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The original post for this episode can now be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/collapsing-scenes).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 458 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on this podcast we’re going to talk about why and how screenwriters find themselves collapsing and combining scenes. We also have a bunch of listener follow up about returning to production, portrayals of police on screen, and issues faced by Black writers. And in our bonus segment for Premium members we will talk about the return of professional sports.

**Craig:** Your favorite. I know you’ve just been on the edge of your seat.

**John:** I am weirdly excited about the return of professional sports.

**Craig:** Oh wow.

**John:** A lot to get into.

**Craig:** If there was ever a reason for somebody to quickly subscribe to the Premium member feed it’s this. Because even I’m–

**John:** What is John excited about with the NBA?

**Craig:** I couldn’t possibly–

**John:** Only the Premium members will know.

**Craig:** I mean, I cannot wait to hear this.

**John:** But professional sports are not the only thing going back into production. So, on previous episodes we’ve talked about how actors are likely to be the deciding factors about when shows and movies go back into production with COVID-19 precautions. And we also noted the power imbalance between stars on the top of the call sheet and those listed lower.

But Joe wrote in. Craig, do you want to talk about what Joe–?

**Craig:** Sure. Joe says, “I’m an actor and a member of SAG/AFTRA and the truth is that virtually no actors make a consistent living from performing. The overwhelming majority of actors book one or two day-player gigs a year. That’s if they’re lucky. And then they have a regular job that pays the bills. So the question that actors in this situation, which is most of them, have to ask themselves now is do I risk my life for a non-life-changing role? Because getting COVID for an occasional day-player gig that pays a thousand bucks can cost them the job that actually pays their bills.

“Actors are so desperate to land that life-changing role. So my hunch is that they’ll continue to risk their lives for the day-player gigs just to stay somewhat relevant. It’s a sad F’ed up situation because the odds of deriving a livelihood just from acting are slim to none.”

**John:** Well that’s more depressing with each paragraph.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But let’s do talk about that, because I think it’s important to acknowledge that WGA writers who are working in Hollywood, some are working a lot, some are not working as often. But if you’re a working writer you’re a working writer and that can be your main source of income.

With actors there’s a lot more variability and there are a lot of actors who are a member of the union who really are in the situation that Joe describes where you’re booking one or two jobs a year. And so for them, god, do they take the risk of going to a set that they don’t feel safe on? It’s a hard calculation.

**Craig:** Well, go a little further. Because Joe stops his calculus at day player. So for those of you who don’t know what that phrase is, actors are hired usually week to week. That’s how your general cast is employed, either on an episode basis or a week to week on a feature basis. Day players are people that are hired for one day. So that’s the role of the waiter who comes by and says, “Sorry sir, we don’t have what you asked for.” That’s a one-day job. They’re paid one day.

But what about background? So extras. Extras are already working kind of in tough conditions. They’re not particularly well cared for by productions. They are often smooshed together under tents. And they eat separately from everybody. I wonder about them as well, particularly because extras are the ones that are in crowd scenes. So when you see a big crowded room and you think to yourself in our post-COVID mentality, oh good lord, everyone is going to get COVID in that room, almost all of those people are background.

**John:** Yeah. So all the precautions we’re talking about in terms of like, oh, maybe we can shoot two parts of a scene separately so the actors aren’t actually as close as they seem. Or we’ll do things, when we talk about not having crowd scenes, well in some cases you’re still going to have to have some background players moving through there. Even in a show like Brooklyn 99 there are people who move through the backgrounds of those scenes and those people wouldn’t be masked.

And so it’s tough. And it’s tough for those people to decide, OK, I feel comfortable being in this situation without a mask while this is happening. It’s a lot.

**Craig:** I’m afraid that Joe is right though that a lot of people want to be in show business. And not only will day players show up at risk to themselves to make as he says a thousand bucks, but background artists and extras will show up to make a couple of hundred bucks. Therefore it is kind of incumbent upon our business to figure out how to keep these sets safe because people will show up.

**John:** Yeah. And we should also stipulate that everyone working on a set, like everyone working overall, is taking some risk by showing up. It’s just that the precautions that a grip or a gaffer can have about masking up and other safety equipment, a background player may not be able to have those because they’re literally on camera. So that’s what we’re talking about here.

The same way that we see news people having to make the decision of are they taking off their mask when they’re on a camera shot or are they leaving their mask on, those are tough calls. And people are having to make those decisions in real time.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Yeah. Another thing we’ve been talking about a lot on the show is portrayals of the justice system. And we’ve speculated that networks and showrunners will be looking at shows that portray policing and the justice system more realistically or in different ways than they classically have. Bob Shane wrote in to say, “I’d like to call your attention to a really good series that was on ABC for two years and it got canceled this year called For the People. In it a group of young lawyers who recently passed the bar exam are hired. Some by the federal prosecutors’ office and others by the federal public defenders’ office in New York. The show cuts back and forth between the cases. It never pandered to the police or authoritarian law and order agenda. And it did a great job exposing the flaws in the system. It was created by Paul William Davis and produced by Shonda Rhimes’ company.

“I suspect that this would be the moment for fans of that show to ask ABC to bring it back, or for Shonda Land to get Netflix to pick it up.”

And so this was a show that I had in my head and I could not remember the name of it as we were talking about it. Because Paul Davies is actually a friend. His daughter and my daughter went to school together and I knew when he was actually just starting his career as a TV writer. He’s a lawyer who transitioned to that. And so he’s always been on my list of like, oh, I have to have Paul on the show to talk about transitioning from another career in your 30s. Because he made that transition and got to run a show really early in his writing life.

So, yes, I think that’s the kind of show I can imagining happening more often. But even in the description that Bob puts here I can see why it’s a harder show to program than the other 19 police procedurals.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the thing about police procedurals and we’ll also call them justice procedurals, like Law & Order, which was built around trials, which don’t exist, is that they’re easy to do. It’s built-in drama. I mean, trials are dramatic. They have an incredibly narrative-friendly structure. You make an argument. You make an argument. You cross-examine. There’s banging of gavels and objections and moments of drama. And then people go and decide. Who wins?

Well, that’s just perfect.

**John:** Yeah. It’s like sports. There’s a clear outcome. There’s a winner and a loser.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** In ways that reality doesn’t have winners and losers.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. Most of the time people are losers when they end up in the justice system and their loss is some kind of brokered loss that’s done a bit bloodlessly.

So, I agree with you. That does sound like a hard one. But I’m sure that, you know, look, if it got on the air, it was on for two seasons. So it was obviously doable. I think that will ABC bring it back? It’s unlikely. And I don’t think this is the time where we should be looking backwards and sort of dusting things off. Everything has changed quite a bit. It’s time we write new things. So it would be interesting to see what somebody like Paul Davies would do now if he continued working with Shonda Land or purely for himself or anything.

**John:** Yeah. Well on that topic of what we do now and do forward, do you want to read what Ryan in Florida wrote?

**Craig:** Ryan writes that “Episode 456 forced me to take a closer look at one of my characters, a sheriff, and to rethink his role in my story, which I believe was your intent. It occurred to me that the sheriff is a ‘the end justifies the means’ sort of guy. Where did this thinking, the end justifies the means, come from? And why is it so pervasive in a country founded on the principles of freedom, equality, and justice for all? Your podcast reminded me that the means is the end. Separation of the two concepts exists only in our mind. Here’s to hoping that America will rediscover the passion of its principles and pursue the ideals that changed the world.”

Here, here, Ryan.

**John:** Yeah. So I want to unpack a little of that because America was founded on the idea of justice for all and freedom, but it was also founded on this idea of like the frontier and the going your own way and sort of the lone wolf thing. So, it’s interesting that our sheriff mentality tends to be towards the hero/lone wolf person. And other parts of our justice system are more about the teamwork and justice for all. America has always been built on that duality of like we’re all in this together, oh it’s every man for himself.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, this was a debate that was going on when they were coming over in the Mayflower. Literally they were having this debate. Because we are a nation of what we’ll call sort of progressive liberal thinkers, a guy like Roger Williams who founded Rhode Island among other things and who believed in the equality of all peoples, including Native Americans, with whom – he learned their language and he had good relationships.

And then you had the true hardcore puritan Calvinists who believed that people were born either good or bad, as babies. It had been predetermined by god. And so, of course, if that’s your point of view and you believe someone is evil, why in god’s name would you allow the means to disrupt what must be divine justice?

Similarly, if you believe that you are good then you should be able to take whatever you want. Hence, manifest destiny. This is the American duality. And it’s interesting to see writers starting to at the very least recognize the duality is there. And once you know it’s there you have choices to make.

**John:** Also this week I saw a discussion that Brooklyn 99 was talking about it needed to throw out the first four scripts they have written for this next season to shoot, because they just don’t make sense given the environment. And that is a thing that you’re going to see in every writer’s room. Those initial weeks’ discussions will be really challenging to figure out what is our show in 2021. What makes sense?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s tough to see. But I think it does come back to some of these fundamental American principles that are in conflict with each other. That we are a nation born of people who sought freedom who also enslaved people.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** We’re always going to be grappling with that. I think it’s just much more obvious that we’re grappling with it as we come up with this next batch of series.

**Craig:** Yeah. And, look, a lot of people are going to accuse Hollywood of virtue signaling. And I think it’s important to recognize the difference between virtue signaling and evidence of virtue. Because virtue signaling is a cynical act. You’re not virtuous. You’re not trying to be virtuous. You don’t even understand the virtue of the virtue you’re signaling. You’re just putting on a show in the hopes that people will praise you, or not attack you.

Evidence of virtue is just that. If you are making an effort because of the right reasons to be a more equitable employer, to be a writer who is more aware of other perspectives, to be listening, to be changing, evolving, including, then people will see evidence of what I would consider to be virtue. And the cynical tarring of all evidence of virtue as virtue signaling is also something dangerous that we need to keep aware of.

Not saying that we shouldn’t also be – because, look, there’s a lot of virtue signaling. So let’s not pretend. Even if 90% of it is virtue signaling, at least 10% of it is evidence of actual virtue. And so be brave enough to do that and hopefully you don’t get hit with that accusation.

**John:** Yup. Widening our clock back further, we started this year talking about assistant pay and assistant pay cuts. Nick wrote in this week a suggestion which I found really interesting. So it’s kind of long but I want to read through it because it’s systematic and it speaks to systemic ways of thinking about it that might be helpful.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So Nick writes, “I’m an officer in the air force and I’ve lived in a few different countries over the last few years. Pay in the military is rank-based, meaning no matter what your position is if you’re X rank with Y years of service you get Z pay. It’s a very simple formula and you can even look it up in military pay charts to figure out what that pay is because it’s public knowledge.

“But because the military is spread across the world it would be unfair to give everyone the exact same wage because being stationed in Los Angeles would obviously be extremely more expensive than living in Oklahoma. That’s where BAH, or basic allowance for housing, comes into play. Every zip code in the US has a certain BAH based on different factors that the Department of Defense updates regularly. If you Google BAH calculator you can input a zip code and find out how much the government would pay you on top of your base pay if you were stationed there.

“This is something our government already does and is supposed to represent the amount of money you need just for housing in order to live decently in that area. The studios could easily start using this data to determine what is fair to pay their assistants on top of whatever the minimum wage type salary they’re trying to pay their assistants.

“For example, using LA zip code 90038 and a pay grade of E2, air man, normally a high school graduate with no college education, and brand new to the service, the monthly BAH would be $2,079. Using the rank of O1, a second lieutenant, the minimum requirement for which is a Bachelor’s degree and probably more closely aligned with the education level of an assistant, the BAH gets raised to $2,430.

“Do you think this is something the studios could use as a starting off point when determining what is a fair wage for their assistants? I feel like it’s as impartial as you can get and ensures that assistants are getting paid enough money to live comfortably.”

**Craig:** Interesting. Well, double-edged sword there. So always have to look at the law of unintended consequences. If you rigorously format payment then what you end up with is a situation similar to what we do when we’re negotiating union minimums. The minimum becomes the maximum. So, the deal is we only have to pay you – this is what the chart says, so that’s what you’re getting paid. And, yeah, we’ll pay you a little bit extra for living there. But there isn’t going to be as much upward variability.

Now, people could argue that it’s the downward variability that’s been crushing everybody. And I think that’s reasonable. The thought experiment is what happens if we firm up the floor, what happens to the ceiling? And that’s an interesting economic question. I don’t quite know the answer. But I think that since everyone who is an assistant in LA is living somewhere in incredibly expensive LA, this is probably not as impactful as it is for the military where as Nick writes people could be living in vastly different kinds of environments in terms of cost of living.

**John:** Yeah. So what I think your analogy with scale is absolutely appropriate. It is setting a floor. And so when unions negotiate scale it’s to set a floor so nothing goes below that. And for assistants we’ve talked a lot about sort of like what is the minimum sort of livable wage in Los Angeles. And so we talk about for a 40-hour week is it $25/hour? For a 60-week is it $20/hour? Is there some basis for which a person can make enough to live? And something like this calculator is helpful for figuring out what is the actual expense of living in Los Angeles, or the expense of living in New York.

What I do wonder is if this variability based on location could be helpful in thinking about how much we’re paying crews who are living and working outside of Los Angeles. Because some markets are a lot more expensive than Los Angeles and some are a lot less expensive. And so we’d be thinking about how much does a gaffer who is working in Atlanta need to be paid versus a gaffer who is living in Los Angeles? What are actual livable wages in those places? That might be interesting.

But because each of those productions is sort of working as a one-off I don’t know that you’re going to have a bigger impact or the range of impact that you would hope to have by using this kind of calculation.

**Craig:** You start to feel bad for people who move to stretch their salary further and then the company says, oh you’ve moved, we’re cutting your salary.

**John:** And that does happen. I have friends who moved from Los Angeles to cheaper places and the companies they’re working for are like, “That’s fantastic. You had an allowance for living in London and now you’re not living in London.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Not easy answers there.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** I also want to point our attention to – this wasn’t written directly towards us, but a lot of people mentioned us in it. Nicole French had a Twitter thread from this past week.

**Craig:** Yeah, I saw this.

**John:** She writes, “Today a Black film editor posted in a Facebook group for Hollywood editors looking to connect with other Black editors as they’re severe under-representation in post-production and they can be hard to find. What ensued is a slew of white editors who immediately objected to the post, asked for it to be taken down by moderators, and accused the poster of breaking the law, discriminating against whites, fanning ‘anti-white racism’ against them. And insulted Black editors and white editors speaking up for diversity.”

And this just felt like a giant Yikes to me.

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs] I mean, I saw it. I went through it. I looked at it. I’m not on Facebook, but because the link was there I could kind of go through or somebody had maybe just sort of copy and screen shot it. Is that the past tense of screen shot? It’s not screen shut?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Screen-shotted those things. And so first of all there’s just a question is that illegal and the answer is no.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** I mean, if somebody said, “Hi, I’m looking to hire people and I will only hire” and then lists a group, there are employment issues. There’s employment law and things like that. But saying, yeah, I’m looking to just have a discussion group or meet up with or talk to, I mean, what? Of course it’s not illegal. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.

**John:** Yeah. An affinity group for underrepresented population, yes, that’s not illegal.

**Craig:** No. It’s not illegal. And then there was just stupidity. Look, there’s all sorts of levels of racism. This was not quality racism. I don’t know how else to put it. It was like dumb-dumb racism. It wasn’t like, oh, I don’t know, when some sort of super thinky person writes this very long essay that disguises their racism in rather thought-provoking terms. No. This was just dumb-dumb racism. Like, “What? That’s not…bah.”

And I just thought, well, this makes white editors look awful. It was every single one of those. I just want – I’m going to say this, because I can. Because this isn’t illegal. I would never, never – I will never – hire any of those editors. Not because they’re white. I’ve hired white editors before and I’ll hire white editors again, no question. And not because they’re men. I’ve hired male editors and I’ve hired female editors. I won’t hire them because they’re dumb. How about that?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, anyway, you’re not working for me anymore. And I hope other people look at those names and go, yeah, I don’t want to work with you either. Because you’re a dick. There you go. And I want a new group that’s for not dicks. Is that OK? Is that illegal?

**John:** Now, Craig, it struck me that I was seeing these Facebook messages, these screen shots, and it’s like I can’t imagine writers who do that. And maybe it’s just because we’ve been in this a little bit longer, but I don’t see the same things happening among screenwriters. And I’ve definitely seen concern about, you know, you and I have both talked to young white men who are trying to get staff writer jobs and feel like it’s really hard for them to get a staff writer job. And I’ve heard that. I’ve listened to that. And I’ve also been able to sort of talk them through that. None of them would be so stupid as these people who are replying in this thread, how they were replying.

**Craig:** I mean, these people seemed like editors who had jobs. So it was like they were eating in a restaurant and someone came in and said, “Hey, for those of you who have not yet been served do you want to come have a discussion?” And they said, what, you’re excluding us because we’re already eating? No! We get to talk to anybody.

And you’re like, goddammit. No, writers tend to not be this absurd. Or at least, no, let me take it back. There have been writers who have been this absurd, but not in a cluster like that. It was this weird cluster. It was like a herd of dopes.

**John:** I also felt like that a lot of those things happened like 10 years ago, or five years ago. I think we went through that wave and those people got culled a little bit. So, there just wasn’t a culling yet in this ring.

**Craig:** It’s not really praise for writers as much as just more damning evidence of these guys. I just – it was just like, ugh, they were just dumb-dumbs.

**John:** Dumb-dumbs. All right, Craig, now this is a thing I don’t think you’ve read ahead in the outline, but I feel like it’s important that you probably read this message from Tyler because I want to see how you respond.

**Craig:** Sure. This is going to go great. Tyler from Bellingham writes, “I just became a Premium subscriber and I’m listening through the back catalog. I just listened to Episode 7 and made a horrifying discovery. Not only is John withholding from Craig the riches he’s acquired through the podcast, he owes him potentially millions of dollars for coming up with the very idea of Highland.” This is great so far. I like you, Tyler.

“Toward the end of the episode John and Craig discuss screenwriting software. This is prior to John creating Highland. As they’re wrapping up the conversation Craig says he believes there is an opportunity in the market for a mid-priced screenwriting software to compete against Final Draft and other smaller players. Shortly thereafter John released Highland.”

All right, Tyler, your argument is falling apart quickly. “If I’ve learned anything from Scriptnotes it’s that an offhanded comment in an informal setting is 100% copyrightable and stands as a legally binding contract. Thus, John owes Craig bigly. I look forward to hearing how John plans to right this wrong.”

Tyler, this is one of the best things anyone has ever written in. You’re great. [laughs] You’re great. And you’re right. An offhanded comment, and certainly an idea as we all know, is property. John owes me what I think is probably millions of dollars.

**John:** Yeah. Probably [unintelligible]. Tyler, it shows a good understanding of the entire dynamic of Scriptnotes to be able to retroactively apply to that conversation we had way back then. And probably Highland was in the works back then. I just may not have said anything about it. But we can figure out in the timeline when we actually – when I started talking about Highland. Because there was a public beta for like a year before we released it. So, who knows?

**Craig:** Well, yeah, I guess I probably am owed money for that as well. I’m a saint. That’s what I think. Eventually people are going to understand that–

**John:** Saint Craig.

**Craig:** I’m a Saint.

**John:** He’s a Jewish Saint.

**Craig:** Yup. I’m a Jewish Saint. We have those now.

**John:** All right. I want to propose a craft topic. So this was something that I was encountering this week. And Craig I feel like you probably encounter this too.

**Craig:** Oh, of course.

**John:** If you have not encountered this I will be so angry.

**Craig:** Oh, no, no. All the time.

**John:** All right. So the project I’m working on I have a detailed outline and have really good understanding of what all the scenes and sequences were and I felt really good about it. But then I still encountered a thing that I’ve encountered in most of the scripts I’ve written is that – and it often happens in the third act, but it can happen sort of anywhere is that there are two or three story beats that I intended to be separate scenes or sequences and in looking at it and looking at the overall length of things and how stuff was working I was like, crap, I need to compress these down to become one thing. These can’t be separate scenes. They need to be shrunk down into one scene. And I feel like I’ve done that in nearly every screenplay I’ve written. And yet I don’t remember us ever talking about that as a topic on this podcast. Have you done this?

**Craig:** Yeah, of course. Of course. Usually I think when I’ve been doing this it’s not as a result of the creative process within but as you point out it’s when we’re going through budget and the practicalities of shooting.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So there was quite a budget battle on Chernobyl. It was a prolonged slog. It was a WWI trench warfare battle. And thank god I had Jane Featherstone and Carolyn Strauss and Sanne Wohlenberg to fight that fight and I never had to get on the phone to do that, thank god. Sooner or later they had to come to me and say, OK, well we have a list of things. We’ve gotten a bunch more but we have to make some concessions. We have a list of things that we could compress. So, let’s talk through them. And then my job – and this is almost I think every writer faces this at some point or another in production is you are the one who knows the difference between hitting an artery and hitting a capillary.

And so your job is to guide people away from the arteries and figure out how to kind of squish the capillaries back into other things.

**John:** Yup. So, let me talk through an example of this and offer some of the choices that a screenwriter might make. So here’s the example. Let’s say you have – this is the middle of a script. You have two characters. You have Denise and Alfonso and they notice a strange smell in their house. That’s one beat. Second beat. They search the house and eventually discover that a family of raccoons is living in the attic. That’s the second beat. Third beat is the animal removal guy hits on Denise in front of Alfonso. So that’s a third beat, which should hopefully be a surprise.

So those three beats, they might be fine. They might work really well. They could be funny. They could build on each other. They could be effective just as it is. But if for reasons of length or budget or just a sense like I can’t have these three beats you need to compress or collapse these. You have a couple of choices. And so let’s talk through what those choices might be.

You could move the first and second beat together. So scene, we’ll call it A and B, could be combined. So we might come into the scene with Denise and Alfonso already searching for the source of the smell. So we don’t see the discovery of it. We don’t see the realization that there is a smell. We come into the scene and they’re already looking and we just set up within the already looking that they smell something. So that’s a choice to compress and combine those two.

Second choice. You could move B into C. So it’s basically cutting out the discovery of the raccoons and going from I smell something to there’s the animal control guy who is getting the raccoons out of the attic. So within C you’d have to explain that there is a family of raccoons up there, but you can get rid of B.

Third choice. You cut A and B and you just do – if the important thing is C, like the animal control guy hitting on Denise, you just do C and you sort of build the setup into the start of C.

Or, if the raccoons were more important than the animal control guy you might cut C and just do A and B.

Craig, can you think of any more choices you might make in terms of getting through those three beats if you had to lose and compress stuff?

**Craig:** No, I mean, those – you’ve got the permutations. And the fact that you’re using A, B, and C kind of, that’s the giveaway that what we’re talking about here is essentially the multiple scenes being reimagined as multiple beats in one scene. Right?

So, setup a conflict, a reversal, a complication, and payoff. This is roughly how these things go. So, what we’re saying here is if someone comes to you and says we have to squish this down your job is to analyze these three beats and say what is actually the purpose of all of this. What am I trying to do here? Is my purpose to show that Denise and Alfonso are a stronger couple than they realized? Well then I need to see the guy hit on Denise in front of him and I need to see probably them already mid-search, freaking out over something together that maybe somebody insists isn’t there. So four people are searching but only Denise and Alfonso smell it. It’s the thing that binds them together. See what I mean? The point of all this can’t be the plot.

The point has to be, well, probably relationship of some sort or even if not a relationship some sort of internal character growth, that’s the part you need. And so now your job is to figure out what is the most essential other bit required to get that part to work.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And a lot of times what you find when you do this exercise is you’ve made things better. Because you’re essentially pre-editing with a good editor, not a dumb-dumb. And we don’t necessarily need to see lots of things. This happens all the time in the editing room where we’re not making these cuts or compressions to save money, we’ve already shot it. We’re making them to tell the story better.

**John:** Yeah. And if you were able to do this in the writing phase versus when it’s on the nonlinear editor in front of you can do a better job. I mean, you can do amazing things in the editing room, but you can do much more cogent and clever things if you do it while you’re writing. I should have said another option is you cut A, B, and C and just find a different way to achieve those same ends. Maybe there’s going to be too much shoe leather to get you through all those beats if you are trying to do this. Maybe you don’t need the animal removal guy and there’s a different way to achieve what you’re trying to achieve by that whole sequence that can be done as a scene.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** A reason why I often find myself doing this in scripts as I sort of think retrospectively about stuff I’ve written is the too many endings problem. Is that a lot of times when I’m compressing and collapsing things it’s because the movie wants to be over and I’m not letting it be over. And so if there’s stuff to pay off rather than have multiple scenes that are paying off one thing I need to get those all to sort of be part of one movement, as part of one action. Because the reader and the audience get tired of things just closing and ending. And they want to be done. And so sometimes you need to compress those moments down.

I’ll often find those beats though in the first act, too, where it’s like I know why I’m setting these things up, but if it feels like we’re just setting stuff up it’s not going to work. So I need to find ways to compress those beats and combine those beats into a single scene rather than have multiple scenes stacked up one after the next.

**Craig:** Yeah. The flow of this stuff wants to be concise. I think it’s a fairly common syndrome for people to want to stretch out. Maybe because some of the movies that turn them on initially are movies that feel very dialogue-y. Many people have remarked that Pulp Fiction gave birth to a million terrible scripts because it seemed like they were Shaggy Dog scenes that would just go on and on and people were talking. And some of them were. But the dialogue was fantastic. And things that were happening as it turned out were pieces of a fairly intricate clockwork mechanism.

A lot of times your instinct is to stretch out and just play through moments and find what matters and find what’s impactful. But ultimately things want to compress. You want less. And so you are going to start collapsing. Even as you’re writing inside of moments you’re going to start collapsing.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Until what you thought was a sequence of A, B, C, D, and E you realize is really just a sequence of A and B. That’s all it is. It’s just two things. So let’s just two-thing it, not five-thing it.

**John:** Yeah. Great. So that is collapsing scenes. Let us do a big transition to our special guests for this episode. So, about two weeks ago on June 12 the WGA Committee of Black Writers put out an open letter to the town calling for systemic change on a host of issues. To talk about those concerns let’s welcome the co-chairs of this committee. Michelle Amor, Hilliard Guess, and Bianca Sams. Now, we’re all talking on Zoom so we can see each other, but it’s challenging when we have five voices on a podcast. So, Michelle, can you introduce yourself so we can hear your voice and know who is talking?

**Michelle Amor:** Yes. Hi, I am Michelle Amor.

**John:** And Michelle, where are you from and how long have you been writing in Los Angeles?

**Michelle:** Oh, I’m from Chicago. I moved to LA in 2010 to attend UCLA to get my MFA. And I have been writing professionally since just right before that, but also I’m a fulltime professor of screenwriting over at Loyola Marymount University.

**John:** Fantastic. Hilliard Guess, talk us through how long you’ve been in Los Angeles and how long you’ve been a writer. What’s your background here?

**Hilliard Guess:** I’ve been in LA since ’96. I’m a former actor turned writer and producer. And I’ve been writing since about 2000/2001.

**John:** Excellent.

**Hilliard:** I now do film and TV. So I’m back and forth.

**John:** Fantastic. And Bianca could you introduce yourself and how long you’ve been in LA? What’s your background here?

**Bianca Sams:** Hi. My name is Bianca Sams. I am the vice chair. And I’ve been in LA about five years. I was a playwright and an actor. Moved into film and TV. I came for the Warner Bros program and have stayed. And yeah.

**John:** Excellent. Now, Michelle, let’s start with you. So in your letter you start off talking about the public statements that the studios and other companies made in the wake of the George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and other Black people killed by police. How important was it for you that these companies made these public statements, or saying that Black lives matter? How important was it for them to say that?

**Michelle:** It was very important. I mean, at the end of the day it’s very frustrating to be a Black American. I mean, I think a lot of people now are seeing how frustrated we’ve been. I mean, most of the people I know for example we’re contributing members to our society. We work really hard. And we’re just constantly oppressed in so many ways. So, hearing even just the words, it definitely helped. And it inspired us to think about responding to it. And that’s why the letter also had the historical context because it’s important to know where you’re going knowing where you came from.

So we couldn’t let that slide without talking about things like Birth of a Nation and all of the issues that we face every day.

**Craig:** Well I like the fact that you’re not letting things slide. Because I think for a long time that’s kind of been the nature of things, right? People complain and then everybody yes, yes, yes, and then they let it slide. That’s been everyone’s default position. And I want to read this line that you guys wrote which in and of itself is a gorgeous piece of writing. So that’s why I want to read it, because I like reading good words.

It says, you said, the three of you, “Basically either you commit to a new institutionalized system of accountability with and to Black writers, or you prove that you’re putting on just another strategic virtue signaling performance deemed necessary to survive the times.”

First of all, bravo. That’s awesome. And I love the clarity of it. And I particularly love the word prove. Because I think it’s fair to say at this point after about a thousand virtue signaling performances that that’s exactly what the studios and networks have done for all of these years. They’ve just done what they felt they needed to do so they could just survive and not be canceled as the kids say.

So, tell me about the thrust of that because I’m sure there was probably some debate about how to temper this statement. How strong, how aggressive, how not aggressive, how conciliatory. Talk to me a little bit about if there was just an automatic unity of thought of how you should proceed with this statement.

**Michelle:** So, yeah, the whole thing was like, OK, let’s come with facts. Let’s hit them hard. But let’s also leave the door open for real change. Like we understand that we want to work in this business. We’re not saying like blackball us and kick us out. We’re saying, listen, we’re here because we want to tell our stories, too. And now we want you to follow those statements up with some real action. And we used our numbers so you could understand that we understand where the problems lie. If, for example, we’re 15% of the population but we only make up 5.6% of the film writing jobs then that’s a problem that we can work to correct.

**Craig:** Right.

**Michelle:** And those are things that we really wanted to be sure of. And let me just be clear here. It was very important to me specifically that the statement not only said what we wanted to say but it said it very well. We knew we were going to send it out to a mostly writers community. And we didn’t want anyone, “Look at those Black writers. What are they saying?” We wanted to impress the hell out of all of you. We wanted you to look at those words like, “Ooh, look at the command.” That was very thoughtful.

**Craig:** Nailed it.

**John:** Now Hilliard one of the recurring points in the letter is about accountability. So, let’s talk about that because every year the WGA puts out pretty detailed reports about who is getting hired or not hired. We also see university reports about representation on screen. But that feels like a way of counting, and it feels like in your letter you’re really arguing more for a moral accountability that you’re looking for. That you want an outcome that’s not just pure numbers but is actually what you’re describing is a systemic change.

So you say, “We need to revolutionize the way our industry hires writers.” What does that look like? What are some parameters, some benchmarks? And what does the change look like if it happens?

**Hilliard:** Let me just give you a couple things, just to think about it like this. If we have people in higher places, more people will be hired. That’s just the way it is. The reason why a lot of white guys are being hired is because their white friends are there. So it’s the same thing. Which is why, as you see, my favorite line in the entire thing that Michelle wrote was this line. “You need more Black friends.”

So if you think about that, right, then the system will change itself. Because if you had more Black friends in your rooms and not just one, you know, that the system would change itself. So we need more people in places to hire. We need more people in rooms. We need more people in the place with a voice. And we need the opportunity to fail. You know? Three or four key things that I know if you just did that alone things would change.

**Craig:** We’ve been talking a lot about the opportunity to fail. It’s a weird one, because it might be maybe a first instinct to not talk about it, because it has the word fail in it. But there is nothing shameful about failing. Writing is – what is writing? It’s failing a thousand times in a row and then you get what you call your last draft. Right? What’s rewriting? It’s just fixing your failures.

And allowing people to fail, it’s how they learn. It’s how they learn. And I think one of the issues that we know as a town, we were talking I guess it was last week, we were talking about the difficulty of some of the diversity programs whether or not their heart is in the right place, it sort of makes it like come on in, and then if you fail, well, I guess you failed so that’s a diversity failure. Next person in, please. It just doesn’t connect.

**Hilliard:** One of the things that a lot of the TV shows forget when they staff, these writers coming out – and Bianca was in an actual program so she can speak to this specifically, but they forget that she got into that program as an example over like 3,000 or 4,000 other people. You’re talking to the top people.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Hilliard:** You know what I mean? So their script is better than every staff writer that’s staffed. Do you know what I mean? So you keep forgetting that. And I actually just told this to Jack Melbourne yesterday. I’m like, dude, you guys got to be better. [Unintelligible] it’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, go ahead Bianca.

**Bianca:** No, but it’s also even the idea of failure. Like that’s why they’re not moving up or why that’s not happening for them which is honestly usually not in fact the case. They’re only paid for for one year. And when they have to pay for them then they cycle them out for another free person and they’re not in fact encouraging the mentoring and moving them up. They’re seeing them more sometimes as tissue people. OK, here’s a spot at the bottom. You have the least amount of power. You have the least amount of ability to change the culture in the room. But you have a spot for the moment. Next. Onto the next.

But to go back to something that John said, actually I think the numbers are very important. And I think it’s a thing that if you want to make something better you have to be able to track it. You have to be able to analyze it. And you have to put your energy there to be able to improve it. So you have to be very specific though, right? Like if you have – we don’t have complete numbers, for example. So it’s hard for us to say OK here are really the problems. We’re kind of glossing over and you’re kind of maybe looking a little bit here, and maybe looking a little bit there. And it might appear on the surface that things were improving but in reality if you can’t tell me well how many Black writers are moving from staff writer to story editor, and how quickly? If they’re being asked to repeat four or five times then we can’t actually see that that’s a pattern. It happens year over year over year. How do you go back except for anecdotal information and change that problem?

And I know for myself, numbers again is my thing, I’ve asked for these numbers, I’ve looked for these numbers, and depending on where you go they’re all very different. And it’s hard to just be like what are the Black writers. What are the Black female writers? What are the Black male writers? We can’t get that kind of data. And oftentimes it feels like we’re putting Band-Aids over dams because it’s like, OK, we do this one thing over here and we have these two little things and everything will be fine.

**Craig:** Because there’s this sense that the companies are looking for an answer that will make this all be quiet. But there is no one answer and we’re missing certain – like baseball has a thousand new statistics. I love all of them. But we need an upward mobility statistic for writers in Hollywood in all groups who have been marginalized. Right? We just don’t have that – whatever that factor is, we don’t have it. Sorry, John, I cut you off.

**John:** Yeah. So it sounds like what Bianca is describing is we have good numbers that are trying to speak to equity and access, like sort of being able to get into the system, but we don’t have good numbers about equity of opportunity, equity of outcome. That the same person who is at the same job can move up the ladder in the same ways. And so tracking that and having meaningful statistics that actually follow the path of people through it will help, because like everyone else on this call I’ve heard all the stories of writers having to repeat at levels that they should not be repeating, or not being able to move from being paid out of a different fund out to being the real staff member. And we need to actually be able to chart that better.

**Michelle:** You know, I was talking to a showrunner yesterday about not just getting in as a staff writer, but how many Black EPs are in this town and how many Black show creators have shows on the air and how many Black writers have overall deals? Because that’s where the real power is. When you talk about that power seat, you talk about where are we in a position? It’s like Hilliard said, when you have Black showrunners nine times out of ten they’re creating what we would consider Black content. So they’re going to hire Black writers. And that’s really what’s happening on I would say like the white side or the mainstream side.

But, you know, we can write on any show. That’s the other thing, too. This idea that, oh well, I don’t have any Black characters, I don’t need a Black writer. It’s like excuse me? I love action. I love sci-fi. I love horror. We can write on any genre. And to assume that we can speak for voices outside of our own yet others always try to tell our story. That’s frustrating.

**Craig:** Yeah. White people aren’t shy about writing on Black shows, are they?

**Michelle:** Not at all.

**Hilliard:** Exactly.

**Michelle:** And I think some people, you know, really don’t get how insulting that is. Where you’re not even represented in your own way. Like I sold a show to CBS last year. I remember having discussions with executives about this Black woman. And they were like, mmm, they were not Black, they were not women, and they were really kind of pushing back on me telling them who I am. And I remember I was like, hmm, this is weird. So I’m saying that to say it’s frustrating because we’re constantly fighting to even just tell our own story because so much of who we are it’s like stereotype and frustrating.

**Hilliard:** And when I signed to one of the big four agencies I remember sitting down at the table with them and they were all excited about me. They were going to do all these great things for me. And before I left I said in front of everybody, “Here’s the last thing you need to know. Do not just send me out for things that are Black.” I live in a white world. I know everything about you guys. We’re consumed with you. So to assume that we don’t know you is the most ridiculous thing.

Now, for you to get me is where I’m impressed. For you to get the nuance that we have that’s when I’m impressed.

**Michelle:** Yeah. I always tell my students, I mean, I teach at LMU. Most of my students come from Republican/conservative white families. And I’ll say to them when they say, “I want to tell a story about a poor little Black boy.” My first question is why. Because I say to them you’re probably going to screw it up. You’re not going to get it right. And your reasoning is because you’re being told, oh, I’m won’t get a job in Hollywood because I’m a white guy. And I tell my white male students that’s a bunch of crap. I’m like, no, don’t go in there. You still tell your own story, whatever that is. Don’t feel like you have to try to tell mine.

First of all, you’re not going to get it right. And it’s frustrating because you’re seeing it even in the schools and that’s carrying over. And so professors like me, I’m constantly fighting to teach students to tell their own truth. I don’t care if you’re from a little town in Colorado. Whatever. Tell your story. Tell me about your funny uncle. Tell me about your experience. And that’s what we’re going to be drawn to.

But if you’re trying to force it, and I’m seeing too much of that now. And it’s honestly – it’s just frustrating.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s no lack of cynicism. In every corner of this business, I guess it’s endemic to who we are. But I’m wondering as you guys have gone through this process of witnessing and experiencing both the events of the last we’ll say month and a half but also the events of your entire lives, and looking at the way people are responding now, and I think there I’m pretty much saying white people and white businesses, are you feeling any sense of hope in that there’s a difference? Or is too soon to tell?

**Hilliard:** Well, I mean, a lot of people have asked us, you know, myself, Michelle, and Bianca, what has Hollywood’s response been. Guess what? We haven’t heard from hardly anybody. And by the time we’re through here. Now, we’ve heard from some showrunners going, “Wow, you guys wrote an amazing thing,” but we’ve not heard from the HBOs, the Netflix, the people that we called out going, hey, you guys are the ones claiming this stuff. Do you know what I mean? Let’s see what you guys are doing. Sit down with us. But nobody has done that.

**Michelle:** But I will say this. I have been reached out to several individuals, some of whom have a bit of power, and I think that there’s conversations that are happening. I’m hearing, for example I heard yesterday that one of our top execs in this town on a call and said that he wants to see all of his shows change as far as seeing Black writers on these shows. And it came from a pretty good source. I won’t say who it is.

But I’m saying that to say it’s coming – I’m hearing things. We just don’t want it to be something that’s sporadic all over the place. We really want systemic. And a couple years ago I actually pushed the guild for a Rooney Rule. I really wanted to go out to the studios and have them sit down and come up with a plan, similar to the NFL, where you have to interview us. I mean, again, we’re not asking you to give us anything. We’re saying at least have something in your company where you say, OK, for every job we have to go out to so many Black writers, so many writers of color, etc. And find a way to track that so you can say, OK, we interviewed these number of writers. We were able to hire these many. And over a period of time you can at least track to see how that’s impacted.

Because what’s going to happen is this. If the studios and the production companies and all the networks suddenly change the way they do business then the agencies have to. And we get right now the whole issue with agencies, but then the agencies will say, “Oh, we have to go and find some Black writers because everybody wants some.” We can then get the opportunities that we’re saying we simply would like to have. As opposed to, as Hilliard knows, we always get showrunners that come to our committee and ask us, “Hey, you got any writers? We’re looking for writers.” But they’re afraid to say out loud “Black.” Because they’re like, oh, we can’t just ask for Black writers. I’m like why not? You don’t have any. The first thing is being comfortable enough to have the conversation and say, “We have no Black writers in this room. And we need to change that.”

And so if you can say the words then you can start working to feel some of those positions.

**Hilliard:** And we need them in higher positions is the problem. They hire these staff writers with no voice.

**Bianca:** And if you have a voice you’re penalized for having said voice. You’re at the bottom of the table.

**Michelle:** But let me also add they are looking for Black showrunners. Here’s the problem. Due to the systemic racism – we had writers back in the ‘80s and ‘90s who were incredible writers on incredible shows. As you know the ‘90s had a lot of Black shows. Those writers were never allowed to get past story editor. If they were allowed they would now be showrunners. We would have probably 20, 30 additional Black showrunners in this town who are so talented. They’ve not lost their talent because they’ve gotten older. They just were not able to get the opportunities. And so part of what we’re trying to do at the guild is bring those writers back into the fold and bring them back up. Because they were really torn down. They were devastated.

They were done really dirty. We do stand on the shoulders of some truly talented people. And so part of it is things were taken from us and they need to be restored. The value needs to be restored. Because it’s one thing to say like, oh, we don’t have anybody. It’s like, yeah, because you intentionally prevented that from happening.

**Bianca:** But we’re also recreating those problems now. When people are repeating, and repeating, and repeating. Right? To repeat staff writer four, five, six, seven times you think about how many times are you supposed to, or more people normally. One, two times maybe. Four, five, six. You’re not getting script fees. You’re not [growing pension]. People leave. People fall out. People have a harder time moving up.

So if you think about somebody being four years at staff writer where would they have been in those four years if they were promoted like other people? Or six years? And so we’re doing it now to a new class of people. Last week there were people asking for mid-levels and they’re like, “Oh, well we can’t find any.” And I’m like well maybe look at somebody who has been here for six years, been working on shows every year getting scripts. They’re clearly capable of producing episodes. But they’ve also been kept back. And are you willing to say I’m going to look at an executive story editor who has been here who has repeated staff writer for four years, wrote three, four scripts. Repeated story editor a couple times. Now is an executive story editor. And might actually have more experience than somebody who is technically mid-level but their title says something different.

And so we’re doing sort of the same thing now where we have classes of people who have been stuck. I know myself I’ve repeated staff writer four times. I was asked seven times to repeat staff writer. And I literally had to walk away from things until somebody decided – like until somebody offered something else I would not do it.

And so there’s a system in place as well right now that’s recreating those problems in real time.

**Hilliard:** Which also goes to they always assume that the Black staff writer has no experience whatsoever. They forget most of us have shot movies and produced them. Have produced our own pilots. Have produced proof of concepts. Dozens of them. You know what I mean? So when we get in a room I’m already a co-EP in my head over these other people.

**Michelle:** I mean, true, everyone is not capable we get of running an entire show. It requires a lot. But there’s some pretty dope people out there who could do it. You know? And people do it all the time.

**Craig:** People do it all the time. I mean, it’s hard to get those jobs, but it’s hard for – I mean, it’s hard for everybody in a sense. Like everybody that’s playing here is playing at a professional sports league level. But, yeah, so it’s hard for everybody. The point is people can do it. We know that. It’s doable. So—

**Michelle:** Yeah. Has it been perfect? No. But we’ve done a really good job. And I think back to what Hilliard says, you know, we should be allowed to fail.

And let me talk about because of this we’re artists. Like who wants to create under these stressful situations? Just like everyone, like I want to create beautiful, vivid worlds. John, you don’t know this but one year I went to Sundance and we snuck away and went to go see your movie Big Fish. And I just remember thinking like, yes, like I love movies, I love television, and I just want the opportunity to create my own Big Fish. Like my own work that people can look at and be also as moved.

And that’s why we’re here. So when you’re creating and you’re constantly worried like, oh, I have to represent the whole race. That’s exhausting. Right? I want to get on a show. I’m sure you don’t think like, oh, as a white guy, I’ve got to represent all white men.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I’m trying to not represent white men. That’s my new thing. [laughs]

**Michelle:** We want to represent the world and have fun, you know. I know Hilliard loves like cool cars. I’m sure that would be something in his show. And Bianca probably has some like mad genius or something in her world. I don’t know. Those are things that made us want to come into this industry in the first place. And we get that Hollywood is a microcosm of America. But to your question, I do believe there is a change. It’s why the statement was written. We think that there is a paradigm shift. What we plan to do though is to hold them to it.

So we’re not done. We’re also preparing to, you know, take some more action.

**Craig:** Good. Yeah.

**John:** Let’s talk about those next steps. So, if I’m a Black WGA member listening to this and I want to get involved, what do I do next? How do I reach out to you? What happens?

**Michelle:** Well, we have a committee. And we meet – of course, because of the pandemic things were a bit off. But we’re going to have a new meeting in August. We also have an incredible meet and greet coming up in July. We have 100 of our brightest, most talented writers. There are going to be 33 showrunners. Like a speed dating session.

**Hilliard:** Meet and greet.

**Michelle:** So we have a lot of things that we do already for our committee behind the scenes. And a lot of people don’t realize. It’s like oh wow what’s going on over there. But because of the pandemic we had to, of course, slow things down. But we’re planning a bunch of virtual panels and events for the remainder of the year because as you know in America Black people are dying at the highest rate from COVID-19. So we are not going to take a chance on our lives.

That’s another thing. You know, with the industry opening, it’s like are they fully thinking about Black lives? Again.

**Craig:** The answer is no.

**Michelle:** You get the virus. Yeah, we get that you could live. But—

**Craig:** Yeah, right. I think, yeah, staying home is a good idea. I think staying home is a great idea, actually, for all of us.

**Bianca:** Another quick thing if they haven’t already, just for stats purposes as the number person, if you have not already self-identified on the website that is really, really helpful. I’ve been getting most of my staff from there. And some of it is that people have not self-identified. You can also email us and join the CBW if you are a Black writer. And come to the meetings and figure out how you too can get involved. We have a lot of great things coming up. Financial literacy things. Things outside that aren’t just about the industry straightforward.

So, get involved. Get excited. And, you know, we’re moving and shaking.

**Hilliard:** We have a Facebook page, too, that they can join.

**John:** Cool. Bianca, Hilliard, Michelle, thank you so much for joining us on this. It was so good to talk with all of you.

**Craig:** That was awesome. Thank you guys.

**John:** Thanks for all your hard work. And we look forward to hearing what happens next. We’ll keep an eye out for you.

**Hilliard:** Awesome. Thanks for having us man.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thanks. Keep going. Keep going.

**John:** And Craig it’s now just you and me. It is time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** One Cool Thing.

**John:** You got one?

**Craig:** Yeah, I do. I don’t know, your dog Lambert – is Lambert a picky eater?

**John:** He was a very picky eater when he first came to our house. He’s a less picky eater now. What do you got?

**Craig:** Well, we have our wonderful dog, Cookie. She is fantastic. She is also just a little princess when it comes to food. Good, she’s so, mmm. So dogs can’t just eat treats all day. They need real actual kibble and stuff like that. Or some certain wet food. But she just literally will turn her nose up at it. She’ll look at it and then her nose will go up and she will walk away.

So, it’s getting frustrating, especially because sometimes she gets so hungry that she’ll barf.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** They do that. Because they have too much bile building up. And you’re like, well, if you’re that hungry just eat the food. But she’s like, no, I don’t want to. It’s gross.

So, in looking around I had some other stuff that I used to crumble on it and put on it. And it sort of worked a little bit but not great. Now – now I have Marie’s Magical Diner Dust.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Marie’s Magical Diner Dust is made my Steller & Chewy and it’s some kind of horrifying – it’s like basically the stuff that dogs like the most is the stuff that would make us puke the most. It’s like it’s made of skull and chicken dicks and stuff. So it’s just dried up little powder. So I sprinkled a little bit on there and it was like I had brought out some cocaine in the club. She just went bananas. And just immediately started eating. So, thank you Stella & Chewy for your Marie’s Magical Diner Dust for dogs. So gross. So effective.

**John:** Excellent. When Lambert first came to live with us he did not like our food. And so we experimented with different foods to get one that would work with his system well. But then he would still be really picky about eating it. When Megan McDonnell would dog sit him she couldn’t get him to eat at all and she would have to like sort of hand feed him kibble.

What we discovered was pretty useful which if other people want to try this before reverting to dinner dust is you take a tiny bit of peanut butter and rub it on the inside of his bowl and that was appealing enough that he would start to lick the peanut butter and he was like as long as I’m here I guess I’ll eat the kibble too. So we would soften his dry food.

Now he’s just gotten over it and so eats his food. We wet it down a little bit and he’s a good eater.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, so I’m envious. This dog, trying to get her to eat, ridiculous. What about you, John? You got a One Cool Thing for us?

**John:** I do. So mine is an immersive light field video with layered mesh representation.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** This is from SIGGRAPH 2020, so a big visual effects conference. Click through the link here, Craig, and it’s something I’ve sort of speculated we should be able to do soon but we finally now have the computer processing ability to do it. If you can imagine if you took a whole bunch of Go Pros and layered them all around a big sphere you could get a full 360 view of things. They’re doing that, but then they’re doing incredibly computational intensive processing to make a full field view from that. So, you can film something and then in real time move to any space in that video in any space in that world. You click through in the little sample videos you’ll see a guy with a homemade flame-thrower.

**Craig:** It’s really cool. Yeah.

**John:** And so you can move around in 3D space while it’s happening, so it feels kind of like a videogame, because it is kind of using videogame engines to take real video and figure out the surface mapping of stuff and create 3D models out of it. It’s really impressively done. So I would just say it’s a little preview of stuff you’re going to be seeing in movies in about six months.

**Craig:** In six months?

**John:** Well, I think you’re going to see application of this kind of stuff in movies coming really soon. Because the moment you can do stuff like this in a demo everyone is looking at this and it’s like I already sent it through to a director I’m working with. Oh, we’re doing this, aren’t we? He’s like, oh yes, we’re definitely going to do that.

**Craig:** Look, it’s awesome. I’m looking at it. It’s really, really cool. I can definitely see how it would actually enhance videogames for sure. I don’t know if I would want to watch a passively observed story like this.

**John:** Oh, no, no, no. I’m not saying you’re going to see the whole movie that way. But I’m going to say like bullet time in the Matrix, there’s things like that where I can imagine us moving through a space and moving through a battle sequence where the different fields of planes are in different timings. You could just do really amazing things if you had this kind of information.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s the kind of thing which, again, you could do right now with just pure visual effects. But to actually have the real photography behind it will enable some amazing things.

**Craig:** That’s very cool.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Very cool.

**John:** And that is our show for this week. So stick around after the credits for our discussion of professional sports. But if you’re not a Premium member you’ll have to just wonder. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is a classic Matthew Chilelli outro. He’s done some of our best ones. It’s actually how he became our editor is by doing a whole bunch of outros for us.

If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you send longer questions or things like we read today. For short questions, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Just today Craig replied in a really great thread about someone’s question and concerns, so thank you for doing that, Craig.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** So follow Craig. We have t-shirts. We have t-shirts at Cotton Bureau. They’re terrific. You should check those out. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts.

You can sign up to become a Premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments. Craig, thanks for a fun episode.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right, Craig, baseball is coming back. Basketball is coming back. I am weirdly excited for both of them.

**Craig:** Are you? [laughs]

**John:** I’m excited because it’s a new thing and I’m really curious how they’re going to do it. I also feel like I like when systems and structures try to react to the outside world and find a new normal.

**Craig:** Oh my god. That’s the most robot thing you’ve ever said. Sorry, that’s the second most robot thing you ever said. The first most robot thing you ever said was immersive light field video with a layered mesh representation. [laughs]

**John:** So, for our international listeners who may not be following what’s happening in American professional sports, the NBA, the National Basketball Association has announced that they are planning to kind of resume this season. They’re moving all the players and families and coaches and staff to Orlando, Florida where they will be playing a truncated version of this season and going into the playoffs. And we will have a national champion. Do you call it a national champion? What do you call the winner of basketball?

**Craig:** Oh man. It’s just the champion. It’s the champion. NBA champion.

**John:** NBA champion. That’s what I was looking for. So they’re going to do that but it’s going to be a highly tested environment. But even as we’re recording this today like a bunch of players already tested positive for it, so there you go.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah.

**John:** But so basketball I think will probably work. I mean, the teams are relatively small in these pretty controlled environments. Baseball is outdoors, which is great.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** But, you know, usually teams travel and so it’s not like everyone is going to go to one place where they will do all baseball.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** I just don’t know.

**Craig:** Yeah, how will they do baseball? This is the most important question. Look, I think – I’m more worried about the NBA. Because basketball is a contact sport. We don’t think of it in the way that football is a contact sport where you’re encouraging contact, where it’s required on every play, but basketball players are in each other’s faces. They are up against each other physically. They are sweating on each other. And they’re smashing into each other and falling down on each other. Whereas baseball, everyone is actually quite far apart.

I mean, some players, when you’re in the field are really far apart.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, who is close together? And I’m going to remove the dugout from the situation. So in the dugout all the players are waiting to have their turn at bat if they’re in the lineup. You can work that out. You can have sort of a social distancing dugout kind of situation. In the field the catcher is pretty close to the home plate umpire and the batter. But if they are wearing – I mean the catcher is already wearing a mask. And you should be fine.

Beyond that there is not a ton of contact in baseball. People slide into base and they’ve already reduced the amount of contact just per the rules to reduce injury. So I’m not so concerned transmission during a game between players. It’s what happens in between the games that’s obviously the problem. Because it’s just hard to keep people who are working together from, you know, being near each other and potentially infecting each other. And all those players – sorry, many of the players have wives and they have children. And, you know, there’s more vectors for infection.

Obviously there’s not going to be fans. We’re not doing that. Have you seen what they’ve done, I think it was in South Korea where baseball is very popular, they filled the stands with stuffed animals.

**John:** Which is exactly how it should be at all times.

**Craig:** So great. It was so great. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. And then I saw one photo of an orchestra that was playing–

**John:** To potted plants, yes.

**Craig:** Yes. An audience of plants, which is very sweet. It will be weird.

**John:** Well, so baseball it feels like all your potential concerns and objections, like they have families, they’re going to encounter other people. Yes. And also everyone else who is going back to work in any capacity is going to have those same problems.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** So it’s similar to that. Except there’s additional travel with baseball and it looks like they’re taking efforts to travel less than the other ones would.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think if they can reduce the travel down, because obviously far fewer games are going to be played. I don’t think anyone is going to look at this season as a “real” season, no matter who wins the World Series. It will have an asterisk a mile wide next to it because it’s just a weird year. There was a strike-shortened season where there was another asterisk World Series winner. So, it’s just a weird one. But the players want to play. And the owners want the players to play. And there is money to be made from the television rights. And I would watch, for sure.

I did years ago when–

**John:** Craig, one moment though. Because from a television viewer perspective, someone who is just watching a baseball game, it doesn’t necessarily going to feel any different. I mean, I don’t know that you would necessarily know there was a problem–

**Craig:** It will. Oh yes.

**John:** Tell me why it will feel different.

**Craig:** Because it’s silent. So, baseball games are loud. Baseball stadiums are much larger than indoor arenas where NBA teams play. They are not as big as football stadiums, but you’re talking typically about somewhere between 25,000 to 50,000 per game, outside, cheering.

**John:** If only we had a way to pipe in sound that wasn’t actually part of a scene when it was recorded.

**Craig:** That would be awful. If you had artificial crowd reactions it would be the worst.

**John:** Bum-bum-bum-bum. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. It would be just awful. It would all sound like a videogame.

**John:** So it’s going to feel like golf is what it’s going to feel like.

**Craig:** It’s going to feel like golf. There was a game that was played years ago when Freddie Gray died in the custody of police in Baltimore and civil unrest occurred which as we know solved the problem of police brutality. Anyway, just amazing, right? We’ve been doing this – that’s a whole – I’m not going to go down that road again. But just, argh, police.

So, Baltimore had a curfew. They were essentially shut down for a day or two. But I can’t remember which team, maybe the Angels, were in town to play the Orioles and they played a game in an empty stadium. And it was the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever seen. Because like you just heard stuff. It was weird. It was just like – yeah.

**John:** I watched, this past week was the worldwide developer’s conference for Apple. And so some years I’ve gone. I always watch it and there’s always a live keynote. And it’s a big thing and it’s a huge crowd. And obviously they couldn’t do any of that this year.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And they made choices like, you know what, we’re going to change the format completely. We’re going to lean into it and not try to do the normal things we’re doing and they did a much better job. So I think it will be weird at the start but I bet they can also just find ways to film it differently so that you’re not expecting some of the moments that you would normally expect with the crowd.

**Craig:** I am laughing at you, not with you. Because the thing is we don’t really film – I mean, yeah, occasionally you’ll look at, they’ll have a crowd shot. But by and large it’s just the sense of the crowd reacting as things are happening is part of what’s going on. And there’s always this low crowd hum.

It’s a little bit like when they show you–

**John:** The sitcoms without the laugh tracks?

**Craig:** Yes. It’s that eerie. It’s just eerie.

**John:** Oh, that would be so good.

**Craig:** Because it’s like, OK, it’s 3-2 and bases loaded and two outs. This the payoff pitch. And in those situations the crowd is at a fever pitch. Every little moment is just adrenalized. And in this one it will just be like…and he struck out. Silence. Everyone just walks back. It’s gonna be weird.

**John:** Yeah. It’s gonna be weird. But let’s talk about how weird basketball is. So they’ve made a completely different choice. It’s sort of New Zealand’s choice of we are going to isolate this group of people and not let them have any encounter with the outside world. In theory that should work. If you actually keep a tight quarantine on these people they can be as in each other’s face as you want because there will be no virus for them to transmit.

**Craig:** Right. Good luck.

**John:** Yeah. Good luck. I genuinely wish them good luck. But it’s going to be tough.

**Craig:** This virus, I mean, COVID particularly, it’s like water. It’s going to find any little crack and it will get through. It just doesn’t seem realistic. It really doesn’t. If they can pull it off, great. Just remember people are going to have to be feeding them. There’s doctors and there’s food service and there’s janitorial service and there’s shopping. You can’t – it’s not Bio-Dome. You can’t seal them up.

**John:** Yeah. My mom is in a senior living place and it’s kind of Bio-Dome-ish. They are pretty – they’re vigilant. And, again, I’m not confident that there will never be a case at her place, but they’re taking the precautions that they can take. And so I guess on the NBA side I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that it’s worthwhile to try doing what they’re doing.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can theoretically Bio-Dome folks who generally have reduced mobility and independence anyway. Bio-Doming 20 to 40 year old men and their wives, their significant others, their children. Listen, obviously I’m not rooting for anyone to be sick. I hope it works. I really, really do. And weirdly I would say basketball – it will be less weird to watch without a crowd because basketball is a playground sport. It’s everywhere. So we all have the experience of watching basketball where there’s no crowd. You just go down to any of the basketball courts, like Venice. When you go down to Venice here in LA there are these famous basketball courts. It’s where they shot a bunch of White Men Can’t Jump.

And they play. You’re just used to it. You’re not used to seeing baseball games with no one there. It’s just not really a huge thing. And so it’s just going to be interesting.

**John:** Yeah. A good experiment. We’ll see how it all plays out. No one is expecting the NFL to come back. Correct?

**Craig:** If the NFL came back that would be madness. I don’t know. It would be absolute madness. But they might. I mean, that’s the thing. The amount of money behind all of this is extraordinary. Yeah. But until a vaccine happens – I mean, yeah, I don’t know. That one seems weird to me.

**John:** And so it seems like none of these issues will impact anything in our direct lives, but literally I was having a conversation with a network about plans for this thing I may be working on. They’re like, “Yeah, it’s really going to be a question of whether NBC does the Olympics or not, or when those happen.” We’re trying to think like two or three years out for where stuff is going to be. And it’s like, yeah, that’s right. The Olympics is a huge, huge – obviously it’s an athletic event, but also three weeks of solid programming. And if you don’t have that, that’s important.

**Craig:** I think a lot of the folks that are in those executive suites are doing the only thing they can do which is make plans. But as they’re making plans I think they’re all well aware that their plans are pointless. They are doing what – they don’t want to sit there and do nothing, but no one knows how this is going to go. No one. Anybody that has any kind of certainty is a lunatic.

**John:** Yup. Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Bye.

 

Links:

* [WGA West Committee of Black Writers Call on Hollywood to Revolutionize the Way Our Industry Hires Writers](https://deadline.com/2020/06/wga-west-committee-of-black-writers-co-chairs-call-on-hollywood-to-revolutionize-the-way-our-industry-hires-writers-1202958013/)
* [Immersive Light Field Video with a Layered Mesh Representation](https://augmentedperception.github.io/deepviewvideo/)
* [Stella & Chewy’s Freeze-Dried Raw Marie’s Magical Dinner Dust for Dogs](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SM1QT2J/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)
* [Hilliard Guess](https://twitter.com/HilliardGuess?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) on Twitter
* [Bianca Sams](https://twitter.com/writesamswrite?lang=en) on Twitter
* [Michelle Amor](https://twitter.com/MichelleAmor?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) on Twitter
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [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 Matthew Chilelli ([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/458standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/that-icky-feeling).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 454 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show we’ll be discussing the difference between story and screenplay, both as official WGA categories but also what we mean in everyday use. We’ll also explore that icky feeling that something is wrong with your script and what to do about it when you feel it. Then we’ll be answering listener questions about age, starting over, and whether you should turn in the Final Draft file when the producers ask for it.

**Craig:** Oh, yes.

**John:** And in our bonus segment for Premium subscribers, Craig and I will read erotic fiction.

**Craig:** Now if that doesn’t cause a stampede toward the subscription button I don’t know what will.

**John:** It could all be a big tease. We’ll see.

**Craig:** By the way, the erotic fiction we’ll be reading from is called Stampede Toward the Subscription Button.

**John:** Ha-ha. Really it’s good. It’s a very meta kind of thing.

**Craig:** Hot.

**John:** Hot. Some news about writing. Last week on the show I mentioned that my local bookstore, Chevalier’s was reopening and a bunch of local authors we’re getting together to celebrate its reopening – of course delivery or takeaway. But still it’s great that indie bookstores are being able to reopen. So we’re hosting a special event this coming Saturday, June 6, at 2pm. We’ll have a dozen authors, including myself, Aline Brosh McKenna, Derek Haas, Stuart Gibbs. Other middle grade YA and adult authors.

**Craig:** Stuart Gibbs! I’ve known Stuart Gibbs forever.

**John:** He is a lovely, lovely man.

**Craig:** Yeah. He really is. I’ve known him since I first arrived in Los Angeles.

**John:** Yeah. He’s a good guy. So we’re going to be talking through our summer reading list. So these are books we recommend people take a look at, both all the way from picture books up through grown up adult novels. So we’ll be talking through the books we love, books you should read over the summer. People should buy those books from Chevalier’s or whatever your indie bookstore is. But come join us on Zoom. It’s 2pm this Saturday, June 6. We’ll be hanging out and discussing summer reading.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** Second bit of follow up. Last week on the show we were talking about how to reopen the town for production. And several people wrote in about French hours. And they’re making a point which we didn’t really make in the show is that to summarize French hours are where rather than working these endless long production days you limit yourselves to 12 hours and there’s no lunch break. You don’t stop for lunch. You work through lunch and everyone goes home at a reasonable time.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And, Craig, what is the downside of that from an economic standpoint for an individual person?

**Craig:** Well…I think maybe it’s that there’s a less likely chance that there will be overtime.

**John:** That’s exactly it. So people were writing in to say that French hours sound great and they probably are healthier for everybody concerned. The reason why you’ll see pushback against it is that after eight hours people on these union sets tend to get overtime. And so you want to work more than eight hours because that’s how you bring home the big bucks.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so that’s the thing we’d be balancing out is how to we get to a place where people value their life and their livelihoods and having a quality of life rather than just the sheer number of dollars they’re taking home.

**Craig:** Well, if you recall when we were talking about this Rawson got emotionally pleased at the thought of French hours. Most filmmakers do. And so what I would say – let’s say for instance on the next television show that I’m showrunning and EP’ing, I’d say to the producer, meaning the person in charge of the budget and also the studio, “Hey, what if we offer the crew more money per hour? We sort of say, look, we’re just going to go apples to apples here.” So we would probably end up doing this many hours over the course of a week with this much at time and a half, which is standard overtime. We’re going to give you a little bit more for your standard hours to get to that number and in exchange we’ll do French hours just because it makes us happier.

**John:** That is the right conversation to have.

**Craig:** Yeah. And hopefully that would go well. Because the benefit of French hours is not – look, maybe there are bean counters who say the benefit is that you’re saving money. But for us on the creative side the benefit is just that it’s just better creatively. And also for the purpose of managing COVID and etc. It’s vastly superior.

**John:** Yeah. So my hope is that as we start having these conversations about reopening the town some of the necessities, like French hours, become the norms. And that we really do move to a place where we are thinking about the health and safety and creative function of the people who make film and television and that it becomes a matter of course that we’re limiting our hours to things that make sense.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m all for it. But point well taken. We should not put this on the backs of working people. That’s not who should be absorbing the cost. Nor should there be a cost to absorb. We’re already paying people this much money. We should keep paying them that much money, if not more, and just shift the way we do the work during the day.

**John:** And now there’s not a real state update in terms of when we are going to have guidance about how we’re reopening the town. As we’re recording this, this is on a Thursday, we thought earlier this week there would be an official state of California guide and plan for how it’s going to work.

**Craig:** Yeah. What happened there?

**John:** It didn’t really happen. I’ve heard rumblings that it’s really on the actors’ side. That there’s real concerns about, again, safety and basically what we talked about in the show. They are the most vulnerable people on a set because they cannot wear masks. Social distancing won’t apply to two actors who are in a scene together likely. So, there are real concerns about maintaining their safety.

What I hear, and this is all just people gossiping, is that’s one of the hold ups about having official guidance behind this. Still, when I talk to showrunners there’s ongoing discussions about maybe it’s July, maybe it’s August. That there’s going to be an attempt to get TV production at least back up and running.

**Craig:** Yeah. It will continue to be the actors and it should. Because they are going to be the ones who are the most risk. And they are literally incapable of doing their jobs properly if they are physically restrained from being near each other or revealing their faces. Unless we just go to an all Iron Man kind of thing. [laughs] Where everyone is just Iron Man’d up.

**John:** 100% of the time.

**Craig:** Yeah. Or Banes. Just Iron Mans and Banes.

**John:** Iron Man or Banes. Or a tremendous amount of visual effects to paint out people’s masks, sort of like how we painted out Henry Cavill’s mustache.

**Craig:** That didn’t work so well.

**John:** It was phenomenal. It’s what everything should look like. There’s vaguely a little bit long. Like an Animal Crossing face.

**Craig:** [speaking like Bane] I don’t want you to worry, John. I’ve had my COVID test.

I would do Bane all day. If I could do Bane all day I would. If it were allowable. If my wife would allow it.

**John:** Yeah. But she would never allow that.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** All right. Let’s get to our two main topics. Our first is story versus screenplay. So, on the show many a time we have talked about writing credits and what they mean, but we should probably recap that because for American movies the credits you see onscreen have very specific meanings and Craig can you talk us through what the very specific meanings are for the writing credits we see on a feature film?

**Craig:** Again, and first thing to know just as a little bit of background is that these writing credits that we have onscreen are the production of negotiation. So it’s actually writing into our collective bargaining agreement with the studios. And because that bargaining agreement is a massive contract these terms actually are legally defined in the contract.

So, what is story? Well, let me give you the dry version. Then I’ll give you – then we can discuss what we think it is. The dry version is “the term story is all writing covered by the provisions of the MBA representing a contribution is that is distinct from screenplay and consisting of basic narrative, idea, theme, or outline indicating character development and action.” And this is something that when we did our rewrite of the manual for clarity this was a section that I worked on pretty carefully. And this is a bit of my hobby horse. What it now says in there is “distinct from screenplay means that the contributions considered for story should not be applied to screenplay credit, nor should contributions considered for screenplay credit be applied to story.”

But what does that clunky lawyer-written phrase actually mean creatively? I’m kind of curious what you think it means.

**John:** So, when I think of story I think about if I were to sort of pitch the movie or pitch what’s happening in the story and write that down, so my written version of a pitch would probably be story. And that is it’s what’s happening but it’s not the specifics of details, individual scenes, how it works. It’s really more kind of what happens and the overall shape of things rather than the specificities of how it’s being told onscreen.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I think that’s generally the way people approach it. I mean, there’s all sorts of ways you can work it in your mind. I mean, one tactic I have sometimes is to think what part of this could have been expressed in a treatment without any of it seeming like it might belong in a script. You know, people can put dialogue in treatments. Well, that could fit in a script. But if it’s just sort of a treatment-only kind of thing then it’s likely that it’s story, but not necessarily. Basic narrative to me kind of feels like broad plot. Not the specific little ticky-tacky moments but broad plot.

**John:** Now, the very specific language you gave, here’s why that language is important. Is that ultimately at the end of a writing process and as we’re determining credits it’s that very specific language that we are going to be using in our arbitration statements, or if you’re an arbiter determining credit you are going to refer back to that very specific legal language to say this is why I’m defending this decision on this. So, when Craig and I are talking in generalities about story, great, we can talk in generalities. But if we’re talking about the specific credit for this piece of literary material we are always going to reach back to that legally language because that is how WGA credits are determined.

**Craig:** Yeah. So when I’m doing an arbitration I will talk a lot about what I consider to be the basic narrative and who contributed to the basic narrative. Idea. I think everybody kind of gets what that is. Theme. Everybody kind of gets what that is. And then outline indicating character development and action, which to me means again kind of a – well, it’s an outline. And then the question is how fine or specific of an outline. Generally for story I tend to think of it is more on the broader side of things because of the nature of the definition of screenplay which I suppose we should get into.

**John:** Let’s get into that.

**Craig:** So, screenplay. And remember this is story is distinct from this. “Screenplay consists of…” and this by the way I’m about to read one of the worst sentences ever written.

**John:** Oh yeah. Full of semicolons. Yeah.

**Craig:** To this day I cannot parse it properly. It’s brutal. And here’s what it says. “A screenplay consists of individual scenes and full dialogue together with such prior treatment, basic adaptation, continuity scenario, and dialogue as shall be used in represent substantial contributions to the final script.” What? [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. But there’s even more.

**Craig:** There is more.

**John:** There’s four bullet points.

**Craig:** So, what the credits department did in their wisdom was sort of say, look, let’s take that and actually turn it into something that’s fairly useful as a general rubric for arbiters who are analyzing screenplay. We tend to look at screenplay as contributing to four major factors. The first is dramatic construction. The second is original and different scenes. The third is characterization or character relationships. And the fourth is dialogue.

So, what do you think those mean?

**John:** [laughs] So, and again, if you’ve ever done an arbitration either as a person seeking credit or as a person determining credit you have used this exact language in defending your decisions and your choices.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Dramatic construction. I think we all get what that means. It’s how the puzzle pieces are put together. This is how you’re telling a story. These are the ups and downs. The twists, the surprises, the reveals. It’s how the story tells itself.

**Craig:** Right. It’s different from just if I said, OK, what is the outline of John Wick. John Wick is a hitman. His wife dies and leaves him a puppy. Bad guys kill the puppy and steal his car. He declares revenge. He goes and kills this guy. And then he kills this guy. And then he kills this guy. The end. And there’s a hotel. Right? I mean, those are the big, big moments.

But the dramatic construction are the way that things unfold. The way that the bad guys explain to John Wick is to his son and how that, you know, factors into the way he deals with John Wick. Those are sort of – it’s the specific stuff, right? The specifics of the dramatic. Which leads us into original and different scenes, which you know, I think we get, right?

**John:** Yeah. We get a sense. A scene is as a moment begins, as a moment ends. It’s how the moment begins. How the moments ends. And crucially what happens in that scene. It’s the very specific beats within that scene. And so while in an outline or a treatment you might give a sense of the shape. We might get a sense that there’s a scene here that does this, it’s the actual scene itself is what is considered part of screenplay credit.

**Craig:** And that’s why the word “different” is in there. Because we are oftentimes parsing out this contribution between multiple writers. If there is a beat. If you and I are both asked to adapt something like Fiddler on the Roof, which by the way was just announced is going to be a movie produced by Dan Jinks, your former Big Fish producer.

**John:** And directed by Tommy Kail. Excited about all this.

**Craig:** And directed by Tommy Kail. Sounds like it’s going to be – I mean, I’ll see nursery school productions of Fiddler on the Roof.

**John:** Craig, let’s stop the podcast now. You clearly are going to be cast in Fiddler on the Roof.

**Craig:** I should be.

**John:** There’s no way this is not going to happen.

**Craig:** I should be.

**John:** Yes. If you’re not a Tevye there is a role in that production for you.

**Craig:** I’m weirdly too old for Tevye. Isn’t that terrible? I’m too old for Tevye. I always think of him as an old guy because Zero Mostel was probably – but he’s like – well, actually, maybe I’m not. Because his youngest daughter–

**John:** No, he has teenage daughters.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know what? I’m a perfect age for Tevye. And I can sing that – you know what? I’m going to do it. I should do it. I’m the best. I’m the best Tevye available. [laughs] I am. So we’ll discuss that with Dan.

**John:** And Craig can sing. I mean, I really don’t know why you’re not working on your audition right now.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. Dank Jinks, I will go on tape. And you will be amazed. You will be amazed.

**John:** Good.

**Craig:** Also, I’d like to point out I’m Jewish. That matters. Seriously. I totally get the white-washing thing. Like so just side note on Fiddler on the Roof. I’m a huge Fiddler on the Roof fan. To the point where I can explain why Zero Mostel is a vastly better Fiddler than Topol and I know people are going to say, “What?” But I really do think so. Because I think that Fiddler on the Roof is a very Yiddish kind of thing as opposed to a Jewish kind of thing. It’s different feel in a weird way.

And then there’s Alfred Molina. [laughs] I mean, Alfred Molina is a brilliant actor. And he can sing. But you got to be Jewish. You just got to be. I don’t know how you do it without being Jewish. I really don’t. I don’t know.

**John:** So that ties into our next topic which is characterization and character relationships.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So back to the screenplay. And I like that character relationships is pulled out as a separate thing because as we talk about on the show a lot it’s very hard to imagine a character without really imagining how those characters are interacting. That’s how you actually reveal how two characters fit together. How a character is demonstrated in a screenplay is generally through its interaction with other characters in it. So the relationship between two characters or nine characters is crucially important for a screenplay in ways that it may not be in a story document.

**Craig:** No question. And so the reason Fiddler showed up in the first place here was when we say if I say to you I need you – we have a story beat. It’s story. And the story is that Tevye is going to marry his daughter off to the butcher. You and I will write very different scenes of that. Any two writers will write different scenes of that. Same basic story point, but different and original scenes.

Similarly, with character – so character development and action is story. So, who is in it? Like the guy that delivers the milk in this little village of Anatevka and he has five daughters. OK. And he is a big believer in tradition. Characterization is literally how that character is expressed.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The things he says and does. His temperament. His choice of words. And the nature of his relationship with his wife and his daughters and the townspeople and the Russians. All of that is script. And, of course, the primary way that that is expressed is through dialogue. It’s not the only way, but the primary way. Dialogue is essentially entirely a contribution to screenplay. Those are kind of the two big things.

**John:** Those are the big things. And so as we’ve said before sometimes in treatments you’ll do the parenthetical dialogue or the italics dialogue to sort of indicate what the things are. But it’s really a screenplay aspect. And that matches up I think with our basic expectations of what a story is versus a screenplay. The story is sort of the gist of it. It’s like this is the overall shape of it. But the screenplay is the on paper representation of what the movie is going to look like and feel like.

**Craig:** Right. Right.

**John:** And so from a credits level if the same writer has both story credit and screenplay by credit those compress down to become a written by credit. There’s special cases in weird situations based on underlying source material. So sometimes they don’t compress. But in general if you see a written by that means that the writer who is credited there is entitled to both story by credit and screenplay by credit so they’ve smooshed together.

**Craig:** That is only what it means. That is it. That is the definition of written by. And we’ve been working on this, and hopefully one day we’ll get there, but if you have written a story that is based on something, so it’s an adaptation, but it is quite a bit different. It’s clearly significantly different than the underlying material. Then you’ll get screen story by. And if you get screen story by and screenplay by unfortunately they don’t squish down, which is I think silly. But it’s the way it is. So, alas.

**John:** Yeah. And every once in a thousand credits you’ll see adaptation by which is a very unique credit that is only given as a result of arbitration.

**Craig:** It doesn’t mean what it says. And–

**John:** It’s a way of acknowledging that a person contributed to a thing that is important but isn’t meeting other thresholds. It’s a weird credit. We’re going to sort of ignore that for now.

**Craig:** I don’t think it has been given out. I don’t know when the last time it was. But I honestly don’t think it’s been given out within the last ten years.

**John:** So this is talking through credits when a project is completed, so the end of the process. But what I want to really focus on today is figuring out story and screenplay credits earlier in the process, when you’re thinking about writing something or you’re working with somebody and figuring out what are we going to put on the title page of this script because that is really important. Because that title page for your script is what sets the precedent for who wrote this thing that they’re reading.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so figuring out story and screenplay credit is really a writer’s decision at the very beginning of the process. So let’s start with some listener questions because this might help us frame our conversation. So, a listener wrote in saying, “I have a question regarding credit on a screenplay I wrote with a partner. The project began with him pitching me a general premise and a very basic description of a couple of the main characters. From there we broke the story, even completely overhauling it at one point, and created the characters together. We’ve agreed to take a 50/50 credit on the screenplay but he is suggesting that he also get a story by credit. It seems to me that story by is too much for just a basic premise and some general characterizations, but I do think he deserves some sort of added acknowledgment for having the original idea.

“We were wondering if you could tell us whether ‘idea by’ is a legitimate credit in these types of situations, or if you have any other suggestions.”

**Craig:** [laughs] I like when questions are clear and easy. So, the deal is that there is story credit. That’s a thing. There is no idea credit. Story credit includes idea. So, while he’s correct in suggesting that he should get story credit, it’s also quite obvious that you should get story credit because like you said you broke the story with him, created the characters together, and then wrote the screenplay. Which, by the way, remember screenplays contain story elements. Story credit can be generated even if there’s no treatment or outline or something like that. So, the fact is you both deserve story credit and he doesn’t get special story credit or first story credit. No such thing exists.

The answer is no. He does not get anything special. It is 50/50 for the screenplay. It is 50/50 for the story. And your partner should take a look in the mirror and ask himself what kind of person he wants to be. Because this is not how you get ahead in the world as it turns out. And this is just separate. This is psychological. And I’m not condemning him. I understand it. Everybody is starving for a credit. And then along comes food and people are like “but I found the food I should get an extra chicken wing.” I totally get it. It turns out in the long run being generous with your partners will generate far more success for you than being stingy and parsimonious. Oh, there we go.

**John:** Yeah. So specific advice in this situation. So, you two writers should say title of screenplay, written by, because you’re both going to claim story credit and screenplay credit, written by your two names. Now, a thing you might decide to do is to put his name first because maybe that’s a way of acknowledging that he was the first person who came up with the idea. You guys can decide that. But, no, don’t break it up into separate things because it’s not going to accurately reflect what’s happening. It’s not going to be a good idea down the road.

Do what Craig did. Be generous, both of you, and god-willing you’ll sell this and many other things down the road.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just be cool about it. And in case you are wondering the order of names within a writing team has no significance. It’s not like the Writers Guild determines which person in an ampersand situation should go first. We do not.

Let’s see, should we do a Francesca question?

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** OK. Francesca writes in, or Francesco, depends, “About eight years ago I was pitching movie ideas to my friends. Most if not all got shot down except for one. The friend I pitched it to said to rename it 299, because it’s a play on the movie 300. Sure, why not? Titles change. Since then I’ve heard him talk about this movie he came up with by himself called 299. He’s done this in front of me once and in group chats. Like, hey guys, when are we going to work on the movie that I came up with. This was recent. 2020 pre-COVID. I sent a message in group that basically was like, hey man, we created that, not you alone. And he said, oh yeah.

“But even then, knowing he claims he created this movie I didn’t want to argue that in fact it was my creation. But really it was. He had a title and some suggestions. But I pitched him, not vice versa. What do I do and how do I keep stuff like this from happening again?”

Oof, we get this quite a bit.

**John:** We do get this quite a bit. So, there are a bunch of small things to unpack here. Listen, nothing was written down yet, so there’s not like a title page thing to be worried about yet. What we’re really talking about is what is that line between just sort of shooting some ideas around with friends and colleagues and saying like, oh, we’re not writing this thing together. At what point is feedback sort of like actually contributing to the underlying thing?

And there’s no clear answers here, but I can give you some – hopefully together we can give you some guidance and also some commiseration because even among us, among our friends, this still does happen. So, it is a little bit frustrating. Craig, how we would start off with Francesca here.

**Craig:** Well, in terms of this situation I think what you don’t want to do is soft pedal things. It seems like what’s happened is he’s somehow managed to bargain himself into being the cowriter of this when he’s not anyway. Or the co-creator of it. So, I think you want to be clear. “Look, this is what it was. And then say I’m going to not use the title but thank you. And this way we’re nice and clean.” If that’s really all of significance. And if there’s anything else you can say I’m not going to do that either. Sometimes you might be considered that, well, he’s going to go off and he’s going to write a movie called 299.

Look, if he is a better writer than you than he’s a better writer than you and his is going to go and yours isn’t. Odds are he’s not. Just going – odds are that nobody is a good writer, right? That’s just generally the odds as we know. So I wouldn’t worry too much about that.

In the future, going forward prospectively, one thing you can say to people before you ask them for advice or pitch them is say, “Listen, I was wondering, I’m writing something and I was wondering if you’d be willing to just give me some friendly feedback, just sounding board stuff. I’m not looking for anything, you know, I’m not looking for producers or writing partners. I was just really just looking for a sounding board. If you’re interested in just being kind of one of those no attachment sounding boards for me then that would be awesome. But if not, I totally understand.”

And then before you’ve ever said a word you have anchored dialogue in the proper context. Because people sometimes misconstrue things when you come to them and you’re like, “Well what do you think about this?” And they’re like, “Well what if you did this.” Oh yeah, and now we’re riffing. And suddenly we’re writing partners?

**John:** Yep. Yeah. So I was going to say exactly those same three words which is the preface to your pitch is “I’m writing something.” Just declare this is a thing that I am working on. And if you put it in that context then it’s harder for them to say like, “Oh, I thought we were working on this together?” It’s like, no, no, no, I said from the start I am writing this thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that makes it clear this is the scope of what you want their feedback to be about. And that’s good and that’s helpful. Now, this thing that Francesca is describing happened eight years ago. So I do also question why haven’t you written this thing? Like if it’s really such an idea that is important to you why didn’t you write this? And there is also a time limit on this stuff. And if you really haven’t done any work on this in a year or eight years you’re probably not actually really writing this thing and maybe you’re just looking for a reason to be angry about this.

**Craig:** Yeah. You don’t want to be the proverbial two bald men fighting over a comb. If neither one of you – and that’s me and you basically – if neither one of you have written this thing within the last eight years then it kind of is neither of yours at this point. Do you know what I mean?

**John:** It’s the universe’s, yeah.

**Craig:** It kind of belongs to the universe. The other trick that you might want to try before you talk to somebody about something is say, “I’m halfway through something. I’ve been writing it.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s much harder for people to imagine jumping on a bus that’s in motion than one that’s currently being assembled at the plant. So, another little trick there. But, yeah, I agree with John. I feel like the bigger question Francesca is what’s been going on for eight years? And maybe spend less time in group chats and write your stuff.

**John:** Yeah. And I think it’s a great way to wrap up this conversation about story versus screenplay is that story is not that hard to do. Story, it can be – generally it’s a document. It’s something you’ve written but it doesn’t have to be an incredibly elaborate thing. It could be a page and you could get credit on a movie for having written a one-page story synopsis. That’s possible.

Screenplay is a lot more work. Screenplay is an actual screenplay. You’re really writing a full thing here. And so, you know, I would challenge to Francesca and to other folks here is that if you don’t fixate so much on story credit and really think about what is the work you’re doing. And if you’re doing the work of writing a full screenplay then that is the work that becomes screenplay credit. And to really think about those things on that scale of like one page versus 120 pages. And when you think about it that way it’s easier to suss out who deserves story credit and who deserves screenplay credit.

**Craig:** That’s a great point. And one thing to be aware of is that the Writers Guild rules are an evolution of copyright rules. And so story is compensated significantly in the sense that 25% of all residuals are given to the person or persons that get story by credit. Now, you could say that’s only a quarter and 75% goes to the screenplay, but again, you can write a single page and get story credit. The person who gets the screenplay credit may have worked for five years and generated a thousand pages. So, that’s the Writers Guild point of view.

But what the world values, meaning the studios that pay us, is the screenplay. And we know this because there’s a screenplay bonus that is oftentimes multiples of what they’re paying you to actually write the screenplay. Meaning, if we make this thing and you get screenplay credit you’re going to get like a million dollars, two million dollars, just suddenly. Boom. Out of nowhere. Because you did the thing that they value the most. This comes up time and time again.

I’m sure that you have had these experiences where someone says, “Hey, we would love for you to write this.” And you’re like, oh, I don’t have the time. But I can maybe work on the story for a week. And they’re like, “We want you to write the thing.”

**John:** The thing. Yeah.

**Craig:** “Thank you. But what we want is the thing we value.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So write your script is the point.

**John:** The other analogy I’d have is the story is like the trailer for the movie. And the screenplay is the movie. It’s the whole thing. And it’s like they are very different scales of time and work and sort of what you’re getting out of it. So, they’re both incredibly important but they’re going to pay you to make the movie. They’re not going to pay you to make the trailer.

**Craig:** Correct. Correct.

**John:** All right, Craig, let’s get to your topic here which you pitched to me as what to do when you sort of feel like your story – you get that icky feeling that your story is not working, your script is not working.

**Craig:** Something is not working. This happens to me at least once in everything I write. I will – it will suddenly occur to me in a vague sense that something is terribly wrong. And I attempt to specify it. I attempt to figure out where it’s wrong, why it’s wrong. But mostly it kind of manifests as a vague nausea that it’s instinctive. Something is wrong.

And when that happens over time I’ve started to come to an understanding of how to get through it and how to get out of it and what to not do. And I’m sure that you’ve had this feeling, too. I can’t imagine. I mean, as robotic as you are you’re still a human being. You have human feelings.

**John:** Yeah. I’d say most projects that I’ve gone through have some version of this. And including things which no one has ever read because I never really got through these situations. And so that may be an escape hatch we talk about in your overall discussion here is that sometimes these aren’t solvable. But trying to figure out where the problem is is so crucial. So talk us through where you figure out the problem might be.

**Craig:** Well, the first thing that you have to kind of wonder is what is the specific nature of the problem that is presenting itself to you. And we’ll find out if that really is the problem or not. But initially these things crop up very typically as, OK, I’ve got a plot knot. And you can call it a plot hole, a plot discrepancy. Things aren’t adding up. I’m supposed to have somebody be over here, but they’re over there. They managed to cross a continent too quickly. Or this happened the day before and it’s the day later. There’s like time problems you can’t get around. Or, I need them to know this thing, but they never knew it before. They haven’t met that person but they need to have this.

So you start to go, OK, there’s trouble. Just circumstances. And then sometimes you have concerns that are entirely focused on characters. The character needs to do something, but it violates some aspect of who they are or how they feel or what they’ve done before. There’s just a basic inconsistency. Their motivations don’t match their needs. These are the kind of problems where you just know before you ever hand a script in that if you did you might sneak it past somebody but never an actor. Never an actor. They would be like this doesn’t add up. And they’d be right.

There are also, man, this one comes up all the time. What I call immovable objects. And when writers sometimes will – I’ll call a friend or they’ll call me and we have these problems and we’re asking for help. They often are in the phrase in this context of immovable objects. The story requires this happens. But I don’t know how to make it happen. I don’t even know why it’s happening. And I don’t know how it should happen. But it has to happen. These are immovable objects and you just don’t know what to do with them.

It’s like I’m driving down a road and there has to be a wall in front of me, also I need to keep driving. What?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Trouble.

**John:** And so you and I have both encountered this situation where we are working on an adaptation of something, and so there are immovable objects because the basic nature of this property – this is a thing that must happen. Like the audience has expectations. This moment must occur.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And yet given the logic of the story we’ve built and everything we know there is no reason for that moment to occur and we have to figure out – either create a new reason. I mean, it is a problem. So we’ll get into what some of the solutions might be to that problem, but it is a thing that happens especially often in adaptations because you’re stuck with – some rules are being imposed upon you that would not be the rules you would set for yourself.

**Craig:** Very much so. It’s a little bit of like if I pull this string the curtain opens too much, so if I pull this string it closes all the way. So I pull that one again. I need this person to be more like this. But then this [song] needs them to be more like this. And you go crazy.

**John:** So somebody is going to be listening to this podcast about three years from now and they’ll be like, “I know exactly what both of them were talking about,” and it’s going to be delightful. So, check back in three years from now. Set yourself a reminder to check in and you’ll know, ah-ha, this is what they were talking about.

**Craig:** Put it on our calendar. And that leads me to the sort of final specific one, which are competing interests. Lindsay Doran has a great phrase. “Close up with feet.” She’ll say, “I want this moment to give me this feeling. Also, I want it to this thing that is completely incompatible with that feeling.” You want somebody to do something bad, also you want to feel like this person falls in love with them. You want them to run away but you also want to feel that they’re brave here. You want somebody to make somebody happy, but you want that person to hate them.

You feel these competing needs. And they negate each other to the point where you clench up and do not know what to do. And all of these things are all wonderfully specific and yet less common than the most frequent one you encounter which is something is not right and I don’t even know what it is or why. It’s just not good.

**John:** So, Craig, before we move on I’m going to pitch two more things to you which I often feel–

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Which give me this vague ickies. One is the awareness that something is repeating and I don’t want it to repeat. And yet I sort of can’t figure out a way for it not to repeat. I recognize I’m repeating the same moment, the same beat, the same idea, and I don’t want to but I don’t know how to not repeat it. I’m trying to stay – basically I’m trying to stay on theme and I’m trying to stay consistent, but in the consistency I’m being repetitive. And what’s often a related thing to me is something we talked about recently on the podcast which is like this is just not interesting.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** I recognize that it’s doing what it functionally needs to go, but I just don’t care.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that to me is probably the most troubling of these vague ickies because it’s like if I don’t care about it no one is going to care about this.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a bad feeling to know that you have managed to build a house that is resting on a single load-bearing wall. And that wall sucks.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s a bad feeling. And it happens all the time. You said you had two. I’m curious what the other one was.

**John:** Oh, those were the two. I would say it’s the “this is not interesting” and the “I am repeating myself.”

**Craig:** I’m repeating myself.

**John:** Like I recognize that this a repetition. So it’s kind of the opposite of “close up with feet.” It is consistent and yet it’s too consistent. It’s actually just the same moment happening again.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And when it is a scene that’s repeating, like you can figure out ways to like, OK, I could put a little shading there. But you recognize this whole sequence is really doing the same thing that the previous one did, crap, I didn’t recognize this until now.

**Craig:** Well, right there you’ve kind of avoided the first big pit fall right here because I think some people encounter this feeling, this icky feeling that there’s a problem, and they go, “Nah, you know what, no there isn’t.” Takes them to Jedi mind-trick themselves.

No, no, there is. There’s absolutely a problem. If you know there’s a problem, there’s a problem. Even if you’re technically wrong. Even if somehow you’ve been deluded into thinking that there’s a problem when there isn’t one, the fact that you think there’s a problem means you’re not writing it well anyway. So you cannot ignore this feeling. It’s incredibly important to accept it.

**John:** Mm-hmm. Agreed. You have to – the first step of solving the problem is acknowledging that there is a problem. So yeah.

**Craig:** There you go. Exactly. The very common instinct in your desire to immediately get past this problem, because nobody wants to sit with this icky feeling, you just want to get it out of you, is to solve it with cleverness. You’re going to solve it by using a lot of scaffolding. You’re going to contort your plot and your characters to make the problem go away. And you will technically make the problem go away. You will solve it. It’s just that now it’s boring and it sucks. Because solutions aren’t what people are going to see a movie for. They’re going to see a movie or watch a television show because it is this beautiful, whole natural narrative that is there because it’s correct.

When you write a scene that solves your problem, that scene is bad. Because it exists to solve your problem. It is for you, it’s not for the audience.

**John:** Now, a corollary to this which I’m thinking back to the second Arlo Finch which I ran into sort of a – I ran into problems. This is just not going to fit right. When you talk about a scene that is just there to sort of fix the problem or muscle you through a problem and get you to the next thing, that’s an unsatisfying boring scene. But where scaffolding can become useful is I’m going to wind back, I’m going to unravel some stuff, and actually build in a scaffolding. And I’m going to support this idea by going back in time and making it so it is a natural extension.

So basically I’m going to build a bridge from where I was to where I’m going, but I actually have to step back a bit and build that bridge.

**Craig:** Right. So that’s an actual bridge. It’s not scaffolding.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** That’s the thing. You absolutely should go back and support it. And then it feels natural and it unfolds and it looks correct. Yeah, you’re not just – you’re like, OK, we were building a house and this room was supposed to have a hallway to that room. But they’re offset by 12 feet. So let’s just build a weird hallway that just does this weird juke. Nobody wants that hallway. Nobody. I mean, yeah, technically I could walk from one room to another but this hallway sucks.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, how do we fix this? So there’s this phrase that always comes to my mind when I’m in these moments and it’s from Searching for Bobby Fischer which I would like to nominate to be our next deep dive movie.

**John:** Oh sure. We could get Mr. Scott Frank on to talk about it.

**Craig:** No. We’ll get Mr. Steven Zaillian on to talk about it.

**John:** Oh, I forget. Steve Zaillian. I always [crosstalk]. Steven Zaillian.

**Craig:** We want to over-credit Scott Frank with everything, but we’re going to get Steven on.

**John:** We shouldn’t. We shouldn’t.

**Craig:** No, we shouldn’t. We’re going to get Steve Zaillian on to talk about it. And it’s one of my favorite screenplays. And also he directed it beautifully as well.

So there’s a moment that recurs where Ben Kingsley’s chess professor is instructing this young child and they’ve got a chess board in front of them. And he’s saying to this kid you can get to checkmate from here in 12 moves. Don’t move until you see it. And the kid is like I can’t see it. And he says don’t move until you see it. I can’t see it. And then Kingsley says, “Here, I’ll help you.” And he just wipes all the pieces off the board and they all clatter to the floor. And he has the kid just look at this blank board. And sort of makes him go through this mental exercise of trying to do it without being stuck in the weeds of the pieces themselves.

And this comes up in the end, in the final match. He’s got himself to a point where Ben Kingsley who is watching the match from another room goes, “You’ve got him. You’ve got him in 12 moves. Don’t move until you see it.” And then the kid is just looking at the board and in his mind he’s just whispering to himself “I don’t see it.”

And then back to Ben Kingsley. Don’t move until you see it. Can’t see it, I don’t see it.

And I’m thinking this all the time in these moments. I’m like don’t move until you see it. And then I’m like but I can’t see it. And I’m like, fine. Don’t move until you see it. And this is why this has become kind of a mantra to me.

Because when it happens it is not hard to solve. Once you see the problem, the real problem, then the solution is evident. It’s easy. It’s elegant. There are not a lot of moving parts. It’s easy to write. Because you’re correct. So, the question then is maybe this sick feeling I had was about what I thought was a problem. I didn’t understand the nature of the problem at all. So, the feeling was correct but my identification of the problem was wrong.

That’s why I’ve been kind of walking around in circles going “I can’t see it. I can’t see it. I can’t see it.” And then one day I go, oh for god’s sakes. Of course. And it’s outside of the problem that I thought it was.

So, one way we get through this is patience. And patience means not only being patient with yourself and giving yourself time to finally see what the real problem is, but also the patience and wisdom to not move until you see it. Because the more you write, the more you try and write your way through this problem, the more invested you are in the writing you’re doing to solve the problem that probably isn’t the problem. So all that writing is going to be wasted. All that effort is going to be wasted. And you’re going to maybe be loath to let it go. So don’t move until you see it.

And then when you see it you’ll know.

**John:** I want to believe everything you just said, and yet I can also imagine myself or other writers in situations where this becomes an excuse for paralysis and perfectionism. Because all writing is difficult. All writing, there’s going to be some moments of self-doubt.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And so how do we help distinguish between, OK, this icky feeling I need to stop and wait it out until I really find the perfect solution versus, no, writing is hard. Writing is hard and you just have to do it. And you will discover things in trying to work on it. Because you and I both on our daily writing situations we reach places where we’re like, argh, I can’t make this thing work. And then you just work through it and you figure it out.

So, how do we help distinguish between the moments where you really should stop and wait versus just sit down and put your butt in the chair and get some words written?

**Craig:** Well, there’s a circumstance where you know what you’re supposed to do, you just don’t feel like you’re doing it well. That’s different. You need to just keep working. You need to work on it.

I know what the scene is supposed to be and I know what it’s supposed to accomplish. All that is correct. I just don’t like what I’m doing. OK. Think of a different way to do it. Write that. Try a different way. Try a different way.

But when there’s something that is fundamentally wrong it’s not that you should go to bed or take a vacation. Start taking walks and thinking about it. In fact, it’s important to think about it and think about it and think about it. It’s important to struggle with that problem because the struggle with the problem is what will eventually get you to the place where you see what the answer is. So you’re working. I mean, you don’t take the day off. And the “don’t move until you see it” part is essentially write the solution that you know is right. That’s really what I’m getting to. Is don’t write the bad ones. Don’t write the ones that just rush you through it. Write the one that feels good.

Because when you get it, I mean, I had this problem man on Chernobyl, oh boy. I mean, there was a dark week. There was one very dark week where I was just walking around thinking. There’s this awful wrongness in the midst of something and I don’t know how to solve it. And I did not move until I saw it. And then a few days later I went, “Oh for god’s sakes.” And almost inevitably it’s like all the pieces were there. I was looking in the wrong spot and I was thinking about it in the wrong way. And that there’s something that with all the pieces I already had that is so simple and obvious and once you see it it’s obvious. It’s just like solving any puzzle.

I mean a real puzzle. Not a jigsaw puzzle. [laughs]

If somebody comes along and goes, oh here’s how this works, you go, “Oh for the love of god,” right? So that’s it. It’s really just going through that and then when you know you have it you have it. So you certainly don’t want to do this as some excuse to not write. In fact, the hardest work you should be doing is this kind of work. Just struggling through the problem. If you don’t feel that you’re exerting yourself then, yeah, you’re probably just avoiding and you don’t want to avoid.

**John:** So, the solutions you’re describing, it almost sounds like you’re really talking about – you’re reframing what the problem is. It’s basically you’re working and waiting for your brain to come to a place where it is reframing the situation. Basically change the context so you can actually see like, oh, these are actually the ways these things could line up. This is what the – basically forgetting my original expectations about what needed to happen here so you can actually approach it with the things you actually have and what is going to work for the pieces that you have.

**Craig:** It’s exactly correct. It’s exactly right. We usually end up in this space because we have falsely determined that a bunch of things are givens. And they’re not. Sometimes most of them are given but some of them can change in pretty dramatic ways. And suddenly, it’s so interesting, like when you’re trying to solve these problems some of the, we’ll call them the grindy non-solution solutions, seem like they’ll be a lot of work. But you’re willing to do it to make the ache go away.

Then you come up with the real solution. The real solution is way more writing and it’s much less work.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because it’s correct. And it’s actually a joy. That’s how you know.

**John:** Great. All right, let’s tackle some listener questions. Aaron wrote in to ask, “How old is too old? After working in digital media in New York I recently moved to LA to find an entry level job as a writer’s PA or a writer’s assistant. Although I have some contacts in the industry I did not have any gigs locked in. And now with COVID my chances of landing such a job this year or even next seem slim. I’m 25 years old and I know many people trying to break into the industry start their careers by working in these assistant jobs.

“That said, I’ve also heard that once you’re approaching your mid-to-late 20s it’s harder and harder to find these opportunities as people start wondering why you’re 28 and begging to be a PA for example. Basically my question is is it already too late for me to take this path breaking into the industry? Or should I start thinking about other ways in? And how necessary is assistant experience to foster a successful career in entertainment?”

**Craig:** My god.

**John:** Yeah, I know. I have a bit of “my god” in me too.

**Craig:** I mean, what has happened in our world where somebody who is 25 is like I’m over the hill. No, Aaron. Look, how old is too old? 112. Death.

You’re not too old. Objectively speaking in no way, shape, or form, in any hallway, in any building in Hollywood is 25 years too old, unless you’re talking about who is going to be playing a nine-year-old character on television. So, look, yes, tough times. And anybody that – I’ve also heard, he says, “I’ve heard that once you’re approaching your mid-to-late 20s it gets harder.” Who told you this?

**John:** [laughs] Yeah. Some grizzled 29-year-old.

**Craig:** Right. My god. Nobody knows a goddamn thing. Remember, Aaron, nobody knows anything. Nobody knows anything. Nobody knows anything.

**John:** The underline is on the knows.

**Craig:** Knows. Nobody knows anything. Is it harder and harder to find these opportunities? I’ve got to be honest with you. I don’t think so. I don’t know how old PAs are. When I see them I don’t know how old they are. But in my usually they’re in their 20s or early 30s.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Assistants are usually in their 20s or early 30s. I don’t know. I mean, yes, if you’re in your 40s it’s going to be much tougher. People at that point sort of are like, “Look, you’ve been 15-20 years, we’ve had a pretty good look at you.” It’s just like sports, you know. I don’t think you’re making it to this show in this capacity at this point. Maybe think about a different thing.

That’s not, by the way, different than writing or anything that’s purely creative that way. But in terms of production work and stuff like that, yeah, I think it’s a reasonable question. But, no, 25. Come on. No. No.

Look, if you have trouble there may be a series of reasons why. One of them will not be your age.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** Joe in NoHo asks, “A writing partner and I recently optioned a script to a big digital media company that is venturing into making features. We delivered the rewrite and the polish we were contracted to send them. And now they’ve emailed us to ask for the FDX version of the script.” That’s the Final Draft source file. “When we asked why they wanted the FDX they responded they needed it to run breakdowns for budget and casting, etc. We’re kind of split on how we feel about sending an editable version of our script for several reasons. Most of our working writer-director-producer friends say it’s not kosher and it’s disrespectful. But our attorney doesn’t see an issue with it. Thoughts?”

John, where are you on this one?

**John:** I used to have a strong bias – a strong opinion that I’m never going to send them the FDX file because that’s an opportunity for people to rewrite me, to make it easier to rewrite, to make little tweaks and changes to stuff. And so like, no, I’m only going to send in the hard copy or the PDF. And then I made an app called Highland which makes it really, really easy to take a PDF and make it back into an editable file. And so I realized it’s all moot.

They can edit the file if they want to. They can make the FDX. All I’m doing is creating a hassle for them to not give them the FDX. So I will send in the FDX file if they want it. Craig, how are you feeling these days?

**Craig:** The same. Although, yeah. So, Joe, it is a valid thing. There are budgeting and scheduling breakdown software that use the FDX version. They require that. I think you have to ask yourself how much of a protection are you affording yourself if it can be defeated by them spending $100 on a typist? Because that’s really what they could do. They could just say like, “OK, give us the PDF. We’re going to go hand it to a temp who is going to spend four hours just touch typing your thing into Final Draft.” That’s literally what – that’s the big obstacle that you’ve thrown up for them. It’s not an obstacle at all.

What you need to do is just make sure – make clear – that this is the writing I did. And since you have an attorney the attorney is wise enough to know that this is really not something that comes up a lot. Especially if you’re working with a reputable company. A big digital media company has concerns about liability. They’re not going to want to…

If you’re dealing with some rat, you know what I mean? Like some, I don’t know, fringe sleazebag then I guess. But you’re not. So, not a problem.

**John:** Yeah. There was one studio executive at a studio that is no longer a studio.

**Craig:** I know exactly who you’re talking about.

**John:** [laughs] Who was notorious for just like, you know, typing up scenes and pretending that the current writer wrote it.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And that’s a situation where not ideally want to give them your FDX file. But you know what?

**Craig:** It couldn’t stop him from doing it anyway.

**John:** It wouldn’t have stopped him one bit.

**Craig:** Is he still around?

**John:** He’s still around.

**Craig:** OK. I’ll have to ask you off-the-air where he landed. OK, well anyway, we had an answer for you, Joe, which is nice. Do you want to take Jordan’s question?

**John:** Yeah. Jordan asks, “I wondered if you and Craig had any thoughts about when to put a project aside or even start anew? I’ve just hit a point in my pilot script where I realize things aren’t working. It’s too convoluted. I need to simplify. And I was 45 pages in. So it’s disheartening that I even got this far into it. I wish I realized earlier that there were issues. Something I missed in development I guess.

“Is there anything that raises a red flag for you or Craig and tells you it’s time to take a step back and either reevaluate the story, the structure of the script?”

So, Craig, this ties in very well with what you just were talking about.

**Craig:** Hopefully this episode does give Jordan some general advice. But Jordan you’re asking kind of a different question than the first question. Right? So the first question is when should I put it aside or when should I start anew. But then you describe a circumstance that requires neither of those things. You don’t need to start anew. If you’re 45 pages in and things aren’t working, if you still love it and there was something about it that does work for you then just you’re rewriting, aren’t you? I mean, yeah, take a moment, hit pause, walk around, think about it. See if you can figure out what exactly isn’t correct.

OK, it’s too convoluted and you need to simplify? Do it. De-convolute. Simplify. Make it elegant. I prefer the word elegant to simple. And, yes, would it have been great if you had realized earlier that there were issues? Yeah. But you didn’t. And guess what? That’s the way it goes.

As time goes on you do start to take some seconds off of your realization time. But you don’t get it down to zero. All of us end up in that situation. You know, just mourn for a day or two and then see if you can tuck back in. If you’ve gotten to a point where you’re like oh my god this is just junk, and actually what I’ve realized by writing 45 pages is that this – I don’t even want to watch this thing in any way, shape, or form, then dump it. Move on.

**John:** Yeah. There’s an episode we did a zillion years ago sort of centered around Marie Kondo and her big thing about how to get rid of things. How to say goodbye to things. And this could be a project where like you just don’t want to write this anymore. It does not interest you. You can basically hold it in your hands, or mentally hold it in your hands and say like thank you for teaching me that I didn’t want to write this kind of story. And then you can set aside and not feel any guilt about having not finished it. Because you did learn something from it. If you are going to abandon it it’s fine. It’s cool. It helped you. It taught you that this is not a thing that you wanted to write and you are a better person for having done that work.

**Craig:** 100%. We’ve got time for one more?

**John:** Yeah. Want to take Matt from London?

**Craig:** Yeah. Matt from London asks, “Hi John and Craig.” Hi Matt. “Longtime fan of the show. Your conversations are such a friendly comfort, particularly in these strange times.”

Glad to be a comfort.

“I have an admin question, specifically about digital organization. I’m hopeless at it. Files and folders are littered in scatter shot locations all over my laptop. It’s a mess. Lockdown seems like a great time to do a bit of spring cleaning. What are some techniques you guys employ to keep your digital houses in order? How can I Marie Kondo my hard drive?” Is he psychic?

**John:** It’s weird that he was referencing that. It’s a thing that happens. I feel like we’ve talked about this on the show other times but I keep one folder per project. I keep everything related to that project in one folder. Those folders all go in Dropbox. It works out really well for me and it’s just not complicated. And so this is a good time to sort of clean up your stuff and get things sort of neatly tucked away. But I’m just a big fan of the folder that is everything related to that project and leave it at that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Folders are your friends, right? So your laptop is essentially telling you here is how you should do it. And what you’ve been doing is not doing that. So why don’t you listen to the laptop, whether it’s Windows or Mac. It’s going to afford you the same opportunity. My basic method is similar to John. I have a folder for each project. Inside that folder all of the files that eventually lead up into the first draft I will then once the first draft is handed in consolidate into a sub-folder called Draft 1. And then all the stuff that is draft two gets into Draft 2.

And then if the show goes into production then I have a production folder and production drafts. And I have casting. Everything gets its own little folder inside of the big folder. And I have one mega folder called Scripts in Progress. That’s where all the stuff I’m working on right now goes. All those folders go in there. And when I’m done with something and it’s no longer in progress it leaves the Scripts in Progress island and it goes off into the Writing Archive folder where all the old stuff lives.

This is not hard to do.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** It’ll take you a couple hours to sort it all through. You’ll feel great. And then once you have that set up as a system you’ll just know to do it next time.

**John:** Absolutely. And once you have that setup you’ll also back up your stuff. So if you’re using Dropbox or whatever cloud service, great. That’s one level of backups. But you’ll also turn on Time Machine. Turn on whatever other system you want to do so you have redundant backups. Stick it on a USB flash drive so you can put those someplace else. Just make sure you hold onto those old drafts because they are useful. And you will want to refer back to them at some point.

**Craig:** John, do you have – a producer emailed me the other day. It was a project that I’d done with them back in I want to say 2001.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** And they were saying, hey, you know, would you be interested in kind of reviving that? And I wasn’t. But I did go and look for it. And it was in an – I think it was in an old Final Draft format that no longer seems to exist.

**John:** FDR. Yeah. I can open up FDR.

**Craig:** I don’t think it was FDR. It was something – I don’t know what it was.

**John:** I don’t think there was anything before FDR. Wow.

**Craig:** You know, I should look at what it is. Maybe it was an FDR. I’ll look and see actually. I’m looking right now.

**John:** Send it over because literally we have these sort of magic cameras and we can smash up nearly anything and convert it.

**Craig:** So the file, I’m looking at the information on it, a kind document. [laughs]

**John:** That’s not–

**Craig:** There’s no extension listed for it.

**John:** Send it over and I’ll get you an update. But I will say it’s 95% likely that Nima can smash it open for us.

**Craig:** I’ve got to be honest with you. I don’t need to smash it up. [laughs] I really don’t need to. But it is interesting that there’s a line where things before that line are sort of–

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** You know, and then there’s the world of PDFs came along at some point and everything theoretically from that point forward is easily readable.

**John:** It’s readable.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Cool. All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. I have two small One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** The first is – so my daughter when she was little she was in gymnastics and when she did gymnastics they would get these medals when they completed like one – they learned how to do the fall, they learned how to do this. And so she ended up with like 60 medals. And she’s now coming on 15 years old.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Doesn’t really care about these medals at all.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Because she was getting six medals a month for this. And so we had all these medals. What do we do with these medals? And so my husband Mike found a place called Sports Medal Recycling. And basically you tell them what you’re sending them and you send them like all your old sports medals and they just recycle them. Because they can’t be done in normal LA recycling.

**Craig:** That’s interesting.

**John:** This place can melt them down and actually reuse them. So, just a good way to sort of get rid of those old things and not feel so guilty about just throwing them in the trash where they’re not being recycled properly.

**Craig:** Ah, well how about that. All right.

**John:** Second thing is something you may enjoy. It’s a video about Pac Man and specifically it focuses on how the ghosts work in Pac Man.

**Craig:** I’ve seen this. Yes.

**John:** And how they follow you. And it’s an actually very clever sort of pre-AI. But the algorithm for why the ghosts chase you the way they do is so much smarter than I would have guessed. And so I’ll put a link to this video on this. Behind the scenes of Pac Man.

**Craig:** Damn ghosts. Early AI enemies those ghosts. Nasty. Hopefully lots of people have seen the Mythic Quest quarantine episode that came out a week or two ago.

**John:** And I noticed the Scriptnotes t-shirt that Craig Mazin’s character wears.

**Craig:** Multiple. I wore two different ones I think. Three different ones possibly. And it was very gratifying to see how well that episode was received. Excellent work by Rob McElhenney and Megan Ganz and David Hornsby who are the primary writers of that episode

One of the things that I was kind of fascinated by was the way we did it. And we had kind of talked through a little bit in our last episode. But there is an app that we were using to actually do the filming.

So we were using iPhone 11s. I guess that’s the latest iPhone?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But it wasn’t just like the regular camera thing. It was an app called FiLMiC Pro. And FiLMiC Pro has like four billion little settings on it and the DP kind of had us make sure that all the things were set correctly. Shutter speeds. And exposure curves. And f-stops. I’m the worst at the DP stuff. I really don’t know anything about it. But it looked really good. It definitely looked better than I think it would have looked otherwise.

And so I thought, oh, well this FiLMiC Pro probably costs – it’s like one of those professional apps that cost like $150. $15. $15 for FiLMiC Pro. And it makes everything look quite a bit better, at least as far as I can tell. So, that’s my One Cool Thing of the week.

**John:** So, Craig, talk us through a little bit more. So, watching the episode all the times – we’re supposed to be looking at your laptop or your computer screens through this thing. So we’re looking that way. So, are you looking at the iPhone that’s doing this? Or is there another laptop? Who else is seeing the feed of that camera at the same time?

**Craig:** So we have – my personal laptop is running Zoom. And then we have this flexible gooseneck thing that props up the iPhone so that the iPhone is pointing – the camera is pointing at me. The screen of the iPhone is pointing back towards the laptop. So the laptop camera is seeing essentially the monitor, right?

**John:** Oh great.

**Craig:** Which was annoying. Because I would have to adjust the laptop screen to give a better view of the monitor, but then also adjust the camera to give them the camera angle they wanted on me. And then readjust the laptop camera to get the better angle.

**John:** So I assumed that it was piping out over the Internet.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** And recording – that would be great if it could. But it did not.

**Craig:** No, no. It was not doing that. So all FiLMiC does is just suck in data at very high resolution with all sorts of little – so one of the nice things is you can create settings profiles. So before they sent us the phones the DP and production staff went through and made sure that FiLMiC Pro was dialed in exactly as they wanted. And then they put it under a Mythic Quest setting.

**John:** [Crosstalk] and such, yeah.

**Craig:** All of that stuff was kind of done, all the color temperatures, and yada-yada. But there were still a few things that we had to do to make sure it was correct. And it did seem to work really well. So, yeah, our deal was we were basically, as actors, we’re looking pretty much directly into the lens. So it’s interesting because I’ve got like my earbuds in and I can hear for instance Ashly Burch who plays Rachel, I can hear her. I can’t really see her, because she’s–

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Blocked. So I can hear her. So I have to talk to her as if she’s the iPhone lens. And one of the just little techniques that Rob said seemed to work really well and so we would do it is leaning in closer to that lens. If we wanted to make a point. But it was an interesting thing to not see someone like that.

**John:** How were you recording sound? Was that recorded separately?

**Craig:** No. It was recorded at the same time. So with sound we were using a Shure mic. The Shure brand. Classic mic brand. And so this particular Shure mic would connect into the iPhone through the lightning port or whatever that port is on the iPhone. I guess now it’s a USB-C port, isn’t it? No, it’s still lightning, right?

**John:** The iPhones are still lightning, yeah.

**Craig:** So it’s stuck in there and then we would point it at us and then there was a separate Shure mic that had the audio department. So then the sound guys had their settings for that. And so–

**John:** And so it was a lav hidden in your shirt? Or where was the microphone?

**Craig:** No. The microphone was on the phone pointing directly back at me.

**John:** I got you.

**Craig:** Because they didn’t want to have us like lav’ing ourselves up and then wiring something back over. The phone was the issue, right? Because they didn’t want to send over a separate recorder. There’s also no syncing.

So in production, you know, people think the clapboard is just for like, clap, but it’s got a crystal in it that’s syncing the audio with the numbers on the slate which the camera is filming. That’s how they sync everything up. So they didn’t have that opportunity here. But FiLMiC Pro understood that it was going to be pulling audio in from the Shure. And, I don’t know, it was all very well thought out.

**John:** Great. And so did you end up clap syncing before you started recording things or not?

**Craig:** You know what? They had us do it like once and I think they gave up. [laughs] Because I think they were like, OK, everybody clapped at once.

**John:** Yeah, it’s hard to do.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, everybody is getting their Zoom audio at slightly different times and so I think they just had to kind of eyeball it.

**John:** I was looking at how Seth Meyers is doing his show from his attic. And he’s just on an iPad. And the iPad is working as the teleprompter and it’s using the front-facing camera on his iPad is what’s recording him. And it works.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, the front-facing camera is generally nowhere near as good as the back camera. But if you want to be able to see yourself you need the front-facing one, right? So that was the weird part of this is we did use the back camera because it’s a far better camera, but you couldn’t see yourself. Which I guess kind of you didn’t want to anyway. I mean, I don’t want to see the monitor when I’m acting. I just want to be able to see the person.

Because, you know, John, I’m a very accomplished actor. [laughs]

**John:** Yes. So as you’re putting yourself on tape for Tevye, that is choices he’s going to make.

**Craig:** I mean, I’ve been around, man. I’ve acted in a show for a number of episodes that is fewer than 10. [laughs]

**John:** That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by John Venable. 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, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

We have t-shirts and they’re great. You can see some of them featured in Mythic Quest. They’re available at Cotton Bureau. There’s a link in the show notes for that.

In the show notes you’ll also find other stuff we talked about. At the site you’ll find the transcripts. We get them up about four days after the episode airs.

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 just about to record on erotic fiction.

**Craig:** Oh my god. That’s awesome.

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

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right. It’s our bonus topic. So back when I was writing Arlo Finch I met with a bunch of the audio book narrators and you can hear some of that on the Launch podcast I did. And one of the things that was interesting as I was talking with them is that most of them use their real names for when they’re recording normal books, but they use special names, alternate names, for when they’re recording erotic fiction. And I just love that the same folks who are reading children’s books are also reading erotic fiction.

And also that there’s still erotic fiction. There’s still a market for erotic fiction.

**Craig:** Is there anything less erotic than the word “erotic,” by the way? It’s such a boner killer.

**John:** When Madonna sang Erotic for her album Erotica she had a good intonation for that, so I get that. But erotic is not–

**Craig:** Nah. Blech.

**John:** But this is maybe an unfair and misleading setup for I really want to talk about meta fiction and fan fiction and sort of that intersection because while there still is erotic fiction even in the age of Pornhub and stuff like that, what’s probably most fascinating is user-generated fiction which is often porny but not always porny. Sometimes it’s slash fiction. But there’s a whole different category of fiction that didn’t exist when we were kids.

**Craig:** This is one of the great bait and switches of my life. [laughs] I can’t believe. I mean, if people are listening at home and they are upset, I just want you to know I am, too.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I was told that we would be reading erotic fiction.

**John:** All right. Well, we can at least talk about erotic fiction.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Craig, did you read erotic fiction at any point in your life?

**Craig:** [laughs] Oh, I think we should ask Sexy Craig that question.

**John:** Sexy Craig, have you ever read erotic fiction.

**Craig:** I’ve lived erotic fiction. I’ve lived it, John. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, I never thought this would happen to me. Yeah, of course I did. I mean, when I was a kid. So the porn that was available when you and I were youngsters–

**John:** Was all printed.

**Craig:** It was all printed. The thing that you would go to – if you were a young straight lad like myself you wanted Penthouse. You didn’t want Playboy. Playboy was too fancy. It was too classy. Hustler was hard to get and really did make you feel like you were wrong. So Penthouse was a fantastic middle ground. It was dirty enough but you didn’t feel like you were just falling apart as a human being.

And Penthouse had this section called Forum. And in Penthouse Forum people would write these stories in.

**John:** Like I never thought it could happen to me, but…

**Craig:** Every single story had some guy who was like I never thought this would happen to me but I went to a laundromat and I was doing my laundry and three women came in and…

Yeah, and they were great. They totally worked. [laughs] They did the job.

**John:** And they were all fake. None of those were actual real things that happened.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** And those were probably the direct predecessor to online sort of porny fiction which was very much imagining scenarios with like famous people. And sort of a newer phenomenon as I was sort of researching this was have you ever heard of Y/N?

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** So Y/N is Your Name. It’s a placeholder for your name. And so it’s fiction where the reader is inserted into the place where we see Y/N.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** So it’s a thing that you see on like Wattpad and other sort of online fiction pieces.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s interesting.

**John:** Yeah. So it’s first person/second person. It’s a weird sort of POV thing. But where you as you’re reading it you’re supposed to put yourself into that position.

**Craig:** Do you actually enter your name so that it is stringed in to a variable?

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Oh, you have to do it in your head.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Huh.

**John:** You have to be your own variable–

**Craig:** Somebody ought to take care of that because that would be way better.

**John:** Yeah. If you’re going to insert your variables.

**Craig:** Do your variables, come on. Come on, man.

**John:** Get yourself some good, fun times. My experience with erotic fiction was, yes, like friends would have Penthouse or Playboy or that kind of stuff, but there were also these trade paperback books that were – they were definitely mostly oriented towards women but there were some that were sort of general purpose or sort of male-oriented.

And they’re weird. I can’t imagine that there would be any market for those kind of things now. But there was a market for everything because that was all you had.

**Craig:** That’s all you had. But I mean you were like in a porn store?

**John:** Yeah. Like in a porn store. So the same kind of place that would ultimately sell videotapes before then would have like cheapy trade paperback kind of–

**Craig:** Ah.

**John:** Fiction like that.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** I’m sure there’s people who collect. Maybe I’ll look for those because I’m sure the artwork was all fantastic.

**Craig:** There’s an interesting just topic of the porn gap for gay boys in the 1980s, right?

**John:** Oh, for sure.

**Craig:** How did – I mean, now it doesn’t exist, right?

**John:** There was Playgirl.

**Craig:** Yeah, there was Playgirl, but like where did you even find Playgirl? It seemed like Playgirl was a myth. You would talk about it but I never saw it.

**John:** Yeah. So but it was hard to find nude male representations outside of medical things. It was literally sort of hard to find that source of stuff. It’s also why I feel in writing and in fiction you found people searching for queer characters even when they really weren’t quite there. Or they were being so carefully coded into what was there. And so you ended up like, you know, if you could see a movie like Maurice, like oh my gosh, there’s actual men kissing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well wasn’t the birth of slash fiction was – maybe I’ve got this wrong – but in my head the first versions of it were homosexual romances between Captain Kirk and Spock.

**John:** Yeah. That’s what I consider the initial slash fiction. I’m sure there’s some other history but that’s what I think popular culture considers the first slash fic.

**Craig:** They should do that. I mean, honestly. Like we’ve had 400 Star Treks. Just do it.

**John:** Go straight for that.

**Craig:** Yeah, just do it. I would watch that.

**John:** So slash fic sort of leads into – what I will segue into talking about like why these exist in print forms. We haven’t seen a lot of them in actual video forms or at least we don’t see this in actual real entertainment that people are making out there. So the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt special I thought was terrific. It was the most recent Netflix special where you get to make choices between who is going to – at decision points you decide should Kimmy do this or should Kimmy do that. And it branches out in sort of a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of way.

And I just feel like there’s more – it’s weird that it’s still such a new place. Because we’ve had videogames for a long time but we haven’t had the ability to do a lot of the kind of stuff you see in print form in terms of user control over the experience in film or video.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, we try. I think part of it is that we just like receiving video. You know, we like receiving it and–

**John:** Passive.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s passive. When you and I were kids they came up with the Choose Your Own Adventure books and they were great. And we enjoyed them. But I mean the stories weren’t good.

**John:** They were not good.

**Craig:** Because the point is they were designed for you to go pick your way through them, but they were kind of disposable. And they weren’t literature. I mean, literature you want to receive. But what is interesting is that there is this whole the world of receiving literature that is interactive in the sense that fans are creating it. So you mention in the show notes here Wattpad. I mean, my daughter is on Wattpad all the time. I mean, she is reading Wattpad constantly.

**John:** Yeah. And I think within Wattpad it is fascinating that there are genres that exist within Wattpad where it’s like how is this a genre and yet it’s such a thriving genre. So there’s like gay military werewolf is like a big Wattpad genre.

**Craig:** Huh.

**John:** Which is kind of great. It’s scratching an itch that you wouldn’t realize that people out there had.

**Craig:** So specific.

**John:** Yeah. And so I do wonder at what point we’re going to be mining some of those if not specific stories then the general universes of those kind of stories to create – where is the True Blood for the people who want to see the military werewolf gay romances?

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, eventually we will be able to have an entire channel. There will be the network, right? We are fragmenting things out beautifully. I mean, Wattpad, my understanding is – the way my daughter explains it to me, and I hope you didn’t just get into trouble, is that it’s not erotic fiction.

**John:** Oh, no, no, no.

**Craig:** It’s fan fiction.

**John:** It’s fan fiction but like–

**Craig:** It’s like romances and stuff.

**John:** And so what I’m saying about military werewolves, it can be romance without being sort of erotic.

**Craig:** They kiss and they’re in love. Yeah. Are they both werewolves or is it like a non-werewolf? Like he’s in the military and sergeant has a secret? And then the moon comes up. Is it like that?

**John:** I don’t know the outer limits. I don’t know what the fans would consider the boundaries of what that would be. But, yes, that feels right and also it feels like the overlap of what a pack would be like and those – that kind of order and the wildness versus the military thing feels right. So, there’s a lot of good space there.

**Craig:** The idea of representing unbridled, unrestrained masculinity in a safe context of a story.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Because werewolves are dangerous and brutal and they bite your face and stuff. But, you know, I feel like either you or I could write the greatest gay werewolf military story on Wattpad. We just come in and just dunk on everyone. [laughs]

**John:** Maybe we already have. Maybe this is all a setup for just this.

Now, I can’t believe I’m this far into the conversation without bringing this up is that of course we look at 50 Shades of Grey. This is an example of exactly what we’re talking about. So this was a woman who wrote fan fiction that hit exactly the right nerve and became an international sensation when it crossed over into popular culture. So, I guess I’m just – I’m reminding us that this has happened before and it seems so right to be happening now.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s interesting. You would think that there would be more. 50 Shades of Grey seemed like it was heralding the beginning of something. But it may occupy a unique space. Because I haven’t seen it happen again in that regard. Unless I’ve missed something major. And it’s been quite some time.

**John:** It has been a long time.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that was fan fiction that was roughly based on–

**John:** On Twilight.

**Craig:** Twilight. Which has werewolves.

**John:** See? It all fits together. I mean, it’s really our calling. It’s what we need to do.

**Craig:** Yeah. Werewolves.

**John:** Werewolves.

**Craig:** Gay werewolves in the military.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Huh.

**John:** It’s what we want.

**Craig:** OK. I’ll do it. I mean, I will. Is there a ranking on Wattpad? I want to be number one.

**John:** Whatever the top things are, that’s what our goal is.

**Craig:** I want to grossly abuse my power as a writer to pointlessly make my way to the top of that chart.

**John:** Ah-ha. Yeah. We’re really nothing if not competitive.

**Craig:** It’s weird. I’m a weirdo. This was great.

**John:** Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

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You can download the episode [here](https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/scriptnotes/454standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here.](https://johnaugust.com/2020/the-empire-strikes-back-with-lawrence-kasdan)

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Today’s episode contains a few bad words and also spoilers for The Empire Strikes Back, which really if you haven’t seen The Empire Strikes Back? That’s crazy. You should see that movie. Enjoy.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** And my name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 452 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program it’s a deep dive into The Empire Strikes Back, looking back at how this 1980 sequel to Star Wars works on a script level and a story level. To help us do that we are joined again by screenwriter Larry Kasdan who not only wrote Empire and other Star Wars films, but also Raiders of the Lost Ark, Body Heat, The Bodyguard, Big Chill, and so many more movies it’s just exhausting. Welcome back Lawrence Kasdan.

**Lawrence Kasdan:** Thank you. Glad to be back. I love this podcast.

**Craig:** We’ve arranged things so that you can see into everybody’s room. You requested that you could see into people’s rooms.

**Lawrence:** Some of them have stymied me there with their glossies.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, a few of these people have head shots up perhaps hoping to be the next Indiana Jones or something.

**John:** We are doing this live on Zoom. We love to do live shows for the Writers Guild Foundation. This is a live show for the Writers Guild Foundation, but instead of being in a big theater with a bunch of people around us we are staring into living rooms and bedrooms and other rooms of people here on Zoom. Thank you to the Writers Guild Foundation for putting this together. Thank you everyone who came. We have 200 and some people in this Zoom room watching us live.

**Craig:** On the way to 500 I believe.

**John:** That’s pretty exciting. Now, Larry we’ve had you on the show before. You were a guest on Episode 247. That was way back in 2016. A different lifetime. We were talking about Raiders. We were talking about the Star Wars movies you were working on. Today on this program we want to do a deep dive where we really focus in on one project and really the story and script behind that project. We’ve done this for The Little Mermaid, we did this for Raiders. And being the 40th anniversary of Empire Strikes Back we really want to talk about the process of getting from, OK, we’re doing a sequel to Star Wars to the movie that we saw.

And to do that we have you, but we also have your handwritten pages from that script beforehand. So at some points during this video I’m going to be showing you some of those pages and we’re going to talk through scenes that look like the final scenes in the movie and scenes that are very, very different. So I’m excited to get into this.

Lawrence Kasdan, talk us through how you became involved with The Empire Strikes Back. So, Star Wars was of course a phenomenon, but when was your first involvement with Empire?

**Lawrence:** I had just written Raiders of the Lost Ark and it had taken me about six months. And I took the script up to George, handed it over to him in a very ceremonial way. And he said, “Let’s go out to lunch.” And he said, “I’m in real trouble on the next Star Wars. Would you write it?” And I said don’t you want to read Raiders first? He said, “I’m going to read it tonight. If I don’t like it I’ll take back this offer.” But he did like it and almost immediately – I had to have a break – but a few weeks later we started this and wrote Empire very quickly.

**Craig:** And part of the reason that he was talking to you was because the first writer on Empire, Leigh Brackett, was pretty sick and did end up passing away. So you guys, even though you’re co-credited, you don’t really overlap in the creation of Empire.

**Lawrence:** No. And I wish I had met her because she’s a legendary writer, both science fiction and screenwriting, and written great westerns which I love. She’s got a credit on The Big Sleep, one of my favorite movies. So she was a giant. But I never met her because she was hired to do it and she became very sick. She handed in a draft which I maybe saw once. But when George made this proposition to me at lunch she had already passed away. He said there’s a thousand people working in England and we have no script.

**Craig:** When we hear someone say, or imagine ourselves on the receiving end of, “Hey, do you want to write Raiders of the Lost Ark,” it’s already nerve-racking. But Raiders of the Lost Ark wasn’t a thing when you wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark. But Star Wars was the thing of all things.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**Craig:** Did you feel anxious? Were you terrified? Or were you like, meh.

**Lawrence:** I was a little bit tired from finishing Raiders. I was worried about their reaction. So I was in kind of a haze. And when he said, you know, will you come on and help me with Empire you can’t really be shocked. At that point I had been trying to get into the business so long and had seen enough things. You know that once you get hired then things start to work. It’s murder to get hired. And no one wants to hire someone they’ve never heard of.

The second they have a decent credit everybody wants to hire you, even though they don’t know if you’re good or bad.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Lawrence:** So I sort of wasn’t surprised. He’s in trouble. He knows I just delivered a script. Maybe—

**John:** Maybe you’re the guy. So, we got to read through the transcript of Raiders, and so the conversations you were having with Lucas and Spielberg about the intentions going into Raiders, was there an equivalent session with you and George Lucas and other folks involved about what the goals were going to be going into Empire? The sequel to the surprise hit movie Star Wars. What were those initial conversations about in terms of intention, and hopes, and things you wanted to see this movie do?

**Lawrence:** My first real conversation was in private with George. And when I had had my little break and I came back up to the ranch and we were talking alone. And he said, “You know, Darth Vader is Luke’s father.” And I said, no shit. I thought that was just fantastic. And it was clear to me that that meant the second movie was going to be very different from the first. And you must know that I love the first one. I love The New Hope. I think it’s one of the great movies. And it changed the world.

But part of its fun and why it was irresistible to people is it was so light and fast. And you never stopped for a second to talk about character or to have very much intimate scenes. There are a couple things if you get three lines between two characters it’s a big deal. But everything around it is perfect and I learned over the years with George that that’s his greatest desire to move fast and entertain people. And anything else is gravy as far as he’s concerned.

Well that was not my point of view on writing. That’s not the things I had been writing. And I could tell when he told me about Darth and Luke that that opened up a whole different kind of movie than the first one. So without taking anything away from the first one, which to me is the greatest Star Wars movie, this was going to be a different animal. And he seemed to be receptive to that. And, you know, for the next year or whatever it was as they went into production and I was around sometimes it was clear that there was always this slight frisson, a tension between my desire to have the characters to be a little more – have a little more depth, to let the love scenes play a little bit, to let Yoda’s philosophy be heard. And always George’s instinct to go fast, or faster, faster.

And looking at the movie now I think it really combines those things pretty well. And I’m amazed by how much action there is in it. And how well it works. And I’m amazed that there is a chance to know these characters. And the actors embraced that idea, of course, that now they had something more to play.

**Craig:** There’s a moment early on in the film that I think hearing you talk embodies that for me. It’s a fascinating combination of let’s call it George and Larry. There’s a classic Campbellian story trope of the call to action. And we all know that George was kind of student of Joseph Campbell. And so early on in Empire Strikes Back there’s a call to action. Obi-Wan appears like a vision to Luke and says, “You’re going to go to Dagobah and meet up with Yoda and become a Jedi knight.” Classic. And it’s such a fascinating kind of your mentor reappearing and giving you this interesting challenge. At the same time he’s freezing to death and he’s just escaped from this monster that beat him up. And he’s going to die. And I remember even as a kid feeling like this is what movies do better than anything is they give you two stories at once and it makes sense on top of each other.

I remember just almost laughing at the thought that ghost Obi-Wan didn’t give a damn, which meant he was going to be OK.

**Lawrence:** Meant he’s going to be OK. You know, it’s a trap that people can fall into that maybe this character isn’t going to live, you know. But as soon as Ben tells him what his next chapter is going to be you know that he’ll be OK. Now you pretty much knew that anyway. This is Luke Skywalker. And you know that Han Solo is already looking for him. So you think [Obi pretty good]. But it’s an actual release of pressure like in a steam pipe.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Now, talk us through this early part of the process. You’re having these conversations with George. Was there an outline document? At what point were things being written down in terms of your marching orders and this is what you’re going to try to write?

**Lawrence:** Yeah, I don’t remember in detail, but I know that George – and he was under such pressure. And Leigh had passed away. And he got something down. You know, that’s a great habit to have. Get something down so you can talk about it. And George was a great one for doing that.

So I’m sure that we worked somewhat from his notes. And then very quickly Irvin Kershner became involved, the director. And he was an enormous influence on everything because he was such an unusual, eccentric character. He had actually taught George at USC briefly. He had made New York gritty human adult dramas before that. And when his name was announced to do the second Star Wars people were amazed. You couldn’t understand it.

But Irvin was the kind of guy, he would come in and just embrace. There’s a lot of his qualities in – all of us I think in Yoda. If you’re going to do something just do it. And it didn’t matter that he made The Eyes of Laura Mars or Loving or whatever. He was going to do this now.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** And it was a big change for him, a big break for him in a way because it was a big expensive movie that he’d never made.

**Craig:** Well there’s something that’s happened culturally that I’m kind of fascinated by. In your mindset as a writer when you come on something like that you know you’re writing the sequel to the biggest movie of all time. It’s this cultural touchstone for every generation. But it’s still a time where a studio might say we’re making another Star Wars and everybody goes, “Great,” and they’re not particularly freaked out by the fact that somebody has been chosen as a director and this guy who has never written anything we know has been chosen as the writer.

So there’s a certain freedom.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**Craig:** And it strikes me that now if there’s a property, a franchise that kind of exemplifies a kind of total scrutiny it’s Star Wars. And you’ve been involved in Star Wars since. I mean, you worked on what is it, I lose track of the numbers, on eight? Seven and nine? Is that what you worked on? Seven and nine.

**Lawrence:** I worked on seven.

**Craig:** Seven. And you see the hoopla.

**Lawrence:** And then we did the separate Solo movie.

**Craig:** And then you did the Solo movie.

**Lawrence:** So that was four of these that I was involved with.

**Craig:** Did you have any sense at the time that you were kind of working under an interesting shroud of anonymity even though the property was so famous and global?

**Lawrence:** Absolutely. And you know Skywalker Ranch was a heavily secured area. When people got into Skywalker Ranch they felt grateful. The same way I feel every time I drive onto a movie lot. I’m sort of surprised that they let me in and I’m OK and they’re going to tell me where to park. That’s a big deal. Because for years I looked at the gates to studios and just wanted to get in there.

But Skywalker was much more intense than that. And people did not wander around Skywalker. And we were working up there in Marin and it was private. And I didn’t write up there. I wrote at home in LA. But when we had any of these meetings we would go up to the ranch. And this group of people, Kershner for sure, and then some other people would join, producers, Gary Kurtz occasionally. But Gary was really focused in England. He is the producer and he had produced Star Wars. But things were really rolling in England and so he wasn’t much involved in the story.

**John:** Now how early in the process did you know that you were really going to follow two very different threads? So you’re going to have Luke going off with Yoda and his whole quest line and you’re going to have Han and Leia and Lando Calrissian. How early in the process did you know that those two storylines would be separate for most of the movie?

**Lawrence:** I knew it immediately because that happens in the first movie. You know, the secret and the fun of Star Wars is it’s never one story happening alone. There’s always somewhere to cut to. When you get bored with the scene you just cut to the other storyline and it gives you an enormous burst of energy. Now suddenly you’re back to the other thing. Maybe the other thing, the one you were on, is playing itself out, you’re out of ideas, and now you have a whole chance to make a different movie right butted up against it.

And there’s a lot of that in Raiders, although it’s mostly from Indy’s point of view. But Star Wars, the first Star Wars was like that, back and forth. And even when they were together they get split up in the Death Star. And you’re just cutting back and forth. And so I knew going in this is going to have the same contouring.

**John:** All right. So we’re going to start looking at your handwritten pages and your edits along the way. But I’m really curious about the actual physical process of writing a screenplay back in, this would be 1978, ’79, ’80. And so this is probably before Final Draft at that point. What were you actually writing on? Were things being typed up–?

**Craig:** Or computers.

**John:** Was this done on a computer? Was this done on something else? What was the actually writing at that time?

**Lawrence:** I had always been a terrible typist. And that’s what some people here won’t even know what a manual typewriter is, or an electric typewriter, but I never mastered it. And so I was always making corrections with White Out. It was a nightmare for me, because I was never a good typist.

And so I hand wrote everything I did up until Grand Canyon. My wife and I did Grand Canyon. That’s when word processing really came in around 1990. And I was thrilled. Because now when you made mistakes it was very easy to correct them. And it changed everything.

But for every movie I did before that I was dependent on a typist who was the middle person between my handwriting, which you’re about to see, which is not good handwriting. But I have everything – all those movies – in handwritten pencil on long legal sheets. And it’s sometimes amazing to me how few changes I made.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Lawrence:** And I do think it gets to the heart of something that’s very important to me which is there’s a completely different feeling about writing longhand than there is working on a computer. And you’re very careful. You don’t want to go back and rewrite that whole paragraph. You can mark out some stuff, but basically you’re thinking about every sentence and every word very carefully. More like a novelist would do. And then you move on.

And, you know, at the end of the day – I’m left-handed which is a terrible thing to be when you’re a hand-writer – and my hand would be cramped and I could not even move it. But Raiders of the Lost Ark, Empire Strikes Back, Big Chill, they all exist handwritten in pencil on long legal pads.

**Craig:** Well it’s the difference in an analogous way to the way we used to edit on old Moviolas where you cut the film and you spliced the film together. And that’s obviously with the advent of nonlinear editing that goes away. And there is no such thing as a semi-permanent cut. Nor is there any more tolerance for the little glitch bits that used to be fairly common in the way that things used to be edited together.

**Lawrence:** And the impact on the art itself, whatever you’re doing, is enormous. You know, I often think, oh, I would like to work that way again, you know. Because not being able to change everything immediately, not being able to lift out paragraphs and sentences and move them around is completely different. So you’re committing emotionally and in your story to that thing it took you so long to hand-write.

And as you go through the process and people said, well, we want this to be different, and different, then there are typists who come in and it’s not quite as imposing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, thank god you had Gayle. I was looking through these pages and I was like is Gayle, was she like one of the producers that I didn’t know? Because you’re like, “Gayle,” and it seemed like you were talking to her like, Gayle, forget this stuff. This is no good. I’m so sorry I wrote that. This is what matters.

It turns out Gayle is the typist.

**John:** Yeah. And so I’ve been a hand-writer of scenes for a very long time. And so generally first drafts I would write by hand going back to Go and early things. And so Rawson Thurber and Dana Fox, they were typing up all of my pages. And I didn’t not because – I could type really well, but I did really like the fact that I was committing to a thing. And I wasn’t going back and editing stuff. I was writing the next scene and writing the next scene.

One thing I often notice if I start writing on the computer is that I will just keep rewriting those early pages again and again and again and won’t move on. And handwriting is a way to break yourself of that habit.

**Lawrence:** It really breaks – you don’t want to go back. You don’t want to go through that physical thing again. And when people cavalierly say, “Well just change all that,” it’s a much bigger thing. And you’re thinking about it. You’re going back to the pencil. And the same thing as Craig said, in editing the way movies are edited is completely changed by the way we now edit.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** Let’s take a look at this draft. And so if you’re watching this live you’re going to see this on your screen. We’re going to take it over. If you are listening to this episode after the fact we’ll have the slides as a link so you can see what it is that we are talking about with this. But this is an early draft and you can tell us when we would have started seeing this. So everyone on their screen should see, we’re going to start with Scene 8. This is your left-handed in pencil writing version of The Empire Strikes Back.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**John:** So, what are we seeing here? This is–?

**Lawrence:** And this was very early on in the process. It’s at the beginning of the movie. You’re in the Hoth which is like the first act of the movie. And I get everything – when I was handwriting all my originals and everything I always did it in sequence. It’s not necessary to do it that way, but I always did. I wanted to know what was behind me. I never wanted to jump ahead.

So I wrote Empire in sequence as I had done everything else. And so this was very early in the process. And because I was writing so fast, this is, you know, a few days in, and we’re in the Hoth, you know, in the corridors, which is an incredible set that I was lucky enough to visit. I had barely been on a movie set before. And then to have my first real experience be in the ice corridors of Hoth that was pretty amazing.

**John:** So, Craig, should we take a read through this for our listeners at home? I’d love to hear sort of both the scene description and this dialogue which is so iconic. So this is a long scene between Leia and Han. Really establishing the beginning of what their arc is going to be over the course of this movie. So, Scene 8, INT. ICE CORRIDOR. Han strides down a corridor covered from the ice. Leia follows quickly, agitated. Behind them, unnoticed, the arm of a Wampa Ice Monster suddenly detaches from a seemingly solid section of the wall.

Leia says – so do you want to be Leia or Han? Craig, you choose?

**Craig:** Oh, I want to be Leia, obviously.

**John:** Go for it.

**Craig:** Captain Solo.

**John:** Han steps in the quiet corridor and I can’t even read the next word. Going towards Leia.

**Lawrence:** And turns to face Leia.

**John:** Turns to face Leia. Thank you.

**Craig:** Captain Sol—Han. Why are you leaving us now?

**John:** That bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell reminded me of what I’ve got to do.

**Craig:** Does Luke know?

**John:** He’ll know when he gets back. Don’t give me that look, sweetheart. Every day more bounty hunters are – help me with the word?

**Craig:** Searching.

**Lawrence:** Searching.

**John:** Searching for me.

**Craig:** [laughs] Is this how it went on that day? We need Gayle.

**John:** If I don’t pay off Jabba soon – ah, Jabba – there’ll be too many to stop. Remotes – help me out there?

**Lawrence:** Gang killers and who knows what else.

**Craig:** Oh, Gank killers. Now just to pause for a second. Do we ever hear about the Gank killers? I don’t think we heard about the Gank killers in the movie.

**Lawrence:** You know, I’m the worst person to ask. And this has come up many times over the years because when you do gatherings or you’re promoting the movie or you’re at Comic Con people ask you questions. They’re very detailed. They devoted their life to knowing these details and I’ve forgotten. I’ve gone on to other things. So I’m a terrible reference. Pablo Hidalgo who is the head of the history of Lucas Film, he knows everything.

**Craig:** I feel like Gank killers didn’t make it.

**John:** Yeah. And who knows what else.

I’ve got to get that price off my head while I still have a head.

OK, so he’s setting up the danger for Han. Important in this movie, but especially important for future movies. Leia says–

**Craig:** Han, I need you here. The Rebellion needs you.

**John:** Oh, so it’s the Rebellion.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Not you?

**Craig:** Me? [laughs]

**John:** My little princess. I’m afraid you don’t know yourself very well.

**Craig:** What do you mean?

**John:** When I met you I thought you were not only beautiful but brave. Now I see you’re only beautiful.

**Craig:** I fear nothing in this galaxy.

**John:** You’re afraid of your own feelings.

**Craig:** And what are they? Please, tell.

**John:** And the parenthetical here is “flip,” so just like–

**Craig:** I thought I nailed that.

**John:** I thought you did, too. But I want to make sure for the folks who can’t read this.

You want me to stay because you care for me.

**Craig:** I respect you, of course. You’re a bold fighter. Maybe not the brightest.

**John:** No, you’re highness, those aren’t the feelings I’m talking about.

Leia looks at him. She knows exactly what he means. But pretends to understand only now. She laughs.

**Craig:** You’re imagining things.

**John:** Han steps closer and Leia instinctively steps back. She’s almost against the wall.

**Craig:** Whoever – if anyone had ever been inspired to write slash fiction about you and me, this is it, man. It’s happening now.

**John:** This is the John/Craig slash fiction people have been craving for 450 episodes.

**Craig:** This is hot. Keep going.

**John:** And I cannot even begin to describe what a terrible job I’m doing of this dialogue.

**Lawrence:** You’re fine. You seem fine.

**John:** All right.

**Lawrence:** When we did our last one on Scriptnotes and what you guys have probably done more than anyone in the world, you’ve created a library of reference about screenwriting that never existed before and it’s more voluminous than any book you can get or anything. And it’s a wonderful resource for people. And what I’m interested in talking about whenever you want to and whenever you can is the writing itself. And this scene that we’re in the middle of, in the corridor, is a perfect example, it’s in the movie. As you say, it sets up a lot of things. In fact, nothing really changes, which is her denying her feelings toward him. His being very cocky but uncertain. And that plays throughout the movie.

But what interests is me is there’s always two, three, four things happening at once. So that when he starts toying with her about your feelings, she denies it. But it’s clear from Carrie Fisher and from Harrison that she’s very much in love with him. She’s very drawn to him. And all her denials are baloney. She’s playing a role as a princess.

That kind of stuff is so rich, you know. If the audience – it doesn’t have to be explained to them at all.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** You just know. They look at human faces and they say he’s not telling her the whole truth. She’s not telling him the whole truth.

**Craig:** Correct. And it sets up a pattern. Because a great scene, and you know, I’m obsessed with relationships really. We talk about character and I’m always thinking really what we mean is relationships. Because that’s the only way character makes any sense. And that scene as delightful as it is, that kind of meeting, these two people recontextualizing their relationship, sets up a pattern that then influences and enhances every scene to follow between them. Because they will repeat this pattern over and over until he kind of gets it right.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**Craig:** Which is wonderful.

**Lawrence:** And she is softening every time, too.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Lawrence:** It works on her.

**Craig:** And just like with Luke in the snow, dying, and Obi-Wan showing up and saying while you’re dying I have the exposition for you, they’re going to have this in the belly of a creature that they thought was really an asteroid while they’re hiding from the TIE fighters. So these layers of things make everything better.

**Lawrence:** And, you know, one thing I was reminded looking at the movie is there are two scenes about he’s going to split off and leave the Rebellion and she can’t rely on him and what kind of man is he. And what happens is they get into the Millennium Falcon and they’re together for the rest of the movie.

**Craig:** Right. Right.

**Lawrence:** So all this splitting up turns out to be irrelevant.

**Craig:** That’s another kind of writing question I had for you. There’s a moment that you know about as the writer that nobody else knows about. And sometimes those are kind of the juiciest moments. You know that in Hoth, shortly before they get wind that the Empire is about to attack, that Luke and Leia are going to have the last discussion they’re going to have until the end of the movie. They’re not going to see each other again. And you know that. And sometimes I think writers don’t take enough advantage of the secrets they know that the audience doesn’t know. Because there are things going on in there that just make it all so much more interesting because you’re aware of that.

**Lawrence:** Yes. And that to me is a good part of the fun of screenwriting.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Lawrence:** Because that’s always happening. If it isn’t happening then the scene is probably flat. The scene is probably too simple. It’s always – and the audience, which is so fast, it doesn’t need anything explained really. They get it from one look from an actor. And a lot of stuff is totally redundant when you say it. So they know, oh, these are people and they have mixed feelings about each other. And maybe he knows something she doesn’t know. That’s what gives it all the juice.

**John:** Going back to the scene with Han and Leia that we were just reading through, you talk about in the first movie Lucas was so obsessed with speed and just getting through stuff, this scene actually has more banter than probably any scene in the first movie does and more sort of romantic comedy kind of banter. And yet while we could see some of that stuff with a look, you also need those characters to be in a space and actually enjoying it and you need to see them playing the sport. Because we need to see them hitting back and forth.

**Lawrence:** You know, in A New Hope it starts, but because it was moving so fast and because it was a certain kind of idea of what a movie should be it never pauses to let that play. So they get two strokes and they’re out. And they’re wonderful strokes and people quote those lines for 45 years now. And they’re wonderful. But you really want a little more. What happens after she has that quick comeback?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So let’s talk about the relationship between Han and Leia and also between Luke and Leia. Because coming off of the first movie we could anticipate that this was going to be a love triangle. And it seems that that was maybe the initial conception of it. But in your movie it’s not that. So at what point was there a conversation about sort of what Luke and Leia’s relationship is going to be? And what point did you know what that was going to be like?

**Lawrence:** You know, there’s a gray area, a mystery area whenever you talk to George because to hear him tell it, and I think it’s true, he always thought this would be a trilogy. That there was more to the story. On the other hand, if Star Wars had failed there would have been no trilogy. So he wanted it as a standalone. No one really believed there was going to be a sequel to it. When it was coming out no one had any idea what it was going to be.

But once this enormous success happened, it changed everything in George’s life. Not only his acquisition of land and ILM and so on, but it also changed his attitude about what the first one was. And he can find the seeds of everything in the first one. And they’re there because that was his instinct. That was the story he wanted. But they’re not the details. And I honestly believe that he didn’t know about Leia and Luke when he was starting this.

**Craig:** Yeah. It doesn’t seem like it, but that’s OK. I mean, one of the benefits that it seems to me you had from a writing point of view, and I’d love to hear your feelings about this, is that because A New Hope was so compressed in its characterizations and sentiment and relationships that unlike a lot of sequels where you are trying to squeeze a little bit more blood out of something that was plenty bloody to begin with and isn’t so much anymore, you got to kind of create the real relationships. Like I’ve often said one of the reasons that my wife ultimately married me is because–

**Lawrence:** I’ve wondered so much about this.

**Craig:** Yeah. So here it is. But she is a huge Empire Strikes Back fan. And in particular when Han Solo says to Leia, “I think you like me because I’m a scoundrel.” You know, I was her scoundrel. And there was something about where in New Hope, and again an amazing movie, there’s no space for that stuff at all. It’s just sarcasm and fly boy and let’s get out of here.

So you had kind of a unique opportunity with the sequel that I don’t think many people ever get.

**Lawrence:** Absolutely. And that applies to everything in Empire because walking into that room with George and hearing about Vader you say, oh, this is going to give us room to do anything we want. And these characters who were so amusing and charming and fast in the first one, now let’s see who are they? And that was a great invitation. And the same thing applied to the story, because his resources were so much greater now. Every effect didn’t take forever. There were millions of people working on it which there hadn’t been before. So everything got more complicated.

**Craig:** You had this writing challenge of writing for a puppet. And–

**John:** We need to get into Yoda, yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. We have to talk about Yoda because of all the stuff that – and I don’t know if we’re able to show–

**John:** We think we’ve got it fixed. I think we’ve got it fixed without people being able to hijack us. We’re going to try it.

**Craig:** OK. Try. If they do I’ll freak out again. But of all the stuff that’s handwritten and in this, it seems to me that the Yoda stuff is probably the closest to 1:1. So much of it is there. And it’s kind of goose-bumpy to see and maybe because Yoda was voiced by Frank Oz but not an actor/human being, the dialogue just carried through more linearly from your left hand to the screen. But it’s a remarkable challenge to write for this – it’s not just a new character. It’s not a person that you can even imagine.

**Lawrence:** I know. When George told me there would be a character who played that role in the story and he didn’t know what it would look like yet and he wasn’t sure about what it knew and what it could do, I was excited. Very excited. And he said this is someone who we’ve never seen. We didn’t see in the first one. And I need for him to talk in a new way. Need to have it be very distinctive how he talks. But more importantly and this – both George and I love Akira Kurosawa. The Kurosawa movies, which are the greatest movies in the world, and he is my favorite director, they are full of characters like this.

In fact, the first Star Wars, A New Hope, is practically a mirror of Hidden Fortress in that there’s two little droids, except they’re human beings, and so on. But all through the Kurosawa universe there is a mentor character and there is the son character. There is the innocent and the experienced and the wise and the naïve. And when we were talking about Yoda it was clear that this is a guy that’s in Seven Samurai, my favorite character in Seven Samurai, which is Shimada, the leader of the samurai. And he always has a different reaction to what happens in the scene than everybody else in the scene.

He always sees the big picture and his slower to react because he’s figured it out. And the brilliant thing, and this is good for any writer, is our introduction to him is a beautiful ballet [unintelligible] of violence. You know, it’s approached so calmly and he calmly cuts his samurai [nada] and it takes a long time.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** And then it bursts into action and it’s over in seconds. And so you know before he starts being the wise patient one he is also this incredible samurai and physically awesome.

Kershner was such a different person than George. And that created this wonderful friction between them. And if you look at Kershner’s movies you’ll see a lot more run up to the joke. Run up to the gag. Run up to the action. He takes his time. And George likes to just go, go, go. And he ceded it correctly. But it makes all the difference in the world when you look at a movie how quickly you get to the [unintelligible].

**Craig:** Yeah. Well that’s, I mean, Yoda is a great example of Star Wars kind of taking its time. And so we have here the – and so this is a combination of typed and handwritten which is wonderful. So, this is INT. Creature House. So you called him creature. This is a question that we get all the time. When a character becomes revealed, their identity is revealed, what do you call them at first? Well, Yoda’s name was creature. INT. Creature House. The inside of the house is very plain but cozy. Everything is in the same scale as the creature. The only thing out of place in the miniature room is Luke who is cramped by the four-foot ceiling. He sits cross-legged on the floor of the living room.

The creature is in an adjoining area, which serves as the kitchen, cooking up some incredible meal. The stove is a steaming hodgepodge of pots and pans. The wizened little creature scurries about chopping this, shredding that, and showering everything with exotic herbs and spices. He rushes back and forth putting platters on the table in front of Luke.

**John:** Good this will taste. Wait and see, wait and see.

**Craig:** Luke looks around rather amused by his surroundings.

Well, it smells good anyway.

**John:** Why wish you to become a Jedi Knight?

**Craig:** Because of my father, I guess.

The creature gives Luke a questioning look.

My father was a Jedi.

**John:** Yes, yes. But why wish you?

**Craig:** I know it was meant to be.

The creature seems irritated, defensive.

I feel it, that’s all.

**John:** Think you Yoda will be satisfied with that?

**Craig:** Yes…I think so. Yoda will understand. Where is he anyway?

**John:** Very near.

**Craig:** When will I see him?

**John:** When you allow yourself to see.

**Craig:** The creature places a plate of steaming food in front of Luke. The young warrior studies the creature a long time through the steam thinking. Suddenly he understands.

You…you are Yoda?

**John:** That is my name. Why so surprised are you?

**Craig:** So let’s pause for a second. This is not how it works in the movie. And we were talking about this before. And so Larry I want to – this is one of these areas where the movie did a much sort of compressed, faster reveal of Yoda as Yoda. We hear Ben’s voice. Luke hears Ben talking. Then he realizes, oh wait a second, you’re Yoda.

But this was a different conception. And talk us through why this is a preferred way of doing it for you.

**Lawrence:** For me?

**Craig:** Yes.

**Lawrence:** Because the mood and the pace that all the Yoda stuff has up to this point, when he first encounters him out in the swamp, when he’s making the dinner, it’s all about this, which dovetails perfectly with Yoda’s character, which is you do one thing at a time and you take your time and you don’t rush anything. And it’s quiet. It’s very quiet. This is after you’ve seen a third of the movie already practically. And it’s been bang, bang, bang, and fast, fast, fast, and monsters and rocket ships. And here is this quiet place.

In fact, even up to the point where Luke splits off from Han and Leia at Hoth it’s different from that moment on for Luke, for Luke’s story. Theirs continues very much in the same tone.

**Craig:** Inside of this you are like the scene in the movie contrasting the essential problem Luke has, which is impatience, which is immaturity, which is therefore connected to fear, which leads to hate, which leads to dark. It’s all there in him being a young man who just—

**Lawrence:** And in fact even with this beginning that you’re talking about that never made it to the movie that is where it goes very quickly. It goes to a discussion about his patience. It is Yoda interrogating Ben in the after why does he believe in this guy. He seems so impatient. He seems so young. He seems so callow. And Ben is defending him. So that’s always, for writing again, this is a good rule which is when two other characters are talking about someone it reveals all three of them.

**Craig:** Right. Right. That’s a great way of putting it.

**John:** Larry, tell me about the choice of how Yoda speaks? Because it’s so distinctive. We’re so familiar with that now, but you had to come up with that. And so what was the process of getting his verbs inverted and what his voice was going to be like?

**Lawrence:** I think it was what I could think of.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Lawrence:** And it immediately got a positive response from George. And we never turned back. And I don’t know why. A part of it has to do, you know, it’s sort of Shakespearian in that you don’t start with the subject. There’s that. It slows things down. You have to worry through the sentence to understand. And then that way you’re paying more attention.

You know, it’s funny, in this pandemic we’re in a lot of people are trying to meditate and it give them some relief in a stressful day. But when you look at the introductory scenes of Yoda, he might as well be a meditation teacher. What he says to Luke from the time he lands in the swamp is you’re not looking at the thing itself.

**Craig:** Well let’s read that, because this is one of my favorite – I mean, so I’m reading this from your handwriting and this is what Yoda says.

“To become a Jedi takes the hardest work, the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. But you, Skywalker, I have watched for a long time. All your life have you looked away, to the horizon, to the sky. Never your mind on where you were, what you were doing. Adventure, heh,” I’ll add that in. “Excitement, heh. A Jedi craves not these things.”

That’s like, OK, so I just want to say from a sort of writing is magic point of view that’s magic. Because, again, your left hand put that there. And then it sort of went into the puppet and now it’s not just something that everybody knows and shares from a cultural point of view, it is in a weird way a fundamental part of our understanding of Zen, in the west. This is – you kind of gave us Zen through Yoda.

Talk about how – I mean, it’s one thing to say like, look, Yoda is 800 years old or whatever he was and he knew these things. It’s another thing to say that you were not 800 years old and how did you know these things?

**Lawrence:** Well, you know, I was very interested in, and my brother who is very deeply involved in it and from the second I learned some of these precepts. And they resonated for me. Because I was – to this day I have a problem with not doing one thing at a time. I’m always splitting my decision. And so you turn away. You knock things over. You forget why you came in the room. And it’s not just age, which Craig will say. You’re too distracted. The pandemic is an added distraction to a world that was already incredibly distracting. And so when you can focus and do the thing you really want to do, and feel it, and live it, it can be three seconds, but if you really live it and you pay attention to it it changes everything. And I like that speech.

But what’s unusual about that speech is it really goes to the heart of A New Hope and him looking into the distance, wanting to get away from the ranch, the farm. And you know. So the audience knows, because they knew A New Hope perfectly. Yeah, that’s what he was like on Tatooine.

**Craig:** That’s him. That’s him. Yeah. One other thing I’ll mention about this scene that’s sort of legendary, and a sign of how good of a writer you are, and a crystallization of what good writing is is that you have this wise character who is imparting these deep lessons of wisdom and there’s this young man who now understands that this is a wise old guy who is going to help him. And the ghost of his other mentor has appeared. These are all calming, stabilizing things.

And you understand inherently that in a movie, any movie, but particularly this movie that comforting, stabilizing, explanatory scene has to end in the most destabilizing, threatening way possible, which is Luke saying, “I’m not afraid,” and from your left hand Yoda says, “You will be. You will be,” which is terrifying. The freaking eyes go yeah. It’s always terrifying and I say that to my wife all the time as well, because it’s fun. But that to me is the essence of what it means to craft a great scene. You understood that it was going to begin here with a young man who doesn’t even know what this little thing is and it was going to end with that little thing terrifying that young man.

**Lawrence:** I always struggled to look and usually did not find. But you’re looking for the thing at the end of this scene that throws you into the next one, even if it’s different characters.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** You just want to be sling-shotted ahead. And when he says, “You will be,” it opens up the promise of, oh, this movie is going to be cool.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Had you left that scene earlier on a place where Luke was comfortable or at least like was excited about this next step you wouldn’t have had the same energy jumping into the next scene. You would have lost energy on that cut. And instead you gained a lot of energy by ending the scene on that moment.

So let’s jump ahead to Luke being scared and being afraid, which is this final fight with Vader. And he’s cocky in it and then he’s losing to Vader. And then one of the most iconic moments in cinematic history is the revelation that Darth Vader is actually his father.

Craig, let’s you and I look through the pages that lead up to that. But I’m really curious, you know, you say that Lucas told you, oh, Vader is Skywalker’s father – were you always anticipating that the revelation would happen during this fight, during this moment? Did you experiment with other places?

**Lawrence:** You know, when he said that in the sanctity of his office at Skywalker Ranch it was understood that no one was to know this for the next two years.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** And that’s not so easy on a movie. You know, you’ve seen it, how hard it is to keep secure anything. And this was a giant thing that the whole world suddenly would be interested in. So, it was from that moment on never mention it. Never talk about it in public. Never say, you know, in the story conferences. You did not reveal that. And when it came to shooting there were fake pages. And then the very last second it was revealed to the actors.

**Craig:** Right. And a little slightly different here. The way that you reveal it is frankly more subtle I guess is what I would say, from your left hand.

**John:** Yeah, so talking through this, the pages that we’re looking at, it starts in Scene 140 and there’s a Zero-Cold Chamber. Some familiar dialogue here. Some stuff has changed a little bit along the way. And it looks like an addendum page, it’s called Insert A, add to the bottom of Scene 146 or whatever it is. Luke’s sword whistles past Vader and the young warrior is thrown off-balance, his guard down. Vader’s light saber flashes out with deadly skill and cuts Luke’s arm off at the elbow! Luke’s forearm flies away in the wind as the boy himself almost goes over the edge. He can barely stand.

He wipes the tears and blood from his eyes, but still can barely focus on his massive opponent.

And then the next page Vader says, “Search your feelings, my son. But you will know it to be true. Come join your father.” Luke is horror-stricken. Bewildered.

So, Larry, is this an example of that line and that information is being held back from the actors until the very last moment?

**Lawrence:** Yes. That’s right. They did not know. And I had written another ending. I don’t remember what we were dealing with all the time during production, but that was not in there.

One thing, you know, when you’re talking about it John, one of the things that interests me most in life and I try to get into screenplays is this feeling of you do sense things that are not told to you. And we all do it. And you walk into a room with someone and you get a feeling off that person. It could be good, it could be bad. Maybe like I’m getting nothing from that person. And when you think about your own life and you think why did I do that? That’s one of a million mistakes I’ve made. And you feel in your body what is that thing in you.

So, I think that George rightly from A New Hope was playing on something we all know to be true, which is you don’t have to say it, no one has to tell you. You have feelings about the situation. And so when Darth is working on him he’s saying you know this to be true. He wants him to admit it because he knows it is.

**Craig:** And that sequence I have a sense memory as a 10-year-old watching that sequence and knowing early on, like you say, you have a sense of things, even the audience as we’re watching, something is wrong. This is not the usual thing. Where like, good, it’s the good guy versus the bad guy. The good guy is going to shoot the bad guy and it’s over. Or they’re going to have that classic fist fight at the end of the movie and then one of them is going to get kicked off the, you know, the side of the thing and that’s the end of that.

Something is up. You can tell. And the reason you know something is up is because Darth Vader isn’t acting like Darth Vader. This is a guy who randomly just chokes out people. One of the very – by the way, the other thing about you I should say is you’re funny. You are a funny writer. You are a really good, strong comedy writer. And so things like for instance Vader’s, like the running gag of Vader choking out these successive admirals and captain is just funny. But then we get to the end here and he’s not doing it.

So what happens from a writing point of view is instead of us sitting there waiting to see how the inevitable battle concludes. We are now waiting to see why this relationship is not working the way we expect it. And then to satisfy people with what they were not expecting and to make sense of it all retroactively is just tremendous sleight of hand. It’s incredible craft.

And I think sometimes people forget because they think that all it is is like write-write-write, swing-swing, hit-hit, I’m your daddy. What? It’s not like that. Doesn’t work like that at all. There are a billion bad versions of that scene and it’s a credit to the writing that it works.

**Lawrence:** Well thanks. But in A New Hope, you know, the ultimate is in the scene “Feel the Force, Luke.” He’s trying to get the shot down the tiny little hole in the Death Star. And the entire movie is about being in touch with the Force. And he meets Ben who is very much in touch. And in his limited time Ben tries to get this kid to be open to it. And Luke and his father, Anakin, Darth, he knows it. He can track his son across the universe because of feelings that he’s getting.

And that to me is metaphorical for all of our lives. You know? And you just have – you go into a meeting and you have that funny feeling. Wait, this is not right. Why are we having it now? They’re going to tell me something I don’t like here. Or you have a conversation with your family and you say, “Let’s start again. I’m not getting this clear to you. And you’re reacting and we’re not hearing each other.” It’s all there.

The whole saga is about are you in touch with the feelings that are swirling around you.

**John:** That is our show. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli, who also did our outro. Thank you to the Writers Guild Foundation, in particular Enid and Dustin for getting us here.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** We love your outros, so Matthew is doing the one for this week, but you should send us your outro for these shows. Send them to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

Larry Kasdan, are you on Twitter? You’re not on Twitter. You should not be on Twitter.

**Craig:** No. But John Kasdan is on Twitter.

**John:** Yeah. Follow John Kasdan. He’s always there.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. We’ll try to put up some slides, the pages we showed. You’ll also find the transcripts. We get those up the week after the episode airs. And Premium members can sign up at Scriptnotes.net for the bonus episodes and bonus segments. Larry Kasdan and everyone, if you guys want to put yourself on video again and wave to Larry Kasdan.

**Craig:** Yeah, we can see you now. Let’s look back into your rooms.

**John:** Aw. We want to see all your rooms.

**Craig:** See, look at you in gallery view. Thanks guys. Thanks for—

**John:** Look at everybody.

**Craig:** Look at how many of you there are.

**Lawrence:** Goodbye everybody. Thanks for coming.

**Craig:** There’s so many.

**John:** Thank you very much for joining.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** And thank you to the Writers Guild Foundation.

**Craig:** Thanks everyone.

**John:** Thanks.

**Lawrence:** Thanks everybody.

**Craig:** Bye-bye everybody.

**John:** Bye.

[Bonus segment]

**Craig:** Well maybe we should get in touch with some of the feelings of the folks that are watching and listening. That’s my segue. I’m being Segue Man now. I’m very proud of myself. Yeah.

**John:** Matthew asks, “The ending of Empire Strikes Back is incredible to me because it feels so satisfying yet so many threads are left open. Can you speak to how that was constructed and what some of the challenges were in achieving that?

**Lawrence:** Yeah. That gets to the heart of the movie for me, because I was trained in classical dramatic construction. And if you think of the three-act-play which is what we worked with generally, the first act you get the situation, you get the characters. And then in the second act everything goes to shit. And you want, you know, ideally at the end of the second act it looks like doom. And how will those people ever get back together again? How will they ever forgive each other? Anything like that. It’s always open-ended at the end of the second act. And then the third act hopefully resolves in a way that’s very satisfying.

Well, Empire Strikes Back is the second act. And that makes it – when I realized that immediately I thought this is really fun. Because we don’t have to wrap everything up. We don’t have to tie it all together. We want it to be chaos at the end of this movie.

**Craig:** Right. Ties into this next question from Hillary who asks, “Do you approach writing ensemble dramas like The Big Chill and Grand Canyon differently than writing genre films like Raiders or The Empire Strikes Back? What is different, if anything, about the approach to writing for a franchise with a fantastic intergalactic story world as opposed to something that is very much feet on the ground like Big Chill or Grand Canyon?”

**Lawrence:** I don’t make a big distinction between them. I really think the job is always the same. Within the reality that you’re creating, it doesn’t have to be our reality. But within that there has to be some sense of logic to the world that you’re creating. And that’s true in The Big Chill and Grand Canyon and Star Wars. You know, it’s just – that’s what you want. You want the audience not to be comfortable, not to be put to sleep, but to say I recognize something true here.

**Craig:** Right.

**Lawrence:** So I’m not just thrown out because the guy does something crazy. You know? Or if he does something crazy then it teaches me that he’s crazy.

**Craig:** Right. It’s intentional. It’s always intentional.

**Lawrence:** Yes.

**John:** So Federico asks, “Any dos and don’ts regarding the weaving of world-building and story, especially when setting up a film’s universe in act one?”

So, I’m thinking about this in terms of Yoda, which we just talked about. You don’t do a lot of world-building about who Yoda is or what Yoda is. That universe – he existed in himself and you’re setting up his planet, but only the degree to which you need it. Did you have other documents that are other things thought through in terms of what all this is? Or is your world-building just what we see in the movie?

**Lawrence:** I’m not drawn to that. And the reason I don’t generally, you know, I don’t like development and I don’t like story conferences too much, it’s a very intimate thing to me. It’s got to be the principal is doing it. I don’t want to talk about it intellectually. I don’t want to write it. And I want to know in a material way what is going to happen, what are the props here. Where are we trying to get to within this scene from here to here? What will we use to get there? What will be revealed while we’re doing that about the people in the scene? Even if they just walked into the scene.

Those are the movies I love. It’s not my movie, it’s every movie that trusts the audience and says, “You’ll get it. Just relax.” And you do get it. I remember watching Gravity and thinking she’s doing things in the capsule, I don’t know what they are but know they’re really intense and that she’s running out of time. They don’t ever say that. You know, it’s all lights and stuff on the thing. And she’s working as fast as she can. And I so admired that. The presumption that the audience will figure it out.

**Craig:** Great. Let’s see if – want to do one more question?

**John:** I was going to do Jeff’s question.

**Craig:** Great. Do it.

**John:** Jeff asks, “It’s always fun to hear about discarded early ideas. What were some wild ideas you or George had early on that were never shot and were discarded?” Do you remember some things that came up early in this process that like what if we did this and you [crosstalk]?

**Lawrence:** No. I don’t have that kind of memory. And this scene that we talked about that did not get shot the way I had written it, it had been reprinted in [Unintelligible] Magazine, my handwritten pages. And when I saw it after many years, I thought, oh, that’s pretty good. You know, when you’ve come upon something you’ve written years and years ago you say that’s pretty good. And I thought it was in the movie. And then watching the movie the other night it wasn’t there. I was freaked out. I said well this other scene is there and I like mine better. You know? And they both end up at the same place, but they start completely differently.

So, memory is really tricky. And, you know, you think you remember something but in fact you’ve created a new history that you’ve convinced yourself is real.

**Craig:** Well, I’m sorry that we played any part in disrupting that history for you. [laughs] I feel terrible now. The movie had been perfect.

**John:** One of the reasons I was really excited to talk with you about this movie though is that I think we do rewrite a history and make it seem like everything was inevitable. That it was inevitable that off of Star Wars you would have Empire Strikes Back, but it was the furthest thing from inevitable. It went through Leigh had done a script and Lucas was struggling to get a script. You were able to sort of deliver a thing that could be shot. But it wasn’t at all obvious how you make a sequel to that movie, or even if it was a good idea to make a sequel to that movie. Because sequels were not a popular thing.

I mean, Empire was the reason why we have sequels to a large degree to these big franchise movies and we even come into some of these giant movies with the idea of like “and then we will make it into a trilogy.” That whole thing starts with Star Wars. So it’s so helpful to have you talk through these initial stages.

**Lawrence:** Speaking to that, I will say that I find, you know, I’m a big basketball fan, sports fan. When someone wins the Super Bowl, my guy wins the Super Bowl for the sixth time, you say well there’s something – he’s the greatest there ever was because who could do that? But what you know if you’re a really big fan, every one of those seasons if you watched every game there was a moment when they almost lost. You know, if it wasn’t a rout.

And somebody made a catch you couldn’t believe, or someone dropped a pass that you can’t believe. And all those things, it happens in basketball all the time. The last minute shot. The fumble. The turnover. And what looks inevitable when they’re standing there, him holding the championship trophy, was not inevitable at all.

And I feel that moviemakers are like that, too. When you put it out there there’s a sense of like well that’s going to be it for now. I’m not going to change this. And there is kind of solidity to it. But up to that moment in the cutting room everything is up for grabs. And there is no inevitability about it.

Very often the things you thought would make it inevitable are superfluous and the audience doesn’t need them.

**Craig:** So, see, that’s what good writers sound like when they talk. He knew that we had come to an end and proceeded to deliver a perfect summary. A wonderful anecdote with an analogy that wrapped everything up and made it perfect.

**Lawrence:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Outrageous. [laughs] It’s outrageous. You just know how to do it. God, it’s just–

**Lawrence:** You’re very nice. I love being with you guys.

**Craig:** We love you, too. We love you, too. Greatest living screenwriter, Larry Kasdan. I’ve said it a million times. And I’ll say it after you’re gone. [laughs]

Links:

* Find Lawrence Kasdan’s Handwritten Script [here](https://johnaugust.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/empire-handwritten-pages.pdf).
* [Scriptnotes 247, The One with Lawrence Kasdan](https://johnaugust.com/2016/the-one-with-lawrence-kasdan)
* Thank you to the [Writer’s Guild Foundation](https://www.wgfoundation.org/events/all/2020/5/5/online-conversation-revisiting-the-empire-strikes-back-with-lawrence-kasdan) for hosting us!
* [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 Matthew Chilelli ([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/452standard.mp3).