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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/there-is-no-conspiracy).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 512 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show it’s a new round of the Three Page Challenge where we take a look at the first three pages of scripts submitted by you, our listeners, and give our honest feedback. We’ll also be looking at lecture scenes, mega deals for creators, and the ethics of writing conspiracy thrillers. And in our bonus segment for premium members I’ll be taking with comedian Sara Schaefer about her three simple steps for getting your TV show on the air.

**Craig:** Oh man.

**John:** Craig, you’ll want to listen to this.

**Craig:** Yeah. There are only three? I’ve been doing like six steps.

**John:** Yeah. Spoiler, there are many more than three. It’s sort of part of the joke is that it’s incredibly hard and frustrating at every step.

**Craig:** Yup. Yup. It is.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So that’s an extra from the Schaefer Shakedown podcast which you should also listen to, but really it’s a great little bonus segment if you are a premium member. Stick around and listen to that after the credits.

But first Craig it’s great to have you back. We’ve been sort of hit or miss the last couple of weeks because you’ve been working, I’ve been traveling. But now we are back recording the show.

**Craig:** Yup. So it’s going to be a little bit like this while we’re making The Last of Us just because it’s hard to produce a television show. It’s a fulltime job, and then some. So every now and then I will be amiss. But hopefully I can get into a good rhythm and stick with you guys regularly.

**John:** Very cool. Now over the past couple of weeks it’s been a very good time to be a creator of television shows, or at least a very successful creator of television shows. Because you are that kind of person you are going to be able to make a mega deal with one of the streamers. There were three of them just in the last two weeks which were pretty exciting.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Courtney Kemp, creator of Power over at Starz, made a new deal at Netflix listed as high eight figures, possibly rising to nine figures. I had to actually do the math to figure out like oh that’s a lot of zeroes.

**Craig:** It sure is.

**John:** That’s a lot of money.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that’s amazing news for Courtney who is a fantastic person. I got to know her a little bit a year or so ago. And this is – I guess we can call it the Netflix Effect. I mean, Netflix has definitely driven the price of the reliable showrunner up quite a bit. When we get these reports of high figures, possible rising to nine figures, it’s a little bit like dealing with these big sports contracts. You do have to look at how many years it covers. Typically it is about exclusivity. Sometimes inside of those deals there are incentives. They rely on the continuation of a show being produced, or such and such.

But generally speaking I think we can say that Courtney Kemp just made a massive mega truckload full of money and I am thrilled for her. I think it’s fantastic. As long as this lasts let’s just keep doing it.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** It’s a good time to be a showrunner in television.

**John:** Indeed. People who have been doing this for quite a long time, Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame, reached a $935 million deal that will keep them at – what’s crazy it’s not actually for South Park. It’s for like things related to South Park. So they’ll be making 13 or 14 South Park movies for Paramount+ which is good.

Here’s the point where I think I’ve said this before on the podcast but back when I first starting out in Hollywood, so I was still in the Stark program. I was at a bar called Three of Clubs which still exists and a friend introduced me to this other guy who was also from Boulder, Colorado. I was talking to him. He seemed kind of down on his luck. I said what are you working on. He’s like oh I’m doing this Christmas card for this guy who works at MTV. I felt kind of bad for him because he seemed to really be sort of struggling. But that Christmas card was of course South Park and that was Trey Parker.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I said, “Troy, it was nice to meet you,” at the end of our conversation. That’s the last time I talked to Trey Parker. But you know what? Things are going great for those duos.

**Craig:** He’s doing OK. Yeah, so Trey and Matt have created an empire and what’s fascinating about what’s happened over the last few years is that something like South Park is – it’s the perfect storm for deal-making in the modern era. Friends we all know was this enormous drive for Netflix. And it was probably one of the reasons that HBO/Warner Bros suddenly said what are we doing. Why are we giving all of our stuff to Netflix? Let’s just make our own thing.

South Park, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, the things that they make, the world they’ve created has a library that’s enormous already and it will continue to grow. That is a perfect situation for a new streamer like HBO Max because it just creates tremendous value for everybody who is showing up and promises tremendous value to come.

We are starting to see what our work is worth. And that is exciting. Part of the deal that they made has to do with revenue sharing and ad sharing. It’s very complicated. Every time one of these things happens everybody else stops, looks at it, and goes well why don’t I have that. It will also continue to drive things up. It’s exciting.

I’m excited. I’m looking ahead to things. I am not worth a billion dollars. I can assure you of that. But those guys are.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So congratulations to Trey and Matt. It’s exciting. And they are brilliant. And the work they do is brilliant. And I have to believe – I’ve just heard that they’re good guys. I’ve never met them personally but I’ve heard they’re really solid guys. I have to hope and believe that the people that are important to the creation of their stuff are also being taken care of well.

**John:** Well I’ll tell you when I met Trey 25 years ago he seemed perfectly nice in the five minutes I had.

**Craig:** Oh, well, nothing changes, right? Yeah, hundreds of millions of dollars and success doesn’t change anyone.

**John:** Has never changed anybody.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Not a bit.

**Craig:** Nah.

**John:** All the people we knew back when are exactly the same people they are now.

**Craig:** I have to say if there were a person to bet on not changing I feel like it’s those guys. Because you know so much of what they do is about taking the piss out of people and not being too serious and not being too self-important. So I hope.

**John:** So, you mentioned the Friends at Warners kind of situation, and the South Park situation is kind of weird and interesting because HBO and HBO Max/Warners had bought the library of rights to South Park and so they have it on HBO Max. But, this deal is with Paramount+. And so it’s a weird thing where they’re not getting the library back yet. So they can get all of the future sort of South Parky things.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So it’s honestly sort of more like when the cast of Friends renegotiated their deals for a million dollars apiece, to keep them there in the family.

**Craig:** That makes total sense. They seem incredibly reliable. I mean, year after year after year they just keep putting content out. And people like it. So, it’s a good blue chip story even as you say if the entirety of the library isn’t there, what’s coming is going to be there.

**John:** And plus they’re buying Casa Bonita in Denver which is very exciting for me as a Coloradoan.

**Craig:** That is so awesome. Awesome. Oh my god. Casa Bonita.

**John:** Finally we should talk about the $900 billion sale of Hello Sunshine which is the Reese Witherspoon production entity which has made a ton of really well regarded shows, some of which star Reese Witherspoon but some of which don’t. We have other friends who work for that company. Good on them.

**Craig:** Yeah, totally good on them. This one is a little confusing because they have made a lot of good shows but they don’t own those shows. So, this was an outside investment. This is private equity coming in and purchasing the company. And there must be a plan beyond just the show Hello Sunshine and I guess they also have a little bit of ownership in Little Fires Everywhere. But I have to believe that this is really about Reese Witherspoon expanding her brand the way that for instance Jessica Alba became a billionaire by expanding her brand. That has to be what’s going on here. That this is not just about television shows but about more.

**John:** Yeah. Because Reese Witherspoon is an influencer in the literary space as well, so her book club is successful. In many ways she’s kind of an Oprah for a new generation and that could be really sort of what this investment is for to enable more stuff along those lines to happen. So, this is a situation where it’s not about a writer-creator-showrunner but really a place that could make stuff for your entity.

**Craig:** In retrospect all will be kind of judged and evaluated when there are big gold rushes in Hollywood, and this is not the first time there’s been a big gold rush, there are winners and there are losers. There are good bets, there are bad bets. Sometimes the good ones turn out bad. Sometimes the ones that seem bad will turn out great. I don’t envy anybody that’s making billion dollar bets on things. I’m glad I don’t have to do that sort of thing. I just have to sit here and right.

**John:** Yeah. Back in our day when we were first starting out to make an overall deal at a place was kind of a big deal. We were very excited to do it. Actually I first got to know you because you and I made a deal for a bunch of writers over at Fox. We sort of pitched around town about doing this writers deal at various places and Fox was the one that took us up. And that was really exciting and important.

I think what’s changed so much is that with the rise of these streamers and they need so much content that outside of the feature space it does really make sense to lock down some creators to make sure they’re making stuff for you.

**Craig:** Yeah. And to take care of the ones you have. I hope HBO is listening. No, they’ve been very nice to me. When you and I were starting in the feature business I think you probably had at least a few moments like I did where you look over at the people in the television business and went, “What? You’re making how much?” It just seemed like these insane numbers. And oftentimes they wouldn’t have to do anything for those insane numbers. They were just like sitting in an office and, I don’t know, getting high and earning crazy amounts of money.

Well, it’s still that way except more. More money. The deals that were always good for television writers have become vastly better. The numbers are eye-popping. And this is going to continue while Hollywood is building a new kind of business. And that is excellent for creators. It’s important for us all as we go through this, and as I just mentioned with Matt and Trey, to continue to think about the people who are not creators, that are not showrunners, but who are doing creative labor in our business because it is fairly typical of Hollywood to start handing out crazy amounts of money to individuals and then sort of recoup some of that on the margin by cheaping out on everyone else.

So, hopefully that’s not what happens here and it’s important for showrunners to make sure that people are being compensated fairly.

**John:** What was different as we started is that a lot of producers would have deals at studios. And so you’d say like, oh, Mace Neufeld would have a deal over at Paramount and so you’d go there to make your movie there. There’s much less of that now. And so this is really taking the place of producers doing those things. The challenge is a lot of these writer-creator-showrunners they have limited capacity.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** If they’re actually creating shows they can’t sort of also do a bunch of other stuff. And so as a person right now who is taking out a project or looking at places to go with this project I’m really mindful of like, oh, I really like that person as a writer but I don’t think they actually have the capacity to produce this thing. And that’s going to be – I think we’re going to see more challenges around that area coming up in the next couple of years where people have these great deals and they’re so talented but they cannot actually make stuff with other people.

**Craig:** I suspect that for most of these deals these companies are actually paying for shows. They are not paying for empires. There are a few people that can empire run. So our friend Greg Berlanti is just the king of empire running. I think there’s no amount of shows that he’s not capable of producing. Courtney is the power behind Power.

**John:** And all the spinoffs of Power.

**Craig:** Correct. That franchise is kind of I think really what they’re paying for there. Although of course they would be thrilled to get even more from her and I have no doubt that she has more coming. And we know kind of what they’re looking for from Trey and Matt. They’re looking for the sort of things that Trey and Matt do, whatever is that next show. This is kind of a good thing I think. There was a time when the best paid people in the business were people that were not writing or acting or directing, which is crazy.

I think when we all look back on it we’ll go, “What? Why? Why those people?” It’s good that the money is now flowing into the pockets of the people who are creating the shows, who are key elements of those shows, like Mike Schur for instance. He has his show, and then he has another show. And that’s how it’s going to function. That’s what they’re paying for.

**John:** But he can also help out on other people’s – he seems to have the capability to help out on other people’s stuff as well. And Mindy Kaling has other shows as well. There are some of those people who are talented creators themselves who can also help out, but it’s different than sort of the old days where you had just a producer who was sort of running a fiefdom.

**Craig:** Yeah. And one thing that I think is really positive about writers and writer-producers being the people that get paid the most is that writer-producers really do care mostly – I would say most of them really do care about the show they’re making, or the two shows they’re making. They care less about amassing insane amounts. Nobody gets into the writing business to become a billionaire. If you want to be a billionaire go into the hedge fund business. We care about things.

So, that’s positive. Whereas I think the non-writing, non-directing, non-acting producers, a few of them truly did care, truly do care. Lindsay Doran is my favorite example. A whole bunch of them just wanted more. They were just amassing money and clout. And I will not miss those. There are people that I think became very powerful and also really were – like Jerry Bruckheimer is in many ways a creator. He’s like a showrunner of the movies. I mean, that’s why there’s this continuity among Jerry Bruckheimer films. But you and I know a lot of producers where it’s like, “What? Really? You?”

**John:** They’re really good scrappy – they’re good at attaching themselves to things. They don’t actually add a lot of value.

**Craig:** No. Their genius is in convincing people that they’re necessary and worth a lot of money when they’re not. So, bye.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

**John:** All right. Let’s take a little bit of follow up here. This is a listener question, a listener suggestion. So let’s take a listen to what Greg Beam wrote in.

**Greg Beam:** Hey John and Craig. This is Greg from El Paso. I thoroughly enjoyed the rebroadcast of The Worst of the Worst. As a relatively new listener I didn’t catch it the first time around and I was glad to hear your thoughts on why protagonists need to suffer so much. But I did want to suggest that – I think you could have taken your analysis one step further and to demonstrate how I’m afraid I’ll have to invoke the hero’s journey.

According to Joseph Campbell the outward transformation and corresponding triumph that heroes of myth experience is the external representation of a deeper inner transformation. The hero not only overcomes their personal shortcomings or the evils of their society but transcends all limitations of the human condition.

Doing so requires a stripping away, not just of all they have, but of all they are. The death of their individual identity. Their sense of self. Their ego. And only once the hero’s whole self has been hallowed out can they become a vessel to be filled with the light of god to recognize the oneness of all things. It’s a radical conversion of root and branch break with their previous mode of being and one that is only possible following a total loss of self.

Now this isn’t meant to critique or diminish narratives that don’t have overt spiritual content. They’re perfectly valid and valuable as they are. But being aware of the transcendental sources from which their patterns spring can in my mind and Campbell’s add some depth to our understanding of what these stories represent and how they work in our minds and hearts.

Anyway, no question here. Just a thought. Thanks guys.

**Craig:** Well, thank you Greg.

**John:** Yeah. So we were talking I think two episodes ago about you mentioned Song of Roland as that sort of first mythic quest in sort of a modern context idea. How do you respond – how do you feel about Greg’s suggestion that really the worst we should be thinking back to the archetypal, the demigod level of everything being not just destroyed externally but destroyed internally for that journey to begin?

**Craig:** Well interesting. The Chanson de Roland I don’t think he has any change whatsoever. He’s awesome. He continues to be awesome. And then he finishes awesome. There were some very simple things like that. But Greg is right. I mean, the old, very traditional, very basic narratives were far more broad in the character swings that occurred. You had to die to live. It’s kind of how it works. Jesus had to die to live. He didn’t have to get super sick. Whereas in Unforgiven William Money gets a fever. And he has fever dreams. And then he wakes up and he’s sort of a different guy.

The important thing is that the concept of being reborn – I think everybody is fairly familiar with the notion that that is a flexible and extendable concept. You can mush it around and drag it around and metaphorize it however you want. But killing something within you and having something being reborn in you, yeah, that’s basically underneath it.

I think the modern narrative tends to avoid full hallowing outs. But if Greg’s point is that you kind of need to know where it all comes from I don’t disagree. Look back at the old stories. You know, you don’t send a flood to kill a third of the people. You send a flood to kill everyone. And that’s how it used to be.

**John:** Yeah. It’s not hard for me to think of examples of non – well, they’re mythic movies but they’re contemporary movies, or contemporary-ish movies that do sort of destroy everything about the characters and rebuild them. So you look at Terminator and sort of what happens to Linda Hamilton’s character. She’s living a normal life and everything about her normal life has to be stripped away and destroyed and she has to become a completely new person because of what’s happened.

You look at The Matrix and Neo and everything he believed about his life can no longer exist. He cannot be the same person he was at the start of the movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So that transformation is complete. I agree that it’s good to understand that in the archetypal, epic versions of these characters it’s going to happen. I think we cannot have that be the litmus test for most heroes in most movies. Because I think the audience just won’t accept that in a rom-com or some other sort of contemporary movie that a character would really go through such a huge transformation where everything actually has to be destroyed in their lives, or they have to be completely divorced from where they are because in many ways in our modern films we do want the characters to change and to grow, but we want them to be able to go back to the place where they began, you know, as a person who has learned something but not necessarily with everything they knew before destroyed.

**Craig:** I think that’s perfectly said.

**John:** Cool. All right. Let’s go to a question from Sarah Folks. Megana, could you read this for us?

**Megana Rao:** Sarah writes in, “I have a question about writing the ‘professor gives a lecture’ scene in movies. I’ve seen a number of films in which a high school or college student sits in a classroom and listens to a lecture, participates in a class discussion. Sometimes it’s math and the student looks bored. Sometimes the professor is reading poetry and the student looks enraptured. I’ve also watched scenes in which the professor is giving a lecture on the subtext of the film. For example this is a film about colonialism so the professor is giving a lecture on colonialism.

“Sometimes this works as in I would argue Kenneth Lonergan’s fantastic scenes in Margaret and sometimes it really doesn’t. But what is it that doesn’t work and what is it that does? How can a seminar/classroom scene build character and mood even if the student is just listening and when is it just lazy writing?”

**John:** That’s actually a really great question. And I think it’s actually a specific case or the general case of whenever you have your hero listening rather than talking, so there could be situations where there’s a coach talking, a pastor, a commanding officer. And those are scenes that are common and I don’t think we’ve really spoken about them very much on the show. They can be good. They can be bad, as Sarah points out. But maybe Craig and I we can figure out what are the characteristics of that kind of scene that work well and what are the kinds of characteristics or like oh you need to really rewrite that or rethink why you’re doing this scene.

**Craig:** Well, it’s easy to write the scene where the student is bored. You just write the professor being boring. And that’s the point. And you also know just by definition that that scene is not going to go on that long. Otherwise the audience will be bored. You just need enough to know that our character, our hero, is bored.

When you’re writing the version where they are enraptured/inspired/moved it requires you to write well. You need to write something that actually inspires and moves the people in the audience. So if you want to put Robin Williams in front of a classroom and have him talk about poetry it’s got to be awesome. And Tom Schulman made it awesome.

And that’s how you get them. Isn’t that awful? You need to write well. It’s such a pain in the ass.

**John:** Well here’s I think what you’re describing though is that the hero, the established hero of the film who is sitting in that audience is a proxy for us as the audience. So we have to be with our hero in experiencing this. And so if it’s boring then we’re bored with him. But more likely we’re enraptured or compelled or feeling confrontational to the speaker. We’re there with him. We’re responding the same way that he’s responding to what is being said. And that’s just going to be writing.

In many cases it’s like responding to a monologue. So, it’s a situation where whoever is talking is going to be largely uninterrupted and is going to be presenting this information. Now if that information feels like an info dump, that it’s exposition, there’s a ticking clock for how much exposition we’re willing to take. But if it’s something that is actually meant to engage and transform our listener, great, we just have to be able to see it. And so I think you should always be thinking about those scenes, not just focused on the person who’s talking but how and when is the camera going to be aimed at our hero taking in this information and processing this information. What is the reaction that we are seeing on the hero’s face as this is happening?

**Craig:** Yeah. And that means that that person who is hearing this needed to hear it. There was something in them that was missing and this lecture is filling it. Or there was something in them that they were wobbling on and this lecture is challenging it. But there has to be context. It can’t just be well this is a great freaking speech. It has to turn on whatever the character needed so that we understand this is the moment that matters. Now the character is changing.

**John:** Another thing that distinguishes some of these scenes from other scenes is like is that person who is speaking, the lecturer, is that a recurring character? Is that a character who is going to show up later on in the story or is this the one shot they have? If it’s the one shot they have then who that person is is not so important down the road. But in many cases that teacher character will recur and so be thinking about what are the beats and how are we going to see them in this way in this context in this classroom scene versus later on in the film. And what is the relationship really between your hero and this lecturer? That matters a lot.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let me play a clip from Frankenweenie because Frankenweenie has a teacher character I created called Mr. Rzykruski who challenges the classroom and I think it’s an example of the kinds of things we’re talking about. So this is early on Frankenweenie, the character will appear twice more, but this is his first scene.

[Clip plays]

**Mr. Rzykruski:** Lightening is simply electricity. The cloud is angry. Yes, we make it storm. All the electrons are saying I am leaving you. I go to the land of opportunity. The ground says yes we need the electrons trained in science just like you. Come! Come! Welcome! So both sides start to build a ladder. This man, he comes out to look at the storm. He does not see the invisible ladders. When the two ladders meet, BOOM! The circuit is complete and all of the electrons rush to the land of opportunity. This man is in the way. Yiii!

[Clip ends]

**John:** So in this scene what was important is that we’re introducing this scary new substitute science teacher and he’s going to be doing an info dump about what electricity is because electricity has been powering these monster creations. But it’s really about the kids’ reaction to him. And they are so excited to have this scary man as their science teacher and how inspiring it is to Victor who is going to be the kid character that we’re following. So it’s setting up that there’s a new character here, but also that they’re responding to him sort of the way that we would respond to him. The kids in the classroom are the same place that we are in terms of like oh my gosh this guy is crazy.

**Craig:** And you needed those kids to be scared. It was important.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So that kind of guides the way that person is going to do what they do. So, I suppose if we had some kind of sum up advice for Sarah it would be boring is boring, that’s easy. And inspiring means there must be a space in the character that needs inspiration, that needs to have some kind of impact. Fear. Excitement. Enrapture. Shame. Whatever it is. They needed to hear this and then you have to write it well on the other side.

**John:** Yeah. So with Frankenweenie that scene had to exist in the movie or else a lot of the other dominoes wouldn’t have fallen correctly. But it needed to be a good scene that actually would last in the movie. So that’s the crucial thing.

All right, speaking of crucial scenes that need to stay in their movies. Let’s take a look at the first three pages–

**Craig:** Segue Man.

**John:** Of some of our different scripts here. We have three entries here. So for people who are new to the Three Page Challenge if you go to johnaugust.com/threepage you can submit the first three pages of a script. It could be a TV script or a feature script. It goes into a big bucket and every once and a while Megana goes through all those scripts in that big bucket and picks several of them for us to discuss on the show. This is not a competition. This is just an exhibition. We are looking at pages that people submitted.

Sometimes they’re great. Sometimes they have real challenges. We tend to focus on the ones that have things that we can talk about, so either things that they’re doing really, really well on the page, or things that could be done better. So we have three of them to talk through. If you want to read along with us you can follow the link in the show notes to the PDFs you can download and go with us. But Megana if you could start us out with a summary of this first one. Trickster: Night of Kitsune by Hiroshi Mori.

**Megana Rao:** In 1920s Japan Tsuneko, a woman in her 20s, hides with her daughter, Etsuko, 13, in the backroom of a house as a mob of angry villagers accuse Tsuneko of being a fox devil. Her husband, Mongaku, relents to the crowd’s demands and the villagers drag her away. The villagers bury up to her neck in the middle of the town square. She’s then ripped apart by dogs. They tell Mongaku to behead her with a blessed spear, but when he approaches the body has already disappeared. We then cut to a Manga comic page.

**John:** Craig, what’s your response to Trickster: Night of the Kitsune?

**Craig:** I am a big fan of Japanese historical fiction. I just love the Samurai Era. I love the Meiji Restoration. I love all of it. So I was excited. I had many, many, many, many problems and all of them I think ultimately turned on Hiroshi Mori’s issue with action. And I don’t mean action as in the stuff that’s happening. I mean the things that aren’t dialogue. I had some dialogue issues, too. But this is a good example of a script that needs to be re-approached from the point of view of description and visuals. And it begins with the very first line, “SUPER: OVER IMAGES OF A RURAL JAPANESE VILLAGE. JAPAN, TAISHO ERA, 1920’S.”

First of all, if you’re going to put a super and there’s a date it must be a year at the minimum. It can’t be a decade. 1920s makes no sense. It’s 1921, it’s 1923. But be specific so that we understand that you cared enough to place it in a year. But most importantly “over images of a rural Japanese village.” That’s useless.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** It’s useless. You’ve got to paint the picture. You must fill my mind. And I know what – I happen to know what those villages look like, and they’re gorgeous, and they’re fascinating. And Japanese landscape is often beautiful because it’s an earthquake and volcano prone Pacific Rim nation. So is it kind of terraced? Is it on the shore? Is it among the mountains? Tell me. I need to know.

The house, “In the storage area of a wood farm house,” wood farm houses in 1920s Japan do not look like wood farm houses in 1970 the US. We need to know what. “TSUNEKO, late 20’s, with haunting, piercing eyes,” we don’t know if she’s male or female unless you are Japanese.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Right?

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** We don’t know if Tsuneko is a female or male name, so give us a sense of gender.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s talk about how you would do this, because I was looking for how is the easy way to do this, because you’re not going to say female. That feels clunky. So I think as quickly as you can in that next sentence find a way to flip stuff around so you can get a she or a her in there so we know a gender on this character who is so important.

**Craig:** Absolutely. So Tsuneko, late 20s, with haunting, piercing eyes. She crouches down next to…right.

**John:** That would do it.

**Craig:** That would do it. Tsuneko throughout is going to confuse me, emotionally. I don’t know why she isn’t more scared. She seems super calm. Then she’s screaming. Then she’s grumpy. And we go outside to a mob of ten villagers. Just so you know ten villagers isn’t a lot. Ten people on screen looks like three people. It’s kind of weird how that works.

And I want to know more about the mob. Because if you don’t tell me more about the mob then I’m just going to assume it’s like cliché mob.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk about villagers and mobs, because there’s happy villagers and there’s angry mob, but they’re so cliché. You do need to just be specific. So one guy is identified as being a shopkeeper or something. Great. But I just need a better sense of what this is because I don’t really quite have a sense of the period either. Because you can say 1920s but I’m not quite sure what that looks like in Japan. How rural is this? Are these farmers? Is this a city? I don’t really know where I am.

**Craig:** Correct. The villagers are going to sort of tell you too much now. Villager 1, and Villager 1 and Villager 2, we talked about before not our favorite thing to see in a script. Villager 1 delivers one of the more expository speeches a villager can deliver. He says, “She is a fox-devil. She is a shape shifter. You had no money until you found her in the forest. You brought her here, made her your wife, and used her fox-devil tricks to make you rich.” Unless this villagers job is literally the village summarizer this is not how people talk, particularly in a high pressure violent riotous scene.

**John:** And Craig I kept wanting this to be night and it’s day throughout.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It feels strange to me that it’s daytime. It’s OK that it’s day. It can totally work in daytime. But it feels like a night scene to me and I feel like maybe I just have the expectations of torches or something. It feels strange. What was the inciting incident that got us to this moment right where we are? And I think all these problems sort of come back to a point of view problem. It’s the point of view, who are we supposed to follow? The husband who is the one who is ultimately going to go out there with the spear to decapitate his wife? Is it the little daughter? Is it–?

**Craig:** Tsuneko?

**John:** Who are we actually supposed to be following here? Because if we knew that then this whole thing could probably be shorter, tighter, and better.

**Craig:** I agree. And one reason to set it in the day counter to the typical mob at the front door of a home, and it’s very hard to do that scene in a way that hasn’t been done four billion times before, is perhaps to have Tsuneko look through a slat of wood or something and see them outside. Right now everyone is so disconnected. And Mongaku – what Mongaku says here, it’s really important to think always, just a simple question, what would someone say?

So villager one outlines in quite startling detail why the mob is here. And villager two confirms that. Adds on she made us poor. She tricked us out of our money. Get her. And Mongaku says, “Please. This is a misunderstanding.” Does that seem like something that would work?

**John:** No. Not in this moment. Not when there’s actually a mob there. You know, early on as things just begin to escalate a little bit, sure, but not when the actual mob shows up there to take your wife and kill her.

**Craig:** Yes. You would beg. You would tell them you’re sorry. You would tell them it wasn’t her. You would accuse somebody else. What you wouldn’t do is talk to them like they were grouching at you because they think you took their latte order at Starbucks when it was really theirs. “Move or we’ll burn your house down.” Um, they want to kill his wife. And what they’re saying is don’t make us burn your house. But it’s like well the house is not the big issue right now. I could build another one of those. I think it’s move or we’ll kill you. Right? Or we’ll burn you and your daughter alive, right? Or we’ll kill your daughter. It can’t just be the house.

So what’s happening, Hiroshi, is there’s just a lot of lapses in what I would call logical human psychology. You have to just really ask yourself every step of the way what would work. What would make sense? What would actually be said here?

**John:** Yeah. I want to pitch, going through this sequence and taking out all the dialogue until we get to, “This forest demon isn’t human. She can’t replace your mom. Forget you ever saw her.” If we took out all the actual real dialogue there other than maybe some pleading just to get to that point. Because it looks like they’re just trying to capture this woman and then you find out they actually think she’s a demon. That’s really exciting.

And so if we saw this action and the first time we get that they don’t think she’s even human is there that’s kind of interesting to me.

**Craig:** I agree. In fact here’s my – I like this, here’s our pitch. Here’s my pitch. My pitch is this thing opens with a woman buried up to her neck and she is swollen and she is dying and she’s looking at this little girl. And this guy sits down next to her and he says, “I know this is upsetting but I want to explain why we did this. She’s a forest demon. She’s not human. You need to forget you ever saw her. This is all good for the village. Here’s what she did.” He just calmly explains the whole thing and then says, “And above all she definitely was not your mother.” And you go, oh, that was her mom.

There’s got to be something about relationship that matters to the girl. It all has to be contextualized in terms of relationship or else it’s just stuff happening and it’s not particularly surprising or interesting.

**John:** Yeah. And that same dialogue delivered by a woman could be more compelling than by a man.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** There’s choices that could sort of make this feel more specific. And it all depends on sort of like what is it really tying into because at the bottom of page three we’re jumping forward and seeing there’s a Manga connection. So this may be a story within a story. Even so it needs to be–

**Craig:** It’s got to be a good story.

**John:** It needs to be super compelling. It’s got to be a good story because this is how you’re starting your movie.

**Craig:** 100%. It has to be awesome. Especially if the idea is that this is a story that somebody is actually drawing in a manga. Or it just happens that we jump ahead in time and that girl has been reincarnated as a young woman who draws manga. It doesn’t matter. Either way the opening here has to be incredibly compelling. That’s just how it goes.

**John:** Two little craft notes here. On page 2, “EXT. Village, Tsuneko’s dragged into a large two-story building.” So it’s apostrophe-S Tsuneko’s. I would say it’s a bad choice to do the apostrophe-S on things that aren’t a possession, especially in this case. Because you’re not saving anything and it’s just confusing. I can’t tell is it a thing that’s being dragged. It’s just confusing. Tsuneko is dragged. Or better yet, someone drags Tsuneko. Just show the active thing.

The next paragraph, “Tsuneko’s head bloodied and bruised sticks out of the ground.” Tsuneko’s bloodied and bruised head sticks out of the ground. Moving the head after the adjectives just makes the whole thing clearer.

**Craig:** Or making it a positive phrase and putting commas around bloodied and bruised.

**John:** Bloodied and bruised, yes.

**Craig:** But Tsuneko’s head, bloodied and bruised, shouldn’t run together. Also she opens her eyes and then she opens them again. There’s a continuity error even within the writing which is something you really want to avoid.

**John:** Yeah. And when you hear like “Tsuneko opens her swollen red eyes. Makes eye contact with Etsuko.” But what is the purpose? What is she trying to communicate?

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** This is a case where tell us why she’s doing it. Tell us what we’re supposed to feel because right now I don’t know. And that’s not helpful.

**Craig:** It’s not. And it also veers us away from this next bit which is pretty disgusting but I suppose where dogs eat her face. But if we understood that Etsuko was watching this happen then I would understand why I’m watching it. But if you take away the point of view of her daughter and just show her getting her face eaten which is a weird transition by the way from I’m looking at you to now my face is being eaten, then it just seems like you just want to show me her face being eaten.

Also, if someone’s face gets eaten by dogs they die.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t understand how she’s alive after that. Maybe because she’s a fox-demon.

**Craig:** But then if she’s a fox-demon then everybody should freaking the F out. Like apparently the fox-demon you can eat her face and she still lives. So, it just – yeah, there were multiple issues here and I think the most important thing to take away from this, Hiroshi, is fill the visual picture in. Ground all of the moments in relationships. Think about perspective always. And make sure that everyone says and does things that comport logically with normal human psychology in extraordinary, abnormal moments.

**John:** Yup. Agreed.

**Craig:** All right. What’s next?

**John:** All right. Let’s move on to Martha. If you could give us a summary, Miss Megana.

**Megana:** Great. So we meet plump 45-year-old Martha alone on Ladies’ Night at a Midtown Manhattan strip club. Martha is an enthusiastic and generous regular. She slips $100 bills into G-strings and everyone seems to know her by name. Martha asks Bobby who is “working tonight” and Bobby points him in the direction of the new go-go dancer, Derek. Derek’s friend tells him that Martha is a good time but she’s strong, so he should definitely have a safe word. Martha leads Derek out to her driver and car making several off-color jokes about how this might be the last time Derek sees his friends. In the back of the car Martha pours Derek scotch and condoms fall from the ceiling.

**John:** Great. So this is Martha by Caroline O’Riordan.

**Craig:** John, what did you think?

**John:** I liked that this was a big character. A big introduction on a big character. Martha is sort of brash and brassy and unapologetic and sort of seems very comfortable in her skin in a way that was interesting and compelling. I felt like the men in this story were not nearly as compelling and they didn’t need to be such bright spotlights. But I didn’t know really who Bobby was at all and this last stripper who got in the car. I wanted to have a sense of who he was just so I could sense what is the drama/comedy that’s going to be possible to happen next.

**Craig:** Yeah. I wonder just from the name Martha, I wonder if this is Caroline’s tricky way of saying Arthur. Because it reminds me so much of Arthur. A boozy bachelor who has a butler. And who goes around and lives the life of an utter reprobate. And then is going to meet somebody that kind of sets them straight. And so here we’re doing the distaff version of that. And I thought honestly what was working really well was I understood where I was. I could see the room. Geography made sense. Caroline was making sure that when somebody talked to somebody that they go there first.

The only thing I really would suggest she kind of look at is there’s a broadness in the rest of the world. I like how broad Martha is, but the rest of the world feels broad. So the guys, the issue with the male strippers is that they kind of feel like the waiters in Hello Dolly. Do you know what I mean?

**John:** I do. Yeah.

**Craig:** They’re like, ah, Martha. They don’t seem–

**John:** They’re not in reality. And they’re in sort of her heightened reality and they’re not real to us.

**Craig:** Particularly because they all behave equally the same. Like they all do the same thing in unison. I also think that her largesse should be larger. A wad of $100 – you know, when she got $100 bills from her bra. Generally it’s hard to see, you’ve got to really hit that number. When she throws money you’ve got to realize those are hundreds. That’s a big deal. She’s also been there for a while so it seems like she suddenly pulled that out and started throwing them around.

**John:** A line like, “Don’t worry, I’ve got a second one.” Basically she’s into her second bra roll.

**Craig:** Right. She finishes this wad of $20s and she’s like, “Sorry guys, that’s it. No more $20s.” And they’re like, “Aw,” and she goes, “And so I guess I’ll use these hundreds.”

**John:** Hundreds. Yeah.

**Craig:** Something to just really sell that this is like kind of a life-changing lady to be around when you’re a stripper because there’s a lot of money coming around. But keeping the rest of the world, like Bobby I think needs to be more grounded. The strippers need to be more grounded. Condoms should not fall from the ceiling.

**John:** I don’t understand where they came from the ceiling. I don’t get that.

**Craig:** Also how many condoms do you need?

**John:** You don’t need a lot.

**Craig:** Maybe like maximum three? You know, three seems a lot. Just, whoosh, condoms drop from the ceiling just seems a little broad. So, keep her broad, and keep the rest of the world super unbroad. Because what made Arthur wonderful, and I’m just again assuming that Caroline is kind of going in that direction, I could be totally wrong, is that he was pathetic. That ultimately he was sad. And you knew that because we were putting this life of the party guy in the middle of very regular New York. And that’s why it worked.

**John:** So a couple little small things on the page, just pickups, because I really didn’t mark this up very much because I thought it largely worked. First line, “It’s Sunday night at the “ultimate ladies night” in Midtown Manhattan. It’s not Friday, and this isn’t Vegas.”

**Craig:** I circled that myself.

**John:** I just thought I don’t know what that means. It’s not Friday, it’s not Vegas.

**Craig:** Also, you just told us it was Sunday in Manhattan. So why do we need the rest of this?

**John:** And the next line is great without it. So just drop that out. Third line, “Perched on a stool and cheering on the DANCERS like a blackout proud parent is MARTHA (45, white, big-eyed, plump).” I don’t get the blackout proud parent.

**Craig:** I don’t either.

**John:** So take out blackout. Proud parent, great. Because I get what you’re going for here is that she’s just really into it. She’s like a super fan here. 45, white, big-eyed, plump. Great. I got a visual for that. I would love to know a little bit more, I’m going to talk like Craig here, hair, makeup, and wardrobe. We can get a little bit more specific here. What is her purse?

**Craig:** Definitely.

**John:** How is she styled? If you want to go back and listen to my conversation with Lorene and Mitch about Hustlers, really sort of what these characters are wearing in these clubs is so important to tell us about who they are and why they’re there. I feel like you have the space here on page one to give us more about Martha because this is her movie.

**Craig:** That’s great advice. I also think Martha doesn’t really get a reveal. And with somebody like her you want one. She deserves one. To go back to Hello, Dolly, one of the great reveals in Broadway history when Dolly, even though we’ve seen her before, we haven’t seen her in her full glory. When she comes down the staircase at the restaurant. You want Martha’s reveal to be wow. To really be something. So I completely agree with those bumps there.

Here’s a moment where I think the first red flag on the kind of too broad rest of the world was when she tosses crumpled bills over her shoulder and stumbles away. “The boys lunge like bridesmaids vying for the bouquet.” Nah.

**John:** They can still have some pride, yeah.

**Craig:** And also because what you want is to see that behind her there is no party. The party is around her and what she sees through her eyes. And behind her is actually – they made an agreement to just divide it up. It’s cleaning for them. It’s sad.

**John:** Yeah. We’ve seen both Magic Mike movies and, yes, those guys are working hard for the money. But they’re not–

**Craig:** It’s work.

**John:** But it’s work. And they’re not just going to scrape or pounce on things.

**Craig:** Correct. Exactly. Bobby – I’d love to get a little bit more of a sense of his feeling about Martha. I don’t know what he thinks of her. “Martha,” she goes, “Bobby, great show. Your boys got me dripping as always,” which is pretty funny. “Martha, the reason I’m open on Sundays.” Well that just feels like a couplet designed to tell me that her name is Martha and his name is Bobby. You know? And Bobby has got to have – there’s no reason he should be matching his tone. He’s got to be like, “Mm, Martha.” You know, wow, I can’t throw you out. I wish I could, but I can’t.” It’s like you’re a huge pain in the ass and you’re just extra.

So we just need to see how the rest of the world is reacting to her. Even if he matches her energy, and then when she looks away he and the bartender look at each other like “oh my god, Martha.”

**John:** Yeah. The other woman in his club, like how are they responding to this high roller who is throwing all this stuff? And what is it like to be in her little bottle service area? There’s all sorts of fascinating things you could do here and you don’t have to do all of them, but I feel like it comes back to just making sure that the rest of the world feels realistic so that her bigness can really stand out.

**Craig:** Yeah. Last little thing I wanted to point out to you Caroline is that there’s no reason for Derek, the selected dancer, to not already know about Martha. Even if he’s new, he’s been watching her all night. So at some point earlier one of the guys would have said something. So, what could work is when they get into the car she’s like, “What did your friends tell you? What did the other guys tell you?” And he could be like, “Um, they said that you were a good time but that you’re stronger than you look and I should get a safe word.” Do you know what I mean? And then she sort of laughs and she’s like it’s so true. So that you don’t have to have this kind of feeling that Derek was just apparently checked out all night while this was going on.

**John:** Yeah. On page three he’s described as “half-naked, Derek shivering from the November air.” Be more specific about half-naked. Because is he still just in his G-string? Does he have his phone with him? Some of that information is kind of great because how vulnerable is he is a great thing to see.

**Craig:** Yeah, and again when Derek drinks the scotch, and you should point out by the way that he drinks, you don’t actually say that, he says, “Whoa, this stuff is intense.” That also feels like he’s from Iowa in 1920. He’s a male stripper. He’s drank before. Even if he doesn’t drink much or whatever, it just seems like he’s, again, he’s a waiter from Hello, Dolly. And you want him to be a guy who strips for a living in Manhattan. You know?

**John:** This is not Schmigadoon.

**Craig:** Correct. It’s not Schmigadoon. Bingo.

**John:** All right. Our final entry. The Many Lives of Newton Thomas by Sean Frost. Megana, can you give us the summary?

**Megana:** A mother and father carry a baby boy in a wicker basket out of a station wagon. They leave him in the basket at the entrance of a children’s home at night. They share a tearful goodbye with the father leaving several small trinkets for the boy before the parents drive away in the car. A voice over tells us that he’s imagined this night hundreds of different ways with the parents crying, held at gunpoint, or stopped before they can leave the baby.

We see the different iterations of the scene until the voice over tells us that he suspects that he’s afraid the truth is that his parents were sad but not distraught and decided to leave the baby of their own volition.

**John:** All right. Craig, what was your take on The Many Lives of Newton Thomas?

**Craig:** I really enjoyed this. I liked this, Sean. I thought that there was a really interesting concept here. There were a couple of little bumps in the road that I want to talk about that are somewhat technical. And I think the idea gets across faster and more effective than you might realize, because I think it was probably a bit too much of it.

I’ll start with the real simple things. “A tired looking MUTLI-STOREY BUILDING.” So we’ve got a type on the fourth word which makes us crazy. You also spell story “storey” which is in the British way.

**John:** So maybe he’s British.

**Craig:** Except that he says a parking lot and the British say a car park. So, you either have to be British or you have to be American. You can’t be both. What was interesting was I was confused at first and then when I got to Newton’s line, “I’ve imagined this night a hundred different ways,” I went ah-ha. And that’s fine, except for one bit of confusion and that is she’s holding a baby, wrapped in blankets, and she’s going to put that baby in a basket.

We understand that that baby is an infant. That’s what that is. But the baby says, “Vroom, vroom.” Babies don’t do that. They don’t talk and when they do talk it’s a lot of mama, baba, bebe, but it’s not vroom, vroom about a car. That’s more like a 1.5 or two-year-old, which is definitely not the sort of like I’m going to put you in a little blanket and put you in a little basket. You say baby boy. So I would change that bit.

But I thought it was interesting that the first part seemed kind of off and unrealistic. And then you found out why.

**John:** I took the vroom, vroom as being magical realism. It was impossible for the baby to say that, but it was sort of an imagined.

**Craig:** I would acknowledge that. That’s perfectly fine. But then I would acknowledge that somewhat improbably the baby says. But I thought there was a really interesting kind of iteration of things that happened. The one I would strongly suggest to get rid of is you say sometimes they cry, and so they’re sobbing as they put the baby down. Sometimes they don’t. And there’s a kind of the dad is stone faced and the mom is sad, but noticeably not crying. But the version that you propose is the one that’s probably real is the version where you say, “I do this cause I’m afraid what really happened was more like this.” And then you see that they are not crying and they are just sort of neutral.

And so I wouldn’t step on that. I would keep them happy or sad or scared or Iron Man comes in. And I would strongly recommend that in the bit where at the end, the reveal, Newton says – here’s what Newton says in voice over, “I do this cause I’m afraid what really happened was more like this. No tears. No guy running down the street – and definitely no Iron Man trying to stop a guy from shooting my Dad. Which is why I like to imagine it differently.” And I think maybe all you need is “I do this because I’m afraid what really happened was more like this.”

And then you just see them put the baby down, they don’t really care, and they drive away. And then you go back to the little baby. So the rest of it we’re seeing it. We get it.

**John:** Yeah. So as I was reading it the parents are so vaguely described, and it sort of makes sense that they be vaguely described, sort of generic versions, because he doesn’t necessarily know who they are.

**Craig:** He doesn’t know them.

**John:** But I went back and forth in terms of like should we see their faces or not see their faces. There’s a version of this where we don’t actually ever fully see their faces. But then we can’t really tell if they’re crying or not. So I guess you do have to cast people that you are seeing this. But maybe you just call out early in the scene description a somewhat generic like white man, white woman just so we get a sense of like they’re deliberately not specific. That he’s just sort of remembering them or imagining them as these people.

A bigger issue is I had is Craig how old is Newton our narrator?

**Craig:** Well, that’s a great question. I have no clue.

**John:** I have no clue. And it really does matter because if it’s being told by a ten-year-old versus a 30-year-old it’s a very different feel. And so I think we need to find a place on page one, either after Newton’s first line, or after his second line just to give us a sense of the age of the narrator because it really does change the read, sort of how we’re reading this. If it’s a kid narrating versus an adult narrating it.

**Craig:** That’s a fantastic point. I think in my mind I must have defaulted to young adult. But you’re absolutely right. We do need to know what we’re hearing there. And I don’t know if this is a movie or meant to be a show. It feels like a movie. And The Many Lives of Newton Thomas perhaps implies that here’s somebody who is imagining Walter Mitty style the different paths his life might have taken had it gone different ways. But it’s a really nice start.

**John:** Agreed. It’s a nice start.

**Craig:** It’s a nice start. Oh, one last thing, Sean. New Beginnings Children’s Home. Mm, we can see what you’re doing there. It’s too much. You don’t need that. You can back off the gas pedal on that one I think.

**John:** Yeah. Here’s the other thing. Beyond the name of it, every time we see a slug line with that, because it’s a really slug line and we’re going to be coming back to this a lot, even though we’re not going to really read it every time a shorter slug line I think will just get us through the page a little bit faster.

I would also cut on page two the masked figure says, “Do it or I’ll shoot.” The Mom reluctantly lays the Baby in the basket. The Masked Figure lowers their gun. The Dad sighs in relief. What? Just “do it or I’ll shoot.” Just get out of there on that line. You don’t need the rest of it.

**Craig:** I agree.

**John:** So both this script and our first script had draft dates on those. Don’t do those. Not necessary.

**Craig:** Don’t need them.

**John:** Have one date on your script. That’s great. But don’t tell us this is the second draft. We don’t care. It should be your best draft. This is the draft we’re reading. That’s all that matters is the draft we’re reading. So on the title page you don’t need to put what draft this is. Just put a date.

**Craig:** I agree. We don’t need to see your paperwork.

**John:** Nope. Not required.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So I want to thank our three entrants this week. Thank you for sending this out. And everybody else who sent in all of these Three Page Challenges, Megana went through a zillion of them. So thank you Megana for reading through all of these.

**Craig:** Thank you, Megana.

**John:** And if you have your own three pages you want to submit go to johnaugust.com/threepage. And we might talk about your pages on a future episode.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Craig, we’re running long but I want to get to one question. A question from Chris. If Megana you could ask that.

**Megana:** Chris asks, “In light of so many Americans believing that the COVID-19 vaccine injects sinister tracking technologies into the body or that the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting victims are all paid crisis actors I find myself wondering is it morally wrong to be writing conspiracy theory stories in this day and age? Have writers been inadvertently conditioning the public to think that massively coordinated government misdeeds are commonplace and that it’s good to always mistrust the government and the media because they’re all in on it? Could QAnon have happened without 11 seasons of the X-Files conditioning its viewers to be paranoid? And are we as writers making things worse every time we work a dark conspiracy into one of our stories?”

**John:** Oh, Chris asking a big question.

**Craig:** That’s an amazing question.

**John:** I think it’s a great question. I think we have some complicity in sort of narrativizing conspiracies and building a universe in which there’s always a twist and there’s always a secret bad guy organization behind stuff. So, yes, and here’s I guess the degree to which there’s any evidence to back this up is when you talk to prosecutors or defense attorneys for that matter when juries are in the courtroom and they’re seeing evidence they believe that CSI is real. They believe that all the stuff that they can do on CSI is the standards of how stuff should be working. And so they’re expecting evidence that is actually just impossible. And I think conspiracies are sort of a related thing to that in that people see things on TV and they start to believe oh maybe that’s how the world really works.

So I think I would be nervous writing a conspiracy thriller right now. But Craig I’m curious what you think.

**Craig:** Yeah. So I think we had talked in an earlier episode about the phenomenon of copaganda.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And presenting cops as kind of, I don’t know, just wildly differently than many of them are in the street and not paying any attention to the phenomenon of police brutality and cops as flawed or sometimes completely embedded with ultra-right wing philosophies.

The reason I love this question so much Chris is because I think it is at this point something that is – I’m not going to go all the way and say morally wrong. I’m going to say it ought to give strong, clear pause if you are thinking about writing a conspiracy theory story. Because we have absolutely fed into this. The insistence that the government is portrayed with The Shop. That’s my favorite phrase. The Shop. It’s even behind the CIA. It’s some secret thing behind the CIA and the NSA that basically can do whatever they want. They hear everything. They see everything. They’re completely all-knowing, all-seeing. They can do all this stuff.

Look at The Bourne Identity. The entire concept of The Bourne Identity is insane. It’s insane. And unaccomplishable. And we take that as commonplace. And the insistence that everything that happens in the world has occurred because humans wanted it to happen and that anybody that thinks otherwise is naïve and foolish that’s a problem. It has absolutely fed into this stuff.

I would at this point be so wary of writing a narrative that attempted to undermine what I think is the typical explanation and reason for things going wrong and that is stuff happening, stupidity as opposed to maliciousness. Confusion. Cowardice. Clumsiness. I mean, that’s why Chernobyl fascinated me. It was so human. There was no conspiracy. It was just human.

**John:** And to the degree that there was a conspiracy it was to try to cover up human mistakes.

**Craig:** It was just this mundane don’t blame me. You know? Which seems so true to all of this stuff. You know, I used to laugh at these people who insisted that George Bush did 9/11. And I’m like the same George Bush that couldn’t figure out how to plant one nuclear missile in the desert in Iraq? That guy? Really? No.

And the more we learn about government functions the more we realize that, you know, it’s not always well run. Sometimes it’s no better run than a bad job you had when you were 28. I’m really glad Chris asked this question. If people in Hollywood are writing these kinds of things right now I think they need to stop. And they need to really look at themselves and what they are encouraging.

There are conspiracies. We do know that Russia sends god knows how many bots to try to influence people. That’s a real story. Then investigate it like a real story. Do that. But don’t do the hyper-fictionalized government that knows all, sees all, and controls all.

**John:** Related I think we tend to create stories that are sort of one person against the system. And so the system is corrupt and only one person can bring it down.

**Craig:** Only I can fix this.

**John:** Yes. And I think that only I can fix this problem spills into real life because they start to believe like, oh, they don’t want you to believe this thing, they don’t want you to see this thing. You have to do your own research and really learn for yourself and basically don’t trust anybody. And I think what we’ve learned in this pandemic is that you do need to actually cooperate and work together to get stuff to happen and to get stuff resolved. And so beyond just the out-and-out conspiracy thriller thinking I think we need to just be aware of the degree to which we are feeding into this myth of one person alone makes a difference and that you cannot trust anybody else because the human condition is about trusting other people. That’s what makes us human.

**Craig:** And also just from a creative point of view robs you of relationships, partnerships, people coming together. We love that sort of thing for good reason. Because it mirrors our lives. Problems are not solved by one person. They are solved by people working together.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I’d love to see this change. And I’ve got to believe it is. Like I can’t imagine somebody sitting in a studio right now going, “Ooh, you know what we should do is a conspiracy theory. What really happened to those two planes that crashed, the Boeings?” No, no, it was because Boeing screwed up and they put the thing on the thing.

Yeah, you know, so hopefully.

**John:** I agree with you. I do think there is an awareness of this and I think we should just be vigilant about it and maybe just ask ourselves and ask the folks who are making our entertainment to really think twice before going full conspiracy.

**Craig:** Please think twice.

**John:** All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing comes from listener Tara and she sent through a link to a great collection of TV scripts and not just pilots. And so I will put a link in the show notes to this site. But basically it’s gathering up all of the TV scripts that this person could find online. And it’s really easy to find movie scripts because they’re out for award season. TV scripts, can be pretty easy to find pilots but not easy to find like here’s a random episode from the third season.

So, so helpful if you want to be writing television to just read the scripts and really understand how these scripts work on the page, how shows are formatted. You’ll find that showrunners tend to have a very similar format from year to year, season to season. If you want to copy a style copy the style of the shows that are actually produced. And I think you could spend many hours of your life reading these scripts and be a better education than probably any screenwriting book you could possibly pick up.

**Craig:** That’s a terrific resource. Thank you, Tara. My One Cool Thing is another game. I’ve just been hunting around. Sometimes I go through these dry spells where there’s just nothing good on the app store and then I picked up a couple. You know, the algorithm occasionally coughs up something at me and I go, ooh that.

This game has been around for a little bit. It’s called Circulous. It’s by Chain Reaction Games. It’s for iOS. It might be for Android. I don’t know. I don’t care about Android. And it’s sort of a puzzle game. You play a woman who has just been hired by a company called Circulous. It’s kind of like a Google/Apple corporation. And there is some sort of hacker enemy that’s trying to do stuff and you have to solve a whole bunch of problems.

So it’s kind of escape roomy in that regard. The puzzles are quite fair. They’re difficult but fair. What I love about it is the interface. It does this thing that a lot of games have tried to do and failed. You have your own laptop in the game. And you can tap on a thing that gets you to your laptop and you get notifications and you get emails and there’s like a little mini-browser inside to look up websites. And normally those are just awful in games, it’s almost like they had never seen. And in Circulous they’re quite good. They’ve actually done a really good job of creating that space that we’re really familiar with and making it feel quite functional and good.

So, I’m almost through with it. I think I’m creeping up towards the end but it’s really well done. I play a little bit each night before I pass out. So I highly recommend Circulous. Circulous from Chain Reaction Games.

**John:** Very nice. I will step in. It’s available at least on the Mac and iOS. So it may be available on other platforms as well.

And that is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Andrew Hart and it is the first appearance by Megana in an outro.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Yeah, it’s a good one. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter I am @johnaugust. Craig also sometimes answers questions, but he’s not officially on Twitter anymore.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** We have t-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the Three Page Challenges we talked through so you can download PDFs and read along with us. You’ll find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter also at johnaugust.com. Inneresting has bunch of links to things about writing. So that comes out every Friday.

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 you’re about to hear with me and Sara Schaefer talking about three tips to getting your TV show on the air and the heartbreak that will follow thereafter.

Craig, it is a pleasure chatting with you.

**Craig:** Thanks. Good to be back, John.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** Sara Schaeffer is a writer-producer-comedian and standup comic who has worked on a gazillion comedy variety shows, a lot of them on Comedy Central. Nikki and Sara Live. I’m literally going through your IMDb and you have so many credits Sara.

**Sara Schaefer:** It’s actually ridiculous.

**John:** So you know we’ve had people on the show before who have worked on a late night show, on a late night show for years and years and years, but you’ve popped around so many different things and sort of special events where it sounds like you’re getting together to put on one special event. Do you enjoy that?

**Sara:** Yes and no. So, I’ve hopped around so much in part because I’ve always been trying to get my own projects going, which is the big prize. I’ve done it once with Nikki and Sara Live on MTV. And that was an incredible experience and I’m always trying to sell another project that’s my own idea all the way to fruition. And so in order to do that because it is such a long haul to do that I’ve always taken jobs that are a little more short term. Well, I mean, a lot of times it’s not my choice. I will get hired on a show and it just doesn’t get renewed. Like talk shows. New talk shows are really hard to get going now if you’re not one of the institutional shows, or if you didn’t come from an institution. So I’ll just point to John Oliver and Sam Bee. They have been probably one of the only couple long-running shows. Even Amber Ruffin were talent that were incubated on another institution, like The Daily Show, or Seth Meyers. So that’s part of it.

But also I will hop around because I’m also a touring standup comedian. I’ve just always got my hand in so many different things. And so I like can’t be tied down, man.

**John:** No. We had Jen Statsky on the show recently and she was talking about her time.

**Sara:** Oh yeah.

**John:** I think she was on Fallon as well.

**Sara:** Yeah. She started right before I left the show. And I had a little goodbye drinks after my last day and she was there. And she was like, “I feel like we were going to become friends.” And I was like I know. I mean, and we’re still friendly with each other but like we didn’t have that long term working together friendship thing take place. But yeah.

**John:** One new show that you’re working on right now that will not get canceled because it’s entirely your show is the Schaefer Shakedown, the podcast.

**Sara:** That’s right. Nobody can cancel it. Because I’m the only person that works on it. There’s no money on the line. And there’s literally nothing involved other than my own desire to do it, so that’s good.

**John:** So Episode 7 of your show you shared your secrets for getting a TV series to air in three easy steps. And I thought we might listen to a little clip.

**Sara:** Sure.

[Clip plays]

**Sara:** Hi everyone. For today’s tutorial I’ll be showing you how to sell a TV show in just three simple steps. Step one, come up with an original idea or recycle an old idea that’s been done one million times, whatever your personal preference. Step 1A, tell your agent about the idea. Now if you’re curious how to get an agent I recommend checking out my other YouTube video entitled How To Get A Hollywood Agent in 600 Easy Steps.

So now that you’ve got your agent it’s time to tell them about your idea. Step 1B. Get feedback from your agent who will change the idea until it is good enough to pitch. To a network? No, not yet. You must first complete Step 1C. Finding a production. Now you will pitch your idea to various production companies. If one of them likes your idea you will work with them. Step 1D. Prepare the pitch with the production company. They will help you change the idea until it’s good enough for pitching. This can take several months to several years because they’ll also be insistent on finding a big name director or celebrity to attach. Sometimes big name directors and actors go on long vacations or are shooting a movie in New Zealand, so this can take time. While you’re waiting, I recommend taking up a hobby, like drinking.

[Clip ends]

**Sara:** That’s only the beginning.

**John:** Yes. So, I guess I’ll start with a question. Sara, how dare you? Because Craig and I have been doing this for 506 episodes and you just came out and just said it. You just laid the whole thing out. And what’s weird is that there are jokes in there. There’s funny writing within it but it’s also actually just honest about what the whole process is. And it’s just, ugh, I felt sick but seen as I listened to it.

**Sara:** You know, I always write, I fully write my podcast out. And then will riff as I go with it. But I was writing this episode and at first, I mean, I didn’t have this idea in my head. I always usually do on each episode I’ll do at least one little audio sketch like that one. And a lot of times I have the idea and then I’ll build the episode around it. But this time I was just writing my feelings about just being so frustrated with my career at this point. And so I decided to explain like you got to do this and this, because I was talking about how it’s hard for everyone in this business to make it, but if you have like just a little leg in, like if you’ve got fame, power, if you know somebody, if your dad is somebody important that it just greases the wheels a little bit.

**John:** Yeah.

**Sara:** And I was like if I could just get past the first step. And so I started to write that out. And then I was like oh this could be a funny YouTube tutorial. And I had to stop and rewrite that whole part and really think it through. So it really came from me just wanting to explain to people what you go through and it just worked very well in that format with the sort of monotone cheerfulness.

**John:** Step 1H part of it all. What I think is helpful is it’s a useful thing for young writers or people who are trying to make it in this business to send back to their parents to explain this is what I’m going through. Because there are so many steps where it’s like, yay, and I had a really good meeting, and they’re going to make an offer. Or you got a yes but there’s not an official offer. And you’re like what does that actually mean. And you explain it’s like, no, you’re waiting for the official offer even though you have the yes. It could be months and months and months before there’s anything like a deal. And that’s just to go to the next place which is to pitch to the next people.

**Sara:** Yeah. I think that is also why sometimes I feel defensive about that I’ve quit on my ideas sometimes. I go I didn’t quit. I got to a major obstacle that was so heartbreaking that I couldn’t move forward with it on my own anymore. It was too sad. Or I don’t even go out the gate with some ideas I have because I don’t have the energy to go through all those steps again and it’s so frustrating. And I think that I’ve had a lot of people, I had no idea that this video was going to go as far as it did. And I was like, oh, I really hit a nerve with people.

And I got a lot of people saying all those things you said like this is painful, I hate you, why are you trying to murder me. And then I got a lot of like I sent this to my family so they can understand. And everyone is talking about how far in the steps they’ve gone. I’m like I’ve gone all the way to the end once. And I’ve done every step between. And it’s just I think it’s the length of time it takes and how – and I say this at the end, at any moment it can just go away with no explanation. [laughs]

**John:** So in this pandemic, in this age of Zoom, I had a project which we were about to take out and then the pandemic hit, so it became all Zoom pitches. And there were so many times where we’d go out and we’d be pitching to a production entity or to a network or streamer and it would go through and it was like, yay, that was fantastic. And like, oh, they’re going to make a deal. And then, oh no, they changed the entire regime. It’s like twice we went to the same place and it’s like, oh no, the entire management structure has changed, which you referenced in this video. You could actually shoot your entire show and just like it never airs because the new people don’t want it on the air.

**Sara:** Yeah. That’s happened to multiple people I know where they went all the way, and it doesn’t make sense to me still, but even especially to someone who is not in this business. Why would a company spend so much money on something, it’s made, it’s in the can, and then to not put it on TV? It just is wild to me.

And I think you and I know reasons why. There is more money that has to be spent to take it all the way to that final step. And they maybe just want to cut their losses at that point. But it’s so demoralizing and just absurd.

**John:** Yeah. So in some ways it makes me nostalgic for Quibi and just the fact that anybody could get a show on Quibi. It was literally like “Are you alive? Here’s your show on Quibi.” But you actually talk to people who tried to do the Quibi shows and it was incredibly heartbreaking. And then to make one of those shows and like, oh, your network doesn’t exist anymore. Who knows when someone will ever see this thing again?

**Sara:** The tales of heartbreak that I’ve heard from putting this video out, and just from people – it was also, like you said, you feel seen and not alone. I felt seen back because so many people – major stars that I like love and I’m like what problem do you have in your life, Seth Rogan, like why – he retweeted it. And I’m like, oh, this spoke to him. And that just really made me go you know what it’s hard for everybody and it is easier for some people to get the wheels turning, but it’s crazy for everyone. And dreams die all the time. It is just a testament to how – you know, so many people were like oh I’m not even at Step 1C. And I’m like do you understand how hard it is to even get to Step 1A?

You have an agent. That’s why I said at the beginning I was like oh I know if I put this out people are going to go how do I get an agent. And I’m like that’s a whole other thing.

**John:** It is a very, very different thing. A thing I think I would add to a future incarnation, or if you ever make the book version of this is that same giant celebrity who you want to get on your project will make it so much easier to sell. That giant celebrity is a giant celebrity because he’s attached to every other project as well. And so trying to get that person’s sole attention, that’s a thing, too.

And so it’s not just the movie they’re shooting in New Zealand. It’s just will you be his or her first priority ever? And that’s really tough. And so, yeah, even this afternoon I was on a pitch to a production company. And I’m trying to get this production company onboard. And it’s just – you know, at every level you’re still just kind of hustling and you’re looking for that extra element that sort of makes it like, oh, it’s sort of impossible to say no to. And there never is an impossible to say no to.

**Sara:** Yeah. Got to be undeniable! There’s always a way to deny somebody the goods. I’ve learned to take every victory and every yes – to take every yes in this process as a huge victory, knowing that even if it doesn’t go all the way and no one ever sees it, you know, you did something. And it’s hard to do when you’re not getting – in those very first steps you’re not getting paid for a long time, so that’s tough.

And so it’s always a balance between finding a way to make – I always say this to people. You’ve got to have your money maker lane and your dream lane. Sometimes those lanes converge and sometimes they don’t. And, you know, that’s always been my way. It’s tough though because sometimes I have said no to jobs, money on the table, because it was just money and I had a dream that I wanted to work on. And sometimes that doesn’t pay off.

But, you know, I wrote a book. It came out a year ago. And a lot of people were like, oh, this sucks, I’m just going to just stick to books instead. And I’m like what?

**John:** Oh god. No.

**Sara:** It’s just as hard, if not harder.

**John:** Sara, I wrote a trilogy and just the pushing the boulder up the hill for a trilogy is like, oh, you think you’re done. It’s like, no, no, you’ve got two more of those to do. And support. And put it out there in the world. So, it’s tough.

**Sara:** When I went into writing a book I had no idea. And then I was like I wrote eight books in the course of this process. And when the book was done and it came out people were like are you going to make this into a TV show or movie? And I’m like, sure, I’d love to. But do you understand – and that has stalled that process.

But I had one really amazing actress who I loved who I had no idea that it had gotten into her hands. And she read it, loved it, and was like I want to star, produce, direct, I want it all. And I’m like, oh my god, here we go, but knowing this is probably never going to happen. But just the fact that she read it and liked it and I didn’t force it in her hands. Like somebody just gave it to her I think. I don’t know how it happened but I was just like this would be so amazing.

And I had a little celebration just for that moment knowing that it wasn’t probably going to go anywhere. And it hasn’t. [laughs] You know?

**John:** At least this went someplace. So, thank you again for this explanation of the steps of this which I think will live on for many, many years. It will keep getting passed around. So that is a thing we know will exist out there in the world. You’ve explained it once. It never needs to be explained again.

**Sara:** Yeah.

**John:** Sara Schaefer. Thank you so much. I would love to have you back on the show for a full episode.

**Sara:** Anytime.

**John:** Fantastic. Thanks Sara.

**Sara:** All right, thanks John.

**John:** Bye.

**Sara:** Bye.

Links:

* [Courtney Kemp’s Deal at Netflix](https://deadline.com/2021/08/power-creator-courtney-kemp-signs-netflix-deal-lionsgate-1234813246/)
* [Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park Deal](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/south-park-deals-trey-parker-matt-stone-1234995748/)
* [Hello Sunshine Sale](https://deadline.com/2021/08/reese-witherspoon-hello-sunshine-acquired-blackstone-venture-r-kevin-mayer-tom-staggs-1234807439/?fbclid=IwAR2BTj1Qpmgxv7-1rQIDJFObtsTE7noAIKfXqTX3FVaZ1p-s5qUN79BODGQ)
* [Frankenweenie](https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/frankenweenie/msxVowQvL18k)
* [Trickster: Night of the Kitsune by Hiroshi Mori](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2021%2F05%2FTrickster-Night-Of-The-Kitsune_3Page.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=1a05c101fbb1b815b66977e9a5a07369a818c6fa2e8e28426a6d08949f1fd148)
* [Martha by Caroline O’Riordan](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2021%2F06%2FMartha_Caroline-ORiordan3.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=b0776dca79a91180707f676b8f2900eaa4f962fedaedefde4cf9d6d4aee9578d)
* [The Many Lives of Newton Thomas by Sean Frost](https://johnaugust.com/index.php?gf-download=2021%2F05%2FTMLONT-Three-Pages.pdf&form-id=1&field-id=4&hash=1e7a0d0abf0e46eb4b9f25ccead6588a5a7850829a1f50e6aa1bf69c717ad53d)
* [Collection of TV Scripts](https://sites.google.com/site/tvwriting/)
* [Circulous Game](https://www.chainreactiongames.org/circulous/)
* [Sara Schaefer’s Twitter Clip](https://twitter.com/saraschaefer1/status/1421622886574395393)
* [Schaefer Shakedown](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-schaefer-shakedown/id1565766154)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Andrew Hart ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/512standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/378-the-worst-of-the-worst).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Today’s episode originally aired in December 2018. In it Craig and I talk about the Worst of the Worst, which we define as that need to make things not just a little uncomfortable for your heroes, but downright awful. We talk about stakes, consequences, and transformation. Mostly, this feels like a feature idea rather than a TV idea, but with the rise of short series I think you’re going to see more and more of these decisions happening on the small screen as well.

Craig and I were not prescient. We’re just feature guys in an industry that was quickly moving towards streaming. So, enjoy this episode. If you’re a premium member stick around after the credits where I’ll be talking with producer Megana Rao about what she’s been learning listening through all the back archives and what she’s seeing out there in the real world as she’s trying to be a writer getting staffed.

Enjoy.

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 378 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’re going to dash hopes, ruin friendships, and destroy things we love most.

**Craig:** Oh, thank god.

**John:** As we talk about why bad things need to happen to characters we love. Plus, we’ll be answering questions about WGA signatories and old TV scripts.

**Craig:** Well that sounds fun.

**John:** Yeah, Craig, it’s nice to have you back.

**Craig:** It’s good to be back. I’m so sorry I missed – since I’ve been working and traveling, you’re working and traveling, and then I had some needle shoved into my spine last week.

**John:** Oh, no, not good. Don’t do that.

**Craig:** It wasn’t an accident. It was on purpose. There was a medical professional doing it.

**John:** All the kids are doing it.

**Craig:** All the kids are doing it.

**John:** Yeah, just inject – first it was Juuls, and then they’re injecting things into their spines.

**Craig:** Exactly. So that was why. Initially it was supposed to happen first thing in the morning and our podcast interview with Phil and Matt was going to be in the afternoon, and then they had an adjustment. So when I got out of that thing I was about two hours away from doing the podcast and just feeling really weird and oogie. So, yeah, but I’m back. I’m back.

**John:** He’s back. He’s no longer oogie. He’s full of boogie. And you can see Craig in person on December 12th which is tomorrow as this episode comes out. We are doing our live show in Hollywood. Our guests are fantastic. Zoanne Clack of Grey’s Anatomy, Pamela Ribon of Ralph Breaks the Internet. Cherry Chevapravatdumrong of Family Guy and The Orville, plus Phil Lord and Chris Miller of Lego Movie and the new Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse. So we are hyping this show, but for all I know we’re sold out and it’s just–

**Craig:** We should be based on that list of people. By the way, Zoanne Clack I think is a medical doctor.

**John:** She’s a medical doctor. So if Craig has an emergency, she’s the person.

**Craig:** We’ll be talking about my spine on that show. But this is an amazing lineup of people. Totally – everybody from different places – well, we do have three representatives of animation come to think of it. All right. All right. Lord and Miller, I mean, boom, Pam Ribon has got this huge movie out. Everybody is famous. And you know what? Why would anyone not want to go to this show? Plus, me and you.

**John:** Well that’s us. I mean, that’s the other celebrities in this whole thing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Sometimes we like try to land a big name and then it’s like, you know what, let us be the big names sometimes.

**Craig:** We’re the big name.

**John:** Zoanne Clack, yes, she’s a medical doctor, but what I really want to talk to her about on the show is how she’s transitioned from being a doctor to writing a show about doctors. Because we get so many questions from listeners about like “I am a police detective, but I want to write detective stories.” And that’s an interesting, fascinating transition. She has done it, so she will be able to tell us what that life is like.

**Craig:** Maybe she can also chat a little bit about our episode where we went through all the mistakes that, like the fake medicine on TV. I wonder if she’s ever – well, you know what, let’s save the Zoanne questions for when we’re with Zoanne.

**John:** Absolutely. We also have another live show to announce. I’m very excited to announce that we are doing a screening of Princess Bride and an episode afterwards in which we’ll be talking about the movie we just saw. So, William Goldman passed away this past month. We are going to be doing a series of screenings for the WGA. This is going to be at the WGA Theater on January 27th. So, Craig and I will watch the movie then discuss the movie afterwards with the audience. And so this is I think going to be open up to everyone. So once there are tickets there will be a link in the show notes for that. I’m very excited to do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Me too. It’s one of my favorite movies and William Goldman was a giant. So it’ll be nice. It’ll be nice to do that in his memory.

**John:** Absolutely. And so this will be kind of a trial run also because I’d like to do more of these on the whole. So if this goes well there’s some movies down the road I want to do a deep dive on. We’ll screen them and then do a deep dive. So we’ll let this be a test run.

**Craig:** Brilliant.

**John:** Brilliant. We have some follow up. First is from Partis about the Start Button. Craig, do you want to take this?

**Craig:** Sure. OK, so Pardis writes, “The problem with the system you outlined on the podcast where the WGA can be the bad guy if you ask them to, calling the studio on your behalf to enforce the terms of your writing agreement is that the studio knows the WGA is only calling because you, the writer, have asked them to. And since writers are more dispensable than directors, yes, you can get labeled as a diva or as a problem child or as more trouble than you’re worth and lose out on future writing assignments as a result. So, what’s the solution?”

Pardis says, “A system whereby the WGA is alerted to commencement on a feature automatically. And a system whereby the WGA checks on progress for all feature products automatically without asking the writer first. That way the studio can’t blame any specific writer for asking the guild to be the bad guy. There’s just automatic oversight across the board. But, how can we put this system into place if the guild isn’t already alerted to commencement automatically?

“Option number 1: Negotiate a meaningful financial penalty into the next contract for studios that fail to file their paperwork for new project with an X number of days of the agreement being signed. That money can go toward covering the guild’s increased oversight and enforcement costs.

“Option number 2: Create a small financial penalty for writers who fail to alert the WGA that they’ve started work on a new project. Option 2, because then the studio can’t get mad at writers for alerting the WGA about new projects because writers have no choice but to inform the WGA directly less the writers be penalized themselves.”

**John:** All right, so let’s take a look at Pardis’ suggestions here and sort of how Pardis is laying out the situation. So, I think what Pardis is suggesting overall have some merit to it. You want the WGA to be the bad guy. You want the WGA to step up and do this work on behalf of writers. And if it feels like the WGA is only calling the studio or only getting involved because the writer complained I can understand that hesitation.

That said, the goal is for this to feel like it is just automatic. It’s like changing the way we’re just doing this on a regular basis. And so that even without a financial penalty for failing to hit the Start Button and report a new project, that it will become a matter of course for writers to do this. And the WGA has increased already the number of enforcement people there are to do that work. And so they are going to be checking up on people anyway. And so regardless of hitting the Start Button or not hitting the Start Button, there’s a lot more outreach to say like, hey, what are you working on, how is this going, and are you being paid on time? Is anything going on? And that is one of the overall goals and functions of the WGA is to make sure that our members are being paid and are treated appropriately.

**Craig:** These ideas, all ideas really, have been discussed ad nauseam since I have been involved in WGA stuff, which is, you know, over 14 years ago or something. But I would say that Pardis you’re not the first person to suggest that we should maybe start penalizing writers. But good luck. It’s not a great idea, honestly, to essentially crack down on writers to solve the problem that is created by studios. We already have enough problems. You’re dealing with writers that are already being abused and now they have to send money to the guild because they’ve been abused? It’s not great.

Can you get a meaningful financial penalty for studios that fail to file their paperwork? No. Probably not. And again when things start is kind of fuzzy. So, the Start Button actually is the best idea I’ve seen to date. And I think it will bear fruit. So I would say, Pardis, patience.

**John:** Related aspect here is that when you are hitting a Start Button or even now if you’re not hitting the Start Button, you are supposed to upload your contracts. And so I have been uploading my contracts. Everyone is supposed to upload their contracts that show all the steps of your deal. When the WGA has this information they can be checking on it independently so they don’t need to necessarily wait for you to say that there’s a problem. They can say like, hey, according to what we have this is what’s happening on this project – is this accurate? And you need to answer that honestly. And so that is a way in which the WGA can become involved, even if you are not reaching out to them to say help me here.

**Craig:** Yeah. Hopefully this works the way we would want it to in an ideal situation where the guild is helping you without feeling like they’re bonking you on the head. And in getting in your work process. So, let’s see how it goes.

**John:** Second bit of follow up, a previous One Cool Thing was the show Please Like Me. And last night I was out and randomly bumped into Josh Thomas the creator and star of Please Like Me. And so I want to talk a little bit about sort of what to do when you meet somebody who you’ve only seen their work in person. Because it can be sometimes kind of awkward. So what I did is I said, “Oh hey, you don’t know me, but I thought your show was fantastic and you do great work.” I asked him if he moved to Los Angeles fulltime and is writing here and he is. And then I left him be and let him sort of go on and be about his night.

So maybe we’ll get him on the show at some point and he can talk about what he’s doing here. But as a person who gets approached like Josh Thomas gets approached in that situation I want to talk about sort of best practices when you’re going up to talk to someone whose work you admire, but it’s in a social situation. Because, Craig, you must encounter this, too.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, it’s not on a daily basis by any stretch of the imagination, but it does happen. And mostly people seem to do it well. You know, I haven’t had any weird encounters. Any actor that’s on television has astronomically more of these encounters than you or I. And my guess is just that numbers wise they’re going to run into some odd ducks, probably at least once a day.

**John:** Yeah. So I would just say I would encourage – if there’s a person who is doing great work and you want to say like, oh, I really like the thing you’re doing. It’s good to say that, because sometimes it’s just good to hear that you’re making stuff that the world appreciates. But I would say if you’re going to make that approach plan for an out that’s going to get you out of that conversation within 30 seconds to a minute, because they were going about their life before you interrupted them. And so you want to be able to say what you need to say and then like let them go off and do their thing. If they want to keep engaged, they can engage. But make sure you’re giving them the release to get out of the conversation.

**Craig:** And take a look at their face before you walk up to them, because listen, everybody is a person. Everybody is going through stuff. Sometimes we’re in a nice happy mood, sometimes we’re in a neutral state of mind. Sometimes we’re concerned, we’re running late, we’re sad, we’re nervous. And then we don’t want anyone talking to us. Anyone, by the way. Much less people that we don’t know. So, just take a look. I know it’s hard because – and again, this isn’t something that I think anyone has towards somebody like me – but when people see a movie star in their minds they think you know what it doesn’t matter how they’re feeling and it doesn’t matter what’s going on. This is my moment to shake Tom Cruise’s hand and I’m doing it. Because the rest of my life I shook Tom Cruise’s hand, right? I had that moment. And he’ll get over it and he will. He will. But, you know, it’s not that big – who cares? I guess that’s my whole thing is like who cares.

**John:** My ground zero for getting recognized, well of course Austin Film Festival I get recognized a lot there, which is – I sort of go there knowing that’s going to happen. The lobby of the ArcLight I get spotted a lot. And sometimes at the Grove. And there was one time I was walking through the lobby of the ArcLight and this guy goes, “Wait, you’re that writer guy. You’re good.” I’m like, OK. I guess I’m good. Thank you, random stranger. That’s nice.

**Craig:** You’re that writer guy. Well, that’s pretty much right. This is one of the nice things about living in La Cañada is that nobody cares. Nobody cares. They don’t care.

**John:** Let’s get to our marquee topic which is bad things and bad things happening to the characters that you love. This came up for me this morning because I was working through the third book of Arlo Finch and I was looking at my outline and just looking at how many bad things happen, which is just a tremendous number. I think partly because it is the third and final book, so if something could happen this is the last place where it could happen. But also the character has grown to a place where he can handle some things that he couldn’t otherwise handle. So, there’s a lot of serious stuff that happens in the third book.

But I want to talk about it because I think there’s this instinct to sort of protect our heroes, protect our characters, and it’s hard to sort of get us over the hump of like, no, no, no, you have to – not just allow bad things to happen but make bad things happen to your heroes in order to generate story. And this is really very much probably more a feature conversation than a television conversation because in ongoing series there will be conflict within an episode, but you won’t destroy everything in their life every week. But in features that’s a really important part.

**Craig:** It’s a huge part. And, yes, you’re right. In television you need to make sure that people come back the next week in roughly the same shape you found them. So there will be little mini ups and downs. But in movies we feel narratively like we have to see people torn apart. And this goes all the way back to the bible.

**John:** Oh, the bible.

**Craig:** The story of Job.

**John:** Tell me the story of Job.

**Craig:** I will. And I should mention I don’t believe in anything in the bible. However, the bible is evidence of something. And it is evidence I think of deep seeded instinctive narrative patterns in the human mind. They are expressions of these things that are in us. They are not always sensible or logical, but they are there. So, that’s how I’m going to take a look at the story of Job. It’s a very simple story. Job is a very pious guy. He believes in God. He’s just super godly. And God therefore rewards him with a fortune and health and, I don’t know, bountiful crops, or I don’t know, whatever God would give people. And God is hanging out one day with Satan, as he used to do, and Satan says, “You know, Job only loves you because you reward him.” And this is a general moral conundrum that has been dissected over time. You watch The Good Place, right?

**John:** Oh yeah. It’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Of course, so they refer to this as moral dessert. The idea that you behave well so that you get your reward from whatever metaphysical/supernatural deity you believe in. And God says, “No, no, no, no, no. Job loves me because he’s a good guy. And I’ll prove it. I will remove my protection from him and you go ahead and do whatever you want to him. And you’ll see. He’ll stand by me.” And so that’s what happens. God removes his protection and Satan begins to torment Job – torment him – torment his health, and ruin his crops, and scatter his children. It’s just awful. Like every bad thing you could do to somebody he does to Job. And Job just stands by God.

And in the end, you’re the winner Job, and God rerewards him and gives him even more crops and frankincense or whatever they had back then.

So, why am I bringing up the story of Job? Because there’s a moral inherent to it that I think is why we need, narratively, to torture our characters. And the idea is that our goodliness or our growth or whatever you want to call the evolution of our selves, the betterment of our selves, it doesn’t count to other people unless it is perceived to come at terrible cost.

Now, is that actually true? I don’t think so. I think it’s perfectly possible to become a better person without suffering. But when it comes to narrative it seems like we need it or we don’t believe the change.

**John:** Yeah. We didn’t see the work. We didn’t see the struggle. We didn’t see sort of the cost and it doesn’t feel like it was merited.

**Craig:** Exactly. So what we like to see is somebody that has experienced a trauma and they’re going to get over the trauma but only by facing it in the most hard and difficult way. They are going to repair a relationship with somebody by that person leaving them. They’re going to appreciate what they have because they lose it all. So, every character starts with this flaw and then we as the writers we torment them and force them to confront it through a series of increasingly difficult trials the way that Satan did to Job. And through that there is this falling apart. Break you down to lift you up. And we call this the low point.

The low point in a movie is the low point because the writer has tortured the hero to the point where they give up. They finally give up. That’s what you have to do is – you’ve lost your, whatever your ego is, and your hubris, and you give up and from that you will rise back. But those moments are so notable. And one of my favorite versions of that is the Team America puke scene which is just perfect. It’s perfect.

**John:** Let’s play a clip from the Team America puke scene.

[Clip plays]

So this scene classically is a character who has lost everything and then sort of loses more and in this case is literally vomiting up the last they have left. But let’s talk about some of those things that a character can lose and list off some of those classic things you’ll see characters losing here.

Some bad things might be to take away their home. So you might literally burn it down, or you might cast them out of society. You might take away their support system, so taking away their friends, their family, the institutions, the organizations that they’re a part of. You might have the rest of the world see them as the villain. And so you have a hero who is being perceived as the villain which is horrible. Incarcerate them. I have a note here sort of incarceration, also the weird case of Paul Manafort at this moment. So as we’re recording this, this is a guy who is going to probably be in jail for the rest of his life and he’s acting really strangely which leads me to believe that there’s something else he could lose, which is always fascinating to speculate on that. There’s something worse than being in prison for all this time and so he’s acting on behalf of that. So figuring out what that is.

You can kill a character. You can lop off a limb. You can force them to act against their own beliefs, so classically they have the daughter kidnapped and so therefore they have to do things that they can’t believe. You can sew tension and conflict between their allies. You can destroy the item they love most, so it’s like he finally gets that car he’s been hoping for his all his life and you destroy that thing.

So, those losses are bad things you’re doing to your character and they’re pretty crucial. If you don’t do some of those kinds of things over the course of your movie it’s probably not a movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, what you’re doing is burning away what needs to be burned away. And it’s unpleasant. And we need it to be unpleasant. We need to see this character suffer. What is it, hamartia I think is the Greek word for suffering. And then catharsis is essentially vomiting. Which is one of the reasons why I like that scene so much because they just did it.

Humiliation is something that we see all the time. The writer creates circumstances in which the hero is humiliated. Where they lose all sense of self-worth and pride. We can kill or harm the people they love the most. We can make them feel terribly guilty and confront them with the consequences of what they’ve done. It’s good because it’s tortuous.

There’s that scene, people of our age always remember this moment in the second Superman movie from the late ‘70s/early ‘80s where Superman willingly gives up his power so that he can marry Lois Lane. And he gets beaten up by some guy in a bar. And it’s crushing. It’s crushing because you see someone brought low. I remember seeing that scene in the theater and feeling terrible inside. And it was the same feeling I had when I watched the animated The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe when all the evil Snow Queen and her minions shave the mane off of Aslan.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Take his hair away and reduce him to just this pathetic wretch. And, yeah, it’s – you need it. You need it or else when they come back you don’t feel anything.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk about the timing of when these bad things happen, because there’s a couple different moments over the course of a movie where you see these things happening classically. So, the first is the inciting incident or whatever you want to call that moment early in the story that sort of kicks this story into gear. And so, you know, in the first 10 to 15 minutes of a story where a change has happened. This is the village is raided and the hero’s parents are killed. This is a big change has happened that is starting this story with this character.

Often the end of act one. So you’ve arrived at a new place. We’re not in Kansas anymore. The hero’s house has burnt down. We’re entering a new world. There’s a big change and the hero has lost something. They may be excited about what they’re headed towards, but there is a loss. They’ve crossed into a place where they can’t get back to where they were before.

There’s a lot of times, moments in the second act that are going to be losses, where allies turn on them, where new obstacles arise. There’s a plan that fails, seeing things that were important to the character that we were hoping for for the character don’t come true. And then classically the biggest of these losses, which is probably the vomit scene from Team America, is the end of act two, sort of the worst of the worst, which is you’ve gotten to this point and you’ve lost everything. It should generally be the character’s lowest point, or at least the lowest point in this character and how they’ve evolved over the course of the story. That thing that looked like it was potentially in their reach has been taken away from them. And that’s classically the end of the second act.

**Craig:** It’s the end because there’s nothing left to lose. You, the writer, have beaten it all out of them. They have no pride left. They have no resources. Or whatever it is. You’ve removed the stuff that they were relying on. Their crutches are all gone.

It’s important to note that when you visit these bad things on your character you must do so sadistically. It’s not enough to just have some bad things happen. You have to do them in a way that is deeply ironic and miserable. Especially miserable. Because then oddly the more exquisite the torture the more we feel positively when they overcome it.

So, the example I always think about is Marlin at the beginning of Finding Nemo. He’s a happy fish and he’s there with his wife and their hundreds of little babies. And they’ve found a place to live. And then his wife is eaten and all of the babies are eaten except for one. And that is very bad. But then Pixar understood it’s not bad enough. They have to make that little one disabled. They have to give him a bad fin so that he will need even more protection. And then that’s not enough. He is the one that goes missing. And so you have to go get him. And that’s not enough. In the end you have to let him go into more danger to save a friend. And then that’s not enough. You have to feel like he died there. And in that moment where Marlin thinks that Nemo is dead, he flashes back to holding him as a little egg and if you’re human you cry. Because the torture has been so exquisite. And therefore the relief and joy is beautiful and our appreciation for how far Marlin has come as a character is real.

They earned it. Did I ever tell the story of Jose Fernandez, the pitcher?

**John:** No. Tell me.

**Craig:** So this sort of goes to what I think of as the essential ingredient of character torture is irony. It’s not enough to just sort of make bad things happen. You have to do it in a way that feels ironic, as if the world had conspired against them.

So, it’s a guy named Jose Fernandez. Like a lot of baseball players he came from Cuba. So he had to escape from Cuba and he escaped on a small boat with – it was one of these crowded boats full of refugees and at some point on the voyage the boat gets tossed and turned and someone says, “Someone has gone overboard,” and without even thinking Jose Fernandez just jumps into the ocean to save whoever that person is. And he does. He grabs them. He brings them back on board. He pulls them up. They live. And it turns out that the person he saved was his own mother. He didn’t even know it.

He arrives in the United States and he becomes a baseball player. Not just a baseball player. He is an amazing pitcher. He plays for the Marlins. He is fantastic. He is going to earn many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. So, just the kind of dream come true for somebody that had to escape Cuba on a small boat and rescue his mother from drowning.

Unfortunately, two years ago he died. He died in an accident. And if I told you that he died in a car accident you would think that’s bad. But he didn’t die in a car accident. He died in a boating accident.

**John:** Oh my.

**Craig:** And that is ironic in a terrible way. It implies that the universe was doing something. It had its thumbs on the scale so to speak. It is tortuous to think of. And when we write our terrible tortures for our characters I think it’s important for us to think of that. Because – and it’s a sad thing of course – but the worse it is and the more ironic it is the better the ending feels.

**John:** Yeah. Well let’s talk about sort of how those bad things come into the story. Because I can think of three main ways you see those bad things happening. The first is an external event. So that’s the earthquake. That’s the world war. In Finding Nemo that is the – is it a shark who eats the fish originally?

**Craig:** No, he gets grabbed by some fishermen who are looking to capture fish to sell, like for aquariums.

**John:** No, but at the very start of the movie where–

**Craig:** Oh yeah, it’s like a barracuda or something like that.

**John:** So that’s really an external threat because that – so barracuda is not the primary villain of the story. I don’t remember Finding Nemo that well. That barracuda itself never comes back.

**Craig:** Correct. It was just nature.

**John:** It’s nature actually. So some external force that you cannot actually defeat comes back. But sometimes it is the villain itself who is the character who arrives who is the one who is causing the suffering. So, every James Bond movie. Many fairy tales. Die Hard is an example. So, there’s a personified threat. A villain who is doing the thing that is causing the suffering. That is beginning the suffering.

But in some of my favorite movies it is the hero themselves that is doing the action that is causing the problem. So if you look at Inside Out or Ralph Breaks the Internet or Toy Story, it is the hero who is causing the problem. The hero who is ultimately responsible for the suffering that the characters are going through. And that’s often great writing. Because it gets back to the idea of like what is the character’s flaw and something about that character’s flaw is causing the suffering. And we see them having to address that flaw in order to stop the suffering.

**Craig:** No question. It’s very common with Pixar movies. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of a Pixar movie where the bad stuff is majority villain driven other than Bug’s Life, where Kevin Spacey, a real life villain, portrayed a villainous grasshopper. But typically in Pixar films – and sort of I guess in The Incredibles, but yeah, mostly they bring it upon themselves because it is more interesting.

**John:** I mean, in The Incredibles movies there’s sort of an attenuated thing where it’s like it’s because of past actions, it’s a boomerang effect that sort of comes back in, but it’s not a thing we saw them do at the start of the movie. It’s not generally responsible for most of the suffering.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But movies are about consequences and if characters are allowed to freely make choices and then have to suffer the consequences of those choices, that is good and appropriate and compelling storytelling, especially for a feature which is something that is designed to happen just once.

So, a television show theoretically should be able to repeat itself ad nauseam. A feature is sort of a one-time journey for a character. And so that one-time journey is going to about big steps and big swings and big failures when they happen.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** So some takeaway on this idea of bad things happening to your characters. I would say really as you’re breaking a story you have to be thinking about what are the biggest worst things that could happen. And when I say the biggest worst things that are in the universe of your story. So, obviously you can’t stick a tornado in space. But within the context of your movie what are those and what are the character effects for it?

I think so often when we get notes about like well the stakes feel light here, sometimes the proposed solution is to make it be – it’s the end of the world. Like if we don’t do this then everyone else around us dies. I think that sometimes that’s mistaking the bigger scale for more personal consequences for the things that the characters are going through. So, making sure that it feels like a punishment very specifically tailored to this character that you’ve created.

**Craig:** Exactly. And you don’t have to – you don’t have to substitute volume of badness for quality of badness. In the beginning of John Wick the bad guys basically kill his dog. Which in and of itself would be like OK that’s bad, except it was the last gift he received from his deceased wife. That’s all it takes. I’m good.

And, you know, it doesn’t have to be this massive visitation of problems. Sometimes it’s just the cruelty of it really. Little bits of cruelty.

**John:** The Wizard of Oz, she’s trying to take Toto away at the start. That horrible woman is trying to bicycle away with Toto. That’s horrible. And that’s absolutely the right scale of problem for that movie so before the tornado comes that is what we’re experiencing. We can see it from Dorothy’s eyes like this is one of the worst things she can imagine ever happening.

**Craig:** A lot of times I do think about The Wizard of Oz when people start harping on stakes in meetings. Because I’m like what are the stakes exactly? What are the stakes?

**John:** There aren’t stakes in a classic way. It’s not like the Lollipop Guild was being horribly oppressed. It’s not like there was – she ended up changing the world but kind of by accident.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I guess the stakes were that she would get killed or something. I don’t know. But yeah, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s really more about how closely we empathize with the character and the stakes are whatever is stakey to them. It’s about what makes them feel. And if you make me feel what they’re feeling, those are stakes. That counts.

**John:** Absolutely. In a previous discussion we talked about want and want versus need, which I think is a false dichotomy. But when characters express their wants they have a positive vision of the future. So they can imagine a future and in that future their life is better because they have this thing that they want. And that’s a positive vision. Fear is a negative vision of the future. And so they are afraid. They’ve seen the future and in the future their life is worse because this thing has happened or has been taken away from them.

That’s really what we’re talking about with these things we’re trying to – these horrors we’re trying to visit upon our characters is that those things that they feared or those things they didn’t even think they had to fear, those are happening to them now in this story and they have to figure out how to deal with it.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** All right. Let’s get to some listener questions. First off is James in Napier, New Zealand. I assume it’s Napier, but maybe it’s pronounced a different way. It feels like one of those words where it could be Napier, or Napier.

**Craig:** I think it’s probably Napier.

**John:** Napier. James writes, “How in god’s name do you make sure a TV script is the right length? There’s a lot of flexibility in how feature film scripts can run. I know the one-minute per page rule is a rough guide when you’re writing. TV and radio are much more time-constrained so how do you make sure the script is exactly the right length to start with? And how do you keep it that way during production?”

Craig, you just went through TV.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’re doing this right now. Don’t panic over here, James. It’s no big deal. Generally speaking, you know, we’ve got this rough 30-page/60-page guideline for half an hour or an hour. But the truth of the matter is it’s all guess work. The pages don’t really conform clearly to one-minute per page. Things are going to get cut. Some things are going to be expanded.

The good news is that we don’t really live in the world where the vast majority of television is constrained by rigid time formats. Everything is far more loosey-goosey now which is nice. If you’re writing for network television, different story. But with that point I would say, again, don’t panic. You can edit. And you can speed things up or slow them down editorially. So just generally, you know, get roughly in that zone and that’s what it will be.

And, you know, my experience at least with Chernobyl so far is that the scripts – at least for the first four episodes – are around 59 to 63 pages and they’re all timing out to be about an hour.

**John:** It does work that way. I was talking with Rob Thomas, the creator of Veronica Mars and iZombie and other shows and Rob hates the one-page-per-minute rule because he feels that sometimes networks try to value it too much. And so the way he writes it doesn’t really match up that well. He believes that you could probably actually do a word count that would more accurately reflect how long something really will take to fill.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I think it’s an interesting experiment. The truth though is that once you start making a show, so iZombie or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or any of Derek’s Chicago shows, they know. Ultimately they get a sense of like, OK, our scripts need to be about this length because this is what the episodes cut out to be. And even then there will be episodes that are running long for a while and they have to find way to get two minutes out of it. And when we had the Game of Thrones creators on, Benioff and Weiss, they were talking about how in the first season their episodes were too short. They didn’t understand sort of how long stuff was going to play. And so they needed to add additional scenes to sort of fill them out because they just didn’t have a sense of how long an episode was going to be based on the script page.

**Craig:** Exactly. All right. Joe has a question. He writes, “I am a WGA member. I have an offer on the table from a reputable Middle Eastern production company looking to produce a more Western style show. The offer is about 15% less than WGA minimums. They won’t go any higher because they say lower budgets and the Arabic-speaking portion of the MENA territory,” Middle East, I don’t know, “simply doesn’t support it. I asked the WGA and they said flatly I cannot work for any company who is not a WGA signatory.

“I asked my reps and was told the WGA does not have jurisdiction here and becoming a signatory should not be what stands in the way of signing this deal. To be honest, the WGA response rubbed me the wrong way because it felt like they were using me to gain signatories when they didn’t have anything to lose and I did. A job.

“That said, I owe a lot to the WGA. I’m eking out a meager living as a writer and I recognize the WGA is part of that. But I don’t have so much work that I can just turn stuff down willy-nilly. So, does the WGA actually have jurisdiction here?”

John, what do you think?

**John:** I think there’s probably some situation in which you can be hired by a foreign company as a WGA member and they don’t have to pay you minimums. But this is probably not one of those situations. I know there’s international working rules, essentially one of the things the WGA needs to make sure never happens is that international companies sort of come in and sort of scoop up American writers to really write American things but try to pay them less than that. So I think that is why the WGA’s response is that.

But, Craig, you know more about the rules. Tell me.

**Craig:** Well, I have an understanding here, but it will be interesting. I would love to get the WGA’s official position on this. My understanding is that the WGA here is correct. The issue is that Joe is here and the WGA’s jurisdiction covers the United States. It is chartered by the Department of Labor. So, if you are a member of the WGA and you are writing something here in the United States it has to be for a WGA signatory. You cannot go lower than that. Period. The end. Assuming that there is an applicable collective bargaining agreement which obviously there is here.

So, no, you can’t do that. Listen, Sony, right, owns Columbia. We call them Sony now. Well obviously Sony is a Japanese company. So why wouldn’t Sony just start saying everybody who works for Columbia Pictures, we’re actually employing you under the Japanese branch of Sony, so you don’t have to do WGA. No. That doesn’t work that way. At all.

**John:** So I suspect that where we could get to with Joe is if this company was willing to fly you over to the Middle East and put you up there and you were doing your writing services there–

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** They could pay you less than that and that would not be a great situation for you. So not only are you giving up 15% of this money, which by the way 15% of scale is not a ton of money. I just feel like they could find that money for you. But, you are giving up your credit protections. You are giving up kind of all the stuff. Health and pension. You’re giving up much more than you sort of think to take that job. So that is why we have protections like this so that you cannot be undercut by a foreign thing.

So could this company form a WGA signatory? Yes they could. It would be great if they did.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think the WGA, by the way, Joe is using you to get this company to sign up as a signatory. I don’t think they care about this company. I think they care about everybody else that’s in the WGA and the value of our minimums not being degraded. So, what I would say here is you can say to them, listen, this isn’t me asking you for anything. I’m not allowed to do this. And, by the way, company, if you come here to the United States you can’t get anybody in the WGA to do this. None of us will be able to do this. You’re going to have get a non-WGA writer.

So, you know, which generally speaking won’t probably be as good. So, that’s where they’re at, Joe.

**John:** All right. Kofi from Woodbridge, New Jersey writes, “My question pertains to the release of completed scripts after a television show has aired or a movie has been released to the public. Who decides whether or not the completed script will ever be released? I’d love to read the script for every episode of my favorite shows, but usually only the scripts for the pilot and episodes selected for awards are available. Movie scripts can be hit or miss, too. Why isn’t every script made available to be read for educational purposes?”

**Craig:** Well, there are certain circumstances where the writers actually have the publication rights over screenplays. If you have separated rights in feature films that means you have a Story By or Written By credit then I believe you have the right to publish your screenplay.

But, look, by and large they don’t do it because it takes time and it costs some amount of money and it takes some tiny bit of effort and they’re just not willing. It’s no one’s job. It’s a massive company and they can look around and who wants to be the person responsible for scanning and posting 4,000 screenplays. Nobody wants to do it. And there isn’t really a huge clamoring for it, which, you know, is a bit of a bummer. That said, there are plenty of kind of underground swap meets for these things online. I’ve seen them around.

So, yeah, it would be nice. But it comes down to sheer laziness and lack of interest, I think.

**John:** So, the situation is actually a lot different than it was 25 years ago when Craig and I were starting. I remember when I arrived at USC for film school they had a script library. You could go down and could check out two scripts from this library and they were literally printed bound scripts. Not even brads in them, but these special posts that sort of like are sturdier than brads. You could check them out and read them and take them back in. And it was a great experience for me to read all of these scripts from classic movies I loved but also things that had never been produced and it was a really good experience.

So, I think reading scripts is fantastic. But, now there’s the Internet and now there are PDFs of screenplays. And so while Kofi can’t find all the screenplays he wants to read, he can find a ton of them. I mean, even just in Weekend Read we have hundreds of scripts. Things that are going for awards, those are posted online and those things are easy to find. It’s harder to find the scripts for movies that are not sort of award contenders. But, you can kind of find them.

But Kofi’s more interesting point is he wants to read the episodic scripts. Those are harder to find. You tend to find pilots or just those marquee episodes of things. And it’s great to read the normal episodes. That’s one of those things where it actually is much easier to do if you are in this town. Because then you just have networks and assistants at places who can get you copies of scripts. They’re not really under lock and key. They don’t have a lot of value in and of themselves. You can’t do anything with the scripts and so no one is trying to sort of keep them from you. But what Craig said is like it’s no one’s job to publish them or post them. That’s why they don’t happen.

**Craig:** That’s why they don’t happen. Well, keep looking. And by the way, Kofi, spent a lot of time in the mall over there in Woodbridge myself, so just waving hi to you back there in the old country.

And we’ve got one more question here from Cory right here in LA who writes, “I’ve got an award-winning short film and I just hired a screenwriter to adapt it into a feature. Though I’ve come up with much of the story, he will be hitting the keys to bring the story and script together. I am a one-man production band with a small production company. I’d like to make sure that I am setting both he and I up for success.” That should be him and I. Setting both him and me. Yeah. Because, right. Anyway.

“I’d like to make sure that I’m setting both him and me up for success and possible WGA membership or eligible points toward. First, should or must I make my company a WGA signatory? Second, since I or rather my company is self-financing his writing of the screenplay do I need to adhere to WGA payment standards to allow him eligibility? Finally, if I’m the creator of the original work and I’ve come up and will be credited with Story By is there an opportunity for me to earn WGA points or is that just for the screenwriter?”

Oh, excellent list of membership questions there, John. What do you think?

**John:** Absolutely. So, I don’t have all the answers but I will tell you that you’re not the first person to encounter this and I think the WGA has done a much better job over the last ten years dealing with these kinds of situations. I think Howard Rodman deserves a lot of the credit for that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** What you’re describing is probably a low budget independent film. And if you go to the WGA website there are resources there to talk you through what happens with low budget independent films. Classically these were done outside of WGA jurisdiction. But recognizing that some of the best work was happening there and this was obviously writer’s first work they set up these low budget agreements so that you can do this kind of stuff. That you don’t have to pay people the full amounts for writing services and other things but still allows for things like credit protections. It allows for other parts of what you get with a WGA package for these productions.

So, I suspect you will click through on the site, we’ll put a link in the show notes, and see what you need to do and how you sort of put the script into a place where it’s eligible for these low budget agreements. And I don’t think you will have to become a full signatory. I think there’s just ways you can sort of use an associate membership to get you started here. So, it’s good you’re doing it. It’s good you’re thinking about this now. But just read the stuff and then make the thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Definitely you want to take a look at that low budget independent film agreement. To become a full-fledged WGA signatory there are quite a few hoops to jump through. I mean, it’s not trial by fire or anything, but for instance you need to show that you have enough financial resources to be able to cover your residuals obligations. So in this case because it’s just you and this is just one independent film I think that’s the way to go. Take a look at it.

In terms of credit, the original work will be considered source material. It was written outside of the WGA so it will be based on a short film by blah-blah-blah. If you want proper WGA story credit, on the title page of the screenplay it would need to say Screenplay by Jim, Story by Jim and Corey. And that, of course, requires Jim to agree. The truth is the story in the original film is essentially akin to the story in a novel. The novelist doesn’t automatically get WGA credit for the movie of it. They have to actually do some work. So in this case what you would need to do to warrant Story by credit or Shared Story by credit is to work up a written story for the new movie that you’re talking about, either on your own or with the screenwriter that you’re hiring, and then that is now part of this chain of title of the work that’s leading up to this film that would be covered by the independent film low budget agreement.

Hopefully that makes sense.

**John:** I think it makes sense.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing feels like a Craig One Cool Thing, but it’s the story in the New York Times by Moises Velasquez-Manoff and it’s about how emergency rooms and other medical professionals are starting to examine ketamine as a suicide prevention or a suicide drug for dealing with people who show up suicidal and it seems like it is potentially a quick life-saving drug to be using for people with severe suicide ideation.

So, it’s a really nicely written up story about the potential of a drug which we only think of in sort of bad context possibly having some really good uses.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was a fascinating article. Totally my kind of thing. Ketamine is one of these drugs that’s been around for a long time and it’s kind of one of those – I think the World Health Organization has their list of essential medicines, like if you were building your doomsday locker of medicines you’d want ketamine in there. It is a sedative. It is kind of a tranquilizer sort of thing. It can be used anesthetically, you know.

And what they found, and I didn’t realize this, but in this article they are saying that very small doses of ketamine can almost stop suicidal ideation in its tracks. So you have somebody coming in who is in severe distress who was just taken by the cops off of the side of a bridge and brought to the emergency room and you give them this tiny injection of ketamine and suddenly they don’t have that anymore. They don’t want to jump.

And, now, that doesn’t last obviously, right? So then there’s work to be done after that. But what they’re pointing out is that suicidal ideation, kind of underlying depression, to reverse that pharmacologically with say serotonin reuptake inhibitors takes weeks. Maybe months. Same thing with talk therapy. But if you need to make sure that someone doesn’t hurt themselves over the two, three, four weeks, this may be a viable deal.

Now, part of the issue is that it can be used recreationally and if there’s a certain dosage you start to have hallucinations and, you know, psychoactive effects. So, that’s why I think in general people are a little, you know, but we have to kind of get over some of this stuff. You know?

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Doctors in the emergency rooms are pretty good at figuring out who is there because they’re actually suicidal and who is pretending to be because they feel like getting a ketamine dose.

**John:** You look at sort of this work, you look at work on LSD, you look at work on ecstasy, these are clearly drugs that should be studied for what they can do in a clinical setting and sort of what good can come out of them. But instead they sort of become demonized because of dangerous uses of them recreationally.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, we wouldn’t use them recreationally if they didn’t work on some level. So, yeah, obviously how much we use and all the rest. So, anyway, that was really promising. So you did that and I went the other direction. I went all the way over into computer world. So I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2, of course, and I want to call out the people that worked on the environment because it’s so good. It’s the best environment experience I’ve ever had playing a videogame.

There was a moment where – it’s not just the detail of the appearance of things, which is quite extraordinary. But it’s the way it interacts sort of synergistically. Just sort of trotting along on my horse and I’m going through sort of a path with some trees on either side and the wind kind of blows and leaves rustle off the trees and kind of swirl in the air around me and then fall to the ground. And I’m like, what? This is getting good.

The wind people talked to the tree people. And then the tree people decided, you know what, some leaves come off when wind blows but not a lot of them, not all of them, and how do they come off? And what happens when they go? And it’s perfect. It’s really amazing how well they did with those little things. And you and I know because we work in movies and television how much work goes into making something look effortless.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** God only knows how many hours were spent trying to make the wind make the leaves go just right. It’s really well done. So, tip of the hat. My One Cool Thing this week the people that did the environment in Red Dead 2.

**John:** Very nice. Those leaf physicists, they did God’s work there.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Michael O’Konis. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today.

But short questions are great on Twitter. Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

You can find the links in the show notes for the things we talked about, so that’s at johnaugust.com. Just follow through to the links there. Or if you’re listening to this on most of the players swipe and you will see a list of links there.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. While you’re there, leave us a review. Those are lovely. We need to read some of those reviews aloud so we’ll try to remember to do that.

Transcripts go up within the week and so you can find transcripts for all the episodes back to the first episode. You can find the audio for all our episodes at Scriptnotes.net.

**John:** Craig, I will see you tomorrow for the live show.

**Craig:** See you tomorrow for the live show, John.

**John:** Bye.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right. And it is now time for our bonus segment. So bonus segments are just for you premium members who are paying us $4.99 a month. That $4.99 a month pays for a lot of things, including the salary of our producer Megana Rao who is now sitting across from me and smiling.

Megana Rao: Thank you, Premium members.

**John:** You picked this episode for our rebroadcast today. What made this stand out for you?

**Megana:** So this is a craft episode that I really like and I think it’s something that I personally struggle with is, you know, making things difficult for your characters because I think at the point that I am on a project that I’m working on it’s like, oh, I really like these characters and then making them go through conflict is something that I viscerally feel as I’m writing it. And so it’s something that I feel like I, like a lot of writers, need to push myself because that’s what makes good storytelling.

**John:** Yeah. So not only do you produce the show every week, but you actually go back and listen to earlier episodes. How much of the back catalog have you gotten through at this point?

**Megana:** I think I’ve gotten through a decent amount.

**John:** All right. A decent amount being 10%?

**Megana:** Oh, gosh, there’s a lot of episodes. No, I think over 30%.

**John:** OK, that’s really good. But of course there are premium members who have listened to every single episode and are like how could she possible produce without listening to every episode. We had Zoanne Clack on the show and she produces Grey’s Anatomy. And she was saying when they hire on a staff writer they expect them to have watched every episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

**Megana:** Well, I was really ambitious when I first started. And every time I’m like, yeah, I’m going to do it and I get through – like I’ve done the first 15 episodes of every season stack for sure.

**John:** So, what kinds of things are you learning from the show that are applying to what you’re doing now as an aspiring writer? And what stuff do you still feel like you’re still missing? What kind of advice have you not gotten on Scriptnotes that we need to make sure we start hitting?

**Megana:** So I think the craft stuff is – and as we’re working on the Scriptnotes book I’m just like, wow, what an incredible trove of information. And I should really listen to it more. But, I mean, I do read it and listen to it a lot. But I think something that I’ve been wondering and have been wanting to get your take on is when you are having a meeting in the industry what does success look like, because we work in the entertainment industry so people are very charming and great to talk to. And so it’s kind of confusing afterwards to measure how well it went or how I should be thinking about it.

**John:** Because right now you’re at a phase that I remember very distinctly when I was first starting, because you’re going to a lot of general meetings and a lot of sit-downs and hey-how-are-yous and you’re doing the water bottle tour of Los Angeles [unintelligible]. I guess actually you’re not going into people’s offices. You’re meeting for coffees? How are you doing these general meetings?

**Megana:** Some are for coffees, but I think because of the pandemic mostly Zooms.

**John:** Mostly Zooms. So a thing my first agent did which I think was a smart choice, he just sent me out on like – he just shotgunned me out into meetings. I took way too many meetings. And you just get better at taking meetings. And so it sounds like your meetings are going well, but you’re having a hard time figuring out what’s the next step, or how to go from like oh that was nice in the room but will I ever work with this person again.

**Megana:** Right. And the thing that I am sort of looking to decode is you know when you go on a date and you’re like waiting to hear what the last thing the person says, because it’s different if they’re saying, “Hey, it was really nice to meet you, or I had a really good time,” versus, “Can I get your number? I’d love to see you again.” And so what does that look like in the entertainment industry or after a general meeting?

**John:** So as you wrap up a general there will be that sense of like it was really nice to meet you, just a very classic thing, like we should look for things to do together. Great. That’s sort of the generic version. And it’s not a brush off. It’s just there’s not a specific next step they’re looking to take. If they really were intrigued by you and sort of like, “Oh, I really want to talk to you more about this specific thing,” they’ll bring up that specific thing.

**Megana:** OK.

**John:** Or if there’s something that you mentioned in the meeting and you were like, “Oh, we both really want to do something that’s based on Norse mythology.” And they’re like, “Oh, let me send you this stuff and we can keep up that conversation.” And so sometimes those will happen at the end of the general, or sort of a first meeting. Other times they won’t. You have to be comfortable with sometimes meetings are just meh.

Like when I went over to Verve. You were there for that. And I went out on a bunch of general meetings and a lot of them were just kind of, “So, we now know each other.” If something down the road comes up they actually feel like they could come out to me for a project. And a lot of what you’re doing now is sort of that.

**Megana:** So I guess also as a writer what responsibility do I have to follow up?

**John:** I think your responsibility to follow up with the good ones. The ones you actually think like oh I would like to work with this person, yeah, it’s good to reach out. And so that’s a case where it’s like, hey, can I have your email. Or you can get the email from the agents to say like, hey, I really enjoyed meeting with you about this. I wanted to talk to you about these specific things. Or this is a thing I’ve been working on that I’d love to talk with you more about.

To me, and people can disagree, I don’t think you owe a thank you note to a general meeting, or that kind of stuff. It’s just like if there was chemistry there was chemistry on both sides and it sort of is like dating. You don’t have to send a thank you for dinner at the end of it.

**Megana:** OK. That makes sense.

**John:** Now something you were talking about at lunch was when you have a meeting with somebody and they’ve read something of yours and they start giving you notes on it. And that’s a weird situation. Can you describe in a general sense what it was like?

**Megana:** I feel like in a lot of meetings there’s questions and constructive feedback or nice – I’m trying to avoid the word saying compliments – but, yeah, it’s nice that they’ll compliment my work. But then a couple of times they will have specific notes or want to do a follow up call with notes. And the notes are great, but I’m confused about whether I should act on them and what that means. Because we don’t have a clear plan forward.

**John:** And that sort of gets back into the dating. Are we actually trying to start a relationship here, or are you just sort of like giving me constructive feedback because you think it could actually think this thing and help me as a writer. And that’s a case where your reps, your agents, or your managers can sort of help suss out is this a person we really think could do this project, because if so then maybe it’s worth really investing the time with them and sort of working through that.

If not, then it’s just great to get their feedback. And if you’re getting consistent feedback about these things you could consider making those changes. But the stuff you have out there right now in the world is something that could get made but it’s really there as a writing sample for you to get hired for other jobs. So it should not be the primary focus is to be rewriting that stuff you’ve already been writing.

**Megana:** Totally.

**John:** An experience I definitely had in those early meetings is they’ll pull out a box of like these are all the things I’m working on. And have they sort of presented that list of the things that they are working on?

**Megana:** Yeah. And I’m always like – I mean, people are just so good at pitching their projects. It’s like the most fun part of the meeting to just listen to all of these great stories.

**John:** Sometimes they’re saying, “OK, we’d like to consider you for this thing,” but other times you get a sense of the kinds of things they’re looking for. Really getting the sense of like what things are going to spark for you that are really priorities for them and how you can sort of like keep that conversation going about like oh this is a thing we want to see happen together.

You’ll also be in some meetings where you’re just like this is not a fit. And the meeting should just end. Just like a bad date.

**Megana:** Yeah. Yeah. Well, thankfully they’ve all been really good so far and the people that I’ve met have been lovely.

**John:** Cool. Thank you, Megana, for producing this show every week. And thank you to our premium members for supporting the podcast.

**Megana:** Thank you guys. Thanks John.

Links:

* The Team America: World Police [puke scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKqGXeX9LhQ), with some bad language
* The opening of [Finding Nemo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG3L98NFyro)
* Aslan’s sacrifice in [The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ6VAGyhWXM)
* [Can We Stop Suicides?](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/opinion/sunday/suicide-ketamine-depression.html) by Moises Velasquez-Manoff for the New York Times
* The environment in [Red Dead Redemption 2](https://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption2/)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Michael O’Konis ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli). And special thanks to Megan McDonnell, the original producer of this episode!

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/378rebroadcaststandard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/preproduction).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 507 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show what is preproduction? Or what the hell is Craig doing right now?

**Craig:** That’s a great question.

**John:** Then it’s another round of How Would This Be a Movie where we take a look at stories we found in the news or just online somewhere and discuss how they could be filmed entertainment for the world to enjoy. We’ll also look at a related question: why do certain movies get made? What is it about some projects that make them more or less likely to actually go into production?

And then in our bonus segment for premium members, if you were a time traveler Craig what would you want on your cheat sheet? If you had like a one-page back and front of stuff you wanted to carry with you back into the past what stuff would you want to put on that sheet?

**Craig:** OK, well mostly prescription medications. But let’s get into it.

**John:** Let’s do it. All right. Let’s start with preproduction. So, Craig, you were gone last week because you were in the throes of preproduction. We described you as being buried under an avalanche of preproduction.

**Craig:** Indeed.

**John:** Talk to us about – I don’t think we’ve really talked about what preproduction is.

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t think so.

**John:** So let’s really go through it both for a writer’s perspective but also a showrunner’s perspective which is different. So talk to us about the kinds of things that are involved in preproduction and really what are the boundaries of preproduction versus production and when does preproduction really start for you?

**Craig:** Well, the easiest question to answer is what the boundary is. The boundary is once the cameras start rolling you’re in production. Every day prior to that you’re in preproduction. On a television show where there are multiple episodes individual episodes will have prep going on while you’re producing other episodes.

The time you spend in advance of shooting in prep varies from project to project. The rule of thumb for feature films, for an average feature film, let’s say we’re talking about a $40 million movie, typically you’re looking at three or four months of prep. For a show like the one we’re doing we have been prepping for many, many, many months. And we will continue to prep throughout as new episodes come up. The basic gist of it is if you think about all the things that have to be in place when you’re shooting, all of those have to be planned. And that’s what’s happening in preproduction.

So every department is planning the locations you’re going to be shooting, the sets you’re going to be building, the clothing that the actors are going to be wearing, the casting of the actors, the stunt work that’s going to be required, the picture cars, meaning the cars that show up on the screen when you’re driving, what’s all that look like. What cameras do we need? How many cameras do we need? Do we need cranes? Do we need other special arms for the cameras? Who is going to be handling the video playback? Who is going to be recording the sound? Makeup. Hair. Visual effects.

Every single tiny little thing has to be figured out, including a bunch of things that I don’t necessarily concentrate on, but also have to be figured out like who is doing the catering and what are the trailers going to be. And, oh, props. All the fabrication of things. You know, everything actually happens in prep. And if it doesn’t, well, that’s going to be a sad day of shooting.

**John:** Well perhaps our listeners have watched a heist film. And so you’ve seen the preparation that goes into a heist. It really is kind of analogous because you are trying to plan for this event which is the start of production and you have to think about what are all the things we need and what are the things that could go wrong and how are we going to be ready for this. So you’re assembling a team. You’re getting the resources together. You’re figuring out how you’re going to do these things.

And what’s different about prep for a movie or prep for a pilot is that in this case of the series you have to be thinking about not just how you’re going to make this first episode, but what are the decisions you’re making right now that are going to carry through the whole show and especially this first season? You’re planning not just for one hour of entertainment. It’s multiple hours and a huge schedule to go through. So the decisions you’re making with this first director are going to ripple through to all of the other directors on future episodes. And these are fundamental decisions you’re making right now.

**Craig:** They are. And it’s really dangerous. You have the ability to mess things up before you even start and to mess them up permanently. So you have to be really careful and you have to think twice. There is a tendency, I think a natural human tendency, to want to just arrive to yes. Get to certainty as quickly as you can. But I find that it’s really important to listen to the nagging little voice at the back of your head going, “Well, wait a second though.” Maybe this is a problem for people who have stronger egos than I do because I think sometimes I hear stories about showrunners just like, “I’ve decided this,” and everyone is like, “But we’re the experts in this little area and we’re saying this.” “No, I’m saying…”

Anytime anyone, I don’t care who it is, it could be the guy delivering lunch, if that guy is like, “Hmm, that looks a little too red, don’t you think?” I’d be like, what, oh I mean, hold on. Does it? Let me consider that carefully because it might. Because if you don’t measure a thousand times to cut once you’re in trouble.

Example, hair. Very simple thing you’d think, hair. It’s not simple. That’s going to be the hair. So, we’re going to be shooting for quite some time. Once we figure out what Pedro Pascal’s hair looks like that’s the hair. Every day. Every day. If you blow it then every day you’re going to walk in in the morning, you’re going to look at him, he’s going to look at you, and you’re both going to go, “Great.” And he and I will both think the same thing, “Craig is an idiot.”

So, got to get it right.

**John:** Yeah. Now, let’s talk about what the start of prep really is because there’s this sort of murky period that I’ve found when a project is like we’re going to do this thing but it’s not quite clear when we’re going to actually shoot it, so the initial onramp into prep is really strange. And so talk to us about for something like this or for something like Chernobyl what were those first hires and when do you get sort of permission to actually make those first hires who are going to help you to put the rest of the team together?

**Craig:** Well, so sometimes we’ll call it pre-prep, which is kind of an amusing idea, but I mean, pre-pre-prep. So, the first thing that happens typically is in order to get a green light for your movie or your television show there needs to be a budget. And the only way to have any reasonably useful budget is to do some work. Typically that means figuring out roughly where you’re going to shoot and looking at some key locations and determining what you might need to build and not build.

To do that you have to start with this first key component and that is a producer. The producer in movies that I’m talking about is typically a unit production manager, sometimes they are elevated to executive producer or something like that. And in television they might be called producer or also executive producer. So for us, Rose Lam is our executive producer along with myself and Carolyn and Neil. And she was the first real key hire because she was the person who was going to start to work on schedule, like let me look at the scripts, let me look at this bible, let me use my experience to break it down, get a sense of how long this thing is going to be, come up with some basic numbers and some plans for where we should shoot.

And to do that you get a little bit of a float. They call it a float. You get floated some money from the studio. Not too much, but enough to get that done and done accurately. At which point then there’s a decision made about budget and all the rest. And then you begin hiring people. You need your casting director very early, because you’ve got to cast way ahead of time. You need to hire your production designer very early because what their vision is is going to impact how you are going to be spending your money. And you certainly need to make sure you have a director in place as well.

**John:** Yeah. And what can be confusing is based on different kinds of projects and media when you go from like, OK, we can put together a budget versus OK we are giving you a green light to start shooting can be a very different experience. For something like your show, maybe they said like OK we’re going to make this thing based on this budget, this script, and this director and other key talent involved. But other projects I’ve been through you’re going through quite a lot of preproduction and they have stop points sort of along the way. Like you can spend up to this point but they could decide like, no, we’re actually stopping this right now. We’re not moving forward. We’re not giving you the green light. And that can be one of those tricky things, too.

It’s not like full speed ahead, we’re making this thing, we’re starting this day. You’re continuing to like sort of hopefully build momentum, but you’re still waiting for key decisions from the powers that be.

**Craig:** Yeah. And for television that’s sort of what a pilot is. There’s a built in break point where everybody can agree to produce to one hour of television and no more. And then decide what to do from there. For us we were ordered to series, so that’s not an issue. We’re doing it.

Look, it’s risk and reward. Bet hedging versus commitment. They each have plusses and minuses. Pretty obvious what the plusses are of hedging your bet. The minuses are that when you don’t have a full commitment it can sometimes be harder to access and lock down great talent, not just in terms of actors, but in terms of directors, cinematographers, production designers, and all the craftspeople that create the product with you, create the show, the movie, the series.

And if you don’t actually have a full commitment there a lot of them are like or I could just go over here where there is a commitment and now I have a job. And I don’t have to worry about not having a job. So there are costs to that.

**John:** Yeah. A thing you find in sort of traditional television is you shoot a pilot and then all of your actors are placed on holds so that the studio can decide, OK, yes, we are going to make this into a series and therefore we can pull all of those actors and keep them on the show. And obviously there’s the choice to replace any of those actors you want to and reshoot that stuff which does happen.

It’s tough. And I think as more and more stuff has been written as mini rooms and we’re sort of shooting the whole thing at once that can be great, but it also puts a lot more showrunners in situations like you are where you have to plan for like – you may only get one crack at it. If you were shooting a pilot you could make some changes between the two things. Just like Game of Thrones made changes after that pilot that didn’t work.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** You’re not going to have that opportunity.

**Craig:** No. And we didn’t have it on Chernobyl either. And so part of that is making sure that you feel really, really confident in your team and in the scripts. But I think there are probably also on the other side of the pilot process some negatives to consider as well.

So positives are you can stop and you can retool and move ahead successfully like they did with Game of Thrones. The potential negative is everybody gets a chance to just sort of pick at it and water it down and smooth off the edges and make it stink. Nothing survives too much scrutiny. Nothing. From people who can comment without accountability.

So when I’m making something and I’m commenting on it in the editing room I have accountability for it. All of my comments are leading towards me coming out to the rest of the world and saying I stand by this. Other people it’s sort of like, well, if it’s one of the shows that a network puts out in the year, or Netflix, one of the 15 shows they put out every ten seconds, they’re not really accountable to it. So, it’s like they’re not getting blamed for it specifically. And so everybody can sort of focus too much and pick at it and then walk away. And it can just, you know, the soufflé can collapse.

So, plusses and minuses in all circumstances to these things. When there were only three networks and there was one season it made sense. Everybody had a pilot. Nobody could avoid the pilot situation because there was nowhere else to go, because those were the three networks, this is how they do it. We all do it at the same time. Not so anymore.

**John:** Yeah. But also the musical chairs problem of it was really tough because essentially there’s only a certain number of actors. There’s only a certain number of cinematographers, directors. You’re all fighting for very limited resources here.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So I got my third choice of an actor and I got this–

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s bad.

**John:** It’s bad. And so this is probably a better way to make things, but it is still really difficult.

**Craig:** It’s difficult. Yeah.

**John:** So, a question for you. As you were buried under work last week, how much of your daily firefighting problem-solving is really about money and budgets?

**Craig:** Very little. We certainly have budget challenges. There’s no such thing as a show without a budget challenge. It doesn’t matter what your budget is. My feeling is that by and large no matter what you do as an artist you will always have at best 90% of the money you need. That’s just the way it goes. Because, you know, your imagination always exceeds your grasp to some extent. And they have to draw the line somewhere. We do have a very healthy budget and we have a budget to make an excellent show, and so we shall do our best to do.

But, no, most of the issues that I deal with really are just the issues of 400 things need to be determined and here’s what someone just sent over as a possibility. And it’s not quite right, but it’s making us reconsider this or that. Someone says I need to sit with you for ten minutes and just ask you three questions. And that ten minutes turns into two hours because the questions are actually complicated. And then all of the other things that were supposed to happen after that have just been pushed down the line and then things spill over into the weekend.

And as you get closer to shooting this is very common.

**John:** Yeah. Now, how much more complicated is it shooting something that’s distant and remote? Like Calgary is not the end of the world but it’s not in a production hub. And obviously Chernobyl was not shot in a production hub. It does strike me as a very different experience because when I make a movie here in Los Angeles, we’re making Charlie’s Angels, we have all the resources of Los Angeles here. And we can pretty easily swap people in or out if we need to.

You are more isolated up there and is that a thing you have to think through in production right now?

**Craig:** No. It’s something that we consider early on. But one of the selling points of shooting here in Alberta is that there’s a pretty good layer of crew here in Alberta. And when we need to fill in we pull people in from Vancouver or Toronto where those are production hubs. Vancouver is more of a production hub at this point than Los Angeles is. So there’s actually quite a good depth and folks don’t mind relocating from Vancouver to Alberta for a while, or Calgary for a while, the way that our friend Derek lives in Chicago for a big chunk of the year because they do Chicago Fire there. So, that hasn’t been too bad.

And of course Calgary is a city of a million-plus people. So this experience has been much easier than the prep experience in Lithuania. There’s no language barrier. And there’s just more people to pull from. However, this production is way larger. So everything kind of scales together.

You get 90% of what you want all the time. That’s the way it goes. At best.

**John:** Let’s talk about you as a writer in this prep preproduction situation. Also it’s weird, as I was working on the outline here. We say prep and preproduction and prep is sort of a shortened version of preproduction, but it’s also preparation. It’s weird that they are describing the same things and they’re similar words but they’re not quite the same word.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** As a writer what are you doing right now on that first script that’s shooting? How much are you still tweaking things? Is there a script coordinator who is helping get stuff put together? What is the writing that happens for you during this period?

**Craig:** The writing for the first three episodes and to some extent the first four episodes is kind of done. There are little tweaks. I kind of blew it. I forgot that we had changed, like literally a word from one thing to another, and I was like oh, D’oh. And that actually matters because the people doing some prosthetic stuff need to know where it’s going to go. So we issued – the green pages were literally I think one word changed.

We do have a script coordinator and so I work with her closely. I’m very good about maintaining revision levels and scene numbers and things like that. But with any production at this point you do need a script coordinator to be the central distribution point. And that all goes through Synchronize. Synchronize is the software that everybody uses. God, I hope it’s better than – it’s not owned by Final Draft is it? Because that would bum me out.

**John:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** I don’t think it is.

**John:** It’s probably Entertainment Partners or something else.

**Craig:** Yeah. Anyway, so it’s basically the software that does all the distribution of schedules, calendars, scripts, all those things to cast.

**John:** And are you distributing physical scripts? Or is it all online now? Basically are people seeing printed pages or are they only scenes on tablets?

**Craig:** I believe that they are able to print them. They arrive as watermarked PDFs so they print them for themselves for reference if they need to. But, no, this is not like the old days where when it was time to release new pages 12 Xerox machines begin cranking up to 800 kelvin as pages got shot out. We just don’t do that anymore. It’s wasteful and it’s slow and expensive and unnecessary.

But it is a weird situation because I am writing the other episodes. So, you know, there are episodes that are going to be shooting many, many months from now that I’m writing now while we’re prepping and then while we’re shooting. And that’s, you know, that’s a tingly feeling of anxiety.

**John:** And something we should make clear is that the preproduction phase stops at a certain thing. Once you start production like preproduction stops. But there’s still prep on each individual episode.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that is the director. And are you marrying a director and DP together? Who travels together on an episode?

**Craig:** Yes. So each one of our episodes. Without getting into it, because I don’t think they’ve all been announced. But we have five directors across ten episodes. So we have the pairings all figured out in terms of DPs and such.

**John:** And does each director have his own first?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So one AD is running the whole?

**Craig:** Well, no, I believe there’s going to be a second first AD that comes in. So, they alternate because what’s going to happen, of course, is the first AD does need to start prepping episodes with the director. So once it’s time for that our first AD who is working with our first director to kind of step back and start planning ahead then the new one comes in. So, yeah, we do have this kind of side-by-side first AD thing going on.

**John:** And so that episode prep is also crucial because you made general decisions about the look of the show, how stuff is basically going to work, overall camera styles, but this director with this DP and this AD is figuring out like, OK, we’re going to need a crane on this day. This is how many extras we need for this thing. So it’s really taking what you’ve written in the script and figuring out like, OK, let’s really break it down in how we’re going to do this and what is our plan for getting this episode shot in the number of days that we have. What is our schedule going to be? When do we go to nights? How do our weeks work? Those are crucial things.

**Craig:** We’re going to nights real fast.

**John:** Oh, Craig, you wrote a shot that probably mostly takes place at night.

**Craig:** No it doesn’t. Thank god it doesn’t mostly take place at night. But there’s a bunch of night stuff early on and, of course, we don’t shoot in order, so I’m not giving anything away about what happens when. But I’ve been pretty smart about not plunging us into too much night. But there’s night early on. And you know what? Better to do it early.

**John:** Yeah. Rip the Band-Aid off.

**Craig:** Rather than when you’re week – sorry, week – month seven and you’re like oh my god.

**John:** But you are in Calgary facing a unique challenge. There’s limited daylight.

**Craig:** Ah-ha.

**John:** As you get into the winter.

**Craig:** And this is an interesting challenge. Very limited night right now. So, a couple of weeks or so, or however, I haven’t looked at the schedule exactly to see exactly how many days, but the number of days we have that we’re shooting nights we have to be really careful about. They are very well orchestrated, prepared, and choreographed because right now in Calgary you get about 4.5 hours of proper dark.

**John:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** That’s what you get. So in production when you shoot a little bit of a day and a little bit of night it’s called a split. We will likely be kind of in a semi-split situation where we shoot a little bit of stuff that’s sort of day-ish and then we start prepping and we use that kind of twilight, that 19-hour long twilight that they have here to set up. And then once the sun is gone-gone, boom, pedal to the metal.

**John:** Yeah. I remember on Go, of course it has a lot of night shooting, and it mostly takes place over the course of one long night, and there would be times where you’re just trying to get this one last shot and the sun is coming up and you’re trying to hold up flags to make it a little bit darker. And you just curse the rising of the sun. And then to have to drive home after a full night of shooting with the sun coming up is just the worst experience.

**Craig:** Particularly if you’re driving east. It’s just blaring in your eyes.

**John:** Oh yeah. That was me. Me coming from Santa Monica Airport back to my house in Hollywood.

**Craig:** It’s depressing. The shooting schedules can definitely screw your head up. They certainly screw my head up. There is this awful feeling of chasing the light or chasing the dark, which is why I think some of the older, more well established directors from the ‘70s and ‘80s starting promoting this whole we’re going to shoot everything on a green screen stage and I’ll be MoCap because you don’t have to go outside, it’s always air-conditioned. There’s no light. There’s no dark. You’re wherever you want.

**John:** Yeah. Season two of your show is going to be like The Mandalorian. It’s going to be all virtual sets. Pedro will be back in his environment.

**Craig:** It will not. Look, I do – I’m not impressed – The Mandalorian, the volume. I love that they call it the volume. It’s a remarkable technology. It seems very well suited for something that does take place in a kind of fantastic other world. We’re a very naturalistic philosophy over here.

**John:** You’re a naturalistic zombie show.

**Craig:** Yeah. Not zombies. Not zombies.

**John:** Sorry, fungal creatures.

**Craig:** Thank you. Humans, just fungal-infected humans.

**John:** Yeah. Infected humans. All right. Let’s think about movies that are not in preproduction. They’re not even in development. They are just potential movies. It’s our segment How Would This Be a Movie. And as set up I’m seeing Zola this afternoon. I’m very excited. Because it’s the first of the movies that we’ve pitched, way back at the Austin Film Festival. I remember our great discussion about the Zola tweets, so I’m excited to see that movie. People love it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Just this past week I got approached to adapt – to do one of my first How Would This Be a Movie. One of the properties we talked about on the show, producers came to me and offered me–

**Craig:** Did they know when they were offering it to you that–?

**John:** They did not. Because if they had known they would have seen like why I did not think it was a good idea for a movie.

**Craig:** They would have seen the big no flag being waved real early. You can’t say which one it is I assume?

**John:** Unfair for me to say which one it was. Because someone will get that job, and that will be great, because I love when writers get hired to adapt things. I just don’t think it’s a good idea for a movie. All right. We have three or four projects here to look at. We’re going to start with the big one which I think probably actually is a movie. We’re going to link to the New York Times story on this, but there’s actually a lot of other sources for it.

This was about these criminals who were using these secured devices, these encrypted devices, for phones and texting that they thought were legit, but of course the FBI was actually behind it. And so they bought these cell phones on the black market. They believed that they were super securely encrypted. It was like cell phones just for criminals.

**Craig:** Right. [laughs]

**John:** And of course the FBI was involved in this. And they were able to sort of really round up a whole network. On one day they had arrested 800 people in more than a dozen countries. They intercepted 20 million messages in 45 languages.

**Craig:** They seized tons of drugs. 250 firearms. 55 luxury vehicles. And $48 million in several currencies and crypto currencies.

**John:** And interestingly none of the people arrested were in the US. Because you actually can’t use basically what they were doing, like you can’t use in the US. But it was like Australia, and Asia, and all sorts of other places.

**Craig:** Yes. Europol was sort of a big part of it. So something like this has happened before. There was I think it was either the FBI, CIA maybe, had figured out – there was a company that was hosting servers for the dark web. I’m not sure what aspect of it. But they got them. They came to those people and were like we got you. We got you on X, Y, or Z, whatever they had done wrong. And the deal is we’re going to go easy on you if you just let us run this. And they were like you got it.

And so for months all these people who were using this secure server specifically to avoid the prying eyes of the government were literally sending stuff through a government server. And all of it was just being logged as mountains of evidence.

**John:** Yeah. And it was a very similar case here. So this is Operation Trojan Shield. Ugh.

**Craig:** Oh my god. Really?

**John:** That was the name of the operation.

**Craig:** Condom brand.

**John:** There was a service called Anom. And basically they busted the guy who was making these secure cell phones. And said like could you just keep making these secure cell phones but let us see everything that’s happening there. And he was like OK.

And so they sold these really expensive cell phones. I think it’s also so smart that they kept these phones really crazy expensive and sort of underpowered.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** And so everyone felt like, oh, it’s got to be legit. It’s got to be real.

**Craig:** Genius.

**John:** And it’s a classic honeypot. You make somebody sort of feel like oh I’m getting something for free, or I’m getting something that no one else could have. And that’s how it works.

**Craig:** And they got them. So the question is how do you make this a movie beyond the simple mechanism of the kind of man in the middle hacking trick that they pulled here, because in and of itself once you get the point of that, well, then that’s that. So what do you do to kind of jazz this thing up to be a movie?

**John:** Well, I think there’s a couple good choices here. So I kept thinking back to the 2006 film The Lives of Others, the German film where–

**Craig:** Great movie.

**John:** Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, I just love saying his name.

**Craig:** I know. It’s great.

**John:** Which is about eavesdropping in East Germany and a guy who is listening in on a family and sort of like becomes involved in their lives. So that’s a clear way in. But I also think we always talk about sort of ethical choices and characters being forced to make tough things. You’re going to hear about so many crimes and you have to make decisions of like when are you going to intercede or not intercede and sort of what is worth sort of blowing the whole thing up for or not.

And I think those tensions can be great. I’m assuming that the movie is more from the law enforcement side than from the other side, but maybe we’re splitting it sort of back and forth the way Sicario does. I think there’s lots of ways. What’s tough about the story as it is right now with the situation is like there’s so many characters you could pick, there’s so many ways in, and it’s a completely different movie based on where you start.

**Craig:** Well, and that’s why in the end when these companies purchase these stories, so whoever wrote this article, in this case I’m looking at the New York Times article. It was by Yan Zhuang, Elian Peltier, and Alan Feurer. So let’s say that Yan, Elian, and Alan sell the rights to this story as they’ve written it to Warner Bros. At that point Warner Bros what they have is a big question mark. And then they start talking to writers. And this is how it gets figured out.

Somebody is going to come in and throw one of those darts in the right path. For me, when I think of this, I do think of The Lives of Others, and I also think of Donnie Brasco. And the idea that you can create a relationship with somebody while this is happening. That part of your job is now you are monitoring the communications between two criminals and it’s quite clear to you at some point that one of them is just simply being used by the other.

Because you can see everybody’s communication. So what you’re watching is the normal flow of social activity where someone is being bullied or ostracized or lied to or manipulated. And you begin to feel for them. And I think that’s really interesting. So there’s all sorts of possibilities here.

But it would have to be whipped up quite a bit beyond just the concept. The concept alone isn’t going to get you more than 15 or 20 interesting minutes I think.

**John:** I agree. So, you and I are both thinking about this as a drama, but let’s think about this as a comedy or some other genre of film. Because there’s something kind of funny about this. The central conceit can be funny where these people think they’re being secure and they’re not being secure. And that’s relatable. We’ve all sort of messed up and done something that we thought was private and was actually public and it sort of got out. So there’s an opportunity to tell the same kinds of stories or the set the same kind of characters but play it in a funny way. And I think that’s another very interesting take to this is to approach it as a comedy, or even a romantic comedy.

Because what is it like if you can see inside what a person is really doing? Or you can see that this guy’s girlfriend is absolutely just a nightmare and you want to sort of intercede there. There’s something fun about having that information feels like a comedic premise.

**Craig:** Yeah. And in the ‘90s, I mean, this is how I got my career started. You would imagine a drama and then you would say, OK, do the drama except the person that would be the hero what if they’re just an idiot. Now go. Literally, don’t change anything else except that they’re stupid. And let’s have fun.

**John:** Steven Soderbergh, Matt Damon movie. I think it was The Informant! with an exclamation point feels – that’s a similar kind of premise there.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** You talked about sort of buying the New York Times article. I don’t think you buy this article. I don’t think there’s an enough there.

**Craig:** I don’t think anybody should buy any article. I don’t understand that whole business to be honest.

**John:** But I can imagine that there’s a longer article that really goes into the characters and gets some firsthand reporting that is unique and different that could be an article worth buying.

**Craig:** Then it’s just facts. They’re reported. Everything in the article as it is published is available for everyone to use. The reason you would buy the article is to have access to the iceberg under the water line amount of notes that perhaps the reporters had aggregated. And that can be interesting stuff.

**John:** That could be interesting, too. In this case you’re unlikely to get firsthand – none of the people involved in this story are going to talk to you. None of those people are going to be real characters that you can – real life people that you can buy life rights to. That’s not a thing here. So it’s not important.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Cool. All right, next How Would This Be a Movie is Wanted: A Household Manager/Cook/Nanny. This is a thousand-word job listing that requests applications from somebody with a good degree, great executive functioning, very good Excel skills, and also river swimming. So I remember when this – so this was a viral post that went out. Basically this woman, a single mom, who was a CEO was trying to hire on someone to be a nanny, but the requirements for this person were just absurd. Basically crazy. And then I remember also reading Ruth Graham and Slate did a follow up where she actually talked to the woman who did the post. And it was much more reasonable and also interesting.

Because basically this woman kind of needed a wife. This woman needed to do sort of the other stuff and it became sort of an interesting question of feminism and gender roles. I thought there was an interesting thing underneath that as well.

**Craig:** Yeah. I read through that, too. Although I wonder sometimes if we look at these things and the first filter we’re going to consider is gender and the way sexism functions in a patriarchal society. And then the second filter we might want to consider is tech people versus not tech people, because it’s like they’re their own species of human.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** When I listen to the tech people talking, I mean, so I was really interested in the woman sort of explaining through things, because I thought like OK this is where I’m going to actually see the truth under this and go I get it lady. But here’s the first thing. OK, so Ruth Graham asks this question: how did you set about writing this ad? And the woman said, “I had a great nanny for 5.5 years with our family. When the kids started school I placed her with a Google family that had baby boy twins. She’s now been with them for 5.5 years and they love her deeply. This is important because,” and now here’s why we go into Techville. “This is important because I’m one of the most loving, kind people around. And I build wonderful long-term relationships.” Who talks like that?

**John:** No one.

**Craig:** No one.

**John:** A tech person talks like that. Yeah.

**Craig:** A tech person is like and now here’s–

**John:** And now value.

**Craig:** Yes. Let me give you the PowerPoint of why you should invest into my human status. That was like whoa. And, look, also some of the stuff, I understand like your desire – it would be great if she was really good at mountain driving. I guess. But also she’s like my kids and I love to swim in rivers. We’re really into river swimming. You know, it’s OK if you found a wonderful person, a nurturing, caring person who could do all this other stuff, including mountain driving, but when she’s like these people aren’t physically fit enough I’m like well kind of also how dare you. So an amazing, wonderful, loving, caring person who your children would love and who would teach them things and take care of them and drive them places, do all these other things, you’re not going to include because she can’t river swim? How about just leave her there on the shore and then swim on back?

Anyway, I started getting annoyed when I was reading. Because just like, ugh, tech people. It’s tech people. Tech people.

**John:** And I think what she really wants is Maria von Trapp from the Sound of Music.

**Craig:** Maria von Trapp couldn’t swim the–

**John:** No, but those kids did river swim. Like we saw them swim in the river.

**Craig:** Yeah. And they also climbed a mountain, literally.

**John:** They did.

**Craig:** Every mountain.

**John:** Uh-huh. They did some mountain driving as they were getting out of there. So, yeah.

**Craig:** That’s true. That’s true.

**John:** So who are the characters in whatever story this is? I think it’s a comedy, but I think it’s a relationship comedy probably between these two women and what happens here and sort of what that dynamic is which I think is potentially really fascinating.

**Craig:** OK. I have an idea for a movie for this that I actually think is pretty good.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** So don’t steal it everybody, but here’s my idea. My idea is you’ve got this kind of back-breaking tech humanoid. It doesn’t matter if it’s a man or a woman. Literally doesn’t matter. Who is a single parent and puts this crazy viral job listing out there that is essentially demanding a super human. There is a mess. Somebody is a mess, manny, nanny, doesn’t matter. And they’re like I need money. So they basically lie to get this job, but then are required by dint of the job, and also by starting to really care for those kids, to become the nanny that they were supposed to be. And the better they get at stuff the more it becomes apparent to everybody else around in the tech world that is meeting this manny/nanny that the manny/nanny is a super human because they have risen to this task. And that person becomes CEO.

Because if you can do all the things that this person is asking you don’t need to be a nanny. Guess what? You are a mega human. So anyway that was my idea for a movie.

**John:** I really do like that idea and I like the sense of – what you’re pitching is sort of a School of Rock to some degree. The person who takes the job just to kind of take the job because I happened to answer the phone and I sort of passed myself off as this thing I’m really not, and then I actually learned how to do it and I actually had skills that were above and beyond because I was actually myself.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Sort of underneath this.

**Craig:** And the same thing happens in the third act. By having that success, because you did this you then are in a position where you’re going to leave those kids and then the kids are like why and then you’re like, oh, I love you. And it’s nice. I mean, look, it’s formula and everything but I do think that you’ve got to lampoon the tech culture here. They are nuts. And by the way they’re nuts and they’re also running everything.

**John:** They are. Well, the other thing you’re pitching is essentially Mrs. Doubtfire.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Which is a person coming in under false pretenses to do this. So to the degree that I think you could go in tomorrow and say like it’s Mrs. Doubtfire for the 2020s. Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s like Mrs. Doubtfire becomes the perfect human being who becomes both an allergist and a river swimmer and a stunt car driver. And one of the things she was like “determine how to purchase travel via points or miles and comparisons.” And I’m like, oh, so they’re also a travel agent. They’re a booking agent.

**John:** But that is a spouse to a large degree, too. That’s what’s fascinating about this is that they really – she wants someone to watch her kids but also to help run her life. And that’s–

**Craig:** I mean, I don’t know how it goes over there with you and Mike, but for me and Melissa there are a whole lot of things on this list neither one of us does, including let me just start with river swimming. And mountain driving. Mountain driving?

**John:** Yeah, you’ve got to mountain drive.

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t, yeah.

**John:** Chauffeur.

**Craig:** Megana, when you read this, just out of curiosity, what did you think about this?

**Megana Rao:** I felt so bad about myself.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s terrible.

**John:** Now, Megana, you come from a tech background, so you worked at Google. So for all you know you know the Google family that took the previous nanny here.

**Megana:** Yeah, the Google baby boys. I mean, that part of it wasn’t surprising for me and I had a real visceral reaction to reading this. And I was like a lot of the things she’s talking about is adulting and the worst parts of being an adult.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Megana:** And I was just thinking about like I think the reason that people have such a reaction to this is because the emotional labor required for these things is so taxing and tiresome. And thinking about doing a job of just looking at kids’ summer camps is so hard to like fathom. Because it’s horrible, but then it also made me think of all the work that you guys and all parents are doing but we just prefer to look at because we don’t pay for it.

**Craig:** Yeah. There is quite a bit of that. I believe that people need help and I believe if you can afford help then it can be a win-win for everybody. Some people are getting employment and people are getting help.

**John:** And she’s paying $35 to $40 an hour which is not bad.

**Craig:** No, no, it’s quite a lot. That said, the job that she’s describing is intense and there is a whiff of, well, when the revolution comes they’ll be the first against the wall, you know? It’s starting to get a little weird when you’re like having people pit themselves against each other to get your job to do this list of impossible things that honestly you will be OK if you don’t have somebody swimming in the river with your children. That’s not necessary.

**Megana:** Well, the weirdest thing to me also is when she talks about – she’s, you know, the most loving, wonderful person around.

**Craig:** Oh my god. What the fudge?

**Megana:** And how she loves her employees. It was just this weird thing of like outsourcing family and community but having – I don’t know. It was just so blurry around the boundaries and that made me feel really weird.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She did I think at some point describe her friends as – what was it?

**Megana:** Building alliances with other parents.

**Craig:** Building alliances. How dare you? Also, the nanny needed to be able to do sit-ups, lunges, squats, and pushups.

**John:** Yeah, physically fit.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** Yeah. I mean, like you do. Megana knows this. It’s part of the office culture here.

**Megana:** Yeah. Every day when I walk in.

**Craig:** John is like–

**John:** I blow the little whistle and then we do our lunges and our squats.

**Craig:** Megana, it’s Thursday and that’s squat day, so here we go. I, wow, experienced snow-driving.

**John:** Next How Would This Be a Movie. So this is a couple who breaks up after being handcuffed together for 122 days. This is Ukrainian lovers, Alexandr Kudlay and Viktoria–

**Craig:** Pustovitova.

**John:** Pustovitova. Have taken off their shackles and are moving on from one another. So this is a couple who agreed to be handcuffed together because they were having relationship troubles and they decided that the way to solve these would be to be the most cliché version of a ‘70s odd couple who have to sort of live together by being handcuffed together. So they could have divided their house in half and put a tape line down the middle, but instead they chose to be handcuffed to each other.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And as I looked through the photos related to this article I see them wearing different clothes including clothes with sleeves. And I don’t understand how they’re putting on these clothes with sleeves while they are handcuffed together.

**Craig:** This is so much bullshit. This is Instagram nonsense bullshit.

**John:** That’s why I kept it on this thing. This is just annoying Instagram couple decides to be annoying Instagram couple.

**Craig:** Screw you guys. Where they lost me completely was when it said that Pustovitova ultimately had to quit her job as a beautician because clients weren’t comfortable with her husband standing over them as she manicured their eyelashes. So, first of all, you can’t manicure an eyelash. You manicure fingers, not eyes. But you cannot do that job while handcuffed anyway. Geez Louise.

**John:** So Craig there is not a movie to be made about this particular handcuffed couple?

**Craig:** No. It’s nonsense and I would like to never hear of them again.

**John:** All right. Our final How Would This Be a Movie contender, this comes from a Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax. It is her column. And here is the issue. Megana, would you read this question for us?

**Megana:** My husband’s sister “Beth” fancies herself a psychic of sorts who can communicate with the beyond. A few months ago, we were eating dinner when she began talking about a spirit with me. I honestly had no idea who she was talking about and told her that, because I had no deceased relatives or friends who fit her description. Beth became very upset, claiming that she was overwhelmed with what the spirit was trying to tell her. She was so upset she ran from the room to lie in a dark room and compose herself.

My in-laws asked me to be gentler with her, since this “gift” is a major part of her identity.

I see two paths. I can either lie to Beth and feed her belief that she has this “gift.” Or I can tell her she is dead wrong. Which makes me feel like I’m kicking a puppy. My husband and I would ideally like to handle Beth’s “gift” in a thoughtful way, but it’s hard to see what middle ground we have, especially when she puts you on the spot. How can I thoughtfully respond to Beth in a way that preserves her self-worth but also doesn’t give in to a delusion?

**John:** Now, Craig I think has a strong opinion on sort of the reality of Beth and what the sister should tell Beth. But I would urge him to think about as a movie or as characters in a movie is this a situation that can be fun and fraught? And how might you develop this as a movie?

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a fun odd couple situation when you are marrying somebody and their sibling – you inherit these other people. And if you are very much a skeptic about things and that’s part of who you are, that’s part of your identity, no one ever seems to acknowledge that being a skeptic should be a major part of anyone else’s identity. And then you get stuck with somebody who believes this nonsense. It’s really frustrating.

It’s particularly frustrating if they keep being right and you start to feel like you’re being gas lit and what’s going on. Look, I refuse to be a part of any movie that actually says – other than Ghostbusters – that suggests that there is any of this stuff. But that seems like that’s what it would be, ish.

**John:** To me Beth feels like a minor supporting character, like you’re marrying into a wacky family.

**Craig:** She’s one of them.

**John:** It’s Meet the Parents, but she’s one of them.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s the natural choice for it. But if you want to elevate her up from a supporting character to the other sort of co-lead, that is potentially interesting. I mean, obviously Ghost is a great example of this situation where like this person has a “gift” that seems impossible. Whoopi Goldberg’s character has a gift that is impossible. Seems impossible. And yet it is important for the plot to move on. And there can be some good comedy there.

But I think it’s important to marry the skeptic with the true believer. That’s comedy.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think you’re right. But I also feel like I’ve seen this character before a little bit. You know, like the wacky and then no one has to take them seriously. Everybody agrees that they’re nuts. So it’s not really, I don’t…

**John:** But I think what’s potentially more fun is that everyone says like oh no but she’s right. Like if you come into a family where everybody is like, oh no, Beth has the gift and she sees these things. How are you supposed to deal with that? As the rational person. And so we’re coming in as the audience as the rational person. We’re relating to that character as our way in and then we have to see like, oh my god, and the frustration.

**Craig:** Every family I ever talk to I think I’m the weirdo. Because somebody there believes in god. And that to me is right up there with contacting the dead. I just don’t understand it.

**John:** Let’s do a recap of our four things we talked about today. So the first off is the criminals and their cell phones that were actually done by – there was a whole FBI sting behind that. Is that a movie? Is it a limited series? What do you think that is?

**Craig:** I don’t think it’s a limited series. That would be a very boring limited series. I think it’s a movie maybe if you really make it about relationships.

**John:** Yup. Nanny plus.

**Craig:** Yeah, it could absolutely be an interesting comedy that lampoons tech culture.

**John:** The handcuffed couple is not a movie. We’re striking it out. And I wanted to leave it on this list because I felt like these are people who perceive themselves as characters in a movie and they’re not. They have main character syndrome and it’s annoying and they need to just stop.

**Craig:** Yeah. The Defiant Ones is a great movie about two people handcuffed together or chained together. And it was all about the relationship between white people and black people during the Jim Crow era. That’s not this. This is just dumb. [laughs] This is just stupid.

**John:** The original Charlie’s Angels “Angels in Chains” episode is a classic and you’re not going to top that. So, just stop.

**Craig:** Can’t top it.

**John:** Can’t. And psychic sister-in-law is a maybe and I would say it’s possibly a movie but also I think that’s an interesting character in an ongoing TV comedy because it’s not a problem you’re going to solve. You’re not going to resolve this problem.

**Craig:** No. It feels like a wacky neighbor.

**John:** Yup. Let’s segue to something that Aline actually brought up. She texted to say why don’t you guys talk about why certain movies get made, so not just how would this get made but why certain movies get made. And my first instinct is that movies get put into development by development executives who are one type of person. And so they’re seeing story from a specific way. And they are interested in like oh the story, the characters, this writer is really great. And movies go into production because of marketing executives. Basically the decision of like what movie do we think we can actually make money on is often a very different team.

And so when I get approached with a hey would you want to adapt this thing for us, when I got approached with this hey do you want to take this How Would This Be a Movie one of my fundamental decisions was like I don’t think you’re actually going to make that movie. And so much of my job as a screenwriter is to really stock pick or thinking like what movies do I think you’re actually going to make versus you’re just going to hire me to write a script.

**Craig:** Yeah. It does seem to me that some movies just cannot be stopped.

**John:** Inevitability is I think a thing.

**Craig:** Inevitability. Generally speaking if there is some underlying property that some PowerPoint presentation proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it can’t miss, they’re making it. Obviously it can miss. In fact, those probably miss more frequently and then the hit, it doesn’t matter. Everybody agrees together, holding hands in a boardroom this is correct. So this is how you do get pitched things where you go you can’t be serious.

And there’s nothing you can do about it. They’re making it. If there is a combination of a very hot star and a very hot director, they’re making it. Even when they shouldn’t. And that doesn’t have to be a very commercially obvious movie. That could be like a completely commercially not-obvious movie. And yet still but we got them. And then it’s like, OK, I guess you’re doing it then. You shouldn’t. But all right.

**John:** But you always have to think in terms of like what is the slot for this. And does the studio see this as their awards contender? Or do they see this as a big blockbuster movie that’s going to actually generate real movie? Because those are the two things that studios tend to make now.

With the rise of streamers there’s latitude to make other kinds of movies that are appealing to specific audiences which is great. But classically people were approaching this as like can I win awards with this or can I make a gazillion dollars off of this. And those are the things. And some of the movies we talked about today it’s not quite clear how that would work out. I mean, the nanny-plus, Aline could write that movie. It reminds me of sort of like I Don’t Know How She Does It or those books – there was an era of books that were adapted that were centering on women and women’s issues. Maybe you make those for streamers now, but you’re not making them very often for theatrical release.

**Craig:** No, I don’t think any of the movies that we contemplated existing today would be for a major studio. They just don’t do them.

**John:** Unless it was Smokehouse, the George Clooney company, doing it for Warners as a big awards kind of thing. That’s possible. Like Argo is an example of that kind of movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. There is still that niche, but a lot of times I think with those things they have arranged for other co-financiers that limit – when you talk about like, OK, we’re spending a bunch of money, what they’re spending a bunch of money on is, I don’t know, whatever Paw Patrol, live action Paw Patrol.

**John:** That’s what we want. Did you see the trailer for Clifford the Big Red Dog?

**Craig:** I did.

**John:** The trailer for Clifford the Big Red Dog was better than I expected and I think it will actually succeed in its target audience. And I want to wish them well.

**Craig:** I have no idea because I don’t know what it costs. If it costs a whole lot, I don’t know.

**John:** If it costs $100 million then I think that’s money not well spent. But I don’t think it costs $100 million.

**Craig:** That would be unfortunate. And somewhere someone is listening to this going it literally cost $99.5 million, you mother-f-ers.

Yes, listen, I root for all movies.

**John:** I root for all movies as well.

**Craig:** All movies.

**John:** All right. Let’s do our One Cool Things. Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No, you forgot.

**Craig:** I didn’t forget. You know, what episode is this? 507? There aren’t even 507 cool things in the world total.

**John:** There are so many cool things in the world.

**Craig:** I don’t think so. I think we’re into like moderately interesting things at this point.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is genuinely cool and I think our audience will like it.

**Craig:** I’ll be the judge of this.

**John:** Do you want to hear it?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So my One Cool Thing is an episode of Decoder Ring. It’s a podcast I listen to. I think it’s been a One Cool Thing several times before. Willa Paskin hosts it. It is terrific. It’s on Slate.

This episode was on the Tootsie shot. And the Tootsie shot – you know in Tootsie when she’s walking towards the camera, it’s a very long lens in a crowded New York street?

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** You recognize that shot as an iconic image from Tootsie, but from a zillion other movies.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** It’s about the history of that shot, or that kind of shot, and how that shot became possible because of technological changes, but also sort of cultural changes. And the changes in cities overall. It’s just a really great analysis of both urban structure but also moviemaking and cinematography and what that shot means in terms of like we’re focusing on this one person among a sea of other people. That it’s generally a first act shot that you see.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And establishing who this person is in a crowd of others. I just thought it was great. And it ties into 9 to 5 and lots of other things, too. So I would highly recommend people check out the Tootsie shot episode of Decoder Ring.

**Craig:** Pretty cool.

**John:** That’s pretty good.

**Craig:** Pretty cool.

**John:** And that’s our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro is by Michael Karman. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter I’m @johnaugust.

We have t-shirts and they’re lovely. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can also find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s where you find transcripts and sign up for the weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting where we talk about things that are interesting to writers.

You can sign up to become a premium member at Scriptnotes.net where get all the back episodes and bonus segments including the one we’re about to record on your cheat sheet for time travel. Craig, thank you for coming back and for a fun episode.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right. So Craig this is the conceit here I want to get to. So let’s say you are traveling back through time and you may get stuck someplace. If you had one sheet of paper back and forth what kind of information would you want to have that you could share with the people of that time, that era, so that you could jumpstart them but also sort of like prove that you actually know things? What would you have on there that would make you seem so, so smart?

**Craig:** OK. And I don’t know what time I’m going to?

**John:** You don’t. You don’t know what it’s going to be.

**Craig:** Because what a bummer you jump in that thing and you end up just yesterday. You’re like, ugh.

**John:** I’ve got the Pythagorean Theorem for nothing.

**Craig:** God. Yeah.

**John:** And I want to stipulate that there’s prior art here. So Ryan Norse has a great book on how to invent everything. A previous One Cool Thing of mine was The Information by Lewis Dartnell. There’s The Thrifty Time Traveler’s Guide by Jonathan Stokes. So people have thought about this. But the sense of one sheet of paper is sort of my conceit for this.

**Craig:** I would probably emphasize medicine and in particular germ theory.

**John:** Yeah. Oh god.

**Craig:** And some simple antibiotic methods. But most importantly just basic germ theory. If I could back into certain periods and just prove to people that they should just wash their hands, and like specifically the doctor.

You know, when Lincoln was shot, so this is not that long ago. What was it, 1865?

**John:** Sounds right.

**Craig:** So not that long ago. That wasn’t thousands of years ago. The doctors who they took him across the street and they brought doctors in. He was clearly in grave straits and on his way to dying. There’s a bullet hole in his head and they just put their fingers in it to try and feel if they could find the bullet. That’s what they did.

They didn’t wash. There was no reason to wash because there’s nothing on your hand that could possibly cause more problems than a bullet. If I could do one thing it would be germ theory.

So notes on germ theory. Plans for how to heal infections. How to prevent viral transmission and bacterial transmission.

**John:** Those all sound great. I think there’s some basic formulas that would be important there. Because this idea of a cheat sheet, I don’t know if you ever had any classes where a physics test you were allowed to sort of like have one sheet of paper that can have–

**Craig:** They never let me have that.

**John:** Oh, I think it’s a godsend. Because it’s stupid not to because you could always look it up.

**Craig:** I know. But they were mean.

**John:** Yeah. So the basic formulas, so Pythagorean Theorem, Quadratic Formula, getting everybody on a base ten system is just so important and so crucial. The knowledge that the world is round, because experiments you could do even in ancient Egypt that show like oh the world is round, you can actually calculate the size of the earth. The sense that the earth is not the center of the universe. That the sun is the center of our solar system. That there are other planets. I think that’s important to understand. It’s not going to have as big of an impact necessarily as washing your hands will be, but I think will move things forward.

Getting people past – you know, if you look at Aristotle and sort of the classic philosophers they were trying to do this theory of mind, but also the physical universe, and they just did not have the tools to actually understand. So they kept inventing things and they systematize this logic but it was based on nothing. So bringing them the scientific method and sense of like this is the hypothesis, this is what I’m testing. This is the results. That feels crucial to me.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Capitalism and just the sense of how money works and how we’re going to exchange stuff, how we’re going to exchange goods and services.

**Craig:** A lot of Bernie fans screaming at their iPods right now. How dare you!

**John:** If you understand capitalism then you can get to other sort of systems as well.

**Craig:** That’s how you get yourself off the hook, huh? All right.

**John:** That’s what it is. But who explained capitalism better than Marx? No one.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m not really sure anybody did prior to that. It was just sort of this is our system. It’s a natural bartering system is what we do.

**John:** There was Adam Smith.

**Craig:** From the Invisible Hand.

**John:** Invisible Hand and all that stuff. Those feel like the crucial things to sort of get across. I mean, you don’t need to teach them atomic theory. There’s things that are just not going to be realistic because they have to build so much stuff along the way, but I want to get people started as quickly as we can. And hopefully head off some of the worst things like slavery and thinking about sort of like what does it fundamentally mean for each person to have inalienable rights that are possessed within.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, what do you think? Based on everything we know about science fiction when you go back and you help people then you hurl yourself back to the future, it’s going to be a nightmare scape. Because that’s just we can never help.

**John:** Time travel inevitably involves sort of like sleeping with your mother and it’s bad.

**Craig:** Oh, why would you? Why?

**John:** Back to the Future.

**Craig:** Got to drink heavily now at 11:47 in the morning. Oh man. I’m going to go back in time to a moment before you said that. That’s all I want to do.

**John:** Now if you can go back in time you could actually think of a One Cool Thing that you could have shared here.

**Craig:** Nah.

**John:** No, not going to do it.

**Craig:** Never.

**John:** Craig, thank you very much for a fun episode.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** And listeners if you have suggestions for what you should put on that sheet do write to us because I think you’re going to probably have some really good ideas of what that sheet should be.

**Craig:** Better ones. Oh, you know what I would love? I would roll the dice and hope that I would go back to the time of Jesus. And show him the bible. And have him go, “You can’t be serious?” And I’m going to be like, no dude, this is real. And he’d be like, “You can’t? You cannot be serious.” And I’m like, no, no, no, this is seriously real.

**John:** Listeners if you tweet at me with your one page back-and-forth sheet cheat I will retweet that because I think that’s a great idea. Do it. Craig, good luck with your continued preproduction and when do you start shooting? Or is that public knowledge?

**Craig:** That is not public knowledge, but real, real soon.

**John:** Cool. Enjoy.

**Craig:** Thanks.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Zola Movie](https://a24films.com/films/zola) discussed in our HWTBAM segment on [Episode 222](https://johnaugust.com/2015/live-from-austin-2015).
* [The Criminals Thought the Devices Were Secure. But the Seller Was the F.B.I.](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/world/australia/operation-trojan-horse-anom.html?referringSource=articleShare)
* [1,000-Word Job Listing for a “Household Manager/Cook/Nanny](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jan/24/nanny-viral-ad-california-ceo) and follow up [An Interview With the Woman Who Wrote the Viral 1,000-Word Job Listing for a “Household Manager/Cook/Nanny](https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/01/meet-the-silicon-valley-ceo-and-mom-who-wrote-the-viral-extremely-detailed-job-listing-for-a-household-manager-cook-nanny.html) from Ruth Graham on Slate.
* [Couple breaks up after being handcuffed together for 123 days](https://nypost.com/2021/06/18/couple-breaks-up-after-being-handcuffed-together-for-123-days/)
* [Must I really indulge my ‘psychic’ sister-in-law?](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/carolyn-hax-must-i-really-indulge-my-psychic-sister-in-law/2016/08/05/ff5f2f10-5830-11e6-9767-f6c947fd0cb8_story.html)
* [Decoder Ring: The Tootsie Shot](https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2021/06/tootsie-shot)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Liz Hannah](https://twitter.com/itslizhannah) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Michael Karman ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/507standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/creating-a-tv-comedy).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Today on the show we have some clips with some bad words in them, so if you don’t want your kids to hear those words maybe listen to this one on headphones.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is Episode 508 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig and I could not get our schedules to sync up this week, but lucky for all of us we have a remarkable replacement in the form of Jen Statsky. She’s a writer-producer whose credits include Broad City, Parks and Rec, The Good Place, and my previous One Cool Thing Hacks, a series which she co-created. Welcome Jen.

**Jen Statsky:** Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

**John:** I’m so excited to have you here. So we’ve not really met in person I don’t think, maybe at a WGA thing?

**Jen:** Maybe at a WGA thing. But I think this might be our first in-person meeting.

**John:** It very well could be. So on Twitter I congratulated you on your show, but I think we probably retweeted the same things in the past, but that’s about as much as we’ve done together.

**Jen:** Yes.

**John:** Well today on the show I want to talk about how you got started and particularly how you got started in comedy because that’s a thing I know nothing about. And then I really want to dig into the form of single camera comedy, because Hacks is just great and Hacks and Broad City are both single camera comedies, but they’re very different. And I want to talk about writing those, writing towards act breaks, writing without act breaks.

**Jen:** Sure.

**John:** And we have the pages in front of us, so we have some scenes. So I really want to get very specific if we can.

**Jen:** I love it. Let’s get into it.

**John:** And you know who else has questions? Our listeners. I put out a call to the premium subscribers and they sent in 130 questions about comedy that Megana has sorted through. So, we will not 130.

**Jen:** Let’s do them. Let’s hit them all.

**John:** All of them. We’re going to knock them all out.

**Jen:** 130 questions.

**John:** And in our bonus segment for premium members I want to talk through the cat person discourse, so cat person which is that short story that everyone is talking about years ago, well now there’s an update to that, so I want to get your take on that.

**Jen:** It’s so funny that we are once again reliving cat person on Twitter. It’s all come full circle from 2017.

**John:** Yeah. I feel like there’s people who were in a coma all this time and they wake up and we’re still talking about cat person.

**Jen:** On one end of a global pandemic there’s cat person discourse, and on the other end of the global pandemic there’s cat person discourse.

**John:** It gets into those questions about like who owns a story. And we’re all sort of drawing from real life, especially writers. And I’ve run into situations where an event will happen and it’s like, oh, do I get that event, or do you get that event?

**Jen:** Exactly. I know. It’s a super nuanced conversation about art and who owns certain life things that have happened to people. So it is a really interesting conversation.

**John:** Cool. Two little bits of news and follow up to start with. First off, the WGA put out this pilot deal guide, which was kind of cool. So coming out of the agency agreement we now get all the contracts, and so we can see everybody’s contract and we can see how much people are getting paid for their deals, not just as writers but also as producers, and how much they’re getting paid to write pilots. And so they have all this information. The guild looked through 700 pilot deals from 2020 and 2021 to see what the averages were.

Jen, were there any surprises in here for you?

**Jen:** No, no real surprises. I mean, I think it’s so helpful to have this information out there. I’m just so delighted that the guild did this because you know so much of what happens is people get kept in the dark about what other people are getting paid. And in doing that it allows studios and networks to have all the power, because we’re not talking. We don’t know what our counterparts are making. And so just to have this information out there is I think wonderful.

I remember when the guild was asking for people’s contracts I had a couple of friends reach out and be like, hey, is it OK to send them this. And it’s like yeah it’s to help us, it’s not for nefarious purposes that the Writers Guild wants to look at your contracts. It’s all in the name of the information being out there and just being super helpful and give writers a stronger place to be in for negotiations.

**John:** Yeah. So if you have an agent or manager or lawyer getting your deal, great, they should have some of this information. They should have a sense of what this is. But this is a chance for a writer to say like, OK, this is above the median, this is below the median. If it’s below the median, why is it below the median? There could be a good reason. I mean, half of writers are going to get paid more. So, there could be a reason why you’re below median. But it’s helpful to understand. And if there’s a reason that you can solve about this, great.

**Jen:** Totally. Were there any surprises to you in looking at it?

**John:** I was happy to see that there were changes from 2019. So that a pilot script went up $17,500. That’s great.

**Jen:** That’s great.

**John:** And so that’s progress people are making. And the split between one hours and half hours is also good. So you deal for Hacks, was it a streamer at that point? Was it clear that it was always going to be something that was made without commercials and made for not a cable?

**Jen:** Yeah. It was always – the idea was always to go to the cable streaming places. Like we didn’t really ever entertain pitching this to networks. I and Mike Schur under overall deals at Universal Television, so it started out – we pitched to Universal and then kind of going from there we plotted out where we were going to take the show. But, yeah, in the very early iterations as Paul – my co-creators Paul Downs and Lucia Aniello and I were talking about this idea. We just always knew it had to be for streaming or cable. It’s just baked into the idea.

**John:** Great. So we’ll put a link in the show notes to this, but it talks through sort of what broadcast network and streamer deals are like and you can see where things are at right now. And the good news is that it’ll keep going forward. So each year they’ll be able to put up an update to see what progress is being made, or if stuff is retrenching at all.

A bit of follow up here. Two episodes ago we talked about getting fired. Phil in LA wrote in. Megana could you tell us what Phil said?

**Megana Rao:** Yeah. So Phil wrote in and said, “I listened to Episode 506 where you discussed how to handle being fired. While bad communication isn’t limited to screenwriting, it doesn’t need to be the practice. In Episode 399, Notes on Notes, instead of accepting the status quo on notes you and Craig created a program to help producers learn to give better notes and fix communication issues. The same could be done on this issue as well. And industry build on relationships and communication needs a bedrock of respect. And important moments like firing need to have established norms.”

**John:** Yeah. My daughter just applied for her first job. She’s a high schooler. And so she applied for her first job and she keeps asking like when do you think they’re going to tell me if I got the job or didn’t get the job. And I’m like they’re never going to tell you.

**Jen:** Oh, you’ll never know. I’m still waiting to find out if I got a job at Jimmy Kimmel from a packet I submitted in 2008. So, you just never know.

**John:** Well you’re in a position now to hire people, or to fire people if you need to. So, what are some things that you’re thinking about in terms of communication outward with people that are either under your employ or want to be under your employ?

**Jen:** It’s a good question. I mean, I think when it comes to hiring, and especially firing, there are just difficult conversations that you have to have. And with the privilege of getting to be a showrunner, getting to be a show creator, getting to be the boss you are also taking on the responsibility of having difficult conversations. And so I think you can’t shy away from that. I think you have to say, OK, if this person is being let go we’re not just going to do it in an unethical way where we don’t treat them like a human being. We’re going to have a conversation.

And so it’s about being a human being and just treating that person like a human being and saying, OK, this is going to be a difficult conversation and it’s probably not what I want to do with my day to day, but I at least owe this to someone to talk to them about it.

**John:** Well from a writer perspective the golden rule really applies. You know what it would feel like to be ghosted or to be fired in a bad way. We can understand what that’s like. And so even though we may not be trained as managers, which is a whole separate issue, we do have a sense of what it feels like to be the writer who is not getting the full information. And so just being honest with the person and just being thoughtful and human with the person seems to be great progress.

**Jen:** I listened to you guys talk about it and as someone who works primarily in TV, not in features, I knew this as a fact but it is so fascinating that in features it does seem like you have to get so much more used to being fired than in television. Like in television, you know, maybe you work on a show for a season and they don’t ask you back, but even that doesn’t totally feel like firing. It feels like in features it’s a much more common occurrence that people have not figured out how to handle well still.

**John:** Talk to me about not being asked back. Because that is a different thing than being fired. And it doesn’t have the same negative connotation as being dropped off of something.

**Jen:** No, not at all. You know, I have friends who have run rooms and they’ve not asked people back the next season and it’s never necessarily because, oh, that person was bad and didn’t work. Sometimes you’re just like oh you know what going forward we found that the tone of the show is way more dramatic than we thought and so we’re going to try to hire some people with more experience in drama for example. And so that really just becomes looking at every single, the makeup of your writer’s room, who do you need, what are you feeling you need more of, what direction is the story headed, and who can help you serve that?

So a lot of times I think if someone doesn’t get asked back, like yeah sure there are situations where it was just a bad fit and that person didn’t gel with the room, but it doesn’t – like you said, it doesn’t have the same stigma. It’s not quite the same as being fired and told like, OK, you’re not doing this job again on Monday basically.

**John:** It also strikes me that with so many shows being done in mini rooms are being entirely written before anything is being shot, there’s not that same expectation that you’re going to be coming back season after season on a show. Because those people will not be available necessarily. So you’re just kind of assembling a team for one heist.

**Jen:** Exactly.

**John:** And then you go off again.

**Jen:** Exactly. Like there’s so many shows now, so many opportunities. So you can’t really expect – like we have some wonderful writers who wrote on season one of Hacks, but they might get their own. They’re doing their own stuff. They might get a pilot. They might not be available for that reason. Yeah, it’s very much so one heist at a time, one season at a time.

**John:** Let’s talk about the staffing up on a show. So, this is a good transition between your role as a showrunner now versus when you were first starting up. You mentioned that you had submitted a packet to Jimmy Kimmel. What were your first jobs in the industry? What were your first attempts at writing in the industry? Because you were an intern also, correct?

**Jen:** Yeah. So long before I worked I was a kid who just was like obsessed with television. Reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore Show on Nick at Nite was like that’s what raised me. Because my parents kind of kicked the can down the road on that one. And so I was obsessed with television from a very young age. I didn’t really know that it was a job someone could do until maybe towards the end of high school. And then I realized like, OK, it seems like NYU has a very good film and TV program. I’m going to apply there. And I got in. And I studied film and TV there.

I went through the film and TV program which is actually more for directors, but pretty quickly learned that I did not like directing and only wanted to be a writer. And so at NYU the thing that was an incredible privilege of being at NYU was that you’re in the city during the school year so you can apply for these internships that people at other colleges can really only do during their summer breaks. So my senior year I interned at Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Saturday Night Live. Kind of found myself in this insane situation where I was going to 30 Rock six out of seven days a week as a 21-year-old because I was able to do, yeah, three days at Conan, three days at SNL, which was an incredible learning experience.

It was actually 2007, so it was an incredible learning experience which was then cut short because of the writers’ strike. So I got to also see how all of that stuff was going down.

**John:** Tell me like it was an incredible learning experience because they had set it up to be, or because you were doing something that you actually – were you being entrepreneurial about your learning there?

**Jen:** Kind of a combination. They definitely were very kind people who I think wanted interns to learn from being there. But I lucked into a very specific role at Saturday Night Live which was I was a photography intern, which made no sense because I have absolutely no photography skills whatsoever. But that’s just the department I ended up in. And in being a photography intern you are tasked with going down – at least this was how it was in 2007, I don’t know if it still is now – but we were tasked with going down on the floor and taking photographs of the dress rehearsal, like on the Friday, the day before the show on Saturday. And so I had like this firsthand front row view of the sketches being worked out, the actors running through them, the writers whose sketches it were being on the floor, figuring stuff out, what works, what didn’t.

And that was just so incredibly fascinating. So it was kind of a combo. Any time you’re in an environment like that hopefully your eyes are wide open. You’re listening and you’re just trying to take in as much as you can to learn. And then I also kind of lucked out with the position I got.

**John:** That’s great. So you were there to see the tension of sort of like these are the sketches we think are going to work. These are the tweaks we’re making. Just all of the stuff that gets cut.

**Jen:** Exactly.

**John:** And you’re seeing the writers trying to save their things along the way.

**Jen:** Exactly. And just seeing firsthand what a high pressure environment it is. I mean, it’s been well documented, but that show it’s like really crazy that you are under that kind of time limit. And there’s a gun to your head and it’s like, OK, the show happens Saturday, figure it out. You’ve got to write 12 sketches or whatever it is. And they need to be done by Saturday by 11:30 and it’s Tuesday or whatever. And so that was also just kind of a good intro into realizing like, oh yeah, a lot of these TV writing jobs are super high pressure and can be really intense.

**John:** Were those writers on the show talking with you? I mean, I guess you were the photography intern at SNL, so you weren’t probably interfacing so directly with them. But something like Conan O’Brien did you have a role of actually working with them?

**Jen:** Yeah. SNL was like you said I was more in the photo department for that. But I remember at Conan there’s a long term Conan writer, I think he might be at Colbert now, this guy Brian Stack who is just the funniest, loveliest man and he would always come into the bullpen where the interns were and talk to us and say like how are you guys doing, and any questions we had we were able to ask. So like, yeah, you did mingle with the writers there a lot, which was amazing, because you’re getting to see the people doing what you hopefully – what you want to be doing. And so that was a great experience, too.

**John:** So you come out of these internships and NYU with a degree, but also hopefully some writing samples? What were you trying to do next after this experience?

**Jen:** I knew that I wanted to work in comedy. But I wasn’t quite sure what lane I wanted to pursue. And by that I mean I was taking classes at UCB. I was taking improv classes. I was taking sketch writing classes. I had some half-hour samples that I had written at NYU. But I was also doing standup. And that’s kind of an interesting thing about comedy is that there’s so many – if you are like I want to write movies, you’re like I’m writing movies. But if you’re more broadly like I know I’m interested in comedy and I want to work in comedy there are a bunch of different kind of paths you can dabble with.

And so I was doing a bunch of that and pretty quickly like the things that I was having no fun doing I realized like, OK, that’s not for me. I’m not meant to be a standup. That’s not going to happen. And so the way it happened that I got my first actual job in the industry is that when the writers’ strike happened and so SNL and Conan kind of shut down and didn’t really need interns for a bit there was a satirical newspaper called The Onion which I’m sure people are super familiar with.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Jen:** Which was like a huge touchpoint for me comedically. Like one of my first big comedic influence was The Onion. I just loved it. And I spent my last semester at NYU interning there because they at the time were doing web videos based on Onion headlines and articles. And so I worked there at The Onion and then as I graduated I just got a job in a coffee shop because had rent to pay and wasn’t sure the exact path I was going to take to make it in comedy.

But my two bosses there at the time, Will Graham and Julie Smith, they were tasked with running shows – The Onion did a show for Comedy Central and then they did a show for IFC. And these shows were happening at the exact same time, which was pretty crazy. And so they offered me a job of being their assistant and I took it. And so that was my first kind of real TV production experience.

**John:** These internships were clearly so important for you because you met the people who both inspired you but also gave you a job. So what advice do you have in sort of pursuing one of those internships and how do you land one and how do you make the most of it if you’re in one of those spots?

**Jen:** I think that’s a great question. You really just can’t underestimate what it means to be a kind, good person who seems happy to be there, which sounds like the most simple advice in the world, but I think sometimes people forget it. I think like treat those opportunities like they’re really great opportunities and work hard. And I think you will reap the benefits of it. It’s also a tricky thing because even in the ten or so, 13 years since I was doing that we’re having more conversations about what is free labor, are these internships totally ethical? So I also understand that you might find yourself in a situation where you’re like am I being taken advantage of.

But hopefully in a situation like mine was where I was being compensated in the form of school credit and I was treated with respect. I was able to I think work really hard and be available and engaged with the people I was working for and serve their needs and learn from them. And I think it led them to be like, OK, maybe she’s someone we should bring on in a more fulltime capacity.

**John:** What was the first thing you were hired to write, that you were paid to write for film or TV?

**Jen:** So the first thing I was paid to write freelance was actually Onion headlines. While being an assistant there I wanted to also be writing and so I asked if I could submit headline. And Megan Ganz actually who is a very talented writer who co-created Mythic Quest on Apple, she was an editor at The Onion at the time. And so I submitted to her and she gave me such helpful notes on why this headline works, why that one didn’t, and all this. And she kind of guided me through that.

**John:** Talk to me about an Onion headline. Because I have a sense of what it is, but it’s hard to break down specifically what it is. But is it really the order of words?

**Jen:** That can be one part of it, right? Like, oh, this needs to be more succinct. There’s too many words here. You can cut these ones out. Other times it would be like just the general premise of the idea. It’s like I kind of get the observation you’re going for here but it’s not clicking for me. Things like that. And then I eventually got hired as a freelance Onion headline writer. And so that was every week you submit Onion headlines and they send back, OK, here’s the 40 we picked and your initial would be next to yours if yours made it in. And then you don’t even know if they’re going to use them, but those are at least these the ones they’ve culled down they’ve picked that they’ve liked.

And then if they did eventually use them I think you got a $25 check in the mail. So that was my first freelance job, which again I loved because I just loved The Onion so much and I felt so grateful to be getting to write for it.

And then my first fulltime staff job was writing monologue jokes at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

**John:** So that was a job you probably went through a packet process?

**Jen:** Yes. That was a packet process. I was lucky enough to get a manager through a UCB class I took. The teacher very nicely said, “Oh I think my friend who is a manager would like your stuff, can I pass it along to her?” And he did. And to this day she’s still my manager. So through that I started submitting packets to late night shows. And, yeah, did a bunch of those that I am pretty sure I didn’t get the job for because I never worked at those shows.

**John:** In all those cases you’re submitting – you or your manager are putting this in and you just never hear back? For all you know they’re just going into a void?

**Jen:** Oh, you never, ever hear. Basically like, OK, SNL is looking for sketch packets. Conan is looking for monologue joke packets. And so you just do it and you send it out into the world and, yeah, you typically don’t hear.

I remember the monologue one for Fallon, it was like a weeklong, almost challenge or something. You would every night get sent premises and then you would have to send in your jokes either later that night or by the next morning. And you did that for like four days.

**John:** And you’re not getting paid for that.

**Jen:** No, you’re getting absolutely no money for that.

**John:** That’s why the WGA sort of stepped in there and said like, OK, you have to limit that.

**Jen:** Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it’s a good question. I’ve been out of the late night game for so long now. What is the situation with packets now?

**John:** So, here’s what happened. Both on the east, but also some on the west, we were getting these complaints about, OK, this has just become abusive. They’re asking for just tremendous amounts of just free labor to do these things. And even if that stuff is not making it into show, it’s just abusive.

**Jen:** It’s not cool.

**John:** It’s not cool at all. And so there are limits to sort of how much they can ask. And trying to get some standardization of like what packets really mean, so that you can theoretically submit a packet to more than one place, so it’s not all specific work to this. And if there’s real research involved at some point they have to pay you for like those later rounds, because some of these shows were having round after round after round you have to go through.

**Jen:** So crazy. Yeah. So unnecessary to make people jump through those hoops.

**John:** And it was clear when you talked to some of the people who were hiring it’s like they were just doing it because they were doing it. And it wasn’t actually helpful in their process.

**Jen:** Yes. That’s one of those things. And I do feel like in the late night world this happens even more than in half hour of like ways of doing things just get calcified and people go, “But it’s just because it’s the way it’s done. That’s how we do it.” Even on SNL they still stay up all night writing when I don’t know that that necessarily needs to be the process. It’s so good that the guild got involved to challenge these ideas of like, yeah, just because it’s the way it’s always been done doesn’t mean it’s actually cool to be doing to people.

**John:** Yeah. So it sounds like you knew in the general sense you wanted to write comedy, but you decided I’m going to try all the things and then decide from those things which things are not my things. So standup was not your thing.

**Jen:** Standup was not my thing. I am really not a performer. It is not where I shine.

**John:** So UCB was learning sketch writing.

**Jen:** Yes, UCB was sketch writing, which I liked OK, but I still wasn’t great at. And so what happened actually was around this time, I guess this was probably now 2010, before Twitter became a hell scape it was a place where people were just writing stupid jokes. And in a really cool way it kind of democratized comedy writing a little bit because anyone could just write a funny joke. And if it was funny enough a ton of people would see it and get retweeted. And a lot of people made their careers by doing that, which was cool.

And so I joined Twitter in like 2010 and started just kind of writing little one-liner jokes, which like I said there were things I wasn’t great at. I wasn’t great at standup. I wasn’t great at sketch. But I found that one-liner jokes I had a lot of fun writing those. And so I always tell people when they’re starting out in comedy like kind of follow the fun. The thing you’re having the most fun doing is probably the thing you’re best at.

So I just was doing that on Twitter and what’s funny is I had submitted – like I said I had submitted to Fallon many times. I had done that week-long challenge of sending jokes in every night, not getting any sleep, and never hearing back. But what happened was is A.D. Miles, the head writer at that time, learned of me through Twitter and then just sent me a direct message being like, “Hey, do you want to submit a packet for Fallon?” Which I was like, yes, of course, even though what I could have said is, “Yeah, I’ve done it hundreds of times. Just hire me off one of those.”

But they were actually looking for sketch writers at the time, so I had to a sketch packet. Got hired off of that. And then though quickly again since sketch is not really my strong suit I started also – even though it’s divided into up into sketch and monologue writers at that show, or at least it was when I was there, anyone is allowed to submit monologue jokes. You can just send them in.

So I started doing that and getting a decent amount on. And then it kind of became apparent, oh, this is more your skill set. We’re going to move you over to here. And then I became a permanent monologue joke writer for the rest of my time there.

**John:** What I hear you saying is that you didn’t go in saying this is exactly the kind of writer I am. You actually sort of discovered and you just tried a bunch of things. And then winnowed out the things that didn’t work. And so if people are listening to this at home who say, oh, I want to write comedy, maybe take a broad approach to what kind of comedy you’re writing and see where your natural strengths are.

**Jen:** Exactly.

**John:** Rather than assuming I’m the person who is going to write this exact show.

**Jen:** Exactly. I think that when I started, you know, growing up, even though I loved – like Mary Tyler Moore was, again, a huge influence, I also loved SNL. And I think a big part of me was like oh I’m going to be a sketch writer for Saturday Night Live. That’s what I want to do. And I think if I had just tried to like force myself into that it would have been a much tougher path because, again, I don’t think my natural skill set, I don’t think sketch writing is something that I’m great at. And so by trying a bunch of different things and allowing myself to go, right, I’m having the most fun doing this thing, let me follow that, I think that’s the thing I’m best at, it allowed me to find what my path was.

And so, yeah, I think anyone starting out, especially in comedy when there are so many different ways to approach it, I think give yourself the freedom to try a bunch of stuff, and be bad at some of it. And just because you’re bad at one part of comedy writing doesn’t mean you’re bad at the other parts. You know?

**John:** Now, what’s the segue from Fallon to writing for shows, writing for Broad City, writing for Parks and Rec? What was the step in there?

**Jen:** So I was at Fallon for about 2.5 years, which I always say felt like 20.5. Not because of the people there. They’re lovely. But because monologue joke writing is so grueling. You basically – I think every morning by 11:30 in the morning I would have to have like five pages of monologue jokes written, something like that. And let me be clear. Most of them bad. They’re not good. It’s not a good five pages. But still you’re expected to produce this volume of stuff. And it’s all based on the news. And it really – I think the people who can do it forever, like I truly tip my cap to them, because it’s really challenging and it’s really hard. And especially as the world seems to be getting darker and darker it’s hard to write topical jokes based on the news. That really, really weighed on me after a while and I was gone in 2013.

So I really appreciated the job there because – I say it was comedy writing boot camp because I just had to produce so much material every single day. But pretty like towards the end of my time there, like the last year, I realized I think I want to tell longer stories. I want to explore writing for characters and characters that have arcs and just get into that. So I knew that half hour was the place I wanted to be.

And so I made the decision to just leave. I didn’t have my next job lined up, which I remember at the time people were like why are you doing this. But sometimes I think you just have to force yourself to make the move. So I left Fallon. My then boyfriend at the time, now husband, we moved across the country. Came to LA. I wrote a spec of, wow, this is going to date me. I wrote a spec Happy Endings. Do you remember that how?

**John:** It’s a good show.

**Jen:** Yeah, I loved Happy Endings. Very funny show. So I wrote a spec for that and that was my sample, because I think even back then half hour people were looking more for specs than original pilots. And, yeah, I got hired. My first half hour job was actually the show Hello Ladies, on HBO, which was co-created by Stephen Merchant and Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky. So that was my first half hour experience.

But that was a pretty short – it was like an eight-episode HBO show. One of those shows where you kind of are going to write everything in preproduction and then they’re going to go off and make it. And so towards the end of my time in that writer’s room I also came to know Mike Schur via Twitter. And he I guess, yeah, liked jokes I had written there. And then I think he read my spec, but I honestly think he also hired me based off of Twitter and just meeting me and being like, all right, she’s not a total crazy person.

**John:** So that was for Parks and Rec?

**Jen:** That was for Parks and Rec.

**John:** And again these are very joke dense shows. These are things where there’s expectation that there’s going to be a joke every 10, 15 seconds.

**Jen:** Yes. Totally. Yes.

**John:** So from there then back to New York for Broad City?

**Jen:** Yes. I did my first season of Broad City in between the last two seasons of Parks and Rec. It kind of worked out beautifully where I think the day we ended season six of Parks I got on a plane and went to New York and started the Broad City season two writer’s room. And I did that for a couple months. And then came back.

And then going forward Parks and Rec ended. I went on to a show, Lady Dynamite on Netflix. I did that in the interim. And then once The Good Place started I was always kind of – I was never again fulltime in the room in Broad City. I was always just writing a script from LA while they were in New York and giving notes on episodes and punch ups and stuff like that.

So I was very lucky in that I was able to be on The Good Place fulltime, but also be working on Broad City as well.

**John:** Great. So you’ve mentioned all the people who seemed to be involved with Hacks. So talk to me about where did the idea for Hacks come about and how did the three of you, but also Mike Schur and everyone else come together on this property?

**Jen:** So Paul W. Downs, and Lucia Aniello, and I, we met doing comedy in New York. Lucia and I were the only two women in this sketch group that was kind of like an offshoot. It was all people who had met at UCB. And then slowly but surely the sketch group stopped emailing us to come to the meetings and we both realized, OK, I think we’ve been let go from this sketch group. Cool.

But, we instantly connected and shared a sense of humor. And I loved her and I was desperate to make her my friend. And then she was dating Paul and was also comedic partners doing sketches with Paul. And same thing. We hit it off. And I was lucky to just kind of be in their orbit for a while. If they had sketches and stuff I would pitch jokes and they went and they made their movie Rough Night. And I was on set as a punch up writer for that.

And so we just always loved writing together and knew that we wanted to make something together one day. So what happened was Paul was doing a Netflix Characters special, which I don’t know if you guys have seen, but it was basically just a bunch of sketches he was shooting. I came along just to pitch jokes for them. And we went to Maine. We were going to a monster truck rally. So the idea for Hacks was born out of a monster truck rally.

Paul has a character called Jasper Cooch, whose catchphrase is Big Trucks. And he was being allowed to just host the monster truck rally in Portland, Maine. They gave him the mic even though – like he could have absolutely said there’s a bomb in here and caused and incredible panic. But they trusted him. And so on this road trip we met up in Boston and then we drove to Portland, Maine for this monster truck rally.

And I don’t know how we got on the topic, but we started talking about comedians, particularly female comedians, and women in the arts in general and how maybe they hadn’t gotten their due the way their male counterparts had. And how it’s just such a harder path for women, like how they had to keep their heads down and pound the pavement and put up with so much bullshit frankly while, yeah, for other comedians who were maybe straight white men, they didn’t have as hard of a path.

And so we just kind of started talking about characters like that. And wanting to tell a woman like that story. And that was sort of the birthplace of Hacks.

**John:** All right. So for listeners who haven’t seen the show yet, let me give you the briefest logline so you get some sense of what we’re going to be talking about today. Hacks is a limited series, well now it’s going into its second season, so it’s a series about a legendary Vegas comedienne who hires on a disgraced, young Hollywood writer to freshen up her act. And their relationship is alternately contentious, very contentious, and maternal. And it feels like it’s mostly a two-hander.

**Jen:** Yes.

**John:** And yet other characters have some storytelling power. So Paul W. Downs plays an agent who can drive scenes by himself. Marcus who is her COO can also drive scenes by himself. How early in the process did you know who the characters were and sort of what the shape of the show was going to be?

**Jen:** Well, I think you’re right that it is a two-hander. That’s very much so like in the DNA of the show. That’s kind of what it was born out of. It was this idea of, OK, what if it’s this woman who has been through so much and has so much trauma from what she’s done, but also amassed this empire, making so much money doing it. And then what if there was a younger woman who didn’t fully appreciate what this woman has been through and has also maybe like so many women like this, the younger writer has the story about her wrong. Because so often we get women like this, we get their story wrong. And something gets pushed in the media and people just blindly go along with it. And only in the last few years when we look at when like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton have we started to reevaluate these stories we’ve believed about women in the public eye.

And so that was kind of the genesis of, OK, they’ll be forced to work together and they will butt heads, but actually they both really need each other. And at the heart of it it’ll be a love story. It’ll be about these two women falling in love with each other through their friendship, through their working relationship, and how does that change them and what new places does it bring them to.

But then you also are correct to bring up Marcus and Paul’s character and Kaitlin Olson who plays Jean Smart’s daughter so wonderfully. We knew we wanted to fill out Deborah’s ecosystem, right? We’re very interested in the idea of people like Deborah who are empires. Like I said they have a very carefully curated ecosystem around them. They have enough money and enough power that they get to choose all the people in their world, and there’s a lot of people in their world whose job it is to only fulfill their needs and think about them. And so someone like Marcus, played by the wonderful Carl Clemons-Hopkins, we wanted to explore the idea of well what does it mean that Marcus has devoted his entire adult life to working for Deborah and building something up for her. And also taking from her this kind of workaholic attitude and how does he reckon with but is that fulfilling him, is that fulfilling his soul.

**John:** And it’s not into late in the series that we learn that he’s actually a fan. That he got the job because he was a super fan.

**Jen:** Exactly. And we just I think never wanted any one character to feel purely like an accessory, which is a challenge to do that because even though it’s streaming you only have so much time. You only can afford to shoot so many pages in a day. So it’s definitely a balancing act of trying to give – when it’s a two-hander but also kind of also an ensemble, giving the other players in the ensemble rich storylines that feel and grounded and interesting.

So, I hope that we achieved that because that definitely was our goal going into it.

**John:** Let’s take a listen to a scene. This is a scene from the pilot in which Deborah Vance is meeting with the owner of the casino who is trying to tell her that basically she’s going to lose her theater and this job that she has is going to be ending. Let’s take a listen to it, then I want to get to what’s actually on the page.

[Clip plays]

**Marty:** You know how I’m redoing the casino’s east tower?

**Deborah:** Oh yeah.

**Marty:** So the contractor double orders everything. And what the hell am I supposed to do with two tons of fertilizer?

**Deborah:** Dumb it on Steve Wynn’s doorstep.

**Marty:** Bingo.

**Deborah:** Marty, you set me up.

**Marty:** Deb, 2,500 shows. Now, I think it’s a Vegas record.

**Deborah:** It is.

**Marty:** Well cheers.

**Deborah:** Cheers.

**Marty:** And they’re naming a street after you.

**Deborah:** I know. Deborah Vance Drive. It’ll probably be a dead end with an abortion clinic on it.

**Marty:** [laughs] Now that the big show is all planned, maybe it’s a good time to talk about the future. You know you’ll always be a part of the Palmetto’s history. But maybe it would be good if you did a few less shows a year.

**Deborah:** Good for who?

**Marty:** Yeah. I need some marquee dates for new acts. Like Pentatonix.

**Deborah:** What the hell is that?

**Marty:** They’re a beatbox forward acapella group. They do medleys. They won the Sing Off.

**Deborah:** Who gives a shit?

**Marty:** I have two buckets to fill. Families and idiots in their 20s. The families want to see singing and dancing and the college kids want to spend a grand to watch a guy in a helmet hit play on an iPod.

**Deborah:** You’re forgetting about your third bucket. People from Florida. They love me. And my numbers are strong.

**Marty:** You’ll still be doing shows, just not Friday and Saturday.

**Deborah:** Oh, just the most important nights. Un-fucking-believable.

**Marty:** Deb. Why do you even want to do 100+ shows a year? It’s not like you’re having fun. I mean, you’re on cruise control up there.

**Deborah:** I fucking wish – wish I was on cruise control. I’ve been defense my entire career thanks to assholes like you.

**Marty:** Deborah, calm down. Please.

**Deborah:** Oh, what do you care, you own the place. The service sucks. Where’s my fucking doggie bag? I’ll take his, too. And the fork! There was a cockroach in my salad.

**Marty:** Shit. Comp everybody.

**Waiter:** OK.

[Clip ends]

**John:** Great. Let’s take a look at the words that are actually on the page. So this is starting on page 5. This is scene 114 of the script. There’s a lot of changes at the head of the scene. So the script starts with another conversation about being wealthy. It’s about a yacht and an infrared sauna. At what point did that change?

**Jen:** So what you see here on the page we did shoot. We came into it writing the scene like first thinking OK we need to set up what is the dynamic between Marty and Deborah. And the idea being, OK, well one they connect over rich people shit. So they’re talking about their yacht and infrared sauna and that. And then also as – spoiler – but I don’t think we have to worry about that, as the series progresses you see that they have romantic history these two characters. And so there’s also a line here where Deborah says, “Oh yeah.” He says, “Remember my first 70-footer,” talking about his yacht, “Remember that one?” She says, “Oh yeah, we had some fun on that.” And it’s kind of a coy moment where they’re alluding to their sexual history.

But as we got into the edit room it just felt like this is such a lesson in storytelling you learn time and time and time again. Get to the action, get to the crisis. Also, I think once we saw obviously Jean Smart phenomenal. Chris McDonald is incredible, too. Their characters feel so lived in from the moment they appear on screen. We realized like, oh, we overwrote. We didn’t need to write stuff to establish their dynamic.

**John:** You gave them a big onramp that they did not need.

**Jen:** Exactly. Exactly. Trust your actors. Capable actors can communicate that even without words. It’s how they’re interacting with each other. It’s how they’re laughing at each other. It’s how they’re truly sitting across the table from each other. So what happened was is that in the edit we just realized oh their dynamic is clear. This is overwritten probably. Let’s just get right to the heart of the scene which is Deborah finding out your dates are getting taken away from you.

**John:** Great. So the lines we hear in the show, are those just looped lines that you threw in? Did you shoot alternates on the day?

**Jen:** We shot alts on the day. Because it comes in about the Steve Wynn stuff. One of the benefits to having Paul, Lucia, and I are always on set. I mean, Lucia and Paul direct, so they’re of course there. But the three of us are able to pretty easily rewrite on the fly. If we feel something isn’t working there’s three brains. We can huddle up, come up with something. And so that Steve Wynn kind of leading into it that just came from us at village being like all right let’s try this. And credit to Jean and Chris, too, because they’re so nimble and quick that they can have something thrown at them like that and knock it out of the park.

**John:** Great. On page 7 I want to call out some things you do here. So there’s a great moment early on page 7. So she tells a joke, Deborah Vance Drive, and then she writes it down in her notebook, which is just such a great little detail. Is that something you’ve actually seen in real life, or just something you created for this character?

**Jen:** Yeah. It’s something that I think comes from all of our lives. Like I have on my phone Notes app of just like if a joke or if I see something going into it and writing it. And I know on Broad City they had – I think it was a doc of convos we could have. Things we could just talk about. Things that would be funny to see Abby and Ilana talk about and we’d just go into the Google Doc. So that’s something that feels very true to – I mean, I don’t know if it’s all writers. Maybe it’s more specific to comedians, but just constantly observing things and not wanting to forget them so you write them down in your notebook or on your phone.

**John:** So this lunch is set up on the pretense of just like oh let’s get together, but of course he actually has news to deliver and it’s going to lead up to this argument here. A thing you do on page 7 which works really well is Marty’s dialogue is interrupted by a scene description line that is just actually Deborah’s action here. So Mary says, “Now that the big show is all planned maybe it’s a good time to talk about the future.” Deborah puts down on her drink. “What’s this?” in quotes. He presses on.

And so the “what’s this?” is a reaction that she can give. It’s a line that she can say just with her face.

**Jen:** Yes.

**John:** It’s such a great use of breaking up the dialogue here so that we can actually see what the shift is that happened here.

**Jen:** Yeah. It’s a great way I think to show that Deborah is incredibly perceptive and very smart when it comes to business. And so when someone is gently trying to guide the conversation and maybe sneak something by her it’s like, no, no, no, you’re not getting anything by Deborah Vance. Just come out with it, man. And I think Chris does a great job then of like shifting uncomfortably in the seat because he’s a little bit scared of Deborah Vance. So yeah.

**John:** Without that line in there the delivery of his whole thing wouldn’t work. You’re going to need to have some kind of break in there so to call it out in the text is great. You also on page 7 have “Beat” just as its own line as a sentence. And listening back to it she doesn’t actually take that beat, but it’s a nice – Beat is just used as a placeholder like there’s a shift, there’s a moment, there’s a little air here.

**Jen:** A little air to show that Deborah – and again it’s not really in the version that ended up in the final cut, but yeah to show that Deborah is trying to process this tornado that’s been thrown at her of like what are you talking about, I’m losing these dates. These are the most important thing in the world to me.

**John:** Moving on to the next page, here’s an example of I bet you shot all this and people don’t realize that in the edit you have magic scissors and you can cut anything out. So what was actually probably shot was she says, “My numbers are solid and presales from the holiday are on par with last year.” That shows that she’s savvy and that she’s on it. But you probably recognized you did not need the line, so you just cut back to him and her line disappears.

**Jen:** Exactly. Exactly. It was really like – and I had been in the edit a lot on Parks and Rec and The Good Place, always for our episodes. Mike was super like, yeah, get in the edit and do stuff. But this was, running my own show, I was the most in the edit I’d ever been before. And I was just like oh yeah you can truly do anything in the edit room. So, yeah, we shot those lines and then, again, at this point the conversation is getting heated and they’re kind of speaking on top of each other. And so we just wanted to amp up the pace and the frantic energy of it, so it just made sense to lose those lines.

**John:** Now, the decision of when she actually loses her cool, and even when she loses her cool it’s kind of a performative losing her cool. She recognizes she’s doing this in front of a crowd and that she has power because she’s doing this in the crowd. You’re going, “This hits Deborah, then she explodes.” That’s done as scene description but then there’s a parenthetical, hitting the table, getting loud, really emphasizing that this is going to color her vocal performance in this next piece.

**Jen:** Yeah. We knew that this was the moment where we wanted her to lose it because someone like Deborah Vance being told you’re on cruise control, even though it is somewhat maybe true with regard to the quality of her material or how much she’s updated it, she is a woman who like we talked about has had to fight and claw for her position. And so the idea of someone telling her, especially a man telling her, you’re on cruise control is so opposite to what she believes about herself to be true, which is that she is a shark. She just keeps moving. She’s never on cruise control. She’s always fighting, and fighting, and fighting. And so hearing this makes her really lose her top. And yeah.

**John:** So this is a dramatic moment but you’re still in a comedy, and so that’s why you have the runner of the doggie bag coming back. And so can you talk about the shape of this scene and sort of how much did this change in the writing from its initial conception. Was this the scene you kind of always envisioned it to be, or how much did it change as you approached it?

**Jen:** This one I would say of all the scenes in the pilot this one changed quite a bit. We definitely reworked this one more than we reworked some others because it’s such a pivotal scene. It’s the inciting incident for this change Deborah is going through.

**John:** The series would not happen if this scene didn’t happen.

**Jen:** Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, it was a lot of rewriting in terms of like we talked about at the beginning, OK, how much of their dynamic do you need to set up, do you understand who Marty is. I think we got a note at one point that like someone didn’t understand his role, that he owned the casino. So I think that’s where some of the Steve Wynn stuff came in from.

So we rewrote it a decent amount. And I think the beat where she grabs the fork and stabs his steak and throws it, like that came later. She always was going to freak out, but I don’t remember that – that was a later pitch. And, again, you’re also rewriting on the day. And I got to give a shout out to Jean Smart. That “I found a cockroach in my salad” line, that was improvised. She just yelled that as she walked out and we thought it was hilarious and we kept it in.

So this scene went through a lot of rewriting. It was always, OK, he’s telling her he’s cutting back her dates. That was always what was happening. So that never changed. But a lot of the pieces around that inciting incident did change.

**John:** Now the pilot is working on basically parallel tracks. So we’re seeing what’s happening in Deborah’s life, and what’s happening in Ava’s life. And as she’s going to Las Vegas to meet with Deborah about potentially writing for her. They finally meet at the end of the show at it does not go well. It’s a long scene, so we’re going to play just a smaller clip from it, but let’s take a listen to the actual interaction between Ava and Deborah.

[Clip plays]

**Deborah:** So why are you here?

**Ava:** Oh, well, obviously it would be a huge honor to work with someone like you, who has been working so successfully for so long. I mean, you’re a legend.

**Deborah:** Wow. A legend. So you’re a fan?

**Ava:** I mean, of course. Would I be here if I wasn’t?

**Deborah:** What’s your favorite joke of mine?

**Ava:** Man. You know. That’s so hard.

**Deborah:** Well it shouldn’t be. I’ve written over 30,000. Just pick one.

**Ava:** Uh…you know what? I would have to say that your TV show is my personal favorite thing that you’ve ever done.

**Deborah:** You mean my sitcom from 1973? You’ve seen it?

**Ava:** Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, I’ve seen clips.

**Deborah:** Clips? Wonderful.

**Ava:** Um, yeah. Well, you know, a lot of the actors on the show that I most recently worked on were standups.

**Deborah:** You know, I’m going to stop you right there. I don’t work with writers.

**Ava:** You don’t?

**Deborah:** No. Jimmy sent you against my wishes.

**Ava:** I’m going to kill him.

**Deborah:** No, I’m going to kill him.

**Ava:** Great. Well, this sucks.

**Deborah:** Yeah. Sucks. Well at least you didn’t waste too much time researching me.

**Ava:** I’m sorry. Did I do something to offend you?

**Deborah:** Other than walk those chimney sweep boots on my silk rug? Um, no.

**Ava:** Sorry, I didn’t realize it was a shoes off situation.

**Deborah:** Well it’s shoe-dependent. Thank you for your time.

[Clip ends]

**John:** Great. So they’re finally meeting. In the actual episode they start to meet and then of course DJ the daughter interrupts and so you see all of that drama happen and then they finally get to their discussion. This scene was clearly always going to be part of this first episode, because we have to get these two women together in the room. How early on did you know who Ava was in the show? Like who her character was?

**Jen:** I think pretty early on we knew, too. But that one was certainly more – we learned it more and more as we cast. You know, we had this incredible thing where Jean signed on to do the show and you’re like holy shit we’ve got Jean Smart, and then you’re like holy shit we’ve got Jean Smart. Who is going to be play opposite her that’s like 25 and can go toe-to-toe? Oh no.

So the casting process for Ava was really, really long and intense. We saw I think maybe over 400 women for it. Watched that many tapes. And it was always this thing of what Jean has, what Jean is so incredible at is she can in equal parts do comedy and drama. She’s so skilled in both. And so we knew we were looking for someone who also could do that. Someone who could tell jokes and realistically seem like a comedy writer, so someone who is in their bones funny and you believe that, but also can play the more dramatic parts of this show. And so they had to have some real acting ability.

**John:** So what were you looking at for this? Did you write up sample scenes? Or were they scenes from this pilot?

**Jen:** They were scenes from the pilot. So everyone auditioned with the initial Ava and Jimmy scene in his office where he’s telling her he can’t help her get her job and she’s kind of laying out her situation. So they auditioned with that and then they also auditioned with the Deborah/Ava meeting scene.

**John:** OK. So a version of what we just heard?

**Jen:** A version of what we just heard, yeah.

**John:** And that didn’t burn a hole in your brains? Because I’ve always been reluctant to do that because I don’t want to hear that same scene a thousand times and then actually have to deal with it on the day.

**Jen:** Totally. Mike Schur is a big fan of doing fake audition sides because that’s I think part of it. He does not want to hear the same scene over and over and over. And it definitely at a certain point did burn a hole in our brains. I remember just being like I can’t hear this Ava/Jimmy scene one more time. It’s not working.

So, but what was interesting is that there were a lot of really wonderful, talented women who read the part, but for whatever reason a lot of the times we heard the scene Ava just came off as pretty whiny and it was not what we wanted it to be. And then when Hannah Einbinder, who plays Ava, auditioned it just felt different with her reading it. She was like projecting the strength and confidence of a 25-year-old who thinks they know everything, but also there was some very obvious vulnerability right below the surface that felt like she was also accessing, which made Ava not feel whiny and made her just feel like a very interesting character to us.

And so I think what was helpful was even though we had to hear these scenes over and over and over and go through the process of like oh no this isn’t working, junk all the thing in our darkest moments, once we heard it with Hannah and certainly when we heard it in the screen test with Jean and Hannah reading it it was like oh this works. This absolutely works. Which I don’t think I would have felt that if they were dummy sides that weren’t actually from the pilot.

**John:** We had that experience on Go. As we were seeing a zillion actors for Go, and I started to question like did I even write something that is even castable. And then suddenly you get the actors like, oh, that’s Sarah Polley. I get it. It all works.

**Jen:** Exactly.

**John:** And I wasn’t imagining that there was a person who could fill that.

**Jen:** There’s a certain chemistry that happens between the writing and the actor. And when it’s the right actor you’re going to feel it in your gut in ways that you’re not if it’s maybe not the right person reading it.

**John:** So Hannah Einbinder has the vocal fry of a 25-year-old. Did you hear that voice as you were writing this? And also her tendency to kind of stop in the middle of thought. You write with a lot of ellipses in her dialogue. Was that always part of the voice for it?

**Jen:** Yeah, I think we knew that Ava felt more like kind of a drier sensibility, so that was very baked into the character. I think there are a lot of ellipses, but then I also think that Hannah’s natural – she’s also a very talented standup and if you see her perform she has a very interesting, unique cadence, which is much slower than probably your average 25-year-old up on stage. And so it kind of like naturally lined up that way. But, yeah, that was always kind of – she was written on the page the way we imagined it.

**John:** Looking at the words on the page, on page 29 there’s some cuts here and I’m just curious when the cuts came or if they all came in the editing room. So Jimmy actually sent you against my wishes/I’m going to kill him/no, I’m going to kill him, but feel free to kick the corpse. It’s a joke. Did you try it and it didn’t stick?

**Jen:** So this scene, it’s I think a 7.5 page scene or something. It’s incredibly long. And so we always knew – we knew two things. We knew, well, this show lives or dies by the chemistry between these two characters. So, hopefully the chemistry you’re interested in watching them for 7.5 pages. And if you’re not we’re in trouble anyway. But then we also knew when we get in the edit we’re going to need to trim this down, but let’s just shoot it as is and then see where we’re at.

And so, yeah, that was this “I’m going to kill him but feel free to kick the corpse” line, it totally worked. Jean delivered it perfectly. It just felt like the scene was running a little long.

**John:** It’s a little bit of a detour also. It’s pulling attention to somebody–

**Jen:** Exactly.

**John:** Off the focus here. What happens in the rest of the scene is like we finally get to see Ava kind of monologue and actually have her voice and express her power which is ultimately what impresses Deborah. It’s so fun to actually see somebody sort of cut loose eventually, because we’ve seen Deborah be able to go off, but to actually see – it’s a strange place for an audience to be kind of rooting for both sides of the equation. Because it’s really a true two-hander we’re sort of seeing both sides of the story. And to see them go after each other was just sort of delicious. Just a nice job here at the end of this.

**Jen:** Oh, thank you. Yeah, I mean that was always by design that that was how the scene was going to end. That Ava would let loose and in letting loose and kind of they would start roasting each other the way comedians do and that is their love language. Jokes are their love language. And Deborah would be impressed by Ava’s ability that way. And, yeah, I think it’s written that way and then Jean and Hannah just perform it so wonderfully together. They have such amazing chemistry that we were very happy with how it turned out.

**John:** We have a ton of listener questions, so maybe we can do some speed rounding through some listener questions.

**Jen:** Love it.

**John:** Megana Rao, if you could get us started.

**Megana:** Awesome. Joel asks, “Standup comics seem to get far more freedom to go more controversial while TV writers have to be far more careful with jokes and topics. First, do you think that perception is accurate? And if so how do you find that balance?”

**Jen:** Interesting.

**John:** So standup versus sitcom writers.

**Jen:** I think that, sure, there’s probably a little more leeway given to standups because you are just one person getting on stage one night. You might say something controversial but on the flip side when it’s in a TV show it has to go through so many layers of approval before it actually makes it to air. So I think in the case of jokes that are seen as offensive sometimes I certainly think this when I see it, I’m like how did the – so the initial writer, then the showrunner, then the entire writer’s room, then the studio, then the network, like no one gave a note on this? There are lots of rounds that that could have happened.

I think if it is true that standups are allowed more leeway that way it’s probably because it’s just one person getting up on stage saying something one random night and it’s not going through so many levels of approval. But I have to say as a TV writer it’s not something I think about. I never think like, oh, I wish I could say this controversial thing but I got to get up at the Improv to do it. I don’t really think about, oh, can I get away with saying this or not.

**John:** The incentives are also different for the standup comic. And one of the episodes sort of goes into her trying new material and the standup guy who she confronts. And the incentives are trying to get the laugh, to keep the audience laughing is so different than in a sitcom situation. When it’s just you up on that stage you’re going to say whatever you can do. You just keep saying–

**Jen:** That’s a good point. It’s almost like it’s survival. You just need them to laugh, so you’re probably – who knows what you might say to get that to happen. Whereas, yeah, TV you’re crafting characters and you need to make sure that if someone is saying something controversial it better not be punching down or something that makes this person seem like a horrible person if that’s not the intention.

**John:** Because you don’t have to go home with that standup at the end of the night, but with a sitcom character you want to come back the next week and see that character again.

**Jen:** Exactly. Totally.

**Megana:** Awesome. Nora asks, “So many of my favorite comedies get better the longer they go on. And audiences tend to say stick with it, it gets really good. Why do you think many comedies are growers and not showers?”

**Jen:** I think that is really true. I think it’s – well I think it’s for two reasons. One is, and Mike Schur, again, my mentor and the man I credit with teaching me how to make television, is fond of saying I wish I could just throw out the first episodes of a show when you make it. Because the first eight episodes is kind of this sludge pile of figuring out–

**John:** Parks and Rec, those first episodes are rough.

**Jen:** Yeah. And I think Mike – he would be happy to admit that they were figuring it out. Especially in an ensemble comedy. You are figuring out how are all these characters funny. How are they funny with each other? How does that actor mesh with that actor? And so you are really figuring it out. And so I think when comedies start out maybe not as strong as they get as they progress, it is because the writers, the actors, the crew, everyone is figuring it out a little bit. Comedy, I think there’s chemistry to it. It’s intangible. And you’re trying to capture lightning in a bottle in a lot of ways. And so it takes a little bit of trial and error until you really get there.

And then I think the other reason that comedies feel they get better as they go on is like great jokes come from character. You know, yes, there are some lines on sitcoms where if you just saw them written on someone’s Instagram page you’d be like that’s a funny one-liner. But for the most part jokes are funny because they’re specific to character. Like a Ron Swanson joke can’t be put in the mouth of Leslie Knope or Andy Dwyer because they all have very different character games and world views. And it’s why you love them, because they’re specifically drawn characters.

And so I think when you watch a pilot you don’t know these characters. You don’t know their game. You’re learning them. And it’s the writer’s job to introduce you to them and that takes some time. And so I think as a show goes on you learn these characters, you love these characters, you know their games, so you say like, oh yeah, of course Monica has 11 categories for towels. That’s so her. But you don’t know these characters as well when you’re first watching a show. So I think the longer you spend with them the more you understand them and the more the things they say and do are funny to you.

**John:** You just used a term which I don’t use at all in features. Character game. So what is game?

**Jen:** So character game in comedy is basically like – and this is something that I don’t know in the streaming world if it’s as relevant, but character game is like what is their specific trait that they exhibit over and over again in behavior that is how they are funny. So for example Leslie Knope’s game, and you could say she has multiple games, but one game is she is type A crazy optimistic to a fault. She is like the craziest, hardest worker you’ve ever met in your life. And she does everything in her life 150%. And that is both endearing but also sometimes exhausting to her friends and coworkers. And so that’s the character game.

In the most simplest of terms, like sometimes the character’s game is they’re the dumb one. And that is what gets hit over and over again in their jokes and dialogue and what they do. And so it’s a term that gets used a lot in comedy and I think maybe as comedies become a little more – or at least some of them become a little more grounded, a little more real, maybe we say that less and less because the characters – at least when we were making Hacks like we want the characters to feel like real people, real grounded people.

We don’t all have character games in life. Some of us do. But it’s something that maybe we talk about a little bit less. But certainly in a more traditional comedy network sense you do talk about character game a lot.

**John:** So on the Scriptnotes podcast Craig’s umbrage is his character game?

**Jen:** Exactly. Exactly.

**John:** He goes off and my desire to keep things moving along to segue, like this next question.

**Megana:** Leah asks, “In a previous episode Jac Schaeffer mentioned that she received good advice about staffing people in the room. Pick writers who offer something different from what she already had. Is there a type of comedy that is your strongest? And if so, what types of writers do you look for? For example, physical humor? Adept one lines? Etc.”

**Jen:** That’s a good question. That is really good advice for staffing a room. I think to look for people who fill in the gaps for you, who are stronger in things that you are maybe weaker in. Listen, I’m really good at formatting a script. I’m really good on the keyboard. That’s definitely number one maybe. I guess, let’s see, comedy wise probably I feel stronger in terms of jokes and one liners, like just sort of naturally where I come from from the monologue writing world. I think that maybe in jokes more than I think in story.

Story is something that, you know, I think the longer you work in narrative TV you get better at it, but that certainly wasn’t my strong suit when I started out. And so for example I think I’m always, like when staffing Hacks, looking for people who are really great with story. Really great with coming up with story. Coming up with twists and stuff like that. So, yeah, that certainly is good advice. That if you are staffing you want to find people who do things that you don’t maybe do as well.

**John:** This is an obvious point, but something just occurring to me now. A difference with Hacks is you have two central characters, two women who are telling jokes and are aware that they’re telling jokes because it is their business to tell jokes all the time. So there’s two characters who are aware that they’re funny, which is really unusual actually.

**Jen:** Yeah. Exactly. Most times in comedy people are funny but they don’t know they’re making jokes. And in this show, yeah, they know they’re funny. Making jokes is their business. It’s also been an interesting thing because I think when you write about comedians or comedy writers the bar gets set pretty high I think about how funny they need to be in their every interaction. And it’s funny because as a comedy writer, like I personally – the comedy writers who are constantly making jokes in every day conversation are the worst ones to be around. They’re pretty rough.

I, you know, I’m like – I am a comedy writer, but I’ve had so many people, like my hairdresser one time who shares some clients, some friends with me, and he said, “You know, everyone says Jen is so funny, but I don’t see that side of you.” And I was like, OK, cool. I think comedy writers, you think oh this person is playing a comedy writer they better be cracking wise every line. And that’s just truthfully not – it doesn’t feel like a realistic portrayal of a comedy writer to me anyway.

**John:** Yeah. Our next question was from Jay who asks…?

**Megana:** “What’s the correlation between being funny in person and being funny on the page? How does one get better at one or the other?”

**Jen:** Well, I mean, my hairdresser would like me more if I could learn.

**John:** It’s been my experience, too, is that like there’s people who are really, really funny, but they cannot write it down. They don’t have the ability to write in anyone else’s voice. Actually just something falls apart when they actually try to put it down on paper.

**Jen:** it’s really two different skills. And I think there are some people who are so wildly funny in person and also incredibly funny writers. That certainly exists. Someone like my co-creator Paul Downs is an incredible performer, so he’s so funny in that way, but then also a very talented writer. So it’s not like it doesn’t exist. But I think it’s hard. I think there’s no way to learn to be funny. You know, you either have it or you don’t.

So, what was the second part of the question?

**John:** How does one get better at one or the other? So like obviously people can – you went through UCB and so you learned how sketches works and you also learned some performance stuff, but it wasn’t your natural thing. And there’s going to be an upper ceiling to how good you are going to be as a performer, right?

**Jen:** Yeah. I think so. I think I could have taken a million more classes and they happily would have cashed my checks to do it, but I don’t think I ever – it is not in my wheelhouse to be a dynamic, incredible performer. It just isn’t. And that’s OK.

**John:** And we all know some really tremendous comedic actors who could not be any funnier, but they just cannot write. It’s just not natural to them.

**Jen:** Exactly. It is two very different skill sets. And sometimes you’ll find someone who has both, but it doesn’t always line up. And comedy writing is an interesting, especially TV comedy writing, is an interesting hybrid. Because when you are writing on a TV comedy you’re spending all your time in the writer’s room. And the writer’s room is just sitting around a table, breaking story together, pitching ideas, and then going through a script and pitching jokes for that script. I was shocked to find out my first narrative half hour job how little time you spend in front of a computer. When it’s your draft, you’re out on script, you’re writing the episode, but that’s pretty much it.

And so writer’s rooms are a very social place. You have to be comfortable sitting with five, six, seven, eight – back in Parks I think we had like 16 writers. A room of 15 other people and you have to get comfortable pitching your jokes out loud in front of all of them. And that was a real – again, for someone who isn’t a natural performer, and I’m not like an extrovert, that was a real challenge is to get comfortable learning like, OK, I need to just kind of be performing to pitch this joke for this character. So it is two different skill sets. But when you do work in TV comedy in writer’s rooms both come into play.

**John:** Yeah. On the feature side, if you’re pitching a comedy there’s not an expectation that you yourself are going to be hilariously funny in that pitch, but they need to believe that you actually know what funny is. And so if you’re a humorless person going into that you’re not going to get the job. That’s just how it works.

**Jen:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s tough. What else we got?

**Megana:** OK, a different Jay asks, “How many story arcs ahead do you and the staff have a feel for from the start?”

**Jen:** 1,012. No. There’s no set number to be honest. I think basically from the start what you’re more looking at is kind of, especially in a serialized streaming comedy, you’re looking at your tent poles for the season. You’re saying, OK, tent pole one, they meet, they clash. Then mid-season she’s going to quit, but she’s going to go on this bonding trip and learn more about her, which opens her eyes to new experiences and brings them closer. OK, another tent pole, her old LA life calls her back and she gets an opportunity that way.

You’re laying out the very big story points that you want to hit over the course of the season. And then you’re kind of filling in in between that all the little stories. And that is how it works like on our show, Hacks, which is a little more serialized. On more network TV shows, or even Broad City, those shows they were able to withstand a little more one-off episodes I think. So, I remember Parks and Rec like the beginning of every season we would have a writer’s retreat and part of your assignment for your writer’s retreat was to come up with ten episodes and you would just go to the retreat and then you pitch your ten episode ideas to Mike and we would write them all down on index cards and by the end of this retreat we would have this huge board of all the index cards of just crazy one-off episode ideas. Because a 22-episode network sitcom you have a little more leeway.

One that I pitched I remember was like Donna sends a tweet that she thinks is from her personal account but is actually the Parks Department account and it spirals. And that was just a one-off episode that we did that wasn’t tied to a larger arc. But because there are 22 episodes you had the time and space to do that.

And same on Broad City. Broad City we had much more ability to do kind of like one-off episodes that weren’t tied to a larger arc, even though we did on both Parks and Broad City you’re still telling longer arcs, but for something now like Hacks which is only 10 episodes, there’s less of a need to go, OK, we need to generate 500 episode ideas. It’s much more about these tent poles like I said of knowing where you want your character’s story to start, what’s happening in the middle, what’s happening in the end. And then filling in in between.

**John:** Well in the case Hacks in this first season you established stakes for both of the characters right at the very start. And so we know as an audience that by the end of this series we should have an answer to these fundamental questions about what’s going to happen to these two women.

**Jen:** Exactly.

**John:** Which would not really make sense for something like Parks and Rec. That really wouldn’t make sense because the idea of characters leaving, it just wouldn’t track.

**Jen:** Yeah. And we did some stuff, like Leslie is getting recalled at the beginning of the season, what’s going to happen with that? So we certainly did that. But it was less central to the way the show was built.

**John:** Let’s try one more question from a listener.

**Megana:** Jerry asks, “I’ve heard Breaking Bad and Succession both described as comedies. Atlanta has had at least two horror episodes. And Insecure has had episodes that have brought me to the edge of tears. What are the biggest changes you’ve noticed in the form as of late and what do you see coming over the horizon?”

**Jen:** That’s a great question. And I agree with all those assessments of those shows. Those shows have made me laugh and cry similarly, too. I think it’s really honestly exciting to me. It feels like there’s no longer these strict parameters of like it’s a comedy so it needs to sound and look like this, and it needs to be this one way, and the tone always has to be comedic.

Something with Hacks we talked about all the time is like we wanted it to feel really grounded and we wanted it to feel like real life. And real life is equal parts drama and comedy and you’re switching in between the two tones in a matter of instance sometimes. And so what I think is so exciting about all those shows, you know, the question mentioned is like those shows all play with tone in such a cool way. They can be like, yeah, Insecure can be so funny, but then it also has these real grounded heartfelt moments that do make you cry.

And to me that’s so exciting. Like I want my art that I consume to reflect the real world I live in. And it feels like these half hour shows, or all these shows, not just half hour, are getting closer to reflecting the way the real world is in that it plays with tone and it isn’t just one thing.

So I love that shows are now able to do all these different things and it doesn’t feel like there’s hard and fast rules about what they can do. And as far as what’s on the horizon, I hope that trend just continues because I think it’s really exciting. And I think what’s in, I mean, maybe I don’t know if this is on the horizon, because I don’t know what the future of network comedy is, but maybe because these shows are so successful and people love them like maybe network comedies will also get to be a little more fluid with tone and a network comedy doesn’t have to like you know be just one thing. I think that was something Mike did with The Good Place in such a great way. That is not your typical network sitcom and he was given the chance to make it. And I think people were really excited by that.

So hopefully just kind of playing with tone and the rules and letting things be more fluid is something that will spread to not just streaming or cable but also network.

**John:** A thing I noticed about Hacks and Succession both is that they’re not very classically comedies, and yet the dialogue and how the characters are sort of presented are presented with a sort of comedic voice to them. Comedic things can happen in their universe and it makes sense for them do it. And characters talk in a way that I don’t want to say they feel like they’re written by comedy writers, but it feels like they’re writing at a pitch that can feel funny.

As opposed to something that’s done as a straight drama which just would never happen. And so you can basically take the same outline for a Succession episode and write it as just a true drama and write it as this. And the same things could happen in the scenes but it’s really just how characters are expressing themselves mostly that makes it feel like kind of a comedy.

**Jen:** Which is what I love about that show so much. It’s not just a straight drama. I love the comedic moments. And the specific character, again character games, that they kind of play with. I think that’s what makes that show so rich and run to watch.

**John:** All right. It’s come time for our One Cool Things. I have two short One Cool Things there this week. First is an essay by Zachary Zane that ran in the New York Times a couple weeks ago called You Are Bi Enough. And it’s just a nice way of looking, as we head out of Pride month, bisexuals always kind of feel like should I even be at this party. There’s that sense of like do I even belong here. Am I sort of stealing someone else’s valor for being in the room for this conversation?

And he does a really good job sort of laying out what to do if you’re a bi person who is in a mixed gender relationship and stuff like that. It’s just a really smart essay on approaching that.

Second is much more important for me personally which is that one of the things that has been hardest about the pandemic is it’s been impossible for me to get Caffeine Free Coke Zero, which is my go-to drink.

**Jen:** That is a tough one to find. I’m a Coke Zero drinker too and I never see Caffeine Free Coke Zero.

**John:** It’s really tough. So all the canned beverages took a real hit during the pandemic because there was not enough aluminum to sort of make all of our favorite sodas. But the niche drinks, like the Caffeine Free Coke Zero just became impossible to fill. So my two placeholders have been the Caffeine Free Diet Coke, which is OK. If you can find it, that’s great. And so Megana was able to find it this week. God bless you, Megana. But the other go-to for me has been I have a SodaStream and we always just use it for fizzy water. But they actually sell the syrups to put into it.

And so I was able to track down Caffeine Free Diet Cola syrup for the SodaStream. And if you use just under one ounce in a bottle it is a pretty good approximation of what Coke Zero should be like, what Caffeine Free Coke Zero should be like. So if you’re really jonesing for it – it’s not even really economically advantageous, because I worked it out and it’s $1.50 per liter which is not great.

**Jen:** Not great, no.

**John:** It’s not great. But I mean when you absolutely need it it’s there.

**Jen:** I love that you’re over here doing chemistry, too. You’re in your lab mixing.

**John:** One after another, I’m tweaking the formula to get it just right. And so I would say just under one ounce is what you need to make a perfect caffeine free diet cola.

Jen, what do you have for a One Cool Thing?

**Jen:** My One Cool Thing is my favorite show that I watched over the pandemic, and honestly one of my favorite shows I’ve watched, which is a British show called I Hate Suzie. I don’t know if you guys have seen it.

**John:** I have not. Megana is nodding that she has.

**Megana:** Yeah, I love it.

**Jen:** It is co-created by Billie Piper who stars in it as well. And Lucy Prebble who is a phenomenal writer/playwright. She also writes on Succession actually. But this show is just so, so good. Billie Piper plays this actress who is like somewhat famous. She was like a pop star and now is on a zombie sci-fi show which is like seen OK. And then she’s up for this big career opportunity which is Disney is maybe going to hire her to play an “aging princess.” And so she’s very excited about that.

And right as this opportunity is about to happen her phone gets hacked and compromising photos of her leak. Her with someone who is not her husband. And it is just an eight-episode series. They’re all available on HBO Max. And it’s kind of this exploration of what it means to be a woman in the public eye. What it means to be – just modern womanhood in general. And the performances are just so wonderful. Billie Piper is amazing. It’s one of my favorite performances in a comedy of all time I think.

The woman who plays her manager and best friend, Leila Farzad, I hope I’m pronouncing that right, she’s wonderful. It’s a wonderful show that I feel like not enough people I’ve seen talking about. So, I’m doing the work.

**John:** We’ll start talking about it more.

**Jen:** I love it. Great.

**John:** Great. We’ll do it. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Peter Hoopes. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter I am @johnaugust. You’re on Twitter?

**Jen:** Yes, I am on Twitter. I’m @jenstatsky.

**John:** And we have t-shirts. They are great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting which has lots of links to things about writing.

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 Cat Person and the discourse around Cat Person.

Jen Statsky, this was amazing. Thank you so much for coming in.

**Jen:** Thank you so much for having me. This was a real career highlight as a longtime listener.

**John:** Aw, thanks.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right, Jen Statsky. What was your experience with Cat Person before this? So you were aware of the original short story?

**Jen:** Yes, I was aware. I remember reading it back in 2017 and I remember being very struck by it because it came out during the #MeToo movement when I certainly as a woman and I think a lot of women I knew and globally were like reevaluating their relationships with men and interactions with men and just what kind of it meant to be a woman out in the world. And certainly a woman with a sexual life. And so I was very – I thought the story was – I remember reading it and liking it. And then was also was so – I was like, wow, this is like the first viral short story. I couldn’t believe how much Twitter was discussing it and talking about it. So, yes, I was very aware of Cat Person.

**John:** I remember when it broke as well. It was a New Yorker short story by Kristen Roupenian and it just spread everywhere. I think because it was a short story it wasn’t a huge commitment. It wasn’t like a book where you had to read the whole thing. You could sit down and read the thing and like, oh, that was really good. And what struck me as I first read it and it was a lot of part of the discourse originally was it felt like it maybe kind of wasn’t fiction. It felt like it was actually just an essay. It felt like it was a first person thing that she was writing about her own experience. And she said like, no, I’m not, it’s fiction.

The term auto-fiction came up there. The sense of like it felt like autobiography but it was actually fully fiction.

**Jen:** Yeah. And I mean I think partly is because it’s so well-written, or so confidently written that people found it hard to believe it wasn’t someone’s actual experience.

**John:** Yes. And that’s where we get to this week. So, this past week Alexis Nowicki, another author, wrote in Slate saying like, OK, well this is actually based on my own experience, even though she’d never actually met Kristen, the original author. And so we’ll put a link to both things in the show notes. This summary of what Alexis is writing is that she read this short story and everyone was texting her saying like, “This is about you, right? This is about you and that guy?”

And she’s like, yeah, but I never met this woman. I don’t understand how this could be the situation. And she eventually reached out to Kristen Roupenian who said like, yes, I knew that same guy. And while I’m not the person, you sort of are the person who is the other character in the story.

**Jen:** Yes. That must have been such a crazy – I found the essay by, it’s Alexis–

**John:** Nowicki.

**Jen:** Nowicki. I loved the essay. I thought it was really, really well-written and interesting. And she describes coming out of a movie and having like dozens of texts being like, “Is this about you?” People sending her the story. And that must have been such a bizarre, strange experience for a person to go through. And yet it goes into a really nuanced, interesting conversation about art and who owns the details of one’s life. Is it ever OK to just point blank take facts from someone else’s life and use them as fiction? It’s really interesting.

**John:** Well so often on the podcast we do a segment for How Would This Be a Movie and Craig is always arguing you don’t need people’s life rights because facts are facts. And the facts that Roupenian was using here are kind of facts. It was basically she didn’t know this person. She looked up and she had heard about this earlier relationship this guy had had and sort of imagined what this woman was like. And Googled and found real information about where she went to school and where she used to work and was just imagining what this life was. And imagined pretty correctly sort of how a lot of this stuff worked.

But it’s the issue of like nothing was illegal here, but where the ethical boundary is between sort of pulling that stuff in.

**Jen:** Yeah. I mean, I guess what was interesting to me and this Kristen when she did, if you read the essay, you’ll see she apologizes for this eventually. She says I’m sorry I should have taken some of the details and changed them so that it wouldn’t be so directly linked to you, which I do – as a writer myself I can’t picture, yes, it’s of course you don’t need someone’s life rights necessarily. You’re always pulling from different people’s lives and experiences. But I can’t really picture writing something and using such specific details that could easily be traced to a person and not just taking the extra step of changing them slightly so that person wouldn’t think it’s about them.

**John:** Yeah. People were pointing out that it’s always dangerous to be around writers because you never know if you’re going to be sucked into this, but in this case it’s dangerous to be around people who could be around writers.

**Jen:** Yeah. Right. There’s always a writer within a few degrees of connection to you and that’s really dangerous.

**John:** So a thing that I’ve always been aware of as I’ve been around writers is like events will happen, or somebody will say something or things come up. You were saying this before about Deborah writing a joke down in her book. Like as a funny thing happens, who owns that funny thing that happens? Who owns that moment?

**Jen:** I have friends who are standups who talk about this specific issue because they’ll go on tour together. And then when you’re on tour you’re living together. You’re going out to eat. You’re on the bus. And something crazy will happen and then it’s a race to who can craft the joke about it first. Who gets to tell it on stage first? It is a really interesting thing when creative people are together. Who has ownership over it? There’s not really a hard and fast rule about it.

**John:** I also – Dana Schwartz makes this point on Twitter that whenever there’s two people it always feels like you have to declare two sides. And it’s this or it’s that. And you can’t actually say that’s an interesting conversation about this thing. She was in the right, she was in the wrong. She’s trying to claim credit for something that she didn’t actually write. And it makes it more complicated than that. I’m not on either team here. I don’t think they should have teams. I don’t think we’re playing a game.

**Jen:** Right. Twitter always rushes to be judge, jury, and executioner, right? So someone always, yes, exactly, like Dana is saying has to be in the right and someone has to be in the wrong. And what I thought was so interesting about Alexis’s essay is that she wasn’t casting herself as the victim and Kristen as the villain primarily. I thought the essay was so well done because it’s a really nuanced, holistic look of like this very strange thing happened to me. I feel angry about it in this way, but I also see that this person has a particular experience of their own.

So I found it interesting that people didn’t take the hint from the essay which is like I’m not trying to cast, oh, this action was evil and this person should be condemned. I’m just working my way through this specific personal experience that happened and kind of exploring this conversation about art and the ethics of art.

So, yeah, that was interesting. Twitter is not great for nuance.

**John:** What’s also strange about this situation is that the third person in this relationship, so Charles who is the basis of the character, is apparently dead, which is dismissed in a single line and not explained.

**Jen:** I know. My jaw dropped when I got to that part of the essay. And then I don’t know if you saw this, but a lot of people – and again we have no idea – but a lot of people on Twitter took the extra step to say, oh, he killed himself. He must have killed himself because of the negative portrayal in this work of “fiction.”

**John:** I don’t think we know that.

**Jen:** We don’t know that at all. That’s just complete conjecture from people on Twitter, which again like rushing to try to put everyone into the category of villain and good person. It’s just so fascinating. But we have no idea how this man passed away. It’s very sad. It’s a very sad part of the essay and that both of these woman are left I think grieving this person is just like a sad bookend to it.

**John:** And there is theoretically a movie version of this, so the tie in to this is so Nicholas Braun of Succession is apparently supposed to be playing this character.

**Jen:** Right.

**John:** And so it just becomes complicated as reality and fiction and meta fiction overlap.

**Jen:** I don’t know what stage – do you know if they’re–

**John:** I don’t know where they are.

**Jen:** I wonder if the current writer is scrambling now to include this newest twist into the Cat Person saga.

**John:** The next Zola saga.

**Jen:** Yeah.

**John:** Thanks Jen.

**Jen:** Thanks.

Links:

* [WGA Pilot Guide](https://www.wga.org/members/employment-resources/writers-deal-hub/pilot-deal-guide)
* [Hacks on HBO](https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GYIBToQrPdotpNQEAAAEa) check out the pilot script [here](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Hacks-Script-It-Starts-On-The-Page.pdf).
* [Jen Statsky](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4278387/) on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/jenstatsky?lang=en)
* [You Are Bi Enough](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/17/opinion/bisexuals-coming-out-anna-paquin.html?referringSource=articleShare) by Zachary Zane for NYT
* [Caffeine Free Diet Cola syrup by SodaStream](https://sodastream.com/products/diet-caffeine-free-cola-4-pack)
* [I Hate Suzie](https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GX6MziQh41pYSwwEAAAK4) on HBO Max
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* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Peter Hoopes ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/508standard.mp3).