’re a terrific actor, because they are uniquely talented at being able to do that one thing. That’s why you want that star. It’s not just that they’re bringing their luminance, but what they’re good at is exactly what you need in that movie. That’s a great situation when you have both things happening at the same time.
**Craig:** There are also situations where… Let me stipulate, the number one reason you’ve mentioned, people are like, “Hey, we’re not making this unless we have a star,” because that’s the economics involved, but there are also times where you have a kind of story that requires a star, because you’re asking the audience to focus on and care about an individual for a long time.
When we were casting The Last of Us, we felt quite strongly that, unlike when we were casting Chernobyl, where we didn’t feel like we needed what we would call a star star, that we did need one for The Last of Us, because we were going to ask people to focus for so long on one man, and whereas with Chernobyl I felt like I wanted great actors, but there wasn’t a need for what they would call these bankable movie stars or anything like that, because that person would probably puncture the reality of being in Ukraine in 1986. That tonal thing is important.
This is another reason why you want to try and work with people that get it and have taste, because sometimes they do jam these things in, and it’s actually dead before it begins, because of miscasting, essentially.
**John:** Craig, before you brought up there’s levels of movie stars, let’s talk in a very rough sense about what we’d mean by those levels of movie stars. There’s these mega stars. There’s the Tom Cruises, the Will Smiths. There’s The Rock. They’re just these gigantic presences independent of the movie. You know who they are independent of all the roles they play.
**Craig:** They’re brands.
**John:** They’re brands. Weirdly, Leonardo DiCaprio, I would say, is that too, even though we don’t know a lot about Leonardo DiCaprio outside of his movie roles, because he doesn’t do a ton.
**Craig:** He’s iconic.
**John:** Iconic.
**Craig:** He’s an iconic actor. There are actors that are perfectly global. Everybody knows their name. We’re talking about billions of people. Billions of people now who Brad Pitt is. There aren’t that many of those people left, men and women, very few of them, because of the way we make things now. It’s just different.
**John:** For Aladdin, Will Smith was important. Could you have done Aladdin without Will Smith? Sure, you could’ve found somebody else who was great in that part, but Will Smith’s personality and his star presence was incredibly important to making Aladdin possible.
**Craig:** At that time.
**John:** At that time. At the time that we made Aladdin, you absolutely wanted Will Smith in that role. There’s another tier of actor, and I don’t mean tier in terms of quality, but that you recognize that person, but you’re not going to see that movie or see that series specifically for that person in most cases, so Ed Harris, Michelle Yeoh, Fantastic, Michael B. Jordan, any of the Chrises, like the Chris Pratts, the Hemsworths, the Chris Pines. They can be big stars, but they’re not iconic. They’re not going to drive everything.
**Craig:** I think I would make an argument that Hemsworth is now in that zone.
**John:** In a certain kind of role. Paul Rudd in a certain kind of role, yes, but Paul Rudd in a dramatic role, not so much.
**Craig:** It does depend on which thing you put them in. There are actors that are known for being brilliant and wonderful actors, but they don’t necessarily sell tickets. Selling tickets is not necessarily an indication of quality. It’s rare. When there’s this overlap of talent and selling tickets, that’s the holy grail. I think about Denzel Washington or Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep, where they sell tickets and they’re also great. That’s an even smaller subsection of huge stars.
There are incredible actors that are known, that do great work. That was actually kind of the fun when we were casting Chernobyl was just I had my dream cast. We got the dream cast. The dream cast was made up of three actors that were extraordinarily good. People did know their faces and their names, but they weren’t necessarily movie stars or anything like that. They needed to be able to be subsumed by the context, as opposed to overpowering it. There are incredible people like that.
It’s a really important thing to think about when you’re putting your movie together, you’re writing your script. Is this the kind of thing where you do in fact need that big wattage mega star, or will you be better off looking at people that aren’t about the wattage, but rather about, say, the quality?
**John:** We’ve been talking about movies and people who can open on opening day weekend, but TV is also a factor. Sometimes you want a recognizable person, and sometimes you don’t. I thought that casting Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us was really smart, because the people who want to like that show are going to know who Pedro Pascal is. A lot of other people who are going to watch that show really don’t know who Pedro Pascal is, because they’re not that familiar with Game of Thrones, they didn’t see him in Wonder Woman. He’s just the right size of star for that part. I’m sure that went into your consideration for him.
**Craig:** Yeah, and I think he’s about to be in a much bigger one because of the work he does in the show. He is a star. He has the star thing, which is you have to stare at him. He does that thing. He is widely known. It’s interesting, Mandalorian is such a strange show for him, because he doesn’t show his face for 98% of it. Having made a show now with Pedro, the thought of making a show with that face and not showing it just seems crazy, because it’s the best face.
You’re right, he was exactly the right thing. He was the right guy for us. I don’t think we could’ve done better for all sorts of reasons. We knew that we needed somebody that was a real star. Just the center of this thing had to have that in it, not only to hold your attention across many episodes about a man, but also to signify to people that this was quality.
That’s the other thing is when stars do things, there is a kind of imprimatur. There’s a stamp, because they get sent everything. Pedro Pascal is asked to be in 4,000 things, and Brad Pitt’s asked to be in 12,000 things and da da da. When they make a choice finally, you think, “Brad Pitt agreed to be in Bullet Train. This is probably pretty good.” That actually matters.
**John:** Agreed. A bit of a sidebar here, because you’re talking about Pedro and having star quality. A question for you. Who is the most attractive celebrity, famous person you’ve ever seen in person? Megana, you can answer this question too if you have an answer.
**Craig:** That’s a really good one.
**Megana:** Craig can’t choose me.
**John:** You’re radio famous, Megana, so it’s really not going to be fair for the audience.
**Craig:** I like that Megana just hurdles between wildly shy and self-hatred and then just crazy confidence.
**John:** Love it.
**Craig:** There’s nothing in between.
**Megana:** The extremes.
**Craig:** Just the wild extremes. There’s somebody in my mind that I remember thinking was astonishingly beautiful in person, just hard to wrap my mind around how beautiful they were.
**John:** I have a very distinct answer to that.
**Craig:** Who’s your answer?
**John:** I was in London. This was doing notes on Aladdin. I was staying in a hotel. I was leaving the hotel. I walked past this woman, and I actually audibly gasped. She was so beautiful. I was just dumbstruck for a moment. I left, and then I realized, oh, that was Lupita Nyong’o. Lupita Nyong’o was in London to do press for Queen of Katwe. I’d seen many photos of her before, but seeing her in person… I guess she was probably also made up for the press junket. She was actually just an unearthly beauty. She was radiant in a way that I’ve not ever experienced before. Lupita Nyong’o is the person. Her beauty does translate to screen. I’ve seen her in a lot of other things, but wow, in person, she just knocks you down. I’ve heard the same thing about Julia Roberts in the day too. People would say that with her. In her presence, you’d be like, “Oh my god, this person.”
**Craig:** Here’s my answer. I saw both of these people in person for the first and last time the same night. It was at the premier of Huntsman: Winter’s sequel. Charlize Theron-
**John:** I’ve heard that.
**Craig:** … and Chris Hemsworth individually are so beautiful, it’s hard to understand how they’re here. How does that happen? It’s hard to not feel like, “Oh wow, if I looked like that… ” I know I’m not supposed to beat myself up or anything. I’m not Chris Hemsworth. If I did the Chris Hemsworth workout, I would still be so far from Chris Hemsworth. That’s kind of crazy. Charlize, jeez, man.
**John:** I’ve definitely heard that about her.
**Craig:** Tall. She’s all Charlize-y.
**John:** Megana, have you encountered any celebrities in person that you’re like, “Oh my god, that person.”
**Craig:** Yeah, but other than me.
**Megana:** I haven’t run into that many celebrities, but I did pass Andrew Garfield on the street outside 101 Coffee Shop in Hollywood. I was like, “Whoa, that guy had a really cool vibe.” Then I realized it was Andrew Garfield.
**Craig:** Nice. Well spotted. That guy has an interesting quality about him. It’s amazing.
**John:** Now that we’ve talked about what star quality is, let’s talk about the kinds of roles you might slot these people into, because that’s really where things break down. Roughly, I’ll say there’s three levels of roles. There’s your principals, so that’s your hero, your villain, the people who are going to have a lot of screen time. They’re going to be driving the action. You have your supporting roles. You have the spouse, the friend, the boss, the commander, people who have multiple scenes, but they’re not so crucial to everything.
Then you have barely-theres. You have your waiters, your assistants, cashiers, your neighbors. Where I find I can take it out of the movie is when you have somebody who has that star quality wattage or is just legitimately famous, and they’re in one of those supporting roles, your barely-theres. You’re like, “Why is this person here? What is that person doing in that role?” It does throw everything out of whack.
**Craig:** There is a reasonable and warranted technique of putting a very high wattage star in a small cameo part, because whatever it is that they’re playing needs instant gravitas. When somebody finally shows up, everybody’s been talking about the boss, and then the boss shows up, and you’re like, “Oh my god, it’s Tom Hanks. We get it. No wonder they’re all worked up about him.” If some guy shows up, then you don’t feel as anchored in. Generally speaking, actors of that quality and wattage, they’re not going to show up unless it’s something like that. They sense as well as anyone what their value is. That in and of itself feels like it would be exhausting to just be aware of your own value and think about it all the time. At least as writers, we can just come and write stuff and then go home. Nobody sees our face.
**John:** Craig, I want to try to distinguish between two different things you’re describing there, because there’s a cameo, which I feel like is a self-limiting scene, where it’s clearly like, oh, this character’s going to show up and do their little bit, and we’re not expecting them to ever come back. It feels self-closing. Matt Damon shows up in the Thor movies playing a pudgy version of Thor. That feels deliberately self-limiting. Or Melissa McCarthy also shows up in Love and Thunder. You know that is a cameo.
**Craig:** Fun.
**John:** It has an entry point, an exit point. It’s fun. The other thing you’re describing reminds me of Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, where they’re talking about he’s going to show up, and then Alec Baldwin shows up and does one scene, does incredibly well, just knocks it out of the park, and leaves. You needed somebody with that stature in that part. It was crucial.
**Craig:** Alec Baldwin was not actually a huge star at that time.
**John:** I guess you’re right.
**Craig:** What he had was star power. They needed somebody to essentially start that movie as a human manifestation of an angry Old Testament God to lay down the law, establish the tone, and then leave. All the wreckage in his wake is where the drama is, and you needed somebody to just hold the center of it. This was an actor who had to intimidate Ed Harris, had to intimidate Jack Lemmon, had to intimidate Alan Arkin, these great actors, put them in their place, knock them down. You need somebody who can hold that position. If they don’t, you won’t buy it. Again, it’s all a souffle. Everything is so delicate. There are a hundred ways for it to go wrong and really generally one or two ways for it to go right. That is the terrifying part of casting. Every time you cast somebody, you might be ruining things. That’s the scary part.
**John:** It also plays into audience expectations. There’s a well-known story, which may be apocryphal. Ed O’Neill, between Married with Children and Modern Family, he’s a very good actor. He’d be cast in non-comedic roles. Everyone would be like, “I don’t believe him at all,” or they’d laugh when they see him, because it’s like, “Oh, he’s Al Bundy. He’s supposed to be funny.” When he’s not being funny, that’s a problem. That’s a limitation for an actor. It’s frustrating for them, but also, you as the person who has to make the movie, you got to know what those expectations are going to be of the audience.
It’s one thing if you’re casting Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me, because she is the center of that movie. Everyone that sits down to watch the movie knows that it’s not a funny part and that she’s playing something different than what you’d usually see. If Ed O’Neill shows up as a judge in a drama, it’s going to throw you for a bit.
**Craig:** I think that that has changed somewhat. It used to be much worse. Typecasting was a real thing. Now I feel like people actually look forward to these switch-ups. Ed O’Neill is a terrific actor. He’s older. As actors age, sometimes they just get less interested in doing a lot of stuff, and they just do fewer things. The great Gene Hackman just retired. He didn’t want to do it anymore. A few years ago, he was like, “I’m done.”
Tom Hanks was always the example of the guy that somehow magically was able to start his career on a sitcom where he was cross-dressing to get into farcical situations. Then a few years later he’s in Philadelphia, and you’re like, “How the hell did this even happen?” because he was just that good. Also, there was just a humanity there that crossed back and forth. Again, some people have it. I think nowadays, it’s a little easier. I think people kind of like it. I think they like watching people go back and forth. There’s something exciting about it.
I would say to anybody that’s making a drama to heed well the words of the great Vince Gilligan, who said that he just makes a practice of casting funny people in not funny parts, because funny people are the best. They just have this remarkable sense of drama and humanity. That’s why Vince Gilligan, a genius, truly a genius, I don’t use the word often, cast Bryan Cranston, the dad-
**John:** From Malcolm in the Middle.
**Craig:** … from Malcolm in the Middle, a sitcom, an Ed O’Neill part, in the most wonderful, dramatic part in Breaking Bad. It’s why he then took Bob Odenkirk, and he elevated him. It’s just what he does. He’s so smart about that. It is remarkable. Funny people are the best people, I will say.
**John:** The last example I’ll put up is just casting somebody who the minute they show up, you’re expecting them to be more important to it. Heartstopper is a Netflix show that I thought was delightful. Olivia Colman plays one of the boys’ moms. She’s great. She’s lovely, a flawless performance, but it throws you a bit, because you’re just like, “Wait, that’s Olivia Colman. She can do more than that. Why is she only doing this stock mom role?” We did interviews where she talks about why she wanted to do it. I totally get it. I do wonder if casting somebody else in that part would’ve actually been a better choice, because I cannot watch the scenes with her and not think, “Oh, that’s Olivia Colman.” I wonder if a better choice might’ve been to put somebody else in there who did not have that stature.
**Craig:** That’s the weird math you have to do, where you go, “Okay, this person puts out this much light and heat. This role requires this much light and heat.” If there’s too much, then it’s going to break things. It’s tricky. It’s hard, because when you’re putting things together, if someone says, “You’re not going to believe this, but Olivia Colman read the script, and she wants to play the mom,” who’s going to be like, “No.”
**John:** That’s exactly the point. No one’s going to say no. Of course. It’s great.
**Craig:** That’s the tricky part.
**John:** Let’s wrap this up by saying a reminder. There’s a reason why stars are stars sometimes. They actually have these magical abilities to just inspire us to look at them and pay attention to them. That’s why you want them in those principal roles a lot of times, because they’re just so good. Sometimes we’ll identify folks who are not even famous yet, but like, “Oh, you’re going to be famous.”
I think I’ve said this on the podcast before. Josh Holloway came in to audition. He played Sawyer on Lost. He came in to audition pre-Lost for this one show I was doing. He was completely wrong for the part, but I said in the room, “This is not the role for you, but Jesus, you are a star. I can absolutely tell you’re going to be a thing who’s going to break out.” He was really nice about that and said thanks and left the room. I was right.
Some people just have that ability. You want those people in those principal roles or smaller roles where they can actually expand and maybe they can steal some stuff. Once they’re famous, you don’t want to stick them in places where even though they might have the skills to play that role, they’re just going to break your movie or your show.
**Craig:** They’re going to break your thing. What it comes down to, since everybody listening has access to all the stars, just be careful about which stars you choose.
**John:** We have all these listener questions that say like, “Hey, so this megastar wants to be in movie. Should I let him be in the movie?”
**Craig:** No.
**John:** The answer is yes.
**Craig:** No.
**John:** No, absolutely not. You’re not allowed in this movie.
**Craig:** Brad Pitt for that? I don’t know. I didn’t meet Brad Pitt. Once I stood next to Brad Pitt. Have you ever met Brad Pitt?
**John:** I think I shook his hand.
**Craig:** I never shook his hand. I was at the AFI Television, whatever the hell it was. I don’t know. It’s called the AFI Celebrates. It’s the best event. It’s better than all the awards shows, because nobody wins anything. It’s just like, “Here’s 10 things we liked. We love all of you.” You feel great. Brad Pitt was there. I was standing near him while he was talking to somebody, and I was so aware of my proximity to Brad Pitt. I had a para-social relationship with Brad Pitt.
**John:** How can you not?
**Craig:** How can you not?
**John:** The women he’s been with and the career he’s had and the stars, it’s a lot.
**Craig:** It’s a whole thing.
**John:** Our next topic is a Megana suggestion. Megana, help set us up here. You want to talk about committing to an idea and its execution by staying flexible. What are you thinking here?
**Megana:** Yes, I did. Craig, do you watch The Bachelorette?
**Craig:** You know. That’s a setup. Now you set me up. You know I don’t watch that.
**Megana:** You’re watching this season, right?
**Craig:** You know I don’t watch The Bachelorette. You know that. Is it a television show?
**Megana:** It is a television show.
**Craig:** Then you know I don’t watch it.
**Megana:** It’s a reality dating show. It starts off with a lead, the single woman, and she has 30 contestants.
**Craig:** Of course.
**Megana:** By the end, she whittles them down to one, and they propose to her.
**Craig:** Then they abuse the institution of marriage, yeah.
**Megana:** Exactly. We’re in the later weeks of this season. The Bachelorette has several contestants. She’s like, “Maybe I’ll marry Jason, or maybe I’ll marry Eric, or I’m also in love with Johnny.”
**Craig:** She sounds terrible. Go on.
**Megana:** I’m on my couch, locked in, committed to one of these men and devastated when they go.
**Craig:** Aw.
**Megana:** I was watching it, and I was like, “Maybe I’m over-committing.” Then I was reading a notes email, and I was like, “I think this also shows up in my writing, perhaps, the impulse to take an idea and just death grip onto it.” I was hoping that you guys could talk about staying nimble, being open, but also, I don’t know, moving forward.
**Craig:** I get it.
**John:** I get that too. Let’s put it in the context of notes, because a lot of times when you get notes, an instinct will be to seize up and protect and defend, rather than say, “Okay, I get what they’re saying. This is another way I could go. This is another way I could go.” If you are too flexible and too nimble, you will not actually have the drive to finish a thing and not be able to complete it, because you would take every note. Over-flexibility can be a problem, but rigidity is not good for a writer either. Craig, how do we balance this?
**Craig:** I think haphazardly and clumsily and with great potential for error. This one goes actually to the heart of what is most miserable I think about what we do, Megana. There was a talk I gave years ago. I can’t even remember to whom it was. They were asking me to talk about creativity. I brought up this example that I think about all the time. I’ve been thinking about it since I was a kid. You guys I assume have read The Little Prince.
**John:** Oh yeah, of course.
**Craig:** Classic.
**John:** Saint-Exupery.
**Craig:** Saint-Exupery, classic children’s book. The Little Prince begins with this foreword where he is talking about his own childhood, the author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. He is talking about how he drew a picture as a young person. The picture was the snake that had eaten an elephant. When he would show it to the adults, the adults would look at it and say, “That’s a hat,” because the snake was roughly hat-shaped, because the elephant was inside of it, if you can imagine. He was like, “No, you idiots. It’s an elephant inside a snake. Why can’t they see?” Then he meets the Little Prince, this Jesus-like child figure from the stars above. He shows the Little Prince the picture that he drew. The Little Prince says, “Oh, that’s an elephant inside of a snake.” He goes, “Aha, you see, children can see these things.”
I was a child, and I was like, “No, MF-er, that’s a hat. You cannot put that on people. It’s a hat. It’s a hat. It’s not their fault. You cannot blame the audience because they didn’t Jesus their way into your head and see the beauty of the elephant inside the snake. It’s not their fault.”
What he was putting forth was something that I do admire in people, which is this artistic confidence and self-assurance. “I’m not the problem. You’re the problem. I am committed to this elephant inside the snake. I will meet somebody that gets it. Then that person and I will go on to make great things,” or in the case of the Little Prince, the Little Prince will die. Then Saint-Exupery will also die. Regardless, I have always had the opposite issue, which is I’m so panicked that people will think it’s a hat, and then the first person says it’s a hat, I’m like, “Oh god, it’s no good.”
It’s unfortunately one of those things that is a dichotomy you have to navigate. The only advice I can give you or anybody is to just be aware if you feel like you’ve gone too far in one direction. That’s all I can say. You don’t want to be the person that just changes everything all the time. It’s impossible to write things if you’re not committed to them. As John says, if you’re too rigid and you get stuck, you just are incapable of either improving it or recognizing that everybody will look at it and say, “That’s a hat.”
**John:** Megana will know that there’s a project that I’m in discussions to write that is very complicated and has a lot of moving parts and pieces and people involved. A thing I’m reminding myself at all times is that I need to be flexible and not over-commit to one way of doing a thing because of all the different people involved.
What I can do is commit to a vibe, like, “This is the feeling of the movie that I wish to make here. This is what I want. This is the vision for what I have that’s going to happen.” I cannot be, at this point, too specific about which elements will make it through, what is the actual plot, story, beats, how does it all fit together, because of just the people involved. I need to be able to be incredibly open and embracing all these different things, and at some point synthesize this down to a place where I can say, “Let’s do this,” and we will all hopefully agree on what this is. Even in that, even as I deliver them a draft, I will have to say, “Now if that is not going to meet the needs of everybody else here, I’m going to have to be flexible to do the next thing.” At every point, I need to be true to the vision for the overall movie that I want to do rather than this plot sequence is how I want to get there.
My most frustrating moments as a writer over the course of my career have been those times where I held on too strongly to one thing I wanted to defend in my project and lost sight of the overall goal of getting this to be a movie that got made in a certain way or had a certain kind of feel. At every stage, you have to be both committed to the overall vision, but flexible in how you’re going to get there.
**Craig:** That’s absolutely true. That’s the scariest part, because you describe the nightmare scenario is you cling too hard to a thing, you lose sight of the big picture, and the whole thing dies. I think it was the line that they put on the poster for Pet Sematary, “Sometimes dead is better.” There are certain circumstances where the things you would have to do to bring it all to life would not be worth bringing it to live, because once it’s alive, everybody will look at it and be repelled in horror, because people don’t know what they want. They think they know what they want, but they don’t know what they want.
I always felt like when you do test screenings for movies and such, you should get all of your data, ask all the questions, have them fill out the forms, but then also a week later, do it again, not the viewing, but just come back to all those people and just say, “Do the forms again,” because sometimes it takes people time to figure out that they either love or hate something. You won’t know unless you check. You may put something out there that in its horrible form presses enough for an hour, but then everybody settles in and hates it. Sometimes dead is better.
I guess, Megana, the difficult answer is that there is no answer other than to say if you feel yourself drifting hard right or hard left, head towards the center. Don’t give up the notion of committing to something. It’s really important. I don’t know how you write something without it. You have to be able to commit and then divorce yourself and then remarry and divorce and remarry and divorce and remarry, just like you do in your real life.
**John:** To bring it back to The Bachelorette, maybe the overall vision would be this young woman sees herself married to a fantastic man and having a life ahead, and she’s not committing to which of these men it’s going to be quite yet, but she wants to make sure she stays true to that vision. She’s not going to pick a guy who’s not going to be able to get her there. Is that a fair way of thinking through the decision process?
**Megana:** I think that that’s right. Right now, we’re at the point where it’s like whoever wants to propose to them, they’re going to pick, because that is what the vision is.
**Craig:** So weird.
**John:** So weird.
**Craig:** I swear to God, these shows. John, as a gay man living in a country where there was not gay marriage, when you watch these shows, are you just like, “You sons of bitches. I’m over here in a water shortage, and you people are just having water balloon fights all day long on this show called Let’s Waste Water.”
**John:** Yeah, it was largely frustrating. That’s part of the reason we were involved in the lawsuits we were involved in to try to get marriage equality to happen. I think we’ve talked about this on the show before. They’ve tried to make the gay Bachelor, and it just doesn’t work, because everyone can just hook up with everybody else. It just doesn’t work.
**Craig:** That’s going against the best part of being gay, as far as I can see from the outside. That’s the part I yearn for the most and will never have.
**John:** Megana, we have a question from Joe in Rancho Cucamonga. Anybody from Rancho Cucamonga moves to the top of the queue.
**Craig:** Rancho Cucamonga.
**Megana:** Joe says, “I just got hired to rewrite a script for an indie thriller. It’s technically my first paid gig, and I’m really excited for the opportunity.”
**John:** Hooray, Joe.
**Craig:** Nice job.
**Megana:** “Meanwhile, I have two scripts in development with a big producer and two other projects that my manager is trying to set up at different companies. My question is, in the unlikely but totally awesome scenario that I sell all of these in the immediate future, how should I go about managing my time to actually write them? Two are currently outlines, while the other two would be rewrites. How do I prioritize which scripts get written first? Is it common to tell people that I’m already working on a script and you have to wait? Would I be in danger of not selling them because I’m too busy? Or could I just block out certain periods of time and say these eight weeks are for this script, and these next eight weeks are for that script? These are First World problems to have, for sure, but in the case I’m confronted with this reality, I’d love some guidance on how to navigate these awesome waters.”
**Craig:** Awesome waters.
**John:** Awesome waters.
**Craig:** That’s a good name for a water park.
**John:** That is one of my favorite theme parks.
**Craig:** Awesome Waters in Rancho Cucamonga. Thursdays, water slide free.
**John:** Joe has an imaginary problem. I’m guilty of this a lot. I’ll catastrophize ahead and think, “Oh, what if all this stuff happens.”
**Craig:** What if the Oscars and the Nobel Prize ceremony are in the same night?
**John:** There are real situations where I’ve been on two things at the same time. It’s challenging. I have to level with people. I was working with Spielberg on a thing, and I was working on a Charlie’s Angels thing. There was too much stuff that was happening simultaneously.
It’s actually rare. The reason why it’s rare is that you can set up to do a rewrite, you could do this other thing, but the way the deals come out and how the timing happens, it’s rare that you’re going to be stuck on two things, and Joe, in your situation, that you’re going to be stuck on two things at the same time, and where you’re going to have to schedule your time so carefully. Your overall plan of, “This eight weeks will be this, and that eight weeks will be this,” it’s going to work out for you in most cases. Craig, what do you think?
**Craig:** I had something lined up that needed to be written after the thing that I was writing for 27 years now. I have had moments where I was a little panicky and saying to my representatives, “Oh god, yes, I want to do that, but this and that.” They’ve always said the same thing, which was, “It’ll work out.” It always works out. It always does.
There was one time where I got yelled at by a producer who was angry that he had to wait four weeks for something. I called the studio, and I said, “Look, I just got yelled at by this guy. I thought I was clear about how this works and all the rest of it. I’m trying to do a good job. I want to do a good job. The people that I’m working for right now would be very upset, just as you would be upset, if I suddenly just stopped working on their thing.” The studio said, “Don’t worry about that guy,” because I guess he was an idiot. Other than that, everybody just understands.
I would say, Joe, it’s not a problem to be in demand. If you say to people… Rather, your representatives. Hopefully you are well represented. You say your manager, so I’m annoyed, but fine. Your manager can just say, “Yeah, you got to wait. He’s in demand.” That just makes people want you more, generally. No one is going to say, “Oh my god, I want to buy this script, but oh god, I got to wait seven weeks for you to be able to rewrite it? No, then I don’t want to buy it.” Of course not. You know how long it takes to just buy things anyway? It will work out. Stuff will work out.
As you go on in your career, if it develops and you are doing well, you will end up in places where sometimes you do have to say no because of your own schedule. That’s annoying, but what you don’t want to be is somebody that says yes to something that you know you just are not able to responsibly do in a reasonable amount of time. Don’t do that. Other than that, it’ll all work out.
**John:** The only situations where the time really matters is production or very close to production, where they absolutely need this thing next week, or else everything’s going to fall apart. In those situations, I’ve had things where on a given day, I’ve had to work on three different projects. That is tough. That context switching is tough. You can do it. It’s really rare. It’s such a high-class problem to have, because you’re generally being paid really well for those situations. Don’t worry about it, Joe.
**Craig:** Don’t worry about it.
**John:** You’ll be fine.
**Craig:** You’ll be fine. Nobel Prize, Oscar, same night.
**John:** Megana, another question.
**Megana:** Haley wrote in and said, “I have a pitch to a production company coming up. I’m one of four writers pitching on the project. The pitch to the head of the company will be via Zoom. The creative executives have asked if it’s all right to record it. I’m reading the pitch off a detailed written document. If it’s recorded, doesn’t that function effectively as a leave-behind of the unpaid work I’ve done? Can I say, ‘No, sorry, that’s against the Guild’s No Writing Left Behind policy?’ or am I at a disadvantage against the other writers if I decline?”
**Craig:** This is actually a very interesting copyright discussion that involves the difference between a recorded performance and writing. First of all, Haley, I’m a little concerned that you’re reading a pitch off a detailed written document. That just sounds like the most boring way to pitch something ever. Side note, you didn’t ask me for my advice on that, but don’t do that. Don’t do that. Don’t read the pitch off the detailed written document. Pitch it. Pitch it like you know it. Pitch it like you care pitch your passion. That’s what we always say here, pitch your passion.
That said, no, if it is recorded, if you did in fact read the pitch off a detailed written document, what they have is a recording of a performance of something you’ve written. That does not give them the rights to the thing you’ve written. Writing is a literary material in fixed form. It is not a performance. If I go to Hamilton and I film it on my phone, which I should not be allowed to do, I don’t own that recording, nor do I own Hamilton. No, it’s not writing. Writing is literary material as the Guild defines it. That said, I just wouldn’t do it, because it sounds boring.
**John:** Megana will testify that-
**Craig:** Testify.
**John:** I went out with a pitch. We pitched to a bunch of different places. During the Zoom, I keep my notes up to the top of the screen, and so I’m keeping eye contact. It feels really spontaneous. As Megana was the person who had to advance the slides in the Zoom, she will-
**Craig:** Testify.
**Megana:** John is a very good actor. It always felt very spontaneous. I felt very betrayed when I saw the actual document.
**John:** She saw the actual document, but she also recognized that I was giving the exact same performance on every one of these things. Really, I should’ve just recorded it once and hit play for that, because it was exactly the same thing. Then of course the Q and A’s and all the other stuff like that were all unique discussions and vibrant. I get what Haley’s describing, because you end up giving a performance that is kind of scripted to these people, which always was the case in pitches also. It’s just that now on Zoom, you can actually look at your document and it doesn’t feel like cheating.
**Craig:** Looking at a document, notes, and all the rest of it, this is a separate thing about what’s an interesting way to pitch something, totally fine to do. Zoom allows you to do that, whereas once when you were in rooms, they could tell. That’s perfectly fine. Straight reading off of a detailed written document just sounds terrible.
**John:** Don’t do it.
**Craig:** Either way, whether they record your performance, however you perform it, no, that’s not writing. That is not writing at all.
**John:** Let’s do our One Cool Things. Craig, I see you have a One Cool Thing who is an actor.
**Craig:** Yes, my One Cool Thing is one cool person. We had the Emmy’s, John. Did you watch the Emmy’s or were you watching Monday night football?
**John:** I watched one frame of the Emmy’s.
**Craig:** Oh, because you were watching Monday night football, of course.
**John:** I’m 100% about all that American football.
**Craig:** You called it American football.
**John:** I did. For our international listeners, I called it American football.
**Craig:** It’s amazing how you can do that even when you’re not trying to do it. It’s incredible. Lots of wonderful stuff went on at the Emmy’s in terms of the shows. Lots of good choices were made. White Lotus, big winner. Mike White, big winner. Also winning for White Lotus for Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series, the great Murray Bartlett.
**John:** Terrific Australian actor.
**Craig:** Wonderful Australian actor. He’s been around for a long time doing wonderful work in Looking and Tales of the City. He was amazing in White Lotus as Armond the hotel manager who, if you have not seen the show, I won’t tell you how it all ends for him, because it’s remarkable. His fellow countrymen of course refer to him as Murray Bartlett. He’s also wonderful as Frank in the upcoming HBO series The Last of Us. He’s the nicest guy in the world, by the way, and a terrific actor.
**John:** Seems like he should be.
**Craig:** He’s wonderful. Seeing wonderful, lovely people win, especially in Hollywood, is just so gratifying. He’s so lovely. I was just thrilled for him. I was also thrilled for Melanie Lynskey. Even though she did not win, she was nominated for Best Actress in a Dramatic Series, I believe. She is also a terrific human being.
**John:** Agreed.
**Craig:** She’s from New Zealand, so really, this is about that whole area.
**John:** I’m going to keep the tradition going, because my One Cool Thing also involves an Australian.
**Craig:** Oh, good.
**John:** An Australian megastar. Yeah, big star. Nicole Kidman. My One Cool Thing is actually the David Mack article for Buzzfeed that goes into the backstory of how the AMC Nicole Kidman ad came to be. Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this, Craig.
**Craig:** Can I just confess something? I saw this, and I was like, “This seems reasonable.” I thought it was pretty cool. It was a nice ad for returning to the movie theaters. Was it eager? Yes.
**John:** Was it a little earnest? Yeah.
**Craig:** It was earnest and eager.
**John:** As a person who’s often eager and earnest, I can completely appreciate that. Through repetition, it became a meme. If it had just been out there for a week, it would’ve vanished, but the fact that it kept playing and kept playing, it became a cultural meme. This David Mack article digs into the history of that, including the involvement of Billy Ray, one of our previous Scriptnotes guests, who’s one of the writers on that advertisement.
**Craig:** Was he really? I didn’t know that.
**John:** Yes. I thought he directed it. Apparently, he did not direct it, but he did some of the writing on that. Now that I know that, it feels some Billy Ray-ness to it, in the sense of just it is earnest in a way that I sometimes associate with Billy Ray.
**Craig:** I thought it was very nice. I thought it was very sweet, very nice. Nicole Kidman is remarkable. That’s another megastar, by the way. So much wattage there. I guess it seems like this world around the Nicole Kidman thing has been somewhat with it. It’s not making fun of it as much as enjoying it with it. Any time I feel like drag queens are doing parody versions, it means that it’s beloved.
**John:** It’s like the boy who loves corn.
**Craig:** I love the boy who loves corn. It’s corn.
**John:** It’s corn. It’s specific, and it just feels like a great moment of public performance. Anyway, check out this David Mack article, which I thought did a nice job of explaining the phenomenon of it.
**Craig:** I think it’s great. I think it’s great. Sometimes just lack of cynicism is a lovely thing.
**John:** I agree 100%. Finally on the show, if you’re listening to this on Tuesday, October 20th, when this came out, we are now deep enough into the podcast that the Kickstarter for Writer Emergency Pack XL should now be live.
**Craig:** Live!
**John:** Craig can click through the little link there to see. Longtime listeners will know that back in 2015, my little company did the original Writer Emergency Pack. It was a deck of cards designed to help get your story unstuck. Back then, we hoped to print 100 of them. We ended up printing 8,000 of them to ship them to backers-
**Craig:** That’s a lot.
**John:** … and 8,000 to classrooms across the country. I think, Craig, you described it as the Toms shoes strategy of give one, get one. For every pack we sent out to backers, we sent one to a classroom. They’re now in classrooms all over the country, which has been great, but we want to do a bigger, better version of them. This is the version that Aline always wanted us to do, which is putting all the information for the cards on one side, so it’s a physically bigger deck. It’s a tarot-sized card deck.
**Craig:** That’s nice.
**John:** It’s good. We got brand new artwork, a new hard box that will last longer. If you would like one of these, and you live in the US or Canada, back us on Kickstarter, because we will be sending them out to you soon. I think they turned out really, really well.
**Craig:** What is the material that you use for the cards? Is it a plastic, or is it a paper?
**John:** It is a paper. One of our goals in this version of the project is to really lower our environmental footprint, our carbon footprint. We are using certified paper. The box is proudly cardboard, shipboard. Even our packaging materials are 100% recyclable and compostable. We want to make sure this thing is durable and lasts, but when you’re done with it, it’s not going to stick around for a thousand years.
**Craig:** Put it in your compost pile.
**John:** That’s what you can do. I can’t promise you that it’s compostable, but I think it probably will be.
**Craig:** That’s not a great slogan for a new product. “You can throw it out.”
**John:** “Probably compostable.”
**Craig:** “You can rot this.”
**John:** “This will eventually rot. Like all things, this will disintegrate.”
**Craig:** I think that actually is a great slogan for this. “This is garbage.”
**John:** “One day, this too, like you, will rot.”
**Craig:** Will just be a loam, just a loamy soil.
**John:** This could be another Bonus topic, but let’s talk about burial at some point, because I am really opposed to corpse burial and casket burial.
**Craig:** So am I. It’s so stupid. I can’t believe we’re doing it. I can’t believe we put people in boxes and then put the box in the ground.
**John:** No, we don’t put the box in the ground. We put the box in a concrete vault in the ground.
**Craig:** Really? I thought it was just dirt.
**Megana:** What?
**John:** You cannot put a casket in the ground. You have to put a concrete vault in.
**Craig:** Wait, what?
**John:** Then the casket goes in the concrete vault.
**Craig:** No, but I’ve seen… What?
**John:** No, Craig, they’re lowering the casket down into a concrete vault they’ve already put there.
**Craig:** Wait, but why do I see dirt then?
**John:** Because they’re throwing dirt on top of it, but then they’re putting a lid on top of that before they throw all the other dirt in.
**Craig:** Really?
**John:** Yeah. In almost every jurisdiction in the US, you’re not allowed to just put the box.
**Craig:** Wow.
**John:** You have to put a vault.
**Craig:** Because you don’t want rotting bodies in the water table?
**John:** Yeah.
**Craig:** That makes sense. Everybody should be burned. Everybody. Burned instantly, by the way.
**John:** If you are as opposed to casket burial as I am, please back us on Kickstarter. The Kickstarter will be running for 30 days. We only need to hit $26,000 to send these things to people. I think we’ll hit that. I’m just really happy with them. We’ve been working on them for a long time.
**Craig:** Nice.
**John:** It’s good to finally get them out there in the world.
**Craig:** Congratulations. Hopefully, people do back that. Does this Kickstarter require this many people do it before it activates?
**John:** We have 30 days to hit our goal of $26,000.
**Craig:** Please.
**John:** I think we’ll hit that.
**Craig:** Of course.
**John:** We have to hit our goal. Beyond that, we can do stretch goals and things. We decided to limit it to only the US and Canada, because international shipping is not only financially expensive, but also the carbon footprint of that is a lot. If you are an international backer who wants one, hold still, because we will find partners to make them in other places so we’re not having to ship these things across oceans.
**Craig:** That makes total sense. Do you know what I would love?
**John:** Tell me what you’d love.
**Craig:** I would love for you to read some boilerplate.
**John:** Oh my god, I’m going to do it. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao.
**Craig:** Yay!
**John:** It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.
**Craig:** Oh my god, yes.
**John:** Our outro is by Adam Pineless. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I’m @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com, which is where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting.
**Craig:** Inneresting.
**John:** Which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts.
**Craig:** Yay.
**John:** They’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You could get the brand new Scriptnotes double S T-shirt up there now. We’re about to print a new batch of those. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments, like the one we’re about to record on Two Truths-
**Craig:** Two Truths-
**John:** … and a Lie.
**Craig:** … and a Lie.
**John:** Craig and Megana, thank you so much for a fun show.
**Craig:** Thank you.
[Bonus Segment]
**John:** I’ve got a couple of these. I’ve got a couple different categories here.
**Craig:** Oh my god. So set up.
**John:** Megana, are you also going to do Two Truths and a Lie yourself?
**Megana:** I have some prepared, but I don’t need to do them, because I’m a terrible liar.
**Craig:** Come on.
**John:** I think you absolutely have to do them.
**Craig:** John, you’re saying you have four truths and two lies?
**John:** No, I’m saying I have three different categories. I have nine truths and lies.
**Craig:** Oh, god.
**John:** I broke them into categories. We’ll start with in high school.
**Craig:** So set up.
**John:** You have to think back to high school John.
**Craig:** High school John.
**John:** In high school, I was first chair clarinet in the Colorado All State Orchestra. In high school, I was bitten by a black widow spider. In high school, I competed in the World Championships in Future Problem Solving in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Two truths, one lie.
**Craig:** I have my choice.
**Megana:** I think I have mine too. You don’t want to discuss, Craig?
**Craig:** I’m happy to discuss. Let’s workshop this. My instinct is that the clarinet is a lie.
**Megana:** Yeah, mine too, because I feel like otherwise you would’ve been hearing him play the clarinet. First chair?
**Craig:** Also, I was the first chair clarinet in the, I should’ve used this as one of my things, the Staten Island All Borough Junior Orchestra when I was 12.
**Megana:** Do you recognize John as being first chair?
**Craig:** Don’t recognize clarinet. That’s right. I played the clarinet, and I played it well. It’s a part of my life that honestly I’ve almost forgotten, but it was there. I don’t recognize that. I don’t believe that. I think the black widow sounds like a lie, and therefore I believe it’s true. Also, he was scouting a lot.
**Megana:** Also, according to office lore, Nima tells a story about how John picked up a black widow spider by the hands and just waved it off.
**Craig:** That does sound like something a robot would do in defiance of nature and God.
**Megana:** Or that he’s already experienced and knows it’s not that bad.
**Craig:** It’s not good. Yes, I hear what you’re saying, that maybe he’s like, “Look, I’ve survived it once. I can survive it again.” Then the Ann Arbor thing, there are so many words. It’s so specific and weird.
**Megana:** I believe it.
**Craig:** It sounds like something he would do, a future problem solving conference.
**Megana:** We’re locked into clarinet?
**Craig:** I think we’re locked into clarinet.
**John:** You’re touching that card?
**Craig:** We’re touching it.
**John:** You are correct. Fascinatingly, you’re correct for the wrong reasons. This is a thing I just learned about you, Craig. I was first chair of the middle school, the junior high, first chair clarinet middle school, junior high All County, which is All Borough, Orchestra.
**Craig:** We were the same. Wow.
**John:** You and I both, we’re going to have a clarinet duo, clearly.
**Craig:** No, we’re not.
**Megana:** Wow.
**Craig:** That’s beautiful.
**John:** Here’s the thing.
**Craig:** Actually, let’s just take a moment and just recognize the beauty of life.
**John:** Weirdly, like you, I was really good at clarinet, and I realized at a certain point, I don’t care about being really good at clarinet. It is pointless to be good at clarinet.
**Craig:** I can’t believe anyone cares about being good at clarinet. I saw the LA Philharmonic. They ran Back to the Future at the Hollywood Bowl. The Philharmonic played the score along with it. It was fantastic. There are clarinetists in there, and they’re amazing.
**John:** They’re incredibly good.
**Craig:** How did that happen? At some point, did they not go, “What am I doing? Why am I playing this?” Clarinetists have a chip on their shoulder, because everyone’s like, “Oh my god, the oboe. The oboe, it’s so hard.”
**John:** By the way, the clarinet though is the heart of most of the sound you’re hearing.
**Craig:** Clarinet, it really is the unheard glue of everything. It really is. It’s the alto in the chorus.
**John:** We’re tuning the whole band to us, so yeah.
**Craig:** That’s right. The oboe is typically the one doing that.
**John:** If there’s an oboe, then you’ll take the oboe.
**Craig:** That’s the thing about oboists is that they’re dicks.
**John:** Because they have all that pressure in their head, because they’re having to squeeze through such a narrow thing.
**Craig:** Because they’re like, “I have two reeds. You only have one reed.” Oh, shut up. Shut up, oboists, with your two reeds.
**John:** Megana, when you come into the office later, I will play you a clarinet solo.
**Megana:** I look forward to it.
**Craig:** Playing the clarinet was… I don’t know, I was good at it. I don’t know why I was good at it, but I was.
**John:** I was good at it, because I practiced.
**Craig:** You know what, John? We had excellent embouchure.
**John:** We did. Craig, tell some truths and some lies.
**Craig:** They’re all about my childhood. I’m going to go back to early childhood. All of these things took place between the ages of 8 and 11. The first thing, I was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder related to hemophilia. The second thing was that I escaped a minor house fire. I define minor house fire as the house was not completely engulfed in flames. Third, I was hit by an automobile, a moving automobile I mean. I guess it would have to be moving if you were hit by it. I was hit by a car.
**John:** Megana, let’s talk through these. The blood disorder feels like, huh, that’s a strange thing for us to have never heard about.
**Megana:** Hear about, yeah.
**John:** Yet at the same time, it’s like, oh, but that feels-
**Megana:** It’s so specific.
**John:** I want to believe it. Hit by a car feels like it could happen a lot. People get hit by cars, and they’re all right. The house fire feels… Again, the specificity of it makes it tempting.
**Megana:** I think I’m going to go with the car. I bet that he was hit by a car later in his life.
**John:** I’m going to back you on car. Craig, we are touching the car story.
**Craig:** Guess who’s a better liar than you, John?
**John:** Is it Craig Mazin?
**Craig:** I was hit by a car, John.
**John:** Which was the lie?
**Craig:** The lie was house fire. I did not escape a minor house fire. There was no minor house fire. There was no house fire at all.
**John:** I think minor house fire is a really… That minor does a lot of work there. It’s so smart. Well done.
**Craig:** Thank you. I was diagnosed with this very strange blood disorder that they said I would eventually outgrow, and they were right. Basically, if you’re a hemophiliac, you’re missing this key blood factor. I think there’s 14 clotting factors or something. I was missing one of them that wasn’t the hemophilia one. For a while, when my teeth would fall out, it would just bleed and bleed and bleed.
**John:** Wow.
**Craig:** I needed to get my tonsils out, and they were like, “No, you can’t. You’ll die.” It didn’t really stop until I was in high school, and then it was okay.
**John:** Nice. I’m glad you’re okay.
**Craig:** Me too.
**John:** Megana.
**Craig:** Here we go.
**John:** Tell us some truths and some lies.
**Megana:** Do we have to categorize them?
**John:** No, you don’t have to.
**Megana:** One, the CIA tried to recruit me out of Harvard. Two, I have my doubts about the moon landing. Three, I ran the Boston Marathon when I was 19.
**Craig:** Let’s discuss, John, because there’s something I’m drifting toward, but maybe I’m being suckered here.
**John:** Being recruited by the CIA overall makes sense but also feels like everyone in Harvard probably is, and she could be taking a story from a friend who was recruited.
**Craig:** The CIA was certainly on the Princeton campus. Yes, you’re right. It’s the kind of thing that feels incredibly believable, and yet they may have just passed her by.
**John:** She has her doubts about the moon landing. She also kind of believes in some astrology things, so maybe.
**Craig:** I think the fact that she said some doubts is her Get Out of Jail Free card on that one.
**John:** Agreed.
**Craig:** Because I think if she said, “I don’t believe in the moon landing,” we’d all point our fingers and say, “That’s a lie, and also you can’t produce the show anymore.” If she has some sort of Megana-like doubts, because Megana slightly believes in ghosts… I think that one is actually believable. It’s distressing, but it’s believable.
**John:** Remind us of your third.
**Craig:** The marathon.
**John:** The marathon. She is a distance runner. She has run distance before. Boston Marathon I feel like is a hard one to get into.
**Craig:** She said she ran it or completed it?
**Megana:** I said I ran it when I was 19.
**Craig:** That implies complete. I think she might’ve been able to do that.
**John:** I think she might’ve been able to do that too. I’m going to say CIA is my-
**Craig:** I’m touching CIA card.
**John:** CIA.
**Megana:** Oh god, you guys are right. I so want it to be true though.
**Craig:** Of course you did.
**John:** You definitely had friends who were recruited by CIA.
**Megana:** Yeah, they were not at all interested in me.
**Craig:** Yeah, because you just seem so nice. You’re like, “I don’t want this misuse of intelligence.”
**Megana:** I have a lot of notes for them.
**Craig:** That’s weird that you wouldn’t want to support the CIA, Megana. Wow. Also, doubting the moon landing? Megana.
**Megana:** I said doubt. If you’re going to make me bet my life on a fact, I’m not going to choose that fact.
**Craig:** There are so many facts to choose from. I’m just saying, what are your doubts about the moon landing?
**Megana:** I have some YouTube videos I’m going to send you.
**Craig:** No, you don’t. You have them, but you’re not sending them.
**Megana:** I think the JFK speech like, “We’re going to go to the moon at the end of this decade,” incredible piece of rhetoric.
**Craig:** Yes, and also, they did it. They did it. Megana. Oh god, Megana, no. No.
**Megana:** We just had an amazing episode about visual effects. That’s all I’m going to say.
**Craig:** You know what? 1969, those visual effects were not there. No. Megana, for God’s sake, no. No. No. No.
**Megana:** No?
**Craig:** No.
**John:** Thank you for Two Truths and a Lie.
**Craig:** Yay.
**John:** I think generally it’s used as an icebreaker to learn facts about strangers, but I learned something fundamental about Craig Mazin in this conversation. I can’t believe all these years, all these podcasts-
**Craig:** Same.
**John:** … that clarinet has never come up. I still have my clarinet.
**Craig:** Wow. You do?
**John:** I do. It’s a good old wooden clarinet.
**Craig:** Oh my god. Does it smell like that weird reed grease?
**John:** 100%.
**Craig:** Or the cork grease.
**John:** Cork grease, yeah.
**Craig:** Cork grease.
**John:** It looks like ChapStick.
**Craig:** It’s that smell. I can still smell it.
**John:** Oh, 100%. Love it. When you suck up the spit through the reed and-
**Craig:** Gross.
**Megana:** You guys have been popular for a really long time.
**Craig:** Nothing is as popular-
**John:** As a male clarinetist?
**Craig:** … as a male clarinetist. You’re right. Male clarinetists, so sexy.
**John:** Yeah, the best.
**Craig:** Oh, god.
**John:** Craig and Megana, thank you so much.
**Craig:** The shame of it all.
**Megana:** Thank you.
**Craig:** Thank you.
**John:** Bye.
**Craig:** Bye.
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