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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/when-youre-the-boss).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Hello. And welcome. My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 497 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we will discuss what writers need—

[Doorbell chimes]

Hold on, there’s somebody at the door.

**Craig:** There’s more at the door.

**John:** Oh my gosh! It’s Aline!

**Craig:** What the–?

**John:** Aline Brosh McKenna is here.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Woohoo! Anyone home?

**John:** I see she has a basket full of delicious things to talk about. So she’s setting them out on the table.

**Craig:** She brought a basket?

**John:** I see a covered dish labeled “notes.” Well, what’s in notes Aline?

**Aline:** In notes I want to talk about how writers prefer to get notes. How we prefer to get notes. And how when we have to give notes we prefer to give them.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** That’s right, because Aline is a boss. And so she’s having to give writers lots of notes.

**Craig:** Like a boss.

**John:** Now, in that box, it looks like sprinkles/cupcakes, but the label says “hierarchy of genres.” What do you mean by hierarchy of genres?

**Aline:** I want to talk about how the business and the creative community has decided that certain genres are “better, fancier, more serious, more important” than others.

**Craig:** I have no thoughts on this at all.

**John:** Just a completely neutral discussion without any sort of–

**Aline:** I also have no agenda here.

**Craig:** Yes, exactly. [laughs]

**John:** Plus we have lots of follow up and we have questions to answer, so it’s so good that you’re here Aline. So pull up your chair and we’ll get into all of this. And I also heard that from the premium bonus subscribers you have some scientific discoveries you’ve made bout Craig Mazin. Is that correct?

**Aline:** I do. I have the lab results.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** All right. We will crack into those lab results, but only for our premium members. But let’s get into all these topics today. We’ll start with the sad news that ArcLight Cinemas and Pacific Theaters overall are not going to be reopening post-Covid.

**Craig:** Aw.

**John:** Aline, for folks who are not living in Los Angeles can you give us some sense of what the ArcLight means and why it is such a loss?

**Aline:** I mean, it’s the best place to see movies in LA. And you can get your ticket in advance. You can get an assigned seat. It’s got all the best movies when they come out. And it’s really a gathering place. For our family it’s a big deal because my older son, Charlie, is a big movie buff. In 2019 he saw over 100 movies. And most of them were at the ArcLight. Basically that’s his childhood was spent there. He went to the ArcLight instead of going to the prom.

**Craig:** Well, that’s sad?

**John:** No.

**Craig:** But happy. Did he go to see the movie Prom?

**Aline:** No. He went to see a double feature of Captain Underpants and he’s going to be mad because I can’t remember the other one. But, it’s not just a theater. It’s a gathering place. There’s a bar.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** And you’ll always run into people that you know. It’s a different experience and it’s very – it’s a movie theater that’s focused on giving you the best movie-going experience as opposed to a mall where it feels like the movie theater is an afterthought. So it had a feeling also of a temple to movie-going.

**John:** It was like church for movies. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so the Cinerama Dome which is the historically important part of that theater complex is that [unintelligible] Dome that you see and it’s great, and that already existed. But then they built the ArcLight cinema sort of around it. And they were just better. So, so many innovations that are common in theaters now like really great seating and being able to pick your assigned seat were there, but the thing I appreciated probably most is that there were no ads. There were no ads at all before you saw a movie. There were three trailers and only three trailers. And then you got to see your movie.

Every movie was introduced by a person in a blue shirt who told you about the movie and told you where to find them if there were any problems with projection. You applauded for that person afterwards. It was great.

We did a couple live Scriptnotes shows there. I saw my last movie before the pandemic. I saw The Invisible Man there. I saw Crazy Rich Asians twice at the Cinerama Dome, and one time John Chu was there and I got to congratulate him on his movie. It was just a great place, so I’m hopeful that someone with a lot of money will come in and save ArcLight cinemas. But, wow, it’s really sad that as things are opening up that’s not one of the things that’s going to be opening up right away.

**Craig:** I suspect that you’re going to see Warner Bros’ Cinerama Dome or something like that. I feel like one of those places is going to buy it because they can now. And the thing that I also loved about the ArcLight was that they had an actual concern for cinematic integrity. Like you knew going there the projection bulb would be the exact proper amount of lumens or however they measure it, because most people don’t know when they go to a regular theater somewhere random in the US that bulb in the projector is probably half as bright as it should be. So you’re not seeing the movie the way you’re supposed to see it.

Everybody got real smart with sound, but then the projection itself, they really took care of it there. It was a great place. It’s a bummer. But I refuse to believe that it’s just going to be shuttered and empty. Somebody else will pick this up and roll with it.

**Aline:** Same.

**John:** Yeah. Something is going to happen. My understanding is that Pacific Theaters actually does own that property, because they owned not just ArcLight Cinemas and Cinerama Dome, but also all of those shops in there. So that is a source of assets and money that can hopefully be helping it through this period and they can find some way to reopen. But we’ll keep hoping.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Now it was not all bad news this week because this week Final Draft announced that Final Draft 12 is now available for download.

**Craig:** Oh great! [laughs]

**John:** And Final Draft 12, Craig, it adds the ability to import PDFs.

**Craig:** Oh my god. They’ve somehow managed to leap frog ahead to 2006.

**John:** Yeah. So Highland 1.0, which was released eight years ago, that was its big marquee feature. It could do that. So now you can do that in the new Final Draft.

**Aline:** Did you read this tweet under your tweet, John? Somebody wrote, this Nick Rheinwald-Jones wrote, “Nice to literally every person, place, or thing except Final Draft is the personal brand I aspire to but will never reach.”

**John:** Yeah, I’m a pretty nice person but I did feel some shade when it came to Final Draft. And there was some snark as well. I’m sorry. But you cannot announce a big brand new bold feature when it has been eight years and–

**Craig:** No, it’s been done.

**Aline:** August Shade and Snark, by the way, is a podcast I would completely listen to.

**John:** 100%. Where it’s nasty.

**Aline:** Just shade and snark.

**Craig:** Sounds great. I would listen to that even.

**John:** So people can go back and listen to in the archives the Final Draft episode where the guy who owns Final Draft came in and talked with me and Craig. But he doesn’t own Final Draft anymore.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** It’s this company that just keeps going, but it’s not the same people.

**Craig:** In fact, Final Draft is owned by an entertainment business payroll company.

**John:** It feels like it, too.

**Craig:** What else do you need to know? It is literally run by bean counters. There was an update to Fade In which is the program I use. A free update. Sweet. Lovely. Some more options for PDFs and watermarking and some additional scene numbering and revision functionality, which is very nice. And Highland 2.0, so you’re at Highland 2.0 or Highland 3.0 now?

**John:** We’re in Highland 2.0

**Craig:** You’re at 2.0.

**John:** But we’ve done, like all of our little .1 releases are more than sort of every annual Final Draft release.

**Craig:** If Final Draft works the way Fade In or Highland did Final Draft would be on Final Draft 3 right now. Because, I mean, what was it, it’s a brand new release – we support the retina screen. Oh, for the love of god.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, Final Draft. Dumb.

**Aline:** Well, because so many people use it and because a lot of production companies have it people are worried about the melting of the PDFs.

**John:** Let’s talk about that.

**Aline:** It is something you can do in Highland. And I think there are other programs you can do that in, no?

**Craig:** You can do it in Fade In.

**Aline:** So, it’s just that Final Draft is the one that the executives are most familiar with, so it’s probably the one they could figure out how to melt your PDF. But, you know, there’s a certain level of just, you know, trust you have to give. You know, since the days when we started when it was on a physical piece of paper and that’s the only place it was, the minute it became digital it became meltable.

**John:** Yeah, so the concern is – I saw people tweet about this – like, oh no, this is going to ruin everything because in theory I could turn in a PDF and then the executive could open it in Final Draft and make a change in it because they want to make a change in it. It’s like, yeah, that could already happen.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Like, you know, a file format is not going to protect you from malfeasance.

**Craig:** No. Like the guy who works at Universal Studios can certainly pay someone $100 to just type that PDF in Final Draft. This is not a bar to entry. So, no, any – look, if they really want to screw with your stuff they’re going to screw with it. They own it. It’s theirs.

**John:** Yeah. All right. Let’s get into some follow up. We’ve been talking about female characters who have ethical dilemmas and sort of why we don’t see enough of those on screen. Margaret wrote in to say, “Yes, we’re not seeing them on the big screen, but we do see a lot on television,” which I think is a good point. So the Ted Lasso example is a great one. But she also brings up The Honorable Woman, which I’ve not seem. Le Bureau, the French series. Did you watch that Aline?

**Aline:** That’s one of my favorites. And I just have to say Marie-Jeanne forever.

**Craig:** Toujours.

**Aline:** She was incredible. Marie-Jeanne Toujours. Exactly. This is a great – yeah, you mentioned some others here. Killing Eve. Homeland. The Crown.

**John:** The Crown, of course. There’s always choices about what she’s going to do which is mostly to do nothing. But, yeah, I would say that on the small screen we’re seeing more of these.

**Aline:** I have a question for you guys. Because I’ve never written a script where I didn’t have a woman with a moral dilemma. I mean, I feel like that’s what storytelling is in a way is at some point your character gets to a point where they have to choose their moral path. Like in Devil Wears Prada the person with the moral dilemma is not Miranda, because she sort of just is who she is. It’s Andy’s choice, moral choice, not whether she wants to work in fashion or not but whether she wants to be a person who is OK with screwing her friends over and putting career above all. That is her moral dilemma.

But even in 27 Dresses Katherine’s character at the end is deciding whether or not to out her sister as a hypocrite. I think all characters have moral dilemmas. Are you talking about like–?

**Craig:** Bigger kind of life and death sort of villainy ones. Like should I pursue this path of killing people to save people? We tend to assign these larger planet-changing or population-changing dilemmas to men in these movies, but women face them as well.

I think that Margaret is right that television does a better job of it, probably because television – most of these shows that she’s listed here are elevated soap operas. And in soap operas there must be escalating moral dilemmas all the time. So it’s natural that I think this would come up and touch on the female characters as well.

In movies when you’re dealing with these kind of big moral dilemmas as opposed to personal ones. I always talk about Nemo and I think Marlin has a moral dilemma of a sort of how to deal with this son and raise his son, but I don’t think that’s what we were talking about. We were talking more about those people—

**Aline:** I think of this as I’m a good person. I’m doing this. So sometimes you write stuff that is not necessarily hinging on right or wrong. Sometimes, you know, the climax of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, sorry, spoiler alert, is about not who she’s going to be with but what she’s going to do with her life. And that’s not a moral choice. What’s my path in life?

But a lot of the things I’ve written have to do with a woman deciding who she wants to be in the world morally. Sort of what the choices that she’s going to make to be useful in the world and to be a good person. So, it might be a genre, just the genres that are more populated by male lead characters the stakes are more like planets and death.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s like Lindsay Doran always says that women have figured out that what matters is the relationship. So they just get to the relationship. And men need planets exploding and then the relationship. [laughs] You can actually skip past the planets.

**Aline:** You definitely have less of women deciding whether or not they need to exterminate. I mean, I’m always – I have trouble with superhero movies with calibrating – so when they wipe out a whole planet, or a whole people in sci-fi, too, I’m so distracted by that that it’s really hard for me to move on to, you know, but they still have to smuggle the backpack out to this tiny planet. I’m like but they just killed a billion people on the purple planet?

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** How are you guys not standing around being bummed about that? I actually think there is a certain blitheness about killing that we’ve gotten to in these stories where there’s sort of mass killing and we just kind of walk past it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the see Alderaan, they’ve figured out that Alderaan has been exploded in Star Wars and they’re like wow, oh man, that’s terrible. And then about 20 minutes later they’re joking around. Like nobody towards the end of the movie is like, “Can we just have a moment of silence for the entire planet of people that got blown up?” No, no, it’s medal time. Everybody gets medals.

**John:** It’s like the say a million 9/11s happen all at once and they’re like, “All right, let’s trade some jokes.”

**Craig:** You know the Holocaust? A lot of us.

**Aline:** Spy stuff. Le Bureau, Americans, Homeland, those are all spy pieces where all of those female characters are really, really grappling with…

**Craig:** Definitely.

**John:** 100 percent.

**Aline:** Especially in Homeland where she’s dealing with kind of the morality of American foreign policy. And it’s sort of writ large in her own person stories.

**Craig:** Yup. And I would say the same thing for Zero Dark Thirty as well.

**John:** Agreed. All right. Last episode we talked about the burden of specificity. Rachel wrote in with a question about that. Lydia from London, England writes in, “I totally agree with Craig that BIPOC writers should not have to write more about race, but isn’t it preferable and better representation to give characters some cultural specificity, even if the story they’re in is not about race at all? I think To All the Boys I Loved Before does a great job of this. Lara Jean is a middleclass character whose story is not about race, but the small cultural touch tones of her home life make her home feel specific. And her identity as a Korean-American was thoughtfully baked in from the start by creators who understood it, and not as an afterthought by a majority white team suddenly realizing their movie isn’t diverse enough.

“For me this feels like a more trustworthy and satisfying representation.”

So, yes, and I’m also wondering though about the distinction between what you ought to do and what opportunities there are to do things. Because in answering the question last week, Craig, you were defending Rachel saying, no, you shouldn’t feel like you have to have representation – as a Black writer you shouldn’t have to be the person who is creating Black representation. But also there’s an opportunity, right?

**Craig:** Well, yeah. It comes down to the character, because I agree with Lydia that there is great value to be mined in characters with cultural specificity. However, there are certain types of shows and movies where that isn’t necessarily going to add what you want, or it may disrupt the tone of what you want. In fact, there was a bit of a kerfuffle this past week over the show Luther. It’s the English show from the BBC. Luther is sort of a cop show and Luther is played by Iris Elba.

And this week the BBC diversity chief named Miranda Wayland, who is a Black Britain, came under fire after she claimed the beloved detective chief inspector “doesn’t feel authentic because of his lack of Black culture.” She said “when it first came out everybody loved the fact that Idris Elba was in there, a really strong Black character lead. We all fell in love with him? Who didn’t, right? But after you got into about the second series,” meaning the second season for them, “you got kind of like, OK, he doesn’t have any Black friends. He doesn’t eat any Caribbean food. This doesn’t feel authentic.”

This did not go over well.

**John:** I can imagine.

**Craig:** Yeah. It did not go over well because, again, it’s putting a calculation on a creative thing. So I suppose the best advice I could give in general is to put your heart in a good place. Always consider how you can work cultural specificity in in a way that makes sense and serves the story and the tone, but don’t feel that as a writer of color that you have an additional burden that other writers don’t.

And similarly as a white writer don’t feel that you have less of a burden that other writers do. That’s the best I think I could do.

**John:** Now, Aline, you’re writing and you’re also developing TV shows. So, at what stage in the conversation do these questions come up?

**Aline:** It’s definitely something that comes up. One of the writers that I’ve worked with who I really admire, the way he thinks about these things, who is a writer of color and he once said to me, “It matters when I say it matters.”

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**Aline:** And I think that’s an excellent guide. I think that sometimes it’s very important in the details, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, a good example of like makes people feel seen as texture to the story but it’s not primarily an identity piece.

I think that if you’re a writer of color you probably have some sense of how you would like things to be represented in the world. And I would seize that. And I encourage writers that I work with to seize the opportunity to depict their community in the way tht they would like for it to be depicted. And it’s often not for me to say.

So, I think it matters when you say it matters. And if you feel like it really matters in the story specify it definitely. And if you feel like you want to leave it open to, you know, open up things that may look like the default, right, and the default as we’ve discussed is often white and male. If you can open up those people’s thinking by naming a character something, you know, opening it up in places where you see an opportunity to make the world look like the world. Because that’s what we’re trying to do.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Do your homework. Do your homework.

**John:** Last week on the episode we also talked about Scott Rudin. And this last week there was a Twitter thread by David Graham-Caso who was writing about his brother, Kevin, who died by suicide.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I saw this.

**John:** And Kevin had worked for Scott Rudin as an executive assistant back in 2008 and 2009. Kevin actually had a Three Page Challenge on Scriptnotes in Episode 85.

**Craig:** Oh wow.

**John:** So we’re sorry for David’s loss. I would just point everybody to this Twitter thread where the brother talks through what Kevin experienced working for Scott Rudin and sort of the affect it had on his mental health overall. And how just that year or so working for him really did hurt him a lot. And sort of the ongoing effects of this. So, you know, as we talked about last week there was physical abuse that could actually be a crime and could be prosecuted, but I think this behavior that we saw from Rudin and from people in that kind of position really does have an impact that we need to be talking about.

**Craig:** This was just tragic to read. And it reminded me that sometimes we ask the wrong question. Did someone like Kevin end his life because of what Scott Rudin did? That’s not the question. The question is was someone like Kevin experiencing mental health problems or trauma that put him in a place where he was particularly vulnerable to people like Scott Rudin? Because I can certainly say that about myself and why I ended up working for the Weinsteins for so long. Because when you have a certain pattern in your head that’s been put there you oftentimes seek repetition of it.

And the great hope is that instead of finding the repetition of abusive behavior you meet people who treat you well and you learn that there is this other way. There are too many people out here who are the perfect negative fit for folks who are coming to Hollywood. Then it is even worse to contemplate that someone is arriving here has this little lock in their brain and someone like Scott Rudin is walking around with this very bad key. And he finds him and then that key goes into the lock and it starts turning it. That’s what upsets me so much.

People who come to this business are oftentimes very vulnerable. As our great Dennis Palumbo said in Episode 99 when people come to Hollywood they are often looking for the approval that they did not receive as children. This makes them very vulnerable. And it is our responsibility as adults and people in power and people of authority in this business to be aware of that and treat people kindly. Even if they seem willing to accept abuse.

**Aline:** Man, I just, threw him from a moving car, you know, sent people to the hospital. You know, I’m kind of surprised that there isn’t more blowback on this and I keep thinking about the fact that when Harvey was taken down his career was in a massive decline. And it felt like as he became less relevant to the business people felt more comfortable speaking out, which I suppose makes sense. Scott is still very powerful to a lot of different companies. He’s a huge Broadway producer in particular. And I think this is criminal behavior.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And if this happened to my child I would, you know, pursue this. I would – I don’t know if people are suing him. I don’t know if the statute of limitations has run out on some of this. But this is absolutely appalling and unacceptable and people are going to still work with this guy.

**Craig:** I don’t know about that, Aline.

**John:** I don’t know that they will.

**Craig:** I think he’s done. I got to be honest, I think he’s done.

**Aline:** All right. Let’s see. Let’s do a check-in. Because, I don’t know that we can take people speaking out on Twitter as the marker. I think we have to see. I’m just very interested in the power and the employment and the money. I mean, I don’t think Scott has an overall deal with a studio right now, which means he’s drawing income from multiple companies, so that’s why there isn’t like a big firing as a friend of mine pointed out. There’s not a big where he’s deposed from a big company.

But–

**Craig:** There will be distancing I think.

**Aline:** There will be distancing. But this is not just “get me a new potato.” This is physical violence. Violence at a workplace. And you don’t have to be in any way vulnerable to be traumatized by physical violence in a place where there should be none.

**Craig:** Yeah. He sent a guy to the hospital. Broke a laptop over his hand. And I just think that the one thing Scott Rudin has done that is correct in the aftermath of this story coming out is he’s said nothing. That is indeed the best possible thing to do if you have that light on you, because everything you say just becomes more rope.

But I just don’t think people are going to want to have their selves blown up. The next person who announces that they are starting a new venture with Scott Rudin is going to hear about it from everyone.

**Aline:** I’d like to follow the money. I think we should follow the money.

**Craig:** Let’s follow the money.

**Aline:** I mean, sure, there are going to be actors who – if Scott is making movies and they’re good parts. But those are not the economically most powerful folks. I’m curious about who is investing in these shows and these movies. And they are ultimately responsible. And someone was saying to me today, “Aren’t you liable now if you know that this is how this person behaves and you go into business with them?”

**Craig:** Yes.

**Aline:** Is there a liability there?

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. That’s why I think they’re not going to do it.

**John:** These are all possible problems. So, we will flag this for follow up. And so a year from now let’s take a look and see where we’re at. My hunch is that the stuff that is in production or is sitting in the can will come out and there will be talk about it but it won’t kill those things. But I think the next author is not going to sell his book to Scott Rudin. I think the next thing he’s shopping around people will just step back away from it and won’t want to touch it. And I think that is what’s going to happen. Because as you said he’s no one’s employee, so you can’t just fire him. But you can simply not take his projects.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think he’s radioactive.

**John:** All right. One of my favorite things we’ve discussed on this show has been the crush from last episode.

**Craig:** The best.

**John:** And so Megana read the original crush letter, so I want to make sure that she comes back for this follow up that we have, because I also want to hear Aline’s take on this. So, Megana, can you come on and give us a follow up from Oops who has a crush on her producer?

**Megana Rao:** Hello. OK. So I cut this first part down for time to protect Oops’s identity. But to get you guys up to speed her production is currently in quarantine and the producer has gone ahead and asked her to get a drink after the quarantine ends, which should be this weekend.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** Wow.

**Megana:** And so Oops wrote in and she said, “As it stands we have eight weeks of prep and a ten-week shoot. As much as I love it I don’t think I can sit in this giddy Victorian fan-waving space for that long without being sick on myself. I’m just going to go have a couple of drinks, be chill, see what the vibe is, and maybe pull the Mazin rip cord a la what are we doing, there’s something here right, and just see how it goes.

“If I fall flat on my face that’s fine. At least I got it out there and can just get up and move forward. I’ll take a little minor embarrassment over another four months of will they/won’t they. Because as much as I love a good rom-com I don’t want it to be my life. I promise to come through with any further updates. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much for the sagest of advice. And for what it’s worth, we always need more Sexy Craig.”

**Craig:** You will always have more Sexy Craig. Sexy Craig doesn’t run out. You know what I’m saying? He doesn’t get tired. Ever.

**Aline:** So, you know what?

**Craig:** No one pays attention to Sexy Craig. [laughs]

**John:** That’s how we get rid of him.

**Aline:** I listened to this question. This landed so completely differently on me. As I was listening to the podcast with my headphones on under my weighted blanket I really wanted to like sit up and call you guys. And I ran this by a couple female executives and another female writer. This is really tricky.

Now, I’m not going to – I think Oops, the specific of Oops’s situation are hard to tell without knowing the specifics. But I will say that this is something that I specifically did not do when I was a young writer. I specifically did not date anyone in the business. That may have been a more extreme stance than I needed to take, but the reason I did that was because especially executives and agents I was very aware of how they spoke about the women they had dated.

And to this day there are female writers who will come up and men will say some version of “she slept to the top.” And, again, I’m not saying that’s what Oops is doing. And I’m not saying this is right. I’m not saying this is the way things should be. But when you’re dealing with a patriarchy there’s a way things should be and the way things are.

And so even though this gentleman is not the person she reports to directly, he is part of the other company, right? And she doesn’t work for them. So Hollywood is one big workplace. Because we’re freelance and they’re not, but we are one big workplace where people talk. If it goes south and I hope it doesn’t, but if it goes south you have no recourse and now you’re inside your project with what might be attention. You break up with them, that’s going to be awkward. They break up with you, there’s an awkwardness there.

You got to be so, so, so careful. I wish there wasn’t a double standard, but in a business which is so male-dominated. When men flirted with me at work, especially when they did it in front of other people, I never took it as sincere interest. I always took it as an assertion of power. Like the director who looked at my ring and said, “Oh, you’re engaged. What a bummer.” Never thought he was interested in me. Only thought he was trying to diminish me frankly.

So, listen, I haven’t been on a date since 1996. So, I’m not as current. But I will say be super, super careful, especially about – I mean, the thing that Craig said which is like if you say I know we’re feeling this way and somebody says, “I’m sorry, we feel what way,” that’s not at a bar. That’s in your workplace. That is very hard to walk away from.

And so I thought that John said, you know, at first your instinct was to say wait and then to say no to your feelings, and I thought no to your feelings was a really good thought, not just as a writer, but also just note it. I feel like I have some chemistry with this person. And if it’s real chemistry that is going to be a real relationship it will wait.

If it’s hop into bed chemistry I think you should be really careful about introducing that into your workplace. Because Oops may have found her happy ever after, and I understand the temptation there, but I would just be very careful. I mean, I think whatever the streak is in my personality, I was always vaguely offended when that came up. Because I felt like well now you’re looking at me not as a peer. You’re looking at me as a girl to date. And I suppose that’s an antiquated way of looking at things. But I would just say be careful.

And I think John and Craig you have probably been in fewer rooms where sex has been introduced.

**Craig:** Every room I’m in, Aline. Every room I’m in.

**Aline:** Well, it feels pretty bad. And I will tell you just a funny – I mean, I guess this is funny – it’s a little dark P.S. to this. So I never went out with any executives or agents. I think writer to writer is a different story, because you’re not – there’s a different power imbalance. But one of the gentleman who was an agent-executive back in the day, so I had lunch with him not long ago, maybe a year and a half ago. And he’s my age. And he said, and again, as I made clear this was never on the table. This was never on the table. And he very magnanimously said to me, and it was clear that he thought he was saying something really flattering and he said it in front of his female executive. He said, “You know Aline back in the day when we were in our 20s I totally would have slept with you, which is like a weird thing for me because I usually don’t want to have sex with the smart girls.”

That’s a thing that was said to me recently as if I was supposed to be like super flattered. And what I said was, “It was never on the table.” And everybody laughs. But like what?

**John:** So, Aline, here’s where I want to find the balance here, because I think so much of how you framed that is important to understand. And the recognition that in a patriarchy and in a double standard that she is risking more by going out on a date with this guy than he is risking. And that’s not right, but that is a reality.

And at the same time be open to the reality that people fall in love and meet their spouses at work situations.

**Aline:** 100 percent.

**John:** And you and I were both sort of starting in the business at the same time and I did date in the industry a lot. And slept with people I was working with. And that’s also OK. I guess there’s a double standard there as well, sort of women versus men there. But I want Oops to have a great personal life and a great work life. And for her to understand that she’s going to make some choices that are going to tip the balance there a little bit in these next couple weeks. So, that’s why I want to know what happens this weekend.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that’s good. I mean, everything that Aline said is mission critical for Oops to have in her head. And the good thing is I do recall that when she was describing the situation she did say that this guy has been an absolute gentleman. And I think that there’s value to that, because there are guys out there – there’s a spectrum of piggish behavior. No one is perfect, of course, but there are certain guys that it’s very red-flaggy. Some guys are sort of like in between. And then some guys, OK, gentlemen. So I want to give her the credit of her own ability to evaluate. But I think trust but verify is a really great way of moving forward.

You are allowed to go into something in good faith. You just have to keep your eyes open and watch it carefully. When she says she doesn’t think she can sit in this giddy Victorian fan-waving space for that long, I get it. And there is—

**Aline:** Well, OK, I’m going to say two more things. Sets, they’re the most gossipy places. And if that becomes, and she mentioned in her last letter that people were aware that there was some chemistry. So if they start having a sexual relationship everyone will know about it in pretty short order.

**John:** Yup.

**Aline:** And, again, if that is enough of a priority for her to – I was going to use the word “risk.” Maybe it’s a risk. Then to have a strategy for what happens when for example his boss finds out about it, or other people on set find out about it. Everything she said last week led me to believe that this is a nice guy, where they’re having a real connection, in which case, man, movies you’re working so hard. You know, four months – again, this is an older lady talking. But in four months it feels like if you guys have had some nice dinners and hangs while you’re working and then when you’re done if it’s something that is a real thing – I have no problem with people meeting the person that they are romantically interested in at work. But this is a specific circumstance where her fate is tied to his fate and she does not have the same access to the levers of power that he does.

And the thing I just want people to remember is there is no one to go to. He has an HR department. You do not have an HR department.

**Craig:** Oops, she’s got us. She’s got a whole podcast.

**Aline:** [laughs] But, I mean, as a woman. So, when this has happened to me, when someone says – I’m nine months pregnant and I walk into a meeting and the executive says, “I guess this would be a bad day to punch you in the stomach,” I don’t have anyone to tell. I can either just laugh and move on, as I sort of did, and then cry in my car, as I did. And then go and hang out with Craig and John and my buddies and tell the story. But it sucks. And you have no one to tell. And I think, you know, relationships can go south in a billion different ways and can only go right in one way.

So, I don’t want to be the prim old lady, but I want her to be careful. And I’m sorry that there’s a double standard, but this is still an extremely male system.

**Craig:** I think we’ve given Oops a lot of really good boundaries, right? So, you can look around all of our various advices and see where kind of, you know, the optimism and the pessimism and the wariness and the trust are. And then I think move through it as the smart person that you are and remind yourself that you are an adult.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And you can do this.

**John:** You’re also the writer who got this movie into production.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** So congratulations on that. Celebrate that, also.

**Craig:** Exactly. This is one of the things about being human that we cannot avoid. We cannot avoid the infatuations. We cannot avoid love. We cannot avoid relationships with the people we’re attracted to. We can temper them. We can delay them. We can moderate them. How you approach this ultimately of course, Oops, you have all the agency here. It is up to you.

I think you’ve gotten the broadest possible spectrum of maybes, red flags, encouragement. What else can we give you?

**Aline:** I mean, she’s certainly gotten a lot of advice.

**Craig:** Yes. You’re drowning in advice now.

**Aline:** And I’m curious if this has ever happened to you guys, but it’s pretty incredible the amount of times, especially because I started working when I was 23. And I got married when I was 30. And in those years it was kind of incredible how much – and by the way, still after that. I mean, just telling you other stories where people feel like they need to call attention to your boobs or your butt or your marital status. It’s pretty shocking.

And I actually think that because I am older I learned to walk past it. And I hope that younger women have an ability to say, “Hey, that’s not cool.” But the problem is you don’t have anyone to tell. And that’s the issue.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t know exactly – I mean, I think we’re all presuming that Oops is younger than we are. She might not be. But I know that what you’re saying is deeply, deeply true because even I have said some moments in my career, even I, where as a married guy and not exactly a Chippendales dancer, have had some moments where weird shit was said.

**Aline:** Yeah. Well, the funny thing is that I was always – because I was always aware not to bring that into the room it was always – it is always a shock to me. And the thing is one of the reasons it can get confusing is because we work on personal stuff. Right? These are personal stories. And you end up telling personal stories. And you have to. I don’t know what kind of movie this is, but generally we’re writing about human relationships. And so one of the things that distinguishes Hollywood from other workplaces is you’re going to tell a story about when you lost your virginity if that’s the show you’re working on. So by virtue of the kind of work we do you’re going to share more vulnerable, probably more vulnerable, parts of yourselves.

But that to me makes it even more important that we are careful and safe. And that as women in particular in a lot of ways you have to set up your own protective zone. And as you said that’s one of the things you learn to do not just as a writer, but as an adult.

**Craig:** Right. Because this is all messy everywhere. And, boy, if you were surprised when people said stuff to you, imagine how surprised I was when someone said something to me.

**Aline:** Yeah, but you know, Sexy Craig.

**John:** Sexy Craig.

**Craig:** Well, that’s the thing. Sometimes I forget how sexy Sexy Craig is.

**John:** Now, if a writer like Oops is very, very lucky she might have a boss like Aline or someone she’s working for like Aline. And so Aline—

**Aline:** Those segues.

**Craig:** Segue Man!

**Aline:** So good.

**John:** Aline, you are now a boss. And so you are working with writers who are working through pitches and you’re hopefully setting up shows at various places. Talk to us about your notes process with writers and sort of what you’ve learned now that you’ve been doing this for a while?

**Aline:** Yeah. And I wanted to ask you guys how you do this. So one of the things that I – we have a bunch of writers who are working for us. We have about six to eight writers who are working on various projects. And one of the things that I try to do as a producer is to approach things the way I would have enjoyed things being approached when I’m a writer, or when I was and am a writer.

What I found is that I don’t – and this was true in the writer’s room, too – I don’t have my system and everyone has to go with my system. I don’t say this is how we give notes, and you must get these notes in this format. When we start working with a writer I will ask them do you like spoken notes, do you like written notes, do you like written notes with suggestions or written notes with no suggestions? Because the thing you guys point out which is that you don’t want to activate the lizard brain. Right?

Once you’ve activated the fear-shame complex it’s very hard for writers to respond. So, for me I like spoken notes. I would rather get on the phone and have people walk me verbally through their notes, because I like to discuss, and because I like to hear the problem and respond to the problem in the moment. That’s probably when I’m going to have my best idea, because I’m a talker.

But some people when you try to do that they’re so activated by the thought that they have to be articulate that they would prefer to have written notes. And then among the people who like written notes some people really want to hear like hey this takes a little time getting started, why don’t you cut this scene, or move this. And some people just want to hear seems like we could get started a little more quickly.

So, I think one of the things I would love is for the business to be more flexible to the artist, because the artist is the one who has to write. And it always makes me laugh when you get notes which is like we should do blah-blah-blah, and I’m like we? Who is we? It’s me.

So, I think, you know, one of the things I try and do is I try and take all of the necessary kind of distancing that comes with a critique or comes with feedback and pose it more like is it possible, could we, could we think about, would this work, as opposed to dictates. Because you’re trying to keep people’s brains sort of limber.

Now, do you guys have a preference about whether you like spoken, written, what type of written?

**John:** I think like you I tend to prefer spoken, unless it’s just like down the page notes and then it’s fine for that. And Craig I remember you talking on our Notes on Notes episode about that lizard brain thing and keeping you from blocking up. What works for you?

**Craig:** I prefer to have a discussion about all of it. I don’t want to look at any notes on a page. I find that they are codified in a way that makes me feel vaguely nauseated. And the thing about a discussion is that you can go through methodically the way you write. Even if we’re going through, like, you know, I just went through an episode I just finished with Neil Druckmann. So I’m writing the episode. I send it to him. He reads it. And then we have a discussion. And at this point it was just some page notes. And what was nice is we get to a page. He can say, OK, here’s my question, or this line, and we have a discussion, and then I kind of like fix it. There. And then we move on.

And so now we’re not having this notes session which is like going to the dentist, lying back, and having them put needles in your mouth. Now you’re just working, which is what you want.

**Aline:** But, Craig, the three of us are talkers. And I, like you, I prefer that. But I always ask writers. And most of the ones that I’ve worked with like a document.

**Craig:** Great.

**Aline:** Because they like to tick it off. And, you know, there is a difference between the two-page document and the eight-page document. And trying to undo any kind of snarkiness in notes. When I get a set of notes, me personally that I like, I give them to Heather, our VP, Emily, our director of development, Jeff, our development coordinator. I will show them written notes that I like, that made me feel encouraged and happy.

But I have found like executives really want to give you written notes. And I will try and couple that for myself personally. I will try and couple that with a conversation because I so prefer it. But a lot of writers are really internal. And they don’t want to be – if you do it verbally they will feel called on the carpet, so they prefer–

**Craig:** That’s good to know. I think the point is you’re asking them what it is they’d like. You’re right, the executives literally have to write the notes down because that’s work product for them that they’re judged on. They have to be distributed internally and someone has to say, oh look, John did his job this week and wrote notes up. So whatever works for you as the writer I think it’s important. Even if there are written notes, write your written notes as an executive. And then if you know that that writer likes the conversation then call them with your written notes right there and walk through it.

I have no problem with that at all. I tend to like that. I also am particularly fond of questions. I think questions are inherently more respectful and therefore will be more productive than blanket statements.

**Aline:** Did you consider? Would it be possible?

**Craig:** I actually hate “did you consider.”

**Aline:** Oh, interesting.

**Craig:** Because did you consider is one of the more insulting ones. Like did you consider? Yeah, I considered that. Now let me tell why I didn’t do it. But what I do like is when I get to a place and it says something like “what were you going for here because what we got was this, but what were you intending?” Or, “is there a way that it could be more like this or this? If not, this is what we’re kind of missing from this. But how would you do it differently to get this or this? So that it is not just…”

Because my least favorite notes are the ones that are like “we feel that we’re missing an opportunity for more fun here.” Well, I feel that that doesn’t mean anything. Everything is an opportunity for everything. We could be missing an opportunity for a killing. Or a joke. Or something exploding. Or sex. Or anything. It’s all opportunities. Everything is building in choices. So why?

Everything is about why to me, and that’s why I kind of like the questioning aspect as opposed to the “this didn’t work, take out.” Oh, OK. No. Because I thought about it and you didn’t. I know why it’s there and you don’t. That kind of thing.

Although I have to say I always feel very self-conscious now. HBO gives excellent notes. I’ve got to tip my hat to those guys. They are really good at them. And I’m not kissing their asses. I was nervous like I’m doing this and then they’re like, “Oh, he’s talking about us.” I’m actually definitely not talking about HBO. But pick every other place I’ve worked at.

**John:** Yeah. I’m about to turn in something at a brand new place and I’m really curious what the notes are going to be like from that.

**Craig:** Brace yourself.

**John:** Yeah. I just don’t know.

**Aline:** Our company is a writer-driven company. Our sort of mission is to support writers. And I’ve just learned that part of that is being flexible to whatever – you know, some people want to come in and do cards with me and put them up. And some people want to do it on their own and come back with an outline. Some people don’t want an outline. I just try and let the writer enjoy their process. Because one of the problems with notes is that they can squeeze the joy.

So I’m trying to find notes that are – they’re never going to be fun, but that feel like a great conversation with someone who really respects you and the work. And is not clipping your wings, which they can often feel like.

**John:** All right, now I’m looking at the layout on the table here and so we have all these great dishes. And I need to break open this box that I thought was sprinkles cupcakes is actually about the hierarchy of genres. So, you and I have talked, I remember I think we talked about this on our walk a couple weeks ago. But talk me through what you perceive Hollywood tends to look at the hierarchy of genres. Which movies are important and meaningful versus which ones are trivial and not important? Is that the spectrum?

**Aline:** There’s just this dramas are better. You know, that’s how you’re made to feel. And the funny this is it’s not just awards or critics or whatever. And again so I work with a lot of female leads. My movies, even if We Bought a Zoo has a male lead, but that’s a female audience. I feel often still at the age of 53 head-padded by people. The most stunning example I think I told on this podcast was when somebody was talking about some really pretentious story thing and then turned to me and said, “Aline, do you have to worry about that in your movies?”

And I was like, no, no, I just write a makeover montage and then a meet-cute and then I call it a day. And what’s so interesting to me, I think we’ve got to all live in the moment of realizing that It Happened One Night won Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress.

**John:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And that was a romantic comedy. And somehow this primacy on darkness, seriousness, violence, bleakness, I get it, and taste is taste, but why is that considered fancier or cooler? Anybody who has written funny stuff and serious stuff knows that funny stuff is way harder.

**John:** Well also we’ve talked about this before on the show that if a man makes a movie it’s a serious thing, but if a woman makes a movie it’s a rom-com. Even if they’re exactly the same movie. But I do want to talk about the hierarchy of genres here, because I would say that Hollywood values most, or at least when it especially comes to awards time, is the sort of historical courtroom drama is sort of like there up at the top, or some important moment in history as a drama is at the very top. And near the bottom would be, you know, the light, fluffy romantic comedy. The thing that looks like it’s effortless but it’s actually really difficult to do.

And somewhere stretched in the middle of those are like the Marvel movies.

**Craig:** Oh, I think the spoof movie is underneath that one. I would argue the spoof movie is in the basement.

**Aline:** Yeah, when you get into the super broad comedies. But it’s kind of the thing about how like people will review stuff and be like these people were lazy. They weren’t lazy. You work as hard on the crappy ones as the good ones. You probably work more on the ones that don’t work than the ones that do work. Because the ones that do work just kind of have a special “they’re working” thing to them. When something is not working it’s a lot of work. And I don’t know why people think it’s more or less work to write a dark historical piece where somebody ends up dead in a well at the end. Why is that better or harder, given more credence than writing a legit funny movie or silly movie?

**Craig:** Well, I think one of the things about that process, and obviously I agree with the premise of your position here wildly. Violently at that. I have written a lot of comedies and writing Chernobyl was far, far easier than writing Scary Movie 4. It’s not even close. Not even close. Also, rarer. It’s just rarer to be able to write Scary Movie 4 and have that movie come out and people go see it than it is to write something like Chernobyl.

I do think that comedies are wildly undervalued. And part of it is because critics generally aren’t funny people. And as you get older you get less interested in comedy. It just seems like that’s sort of the way the world goes. And generally speaking critics are older. And their tastes harden. And their lives also begin to turn around things that are sadder. The older the get the more your life is about infirmity, sickness, approaching mortality, the collapsing of marriages, and all these things, right? And so they like it.

**Aline:** I never thought of that. I really never thought of that.

**Craig:** I mean, like my dad, somewhere around 50, so I just turned 50, somewhere around when he turned my age just started watching documentaries about World War II and never stopped. Like it just happens. And it’s happened to me. Because here I am, like the things that I’m interested in have gotten darker because it’s sort of where my mind has gone. So there is a natural built-in demographic over-celebration of drama.

Here’s a statistic for you. You mentioned It Happened One Night. There have been seven comedies that have won Best Picture since the beginning of the Academy Awards. Seven. One of them, the last one, was ten years ago, and it was The Artist, which was in French and silent. So I don’t count that one.

**John:** Important facts.

**Craig:** In fact you have to go back to Annie Hall. We’ll sidestep the problematic aspects for this discussion. Annie Hall, 1977.

**John:** Broadcast News didn’t win?

**Aline:** No.

**Craig:** Broadcast News did not win.

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** So Annie Hall in 1977. 44 years ago.

**Aline:** I’m going to argue also that Annie Hall also rode in under the auteur exemption. Comedies by auteurs are considered—

**John:** A David O. Russell comedy. Yeah.

**Craig:** Right.

**Aline:** Yeah. Not accidentally a male auteur are considered more phi-phi-foo-foo.

**Craig:** Prior to Annie Hall in 1977, The Sting won in 1973. And there was Tom Jones from England in ’63. Going My Way, 1944. A musical comedy. And then You Can’t Take It With You which was a proper comedy-comedy, classic adapted one-act or one-set play, and then It Happened One Night in 1934. That’s it. All of the incredible comedies that have come out over time, none of those, none have gotten Best Picture.

But Crash has Best Picture.

**Aline:** Well, I was going to say, so a lot of the movies that you think of as the definitive movies for a year are the comedies.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Aline:** There’s the ones that you’ve watched a million, billion times, and then you go back and look at what won Best Picture and you’re like, oh god, I forgot that even existed. And so it’s just a funny – but I think some of it is connected to sexism as I would. I think I’ve been that person through this whole podcast. But also what Craig said I didn’t think of which is also you know when they do those studies of who the Rotten Tomatoes critics are I wonder if you do an age breakdown that there is sort of a grumpiness. And also like a not understanding of what is funny, you know, or what people are finding funny.

**Craig:** They don’t know.

**John:** So the same discussion we’re having about movies though you could have about books. In the sense that the great American novel has to be written by a white man of a certain age. The same thing happens in literature. The same thing probably happens in music.

**Aline:** Oh, Broadway for sure.

**John:** Broadway for sure. And so I think why it matters is because when you decide that certain genres or certain kinds of writing are more valuable you pay those people more, you give them more respects. Even if it’s independent of the commercial success of these projects. And that’s challenging.

**Aline:** That’s why when I went to see Identity Thief I know how hard it is to write that movie. That’s a really hard movie to write.

**Craig:** It was hard. It was hard.

**Aline:** It is really hard. First of all, you’re walking in the shoes of a billion opposite buddy comedies with a road component. I mean, I look at the more slender comedies and think, wow, what a tiny target you had to make somebody laugh. You know, Game Night to me is like what an incredible thing to do to take something that could have been that minor. And we’ve watched that movie in our house – the movie that we’ve watched the most in our house is Rawson’s movie, Dodgeball.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. It’s great.

**Aline:** But then it’s just funny how people will then migrate to, I mean, somebody I know once who generally directs comedies is just always really searching for his awards movie.

**Craig:** Serious.

**Aline:** Yeah. Because it’s like you want to be able to get that. I understand. But I think that creative – that’s why I always think that the Writers Guild Awards will recognize comedy more frequently because writers understand how hard it is to do.

**Craig:** We get it. I mean, if you look back at 2005 in movies. That was the year that Crash came out and won Best Picture. But that same year Wedding Crashers came out. And so did 40-Year-Old Virgin. In no possible world is anybody thinking more about or watching Crash more than they have 40-Year-Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers. Those movies were massive and they were brilliant. And they were also movies that kind of changed comedy a bit as well. And no one cares about Crash.

And I’m sorry I’m beating up on Crash, it’s just it’s sort of a notorious underserving Best Picture.

**Aline:** The scene in Wedding Crashers where they sit on the steps of the building in Washington and Owen says, “You know, I think we’re getting a little old for this,” I think about and cite that scene all the time. Because that is one of the things that elevates that movie from an ordinary comedy to a truly great comedy which is the sadness of those guys kind of knowing how pathetic this is and how their friendship is based on something that’s kind of necrotic.

And it’s hard to do. Now obviously I am biased, but when I have written more serious pieces with fewer jokes in them I also find I get fewer notes. But structurally—

**Craig:** People respect you more somehow. Like they think that what is moving and dramatic to you is more sacrosanct than what is funny to you. And I always want to say it’s the same. It’s the same. You’re hiring me not for my personal feelings. What you’re hiring me for is the hope that what I think is good is also something that a lot of other people will think is good. That’s what you’re hiring me for. Taste.

**Aline:** Well, one of the funny things is that when we started in the business, now this is just like old people sitting around a table, but John was by far the grooviest of the three of us. I mean—

**Craig:** Sure. He was on IMDb.

**Aline:** Oh, but also John was like cool and had written cool movies that were more like awards-y.

**Craig:** He’s still cool.

**Aline:** No, what I’m saying we kind of caught up here and there. But I was really intimidated by John because I read Go early on and was like, wow, that script is so great. And he seemed to me like this really super cool bald guy with a leather jacket who was really kick ass.

**John:** I’ve never had a leather jacket.

**Aline:** I know. In my mind you did. The leather jacket you had in my mind was pretty cool. But, you know, John you’ve moved through a lot of different genres I would say not strictly speaking comedy. So even the ones that are a little bit lighter or a little bit more in the entertainment zone still keep you adjacent to the sanctioned things.

**John:** Our clock is quickly ticking down, so I think we need to get to our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Let’s do it.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is a post by Jacob Kaplan-Moss called Embrace the Grind. And so it starts with a description of like how this one magic trick is done which is important because it’s just like, yeah, there’s a little magic, but it’s mostly a lot of incredibly hard work and just like thousands of hours of time to set up all these props. And you think like well no one would actually do those things. And it reminded me of – I got a chance to work with Steven Spielberg when he was going to do Big Fish and I got to help out on some other projects with him. And I saw him on set and I realized like, oh, he’s just working really hard.

And it’s a thing I think we often forget about talented visionaries. In many cases it’s not that they’re actually better, they’re just actually willing to do a lot of really hard tedious work. And both Spielberg and Tim Burton, like they just plan really, really well and carefully. And a lot of what you’re seeing that looks just like mastery is just because they’ve mastered the ability to actually just do the work.

So I urge people to take a look at this post.

**Craig:** That’s so true.

**John:** And think about just sort of like grinding through things.

**Craig:** It reminds me, you know, we just bought a new home near you guys. So we are now moving – slowly moving – it’s going to take well over a year for us to transition because our daughter is still going to school where we are in La Cañada. So we have a new home near where you guys are. And I told David Kwong and he immediately said, “Are you doing any work in it?” And I said you know what? One of the reasons we bought this house is because it doesn’t really need much of anything. Maybe little bits here and there.

He goes, “Please tell me whatever it is, because if you open a wall or do something we can set something up.” And he said like two years from now you have a party and we do something that blows everyone’s mind because it’s impossible unless you had set it up two years earlier while the walls were open. I just thought like that’s so great. I love that.

**John:** That’s David Kwong.

**Craig:** That is David Kwong.

**John:** That’s doing the work. Craig, what have you got?

**Craig:** Well in keeping with my puzzle fetish, so you know I love bringing these – there’s a new phenomenon of these puzzle packs that come out specifically to support charities. And Nate Cardin, who is I believe a chemistry teacher perhaps at Harvard Westlake, and also an outstanding puzzle constructor and of course goes without saying solver, flagged me to – he is one of the guys that runs the Queer Qrosswords. So, he flagged me to this new similar crossword pack called These Puzzles Fund Abortion.

And these puzzles are brought together by lots of folks, although Rachel Fabi is the person that is sort of spearheading the promotion of this on Twitter. These Puzzles Fund Abortion. Crossword Puzzles for Reproduction Justice. It’s a good packet. And it all goes to the Baltimore Abortion Fund.

And I have a link here. By the way, I’m just super happy as somebody that has been supporting what I guess we traditionally call pro-choice efforts for a long time, I like that we’re saying abortion now because that’s what it is. I mean, granted, Planned Parenthood as we know does a ton more than just abortion. But it is good to normalize abortion. It is a thing that a lot of people do and need for all sorts of reasons.

And so if you like crossword puzzles and you like femaductive, female reproductive rights and the access to safe and affordable abortion then please do take a look at this link in the show notes. Donate and solve.

**Aline:** That’s fantastic. Puzzles and femaductive rights.

**Craig:** Femaductive rights.

**Aline:** These are two of my favorite things.

**Craig:** Can we make femaductive a thing?

**Aline:** Yeah, femaductive. That’s good.

**Craig:** Femaductive. I mean, it’s just saving time.

**Aline:** All right, I like to have my One Cool Things on this show be things that generally you probably aren’t talking about. I have, and I’ve discussed it on the show before, I have wavy but not really curly hair. Wavy-ish, curly-ish hair. And there’s a whole area of TikTok which is just about women generally showing how to curl their hair. Sometimes men. But what are the best products, ways, towels, methods, plopping your hair, forgetting your curls to be their full curliness.

So I’m just going to make a couple suggestions. I’m hoping that somebody will then let us know if that helped them find their curl. I can’t take credit for these. These come from my hair stylist, James Carameta from Harper Salon. I’m just going to tell you two things.

After you wash your hair, put in your curling cream, and there’s many good curling creams on the market. Comb it through. Do not scrunch. Finger coil.

**John:** OK.

**Craig:** John and I already knew this. We’ve been doing this.

**Aline:** They tell you to scrunch. Don’t scrunch.

**John:** No, don’t scrunch.

**Craig:** Don’t scrunch.

**Aline:** Just finger coil the curls where you want them and then don’t touch it. Don’t touch it.

**Craig:** Don’t touch…

**Aline:** Watch TV. Make dinner. Do not keep scrunching, curling. Just put the finger curls in, go about your business. It has changed my life.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** I’m going to have to get on this.

**John:** It sounds like less work and better outcomes. So, I’m glad to hear it.

**Aline:** 100 percent. And less heat damage.

**John:** Good. All right. Maybe Megana who is on this podcast will be able to use that. We certainly cannot. But that’s awesome. That’s great.

**Megana:** Yeah, I have a ton of follow up questions that I’ll ask Aline later.

**Craig:** You guys need your own podcast on that.

**Aline:** I use the [Arun Co] Curling Cream. And the shampoo that I plugged last time I was on the show.

**Megana:** Yes, I remember that. OK, perfect.

**Craig:** I use shampoo.

**John:** Yeah. Honestly I don’t even use shampoo because I don’t have enough hair to use shampoo. I just wash.

**Craig:** I use a shampoo brand called For What’s Left. [laughs]

**John:** Good stuff. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Congrats to Matthew Chilelli and his husband Tao on their green card.

**Craig:** Yay.

**Aline:** Yay.

**John:** That’s very good news. Our outro this weeks 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. Craig is not on Twitter anymore. Aline, are you on Twitter? Are you using the Twitter these days?

**Aline:** I am @alinebmckenna. I’m not there very much, but I pop in.

**John:** Tag her. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting which has lots of links to interesting things about writing.

**Craig:** Inneresting.

**John:** 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 of scientific discovery that Aline is about to drop on us.

**Aline:** Mmmm.

**John:** Aline, thank you for stopping by.

**Craig:** Thanks Aline.

**Aline:** Yes, I will pick up my cupcake box and go.

**John:** Yay.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right, Aline, break the news. What have you learned? Tell us.

**Aline:** I wanted to talk about, have you guys talked about your 23andMe? Have you guys both done 23andMe?

**John:** We have because I learned that I am even more German than I thought I was. And Craig is related to–

**Craig:** Megan Amram.

**John:** Another one of our previous guests. Megan Amram.

**Craig:** She’s my cousin.

**Aline:** Well, one of the last times I saw Craig we compared our 23andMe. And we are distant cousins.

**Craig:** That makes sense.

**Aline:** We are not close. But we are distant cousins. But, you know, I was very interested in this because – so Craig you’re Ashkenazi. What percent are you?

**Craig:** I am 99.6 percent Ashkenazi Jewish.

**John:** That’s a lot.

**Aline:** So most of my Jewish friends are indeed like that. But my mother is Sephardic. Her mother was Algerian. Her father was Moroccan. She’s French. And so fascinatingly I knew that Sephardic Jews have more diverse influences, but–

**Craig:** Spanish. African.

**Aline:** I found out, yes, so my largest pieces are Ashkenazi Jew is 51%.

**Craig:** Oh my god, you’re a half a Jew.

**Aline:** I am half a Jew because my father is – no, sorry, yes, no it’s 51%. And the other bigger components are North African, of which I am 15.2 percent. And then delightfully Italian, of which I am 11.4 percent.

**Craig:** Nice.

**Aline:** What a delight. So when I found that out I was so excited I took my entire family to E Baldi. But it’s really fun to see, so Ashkenazi Jews, really I have five percent Arab, Egyptian and Levantine, West Asian and – so that’s basically like–

**Craig:** Moorish.

**Aline:** And Ottoman Empire stuff. And so it was really interesting, so you were saying as you get older you become the person who watches Holocaust documentaries, your dad, or war documentaries. And I am in the phase of middle age where I read books about Jews.

**Craig:** Oh dear lord. It’s begun.

**Aline:** So, I’m reading books about Sephardic Jews, Jews in Muslim lands, and it’s really fascinating to see how the Sephardic people peeled off from what is now the Middle East and wandered around Europe and North Africa. And so my background reflects that. And I know that some of this a little bit like astrology, right, because they’re just guessing here and there. But it’s really interesting.

And then, you know, the Ashkenazi Jew thing coexists with this other type of Jew which I think a lot of American Jews, or a lot of American people don’t really know that there is another type of Jew.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. No, we certainly – and when you meet the other – and I mentioned Neil Druckmann before who I’m working The Last of Us. He created the game and the story. And he is Israeli. Obviously he’s not like – I don’t think his lineage goes and stays within that area. But he is Israeli. He’s definitely more of a Sephardic kind of guy. And it’s a different sort of – they’re very different. Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews have a real difference to them. Believe me, I am distressed by the level of inbreeding that has resulted in me. This is not correct. You don’t want this. You don’t want to be 99.6 anything.

I’m glad my kids are not. Although I have also noticed in my kids that even though they are both 50% Jewish my daughter is definitely way more Jewish than my son. Like as far as Jewishness goes, it’s hard to describe it, but she’s more Jewish.

**Aline:** My brother’s results were less Italian and more Middle Eastern. And he definitely has different appearance things. Of course, you know, these are all–

**John:** I do want to talk about, there’s a little bit of hand-waving happening here.

**Aline:** Yes, there is.

**John:** Because it’s not like they can say like, oh, this spot of the gene on your DNA shows that you are from this thing. What they do is they take a bunch of samples from all over the world and they say like, OK, well these patterns seem to match these different places. But that Italian thing could just be because there was a community of people who were in Italy for whatever reason but they weren’t actually part of the larger Italian group.

**Aline:** That’s right.

**John:** So it gets all a little bit murky when you start to try to drill down into individual things because people will show up as like, oh, it turns out that I must be part Filipino. And then they’ll check about six months later it’s like oh no it turns out that’s completely wrong and I’m not Filipino at all.

**Aline:** Well, the 0.1 percent of my heritage which is Finnish I have questions about.

**Craig:** I also have a tiny bit of Fin.

**Aline:** Maybe that’s how we’re cousins.

**Craig:** The Fin cousins.

**Aline:** We have cousins from Finland. There’s just like two kind of very talkative, complaining Finnish people sitting somewhere.

**John:** Craig that’s where you got your teeth that don’t have cavities, as you talked about.

**Aline:** Oh my god.

**John:** Your teeth came from Fins and so therefore…

**Craig:** I have god given teeth. It is the weirdest thing. I mean, I just, you know, 50 years of living you think you’d get one cavity.

**Aline:** Well it’s funny how you get the problem that you have that other people, like I have extremely hairy – well I had very hairy legs before I lasered them. But hairy legs. Hairy arms. Like three hairs under my arms. I don’t know that everyone needed to know that.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** But that’s why they pay for the extra.

**Aline:** The bonus content.

**John:** Thanks Aline.

**Aline:** Bye guys.

**Craig:** Thanks Aline. Good talking to you.

**Aline:** Thank you. All right, bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Arclight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres Announce Won’t be Reopening](https://deadline.com/2021/04/arclight-cinemas-and-pacific-theatres-wont-be-reopening-1234732936/)
* Final Draft 12 adds the ability to import PDFs! Download [Highland 2 here for free](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/screenwriters.php)
* Check out the Highland 2 Student License [here for professors and students](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/students.php)
* David Graham-Caso [Thread](https://twitter.com/dgrahamcaso/status/1380000780053139457) on his brother’s experience working for Scott Rudin
* [“These Puzzles Fund Abortion”](https://fund.nnaf.org/fundraiser/3196850) via Rachel Fabi
* [Embrace the Grind](https://jacobian.org/2021/apr/7/embrace-the-grind/) post by Jacob Kaplan-Moss
* [Writer Emergency Pack kickstarter — 8,000 decks to send out](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSYTA4bLo24)
* [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
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [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 and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/497standard.mp3).

You can find the original post of this episode [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/the-thing-youre-not-writing).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 496 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show we’re looking at those projects that are not the ones you’re currently writing, with some suggestions for keeping them in mind without letting them take over your entire brain space. We’ll also be answering listener questions including what to do when you have a crush on your producer.

**Craig:** Oh my.

**John:** Oh my.

**Craig:** Oh my.

**John:** In our bonus segment for premium members Craig and I will discuss which words we’re willing to lose forever.

**Craig:** Oh, OK. That sounds like fun. Sure.

**John:** But Craig some really breaking news. Had you ever heard about this producer Scott Rudin? And some alleged bad behavior? An article came out this last week detailing this in the Hollywood Reporter. It was an article by Tatiana Siegel. And did this shock you?

**Craig:** [laughs] Not only did it not shock me, but it was a bit like after five years of people finally doing something about the predatory large cat problem someone stood up and went, “Wait, there’s also a tiger. Why don’t we talk about the tiger?”

People have known about Scott Rudin since you and I showed up in Hollywood.

**John:** Yeah. And in 1994 there was a movie called Swimming with Sharks.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Which I remember seeing at the Laemmle Sunset Five. And it was about this abusive producer, playing by Kevin Spacey, and it was widely discussed that this is based on Scott Rudin. This is who Scott Rudin is.

**Craig:** My understanding was that it was a conglomeration of Scott Rudin and Barry Josephson.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** But Scott Rudin, also there was an article that was written about Scott Rudin in the ‘90s that detailed the horrendous things he did and the tenor of the article – and I would also say the reception of the article – was kind of like “awesome.” Like “what a legend.”

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And I know people that worked as his assistant and everything you ever heard was true. And I guess in my mind I thought like does Scott Rudin just get a pass because he’s always been this way? Kind of like South Park gets a pass on everything. I guess. But finally somebody was like enough already. Enough already with this guy.

**John:** So what’s weird is I had Megana check our back emails because I knew I had spoken to a reporter at the New York Times over a year ago about Scott Rudin. It was sort of like – and this reporter’s question was like after Weinstein do you think there’s a market to talk about Scott Rudin and all of these stories of abusive behavior. And so I spoke with this reporter and said like, “Listen, I never worked for Scott Rudin. But all I’ve heard is very consistent stories about the people who work for him. And not writers who work for him, mostly, but really his employees being just horribly, horribly mistreated.” And so I could say that, but I didn’t go on the record because I didn’t know anything.

And so that story never happened, but this story finally did come out. So, I want to both praise the Hollywood Reporter and Tatiana Siegel for writing this story, but it’s also I’m sort of grappling with this, yeah, why didn’t we address this earlier?

**Craig:** Well, we get used to things. There’s like a weird background noise thing that happens and your brain just becomes inured to it. And then one day someone says, “You do realize, right, that this weird thing has been going on for the last 20 years and it shouldn’t be going on?” And there’s just a moment where everybody goes, yeah, what the F.

And I’ve never worked with Scott Rudin. And nonetheless I believe everything I’ve read about Scott Rudin because it’s been said by so many people for so long in the exact same way. You know, there are cases where you can question people, but when you have a Cosby situation where 50 women all tell the same story that story has got to be true. And in this case you’ve got so many assistants telling stories of things being thrown at their heads. Things being broken on their hands. And people being sent to the hospital. And people being physically, emotionally, mentally abused.

**John:** Yeah. The HR person leaves in an ambulance due to a panic attack.

**Craig:** The HR person left in an ambulance.

**John:** Can you imagine being the HR person in that office? How would you even possibly do that? Because you’re constantly churning through these people who are not being treated in any way that should be happening.

So, bringing this a little bit more local, you know, the last couple of years we’ve been talking about #PayUpHollywood and we’ve been talking about the treatment of assistants in Hollywood, and specifically focusing on pay but also respect. And this is a situation where these people who are working for Scott Rudin were not being treated – maybe they were being well paid, but they were not being treated with respect. And they were working insane hours and in abusive situations. And it’s all part of the same thing, too.

If you see the value in a person as an individual you’re not paying them well and you’re not treating them wall, it has to stop.

**Craig:** Not only do I hope that it stops immediately, but I think it’s probably valuable to outline a path for Scott Rudin to perform some reparations here. Because, look, it may be that somebody actually files criminal charges against him for physical abuse, and if that happens then he will be held accountable by the criminal justice system. However, in the absence of that because of statute of limitations or any other reason this is a very wealthy man. An extraordinarily wealthy man, because he’s an extraordinarily successful man.

And to add a little bit of a strange kind of quirk to this, he’s different than Harvey in this one particular regard – well, first of all, because he’s not necessarily being accused of sexual assault, but also Scott Rudin is brilliant. And he has remarkable taste. And Harvey was an idiot. I like to say “Harvey was” because I like to imagine that he’s not alive. It just makes me happy.

So, Harvey is dumb. Scott Rudin is brilliant and has tremendous taste. And so there is this world where you want him to be a good person, because he does participate and help create and bring into the world a lot of really interesting art. With all of his money it seems to me that he could perhaps take a moment and then just start giving it back to all of the people he hurt. Just start writing checks, Scott Rudin.

You can’t buy away pain. You can’t buy your way to a clean soul. This isn’t papal indulgence time. But you can do what you can do. And if I were advising Scott Rudin right now I would say, hey Scott, sell a bunch of stuff, get out your checkbook, and make things right between you and your god. Because you’ve hurt a lot of people. And he has.

**John:** Yeah. This idea of a reckoning is so different between the Weinstein situation because like there were actual crimes committed in the Weinstein situation. Like the criminal justice system was involved and it’s not clear that any crimes have been committed here. There was bad behavior. And it sort of goes back more towards the discussion we had a couple weeks ago talking about what do you do when everybody knows. Everybody know, there’s a whisper network saying this person is toxic, this person is bad. But it’s not at a level where there’s actual crime.

We’ve seen this in some cases where showrunners get ousted because they are not running their shows well and they’re being assholes to their staff. But in a weird way with Scott Rudin, there’s no person employing Scott Rudin. As the producer he’s the person who is coming in with the rights and running the show. And so it’s really a matter of people choosing not to work with Scott Rudin until there is some reckoning, some way to sort of address what’s happened here.

**Craig:** Which I think is almost certainly going to happen. The thing that keep people glued to abusive humans in this business is either the fact that they are relying on that person for their livelihood or they are afraid of what that person can do to them. If you are one person standing up and saying “I am Spartacus” you may get your head lopped off. If everybody stands up and says “I am Spartacus” no one is getting their head lopped off.

And right now I think finally everybody just stood up and said, “Enough already. We’re all Spartacus.” And at that point Scott Rudin is not capable of hurting, damaging, or destroying anyone’s career. So these other folks who have been afraid of him and what he could do I assume are no longer afraid. I hope they’re no longer afraid.

Obviously you and I aren’t afraid, because we’re saying all this stuff. We are not afraid of Scott Rudin, apparently.

**John:** Apparently.

**Craig:** If this show is off the air next week you’ll know why.

**John:** You’ll know why. I think a thing we can also do as people who make films and television is really look at the role to which we are glamorizing abusive bosses. And I think there is such an iconic role, you know, from the Miranda Priestlys, to sort of all the other asshole bosses. And where we sort of like, oh, they’re the kind of villain but we also kind of love them. Maybe we need to take a sharper look at sort of what we’re doing here. Because I think we might be sort of extending the cycle for these people to sort of stay in power.

Because it’s a belief that you’ve gotten the power because you were this power. And you stayed in power because you’re this person. And it’s OK because you are this person. We see this in politics as well. So maybe we need to really look at sort of our role in glamorizing this type of behavior.

**Craig:** Yeah. I feel like generally we are – we meaning Hollywood – a little bit behind the world. We tend to echo what we see in the world. We rarely create something, some new movement. But in a positive way I think the world has moved on a little bit from that idealized cliché.

I don’t think people want that anymore. I don’t think they want to see the romanticized vicious boss who brings out the best in you. It’s a little bit more like Whiplash where we say, oh, look, it’s the romanticized brilliant but abusive mentor that pulls the best out of you, and then we go, wow, actually we don’t like that guy at all and he’s no good. And he wasn’t. He was no good.

So, that seems like where we’ve evolved. But, yeah, you know, bad sign when your HR person is leaving in an ambulance due to a panic attack. That’s probably a red flag, right?

**John:** That’s never good. So, we’d all heard of Scott Rudin but until this week I had not heard of Zachary J. Horowitz.

**Craig:** Who?

**John:** So Zachary J. Horowitz was a smalltime actor. He was arrested this past Tuesday on federal charges that he ran a massive Ponzi scheme.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** He was defunding investors of $227 million.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** And he basically had all these make believe licensing deals with HBO and Netflix and other platforms. So, I was going to save this for a How Would This Be a Movie, but it’s also newsworthy and it’s also a chance for us to talk about licensing deals and sort of how this could possibly happen. But I will point everybody to the article. We’ll put a link in the show notes.

So this guy is a smalltime actor. Zach Avery was his acting name. And he just had small roles. And the classic cliché is you can’t get arrested in Hollywood. He was able to get arrested in Hollywood for defrauding $200 million worth of deals on movies that didn’t exist and were not going to exist. It’s just kind of fascinating that this could happen.

**Craig:** Wow. So I love a Ponzi scheme. I mean, I don’t like participating in them and I don’t like that they exist. I just enjoy reading stories about them because they’re fascinating. Like everybody knows the phrase Ponzi scheme. I think most people understand the vague idea of a Ponzi scheme. And yet people still keep falling for Ponzi schemes.

But in looking over this particular story it sounds like this guy was a bit more Madoff-y in his Ponzi scheme execution because he was fully forging emails from nonexistent HBO executives or Netflix executives. So he was running quite a scam.

But, I mean, OK, just a psychological question for you John. Do you enjoy the process of keeping a bunch of lies in the air?

**John:** I absolutely hate maintaining lies. And so talk about abusive bosses. Back in my days as an assistant I had a boss who was absolutely obsessed with just stirring up stuff and just would have all these lies going. And so as the assistant who was answering the phone I had to have a sense of like what his lies are so stuff wouldn’t get tripped up. And I hated it. I hated it so much. And I don’t know how people who lie a lot can sleep.

**Craig:** Yeah. This guy, I guess one way to explain it would be some sort of sociopathy. I don’t know if that’s what’s going on here. But the lies weigh on you to some point. Everybody lies a little bit, so every now and then you have to lie a lot. Sometimes you choose to lie for bad reasons. But, you know, this kind of full on massive lying, he took everyone’s money, told them that they were going to get 40% returns within a year, and then he turned around and bought a house for $6 million.

**John:** It’s a nice house. We can put a link to the Zillow.

**Craig:** It’s a nice place if you want to buy it.

**John:** It’s nice. It’s available.

**Craig:** Yeah, you can buy it. And so he knew at that moment it was never going to happen. That just seems crazy to me.

**John:** That’s the thing that I really do wonder about. Because if this were a protagonist in a story that we were writing you’d be like you know this can’t end well. There’s no way you’re going to get yourself out of it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** This isn’t going to be The Producers’ Springtime for Hitler where like suddenly something is going to happen [unintelligible]. No, no, you’re breaking the law and it was going to catch up with you.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like he said, OK, you’re going to give me a whole bunch of money. Like he told one investor you give me $750,000 for the distribution rights to a movie called Bitter Harvest, which is ironic, and that I will pay you back within six months. I’ll pay you back $1 million. Well that’s a pretty good deal.

**John:** That’s a good deal.

**Craig:** And he sent that investor an agreement between I guess himself and HBO to distribute the film in Africa and Latin America for three years. But the president of operations for HBO Latin American Holdings was not a person. He made it up. So he knew there was no way in six months he’s sending this guy $1 million. So I guess the deal with the Ponzi scheme is you find some other sucker, you tell that person–

**John:** You pull their money.

**Craig:** — I’m going to pay you back, and then you just send the first guy his money. Meanwhile this is your life now, just this sweaty – it seems like it’s worse than whatever your life was before.

**John:** Yeah. It’s challenging. So, I think part of the reason why he may have been able to do this for a time is that the way that small budget films get financed and sort of internationally financing and licensing deals is really complicated. And it does seem like backroom shenanigans magic to get all this stuff to happen. And in making this you’re not really kind of seeing the final film, or the promise of making this movie is so far off in the distance that it is all kind of a wild west market feel to it.

And so people who are not especially savvy who could get into it could say like, oh, well this is just how it works. And I could see people being gullible up to a point. But ultimately you’re going to be asking for your money and you’re going to be asking to see the finished movie. And you’re going to know that something is wrong.

**Craig:** Yeah. Eventually you will get caught. He has to know. I assume all these guys have to know they’re going to get caught. I mean, do these guys sit around going I know that every Ponzi scheme perpetrator in history has been caught, because the whole point of a Ponzi scheme is that it is untenable and will collapse. But I will be the first. I will be the first to get away with it. Is that what he thinks? Or is he just like this is going to be a wild ride for a couple years and then I’m going to prison?

**John:** My hunch is that you start small and it just sort of escalates and escalates. The avalanche sort of keeps building on itself. That’s my guess.

Because reading through the Bernie Madoff things it seems like he didn’t enter into it with the intention of sort of it getting as big as it did. He basically had to cover a float or something and then it just ratcheted up and up and up. So once you’re in you can’t get out.

**Craig:** Yeah. Once you’re in you can’t get out. I guess that’s true. So it’s a little bit like the non-business version is that movie Shattered Glass that Billy Ray did about–

**John:** Exactly. A small lie.

**Craig:** It just rolls.

**John:** And it escalates. Like if you’re faking one source. I actually tried to get a different set of rights for Shattered Glass and I wasn’t able to get it, so Billy Ray was able to make that movie.

**Craig:** He did a good job.

**John:** He did a good job. Good job, Billy Ray. Last week we talked about titles and we singled out some bad ones. Josh in Chicago writes in, “Quantum of Solace was actually the only remaining unused title of the Ian Fleming James Bond story titles. The other two are Bond in New York, which probably won’t be a great movie title, and the other is Property of a Lady which would have actually been kind of perfect for that movie, although I don’t hate Quantum of Solace. And it’s better than No Time to Die which sounds pretty lazy.”

**Craig:** Did Josh just “actually” us?

**John:** Yeah. And so I cut out the part of it – he did have a sentence in front of that question that says like “I hate to be the guy to ‘well actually’ you.”

**Craig:** OK, well he sees–

**John:** He recognized “well actually.”

**Craig:** I’m not sure that saying “I’m about to well actually you” gets you off the “well actually” hook. Although, it is interesting. I didn’t know that Quantum of Solace was an actual Fleming story. I will say that Quantum of Solace, that was a tough production because it happened during the writers’ strike, so there wasn’t really much of a script. There had been a script but it needed a lot of work. And then the writers’ strike happened and so Marc Forster was sort of forced to make that movie without a finished script and they kind of did the best they could.

If you don’t like Quantum of Solace, Marc Forster has made some terrific movies. He’s a really good guy, too. So if you don’t like that movie I think it’s probably just good evidence that writers are important. I think he would probably be the first person to tell you that as well. But No Time to Die is – I just refuse to call anything in the movie business lazy, even titles.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Everything is exhausting in movies. Everything. Everything just takes sweat and energy and time and thought, even the stuff that you think is lazy or looks lazy as far as I can tell. Even Zachary J. Horowitz was working hard.

**John:** He was working hard.

**Craig:** He was working harder than we do.

**John:** Zach Horowitz was working really hard for that $227 million.

**Craig:** That guy was sweating.

**John:** Yeah. I like the title No Time to Die. You don’t have to like that title. It reminds me of A View to a Kill. It reminds of The Spy Who Loved Me. It just feels like, oh, there’s some danger in the title. It’s great. Property of a Lady is not a James Bond title. That is some sort of E.M. Forster adaptation. And Bond in New York is not–

**Craig:** Yeah, Property of a Lady is a very odd title. I agree. I guess that’s why it is the – Bond in New York sounds like a comedy. It just sounds like a goofy film. And then Property of a Lady also sounds like a lesbian romance, or maybe like a bondage film. See, there’s a bondage-ness into it, like property.

**John:** Bound in New York, but Bond in New York. Sure.

**Craig:** Bound in New York. Property of a Lady. This is a good – you know, we should just get E.L. James on it. You’re right.

**John:** So this conversation is making me excited to see the James Bond movie in a theater which I’ll be able to do, which is great.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So I’m sorry that movie got pushed back more than a year, but I’ll get to see that movie.

**Craig:** You know, I love Bond. I do. I love me some Bond.

**John:** Now several people wrote in about the new entry in the mockable IP category, which is the Peeps Movie.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** They’re making a Peeps Movie. And I’m going to just say I think an animated Peeps Movie is not as terrible of an idea as it could be because Peeps have faces. They don’t have much of a face, but they do have faces and they are animals. So I can imagine a Peeps Movie existing in the same way that an Angry Birds movie was surprisingly successful.

**Craig:** That’s the new bar? It has a face? [laughs]

**John:** Does it have a face? I mean, Slinky had no face.

**Craig:** No. Mr. Clean has a face.

**John:** Mr. Clean has a face. He’s got a handsome face.

**Craig:** Handsome.

**John:** There’s a demographic that will absolutely show up for a Mr. Clean face, Mr. Clean Movie.

**Craig:** That’s right. When you like sort of like pretty well built older daddies.

**John:** Yul Brynner types.

**Craig:** Yeah. With the earring. He’s saucy. Listen, the Peeps Movie, that’s silly. But, you know, if they do a good job and it’s funny, I mean, this is – I think you and I have said this before. This is one of the great plagues that Chris Miller and Phil Lord have visited upon the world is making a brilliant movie about Legos and so everyone is like, see, Legos was good. Well, if you have Chris and Phil it’s pretty great. Otherwise you’ve just got a Peep. You have a very poor grade quasi marshmallow snack that almost no one likes.

**John:** Yeah. No one really cares for–

**Craig:** No one wants a Peep.

**John:** But I have to say I’m impressed by the Peeps Company because they really went out all out this Easter. You got that Peep Pepsi promo. You got this happening. Whoever is doing their marketing and sort of their brand management just really deserves some money. I hope it’s not Zachary Horowitz.

**Craig:** Well now I am rooting for Zachary Horowitz. I want Zachary Horowitz to go into business with Scott Rudin.

**John:** Oh my god.

**Craig:** Like Scott Rudin, there’s only one guy that’s willing to work with him and it’s Zachary Horowitz.

**John:** I mean, it’s just like you want to see Kong vs. Godzilla but it would just be Kong versus a paper bag.

**Craig:** Jerk vs. Dickzilla. I’m down. Let’s do it.

**John:** So good. All right, let’s move onto our main topic today which is that project you’re not writing. It came to me because this week I’m nearly finished, I’m surprisingly nearly finished, with this script I’ve been working on for a very long time. And I’ve said before on the podcast because I write out of sequence the ending has been done for a while and so I’ve been working on these middle parts and this week I realized, oh wow, I only have like four scenes left to write. And it’s like that’s exciting.

But it got me thinking about all the other things I’m kind of working on, or that might be the next thing I start to write. And we haven’t talked very much about how you think about the things that are sort of on your maybe to write plate and sort of how you work through those.

And, Craig, I’m curious right now obviously you’re so focused on The Last of Us, but in the constellation of Craig Mazin how many little planets are spinning around, other things you could be writing?

**Craig:** Great question. Let’s take a look at my folder called Scripts in Progress. That’s the folder where it’s like stuff that is in progress or should be in progress or will be in progress. I have very clearly two other things that I’m thinking about for – sorry, three, three – three things that I’m thinking about for the immediate post-The Last of Us future.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** And I guess one of them would also be The Last of Us if we earn our way to more seasons of The Last of Us.

**John:** And are those features, are they TV? What are they?

**Craig:** Oh, my friend, it’s all television now.

**John:** It’s all television now.

**Craig:** Oh yes.

**John:** Now, in addition to those I’m certain you have other projects that are sort of like they’re little fireflies in your brain that are sort of like, oh, at some point I could write that. Do you have a system for keeping track of those other things that are sort of like, oh, you know what about a movie like this? Do you have a way to track those?

**Craig:** My system generally is at some point I will mention something to someone, whether it’s an actor, or an executive, or somebody and they’ll say, oh, yeah, let’s do that. And I say, great, I’m really sorry I mentioned that because I actually have this other show I have to do right now. And they’re like that’s OK. When you’re ready let’s talk about it. And I say great. And then every now and then they’re like…and I go thank you. You’re right.

And I want to do it. So the reminder system is oddly other people. If I mention something and nobody else wants to remind me about it, nah, maybe it’s not that good.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Maybe it’s just like, meh, nobody seems to care about that. So, other people bug me about it which is good. And then I have a couple of things that I’m bugging myself about just because I know I really want to do them but they’re very ambitious, they’re very long, large aircraft carriers. And so I need to kind of know that I have the time for that. And it’s hard to contemplate those things right now just because I am in the middle of building an aircraft carrier.

**John:** You’ve got to launch that aircraft carrier soon.

**Craig:** I’ve got to launch it. Yeah, it’s like that thing from The Avengers. It’s like an aircraft carrier that also flies.

**John:** Flies, yeah, exactly. Really under-addressed in The Avengers universe is like, wait, how does that thing work? It’s like these giant fans that somehow keep the whole thing? If we have the technology to do that then there’s more things we should be able to do.

**Craig:** There’s so many problems with physics in the – like there’s a moment, I think it’s the first Avengers movie where Robert Downey Jr. gets thrown out of the top floor of his building by Loki. And he’s falling from a skyscraper and his suit catches up to him and links itself onto him. And he blasts his arm blasters at the ground to stop from falling. And there are people right under it.

**John:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Craig:** Now straight up they should be destroyed. Just simple equal and opposite reaction. They should be destroyed. But they’re fine. It’s outrageous.

**John:** I mean, Tony Stark’s suit, we get a lot of discretion for it because obviously he’s still a human being inside the suit, so if it’s traveling at these remarkable speeds he would just be jelly at a certain point. It would crush him.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, inertia would be such that it’s the acceleration that kills him.

**John:** Yeah. Acceleration.

**Craig:** So, yes, some of the accelerations are so fast that, correct, he would absolutely – well, first, he would pass out completely. But, yeah, there would be compression of his spinal cord. It would be horrible.

**John:** But no one wants to see that movie.

**Craig:** No. I mean, he stops on a dime and you’re absolutely right. The inside of that suit, everything should be liquefied.

**John:** Just pouring out of the bottom.

**Craig:** Right. And then they open it up, they crack it open, and it’s just goo drips out. Oh god.

**John:** Yeah. Like one of those mummy sarcophagi.

**Craig:** Yeah. We need a physically correct Avengers, which would be about three or four minutes long, because almost all of them would die immediately.

**John:** Yeah. So that will not be on my maybe to write list, but it could be. So, I was looking through what’s in my head of things that could be the next thing to write. And it’s a long list. What I do is, I’ve talked before about my daily lists, my little sort of daily cheat sheets. Which is every day I sort of fill out this is what I need to do today. And on those preprinted sheets I do have a list of like these are the other things that are sort of kind of in development in my head.

So they include one picture book, which could also become an animated movie. Two middle grade novels, but not the size of an Arlo Finch, so not another trilogy. One biography. A movie adaptation of an off-Broadway show. A new Broadway show based on existing songs. The Shadows, which is that movie that I still hope to direct at some point, but it needs some rewriting. A rewrite of an old screenplay that Craig has read that has a great title but needs a lot of work. A series adaptation of a short story I wrote.

**Craig:** Jesus.

**John:** An animated series based on rights I control. The adaptation of Arlo Finch.

**Craig:** God.

**John:** A moderately budgeted sci-fi thing that sort of feels like a Charlie Kaufman movie.

**Craig:** What the?

**John:** And an expensive, really expensive monster movie. Sort of like a Legendary kind of movie.

**Craig:** Wow, Megana,

**John:** Megana.

**Craig:** Megana, I think you might need to start buying John cocaine. [laughs] He needs cocaine. He’s not going to make it through without cocaine.

**John:** And what’s crazy is I actually had to give up caffeine, so I don’t even have caffeine in my body anymore to do this.

**Craig:** Oh good lord. Well you’re not doing any of that.

**John:** I’m not doing any of that.

**Craig:** I don’t know who you’re fooling. You just read a list.

**John:** But if I could clone myself I would assign one of me to each of these projects and it would be great. And I would be just so productive. But I’m only one person.

**Craig:** You know, you are only one person. And I’m struggling with this all the time. As we get older and older you start to realize that the time that you have is limited. The time that you have just in total is limited. And then also how much time am I going to spend on this as opposed to on things I like.

**John:** Yeah. The opportunity cost.

**Craig:** Right. There are opportunity costs. And I do remind myself sometimes that one of the reasons I was ambitious was to get to a place where I could enjoy things in life that I didn’t have an opportunity to enjoy when I was younger. Well, OK, then if you get there and you don’t actually enjoy any of them then, you know, it’s not as much fun. You’ve got to give yourself a little bit of celebration.

**John:** Absolutely. So, let’s talk through the framework of thinking about these ideas, these projects, and helping to decide which ones you’re going to write. Because obviously we’re in a certain place in our careers where we could do a lot of these things, but really any writer probably has a constellation of ideas and they’re picking sort of which one I’m going to do next.

And so let’s talk through some ways of thinking about which one to write next. So, my first and obvious question I ask all the time, is this a project you would actually pay money to see or to buy? Is this a thing that if you were just a consumer you would say like, oh yes, I want this thing? Because if it’s not it’s not worth your time.

**Craig:** It is not worth your time. You have to be very, well, you kind of got to be weirdly judgy with yourself.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You can’t do all of it. You just can’t. And there are things that I think are tempting because they seem like they would be super fun, or super cool. And then you have to just go through the process in your mind. Imagine yourself on page 63. Or imagine yourself on episode four of seven. How do you feel?

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And if you don’t feel good with that thought experiment…

**John:** Yeah. Some projects I regretted writing, I’m thinking back to an ABC pilot I did. It was called The Circle when we shot it and Alaska when they sort of put it up. And I wrote the pilot. We shot the pilot. It was all really quick and easy. And I never sort of stopped to think, wait, would I actually want to write this show every week? Do I actually run this show?

And it was just kind of a waste of time. I think I was doing it because I had the opportunity to do it. And it was clear I could sell a show, I could set up a show, I could write a show, I could shoot a show. I was sort of doing it to prove that I could do it, or that I could do something that was kind of down the middle and sort of like a straight procedural. And it was the wrong thing for me to be spending my time on. And so I wish I would have asked that kind of question ahead of time. Because it wasn’t the kind of show that I would have tuned in to watch honestly.

**Craig:** Well that’s an important thing. And there are times when you take a little bit of a leap of faith. You think I don’t know if I’m going to like this or not until I do it, so let’s just do it and see.

**John:** Of course.

**Craig:** But definitely if you think to yourself I don’t actually want to watch this, then – I mean, listen, I got put through the ringer making spoof movies.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But I love spoof movies. And I really enjoyed the stuff that worked that was the stuff that we wanted to do that Bob didn’t ruin. I love that. And so even though it was miserable, at least I could go but this made me laugh so much. Just sitting there watching Regina Hall and Anna Faris doing what they do. I would laugh so hard. So there was a joy there.

And then there are things I’ve worked on where everyone was super nice, very pleasant, and I was bored to death.

**John:** Yeah. I have been there as well.

So, in that introspection asking why you’re doing this thing, two questions have come up. If what’s inspiring me to do it is sort of the question why has no one made this movie before, that’s not enough of a reason. So that is trying to complete the universe and have this movie exist because it doesn’t exist yet, that’s not enough of a thing. I’ve also found myself of sort of grudge writing. Where like someone will piss me off and say that I couldn’t write a certain thing and therefore I will decide like well therefore I have to write this thing.

There’s a movie I wrote called Fury which never sold as a spec. And it was really just because I was so angry at what had happened on the second Charlie’s Angels that I really wanted to write something that was dark, and mean, and really wasn’t me, but just sort of reflected this mood I was having. And it was the wrong thing to write and just a waste of time.

**Craig:** Yeah. When somebody tells me I can’t write something my general response is you’re probably right. [laughs] And then I don’t write it. So, I think that’s probably less healthy than your instinct which is to say I’ll show you. Because I think oftentimes you can show people.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But your point is well taken. Revenge is really just another kind of – it’s another side of the pride coin. And preserving pride or making somebody – because the other person who said that you can’t write a thing, and then you go write a thing, they forgot already. They forgot three seconds after they said it.

**John:** McG wasn’t sort of like the one, oh, I’ll really get him when I say this. Like, no, that wasn’t what was happening there.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, it’s like you spend all this time doing it and then the movie comes out and then you find that person at the premiere and you’re like, yeah, how about me now? And they’re like, yeah, that was great. I loved it. Terrific. And you’re like, wait, what?

**John:** What?

**Craig:** You said I couldn’t do it. What? I did. Oh, Jesus, I don’t know, I must have been having a weird day.

Anyway, you just spent three years trying to prove me wrong. That’s a weird move.

**John:** Yeah, self-own there.

Ask yourself what is interesting about the idea. Is it the world situation or is it the character? And if it’s the world situation and not the character you’re going to really struggle. It has to be about that character and sort of unique situations that they find themselves in that story. Because you can’t write a space, a cinematic space. You have to write characters. And make sure you’re really doing that.

What Craig said about you may discover while you’re doing it sort of how stuff fits together. Great. But then maybe that means you need to spend a couple days working on a little part of it and seeing what it actually feels like under your fingers. Because nothing will reveal the problems in an idea more than actually trying to write it.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s a great line from a very early article that Dennis Palumbo wrote, he of our Episode 99, when he used to write a column for Written By, the Writers Guild Magazine. He said that a lot of times there are these lines of dialogue that we are so desperate to keep not because they’re good but because they meant something to us when we wrote them. They were evidence to ourselves that were a certain kind of writer. And that syndrome can spread to even the choice of what to write. I want to be a certain kind of writer. I want to be seen a certain kind of way. Or I don’t want to be seen a certain way.

All of that stuff is actually quite artificial to what’s good. And if you can ask yourself among the various things you want to do which feels true to me, that has nothing to do with what anybody else would think or feel, but rather what I want, what I truly want, you kind of need that. And if you have that you can maybe get rid of the other ones.

And then the ones that you have that you feel are true and not about making a point or anything, then give yourself the opportunity to fail. Because you might. You might get halfway through and go, oh man, you know what? I wanted so hard to do this. Truly and honestly. I just can’t. No problem. You tried. No big deal.

**John:** You tried.

**Craig:** Right. But, you know, you’ll only find out if you try.

**John:** One last thing about this list of projects that are sort of in your head is that it’s important to remember that Craig was checking in a folder to see what those things were, but our brains don’t work like folders or like shelves. The only way ideas sort of stay in our heads is by rehearsal. And so every once and a while they have to come up and they take up some brain cycles to do a thing. And that can be good and sometimes when you’re sort of rethinking through an idea it can mutate and morph and become a bigger thing. And so doing a periodic review of them can be useful because you may think like, oh, I didn’t know how to do that before but I do know how to do this now.

A situation I encountered when I did The Nines is I had these three different ideas that were competing for attention in my head. One was about an actor under house arrest. One was about what happened when I was on the first TV show I did with Dick Wolf. And the third was sort of this forest mystery. And they sort of combined and ganged up on me and said like, wait, wait, wait, we’re all the same idea. And they found a way to sort of take up more brain cycles by stitching themselves together to be one idea. So, I think it is important to just occasionally go back through your list and see what is it about those things that were interesting to you. Is there something that’s interesting to you about them now that you have the ability to do them that you didn’t have before?

**Craig:** And don’t be afraid to let it go. It’s not quitting.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** It’s maybe a sense of shame like am I just not doing this because I’m, and here’s that word again, lazy. Or am I not doing it because I’m afraid? That may be true. Or it may be true that you’ve changed. Or you’ve just lost interest. That happens.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, in some ways it’s analogous to our situation in the US with vaccines. We have so many vaccines that it’s like, wow, it’s so great that we have three vaccines that work. And I see people who are panicking trying to decide between the three vaccines. You don’t have to decide between the three vaccines. Get a vaccine. They’re all good.

**Craig:** First one they can put in your arm. Take that one.

**John:** Take that one. All right. Let’s get to some listener questions.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Megana Rao, our producer, could you come onboard and talk to us about the questions we got in the mailbag this week?

**Megana Rao:** Hey guys. OK, great. So Tanner asks, “I have a question about something I read in a Hollywood Reporter article. They said a project was shut down indefinitely with a source saying that it ‘suffered from script issues.’ Mind you, this is the only time the actual person responsible for the existence of this project is even referred to. So my real question is what is really happening behind the scenes that results in a ‘source’ saying that a movie ‘suffers from script issues?’”

**John:** Oh Tanner. Thank you for asking this question.

**Craig:** Great question Tanner.

**John:** And it really is a good question.

**Craig:** Lies. Lies, Tanner.

**John:** Lies. OK, so here’s what happened. At some point there was a script that most people agreed on. Like OK we’re going into production with this. Maybe we’re going to make some tweaks. And then something went wrong and people involved in the movie have a different idea about what the movie should be. And it is not the screenwriter’s fault. The screenwriter didn’t do a bad job. It is that the people who are making the movie, including the stars, the actors, the studio can’t agree what the movie is and they’re calling it “script problems” but it’s really “we don’t know what this movie is problems.”

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a little odd that a movie studio would agree to make a movie to the point that it would have to be shut down if that movie was based on a script that had script issues that were sufferable. It is so easy to blame a document. It’s hard to blame people, right? The director has a drug problem. The director and the actor started having sex. There was an actor that quit in the middle. Somebody got fired and then a new person was hired and said, “I don’t want to make this movie.”

There’s a billion human reasons why suddenly something just stops. It may be that everybody sat around and said we want to make this movie, but we know that – we all love the idea, we just don’t like the script. Let’s see if we can fix the script, and then we can’t, and then it gets shut down. That can happen.

But a lot of times when you read this it’s just somebody blaming a document for a human problem that occurred.

**John:** Yeah. It could be a bunch of problems as well. They couldn’t get this movie to be made at a certain price and so they’re saying the script was too expensive. Well, it’s not the script. It’s that you couldn’t find a way to do this. And sometimes movies kind of get put on a track to production when there’s the assumption that like we’re going to figure it out when the time comes, and you don’t really figure it out. Or people don’t come to the same point and same place. And it’s blamed on the script, but it’s really not the script’s problem.

And Craig and I have both been in situations where we’re doing emergency rewriting on projects we’re just being thrown into and when you come in as a new writer on those projects you say, oh, this is not about the script. This is about people’s visions for what this is supposed to be. And I am just – you’re paying me a lot of money not really just for my words but for my ability to withstand the pressure in this room.

**Craig:** Yeah. And oftentimes there’s a lot of Hollywood politics at play that make it easiest to just say “script problems.” If you’re running a studio and you’ve agreed to make a movie with a big super star actress. And then as you’re walking through this thing you decide, you know what, I just actually don’t want to make this movie with her. I don’t like her. And I don’t like her in this process. But I can’t fire her. And the reason why is because she’s represented by this massive agent at this huge agency that is also representing four other people that I’m currently in business with and I really don’t want to screw that stuff up.

So let me just kill this movie and blame it on the script. That sort of thing happens all the time. So, when they say that it suffered from script issues all you can know for sure is that the screenwriter was the least powerful person involved.

**John:** Yeah. So right now they’re in production on the movie version of Uncharted, the great videogame. That movie has been in development for ten years. I know so many people who worked on that thing.

**Craig:** Longer I think.

**John:** Yeah. And I guarantee you there are many terrific, terrific Uncharted scripts. So, it was never the scripts that were the problem. It was just they couldn’t get all the elements together. And so at any point you say, oh, we could never get the script right. But it’s like, no, you could never get all the things together and you’re going to blame the script.

So I hope that movie is great. But they could have made that movie a zillion times if they had the right combination of elements.

**Craig:** It’s the combination of things, right? Because sometimes you have a script that you love and then you have a director that you love and an actor you love, except none of them agree. And so you go, all right, what do you agree on? Well, we want it to be more like this. All right. Well let’s move that script aside and let’s bring a new script in. OK, well that script they like but now the studio is like but we don’t really like this script. So, OK, let’s get rid of this actor. The actor is gone anyway. They had an availability issue. We need a new actor. And now the director is gone. They’re going to do different things. We need a new director.

And this dance begins again. And I would argue that part of the problem with film development and these projects being shut down and this sort of endless development cycle is simply this. The writer is not in charge. And when the writer is in charge this doesn’t happen. They don’t have television shows that are developed over the course of 12 years. It just doesn’t happen. They either make it or they don’t.

Because the writer writes it and that’s the vision that matters. And then everybody else comes onboard or doesn’t. But it doesn’t matter. Somebody is going to come onboard and they will make the show. I don’t understand why – I don’t understand why the feature business is the way it is. And I was in it forever.

We need another question. Yeah, Megana.

**John:** Please, another question.

**Craig:** Another question, Megana.

**John:** Let’s get Craig out of his funk.

**Craig:** Megana, bring us another question.

**Megana:** OK, well this one comes from David from Vancouver, British Columbia, and he asks, “When you’re outlining a movie when do you zero in on what the tone will be? Or is the tone something you discover while writing the screenplay? You’ve talked about clichés that trap writers before on the podcast. But how do writers get unstuck from tonal clichés? For example, the heist movie where everyone is witty and cool, or the gritty thriller where the deaths are raw and shocking.”

**John:** Hmm.

**Craig:** You have done Vancouver proud, sir. That’s an excellent question.

**John:** To me, the tone of what it’s going to feel like comes before I’ve written anything down. The initial vision of what kind of movie it is we’re making, that tone is just really baked in from the start there. It’s what it’s going to feel like. And that comes really, really early on.

I’ve said this on the podcast many times before, but with the first Charlie’s Angels it was just – we got tone first, which is basically in a meeting with me and Drew and Amy Pascal, describing what the movie felt like and who the girls were and sort of what the spirit of it was well before we got into plot or outline of story.

**Craig:** I’m the same way. Because so much of what needs to happen precedentially before I can start writing is the determination of character and point or purpose of show or movie. Tone seems to me to be essential to that. I don’t know how I can determine who the character is and what this thing is about if I don’t understand the tone. And it’s just as important to know what the tone isn’t.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** A lot of times I feel like part of my job is being able to explain to other people what I am not going to do. Because everybody’s mind goes in interesting squirrelly directions. And people are constantly drawing on the things that they are familiar with to try and help to find something that they are not yet familiar with.

So, there’s no way I can go forward until I know basically what the tone is. It can evolve. Just as the outline of the story can evolve as you’re writing. And you will find some things. And you will be able to go backwards and change some things here and there. And you will never be able to be tonally perfectly consistent on a first draft.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** As you go forward you will be able to then go back to those early pages and say, ah, I know more now than I did then. Let me adjust. This line is too broad. This is too indicative. This is too subtle. This is the space where this is supposed to be much funnier and that just feels very dramatic.

But, you sort of need to know beforehand. And, David, you’re saying a great thing which is how do I not do for instance the heist movie where everyone is witty or cool. Here’s how. By saying I’m not doing the heist movie where everyone is witty or cool. I know what it is, so I’m not going to do it. At all. There you go. You’ve done it.

**John:** Yeah. And I would say it’s a cliché to do the it’s this movie meets this movie, but one thing that’s useful about, you know, it’s Ocean’s 11 meets Mrs. Doubtfire. That gives you a sense of what tone you’re sort of headed for. And so even if you can’t perfectly articulate in a sentence this is what the tone of the movie is, you have to have a feel inside. This is how the characters are going to be acting. This is sort of the colors of this world. And so being able to think that way is really important.

And if you don’t have the ability to describe that tone you’re probably not really ready to write anything quite yet.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** All right, now Megana, I see this question on the Workflowy. I’m excited to get to it, but it’s also long. So I would just say do your breathing exercises because it’s a long one to read. But I’m excited to hear it.

**Craig:** And do it all in one breath. [laughs]

**Megana:** Oops wrote in and she’s asked, “I think I’ve got a crush on one of my producers. I really, really don’t want this to be a thing, but dammit I think it is. We’ve been working on a film together these past couple of years and have gotten along like a house on fire. I should point out that he’s not my big boss, just part of the team. The film has just been green lit and the mutual appreciation of each other has just kind of grown, a lot, and quickly.

“Like other folks have started to notice. We’re both professionals with credits and what not, but we’re also both in the earlier stages of our careers. I suspect the last thing anyone wants is to put a foot out of line, especially given the power imbalance and the fact that, you know, we have to work together. I want to add nothing untoward or inappropriate has happened or been said. It’s all so wonderfully respectful, which obviously makes me like him more.

“You know when you just know someone feels the same way? But is this like a thing? I was in a long term relationship up until 18 months ago, so I’ve never really dealt with anything like this in my career before. I’ve heard all about the on-set romances of friends and colleagues, so is this just the hype of getting a film set up? Is it my ego being inflated by the fact that he seems to be really into my brain? Or am I just being a dumb teenage girl with a crush again after some heartbreak? Could it be something real?

“And more to the point, what do we do about it? If we decide to shag like bunnies we have to wait until after the wrap, right? Please help.”

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** Let’s tell Oops exactly what to do. You know who needs to help here?

**John:** Oh god no. Sexy Craig cannot make an appearance here.

**Craig:** Oops, I did it again.

**John:** Before Sexy Craig weighs in here I will say, I’m going to be Rational John. And Rational John is going to say I Googled it, I looked it up. So one-third of married couples meet online in 2021. But of those who do not meet online, nearly 22% met through work. 19% through friends. 9% at a bar or club. And just 4% at church. So, you know, this could be your soulmate. This could be the person you’re supposed to be with and don’t discount that. Don’t run away from love.

Your correct in trying to put some limits on it at least while you’re in production, because you are going in to do this big job and it is going to be awkward if you are trying to date while you’re doing this thing. But you know what? I think you’re in love. And I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem.

**Craig:** Well, you don’t know if you’re in love yet.

**John:** No. And I should say that. You have pre-love right now anyway right here. You have possible love. And don’t run away from possible love.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’ve got hormones. You’ve got the madness swirling in your brain. We’ve all had the madness swirling in our brain. It’s wonderful.

**John:** I love the madness swirling in the brain. It’s good stuff.

**Craig:** It’s great. It’s also dangerous. But I agree with John. Look, you’re an adult. And the producer is an adult. You mentioned that there is a power imbalance, but you also point out that he’s not your “big boss, just part of the team.” So I would argue that the power imbalance is not massive. This isn’t somebody that theoretically is going to be able to hire you/fire you in that moment. They’re not your direct supervisor per se. And I think that adults are allowed to get into each other. And adults are allowed to have relationships. And like John said when you work together that’s going to happen. I would hate to think that we have become so terrified of violating that we don’t take advantage of mutual affection. That’s what keeps the world going.

It can also, listen, as we all know it can also collapse. And sometimes people reveal themselves to be horrible once you get to know them. But I want to be optimistic here. Because, you know, I met somebody, John met somebody, people meet people, and then you fall in love and it works. You might be having – first of all, when you say “am I just being a dumb teenage girl with a crush again after some heartbreak,” I don’t know how old you are now, Oops, but that actually never changes. Like I’m still a dumb teenage girl with a crush again after some heartbreak. We all are. It never changes.

We’re all just – our bodies get older, but we are all in our minds always a child. So, yeah, that may be part of it. Or, he may be the guy. And my advice is to maybe tiptoe up toward it, because you want to avoid is going, OK, I know that we both feel this week, but let’s just wait until after wrap. And then he goes, “I’m sorry, we feel what way?” [laughs] “Oh no, no, no, I don’t feel that way about you at all.”

And then that would be awkward. And you can kind of tiptoe up to it.

**John:** Yeah. Or you can say like, hey, how about when we wrap we go out for a dinner, just the two of us.

**Craig:** Right. Or if that feels a little formal given what’s going on, you can be like, OK, can we just talk about what’s up? What’s up? What are we doing? Help me out here because I’m trying to figure out what we’re doing. And then you can put a boundary down and say, listen, here’s the story. Let’s make it through this production and then, you know, then yeah, let’s see what happens. And then that will only make things – by the way, I guarantee you, side note, if he’s like, “Yes, I am into you. You’re into me. I agree we should wait until after wrap,” you guys will be in bed within three days.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s just going to happen. Because once you both agree that you’re eventually going to sleep together–

**John:** Yeah, once you set the limits you’re going to both blow your limits together.

**Craig:** It’s like, OK, John, you and I are going to order a pizza.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** But we’re going to order a pizza like next week. And then you’re like, uh-huh. And then the two of us are just like pizza, pizza, pizza, pizza, pizza. So, I think, Oops, that you should remind yourself that even though you might feel like a teenage girl you are an adult. You are an adult. You are your own human being who deserves to love and be loved. And you should not be afraid. You should just be aware and alert. And it seems like you certainly are.

**John:** Yeah. I would also say the fact that she’s known him over a course of years of development and liked him over this time is a good sign, too. Because when I see on-set romances that are doomed it’s because it’s happened in this hot house of production where people work these crazy hours and they basically see no one else.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s like you’re trapped on Survivor and you have like a showmance.

**Craig:** A showmance.

**John:** It’s a showmance really. And this doesn’t feel like a showmance. First off, you’re being fully rational in what you’re writing here. And it’s happened outside of production. So, I have hope here. I think you’re making the right choices. I would encourage you to just note all your feelings, because these are great feelings and you’re going to use them in your writing.

And also just congratulations on your movie going into production.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is exciting. I hope something wonderful happens here.

**John:** And if wonderful things happen, Oops, please do write back in with an update.

**Craig:** Megana, how did we do there? What do you think?

**Megana:** OK, because I do have a follow up question because I feel like some of the advice was–

**Craig:** Wrong.

**Megana:** Well, no. But just to be clear we’re telling Oops to not have this conversation until production wraps, right?

**John:** No. I think we’re saying – my pitch was to have the conversation now is like, hey, how about when we wrap we go out and have a dinner, you and me.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I’m saying a similar thing. Like now she should say, listen, I feel like something is going on here. I don’t know if there is. But if there is let’s just talk about it and let’s maybe if this is something that feels like – like if you feel the way I feel, let’s just agree to hit pause until we wrap. And then, you know, let’s go have a drink and see where it goes.

**Megana:** Hmm.

**Craig:** Megana is like, no, no, no.

**John:** I want to know what Megana is thinking. Tell us.

**Craig:** Megana is like I hate both of you. I quit.

**Megana:** No, not at all. I’m just – like a part of this is the forbidden aspect. And I wonder like – I don’t know if she should just continue – it’s just so fun like reading this whole question was super fun. And I’m pitching that she should just let this tension ride out.

**Craig:** Oh my god. You’re a sicko. I love it.

**John:** I get, so in some ways it’s that sense of like the thrill of the tension and the thrill of the possibility might be more enticing than the actual what could happen there.

**Megana:** Right. I feel like having an adult conversation, I just wonder if that’s going to like suck all of the air out of this crush.

**Craig:** Ruin it. OK. I like where Megana is going with this. See, you know what? It’s a good point, because you don’t want to clinical this thing, right? You don’t want to be an HR person about it.

**John:** No. No.

**Craig:** Right? So, I get what you’re saying. Maybe, ok, so then the other possibility, this is so much fun, the other possibility is just go for it. Just go for it. Because like honestly, again, we’re adults.

**Megana:** No, I think my advice is more like, you know, that sort of like Victorian romance–

**John:** Don’t say a thing.

**Megana:** Yeah, like did he look at me?

**Craig:** But then nothing ever happens.

**Megana:** Well, until after production.

**Craig:** Oh, you mean like so just keep the flirty, thinky like maybe/maybe not/maybe/maybe not. How long is the production? That’s what I want to know. [laughs]

**John:** Indeed. Craig, it’s The Last of Us, and so it’s going to be a long–

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**John:** It’s going to be another eight months.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**John:** So I’m thinking back to college and I started flirting the woman who was the student body president. And we would sort of exchange notes in each other’s mailboxes, like literal physical mailboxes in the office. And it was so exciting to sort of be in that space.

**Craig:** Oh my god. True.

**John:** That’s so fun.

**Craig:** It’s true.

**John:** Yeah. And I don’t think Oops is going to be able to resist how compelling that is.

**Craig:** Oh, but you know what? Now I want to tell a story about a crush that I had. So, there was a girl named Sima, I won’t say her last name, because now she’s a lady and lives somewhere I assume and has a life. I don’t want to blow her up on a podcast. But it was like a summer thing. And I met her, we were in a summer academic program. Because nerds.

**John:** Nerds.

**Craig:** And this was in the ‘80s and we were on a college campus and they had like a little computer lab where you could type messages to each other on this computer using Unix commands. This was like pre-AOL and pre-everything. And we would just send each other messages. And I could, I mean, I was so head over heels for Sima. It was unbelievable.

And she professed that she was the same for me. But very like the most chaste relationship I think I’ve ever had in my life. She was very proper and very we’re not going to do stuff because I’m a lady. And I was like I respect that.

And it was very Victorian. It was. And it was very much like I will send you letter through the future. And it was wonderful. And then, you know, you go your separate ways because that program ends and I wonder where she is today. Anyway, oh my god, boy, she was, oh. She was beautiful.

And, I don’t know if my wife is going to listen to this podcast.

**John:** Does your wife usually listen to Scriptnotes?

**Craig:** I don’t think so. But you know what? Literally I was 16 years old. I was 16.

**John:** You’re forgiven.

**Craig:** I’m forgiven.

**John:** And you got married just shortly thereafter.

**Craig:** I got married like nine years later actually. Or ten years later. But, man, Sima. Boy, am I just like, I couldn’t have been more in love. But, I was a child. We were children. Oops is not a child.

**John:** Oops is not a child. Megana, so let’s say Oops were a friend of yours. What advice would you give her?

**Megana:** I would say enjoy the flirt. Have fun. I wouldn’t, I don’t know, I wouldn’t have this conversation until after production. I just think it’s such a gift. I don’t know, to me this feels like the most fun part of a relationship, this period where you don’t know what the other person is thinking and that excitement. Why wouldn’t you prolong that?

**Craig:** Because you got to get somewhere, man.

**John:** Yeah.

**Megana:** Maybe I’m just revealing my own personal character.

**John:** But also I think maybe – the age difference may be a part of this, too. Because Craig and I are at a place where we can’t wait forever. And you’re in your 20s. You can wait a little longer.

**Craig:** We’re almost dead. [laughs]

**John:** We’re nearly dead, so everything has to happen right now. That meeting can’t be pushed off till Friday because I might not be alive on Friday.

**Craig:** My god, I’m running out of time. That’s true. Megana, you’re younger. You can be like, you know what, I just want to flirt for a year. And we’re like a year? I won’t be here.

**Megana:** I do think no matter what we say it seems like there’s enough momentum here that her relationship is just going to move forward in one of these directions.

**Craig:** I hope so. I mean, I root for love.

**John:** I would urge Oops to take any of our three pieces of advice and please to write in with an update when it goes so well. Because we’re all rooting for you.

**Craig:** Send wedding pictures.

**John:** Ooh, that would be so nice.

**Craig:** I love a wedding.

**John:** Megana, thank you for your questions and for your epic reading a very long question there. So thank you for that.

**Megana:** Thank you guys.

**John:** All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Yay.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is an article by Peter S. Ungar called Why We Have So Many Problems with Our Teeth from Scientific American. And, Craig, what were teeth originally? On evolutionary terms where did teeth come from?

**Craig:** Oh, well, where did they come from? Like why did they happen in the first place?

**John:** Why did they happen? Fish originally did not have teeth.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because teeth were soft. I assume because animals evolved exoskeletons to prevent from being eaten and so in a competitive fashion other animals evolved bits of bone that would crush through those exoskeletons.

**John:** Yeah. But teeth are not actually bits of bone. Teeth are modified scales, which is interesting. And so basically they’re scales on the outside of fish that gravitated into their mouths.

**Craig:** Gross.

**John:** And became useful.

**Craig:** Gross.

**John:** And so what you have in your mouth right now are a bunch of modified scales and they’re really strange inside. So it’s just a good article talking through sort of what we know about teeth and why teeth are really complicated and so different than all the other parts of our body. And so I just like it. I respect our teeth more knowing the stuff I learned in this article.

**Craig:** In a strange bit of serendipity I went to the dentist yesterday.

**John:** Nicely done, Craig. And had you been putting off going to the dentist during these Covid times.

**Craig:** I sure had. But nothing went wrong. So, I have a lot of ways in which I lost the genetic lottery. I don’t have a well-regulated appetite system. I’m prone to overeat. There’s also I get headaches. My eyes were crappy. But my teeth are spectacular. I’ve never had a cavity. Not one.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** Not one. And they look at the X-rays and they’re like, geesh, I mean, those are really good teeth.

**John:** So that could be the microbiome of your mouth or something.

**Craig:** Something. And he said, flat out, this is definitely genetic. It’s not like you get a special blue ribbon for how well you brush because I’m not the best brusher/flosser in the world. Although I did just get this cool new, I’m not going to make it my One Cool Thing, I have something else, but this new Oral B electric brush. Because I’m an idiot, it has an app. But it shows you on the app like, oh, you’ve done enough on the upper left of your teeth. Move along.

You have to brush so much longer than I thought you did.

**John:** It’s a full two minutes. I have the Ultrasonic toothbrush, the same kind of thing where it buzzes when it’s time to move on to the next thing.

**Craig:** Right. Yeah, so I assume that a good seven seconds of brushing was basically the idea. No. Incorrect.

Well that’s fascinating. I will read more about our teeth. My One Cool Thing is a bit sad. No, it’s rather a lot sad. But Paul Ritter was an incredible actor. I got to know him because he played Dyatlov in Chernobyl. But he had been around for so long in England acting both on stage and in films and on television.

And unfortunately we lost him early this week. He had a brain tumor. I don’t know if it was something that was sudden, or if he had been sick for a long time. He certainly never let on anything to us. But he was not only terrific on screen, but off-screen just the most lovely guy. The most unassuming, humble person. He just – whatever the opposite of difficult is. I don’t want to say easy. It’s got weird connotations. He was so agreeable and amenable and generous and lovely.

And we put him through all sorts of torture, because his character was one of the only ones that was exposed to radiation and then lived.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So we had to have him shave his head before he ever showed up, which he was like done, no problem. Shaving my head. And then we had five or six different stages of radiation sickness, or health. And he just never made a peep. Just did his job and did it beautifully.

And there was an outpouring of love and affection for him this week from all of the people that worked with him primarily in the UK. He was just beloved. I hope he knew that. And I hope that his family, I’m sure they know. But it was such a shock. He was so young. He was 54 years old. And I just was, well it was a rough day. He was a wonderful guy. And so we will miss Paul Ritter in all sorts of ways. And I hope his family and loved ones have an easy path through their mourning.

**John:** He was remarkably talented. I only knew him from your show, and then to see the obituary that sort of talked through his whole career ahead of time you recognize that no one gets to his place and just appears. It was a huge body of work leading up there.

**Craig:** Incredible stuff. And he was so funny. I mean, people who know him from Chernobyl will not know how funny he was. He was hysterical. And was the star of this long-running sitcom in the UK called Friday Night Dinner. And he just was awesome. He was a great guy.

**John:** Cool. All right. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao.

**Craig:** Indeed.

**John:** It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Our outro this week is by Nora Beyer. 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 like the ones we answered today. For short questions I’m on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust.

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 talking about which words we’re willing to get rid of.

Craig and Megana, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thanks guys.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right, so Craig this last week on Twitter I asked the question if you had to give up one common English word what would it be? Mine is “sure.” I don’t need it. And it got a huge number of replies and people had their choices like which words they’re excited to get rid of. Craig, which word leaps to mind for you? What word would you want to get rid of? Or be willing to get rid of. You don’t have to hate a word. You just have to say like I just don’t need that word.

**Craig:** I’m happy to discard “spiritual” and “spiritually.” Those all connect, the two of them. I can get rid of those. I don’t know what they mean. I’ve never known what they meant. And I feel like everybody that uses them doesn’t know what they mean either. They are simply placeholders for things that we don’t understand.

We might as well just say something that I don’t understand. [laughs] That’s what spiritual means to me. I’m sure everybody else is like are you insane and they’re going to write letters. And I understand that and I acknowledge that.

**John:** It’s a very different answer than a lot of people gave. But what I like about that is you’re arguing to get rid of the word just because there’s no agreement of what we’re actually meaning by this word, so we should just not have it because everyone is putting their own meaning on it and we can’t know what that meaning is supposed to be.

**Craig:** Yeah. And it does offer a potential for abuse, because I think a lot of people will just trot that word out, gain some unearned credibility, and then take your money.

**John:** Yeah. I get that. So, a common word that came up was “very.” People wanted to get rid of very. And I–

**Craig:** No.

**John:** I want to defend very.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** So I think there’s a high school English teacher had an idea of like the word “very” is never needed. You should just use a different word.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** I don’t get it. There’s times where you need an intensifier.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** And everyone language has intensifiers and they do serve a meaningful purpose. And I can’t imagine, especially writing dialogue, without a character’s ability to use very.

**Craig:** Yeah. Is he unhappy or is he very unhappy?

**John:** We know what that means.

**Craig:** Right. It’s a discriminator. It gives us a difference between one thing or another. It’s important.

**John:** Yeah. So is he angry or is he irate? Well, I guess irate could be very unhappy, but that’s not useful in the same way. You’re trying to measure a scale. So I think we need very.

**Craig:** Yeah. That music is loud. Oh, well, you know, deal with it. No, no, it’s very loud. Very is probably connected to verily, right? I wonder, is it?

**John:** It is. Yeah. That’s the origin of it in anthropology. So it’s a truthfully. It’s vrai in French.

**Craig:** There you go. It’s vraiment loud.

**John:** Vraiment. People argued for getting rid of “just.” And I can see it. I think just is overused.

**Craig:** No, it’s essential. It’s an essential word.

**John:** I think just is useful. It’s a connector.

**Craig:** I just got here. That is so much different than I got here. It is really – why, oh, now I want to get rid of those people. Can I get rid of people?

**John:** French has a whole way of doing just in like having very recently accomplished a thing. And so we need just for what we’re doing here. People want to get rid of like. Yes, is like overused? But you need to have – I think it’s really useful to have a term that is less than love and indicates an affection for. Also you need the word for similes. It’s so useful to form similes.

**Craig:** I think if people said, look, we don’t mind keeping like to show affection, I like it. It’s nice. But we’re willing to get rid of it as the useless filler which is a substitute for as or similar. You know what? We could actually live with just “similar to.” Akin, or similar.

**John:** Yeah. We’re not improving the language to get rid of it, but if we had to get rid of something.

**Craig:** If we waved a wand and eliminated that usage of like we would also then eliminate like people who were like talking like this. Like.

**John:** But there would be another filler word that would take its place.

**Craig:** There would. It would probably be the Swedish, liksom.

**John:** Liksom.

**Craig:** Liksom.

**John:** “Fine.” Can we get rid of fine?

**Craig:** Lots of different definitions of fine.

**John:** Well that’s the problem. I’m being the most expansive. So if we get rid of fine you can’t use those four letters in any version.

**Craig:** God, well, I mean, no. Because there’s such wonderful uses of fine, like the tiny particulate matter. It’s fine grit. Or I have levied a penalty against you. It’s a fine. Yeah, no, fine is – or fine as in beautifully made and crafted. A fine silken tie or whatever. But I think people are probably, what they don’t like is “fine.” Yeah, cool.

**John:** And sure.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Interesting. Emma Pressman writes, “I want to get rid of interesting.” I take that as a personal front.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re coming at you now. That’s right at you. Interesting is overused, but not as overused as amazing. Amazing is – people are constantly saying they’re amazed. I’m amazed, like really? You stopped and you just stared? Amazing.

**John:** And sometimes words drift. Like awesome and awful used to be synonyms and they drifted different ways.

**Craig:** I mean, I love that. I love that awful is bad. It’s full of awe. Awesome and awful mean the same thing.

**John:** Yeah. Another frequent suggestion is literally.

**Craig:** Well.

**John:** And literally is a case, it’s misused so often that maybe we would be better off if we didn’t try to use it.

**Craig:** Well, at this point what literally has become is another intensifier. And to that extent I don’t mind it. I’m not going to be such a prescriptivist that I say, OK, well yes we understand that when we say literally what we mean is figuratively. But because we all understand it, it works fine.

**John:** Yeah. We get it. The only ambiguity comes up in places where we don’t have enough information to know whether we are talking literally or are we talking figuratively. And then we just need to make better choices about how we’re saying this.

Beth Schacter, our friend, writes, “Nice.”

**Craig:** Well, yeah, I’m thinking–

**John:** You’re thinking of Into the Woods?

**Craig:** Yes. Exactly. How did you know?

**John:** Well, I’ve known you for all these years.

**Craig:** Because you know me, right? She’s not good, she’s not bad, she’s just nice.

**John:** I don’t want to lose that lyric because it’s so meaningful.

**Craig:** For that lyric alone, just to preserve the Sondheim of it all, I would say we can’t get rid of nice. Also the city of Nice.

**John:** Well, they can rebrand themselves. It’s fine.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** They can do it. Nice is one of those things where if you were to describe a character as nice, like what? It’s not helpful.

**Craig:** It is so mild that it’s almost become an insult. Which is what Sondheim was playing on. That nice is the most bland of commendations. Nice. It’s nice. I think noice has to stay.

**John:** Without noice what is the purpose of living?

**Craig:** What is anything? What about Megana? Megana, what word are you willing to shunt and fire into space?

**Megana:** I guess, well I’m not prepared to answer that question because I’ve been preoccupied with something else.

**Craig:** Oh.

**Megana:** I don’t mean to “well actually” this conversation.

**Craig:** Oh, do it.

**Megana:** But, John, you say “sure” a lot.

**John:** I do. I say “sure” all the time.

**Megana:** I saw your tweet last night. And I was like, huh, am I losing my mind? And then I looked through our Slack and I typed in “sure” and I just have pages of responses from John that are just like, “Sure.”

**John:** Yeah, so I would say–

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** I’m willing to – sure. I’m willing to give up sure. I’m willing to make the sacrifice. A word I use commonly. So, I want to stress, I said commonly used words. So I was looking at the list of the 500 most common words in English as I was making my choice for myself. And so sure would be a big thing for me to give up and I do use it a lot, but I could replace it. Because honestly on Slack I just use that little thumbs up little icon instead of sure for most things.

**Craig:** That’s nice that you would give up something that actually hurt to give up.

**John:** Yeah. If it’s not a little pain, if it’s not a little sacrifice, then what is it worth?

**Megana:** Because I wonder if this is like a Gen-X/Millennial thing, but I remember when I first started working for you and you used “sure-period” a lot, and I was like oh my god John hates me.

**John:** Oh no!

**Craig:** I have heard this. That there’s this thing about like a period on a text means anger. And I’m like, no, it just means grammar.

**Megana:** Well, it’s like why would he go through the effort of putting a period there unless he was feeling very upset at me.

**Craig:** Oh my god, because it’s correct. [laughs] Because the period is correct. It’s like why would he capitalize the first letter of a sentence? It’s correct.

**John:** I do find myself using “yup” a lot instead of other yesses, just because it’s a friendlier yes, or a friendlier OK. Because OK can seem passive-aggressive.

**Craig:** If you ask Bo she’ll tell you–

**Megana:** Oh, do you think that?

**Craig:** That yup is friendlier? Oh, you think yup is worse?

**Megana:** My communication with John is just taking on a whole other – this is great.

**Craig:** So every time he says “Yup” you just cry and curl up into a ball?

**Megana:** Yeah. I’m like, oh, well I guess he does not think “yup” and he’s actually really upset about this.

**Craig:** So just to be clear you think that when John says “Yup” he means not yup.

**Megana:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** But you know that he’s not an organic creature, right? Like you know that he is circuits. Of course he means yup.

**Megana:** Sometimes I get a cool exclamation mark, and to me that means yup.

**Craig:** Whereas if I got that from John I would start worrying that something was up.

**John:** Yeah. So Scott Rudin doesn’t use – how does Scott Rudin end his texts? Does he say, “Yup.”

**Craig:** Yup, period.

**John:** Period. There’s going to be a whole exposé on me that’s really about, “Yeah, he’ll send these really passive-aggressive texts like, Yup.”

**Craig:** That’s amazing. There’s a whole study of John interpretation here that needs to be figured out. I’ve been using Yazzzz a lot lately. Yazzzz.

**John:** Yeah?

**Craig:** Yaaazz. And it’s usually if it’s something that I really, hey Craig, I’m going to grab coffee, do you want a coffee? Yazzzz. Like a child screaming for it. Yeah. But I could see like yes-period would be a little possibly cold.

**Megana:** Horrifying.

**Craig:** Well, OK, horrifying is strong. No. Horrifying would be, “You’re fired.”

**John:** I do feel like we need to have a study of the previous Scriptnotes producers and just see how they interpreted all these things to see whether there’s a generational shift or whether I’ve changed.

**Craig:** This is where we discover a trail of tears behind you.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Wow. Man, you’re going to get Rudin’d. You’re on the verge of Rudin-ing. It was just a mild discussion about texting and then suddenly #TheJohnPartyisOver. What did they say? The John is Over Party. That’s what it is. It’s the somebody-somebody-is-over-party.

**Megana:** I’m very grateful that my only conflict at work is what John means by sure-period. I’m very, very grateful.

**Craig:** Just copy me and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you anytime. I know what it means.

**John:** What Craig though does, Craig basically does not respond in words anymore. He only uses gifs.

**Craig:** Yes. By the way, solves everything.

**John:** Which, by the way, I learned this last week means that you are a Gen-Xer and not a Millennial because only Gen-Xers use reaction gifs anymore.

**Craig:** Cool. I’m good with that. I mean, here’s the deal, I’ve got like you have, we’ve got a Gen-Zer who thinks that Millennials are ancient.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** Their whole thing is just to write a random word back at each other. Someone will say like, hey Jess, do you have the homework from today? And then she’ll write back, “Frog.” And then they’ll write LOL. And they know what this means. I don’t. Whatever. Old. Megana, you’re old, too, now. It’s happened.

**Megana:** Oh, I don’t like where this conversation is going.

**Craig:** It’s happening.

**John:** Really it’s just communicating in Snapchat selfies back and forth. And I don’t understand what’s happening. But that reaction face is what it is.

**Craig:** It’s so weird.

**John:** Basically you have to be your own gif is what I’ve learned for Gen-Z.

**Craig:** I like a nice gif. I like a nice gif because it says, hey, I’m a friendly guy. You know, I’m happy. Look at this funny gif. Look at this fun gif I found of me as Lisa Kudrow saying something silly. That’s me.

**John:** That’s it.

**Craig:** That’s it.

**John:** Thanks guys.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**John:** Bye.

**Megana:** Bye.

**Craig:** Yup. [laughs]

Links:

* [“Everyone Just Knows He’s an Absolute Monster”: Scott Rudin’s Ex-Staffers Speak Out on Abusive Behavior](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/everyone-just-knows-hes-an-absolute-monster-scott-rudins-ex-staffers-speak-out-on-abusive-behavior) by Tatiana Siegel for The Hollywood Reporter
* [California Employment Lawyers Association](https://cela.org/)
* [Hollywood actor arrested in alleged $227-million Ponzi scheme](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-06/hollywood-actor-zach-avery-ponzi-scheme-arrest)
* [Peeps Movie](https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/an-animated-feature-based-on-peeps-candy-is-in-the-works-203878.html)
* [Why We Have So Many Problems with Our Teeth](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-we-have-so-many-problems-with-our-teeth/) by Peter S. Ungar
* [Paul Ritter, British Stage, Film and TV Actor, Dies at 54](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/theater/paul-ritter-british-stage-film-and-tv-actor-dies-at-54.html)
* [John’s Twitter Thread on Words We’d Lose](https://twitter.com/johnaugust/status/1379584905969950721)
* [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 Nora Beyer ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/496standard.mp3).