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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/how-to-grow-old-as-a-writer).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Yo, my name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 439 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the podcast we’re going to talk about how to grow old as a writer. We’ll also discuss tips for general readings and answer listener questions about character quirks and improv. Then in our bonus segment for Premium members Craig is going to talk about his experience as an actor on the new show Mythic Quest.

**Craig:** Well this is the first time I’m hearing of that, but I’m all for it.

**John:** Oh, I thought you said last week you were going to do this.

**Craig:** Then it’s not the first I’m hearing of it. It’s just that I forgot. So, you know, when you forget something it’s like you get to hear it all over again for the first time.

**John:** It’s a little surprise. Memory loss can be a really great thing because then everything you find in a drawer is like a present.

**Craig:** My every day is Awakenings. [laughs] I’m so happy to be here.

**John:** It’s like, wait, I’m married? I have children? This is so exciting.

**Craig:** Right. I know how long time has been simply by the number you say of the podcast. So as far as I’m concerned this is the first one we’ve ever done.

**John:** Yes. Goldfish memory.

**Craig:** You claim it’s 439. Well, all right. Well, we’ll see.

**John:** Who is to argue? In news, I’m doing two live events this week. The first is today, Tuesday February 25. I’m doing a Q&A with showrunner Sam Esmail to talk about Mr. Robot, Homecoming, and other things. That got moved to the Guild Theater. So we have more space, we have more seats. So if you want to come there’s still probably seats available. You can find tickets at wgafoundation.org. There’s a link in the show notes. Then tomorrow, February 26, I’m leading a panel on portrayals of criminal justice on screen. That one is at the SAG building. So it’s the same kind of thing when I did the addiction and mental health panel. It is that kind of thing.

There will probably be a livestream but there’s also some seats in that place, so if you want to ask your question come out to that thing tomorrow.

So, two times to see me, ask questions of people this week in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Brilliant. People should avail themselves of this.

**John:** Cool. A bit of follow up. Monica Beletsky wrote in. Do you want to talk about this, Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah, Monica Beletsky, a very, very talented television writer, who has worked on all sorts of your favorite shows, wrote in when we were talking about treatments and outlines and the difference. And she said that “in television an outline is a very common document and is probably more like what we call a treatment in features.” So, if you are a television writer or you’ve not yet become one, just be aware that our discussion of outlines and treatments the nomenclature was applying to the way it’s divided up in features. But in television it sounds like there’s not much of a treatment per se. It’s that there is an outline and it’s a very, very detailed thing.

**John:** Yes. So our biases really are kind of towards features. We try to be aware of our biases, but in that conversation we really weren’t. Even though Craig got an Emmy for his TV writing, we both kind of come at this from a feature background. So sometimes we will say things that mean a different thing in TV and features.

**Craig:** I got an Emmy? [laughs]

**John:** It’s so exciting when Craig doesn’t remember anything.

**Craig:** Every day is a new day.

**John:** Another great example of words that mean different things in TV and features is spec. And so in features a spec script is a script that you’re writing completely on your own that is entirely original. It’s an idea that is your own. And you’re writing it without being beholden to anybody else. No one else is involved in the project. So, a spec script is that thing that you write which can also be a writing sample.

In television a spec generally is a script you are writing for yourself of an existing TV show. I can write funny like in The Office. And so you’d say I have a spec Office episode. It’s frustrating that we use the same word for both things, but you’ve just got to get used to it.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is the problem with the way language evolves in general. And it’s an interesting indication that the television business and the feature business have been weirdly bifurcated for so long, which must be confusing for, I don’t know, someone who is graduating right now from college and coming to LA to be a writer. Because they’re like, wait, there’s a difference between TV and film? It’s all sort of mushed together.

I mean, we live in a time now where things that are made for Netflix are getting nominated for Oscars for feature film work. So, I think eventually that will all go away. I mean, actually weirdly business practices have probably started to retire the word spec for television because it’s not too common anymore that people write them.

**John:** Yeah. Some showrunners who are staffing up shows enjoy reading a spec of an existing show because they know that this writer can write the voices of an existing character and that can be useful. But more commonly showrunners want to read original stuff just to see what this person can do with no limitations on them.

**Craig:** Yeah. They’re just trying to kick the tires and see how good of a writer you are in general.

**John:** Yeah. Other bit of follow up. A couple episodes back we talked about the upcoming negotiations for the MBA, which is the general contract that regulates sort of how WGA members work with the studios. Where we’re at in that process, we talked there would be a survey. There was a survey. There was a vote on a pattern of demands, which is this very broad laundry list of the things you’re going after in this negotiation.

The next step in this process is membership meetings. So they’ve already started in the east. They are coming up in the west. So if you’re a WGA West member, check your email because there will be a list of upcoming meetings where you can talk with leadership about what your goals are in this negotiation. There will also be special meetings just for feature writers. Sometimes they have different things that are interesting to them. So, check your email. Come to these membership meetings. It is the best chance to hear from leadership but also to communicate what you would like to see happen in this upcoming negotiation.

**Craig:** Yeah. They should be real fun this time around. [laughs]

**John:** There’s a lot going on. People have noticed that it’s been a busy year at the WGA. It’s going to be a busy year coming up here. So, I will be at several of these meetings. I won’t be at all of them. But come say hi.

**Craig:** You will be there I assume in your role as a member of the negotiating committee dealing with both the agency thing and the upcoming MBA negotiation.

**John:** Absolutely. So, I’m on both of those committees. So I’ll be there to talk about those things.

**Craig:** Great. Hey, can you do me one favor?

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** Is there a way – I don’t think there is a way – but somehow if people could just, on their way in somebody could hand them a lovely pamphlet that says we know you’re angry, excited, thrilled, upset, emotional. Take deep breaths and be nice to your fellow union members, no matter what they say. Is there a way that people could just be nice?

**John:** Be respectful? Yeah.

**Craig:** Be respectful. Yeah. There is going to be somebody who is going to get up and say we have to strike. And other people are going to go crazy and say you’re an idiot. If we could just avoid that that would be lovely.

**John:** I think that would be a terrific goal. I would say that my function on a lot of these big membership meetings, which I don’t think you’ve been at, is I’m generally the person who is that person saying like just calm down. So I will probably just be that guy who says just calm down a bit.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t know if I’m going to go to any of them because I’ve gone limp and I’m allowing myself to be borne by the tides of the current.

**John:** Well, you’ve also–

**Craig:** Tides are currents. [laughs]

**John:** Tides are currents. You are a goldfish, Craig. But also I think one of the things your sort of stated goals for this year though was to acknowledge frustration but not always act on frustration.

**Craig:** Precisely.

**John:** So maybe–

**Craig:** I am frustrated. But I don’t have to act on it. Wait, I’m in the WGA?

**John:** Holy cow.

**Craig:** Whoa.

**John:** Craig, so we have two big topics this week. This one you proposed, so I’m going to let you take leadership on this topic of growing old as a writer.

**Craig:** Well I was just thinking about because we’ve been doing this for a while, you and I, and when we started there was actually quite a lot of concern about ageism in our business. The general idea was that somewhere after 50 the business started kicking people out. And, in fact, when you look at what the Writers Guild considers a protected class, writers over the age of 40 are considered a protected class. The world has changed drastically since the mid-90s. And I was talking to some people the other day who were pointing out that the writers who are being employed as showrunners and we’ll call them sort of major feature film writers generally are older than they’ve ever been before.

And I thought well this is interesting. There must be some sort of lessons that we can learn since you and I are among the people that are still here about how to keep yourself fresh and motivated and relevant as the years go on. Because we are not kids no more.

**John:** No. Craig, do we want to talk about how to have a long career, or how to be comfortable with aging in your career? Are we talking both? What are the edges of this conversation?

**Craig:** Well I feel like they’re intertwined. So, rather than talk in a very practical way about something that is applicable to about 80 people, I want to talk about something that’s applicable to everybody. Everybody who pursues any kind of creative concern, whether you are a visual artist, or an actor, or a writer, or a producer-director. Whatever it is that you do, as you get older your relationship to your own art and your own creative process does need to change or you’re going to suffer. A reflection of that may be in terms of the industry around you and people’s interest in you, or an audience’s response to you.

So, rather than view it through the lens of industry I just want to talk about how to keep ourselves in a kind of good place with our own creative minds.

**John:** Great. So the artistic side of growing older and how that relates to the craft and the thing that you’re trying to make on a daily basis.

**Craig:** And ideally that would be, you know, reflected back at you with some sort of industrial success if that’s what you’re looking for as the years go on. So, I mean, first let’s just consider it all in terms of strategies, because I do think like anything else there’s just practical things that you can apply to yourself as time goes on. And these are good thoughts and questions to just – even every birthday take a ten minute walk and think about it.

First, you have to think about what your task actually is. Because it changes over time. You may start as someone who for instance in the mid-90s you are “I want to write sitcoms. I’m going to be a sitcom guy that works on network sitcoms.” And there are hundreds of them. Over time that changes. The tasks that are available that match what you think you do can change. Also, formats can change. We think of television as a certain thing now. It’s all over the place. But when we started it was something else.

Chernobyl, for instance, couldn’t have been really done until a certain format change occurred. But that meant paying attention to what was going on with formats.

So there are two kinds of challenges that you can make to yourself. The first is is the thing that I’m doing the only thing I can be doing. Or could I be writing a different kind of thing, like a short story, or like you did a novel, or like we’ve both done some songs? Or, nonfiction work? Also are we working within a format that is maybe dying out or just getting boring to us? And what other formats might expand our own personal expression? If we don’t rotate the crops as it were then we will end up with a field that isn’t doing too well.

**John:** Well, let’s talk about rotating the crops, because I think that ties into a thing that happens with age which is this burnout. Which is that you’ve done one thing for so long that it’s boring to you. It’s just not interesting to you. And it’s hard to work up the enthusiasm to do it again.

I was talking with a writer recently. She was just starting on a new script. And she’s like, oh wow, wait, I’m back doing this again. I’m having to start a whole new script again. And she was ready to. She knew how to write a script. But also she didn’t have the same enthusiasm for it she would have had five years, ten years earlier in her career.

And I think that’s one of the reasons why I was attracted to write the Arlo Finch books or to write the Big Fish musical is it gave me a chance to be a beginner again. To be someone who is brand new to things and be curious and eager to explore and willing to make mistakes as I’m figuring out this new art form. And when you have mastery over something it’s nice, it’s helpful, things are easier for you, but they’re also less exciting. And so picking a new thing to try to do, just challenge yourself on a regular basis to try something that you haven’t done before as a writer so that you get that experience of being new at things.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, getting yourself in that rut is the function of a good thing, I think. We know that you need to focus and you need to practice and perfect. That’s part of how you get good at any creative pursuit. But there is a point where, and a little bit like when you get into a videogame you’ve maxed out your level, you’re now just walking around all the areas of Skyrim and beating everyone’s brains in with ease.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah. You’re just doing a little side quest.

**Craig:** And there’s no challenge because you are perfection. And it gets boring. You’re absolutely right. Being a beginner again is a wonderful thing. And it’s a little scary, so it’s also a function of fear. You know, trying new things is scary. But the thing that I’m scared of the most is actually at this point now in my life being bored. So, challenge yourself to reconsider the nature of the formats you do work in, that you’re willing to work in, that you’re willing to try. Take a look at some formats that you didn’t maybe know even existed before. Because there are new ones all the time. And challenge yourself to even break out of a genre and into another genre.

**John:** You’re really saying stay curious. And really look at the world around you and see, OK, what is out there. What is a thing I could make out there that is interesting to me. And it doesn’t mean you have to pursue everything. Like, you know, you don’t have to become a social media influencer. You don’t have to master TikTok. It’s OK to sort of leave some stuff by the side. But also recognize that if these things are coming online they’re serving some need. And so what is it you can bring to this need and what can you do that could fit into this bigger universe of new content that’s being made?

**Craig:** And you’ve mentioned the key to all of this which is stay curious and be connected with the world. The biggest complaint people will make about we’ll call them aging artists is that they’re out of touch. Well, how do we get out of touch? We get out of touch by essentially ignoring the world around us because we feel like we figured it out in a moment and then we stay there. The world will move past that moment. If you don’t, you will be out of touch.

Sometimes people engage with the world simply in opposition. Kids these days. Let me just boil it down to that, right? The world, you know, I don’t understand the world today. Everyone is on their phones. Anybody who ever says, “You know what the problem is with the world today? Look around you man. Everyone is staring at their phones. They’re not looking at each other.” You go ahead and tell that person they’re an idiot. Because the world changes. They are interacting in fact with more people faster than you could have ever done in your life.

Is it true that sometimes uninterrupted eye-to-eye contact is wonderful? Absolutely. Is it a cliché out of touch thing to say, “They’re all looking at their phones?” Absolutely out of touch.

So, rather than instinctively saying, “In my day everything was perfect and now it stinks,” listen. Just listen to the world. Even if you disagree with it, listen to it. Because perhaps in your experience of the world around you and your differences of opinions with it, you may find grist for the creative mill. Defensiveness isn’t going to get you anywhere.

**John:** Yeah. Being defensive is never a good look. You know, when you say no to something people stop engaging with you. I would say over this last 20 years one of the most helpful ways I’ve been able to stay caught up with how things are for screenwriters and just for general people making creative things, well I’ve always had an assistant. My assistants have always been younger than me. They’ve always been at the start of their careers and doing stuff that people at the start of their careers do. And it’s been fascinating to see how the starts of careers have changed over the last 20 years because just the industry has changed around them.

Also just engaging with the people who originally were writing into the website who are now Scriptnotes listeners. You see what they’re doing. And sort of what the challenges they’re facing, but also what is exciting to them. And I may not be excited about the same things, but what they’re into is valid. And listening to what it is that they are going after is great. I always try to remember that the people I’m interacting with are the people who are going to be running this town in 10, 20, 30 years. And so it’s worth hearing what’s sparking for them because those are the kinds of movies and TV shows that we will be making the next couple decades.

**Craig:** I mean, inherently you are not jealous of the young, nor am I. I think a lot of older people get quietly subconsciously jealous of young people. But my feeling is that when we judge them, well, remember what it was like when we were judged by older people because in my memory my feelings were not hurt at all. I just kind of rolled my eyes and made fun of them because soon they were going to be dead and I was not. And they were old and out of it and not vital. And so my feeling is judging people who are younger and thinking that they “all they do, they’re obsessed with their influencers and their TikTok,” and you’re like you’re not having any impact on them. They’re laughing at you.

So, maybe just listen to them and observe them. What’s wrong with that?

**John:** Well, you can also ask advice. Which I think a lot of times older people have a hard time asking advice of younger people because it sort of reveals something that they don’t know. Well, the fact is you just don’t know some things, so again, be curious. Ask the questions. And don’t ask the questions in a way that feels judgmental like, “Why are you doing it this crazy, stupid way?” It’s like what is it that’s interesting to you about this thing, or why did you decide to make that choice? Again, when you get to move into new fields that’s very natural because you just actually just don’t know. And so you’re in a much better position to ask kind of naïve questions because you don’t know what that thing is versus us as screenwriters we have a good sense of sort of like how all the stuff fits together.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That said, when I talked with a writer – Liz Hannah who just did a movie for Netflix, I am genuinely curious about what the experience is like making a movie for Netflix. What are the deliverables like on that movie? Are they expecting the same things that we’d expect in a theatrical feature delivery system where they want – are they cutting negative? Are they doing all the stuff that we used to do for normal, traditional features? Or is it more like a TV delivery system?

So ask those questions and realize that like the different kinds of things people are making these days are more likely the future than sort of what we knew.

**Craig:** Well, the things around us that happen that we can lose touch with in a dangerous way are not just the kinds of things that I guess the different experiences that younger people are having, but also the general viewpoint of the world. Attitudes change. And it’s very hard for us to keep up with it. It really is. I understand that.

And I remember a friend once told me like – he was like I’m going to keep listening to whatever the pop music station is, like the current hits station, because I never want to be one of the old people that doesn’t know current music. But inevitably you will be. It’s not possible, right? There are some things that are going to leave you behind. But general attitudes and vibes and feelings are things you need to be in touch with. Because what was once funny may not be anymore. Things like funny and dramatic and scary and shocking are not absolute values. They are relative to the time in which you live. And if you’re not paying attention to the kinds of things that are shocking people or making them laugh you’re going to flop because you’re out of touch and out of time.

**John:** Let’s talk about authenticity, because one of the things I see which can be kind of embarrassing is when an older person is trying to seem younger than they are and is not acknowledging the fact that they are in a different generation than people they’re talking to.

**Craig:** Hello fellow kids.

**John:** So language is one where they’re trying to use slang and they’re using it improperly. That’s sort of a tell. And it’s not just that it’s embarrassing that they’re using it wrong. It’s that it’s clear that they’re not being authentic to who they are. I think one of the reasons why young people spark so clearly to Bernie Sanders is he feels very much himself. And that is true of any generation. When we were in our 20s we didn’t want the old person who was trying to be like us. We wanted the old person who felt like themselves. And so don’t reach too far in terms of your own voice trying to sound young.

In terms of your writing voice, though, you are going to be writing characters of all different ages, all different backgrounds. And you have to be listening for sort of how those things sound so that your character’s voices don’t drift away.

So our example in last week’s episode where we were listening to how people speak, that’s I think even more important as you age into your career because your assumptions, your memory of what twenty-somethings sounded like is not going to match how twenty-somethings sound right now.

**Craig:** Yeah. And then we kind of come to our last point which is just language. Just the realities of language. Because you’re right. There is something terribly inauthentic about someone who is chasing language. They will always be five steps behind anyway. They will always be your dad walking in saying, “Oh, chill out. Oh wow, this is fresh.” Shut up, dad. Right?

That’s so old and lame. And it’s faster now. So whatever is cool five seconds will not be cool five seconds from now because that’s what youth is. It’s a churn. So, don’t chase it, but do let yourself be carried along by it. Be aware of it. And let yourself be old authentically without either chasing something, which is inauthentic, or denying the reality of it, which is just as terrible.

Just be aware of the way that the world is changing and be aware of the way you’re changing. And if you are those things and you are willing and open to evolving then it doesn’t really matter how old you get. I mean, you’ll just be cool. Dr. Ruth Westheimer is 4,000 years old.

**John:** Good lord, yes.

**Craig:** And she’s cool.

**John:** Yeah, she’s a lich, but she’s really cool.

**Craig:** She is a lich.

**John:** There’s a [unintelligible] hidden away someplace.

**Craig:** Yeah, she’s a lawful good lich. Very rare. Very rare.

**John:** But special when you find them.

**Craig:** She’s a lich. [laughs]

**John:** Let’s talk about some advantages of age, because a thing I have found over time is we’ve talked about how with mastery some things that used to be really difficult for me are actually very simple for me. And I can sort of figure out narrative problems way in advance just from the experience. But a thing in terms of a career that I’ve been able to take with me and hopefully share is that you have a memory of what’s been done before and sort of where things used to be. And people who are new to the industry won’t have that. And so that’s not like everything should be the way it always was, but pointing out what’s been lost or what’s changed where people new to an industry might not know.

So to me an important thing to always point out is that residuals used to be kind of great and they used to actually be worth something. And someone who is starting in the business right now might not be aware of that. And so I think sometimes as an older person you need to make sure people know what has happened before, what you fought for, what you got. The way things used to be just so that people acknowledge that things could go back to a better place, or to a worse place if you’re trying to avoid bad things that happened before.

**Craig:** Yep. And similarly it’s really good to listen to those people when they tell you what actually – what the boots on the ground reality is for them. Because I remember when we were starting out in the union like the obsession was over DVD residuals. And I didn’t feel really that connected to that. Didn’t have many DVDs out there. And soon enough those went away. So, it’s a two-way street. But there is a beautiful thing that comes with time and that is the release of pressure to define who you are and become a thing.

**John:** True.

**Craig:** We are who we are. There is no confusion anymore about who either one of us is. And at least in our own minds we’ve accomplished enough where we don’t feel like everything is a test of our worth and every problem is an existential crisis. You do get to relax, which, you know, you have more work than ever in these days, but you can psychologically relax because not everything is a kind of a life and death moment where it can all be taken away.

**John:** Yeah. So some of that is economic security, but I would say even when I was in my 30s and doing really well there was still that sort of career insecurity, that artistic insecurity, like you know the imposter syndrome. And I think you and I have both moved past our imposter syndrome, which is lovely, but with that wisdom you want to make sure you don’t just become settled into a rut. Now that you know who you are you’re unwilling to change or unwilling to grow or unwilling to adapt into the next good thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, David Zucker always used to say, “Beware the day that they give you the lifetime achievement award.”

**John:** Lifetime achievement. Yeah.

**Craig:** “It means you’re done.” They don’t give that to you if you’re still like rolling like kind of hard. I mean, they do. And every time I say rolling my daughter looks at me like, “Don’t say rolling, dad. It’s a whole other thing.” And I’m like, oh yeah, that’s right, that’s right, I’m sorry. But I guess the nice thing is that – I don’t know what I was saying, so you can just – Matthew, I apologize. I’m old. [laughs] My mind just wanders. In fact, don’t edit that out. I think that’s important for people to know.

**John:** All right. Well, we talked about sort of growing old as a writer, let’s move all the way back to the start of your career. Let’s talk about your first general meetings. So this is a suggestion from Aline Brosh McKenna.

**Craig:** Who?

**John:** Aline has been listening back to the early episodes of the show, which apparently exist Craig.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** Yes. Goldfish Craig.

**Craig:** There’s more of these?

**John:** There’s more of these. So she’s been back listening to the first season where we talk about stuff. And she says it’s still good, but we’re much less comfortable in our podcasting voices in those early episodes.

**Craig:** Well, that’s good. Amnesia Craig is startled by all of this.

**John:** So, I want to talk through the experience of your first general meeting. So a general meeting as we’ve talked about before on the show, we often describe the water bottle tour of Los Angeles where you go in, you meet with an executive, and you talk about stuff. And we’ve described them in a very general sense, but we haven’t given any real practical advice for sort of what you do on those general meetings, so this is going to be a little sort of step by step thinking about a general meeting.

So, Craig, I would like you to pretend that you are a screenwriter with no produced credits. You have a manager and they have scheduled a meeting with an executive on the Paramount lot. And now let’s walk through what you do to prepare for this general meeting with an executive on the Paramount lot.

Think back like a day or two before, what kind of stuff is on your mind as you’re preparing for this meeting?

**Craig:** So there’s two ways. There’s the modern way and then there’s the old school way. I would strongly recommend a combination of the two. The first thing is to just figure out, OK, who is this person. Ideally what do they look like? Very important, what have they done? So in the old way what would happen is you would talk to your manager and say describe the person to me. Paint me a visual picture because there is no Internet. And what have they worked on that I need to know about? The new way is to just Google. The problem with just Googling is you don’t get that insight from a person who says, “They are very intellectual. You might find them cold, but they’re not cold. That’s just the way they are.” Or, “this person is a militant vegan, so maybe don’t tell the story about how you won the rib-eating contest.” All of that is important.

The most important kind of research is to find out what it is they’ve done so that you don’t walk in there and say in the midst of a great conversation how much you hated this thing that it turns out they produced.

**John:** Absolutely. And that’s so much easier to research now. So just spend your 20 minutes Googling. Figure out what they’ve worked on and what they’re working on just so you have some guardrails around it. But I agree with Craig that you do need to talk to your manager, whoever set up the meeting, just so you know why are you meeting with them. What is the purpose of this meeting? What are the possibilities in this meeting? So you can go in there with some knowledge. It’s just not a complete blind date there.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Also, figure out where the meeting is because Los Angeles is giant, and sometimes you could get scheduled in meetings that are much further away than you think they are. So just knowing where the meeting is in relation to where you live is very important.

**Craig:** And this is something that is much easier to do now than you and I–

**John:** Yeah. Google Maps.

**Craig:** So you and I in our early days would have to figure out where a place was if you had never been there. We’d pull out our trusty old Thomas Guide. We’d look at it and then we’d freaking guess. How should I get there? And, man, sometimes you guess wrong.

**John:** I remember going to a general meeting. I showed up 40 minutes late.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** It was horribly embarrassing. But that’s as fast as I could get there.

**Craig:** Went the wrong way. There were two ways to go, and the way I went a car smashed into a tree and that’s that. And also I didn’t have a phone, so there’s no way for me to tell you. That happened all the time. Now we have Waze. We have Google Maps. There’s all sorts of ways to arrive on time. Do try and get there early. Of course you don’t want to be sitting there for 20 minutes, but try and time it. Worst comes to worst, just hang out outside the lot parked on the side street or something and then go in when you need to go in.

**John:** Absolutely. So we got to the day of the meeting. So let’s talk about confirming meetings because this is a thing that I don’t know happens in other industries, but it’s pretty important in Hollywood. So, a meeting gets scheduled but a meeting is then confirmed, which is usually the night before or the day of if it’s like an afternoon meeting. Basically everyone gets kind of an out, especially executives, because they get pulled into other stuff. So, generally you don’t could on a meeting happening unless it’s confirmed the night before or the morning of.

If a manager set it up, generally the manager’s assistant will confirm the meeting. If you have an assistant they will confirm the meeting. Sometimes you will actually call and confirm with that assistant. But it’s a good idea to confirm, especially if the meeting has been made like two weeks in advance.

**Craig:** Right. That said, if you don’t hear from anyone, presume it’s confirmed.

**John:** Go.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Aline wants us to talk about clothes. And so let’s talk about it. I will say dress appropriately. And that is such generic advice, but I don’t want to be so specific that it precludes one way of dressing or not. So I would say I would never wear a tie to one of these things, and yet sometimes people dress really cool and that’s part of their look. And so I would say kind of dress your look is a useful way to think about it. Dress the way that a writer who they’re meeting with should dress, if that makes sense.

**Craig:** Well, the garb of the artist is wide ranging. Johan Renck would show up at all of these award shows in the strangest outfits. Sometimes I don’t even know if he was wearing a shirt. He always had some strange hat on. Many rings. He’s like a pirate director. And he’s awesome. And that’s cool, because that’s the way he is.

My feeling about clothing is this. If you in the meeting are an impressive human being, if you say and think things that they like, then your clothes, whatever they are, are going to be cool. And if you don’t, then they’re going to be awful. That’s the way it goes. If you are dressed gorgeously and you say dumb things, they’re going to be like, ugh, like I guess all this person does is shop, because they’re stupid. And if you dress like a slob and you’re brilliant they’re going to go, oh my god, the bohemian Mozart. That’s the way our minds – in the end as writers the value that we’re bringing ultimately is what we’re saying and thinking. And the rest kind of goes along with it.

The one thing you don’t want to ever be is unhygienic. That’s just a zero for everybody.

**John:** Agreed. All right. So now you are arriving at the studio. So, first we’re going to say this is Paramount. Let’s talk about the process of actually getting on the lot, because I remember the first time I did this I was a little unnerved. And so you’re driving up to the gate, so generally they’ll tell you which gate you’re going onto for the studio. It’s usually the same, but sometimes they will send you in different ways, so do look at the email about which gate they want you to go in.

There you’ll stop at the guard gate. You will show them photo ID. This happened 9-11 that they asked for photo ID of everyone going onto a lot. Now, Craig, do you remember like before 9-11 often you’d have to stop to leave a lot, and basically they might search your car, but they wouldn’t stop you on the way in? Do you remember back in those days?

**Craig:** I don’t remember ever not being stopped on the way in.

**John:** I guess that’s not true. I guess I was stopped on the way in, but I was always stopped on the way out. And now they just seem to be happy to let you just leave.

**Craig:** Fox will still ask you to show the pass. So, save your pass, because it changes from studio to studio. And it’s pretty rare that a studio will require you to show the pass that they gave you to get in to get out. But don’t chuck it. I’ve made that mistake. And then in Fox in particular on your way out there’s nobody manning it, you just have to scan it, so that it knows that you’ve left. And if you’ve chucked it then, you know, basically people behind you are going to get annoyed.

**John:** Let’s talk about the pass. So generally on a studio lot there actually are two passes. So there’s one pass which is for you as a person, and there’s one for your car. So the one for your car stays on your dashboard, or sometimes they’ll tape it in your window. Sometimes that will have a parking space assigned to it. But there will be one that you carry around. At Disney they want you to clip this little thing on your belt, on your shirt. It’s a hassle. Other places won’t make you do that. But you will have some piece of paper that indicates that you are supposed to be on that lot and also that your car is supposed to be on that lot. So, both are important.

**Craig:** I don’t clip the thing at Disney. I hold it. And then I put it in my pocket.

**John:** I hold it, too.

**Craig:** You just need to get past the guy at Team Disney and then you’re like here’s my thing and he goes, “Go there,” and then I just shove it in my pocket. I’m done.

**John:** Craig just said Team Disney. So Team Disney is the big dwarf building on the Disney lot.

**Craig:** Oxymoron.

**John:** Yeah. The big dwarf building. It’s the building with the dwarfs holding up the roof. It is designed by I think Venturi. He’s a famous architect. It is really a kind of dumb building.

**Craig:** It’s a shame. It is beautiful.

**John:** It is beautiful. But it has this useless interior courtyard.

**Craig:** Massively useless.

**John:** It’s dark and weird.

**Craig:** Yeah. And the office layout, I mean, no one who has ever worked in it has said, “Awesome.” It is definitely a challenging building to work in. As opposed to the old animation building which is where they put all the producers and all their suites which is really cool because it’s like this old art deco – ‘30s?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Something like that. ‘40s?

**John:** It’s cool.

**Craig:** It’s just a cool building. I like an old building. Anyway, each studio will have its own kind of thing. Figuring out where you’re going is sometimes difficult. It depends on the lot. Some lots are pretty easy. For instance Disney, you’re usually going to one of two places – Team Disney, or the old animation building. That’s where the people are that you meet. Paramount, usually you’re going to that one building where all the executives are.

**John:** The executives building.

**Craig:** But god help you if you’re going to Universal or Fox or Sony where stuff is scattered around across 400 different buildings. And they give you a map with tiny little numbers on them. The numbers are not in sequence. I remember the first lot I was ever on was Fox. And I was like why are these numbers like this. First of all, where is number three? And why is 88 next to 120 next to 46? Who did this?

**John:** A mad man did this.

**Craig:** A mad man did it. So, take a little moment to see if there’s a studio map online. See which building you’re going to and actually figure out your walking route from where you’re going to be parking if at all possible.

**John:** So, back in the day when you drove up to the guard gate they’d say, “Who are you meeting with?” And then they would call that person and there’d be a whole system for that. That happens less often now because they just scan your license and they see, OK, this person is in the system. They have a meeting. So they’re not asking you those questions anymore. But they will still ask like do you know where you’re going. And the best response is generally, “No, I don’t.” And so they will take a moment and actually pull out the little map and highlight where it is that you’re supposed to be going. Because that’s really helpful on a big lot.

Now, we should also say that you’re just as likely to have a meeting at Netflix, and Craig have you met at Netflix yet?

**Craig:** No. I’m not allowed to. [laughs]

**John:** I get it. The HBO deal.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So Netflix the process is very, very different. There is still a guard gate you go through. But then you pull into this garage, you give the keys to the valet. Some places have valet. We should talk about valets in a second. But then you go into this giant sort of open area courtyard thing, interior courtyard, and sign in at the front desk, or check in at the front desk. And then it’s just – it’s like the school cafeteria in a way. There literally is food that you can help yourself to. But you see everybody you kind of know. Other actors and writers and directors. And everyone waits down in the main area until your executive comes and gets you and takes you up to your place. So it’s a very different experience.

Generally on most studio lots you go directly to the executive’s office, or at least to the lobby of that executive building. Here at Netflix you wait downstairs until they come get you. And generally they won’t take you to their office, because their offices are tiny. They will take you to some meeting room where you have your small meeting.

**Craig:** And this is probably the way of the future because these companies don’t require large real estate and sound stages. These things are just rented as needed. I mean, HBO for instance is pretty similar in that regard to Netflix. I mean, you pull into a garage. There’s a valet. You go up to HBO. You check in. You wait in the waiting room. It’s like the nicest doctor’s office waiting room. And then someone comes and gets you. And you walk through the rabbit warren of HBO offices. I mean, let me explain for anyone who has not been. Have you ever been to HBO?

**John:** I’ve never been inside HBO, no.

**Craig:** So they’re going to be moving I’m pretty sure. That’s at least what I thought. But the existing offices at HBO, if you bring me to an office there and then walk away, close my eyes and turn me around three times, I will die there. I will never get out. It’s really a maze.

**John:** Netflix has the kind of elevators where if you’re calling an elevator you tell what floor you’re going to, rather than up or down. And so then you have to wait and see which elevator – they’ll show you which elevator you’re supposed to get into.

**Craig:** Fancy.

**John:** Fancy.

**Craig:** So fancy. So there are places that have valet and places that don’t have valet. Places that have valet, let me run it down real quick. Paramount. Not Fox. Sony.

**John:** Sony has it.

**Craig:** Definitely. Not Universal. Not Disney. Warner Bros.

**John:** Warners does it.

**Craig:** I think that’s it, right?

**John:** Yeah. Warners sometimes it depends on where you’re going to at Warners. But, yes, they have a valet. So let’s talk about sort of protocol with valet, which is a little bit different on studio lots than sort of at a restaurant. You go up, you tell them – I often say how long I’m going to be because that will influence where they want me to park, or where they’re going to park my car. If it is a short meeting I may just ask is it OK if I park myself, because sometimes it is OK if you park yourself. Or they’ll steer you to a space.

The issue of whether to tip or not to tip is complicated and based on the lot. Sometimes there will be a sign which will make it really clear that you’re not supposed to tip. When there’s not a sign I do tip. I tip a couple bucks. Craig, what do you do?

**Craig:** Yeah. I do tip but it’s always – I never quite know. It’s a weird thing. Because the thing about tipping is if you don’t tip you might feel like you’ve done something wrong and insulted this person. Then in that situation sometimes I think if I do tip am I insulting them? Like they need a tip because they’re not being paid by the studio? Because at a restaurant you know they don’t pay those guys anything. It’s all tips, right? But I don’t know how it works at a studio. I can’t imagine that a studio is treating them like that. Although come to think of it, they probably are.

**John:** [laughs] Talk about assistant pay, so just imagine what the valet pay is.

**Craig:** That’s a great point actually. So, in any case I’ll usually do five bucks. These days by the way I’ve had one of those moments where I’m like I’m adjusting all tips upward. There’s a general sense of what tips are. So, probably I would go to ten at this point.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** Because, you know, honestly, it relates back to our “we’re getting older” thing. Like as there’s less and less life, you know, it’s like spend more. And I like spending money on human beings. I do. It makes me feel good more than other stuff. And at some point I’m not going to get to the end of my life and go thank god I didn’t tip more. I just – I’m not gonna.

**John:** Quickly let’s say that sometimes you’re having a meeting at a place that is not at a studio and where it is just an office someplace. That’s fine and great, too. Figure out where you can park. If you’re going to be at a meter pay for much more time than you think you’re going to need because you don’t know if the meeting is going to run long. You don’t want to be antsy to get out of your meeting because your meter is about to expire.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** That’s not a good look at all.

**Craig:** Frankly, if your meter is going to expire just shut up and take the ticket. Just take the ticket, because whatever. So it’s going to be $50. Unless you are really, really scraping for dough – honestly – and by the way call your manager and tell them, listen, I would have thought you would have wanted me to stay in there. I can’t afford this. I need $50. I mean, literally. It’s just a weird thing. Because the problem is once you get up at that point to say, “Oh, you know what? I’m just going to run outside and feed the meter.” They’ll be like, “No, no, no, you know what…”

**John:** Oh, the meeting is over.

**Craig:** “Yeah, no, we’ve been here long enough.” And then you’ll get a ticket anyway. [laughs] And it will be over.

**John:** So you’ve arrived at this executive’s office. Generally there will be an assistant or somebody in the lobby who says, “Can I get you something?” And by get you something they mean a drink. That’s all they mean is a drink. The appropriate choices are water, coffee, Diet Coke, or I’m all good. Craig, would you add anything to that list?

**Craig:** Prime rib.

**John:** Prime rib. I want some prime rib.

**Craig:** I would love a plate – by the way, prime rib horrifies me. I don’t know, like people get so excited by it. And I look at it and I just want to barf. It doesn’t look like anyone has cooked anything with prime rib. I don’t know what the prime means. Prime barf material.

**John:** I’ve not had beef in 30 years, so I wouldn’t know.

**Craig:** Oh my god. Well, you’re missing nothing on the prime rib. Yeah, it’s water, coffee, tea, or Diet Coke. And generally speaking over time I’ve defaulted to, “Nope, I’m good,” because if I drink stuff in the meeting I’m just going to have to pee. And I don’t want to pee.

**John:** I generally bring my Arlo Finch water bottle with me to everything. So, I just have my water bottle and therefore I’m all good.

**Craig:** Advertising.

**John:** Advertising. While you’re waiting for the meeting to start, it’s worth studying the outer office. It’ll give you some sense of the vibe. The posters they have on the wall for the movies they’ve made could be useful. Obviously you’ve done your research beforehand, but just get a sense of the vibe. Also, if the assistant is talking with you, talk with the assistant. That assistant is probably very much in the same spot that you are. Try to learn that assistant’s name. That may be a person that you’re emailing back and forth with in the future. That person will probably end up running the studio at some point, so it’s good to be friendly with those assistants.

**Craig:** For sure. Treat them well. Especially if you’re starting out and you’re young, they’re looking at you thinking why am I not there? Why are you not in my seat and why am I not in your seat? So, treat them well because sooner or later they will be where you’re standing and it’s good to just – you know, talk to them like they’re humans. Notice that they’re alive. It will make a huge difference to them. And it is human decency. I mean, we don’t really deserve points for doing what we’re supposed to do. But do what you’re supposed to do.

**John:** Agreed. So, you finally made it through the door. You are in the meeting. Craig, talk us through the protocol of that first minute or two the meeting.

**Craig:** Usually it’s going to be about the person that you’re meeting with saying, “So, yeah, I came across,” they’re going to basically give you a quick log line of why you’re there at all. They’ve seen something of yours, read something of yours. They talked to your manager. You have a mutual friend. Whatever it is, there is some reason they agreed to this. And so that’s kind of the intro. Very quickly it will turn into where’d you grow up, where’d you go to school, how long have been doing this, how did you get started here. “Let me tell you a little bit about what we do here” is a very common thing. They will explain.

And I always laugh. It’s a little bit like when you go to a restaurant and the waiter says, “Have you eaten with us before?” Ugh, no, but go ahead.

**John:** It’s tapas, which are small plates.

**Craig:** Oh god. Because literally if they don’t say – right. So, here what we do is we load the food into a cannon and we fire it into your face. If they don’t say that, I’m like, guys, I mean, yeah. OK. Just say we’re small plates, family style, small to large on the menu, whatever it is. But it’s that thing of like well let me explain a little bit of what we do here. And then they’re going to start talking. A lot of times this will be boring to you. Because what they’re not doing is telling you how specifically money is going to end up in your pocket, which is probably what you’re imagining or hoping for when you’re starting out at the very least. So you just have to kind of nod and be engaged and feign interest as best you can in how their production company came to be. And ask questions. You know, everybody likes to be shown interest in.

**John:** Agreed. So in that first minute you are really trying to establish some pattern of mutual interest. I really liked that thing you made that just came out. I have that same – you’re trying to find areas of commonality just to sort of ground you a little bit. But it’s important to remember it’s not an audition. It’s not a job interview. It’s not a first date. It is really more imagine you have a mutual friend who said like you two should get together and talk. It’s sort of that vibe.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so there’s a transactional quality to it. You’re both looking for how you can help each other. And in that listening that Craig describes, I actually find that really useful because people will stake out a very general area of kind of the things they’re looking at, and more importantly the things they’re not looking for. So when I moved over to Verve I went out on a bunch of general meetings for places that I just had never met before. And so I met at Working Title. And so I thought I had an idea of what a Working Title movie was, and I was basically right, but even within the Working Title framework I got a much better sense of like, OK, they’re very much looking for this kind of thing.

I met at Tristar and Tristar was a different mandate than what it was when I was a reader at Tristar, definitely. So, I got to hear what they’re looking for. I had a meeting at Monkey Paw and it’s a really specific mandate of the kinds of things they’re trying to do.

I had a meeting a studio and they said, “We’re looking for non-IP IP.” Which is like, OK, that’s weird.

**Craig:** Public domain stuff.

**John:** Public domain stuff. They want unicorns or Greek mythology. I’m like, oh, OK. So if I have things–

**Craig:** Why are they looking for it? It’s there. [laughs] It’s all there.

**John:** They want people to come in with non-IP IP basically.

**Craig:** I see.

**John:** Or they’re trying to develop things based on that stuff. So if you had a Medusa story that would be a place to do a Medusa story.

**Craig:** I do not.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** But that is good. You’re getting a sense of what they want and you’re listening to them. Because it is kind of a two-way evaluation process, right? I mean, you may walk out of there, you don’t want to say it in the moment, but you may walk out of there thinking well I have no interest in doing non-IP IP. That’s not what I’m interested in right now. And then you know, OK, so I guess not them for now.

**John:** Yeah. So you’re also getting a vibe on like would I want to work with this person. And I would say trust your instincts there. If they give you a bad vibe, maybe you’re not going to really enjoy working there. So maybe that’s not the right place to take that pitch down the road or to–

**Craig:** Oh yeah, you won’t.

**John:** Or to go after that open writing assignment, because if you’re not going to be up for it that’s cool.

Now, let’s talk about open writing assignments because at some point in a meeting they may pull out a buck slip which is a narrow card that lists these are the things we’re looking to hire writers for. These are projects that are open for discussion. Listen to those. That’s great. But this is also an opportunity to talk, sort of pitch broad areas of things that you’re interested in. This is not your elevator pitch. This is not your sort of concise pitch. This is just I’ll often describe general areas. So if I wanted to say like I can be doing a lot of research on Outward Bound programs and I think there’s a real opportunity to do a horror movie centered around the Outward Bound experience.

That’s not a pitch, but it’s describing an area. And if what they told me was that they’re looking for horror movies and I pitched that back, I can see in the room are we on the same wavelength there. And if we are on the same wavelength then I could come back later in later on with an actual prepared pitch for it. But I’m just getting a sense of like is this the kind of thing that we should be talking about.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. It’s good to also listen in that list, if they pull out the buck slip and they give you their – be aware of two things. One, what you’re hearing are slightly distressed properties. So, first question is with whom am I meeting? If I am meeting the president of something, and they pull out that list, that’s a real list.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s real. If I’m meeting with anybody under that that list is their list. That is a list of stuff that they are in charge of. That they want to get going because it will move them up internally. It doesn’t mean that any of those things will ever actually get made at that company. That said, sometimes they do.

When you hear that list, if you do spark to something engage on it. Just start talking about it. What will happen is they will hear in you maybe the ability to be smart. It’s really what they’re – oh, this person said a lot of smart things. They’re smart. My boss will literally never let me make this movie, but now I have a writer who I know is smart, who if I vouch for for something else will not embarrass me.

To that extent, when you are in there with these people if there is some way – if you’re vibing, right. If they’re NG, then beat it, it’s never going to happen. But if you’re vibing with them try and have some way to express that you were excited to be there in the first place. That you didn’t drag yourself there because your manager said go here, go here, go here, meet a person, go home. You wanted to meet them. You were interested in them because of A, B, or C.

It will make them feel like this isn’t just one of those things you have to slog through, yet another reminder that they are not in charge and have to take general meetings with the likes of you.

**John:** Craig, what is your opinion of giving them your email address or getting their email address? Do you do that after a good general meeting?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I just assume that if they want my email address then they can get it from my lawyer. If you have a manager, they’ll get it from your manager. If you are at one of the code of conduct agencies they can get it from your agent. So, yeah, no, of course. My feeling is that the privacy of contact information, talking about how you grow old in this business, that’s gone. There is no privacy of contact information. Everyone is contactable at every moment. The thought of withholding that would be I think the most offensive possible thing ever. No, you may not have my email address. Good day, sir.

**John:** Good day, sir. I would say that in this last year I’ve been much more forthright about just giving them my email address and say you can email me that directly. So I’m not trying to cut my reps out of it, but basically saying you don’t have to go through the reps for every little thing anymore. And that we have a relationship that is independent of my relationship through Verve or through my attorney. Just because if it’s somebody I actually do spark with and think like, oh you know what, actually I could see myself working with her on projects, just emailing directly is nice. And also if I have the email I can do the etiquette thing of following up and saying like, “Hey, I really enjoyed meeting with you about this thing, or, “we talked about this thing, I’d love to come in and talk with you more about that.”

I traditionally did not do those follow up kind of emails because I didn’t have those emails. And now I tend to do them.

**Craig:** For whatever reason I have always been someone that everyone thought they should just talk to directly. I have actually bemoaned this. Like I would say sometimes why – is this really – people just call me directly, even about stuff that isn’t great. They’ll just call directly and I’m like shouldn’t you be talking to someone? [sighs] Never mind. Never mind.

**John:** Never mind.

**Craig:** Never mind.

**John:** Craig, I have this new invention. So, let me pitch this for you. So it’s a bell that you have in your house and it has a nine-digit number, I’m thinking maybe a 10-digit number. And anybody with that 10-digit number can make that bell ring at any time. Would that be good?

**Craig:** Yeah, I would be OK with that.

**John:** I mean, the idea that we have phones is crazy. The idea that any stranger can call me on the phone at any point. So that’s why I kind of don’t answer my phone anymore. Like I’ll answer it if you were to call.

**Craig:** Well, we don’t answer when somebody we don’t – so, every phone call was a roll of the dice. And now none are. The worst comes to worst is you get a number, it’s unknown number, or from some town you don’t know because somebody moved out here and didn’t change their number. And then they leave a voicemail and you go, oh, that was that person. Let me add them to my contacts. That won’t happen again. That’s it basically. But, yeah, we always know who is calling.

**John:** Wrapping up the general meeting discussion, I want to say that my first 10 to 15 general meetings were kind of terrible. I was not good at general meetings. It took a while to get used to them.

**Craig:** Define terrible.

**John:** Take our advice–

**Craig:** Like what would happen?

**John:** They weren’t productive. I wasn’t getting to the next stage after them. I was awkward in them.

**Craig:** Aw.

**John:** I didn’t feel comfortable about it. I wasn’t comfortable sort of in my writer-self skin. But I did get a lot better with practice. And so I would say take our advice, but also don’t be hard on yourself if you find it weird and sort of uncomfortable being in those meetings, especially at the start, because it is a weird thing to be doing.

**Craig:** And as it happens this is one of the few jobs where you can actually be weird and awkward. It’s just that you have to be that much better at your job. But you are allowed to be weird and awkward. You know, some of the greatest screenwriters out there are weird and awkward. And what happens is the executives will go, “Yeah, I’m working with so and so.” “Oh my god, he’s a genius.” “I know. He’s weird. God, he’s weird.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “But he’s a genius so it’s OK.” Or like, “Oh yeah, she is kind of a shut in. Like she’s a recluse. She doesn’t actually leave her house. But the pages have been amazing.” So it’s actually kind of like the legend grows of this weirdo lady that’s pumping out these great scripts. They’ll do that all the time because this business loves a narrative. They love to characterize everybody. The danger zone is when you’re fine, and you’re also super boring, or awkward or weird in a room. That can be an issue.

**John:** In a future episode we’ll talk about the process of going in and meeting with a showrunner, like if you’re trying to get hired on a show. Some things will apply, but some things won’t apply. So we’ll try to get a really good showrunner on to talk about those meetings as well.

**Craig:** Sounds like a good idea.

**John:** Let’s answer some questions. Craig, do you want to take Zack’s question?

**Craig:** Yeah, Zack asks, “I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions on character mannerisms, specifically on the best way to go about formatting them. For example, if a character has a nervous tick of laughing to relieve inner anxiety,” huh, I think I’ve seen a movie with that, “should you write, ha-ha, or parenthesis chuckles in the dialogue, or parenthesis every time it comes up? Another example would be a physical tick like an eye twitch, more than just a normal occurrence, something that is psychological or neurological. I’ve recently seen this done in a script when the character is introduced as, ‘Note, Eric nervously chuckles throughout the script when nervous or feels out of place in social situations.’ But I feel like readers will forget something like this with everything else they’re supposed to be paying attention to, especially closer to the end of the script when the introduction was back on page one. Any thoughts?”

John, what do you think?

**John:** I think it’s a really good question and honestly a difficult thing to make a blanket statement for. But what Zack is pointing towards is that the experience of watching the movie, we’re going to see all this nervous behavior, we’re going to see these ticks, we’re going to see these mannerisms. But on the page it’s so easy to miss them and to forget them, especially if he said it on page one and he didn’t say it again. So, I think you’re going to have to remind us over the course of the script that you’re doing it. But I wouldn’t do it a parenthesis kind of thing every time it happens. And I wouldn’t try to call it out in action every time. I would find reasons why what he’s doing is either noticeable to other characters or if he’s alone in the scene that his nervous behavior or whatever that mannerism is is worth calling out in the action because it is the main thing that we’re seeing at this moment.

Craig, what would you do?

**Craig:** I agree with you. I think the first time you experience this it’s important to describe it in action and to describe it in a way that is connected to character. So it’s not simply he chuckles when nervous. I can’t think of a more boring way to describe a very complicated thing. In the moment let us experience it as it happens for the first time. Let us feel like the other people in the room who are confused. Is he laughing at us? Is he laughing at that character? Is this just covering something up? We can tell something from his eyes that he has no control over this.

And then throughout that scene he laughs, he laughs again. Show other people reacting. Make a meal of it the first time it happens. Later in subsequent scenes you can say it’s happening again. Right? Like the laughing thing happens again, so that we understand how it’s happening. I would not do parenthesis. That would get very annoying. And I would certainly not just dump it in the beginning like some random boring note. That’s not how we paint human beings.

**John:** Yeah. So if a character had a larger physical thing that was important to call out at the start, certainly call this out. If a character uses a wheelchair we’ve got to know that. But we’re also going to hopefully see reasons why that is a factor in other story points along the way. And so it’s going to be a thing that is going to affect the story as it goes along.

Something that is more subtle like this or that has an influence on dialogue, yeah, look at your dialogue and see how it’s going to possibly impact that. But what Craig said about how other characters react to it is equally important to what the actual character itself is feeling about the mannerism.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s there for a reason. You can’t just dust it on an actor. It will be the first person to tell you how much am I doing this? Am I doing it every line? Am I loud? Am I quiet? What do other people hear and notice? So you cannot bullet point it. You have to bake it in.

**John:** All right. One more question. Rebecca asks, “I want to write a screenplay using improv through a Second City style approach. I come in with a detailed written outline of what each scene is. The actors improvise it in a rehearsal space. As the writer-director I offer feedback, then they improvise it again. The process repeats until each scene is set. If I go home and turn the exact dialogue they came up with into a shooting script are they still actors who improvised their lines, or have I basically turned the rehearsal room into a writing room and now everyone would need to be credited and paid as a writer?”

**Craig:** Oh, that’s a really good question. I got to be honest. I don’t know. I know that for instance the Larry David shows do work in this kind of script-provisational style. But there isn’t this thing where the outlines are written and then actors gather together. They perform like a stage play. Someone transcribes it. And then three days later they act it out. And repeat the things that they said. It’s rather on the day they improvise. Improvising on the day in front of cameras is not – so there is no transcript being made. There is a kind of freedom to just act on camera.

The writers of Curb Your Enthusiasm are the writers who wrote those outlines. And they usually have specific lines of dialogue that they need to get out. In this case I am concerned that if you’re just writing down all the things they said that it is a little – it’s like a roundtable kind of thing. I’m not quite sure.

**John:** Yeah. We can talk about sort of the actual WGA sort of legally kind of definitions of who is a writer and who is not a writer. I would say, Rebecca, you are the writer because you are making ultimately the editorial decisions about what is being written on that page. And you’re actually creating a script that reflects this thing. So if your rehearsal process is getting you to that point, OK. What I would stress is that all of your actors need to come into this with a clear understanding and maybe even sort of write down in the contract saying this is how we are doing this. And you won’t be credited as a writer but we will acknowledge that you contributed to the storytelling.

I mean, an option might be to sort of give story credit, to share story credit with all these people who are doing the thing.

**Craig:** I don’t know. It’s really messy. Because if you go through these rehearsals and one person is just awful, except for this one brilliant line, so you replace them as an actor but you keep their line? It’s weird. I’m not quite sure how – I’m sure this has been done many different ways. The part that’s a little nerve-wracking for me is that there is no script to begin with. There’s just an outline. So if there were a script to begin with and then you go into rehearsals with actors, I mean, we all do this. We listen. We watch. Things come out. You then go back and put those in the script because they work and they feel good. But that’s different. These people are creating all of the dialogue. So, I’m not sure. The answer Rebecca is I don’t know.

**John:** I don’t know. But going back to our growing old discussion, this is a way of working. And so there are other filmmakers in the past who have done this. There are many filmmakers in the future who will do this. So you are going into some ground that has been tilled but there’s not a set pattern for how this is supposed to work. So, just try to be respectful of the patterns you’re trying to set here.

**Craig:** That makes absolute sense to me.

**John:** All right. It is time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a book by Mark Miodownik called Stuff Matters. He is a material scientist. He is a person who studies how we make things, things of metal, things of plastic. I thought it was actually just a great exploration of sort of how the modern world sort of makes our stuff. Craig, for example, if you are eating with a fork why are you not tasting the metal of that fork? Because you know what iron tastes like. Why are you not tasting it when you eat with a fork?

**Craig:** Uh, I don’t know. [laughs]

**John:** So stainless steel is this remarkable substance that they’ve been able to make which shoves extra atoms of other things in there. And when you scratch stainless steel it reacts with oxygen to form a coating around it. So you are never actually touching the metal of the fork. You are touching the outside coating of it. And it’s a self-healing kind of coating.

So, if you enjoy any of the physical sciences or sort of like it ties into recycling and how we make things that we make today, I thought it was y really great. It even gets into chocolate and how we’re able to take this weird being which is not useful at all and turn it into chocolate which is delicious.

**Craig:** Chocolate is delicious. That sounds terrific. My One Cool Thing this week I have not yet had a chance to use but I picked this up, I think this was written about in Wired. It’s a website called DoNotPay. And there’s a bunch of things that it does, but the thing that I’m kind of most curious about is what they call Robo Revenge. The idea is you get a phone call and maybe you’ve been getting a lot of robo calls, spam calls from a particular number or service and you’re tired of it. And presumably you have registered for the National Do Not Call Registry, which no one seems to pay attention to.

So, the idea here is that you see that call and you’re like, oh, here we go. And you’re like in the movies when you’re going to trace someone’s call. You answer the call and you also at the same time click on the DoNotPay website. And there’s a very easy way, literally one click button that creates a credit card. And you say, great, I’m totally into that. Let me give you my credit card information. And you give them the credit card number, expiration date, and security code and zip code that have been generated by this website. It will go through on their end. It will not ever send them funds, of course. But it will go through as an actual card.

What then DoNotPay does is they get the number of the vendor, because it comes through to their information, and they go, ah-ha, and then they call them and go, surprise, Mother-F-er. You just violated the Do Not Call Registry. We are sending you a demand letter for compensation. Also you can never call that person again.

I mean, it sounds pretty great. Will I ever be in the right place and time to make it work? God, I would love to.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** DoNotPay.

**John:** DoNotPay.

**Craig:** DoNotPay.

**John:** All right. Stick around after the credits because we will be talking about Craig’s turn as an actor on the show Mythic Quest. But for now that’s our show. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro is also by Matthew. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place you can send longer questions like the ones we answered today. But for short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. You’ll see the transcripts there. We get them up about four days after the episode airs.

You can sign up to become a Premium member of Scriptnotes at Scriptnotes.net where you can get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re just about to do. Craig, thanks for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** Craig, I have not watched all of Mythic Quest, but I have watched your debut on the TV show Mythic Quest. So, for folks who don’t know this is a new show created by Rob McElhenney and Megan Ganz and Charlie Day.

**Craig:** That is correct.

**John:** And it is set at a game development company. If you like Silicon Valley you will like it. If you like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia you will probably like it as well. I really enjoyed the episodes I’ve seen, but I did watch your debut which happens in episode five I believe.

**Craig:** Maybe? [laughs] I can’t remember. It was one of those.

**John:** Let’s take a listen to Craig’s debut on this television program.

[Clip plays]

**Craig:** Close the door. I can’t see with the glare on the screen.

Female Voice: Sorry, who are you?

**Craig:** I’m Lou. They brought me up from the third floor tester pool to replace some chick who quit or died or something.

Female Voice: Her name is Dana and you can’t replace her.

**Craig:** I’m sure she was a saint, god rest her soul. Anyway, I’m up her from now on.

Female Voice: OK. You know what? Let’s maybe not talk for the rest of the day. I’m kind of chomping at the bit to test out these new maps.

**Craig:** It’s actually champing.

Female Voice: Sorry, what?

**Craig:** You said chomping at the bit. It’s actually champing at the bit. Don’t worry about it. It’s a common mistake.

Female Voice: Great. Excellent.

[Clip ends]

**John:** Craig Mazin, tell us how you came to be an actor on this program.

**Craig:** This was a show that Rob and I had been talking about before I think he – not creatively – he expressed that he wanted to do this show. So I knew that it was kind of on his radar. And he and I had worked together briefly on another project just for a couple of weeks, but we were fast friends. He’s an awesome guy and he’s a very, very smart guy along with being talented and working in the hardest genre there is which is serialized situational comedy. And I believe It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the longest-running live action sitcom in history, in television history.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Which is incredible. I mean, they should be in the Television – do we have a Television Hall of Fame?

**John:** We do.

**Craig:** Well they should be in it. And then when he actually did set up the show he said do you want to just come and consult, just be a consulting producer and hang in the room and just talk about the shape of the season and stuff for the first week or so. And I said, yeah, of course. And I did. And it’s a terrific room and I got to meet some awesome writers, including Megan Ganz and David Hornsby who are both outstanding at what they do and they’re kind of like the brain trust over there with Rob and Charlie. And also Ashly Burch who is the person acting in that scene with me.

**John:** OK. Great.

**Craig:** Who plays Rachel, one of the game testers. And I’m not exactly sure how this came about. It’s not like I was calling him up saying, “Can I please?” I wasn’t like Lucy going, “Desi, please let me be in the show.” But they did create a character who was a total dick. [laughs] And I don’t know why I came to mind. But I did. Rob had asked me to initially audition for the part of Brad, who is one of the major characters, which I was fairly certain I was never going to be. But it was fun to even audition. I had never done it before. I’ve been on the other side of the audition a billion times. I’d never actually done an audition. It was cool.

So, anyway, yeah. So I became Lou. And initially it was supposed to be I think just one episode. And I ended up in I think four maybe. Four of them. Usually with two lines. I’m like one of those two-line guys, which is fine by me. But that first day I had a lot. There’s a lot more than that because there was a part of Lou’s character that ultimately got cut for I think smart reasons, but it was like two pages of dialogue. It was brutal.

**John:** So, tell us about preparing for filming your role. And sort of how much did you know about Lou? How much were you just basing it on like, OK, this is me and I’m just doing a slightly – because it feels like a slightly more asshole-ish version of you.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And so tell us about how you prepared for it.

**Craig:** Well, it was clearly a slightly more asshole-ish version of me and that was the whole point. So that part I wasn’t concerned about. Had that down. Preparing was, I mean, there are certain practical things. You have to go to a costume fitting and have wardrobe and hair take a look at you and pick out some things to wear. So there’s a little bit of a well what do you think, and here’s what we think. And then you end up with what it is, which is fine. And obviously I’m not a particularly picky guy being number 16 on the call sheet.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** So, yeah, so that was fine. And then you get the pages. You get them very late in the game and then, of course, they change them. So like I do have an appreciation for what it’s like to be an actor and learn your lines and then have them change them at the last minute and go, D’oh, but I already learned these. And so you memorize the day before. You memorize your lines. You work on them and you have to both memorize your lines and then also memorize the beginnings and ends of the other person’s lines at a minimum. I mean, ideally, you know, everything, so you can be reacting and responding in real time. And then knowing when to come in without feeling like you’re waiting.

You also have to be, I mean, the nice thing is because I’ve been around production a long time I also know the difference between when you’re both on camera as opposed to being individually on camera. And then really honestly the big part was not freaking thinking about it too much. Because I wanted to. I wanted to just, you know, run it a billion times and come up with the funniest way of doing things. And then you realize what am I doing? I’m doing the thing that I hate when actors do. Just shut up brain. Show up on the day. And just freaking do it. And less is more. And that’s that. You know?

**John:** Talk to me about your prop handling. So in the scene that we’re listening to you have popcorn. You’re matching is not perfect but also editorially it was probably the right choice to do sort of what they did. Were you thinking about like, oh shit, I have to eat all this popcorn as I’m doing this?

**Craig:** There was a bunch of things going on. There was actually a dog in the scene that you don’t see.

**John:** That’s a good choice.

**Craig:** Yes. So I was working with a dog. I was working with a bag of popcorn. Yeah, the dog in many ways was wild. That stuff just isn’t there. But you get pretty good, I mean, you get pretty good at repeating. No matter how good you are at consistency, if they want to make an editorial choice that is discontinuous because they don’t want to include the bit with the dog or something, there’s going to be a matching problem.

In the moment they’ll let you know if you picked it up with the wrong hand or something. There were a couple of times where I was like, wait, did I – especially after the first time you do something. Did I reach over this way with this hand or like that? And they let you know.

**John:** Let’s talk about it. So, it’s the script supervisor who lets you know. Correct?

**Craig:** Yes. Sometimes because in that particular space, it’s a very small space that we were in there in that little testing room, and so very few people can fit in there. It’s basically me and Ashly and then the camera folks and they’re shooting three cameras, so that’s a lot of camera people in there and cameras.

**John:** Is it a four wall set? Or is that just walls will fly out?

**Craig:** Those are walls that fly. But not too much. I believe the back wall flies. Well, you know what? I’m not sure now. I think it does. I think the back wall flies and that’s about it.

It’s tight. So that means that the script supervisor is not in there with you. So sometimes, especially if it we were already deep into and I was just curious about something I would ask the camera op because they’re watching the whole thing the whole time. And he’s like, oh yeah, you totally did it with that. But if he’s like, uh, then I would go, hey, can someone tell me. And so as an actor you’re actually talking more with the camera operator and the script supervisor than with the director. Unless the director is really unhappy with what you’re doing. But mostly I mean–

**John:** You’re checking in with the folks who are sort of helping you get your stuff. Did hair and makeup come in and pat you down and touch you at times when it was uncomfortable?

**Craig:** Not much. I mean, my hair and makeup is very simple. I get a little bit of a trim and then a little bit – they pat the makeup on so that as always the light isn’t beaming off my bald head. If you act they’re going to come in there with some sort of spray gun.

**John:** Oh yeah. 100%. Just put a matte finish on me.

**Craig:** It’s just shine is the problem. But, yeah, every now and then somebody would pop in there and be like blot-blot-blot. But that was about it. It’s not super fancy in that regard. And this is classic kind of television shooting where they’re doing seven, eight pages a day. So things are moving quickly.

**John:** So the scene we listened to, did that take a half an hour to shoot?

**Craig:** No, much longer. Because again there was a dog. [laughs] There was a dog.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** And they have to shoot – even with three cameras they’re doing multiple setups and a character is entering. Entrances and exits take time. So there were a couple of scenes later on where I’m entering. Those take time. There’s a scene where I’m catching up and going to an elevator. A scene where I stop into somebody else’s office. And for those things then it’s very much about the physicality of hitting your mark.

**John:** Let’s talk about marks because people might not know them. But on a set if a character needs to arrive at a place or is standing at a place there will be tape marks on the floor or some other way to indicate where that character is supposed to end up so that lighting and camera and everything is properly set up.

**Craig:** Yeah. The most important thing is focus. Because there isn’t some sort of auto focus for regular film and television cameras. You have to pull focus so that the focus is instantaneous. Auto focus takes time to adjust. You need instant focus all the time when you’re shooting. So the focus puller is adjusting the focus on the fly depending on the distance between you and the camera. So what they do is they say, OK, he is going to enter that door there, so that’s that focal distance. And he’s going to walk to this spot and stop. That’s your arrival. So, you start at that number and then as I move from A to B they move their thing and land on a number. And it generally works great, as long as I hit that number, that mark.

I had no problem with this. I don’t know why actors do. Because the thing is in your blocking rehearsal which is what you do at the very beginning that’s when you’re figuring out where you stop and stand. So the director will come in say I think you should enter this way and move to here. And I’m like, great, do you want me to go around this thing or this way. And she goes, oh great point, why don’t you come around this way and stop here. So then I do it a few times and I just have to remember where I stop.

**John:** Yeah. Do you remember how many steps it took you to get from one place to the other?

**Craig:** No, I just use a visual cue. I just go, OK, I’m going to roughly stop here. So how hard is that? [laughs] It’s not hard. That’s the one thing where – so much of acting did increase my regard and respect for what actual actors, I know I’m not a real actor, what real actors do. That was one thing where I lost respect. [laughs] I was just like if any actor on one of my sets misses their mark I’m going to be like, “Come on, it’s not hard.”

But one of the things I learned that very first day was how important it is to think of the person you’re acting with and to know whose scene it is, and in that case it was her scene. It’s clearly her perspective. So as a writer know whose perspective – don’t fall into the trap of thinking that I’m acting so it’s about me. And do whatever is needed for her so that she can get where she’s going and needs to go because she is an important character, she’s a main character. I am a little bit of garlic salt for the French fries.

**John:** Sounds good. Finally, last question, when did you shoot this? Because people know sort of your history with Chernobyl. So, were you already shooting Chernobyl when you shot this, because I have no sense of like when these episodes were actually filmed?

**Craig:** I believe that I was shooting this I think it was after Chernobyl, pretty sure it was Chernobyl was wrapped. Yeah, it had to be after Chernobyl wrapped. I was in Lithuania. But it was before we were done editing. So I think it was in, I think, I want to say it was in the fall of 2018. I think. Yeah. It’s been out there for a while. But it was fun. It was a lot of fun. And I am in season two. I know that, yeah, I do something bad. [laughs] But that’s all my character ever does is stuff that’s bad. So, anyway, yeah.

**John:** Cool. Craig, congrats.

**Craig:** Thanks man.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* Tuesday Feb 25th, John hosts Q&A with showrunner Sam Esmail to talk about Mr. Robot, Homecoming and other things. Click here for [tickets](https://www.wgfoundation.org/events/all/2020/2/25/showrunner-sessions-with-sam-esmail).
* Wednesday Feb 26th, Join John at Beyond Bars, a panel on potrayals of criminal justice on screen. Get your [ticket here](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beyond-bars-changing-the-narrative-on-criminal-justice-tickets-91710373195)
* [Stuff Matters by Mark Miodownik](https://amzn.to/2SRKOGw)
* [DoNotPay](https://donotpay.com/web/robo-revenge)
* Watch Craig on [Mythic Quest](https://tv.apple.com/us/show/mythic-quest-ravens-banquet/umc.cmc.1nfdfd5zlk05fo1bwwetzldy3)!
* Sign up for Scriptnotes Premium [here](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/).
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by 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/439standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/other-things-screenwriters-write).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 437 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the podcast, sure, we’ll talk about screenplays, but we’ll also focus on other things that screenwriters write, including outlines and treatments, because Craig you and I, we’ve been doing a lot of that recently.

**Craig:** Good lord have we.

**John:** Then we’ll be answering questions from listeners just like you. And in our bonus segment Craig and I are going to discuss the Myers-Briggs personality test. And we will reveal which four letters tell everything you need to know about us.

**Craig:** Uh, I don’t know why anybody listening to this show hasn’t kicked in the whatever it costs to get these bonus segments. They’re better than the show. They’re the best. [laughs] They’re really better.

**John:** Sometimes they are really quite delightful. So, if you want to sign up for these it’s obviously at Scriptnotes.net and you can get in on all the bonus action.

All right, a little bit of news. I’m doing a criminal justice panel called Beyond Bars: Changing the Narrative on Criminal Justice. That’s February 26. This is one of those special little panels that will hopefully livestream, but if you want to be there live in the audience you should come to it. So, I’ll put a link in the show notes to that. It’s going to be me and some TV showrunners and some criminal justice experts talking about our portrayals of the whole system on screen and what the realities are and how we can do a better job making those things match up.

So, it’s sort of a companion piece to the mental health and addiction panel that I did last year.

**Craig:** And where is this panel taking place?

**John:** It’ll be at the SAG building, so on Wilshire.

**Craig:** Got it. Got it.

**John:** Pretty small space. So a lot smaller space than what we do for our live Scriptnotes shows. But if you want to come see that that is available to you on February 26.

**Craig:** You know what I wish in terms of follow up and news and all the rest, I will there was something you could tell us about Highland 2.

**John:** Oh, thank you. I was even going to omit that for this week, but now I’ll say it.

**Craig:** No, I refuse. Say it.

**John:** A couple shows ago I talked about student licenses. So if you are a student who needs to use Highland 2 we do have the capability of adding your whole school so that if you have a .edu address for that we can sign you up for that. You need to give us the contact information for your program or professor. I didn’t really explain very well this first time. I’ll try to explain better now.

But you can send us an email at brand@johnaugust.com. That’s brand@johnaugust.com. Say what program you’re in, but most importantly who the instructor is who teaches your writing program so that we can contact them and they can actually send out the form for signing everybody up. So it’s not just like a “hey I’m a student, give me the license.” We actually need to get your program signed up so we can see that you genuinely are part of that writing program.

**Craig:** On behalf of the public school district in my town of La Canada, I’m curious do you also offer this to public school districts, for high school maybe?

**John:** At this moment we don’t because we need to have somebody who has a .edu address. And high school kids generally don’t. College kids generally do. So, if we can expand at any point down the road we will, but it’s kind of a manpower problem. We need to actually verify who these people are.

**Craig:** I was thinking more of like the schoolwide thing, you know. If a district called you and said we want to purchase a school license.

**John:** Oh yeah. That’s very doable. And that’s already doable sort of in existing plans.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Perfect.

**John:** Totally possible.

**Craig:** All right. Great.

**John:** Let’s segue to the main topic today which is the stuff that we write that is not screenplays. So we’ve talked a lot about screenplays obviously over the course of 400-and-a-zillion episodes. All the words on the page. The format. How to best convey things. But this last couple months I’ve found myself having to write treatments for things. And I’ve sometimes written a treatment for myself which is basically a set of notes, a plan for how I’m going to attack a movie. But this was the first time in a decade that I’ve had to write a treatment that is being turned in. It is like the plan before the plan for the movie. And I found it difficult to write. I found it difficult to convey some of the stuff I would normally be able to do in a scene in just paragraph form, especially when it comes to conveying the inner thoughts of characters. Why they’re doing what they’re doing. A sense of tone. The comedy. The decision about when to move into italics for suggestion of dialogue.

I found it kind of a frustrating form. And you’ve done a little bit more of this than I have, so I wanted to talk through why we write outlines and treatments and sort of best ways to use that document form to convey the movie you hope to write.

**Craig:** Let’s do it. Because I’ve written a lot of treatments and my treatments are very scriptment like. The last one I wrote I think was about 70 pages. And so I believe in them, but I also find them painful for so many reasons. But ultimately a good pain.

So, I’ve done it all for all sorts of things. And it’s not something that is necessary unless you’re being commanded to do it as a condition of employment, which is rare.

**John:** Is rare but actually the thing I’m doing right now, one of the steps was a treatment.

**Craig:** Well there you go. Then you’ve got to do it.

**John:** And so to have a document that is going to be judged based on how well they can understand the movie in this was new for me.

**Craig:** Well, then this is a good opportunity for us to kind of talk about some best practices and some techniques that make things a little bit easier. And also some tips and tricks, because there are some pitfalls. You can get trapped inside of a treatment pretty easily trying to achieve an effect that ultimately is not really achievable inside that format.

So, I guess maybe the first thing to sort of ask is how do you even define one of these documents.

**John:** I think that’s a great place to start, because I would say you scale up from sort of a beat sheet, to an outline, to a treatment, to a scriptment. And the first time I ever heard the term scriptment was in relation to James Cameron who writes these very long, sort of 70-page scriptments that actually do have some dialogue in there and are almost – if you squint you can sort of see the screenplay in them.

But let’s start with that smallest form. Do you have any different levels of document that you would describe?

**Craig:** No. And the truth is I’ve never done a beat sheet because once I start thinking that specifically then I’m already kind of writing an outline.

**John:** I would define a beat sheet, and these are much more common in procedural television, but I would define a beat sheet as not necessarily single sentences but really kind of bullet points that sort of talk through these are the moments in the story, especially in television leading up to act breaks to sort of show you – it’s almost like just the index cards of how you would get through the story. And so they’re very minimal and you’re just sort of looking at the big actions that happen there, or the big reversals, the big moments.

An outline is a much more flexible term, and you’ll see things that I would describe as really kind of a treatment but they call it an outline. An outline is, to me, a much more – a better fleshed out version of the beat sheet that actually shows – tends to show scene by scene, definitely sequence by sequence how you’re getting from point A to point B, what is introduced where, the callbacks to things. It’s a longer document. So to me an outline is probably a 10-page document. What are you thinking?

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, outline is basically a very thorough beat sheet, where you’re not just saying things like “police station, they interrogate the suspect.” And outline would say “Police station. This person and this person interrogate the suspect. They want to know this. She says this. They’re not sure. They decide to go talk to somebody else. Next bit.” That’s kind of like how you would scale up I would imagine from beat sheet to outline.

**John:** I find outlines very difficult to read if I’m not actually familiar with the story itself. I’m thinking back to an arbitration I did a year or two years ago and where one of the documents in it was an outline. And I would say it was 15 pages. And it was almost incomprehensible. It was very hard to follow bullet point to bullet point, paragraph to paragraph sort of what was happening. It was in this weird middle ground where it wasn’t kind of telling the story. It was just sort of saying – it was just giving the scene without enough of the transitions and segues between moments to really help me understand what movie I was watching.

**Craig:** I agree with you. I find outlines to be in a kind of useless no man’s land. I mean, I understand the value of a beat sheet. It’s this minimal organizational tool. It’s sort of the equivalent of continuity. So when you’re making a movie or a television show and you’re in editorial at some point someone will generate a continuity which is just literally a list of scenes in order with their numbers and the briefest description of what happens in them.

But as a plan, an outline kind of falls in between. It’s almost like so if a beat sheet is the plan for tonight is chicken with rice and string beans, an outline is chicken, butter, parsley, string beans, this thing. But there’s no instructions of like how long do you cook, how do you cook it, are there any other ingredients. When? It’s just not enough. It’s not enough to be anything.

Once I decide – this is personal – but once I decide to flesh something out it’s going to be a treatment or a scriptment. Those are really where I find myself living.

**John:** So this project I was writing this treatment for was going to be one of those longer form things. And so I wasn’t stuck in this sort of no man’s land. I really was sort of writing up the whole thing. I really looked at it as this is a prose document that is describing the movie that you’re going to be watching. And so it’s not trying to be an approximation of the screenplay. It’s really describing sort of sequence by sequence this is what’s happening in this sequence but told in really prose form. And when I needed to use dialogue I would move into italics, which is sort of a common choice. Then it always becomes awkward when you have two characters who need to talk to each other. Generally one person is in italics, one person is not in italics. It’s not perfect. But it works.

The other thing I will say about this treatment that I turned in, it had a lot of preamble that was not filmable material but was really talking you through this is the world, these are the characters, these are the challenges, this is what you expect, this is what you don’t expect. So there was quite a bit before we actually got to the story part of the treatment which is a luxury you generally don’t have when you’re turning in the screenplay. You don’t have five pages to talk through the plan for the thing. You’re actually delivering the actual object itself.

**Craig:** And how many pages did that – you’re describing this as a treatment.

**John:** This whole treatment was 26 pages altogether.

**Craig:** Perfect. So this about makes sense to me. To me, the only difference between a treatment and a scriptment is that in a treatment you are prose-ifying the plan for the movie, but you’re not saying everything. You don’t have to explain every transition or every tiny little thing. You can compress a couple scenes into one descriptive paragraph about the sort of thing that happens. For instance, if there’s a battle you can kind of summarize the battle and explain what matters. And as scriptment you’re doing it like a script, where you just now will say everything. Every moment, every little detail, every little transition. It’s all being spelled out in prose.

Prose is more efficient than screenplay to an extent. Although what I suspect is that I probably have written more words in the 70-page scriptment than I am in the 110-page script because in a script it’s just the description is, I don’t know, it’s just a little bit more efficient. And dialogue is a little punchier.

So, do you have to do – there’s no reason to do a scriptment, by the way. I’m one of the few people that does them. I guess James Cameron is one of the other ones. They’re a bear. It’s just that what happens with me is if you said to me, “Hey, I need you to write the classic 25-page treatment,” I’d start and I’d end up with a 70-page scriptment. Because that’s just kind of how my process goes.

**John:** Yeah. It was everything I could do to stop myself from doing that and to actually not keep expanding, keep expanding, keep expanding from the inside-out, but actually sort of limit myself to, OK, in this section, about ten minutes of screen time, it’s going to be about this much page count in my treatment and I’m not going to keep expanding and keep expanding. It was a real danger at certain points.

**Craig:** I mean, the benefit of the scriptment is, well, there are two main benefits. One I think is pretty much a wash with the treatment. The other one isn’t. Both a treatment and a scriptment will provide your collaborators with a very clear picture of your intentions. It’s very hard for them to say afterward, “Why did you do this? Or why did you do that?” You told them you would. It was incredibly clear, in fact. They can disagree. Meaning they can read your script later and go, “OK, we know you said you would do that, and you did it, and we now realize we don’t like it.” That’s fine.

But they can’t be surprised. The benefit, the special benefit of a scriptment, is that you are that much more prepared to write the script. The script becomes that much easier because you’ve kind of written it. You haven’t written all of it. There’s all those wonderful nuances and bits and bobs that come out in scene-crafting. But you’re never wondering, well, OK, now how am I going to get from this to this? Every question has essentially been answered. And so the writing becomes a little bit more of an extension of the scriptment as opposed to just starting up a new process.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk some pros and cons here. I would say a con for the treatment is that as a screenwriter you don’t have all of your tools. Like you don’t have your ability to easily do dialogue, to do transitions, to do a lot of – the film craft of this is not available when you’re just doing sort of prose form. And so you don’t get all the magic you get in writing a screenplay.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** An advantage I would say though is as I head in now to get notes on this I’m probably a little less protective of what I’ve written because it’s not sort of the finished versions of things. And so it will hopefully be a conversation about this is what I’m trying to go for in this scene, this thing that is not fully written yet. So, while it’s frustrating that I cannot give them the full version of what that scene would be or what that sequence would be like, it’s going to be very easy to change my plan for it based on their feedback and their reactions and get the director’s input into these moments before we’ve even written the scene.

**Craig:** No question. There is a rigidity that is implied in a scriptment. That said, what I have discovered is that producers have no problem blasting through that rigidity.

**John:** Of course.

**Craig:** But the nice thing is even then revising a scriptment as I just did last week is also relatively academic. Because so much of what is there is there. And even when they are saying, well, OK, it seems like a better version of this would be this, or we would prefer if this would happen, that it’s all still within the context of the scriptment. That they’re sort of subconsciously working within the framework that you’ve created. They are aware that there are certain things that if you knock down are a much bigger deal. That is an added benefit of the scriptment. It is a little harder for them to fall into the trap of “we’re making a small thing, a tiny suggestion,” that in fact would unravel the rug. They kind of can see that it would unravel the rug, and so they’re a little more crafty about how they’re going to approach things, presuming that they want the script done within some reasonable amount of time.

**John:** Also, you can talk about the story as a story rather than the execution. So you can talk about this is why we think this is not going to work. Or this is why we’re not happy with how the story is tracking here. As opposed to we are not happy with the dialogue you wrote in this scene. And so it is a chance to sort of focus on story without the question of is the problem what happens in the scene or is the problem the words that I used to describe the scene.

**Craig:** For people who might be hearing a strange noise it’s in my office. The heat system sometimes does this little rattle-y thing. It’s a very old building. This building is like from 1908.

**John:** Yeah. I’ve not been to your new offices yet, but based on everything I’ve heard on my side of the microphone I think it’s like a steampunk kind of collective place.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** And that there’s artists and people living together in this big giant space. And they sometimes have a drum circle going.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah. We all wear top hats with goggles on them. And–

**John:** A lot of unicycles. A surprising number of unicycles.

**Craig:** Unicycles powered by little flamethrowers. Yeah, that’s how it is over here. It’s very steampunk. Steampunk is the nerdiest of nerd stuff.

**John:** I love how nerdy it is.

**Craig:** It’s so nerdy.

**John:** I mean, I don’t enjoy it for myself, but I really enjoy that people enjoy it so much.

**Craig:** Like do you like science fiction? And Victorian England? It’s such a weird combo. Anyway, you were talking earlier and you said something interesting that I kind of filed away that I wanted to circle back around to. And that was the issue of comedy. It is very difficult to be funny in a treatment or an outline or certainly a beat sheet. To the extent that I don’t really try too much. The only kind of comedy I will ever try and include in a scriptment is if it’s the kind of comedy that could be neatly encapsulated in a three-sentence exchange between two people.

But beyond that you can just sort of vaguely say an insane thing ensues, or something like this, and describe it. But if you’re trying to get laughs with this thing you’re going to be sorely disappointed. And you probably will risk seeming a bit sweaty.

**John:** Yeah. I would agree. Both of the things I’ve been writing in treatment form recently have been comedies. And there’s moments in which like I’ll put in the right line that sort of indicates what the tone of the dialogue is. But more I think I’m indicating like these are funny elements that will be together. Like you can see why these characters in this situation will be funny and what the specific moments are that can happen. But I’m not trying to get you down to the granular joke level, because it’s just not the right medium for it.

**Craig:** Yes. And, so balancing out the fact that comedy is really difficult, one thing that’s actually very easy to do in a treatment or scriptment, which is very helpful I think for us as writers to both prepare for ourselves and also share with our collaborators, is subtext. Because there are things that characters can be thinking. And as you know from writing a novel prose is brilliant at letting us know what someone is thinking. Whereas in movies and television, the entire point of the process is for us in the audience to discern what someone is thinking through their behavior, their choices, their performance, and so we write toward that. We write to create subtext.

A treatment or an outline or a scriptment allows you to make that subtext clear. So nobody has to wonder what someone is thinking. They know because you’ve told them. Now, whether or not you execute that correctly in the script, who knows. And rewriting is always necessary. But there can be a discussion about intention. Because what happens is a lot of times is without this step, without the treatment or the outline, you turn in a script, it comes back, and they go, “Well we don’t like this scene.” Well why? “Because she’s being mean.” And you go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, she’s actually being gray. See, here’s what’s going on. And I thought that was clear. It wasn’t clear to you. But this is what’s going on. This is how it should be done on the day. And they go, “OK, OK, OK, we see that, we see that, we see that. Got it. Got it. Got it. Maybe you could just throw another word in or something just so we…” Because people get confused and draw the wrong conclusion all the time. I do it as a reader, too.

Scriptment kind of helps pave the way for that.

**John:** Yeah. Because you essentially can cheat in that the scriptment form doesn’t have the same rules in that you can only write what can be seen or heard. You can sort of veer into character’s thoughts to make it clear why they’re doing what they’re doing. It comes with the territory there. It’s nice.

**Craig:** Absolutely. So, it is an exhausting process. I find it very exhausting. And I had to do two of them recently for complicated reasons. I mean, not one and then the same one again, but rather two different ones, but somewhat related. And it’s exhausting. It is as exhausting as writing a screenplay.

But it is really helpful. It is the kind of I think most useful homework you can do. It will always save you from fundamental problems of not knowing where you’re writing to. I think some people get concerned that it may limit them somehow. That it will limit their imagination. But my response to that is always twofold. One, once you’re writing the script if you want to deviate from your scriptment or your outline, do it. And, two, you are perfectly free when you’re writing the scriptment. In other words, you can’t argue that it’s restraining or anti-imagination. You’re using your imagination when you’re writing that. It’s just a question of when do you start making decisions. Do you start then or now? I personally like to do it before I start writing the script because writing a script is really hard and I get very anxious when I have no clue what’s coming next.

**John:** Yeah. See, I’m generally not a planner ahead. I generally start writing the script without any sort of detailed outline or treatment going into it. So this will be the first time I’ll be doing that based on my treatment. And I will say I am looking forward to the fact that some complicated decisions will have already been made about like how I’m going to get all these things together. That’s great.

But thinking back to Arlo Finch, you know, with Arlo Finch I started the first book with a pretty detailed plan. The second book I didn’t go into it with a specific plan for how I was going to achieve all the things I wanted to achieve. And I really loved that process of discovery. And I discovered the villain who I thought was going to be the series villain was not the series villain and there’s a whole different character. And so I respect that like my not having a very good plan going into the second book probably freed me up in some ways.

But then in the third book I did end up writing an outline and it was helpful. So I’m saying I guess it really does depend on your situation, how much time you have, and sort of which way you work best.

**Craig:** I’m not surprised that that’s how it went for you. Because if you think about it, you planned chapter one, you planned act one. And you planned act three. And then act two you let yourself roam around a little bit. And that makes sense to me actually. The areas where you get the most screwed when you kind of don’t know what you’re doing is in the beginning and in the end. And it’s only because, look, the inherent risk to full-on freedom, the kind of freedom that comes with the fog of war, of not knowing necessarily right off the bat what comes next, the cost is that you may suddenly realize, oh god, I’ve literally written myself into this terrible corner.

If you’ve planned your beginning and you’ve planned your end, then I think makes total sense – give yourself some license to roam around in the middle.

**John:** I agree. At some point we will have Michael Arndt on the show. Michael Arndt I think is still in the process of this movie that he’s written that I think he’s directed several versions of along the way. He is the ne plus ultra of what Craig is describing where by making a plan and then sort of building on a plan and building on a plan and building on the plan you can make something hopefully terrific. So, we’ll get Michael on the show at some point because I’m curious to see – he’s probably the most extreme version of this process.

**Craig:** Yeah. He’s a big planner, isn’t he?

**John:** He is. All right. Let’s get to some questions. And the first question is actually about that planning. So Michael writes in, “I’m wondering how long the Chernobyl bible that Craig delivered with his pilot was for his development deal. I’m about to start pitching an historical series with a similar scope. And I’m curious to know what kind of deal my reps should be asking for and what kind of document was sufficient for the pickup.”

**Craig:** OK. Good questions. So I’m looking at it right now. And it was 65 pages. The 64 pages included, let me just give you a sense of it so you have a basic sense of the range, an overview, which was basically a mission statement. This is why I’m writing this. And this is ultimately what it’s about. Then were a number of pages that were about the characters. So the main characters would each get their own page and a description. And then the sort of sub-characters, secondary and tertiary characters would maybe get bundled onto a page together. And then each episode would get its own outline. And those outlines were not scriptments.

So, I’m going to pick a random episode. Episode two is about 12 pages.

**John:** And these are paragraph pages. And your paragraphs are five to nine sentences maybe?

**Craig:** Well, you know me, I’m a big white space guy. So typically the average would be three I would say. So I like lots of white space. I also would include photos to kind of help people have references as I was talking through things. And so that was it. I kind of did it that way. And laid it all out in that regard.

Now in terms of the deal, the deal that I made which I think was fairly standard was that I would provide them with a show bible, and then I would provide them with a pilot script. That’s kind of what they do. I think that’s pretty standard. I mean, Michael I’m not sure if you’re going to places like HBO or streamers, or if this is a network thing. I don’t know. Probably not network because you’re saying it’s a six-hour miniseries, so I assume it’s like an HBO kind of thing. That’s basically what you’re going to get. I mean, that’s how they do it.

Now, I had never written a show bible before. I asked Carolyn Strauss to get me an example. She sent me one. And lo and behold I did mine much longer. It’s just what I do. So I’ve written the longest show bible ever and probably ruined it for people after me who are going to be like, “Well, you know, Craig’s show bible was…” Sorry. Sorry other writers.

**John:** I do hear other folks who are doing shows for streamers find that they are being asked to write a bunch of additional stuff that was sort of not in their original contract between delivery of the pilot script and the decision to actually pick up the series. And that can be incredibly frustrating. And that is a situation which you do want to stand up for yourself and say like, “OK, I’m doing this because it’s helpful for me, but at a certain point you need to start paying me for the things I’m writing.”

It sounds like your show bible was already part of your contract which is great, which is how it should be.

**Craig:** Yeah. And honestly it’s all about get the show or don’t get the show. And I’m going to do that anyway. I mean, it’s just part of my process regardless. So the thing about the term show bible is it’s incredibly flexible. It can be, I suppose, whatever you want it to be. I saw one sample that was like five pages long. And I’m like I don’t know how this is a bible per se. So it’s really what you make of it. Just like same in features. Same deal.

All right. Next question. Anonymous writes, “I have a short film that I’ve birthed.” Oh, I like that. “I hired a writer.” Wait, so did you birth it or, OK?

“I hired a writer to write a 14-page script and now after a year of revisions a team of people are helping produce the film on a very small scale. A producer came onboard to help, non-paid, and they are insisting that you can’t have the word ‘I’ in the title. Apparently they are OK with the letter ‘I’ but not the word “I.” They say you are asking the audience to be in the position of a character before knowing anything about them. They have taught screenwriting in college and won screenplay competitions and apparently this is a big sticking point for them. Am I missing something? Is there filmmaking gospel that I missed about the word ‘I’ in titles? I am Legend. And I, Tonya seemed to do just fine. I acknowledge the word ‘I’ sounds weird in a title but I think the uniqueness helps it stand out. And there is some logic to using I am blank based on our story.”

John, this is a puzzling question.

**John:** It is a puzzling question. So, Anonymous, you are not crazy. It is absolutely fine to use “I” in the title. The reason why I picked this question and put it here is because it comes down to the issue of what is rules and what is taste. And the producer has certain taste, and the producer does not like the word “I” in a title. That’s fine. That producer can have that opinion. That does not make it gospel. It does not make it right. You can freely debate that person on whether “I” can be there. But there certainly is no rule.

And people have tastes. People have opinions. And I remember on Charlie’s Angels one of the producers was really obsesses with – she wanted to see the Angels eat to make sure that it was clear that for all the physical activity that they’re doing they do actually eat food. But didn’t want them to eat food in a messy way. And she had a problem with any sort of like Carl’s Jr kind of messiness. And I get that. That’s taste. That’s not actually a story point. It is just her taste and her opinion. And when you are bringing somebody in on your project you do want their taste and their opinion. But it does not mean that you always have to follow it or treat that as being gospel.

**Craig:** Yeah. First of all, Anonymous, if you hire a writer to write a 14-page script I just want to caution you to not write into a screenwriting podcast and say that you have a short film that you birthed. My problem with “I” is that. It’s when you say I’ve birthed. How about you and the writer birthed it, since the writer wrote the 14-page script.

But that said, you say a producer came onboard to help, nonpaid. So I’m not really sure what that means. But what you’re describing that they’re doing is this – it’s called appeal to authority. Rather than expressing their opinion as an opinion, they say it’s not an opinion because, A, I have taught screenwriting in college, and B, I have won screenplay competitions. Well, that in fact represents zero authority I’m sorry to say to that particular individual. Also, this is art. It has nothing to do with authority whatsoever. Either it’s good or it’s not, depending on who you are and where you’re standing and how you see it.

No, there’s no rule. And anybody that starts to do stuff like that needs to go away. Especially when they’re tossing out rules that you know are wrong. I mean, you just know that’s wrong. How is this person walking around in a world where this is plenty of stuff that has the word “I” in it and thinking that somehow you’re going to be fooled? That’s the part about this that I find vaguely sociopathic.

**John:** Yeah. That they’re holding onto their opinions so strongly even despite evidence to the contrary.

**Craig:** Right. Like clear evidence. And they presume that somehow you won’t unearth it? You will.

**John:** Oh no! They have IMDb.

**Craig:** Wait a second. Before I say what I’m about to say, do you have or have you ever heard of the Internet? You haven’t, great. So you can never say “I” in a title. Yeah, no, that’s just silly.

**John:** Not true. Salvatore from Australia writes, “Listening to Episode 436 with Liz Hannah you mentioned that the writer should always focus on what their own unique perspective is when writing a project. But what exactly does that mean in this context? I’ve heard that a lot but I’ve never actually heard it defined. For example, what did Craig recognize as his own unique perspective in the Chernobyl disaster? Was it the theme that lies always incur a debt of truth? In other words, how do I answer the question of why should I be the one to tell this story?”

**Craig:** Those are two different questions.

**John:** OK. Different questions. But let’s try to answer both.

**Craig:** Yes. So, you have one question, Salvatore, which is what does it mean to have a unique perspective on something. And then the other question is why should I be the one to tell this story. There is no answer to the second question. Nobody should be somebody to tell any story. You want to, you are compelled to, you feel a need to. It would give you artistic pleasure to do so. That’s why. I don’t believe in this kind of notion that one person or another is specifically anointed by fate or the universe to tell a particular story.

What is your unique perspective? The way your mind works. That’s it. Meaning when we say that to people what we’re really saying is do this the way that feels instinctively beautiful to you. Don’t do it the way you think other people do it or would want you to do it. So, when I sit down and I think I’m going to write something like Chernobyl, what I don’t do is go and watch a bunch of other limited series based on historical events and go, OK, oh, that’s good, I should do it like that. Or obviously I wanted to do it like this, but they do it like that. I should really do it like that.

No. I just follow my gut. So that’s what we really mean. Every writer has some sort of instinctive understanding of what they want to do. And that’s the part that you provide that nobody else can. So, let that be your loadstone.

**John:** Yeah. Salvatore is asking about unique perspective. I think what we tend to look for is unique vision and unique voice. And those are things you can find in writing, both writing on the page and sort of what the ultimate thing is that gets made. But it’s sometimes easier to think about that in terms of other media. So like with a composer, like composers have very distinct styles. You could imagine sort of a Danny Elfman score on this movie versus a – I cannot pronounce Craig’s Chernobyl composer, but–

**Craig:** Hildur Guðnadóttir.

**John:** They would be very different approaches. And they have different ears, different visions, different voices when it comes to how they are going to do their work and do their art. And so it’s a question of like what are you brining about your art and your perspective, your vision to this material. And that’s why Aaron Sorkin writing about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook is going to be very different than Craig writing about that or me writing about that. There’s different things that interest us and there’s different things we’re going to highlight. It’s just going to be a different thing.

And so you are inevitably going to be coming into a project with all of your priors. All your history. Your tastes. Your fears. That is going to make it unique. I think what Craig is arguing is don’t try to minimize what makes you unique in order to write the version of the movie that someone else could write, because that’s pointless.

**Craig:** Exactly. That’s exactly right.

**John:** Cool. Do you want to take Breton Zinger?

**Craig:** All right. Our next question is from Breton Zinger, which is awesome.

**John:** It’s a great name.

**Craig:** I want to be Breton Zinger. Breton Zinger writes – this is not a question. This is an order. “You should do a segment on how to be productive writing wise while traveling. I always have grand plans to get X, Y, and Z done, and then I only get X started.” Yeah, what do you think? You’ve done a lot of traveling. I’ve done a lot of traveling. How do you manage this?

**John:** A recent thing I’ve started doing while traveling, and I went to Korea and Japan, and I had very long flights ahead of me. And so a thing I’ve started doing which I really recommend for everybody is you know you’re going to have two, five, 13 hours on a plane. That’s great time where no one is going to interrupt you. While we’re in the plane before we’ve taken off I make a list of here’s all the things I want to do on this flight. And that’s stuff I want to actually accomplish, but also I want to watch that movie I’ve been meaning to watch. I’ll go through and figure out what movies are on the seat back that I’ve not seen yet that I do want to see.

I have books and it’s like I want to read two chapters in this book. So not just the stuff that I have to get done, but the stuff I’ve always kind of wanted to get done. Because to me there’s nothing more dispiriting than having spent 13 hours on a plane and realize like, oh, I got kind of nothing done in that 13 hours. Or I played games on my phone that I could have done anywhere.

So, I try to make that time really productive. And so whether it’s travel, whether it’s jury service, whether it’s some other thing where you have a block of time that is uncommitted, use that time.

The other thing that I’ve been much better about in the last few years, especially with writing the books, is that I need to have at least an hour of uninterrupted writing time every day. And so I claim that with my family saying I’m going to need this time. And so I can go downstairs to the lobby. I can go somewhere else. But I need to be uninterrupted for one hour to do my work. And that’s been great. And I’ve actually been pretty productive during breaks because I’ve sort of blocked off that time.

**Craig:** Those are all very strong notions. Yeah, long flights are nice because you actually get so bored that the notion of doing work becomes attractive.

The one thing to keep in mind, Breton, is that when you are traveling you’re going to be more tired than you normally are. So I think possibly just lower the expectations. There’s possibly going to be some jetlag. Also, you’re traveling, so that means you’re probably there for some purpose. To see things, or do things. So you’re going to have less time and your mind is going to be a little more distracted. And also the writing is something that is contextualized within your normal life at home and you’re not in your normal life at home.

So, I would say also give yourself a little bit of a break and maybe don’t make grand plans to get X, Y, and Z done. Since you only get X started, how about next time just make a plan, a non-grand plan to get X done. And see if you can do a little bit more on X, and then you don’t have Y and Z staring down at you going, “You suck.” And see if that works. If that works then maybe next time you could do, OK, do X and start Y. Just manage your expectations. It’s hard.

**John:** Yeah. Agreed. Patrick Tebow writes, “During the Three Page Challenge section of Episode 434 you two briefly touched on the use of pictures in a scene, such as when a character looks at a photo on a desk. Is this prop and avoid at all cost kind of situation? Or is it mostly a problem when a picture is used as a cheap way to start a conversation between two characters?” Craig, what do you think? Is it always a bad idea to be referencing a photo or a picture in movies?

**Craig:** It’s mostly always a bad idea.

**John:** I agree with you.

**Craig:** I never want to say anything is always wrong, but somebody using a photo to start a conversation between two characters, that’s easily avoidable. The bigger issue is when a character is alone and looking at a photograph. Because that’s a cheap way for the people making something to externalize a thought. I need to know that they miss mom. Or, you know, the classic one is some guy picks up a photo and it’s him and this woman and he’s sad. And we realize that she’s either dead or left him. And it’s just pretty tropey. It’s pretty clunky. And it’s kind of incumbent upon us to come up with interesting new ways to do that. I think at this point in 2020 pulling the old staring at a photo thing is going to feel a little soap opera. A little The Young and the Restless.

**John:** I agree with you. Because I’ve never actually had the experience of wanting to pull out a photo and stare at it. It’s just not a thing I’ve ever done. And I don’t believe it. The movie 1917 which I enjoyed very much does have that as an element. I think it gets away with it to a larger degree than you’d expect because it’s set up in the plot and also because we have an expectation that these soldiers actually would have been carrying those photos with them and it’s a prop that is actually handed off and sort of useful story wise in the course of the movie.

So I believed the characters more when they are referencing photos because that’s a thing that soldiers do.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. So if it’s appropriate to the time then it makes total sense. I mean, but if you’re telling a story now you’re right. I mean, I don’t look at photos ever by the way. That’s a whole other side conversation. What’s happened to our culture with photos, I just don’t understand it. I mean, do you ever just sit there and start looking through old photos?

**John:** No, I look through Instagram to look at other people’s photos.

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** Photos are about what’s happening right now, not about history.

**Craig:** Right. So that’s also insane, by the way. So it’s all crazy. But when people are like we have to get a photo of ourselves I’m like, OK. Why? Are we going to – I mean, I’m becoming that guy who is like, fine, I’ll do it, but will this ever be looked at again? Why are we doing it? It’s so weird. Anyway.

**John:** Let’s do one last letter. This is from Mark who is actually Mike. So this is the guy who wrote in saying that he is moving to Los Angeles and wanted advice and people wrote in with advice. His real name is actually Mike. We changed it to Mark because we’ve sort of gotten in the habit of changing everyone’s names unless there’s a real reason to keep their real name because of all the assistant stuff we’ve been doing. We just don’t want to accidentally put people’s real names in things. But his name is actually Mike even though we called him Mark early on.

Craig, would you read this for us?

**Craig:** Yeah. This is his update. He says, “Thank you so much for airing my question about moving to LA. I’d also like to thank the listeners for their fantastic advice. I especially appreciate how widely the advice has ranged from esoteric to practical. Passion, enthusiasm, patience, and consistency will still with me for years. But don’t write at home and get a California driver’s license are going to be equally useful.

“Here’s my update. I landed yesterday after a hectic month of packing my Brooklyn apartment, quitting my job, and using up every last drop of healthcare I could squeeze out of my employer-sponsored plan.” Oh America. “It’s a huge relief to finally be here. All I’ve seen of the city so far has been the freeway from LAX and the two-block radius surrounding my North Hollywood apartment.” Ah, that’s where I was.

“And I can’t wait to get a car so I can continue to explore. I’m heading to a D&D game tonight.” What? This guy is amazing. “And I’m hoping to meet a bunch of fellow nerds and writers. Would it be possible for you to put me in contact with Eric from Episode 432? If he’s comfortable sharing his contact info with me I’d like to reach out regarding writer’s groups. Thanks again for your time and everything you do. I’m hoping to make it out to a live event soon. Best, Mike.”

Well that’s, I mean–

**John:** That’s lovely.

**Craig:** He sounds like us.

**John:** He does. So I did put him in contact with Eric. Eric wrote back and said, “Sure,” and so they are going to be talking about a writer’s group.

**Craig:** Three months later we’re going to be doing a How Would This Be a Movie. Eric has murdered Mike.

**John:** [laughs] Wouldn’t that be fantastic? So it’s really two outcomes. Either like the same way that Megan McDonnell was hired to write Captain Marvel 2, it could be that Mike was hired to write another Marvel movie, or he killed Eric.

**Craig:** Or Mike and Eric met and fell in love. And then just started doing crimes like–

**John:** Perfect.

**Craig:** Just like Bonnie & Clyde. Listen, there’s a lot that we can do with this.

**John:** It’s a ripe story area.

**Craig:** We really got to see how this turns out. This is exciting.

**John:** All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a Reddit thread called r/imsorryjon. It is told from the perspective of Garfield, sort of. Basically it’s a re-imagination of Garfield in which Garfield is a Lovecraftian monster who kills and possessed Jon Arbuckle and does horrible, horrible things. It is a dark, disturbing thread to go down. And I just greatly enjoyed it. I just love appropriation of cultural elements and twisting them into wild shapes.

I particularly like this idea that Garfield is sort of one of those lantern fish that sort of like lures people in. So I would just say if you want to see some disturbing Garfield imagery I would point you to this Reddit thread.

**Craig:** I mean, yeah, I do want to see that. How could I not want to see that? My One Cool Thing this week is a person. And I don’t know if you know him, John, but I certainly do very well. His name is Scott Silver. Scott is a screenwriter like you and I and Scott is nominated for the second time for an Academy Award. This time around it’s for co-writing Joker with Todd Phillips. He was also nominated for 8 Mile.

And I just want to call him out because I think a lot of times what ends up happening, especially when you’re writing with a director is that suddenly the other writer kind of starts to disappear a little bit for whatever reason.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** And weirdly the reverse happens in television where I notice that suddenly – like Johan just started disappearing from things. And even sometimes people would say “Chernobyl director Craig Mazin” and I would have to be like, no, for the love of – let me right it and tell you why that’s not true.

But Scott has been doing fantastic work forever. He wrote and directed Johns. That was his first movie, which is a really cool movie. He wrote 8 Mile. And he also wrote The Fighter which is awesome. And now Joker. And so he’s had a very long, very productive career. And he’s a terrific guy and an excellent writer. And so I just thought, yeah, I’m going to give this guy a little extra love because, you know, a lot of times when this stuff is going on you can get easily overshadowed by the actors, and the directors, especially in features. And so my One Cool Thing this week is Scott Silver.

**John:** And also Scott is an east coast based writer as well I believe. Right? He’s not living in Los Angeles.

**Craig:** Yes. He lives in Manhattan.

**John:** Fantastic. So, again, you can run your career from wherever you choose to live. Easier in Los Angeles, but definitely doable in New York.

Stick around if you’re a Premium member because we will be discussing the Myers-Briggs personality index. But otherwise that’s the end of our show.

Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao, with production assistance this week by Stuart Friedel and Dustin [Box]. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by James Launch and Jim Bond. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions like the ones we answered today.

For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. And a reminder, of course, sign up for Premium membership at Scriptnotes.net to get all the back episodes and our bonus segments. Craig, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** OK, Craig. When did you first hear about the Myers-Briggs type indicator?

**Craig:** Many, many years ago. It was I think literally when I met Melissa. Because–

**John:** So college?

**Craig:** College. Because her parents were super into it.

**John:** So for people who don’t understand what we’re talking about, it is an assessment, it’s a test, it’s a short three to five minute test you take where you answer a bunch of questions and then it scores you. This is back in the days of pencil and paper when I was doing this in college. It scores you and you get a four letter code that sort of indicates your personality type.

So there’s four criteria. There’s four sort of characteristics. And it comes out to be a grid of 16 personality types.

**Craig:** Yeah. So this is all based roughly on Jungian stuff. Jung, how will I say this as charitably as possible, was wrong about a billion things.

**John:** As was Freud.

**Craig:** Correct. But that’s the point. They were early. They were wrong the way that a lot of people thought the world was flat and yet they were brilliant. So, Aristotle did not know that the world was round, but he’s a pretty brilliant guy. So they were, you know, at the forefront of things. Did Aristotle not know that the world was round?

**John:** I don’t think he–

**Craig:** I don’t think he did.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Well we’ll put that in the hopper for a later discussion. But so, you know, he had these theories, this kind of collective unconscious and these archetypes and these things that meant something to all of us. Regardless, out of that comes this fascinating way of analyzing personality. And unlike a lot of other ways of analyzing personality which basically come down to asking you are you a this kind of person or a that kind of person, Myers-Briggs uses like a quad-axis formula where there are four different scales. They are binary scales. You go this way or you go that way. So for instance you are extroverted or introverted. The words don’t always mean what they mean colloquially.

What’s fascinating about this is that they take the results of those four things and then analyze each combination. There are 16 in all. And out of the combinations of these things they make inferences which aren’t necessarily intuitive to what the individual parts of the collective four letter descriptor is. But for whatever reason when they look at it and combine those four things and assign this, OK, if you’re this, this, this, and this, you’re going to be this. It’s kind of right. It kind of works.

**John:** It’s kind of right but it’s also kind of right in the way that horoscopes are kind of right sometimes.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Or your astrological sign or a lot of other things that feel like this does apply to me as opposed to the other criteria. So, we’ll put a link to one of these tests so if people want to test for themselves to see what the score would be for their personality type. You told me that you came out as an ENTJ?

**Craig:** That’s right. Yeah.

**John:** And so when I took this test in college I also came out as either an ENTJ or an INTJ. Anyone who knows me that I’ve become much more extroverted over time. So, that I became an E over time. When I took the test last night I came out as ENFP, which was different. But honestly I think I messaged you the actual scorecard I got. I was very close to the median on all of these things, and so it really was not a strong thing. Like answering one question slightly differently would have changed my score. So I think I probably am very similar to you on a lot of these things.

Judgment versus perception. I would perceive you to be strongly judgmental. That sounds negative and loaded, but you do tend to have very strong opinions on things.

**Craig:** Yeah. So it’s not in the Myers-Briggs model, judgment is not necessarily like I’m judge-y.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** It’s rather – and neither is perception more like, oh, I notice lots of things. In the Myers-Briggs model judgment is basically about, well, frankly it’s related to what we were talking about in the main episode about scriptments. Judgment is really about planning, and being decisive, and you’re preference if you are more towards judgment is liking things to be a bit more clear-cut and decided. You don’t do well with a general sense of not knowing what’s going to happen. Uncertainty is not your friend.

Whereas people who are more towards the perception side of things, it’s a little easier for them to adapt to changing circumstances. They’re OK with a kind of I’m not really sure what I’m going to do next. I mean, really what it comes down to is are you the kind of writer that likes to know the next scene or are you not. And that’s kind of cool actually.

**John:** That does describe the difference between you and me. It’s that I am a little bit more on the seat of my pants. We should I think say that mental health professionals don’t use this test.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So it really is a thing that is interesting for lay people to do and explore. Have you ever tried to use anything like this for the characters that you’re writing?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Nor have I. But I do feel like it’s the kind of thing where aspiring screenwriters might that that, oh, this will be a great insight. I suspect there are tools out there that will help you figure out the personality types for your characters. And I just do not think it would be a useful way to spend your time on thinking about your characters.

**Craig:** Not even remotely. Because ultimately what it is is there’s 16 of them. So what are we saying? There’s only 16 kinds of humans in the world? Not at all. It really is just a general sense of how you – the only useful aspect to this as far as I’m concerned, other than just vague curiosity, is that it might help you feel a little bit seen and a little bit normal. Because there’s a description of who you are and it’s kind of cast in the most positive light.

For instance, I think in our society we tend to view extroversion as a very positive thing. You’re a people person. Whereas introverts are a bit suspicious. They’re shy. And maybe they’re afraid. And what Myers-Briggs says is neither of those are two. Extroversion/introversion are simply defined as what energizes you more, being around people or not? And that’s a very positive way of thinking about who you are.

So that part is really helpful. And in that sense it’s fun to do.

Should you use this for writing? No. Should you go to those sites that are like if you’re this type you want to marry that type? No. [laughs] That’s nonsense. That’s all just nonsense.

That said, if you are with someone, as you and I are, not just by the way with our spouses but with each other, and you’re involved with people, and you’re–

**John:** You have relationships in work relationships, in friendships, everything.

**Craig:** Exactly. And you’re kind of curious why when you relate to a certain person there are some times where there are conflicts or confusions, doing this could actually give you a little bit of insight. And by insight really what I mean is understanding and empathy. You go, OK, they actually do see the things a bit differently.

So it’s easy to say, ugh, the problem with that person is they’re so rigid. They’re always just trying to quickly decide what we’re doing next. They’re not open-minded. And the other person could say, oh my god, that person literally doesn’t plan ahead or think of anything, they’re just improvising constantly and it’s just this mush. Well, those are negative ways of thinking about those things but there are positive ways of thinking about those things. And I think this helps you do that.

**John:** Yeah. And the degree to which those could be complementary traits for the other person.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** In terms of thinking about this with your characters, as I was going through the questions yesterday I would say that some of the questions are worth asking of the characters in your story. So, I would say I don’t think it’s a good idea to come out with what is the four-letter score for this character. But asking question about like does this person seek out parties and social interactions, or does this person want to sort of retreat and build up energy for themselves? Is this person quick to make a decision or want to gather everything in before making a decision? Those are useful metrics that could apply to some characters in your script. And especially if you’re looking at the protagonist in your script and how he or she works then you might decide, OK, you know what’s going to be great and frustrating for this character in this comedy that I’m writing is a person who is going to do the opposite. And that is probably a useful way of thinking about some of these traits in terms of the characters we’re writing.

**Craig:** Yes. It is a really good way to interrogate your own personality bias that may be getting imposed on your characters. Especially if people say all your characters sound the same. Well my guess is then they all sound like you. And so you have a way of thinking about things and suddenly all of your characters are. So taking a look at the ways other people think about things, not as deficits or failures but rather simply as differences might help you expand some things.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** For instance, one of the axes of the Myers-Briggs test is sensing versus intuition. By the way, their words are terrible.

**John:** I think they’re bad choices. Because it’s not like sensitive is more sensitive. It’s actually relating to does it have to have data or you’re going on gut feeling.

**Craig:** Yeah. They didn’t pick great words. But regardless, the sensing side of things are people that are rather detail-oriented. They’re somewhat literal and practical. They like to deal with concrete stuff. And the other side, the opposite on that axis is intuition. These are people who are more conceptual. They’re more abstract. They like to know what the overall theory or big picture is. They like to know what’s the point of this as opposed to how does it function. There’s an interesting dichotomy there.

**John:** I’m not sure it quite is a dichotomy though. That’s [unintelligible].

**Craig:** Right. It’s kind of an arbitrary thing that they’ve done. All of it is arbitrary, honestly. But it is a nice way to challenge yourself when you’re writing your characters to say, wait, if they’re all sounding the same is it because they’re all kind of super detail-oriented people? Where’s the person that gets frustrated with that and just wants to know why and how? Just big picture this for me, I’m a dreamer, I’m a conceiver, I’m an imaginer. Whatever it is. Just nice ways to get out of your own head. Weirdly I suppose the tool is designed to get into your own head. But I like to think of it as getting out of your head.

**John:** So, as I was doing research last night another sort of test that’s done in a similar way is called the Big Five personality traits. So OCEAN is the model they have on call. And those five characteristics are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

**Craig:** [laughs] I’m neuroticism. All of it.

**John:** Yes. 100%. And I bring it up just because in the traits that the Myers-Briggs is looking at, those aren’t the only meaningful traits that help define how we react in the world.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so I would say just if it’s helpful for you to look at it that way, great. But that’s not going to give you a complete picture of why someone does the things that they do.

**Craig:** No question. This is just I think more than anything it’s food for thought and a fun party trick to do when you’re – I mean, when I would sit and do this with Melissa’s family, half of the discussion was, “Wait, you say you’re a blah-blah-blah? No you’re not.” The other problem with this is that usually these tests are, well, they’re asking you a question and you’re answering it. But we don’t always know what we are.

**John:** 100%. And you’re imagining one scenario in which you remember, oh that’s right, I left that party early. But that other time where I stayed out till 4am. Wait, so how do I answer this?

**Craig:** Correct. Sometimes people also – they think that one way is better than another and so they answer that way.

**John:** Totally. My personality type is that I want to ace the test.

**Craig:** Well there you go. So then you’re starting to min-max this thing.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** I think you do, min-maxing the Myers-Briggs. We’re nerds.

**John:** Craig, thanks.

**Craig:** Thank you John.

**John:** Bye.

* John will be part of the [Beyond Bars: Changing the Narrative on Criminal Justice](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beyond-bars-changing-the-narrative-on-criminal-justice-tickets-91710373195) panel on February 26th
* Contact [brand@johnaugust.com](mailto:brand@johnaugust.com) for information on [Highland 2](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/) for students and educators
* [Outlines](https://screenwriting.io/what-does-an-outline-look-like/) and [treatments](https://screenwriting.io/what-is-a-treatment/) on screenwriting.io, and some examples in the [johnaugust.com library](https://johnaugust.com/library)
* Scriptnotes, episodes [436](https://johnaugust.com/2020/political-movies), [434](https://johnaugust.com/2020/ambition-and-anxiety), and [432](https://johnaugust.com/2020/learning-from-movies)
* Reddit’s [r/imsorryjon](https://www.reddit.com/r/imsorryjon/top/?t=all)
* Scott Silver on [IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0798788/?ref_=tt_ov_wr) and [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Silver)
* The [Myers–Briggs Type Indicator on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator) and an [online test](https://www.16personalities.com/)
* The [Big Five personality traits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits)
* [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 James Llonch ([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/437standard.mp3).

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

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 436 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast it’s a new installment of How Would This Be a Movie, where we take a look at stories in the news and figure out how they can become entertainment, because real life is deeply unsettling, and even in circumstances where someone’s guilt is incontrovertibly established traditional rules of not just storytelling but actual democracy are shattered one after the other making you wonder whether anything actually matters. And if there’s even going to be an election in November, which is why we retreat to what-if scenarios and imagine a world in which choices have consequences, and the bad guys sometimes lose.

To do so we have a special guest this week. Liz Hannah—

**Liz Hannah:** No pressure.

**John:** She is a writer whose credits include The Post, Long Shot, and the upcoming All the Bright Places. Welcome back, Liz.

**Liz:** Thanks guys.

**Craig:** Welcome back, Liz. Third time?

**Liz:** Third time. Need the jacket.

**Craig:** You got the jacket. We have a burgundy jacket for you.

**Liz:** Oh, that’s nice.

**Craig:** At five. It’s gold-stripe.

**Liz:** Oh wow.

**John:** Later on we give scarves. There’s a whole sort of Scriptnotes wardrobe.

**Liz:** I was like do you start with like a jean jacket, then you get to a leather jacket?

**Craig:** All of it from Goodwill.

**Liz:** Great.

**Craig:** Rest assured, someone died in that jacket.

**Liz:** If it’s XXXL, that’s exactly the way I want it.

**Craig:** At minimum.

**Liz:** Yes, obviously. Either that or like petite.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** That’s how it works.

**Liz:** Those are the ranges.

**Craig:** From a child.

**Liz:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** And if you’re a Premium member stick around because at the end of the show there will be a bonus segment, and Liz hopefully you’ll stick around for this, too. I would like to talk about books and what it’s OK to do in or with a book. So, are you allowed to dog your pages? Are you allowed to markup books? What is permissible to do with an actual physical book?

**Craig:** That will be our bonus topic?

**John:** Bonus topic.

**Craig:** Great.

**Liz:** Great.

**John:** All right. Craig Mazin, you just won a WGA award.

**Craig:** I sure did. I can only imagine how frustrating that must have been for some of the people from the guild that were there. I realized when I walked in, because I ran into Sally Burmester who is the kind of second in command of the credits department who I’ve had a lot of years working with, and then just some other people that I know from the guild that I’ve always been very friendly with. And I had such a nice hugs and all the rest of it. And then I realized like there’s only really two kinds of people that work at the guild. People that are like, yay, but then most of them who are like you son of a bitch. So, I was like–

**Liz:** Do you feel like it’s just the guild that feels that way about you?

**Craig:** No, no, obviously the rest of the world. I’m aware of my polarizing nature.

**John:** Well congratulations on another award for Chernobyl.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** So there’s very few awards left, but it’s been a good run.

**Craig:** It’s been a great run. And honestly because we all love each other – I feel like there are probably shows that do, or movies that do really well where there’s a lot of enmity between people. I think there was like something in the air when was it 12 Years a Slave, when that movie won? There was like the writer and the director didn’t like each other. There was something in the air. We all love each other. All of us. Like everybody. So when all these things, like Johan Renck won the DGA award last weekend. So, we were loving on him. And our production designers won. And our sound people won. And so everybody sends each other these lovey-dovey emails. And I’m, you know, that part is wonderful. We all actually like each other so we’re happy.

**Liz:** Such a rarity.

**Craig:** I think it is.

**Liz:** It is.

**Craig:** I think it legitimately is. Ah, if people could see the misery that goes on. But, yeah, it’s been great. And I’m very grateful. And the Writers Guild, you know, my relationship with the Writers Guild is complicated in that I’m always kind of just a fuse-budgety policy questioner, but obviously a loyal member of the guild for a quarter of a century. And, you know, that award last night actually was emotional. It was nice.

**Liz:** It’s really nice to be in a room with other writers. And it’s nice to be recognized by your peers who you respect and who you are either internally or externally competing with. You know, you’re all trying to make each other better, or be better than somebody else. And so to be recognized like that I think is really wonderful.

**John:** Yeah. Some news and some follow up before we get to our main topics. My third book, Arlo Finch, comes out Tuesday, the day this episode drops.

**Craig:** I’m looking at it.

**John:** So Arlo Finch in the Kingdom of Shadows is the third book in the installment.

**Craig:** OK. I just want to describe for people–

**John:** Describe it.

**Craig:** So Arlo Finch and his friends are staring into what appears to be two centurions, but statues with wings, but the wings are it looks like stone. And it’s like but the centurion statue stone goliaths are facing each other and in between them is a crevice of light.

**John:** Fair.

**Craig:** And something good or bad is coming out of it. And you know what I feel? I feel like they’re about to leave something and enter something new.

**John:** That is absolutely true and accurate. They are headed into the world beyond the woods. The realm.

**Craig:** Yes. The Kingdom of Shadows.

**John:** Yes. That is in fact the Kingdom of Shadows. All three books have an “in the” thing. It’s all geographically based.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So “in the Valley of Fire,” “in the Lake of the Moon,” and now “in the Kingdom of Shadows.” It is actually truly a trilogy. This last week I put out a long medium post which you can read about the experience of writing a trilogy, because as screenwriters we always write like one movie. And it was really cool to actually get the chance to write the whole trilogy and do the whole thing. But unlike your Chernobyl experience where you could plan out the whole series in advance, I really kind of couldn’t do that. And so one of the things I wanted to get into in this post is the degree to which you can make a plan but there’s just a lot of discovery along the way. And the villain of this series was not the villain who I thought was going to be the real villain as I started writing the first book.

**Craig:** The real villain I presume is capitalism.

**John:** It is capitalism. [laughs] It’s funny how it all comes back to that.

**Craig:** I’m in a Bernie State of Mind.

**John:** If you want to come see me and get your book signed I’m doing an event at Chevaliers on Larchmont this Sunday at 2pm.

**Liz:** Love that bookstore.

**John:** So good.

**Craig:** I do want to read this blurb on the back of the book. It’s pretty amazing. This is Ransom Riggs who is a number one New York Times bestselling author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, a book that my children both read, and thus I read and loved. And he writes, god I hope Ransom Riggs is a man, because I just said he writes.

**John:** He does. He is a man and he does write.

**Craig:** It could be – Ransom is a gender-neutral name.

**Liz:** That’s true. It’s sort of a human-neutral name.

**Craig:** It’s human-neutral. It’s actually a word. It’s a noun. Ransom Riggs says, “John August is a master storyteller.” That’s pretty impressive.

**John:** It’s nice. Yeah.

**Craig:** Master.

**John:** Yeah. I got some good reviews on this.

**Craig:** Yeah man. That’s awesome. Congratulations.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Are you going to do another one by the way? Not another one of these, but another thing?

**John:** At some point.

**Liz:** A book series.

**John:** Well, at least a book. I don’t think I would do another series right away. It was a lot to undertake right at the start and it was kind of foolish in a way, just because to do a book a year is just a huge commitment.

**Craig:** Derek Haas does a book a minute.

**John:** He does a book a minute.

**Liz:** That’s right. He does.

**John:** And his books are ultimately a series, but they’re not a trilogy in that way. Like it’s another installment. This was a lot.

**Craig:** I wish I had – so our friend, Derek Haas, who does all the Chicago shows, Chicago Fire, all the rest of it, has more confidence as a writer than anybody I know. And because of that he’s free, like he doesn’t do that thing that I’m always doing which is just going, “You know what? I suck. And actually today would be best spent playing a videogame.” He doesn’t do that.

**Liz:** Oh, that’s every day.

**Craig:** Yeah. Right.

**Liz:** Every day opening the computer, and particularly when it’s a blank page you’re like, no, not good enough for that. Just no.

**Craig:** No, I can’t. Derek is like, “Awesome, blank page. Let’s fill it. Woo!”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** God, I wish I had that.

**John:** He gets up at five in the morning and just does it.

**Craig:** He gets up at five in the morning. I go to bed at five in the morning because my mind won’t shut up. Ugh.

**Liz:** I had to open a blank page on Thursday. I was writing an outline for something and it was luckily like the 15th draft of it that I had been doing, or 15th break of it, and so had kind of an idea of where I was going. But man opening that blank page, even knowing like I’ve got the notes, I know where I’m supposed to head, I was just like there’s so much more interesting things happening on Twitter right now. Or Instagram. Or The New York Times. Or quite literally anything else possible.

**Craig:** Anything. Can I tell you also as I get older there’s this new thing that’s been happening – I don’t’ know if you experience this, John, because we’re older than you, Liz. I’ll start a new project. It’s the beginning. I look at it and I go, “My god, am I still doing this?”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh my god. Have I gotten nowhere? [laughs] You just realize that you’ve been driving a car in a circle forever.

**Liz:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And you’re like I have to do this again? Here we go.

**Liz:** My favorite thing is to revise my title page.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s a classic.

**Liz:** I’m really into that.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**Liz:** I’m like, um, is this where you put – is it centered? Is this the font that I want to use for the title? What are the other title pages I’ve used for other movies I’ve written? And then you go down that wormhole. Maybe I’ll just read this. We’ll see–

**Craig:** I’ve got a new thing for you if you want. This is my new jam. So I’m adapting this thing that’s based on another existing work. And that existing work has a very specific font it uses. So I’m like, oh, I’ll use that font for the title page. Well, that font was specifically for that thing. But then other people have made similar. So now I’m on a font hunt.

**Liz:** Yeah.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Oh, font hunt. That was so much fun. And then you get to download the font and install the font. But that’s a day. You’re exhausted.

**Liz:** I was doing a look book for something recently and really got into the font world. And I was like, you know, I really think I want this to look like a neon sign. Guess how many neon sign fonts there are?

**John:** 700.

**Craig:** 4,000.

**Liz:** A million. Just a million.

**Craig:** There we go. I knew it.

**Liz:** And so then you’re like what color is it if I’m doing this in neon sign?

**Craig:** Right.

**Liz:** It was a great day. It was a great day.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s a good day.

**John:** And really when you’re being paid a daily rate to do this, well, my pages aren’t done yet but I did fit the font for the–

**Craig:** What we’re saying is their nightmare come true.

**Liz:** Actually every producer listening to this right now is like, “Ugh, that was why it was on Tuesday and not Wednesday.”

**Craig:** Exactly. “Because of the font? You piece of shit.” [laughs] What can we do? We’re humans. We can only do what we can do, unless we’re Derek Haas.

**John:** A script from this past year which did use a custom font on its title page–

**Craig:** Segue Man.

**John:** Was Knives Out. And we talked about Knives Out in Episode 436. I got a bit of follow up here. It says, “John and Craig, you guys were talking about the specificity in scripts and referenced the Knives Out script. I was excited to read it but I noticed there was very little if any description given to the characters. Starting on page one with Fran and then within the first three pages Marta, Mom, and Alice are also introduced, but Marta was the only character with any description whatsoever. And this description was only given as 20s. I’d have to believe that if this was a three-pager sent in by an unknown you would have mentioned that and Craig would have had some umbrage.”

**Craig:** Yes. I would have.

**John:** “So is this because the script is written by an established writer, or it’s a style that some writers can either do or not do as long as it’s consistent?”

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Tell us what you think, Craig?

**Craig:** Rian Johnson was writing a script for himself to direct.

**Liz:** That’s what I was going to say.

**Craig:** So there’s no question that when it was time to cast, I mean, well first of all that movie is cast almost exclusively with stars. Well-known actors. Meaning there wasn’t going to be an audition process as much as we think this kind of person – I imagine this sort of person, this sort of person. For those actors when the script was sent without question Rian must have included – I mean, I’ll ask him – but he must have included, or just called them and said, “This is who you are. This is what you look like. This is how I see it.” But there was no reason for him to put all that in there because all it would do would be to limit the description for the actors that would be reading it. So he could tailor that to them.

Yes, if he were not directing it, or if there were any chance that anybody else would be working on it, or that there would be a lot of open auditions then, yeah, no, he would have to do something.

**John:** He’d write, “Ruggedly handsome, but doesn’t know it.” Or any of those classic things.

**Craig:** Papa doesn’t know it. Ruggedly handsome but doesn’t know it.

**Liz:** She’s the girl next door, but…”

**Craig:** But.

**Liz:** But.

**Craig:** But. Yeah. Exactly. Because the girl next door sucks.

**Liz:** Yeah, exactly. She looks great without her glasses on.

**Craig:** Oh, yes, the glasses.

**Liz:** That’s my favorite. I’m also wearing glasses right now ironically. So there you go.

**Craig:** Wait, take them off. Let’s see what happens.

**Liz:** Well, it’s like Clark Kent. I can’t.

**Craig:** Of course. Wait, oh my god. Liz Hannah is–

**John:** Superman.

**Craig:** Superman. She’s Superman.

**Liz:** Obviously.

**John:** That’s a good disguise. I was talking with a friend of the show, I had lunch with her a week ago, and she was talking about the process of going out to a major star and so the character is written a certain way in the script but you also write a top page letter that sort of says this is why this is the role for you. And that’s a whole process we should talk about in a future episode, because it’s a very specific thing that happens.

**Craig:** Yes. I did those. I did those. They’re nerve-wracking. I don’t like doing them.

**Liz:** It’s horrifying. You do it for directors, too. You know, like if you’re trying to attach somebody and why is it you and why is it that person and blah-blah-blah. And then when they pass 12 times then you really just get to the letter and you’re like this letter isn’t good. This is why they’re passing.

**Craig:** Also I feel like, oh my god, I’m just – if they say yes I feel like I just sold somebody—

**Liz:** A really bad [crosstalk]–

**Craig:** Like a defective product. Yeah. But that’s me and that’s my sad brain.

**John:** Craig, some shocking and sad news this past week. MoviePass fell to zero. The stock fell to zero. So it had ceased operations in September. We had talked about MoviePass over the past two or three years.

**Craig:** MoviePassed.

**John:** MoviePassed. Craig, any surprises? Any last words for MoviePass?

**Craig:** The surprise was that it took this long. It’s actually amazing how long a venture with no logical prospect for success can actually last. Neither you nor I are business geniuses, but we saw fairly clearly what I think a lot of business geniuses just did not want to see. Which is that that was just not a functioning workable concept. And hopefully people will learn their lesson. But they won’t. Because capitalism is the villain, man.

**John:** Since this is probably the last time we’ll ever talk about MoviePass–

**Liz:** Fingers crossed.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I want to say that I think there is something underlying the idea in terms of like encouraging people to go see movies at theaters which was a good thing that happened for a short period of time. And so I was talking with Megana, our producer, and she was saying like it was kind of great for a while because it made going to movies with your friends so cheap that they went to more movies.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** And that’s a good thing. So, if the movie theater chains themselves, or other people who actually have a financial interest and an understanding of how movies work could bolster that kind of frequent movie-going I think that’s only to the betterment of everybody.

**Liz:** I agree. I had friends who had it and the thing was that they wouldn’t just go see like Star Wars or whatever the big movie was. They were like well because we can go to the movies we’re going to go see anything that’s in the theater. So they would see small independent movies that like I didn’t even know were in theaters. And so I think that encouragement was really great. Because it’s not really the Star Wars of the world that need the butts in seats.

**John:** Exactly.

**Liz:** We’re all there.

**Craig:** We’re all there.

**Liz:** It’s the other movies that are getting the theatrical release that are really looking for the butts in seats. And so I agree. I think encouraging people to go to theaters is great. I think it just has to be sustainable in any form.

**Craig:** It was great for us. It was great for people that like movies to see as many movies as they wanted for the price of one movie. If restaurants did that more people would definitely eat out. And experience new foods. Unfortunately never could quite – I mean, remember there was that one point where they were like, “No, we’re playing three-dimensional chess. You don’t understand. We’re in the data business.” And for a moment I was like, oh, well, OK. Maybe I’m dumb and that’s a thing?

**John:** I don’t really get how Facebook works either, so maybe.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. But then I was like Facebook has ads. I can understand that. But what is MoviePass going to do with their data of people that go to movies? Really the only data they had was that people that were smart enough to take advantage of this insane thing. RIP MoviePass.

**John:** Yeah. The point you made, Liz, about sustainability I think is really crucial. Whenever you look at a bunch of money spilling into something it can stir stuff up. But like can it really build a sustainable business model out of things? And that’s always the question whenever I see venture capital coming into something I’m like, oh, are they going to ruin something and try to change it?

**Craig:** Yeah. The probably will.

**John:** They probably will. All right. Liz, you have just made a new movie, All the Bright Places. It is coming out on Netflix. What was the process of you getting this movie put together and making this movie? Because this is one of the – you were hands-on in actually making this movie. So talk to us about it.

**Liz:** Yeah. It started a while ago. Actually I think I started the first draft of it right after I sold The Post. So it was before we started shooting The Post. So this would have been 2016/2017. And it’s based on a book by Jennifer Niven called All the Bright Places. I got sent the book by my manager who is a producer on it. And Elle Fanning had been attached for a long time. I’ve known Elle for a long time. We wanted to work together. And I read this book and found it emotionally very moving, but also it dealt with things that we don’t always talk about really openly. I think we don’t always talk about mental health as openly as we can. And we don’t talk about tragedy and sort of trauma and how we recover from that, or don’t recover from that.

And it was also a story about teenagers, but it wasn’t a story just about teenagers. It was sort of when we talked about making the movie we were like let’s make a movie where the two leads happen to be 17, not a movie about them being 17.

**Craig:** Right.

**Liz:** And so I started a draft in 2016/2017. And then everybody was busy, couldn’t really find time. Couldn’t find the right director. And then I was doing rehearsals for Mindhunter in Pittsburgh in 2018 I guess, what year is it? No, yeah, 2018. And I got a call that this guy Brett Haley wanted to direct it. Brett had directed a movie Hearts Beat Loud, which was really wonderful and sweet. And he had read the script and everybody somehow was available. Like it’s one of those crazy things, like everybody had sort of six weeks to shoot this movie in two months. And so we all went to Cleveland and made this movie. And got really the wonderful weather of both steaming hot and icy cold winter.

**John:** That’s why Cleveland is such an in-demand filming spot is because of the climate and its accessibility to everyplace else you want to be.

**Liz:** Yeah. It was beautiful for us to shoot there. It gave us everything. The movie takes place in Indiana originally and so we were shooting Cleveland for Indiana.

**Craig:** That’s good enough. That’s close enough.

**Liz:** It was pretty close. But it was great. And Justice Smith is the co-lead. And he’s phenomenal. I had not seen him do work outside of Jurassic World and Pikachu and stuff like that. And what he did in this movie and what he and Elle did together was really phenomenal.

**John:** So as I was putting together the outline for this I was looking for the trailer for it. And so I find this trailer that’s Elle Fanning and some other dude and it was like a fan cut trailer from 2015.

**Liz:** Oh boy. Yeah.

**John:** And so it was crazy to me that like apparently right from when the book sold people were like, oh, this should be a movie and Elle Fanning should star in it. And it’s like the universe wanted this movie to exist.

**Liz:** The fans of the book are ravenous. They love this book. Jennifer Niven, again who is the author of the book, my cowriter on the screenplay, she just has this amazing fan base. I think because it’s real. And it’s also not talking down to teenagers. I think that was really, you know, when I grew up the movies I watched were like Say Anything and John Hughes movies that were not saying that your feelings that you’re having because you’re 17 are any dumber because you’re 17 when you’re having them. And I thought that was an important sort of thing to put out in the world.

I have two teenager half-siblings. I have a brother who is 18 and a sister who is 14. Making things for them I think is now something that I think about. And I don’t want them to watch something and be like, “You totally got it wrong because you’re old.” And I was like well that’s fair.

So, anyways, yeah, honestly Netflix came in and helped us make the movie. And they’ve been amazing partners. But it was a really interesting experience to just sort of have – actually what you were talking about with Chernobyl. It’s like we all kind of lived in Cleveland for eight weeks and became super close. And kind of making a movie with your friends about something you all feel so passionate about is really – I’ve never had something that was that kind of communal in a way.

**Craig:** And now how do you go back to the other way? Where you’re making a movie which is already a war and then you have more wars?

**Liz:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Which is brutal on you.

**Liz:** And if you don’t like the people you’re doing it with and you don’t – it’s funny, at the time that I was doing Bright Places I was talking to an actress-producer about doing another movie, about doing a movie together. And we were kind of just having big talks about what do we want to do, where are we at in our careers, and things like that. And both of us sort of right before, she made a little movie and I made Bright Places, and right before that we were both just so burned out and we were like, “I don’t know, man. Like I don’t know if we can do this. This just feels really hard. Maybe we should just take breaks.” Both of us were just kind of totally burned out.

And then she went and made this little movie with an ensemble cast where they all basically lived in a house together for six weeks. And I went and made this movie with a bunch of people and we basically all lived in a hotel together for eight weeks. And I called her when I got off and I was like, OK, I think I know how to do a movie again, because it’s like this is actually how you should do it, which is with people you love who are going to push you.

Brett and I, the director, got super close during filming. That does not mean that we didn’t fight and argue and disagree. But I think in good ways. You know, I think the writer/director relationship on set is super unique and super different from every project. It sometimes doesn’t exist. Sometimes the writer isn’t there. And I believe that’s very unfortunate because I think that relationship can really push the material and push the movie to be so much better.

**Craig:** It’s the best thing. When it works it’s the best. I mean, Johan and I would – we would have our disagreements, but even as we were having them we had this absolute confidence and faith that we would agree. At the end of the discussion agreement would happen. There was never this like paranoia that OK I’m just going to get rolled over.

**Liz:** Yeah.

**Craig:** On his part or on my part. We were just like we’ll figure it out. It’s cool. We figure things out. That’s what we do. And we’re going to be fine. And I’ve been in so many situations where that’s not even a question. There’s no availability for any kind of consensus because consensus is considered insulting to the director that they would have to even have consensus with the writer.

**Liz:** Yeah. Well, and I think you’re talking about the respect of it, too. Like the mutual respect. I have been super fortunate about the directors I’ve worked with. There’s been that mutual respect. But I’ve also been around and it hasn’t.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**Liz:** And obviously we all know those stories, or unfortunately been a part of those stories, but when you have the mutual respect where it’s like I’m not disagreeing with you because I just want to be right, I’m disagreeing with you because I think this might be a right way to go. And then you talk about it. And then you make a decision together about what the right way to go is. And I think there’s no – people I think get really afraid of stepping on other people’s toes or that as the writer you’re trying to encroach on the director and things like that. It’s like, no, I don’t really give a shit. I just want it to be good. And I don’t care who is right. It just has to be good.

**Craig:** They have no problem encroaching on the script.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I just see a whole like encroaching thing, I just laugh at.

**Liz:** It’s crazy. I mean, I’ve worked with producers who have never worked with onset writers before. And I’m like what do you think – I’m here to help. That’s what my job is on set as a writer. I’m just here to help. And with Bright Places we were really lucky. And Justice and Elle and Brett and I would just kind of like go over the script every morning. And we were rewriting every day to be better.

You know, I’ve been in situations, I’m sure we all have, where you’re rewriting it because you’re like we just have to have words. There’s no words. So we just need them. This was like we had the words, but we were just like let’s take a couple hours and make them better.

**Craig:** Lovely.

**Liz:** And it was a really lovely experience.

**Craig:** That is great. And correct me if I’m wrong, you now make a movie every 14 days. Is that right? You’ve got one in the theater every 14 days.

**Liz:** Yes.

**Craig:** You’re becoming very prolific. I have to say. You are.

**Liz:** Oh, no. That’s silly.

**Craig:** No, you are. This is exciting.

**Liz:** I appreciate it. Yeah, actually this year I’ll have two things out.

**Craig:** How about that? And last year how many did you have?

**Liz:** Two.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Liz:** Yeah. I do a movie and a TV show a year it sounds like.

**Craig:** I like that you were like I wrote this thing all the way back in like 2018. And like it’s taken almost a year for it be like…

There’s a movie that I’m hoping to get made at Universal that I wrote in 2014. And that was after it took Lindsay Doran and I, I think, seven years to get the rights to this book. I mean, so that’s fast.

**Liz:** Oh, no. It’s very fast.

**Craig:** You fast. You fast.

**Liz:** It’s very fast. I’m very lucky. I’ve had really great partners in this, too. I mean, I think that’s the other thing. Because I’ve written scripts that haven’t been made. And I’ve tried to get things made that haven’t gotten made, be in TV or in features. But I think the thing about the ones that get made, or sometimes they just don’t work. Sometimes it’s just not the right time. So it’s not anyone’s fault. But the ones that do work is because I have great partners on it who are willing to just do it. And I think that’s – there’s so much overthinking. There’s so much questioning. There’s so much doubt in all of it. I mean, just talking about the blank page. And when you’re kind of just like let’s go make a movie, or let’s go do this because it’s something we really care about—

**Craig:** That’s awesome.

**Liz:** You know, that’s what I’ve been really fortunate to do. And I’ve also – talking about this other conversation I was having about what I was going to do, you know, a movie to do next and stuff like that. I’ve also just like, you know, I’ve gotten to a place where I just don’t like making things with people I don’t like.

**John:** Oh yeah. It’s the luxury of some choice about who you’re working with. And we all have those choices, but we don’t sort of recognize we have those choices early on, especially in our careers.

**Craig:** We do not.

**Liz:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** I did not.

**Liz:** But I also think it’s how – what are you willing to give up? Like I think one of the things that I was really lucky about of The Post happening not when I was 22 years old is that I had a life. I was married. I knew what was important. I had really close friends, really close family who didn’t care really about – they were excited for me, but that didn’t change their perspective of me. Well, hopefully. I guess I’ll find out.

So I was like I’ll go work in a coffee shop. You know, I’ll go be a librarian. My priorities are not based really on the success of my career. They’re based on the happiness of the people in my life and that I hope my job helps that, doesn’t hinder it. And so I try and make choices that it’s like, you know, would I rather go work in a library in the Pacific Northwest than make this movie? Then maybe I shouldn’t make this movie.

**Craig:** Ooh, I don’t know if I should be applying that test because I think I might pick the library every time at this point.

**Liz:** Yeah.

**John:** But you don’t want to make fear-based choices about the things you’re doing. Like I better take this project or else I won’t get another project. So, I think as you get through your career you can recognize like am I making this choice to do this project because it is something that I actually want to do, or is it something I fear if I don’t do that there will be a consequence?

**Craig:** I mean, tell me I’m wrong, but I always felt like you were actually really good about that. That you weren’t somebody that made choices out of fear. Whereas I only made choices out of fear for so long.

**John:** Well, sometimes I wouldn’t make choices out of fear, but make choices out of envy. Like I knew somebody else was going to make that movie. I know that movie is going to get made. And I want to make that movie.

**Craig:** I’ll be walking by the theater going why did I not?

**John:** There was a major book series that I passed on just on concept and then it became like one of the biggest book series of all time.

**Liz:** 50 Shades of Grey?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** 50 Shades.

**John:** And it’s like, no, I wouldn’t want to do that.

**Craig:** I would love to see your 50 Shades by the way. Now I really want to see your 50 Shades of Grey. It would be amazing.

**John:** It was not 50 Shades of Grey.

**Craig:** That would be so great.

**John:** Liz, when do we get to see your movie?

**Liz:** All the Bright Places comes out on Netflix February 28th. I think there is a trailer dropping the first week of February, so you can actually watch a trailer that has–

**John:** That’s not fan-made but actually made by professionals.

**Liz:** Not fan made. A real trailer. And super excited. And then I guess you watch it forever because it’s on Netflix. So–

**Craig:** Forever.

**Liz:** Would love for people to watch it the opening weekend. Opening I guess is so–

**Craig:** Opening minute. Opening second.

**Liz:** Opening minute. Yeah. And also if you’re in LA I’m going to host a screening at the Alamo Draft House the Sunday after the release.

**John:** Oh great.

**Craig:** Love that. That’s great.

**John:** That will be nice. All right. Before we get into our How Would This Be a Movies, I wanted to take a look at an article by James Pogue in The Baffler which was called They Made a Movie Out of it, which is sort of the other side of this whole story. And so this article takes a look at how nonfiction journalism, especially long-form nonfiction journalism, has become such a pipeline for movies to get made. And that source of IP has become incredibly important. And Pogue really rails against it. And to kind of comedic effect also in a way. I found it kind of hilarious at a certain point.

But he talks about war time romance, unlikely savants, deranged detectives, gentlemen thieves, love-struck killers. Stories that tap into the thrill of being alive as being the mandate behind these companies that are sort of essentially packaging together, not literally packaging in the way that agencies do, but they are creating these stories with the intention that they will become movies down the road.

So, it was the first time I saw someone actually writing up about this phenomenon which I think we’ve all kind of seen. And it’s really there. So, Craig, what was your first take on this article?

**Craig:** I was very glad that he wrote it. I am currently subsumed by people who are like here’s a podcast, here’s a book, here’s an article about some horrible thing that happened, because obviously that’s what you do. And every single time I think to myself why would I need this? It’s facts. So, what I think is going on is that there is this world of producers, and I don’t mean to tar them with an evil brush. They’re doing their jobs. But what they’re doing is they’re trying to present to Hollywood ownership of something, an exclusivity. I got a book out of galleys that is about this event. Now I own the rights to it. And we can now make something of it and no one else can. And I’m just like, oh yes we can. Oh yes we can.

And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, like my lawyer will call and will say, “OK, I got this submission. This producer has this thing.” And I’m like, OK, but what are they for? So they just planted a flag on a thing that is community property, like they went to a fire hydrant and said my fire hydrant. It’s not your fire hydrant.

And the worst part of this, and he really does such a good job of pointing this out, is that it’s distorting the way journalists do their work.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because they know how this works. They can see what sells. And the money they get from selling the rights is vastly more than the money they get to do their actual jobs, which is a shame.

**Liz:** Yeah. We should definitely pay journalists better.

**Craig:** Yes. So it’s distorting the way we are now receiving information. And that part is the scariest of them all. I always say like, hey, the reason you’re sending me – I never say this to them – but I’m like the reason you’re sending me this book that is a bunch of facts that nobody owns is because you saw a show I did and you think I will do good with this. But there was no producers with books and properties back then. You know, in fact we were in “competition” with a project that Scott Rudin had because he bought a book out of galleys. Which, by the way, was an excellent book. But that book came out when our show came out. So they’re waiting around for a book to be published. Do you know what I mean?

Anyway, so I thought this was a great article. And I would just say to people like to writers if you love some bit of history don’t be afraid to talk to those people, but you don’t get boxed out of anything just because somebody has the rights to nonfiction.

**John:** So let’s talk about the money for a second because what Pogue says is that a long-form piece in something like The New Yorker is about $9,000 is what a top tier writer could expect to make out of this. Versus like options could be $300,000. It could be more than that. And so they’re definitely looking at a paycheck. And so even while on a screenwriter level, like a top tier screenwriter, that’s not a ton of money, for a journalist that is a ton of money.

Mark Harris had a tweet this last week where he was saying, “I talked to a writer today who told me her goal is to establish a Twitter persona—“

**Liz:** Oh right. I saw this.

**John:** “—that she can leverage into a deal for a book of identity-driven essays that she can sell as a streaming series that she will consult on and kick off her TV creator-producer career.” And so it is that sense of like if I’m going to be a journalist I have to be thinking about what stories I’m going to tell that can actually carry on to the next thing. And that’s not what journalism was supposed to be about.

**Liz:** Well, it’s also complicated because we’re living in a world of IP. We live in this world where everything has to be based on IP. Everything. You can’t, you know, do this – I mean, genuinely one of the reasons everybody freaked out about Knives Out, I mean, I think it’s a really great movie, but it’s also because it was original. It felt different. It felt like there wasn’t some underlying anything for it.

And so I think it’s really hard as – by the way, any version of writers, journalists, screenwriters, anybody – is going into a study and selling something and just being like, no, I made it up. Or, no, it’s about this time in history. And by the way it’s real. And I don’t need to back it up with a novel or a book or a nonfiction book. So I think that’s really hard.

Whereas when you say like here’s the book that this is based on everybody’s eyes sort of light up and they’re more excited. And they see the Time cover.

**Craig:** They shouldn’t be.

**Liz:** By the way, there is a tie-in book cover for All the Bright Places that has just been released for the fifth anniversary of the book.

**Craig:** But that’s fiction. Like I get that. But for nonfiction, everybody is just staring at this book, thinking that the book is going to get them through. It’s not. Especially if it’s nonfiction.

**Liz:** Well, by the way, The Post.

**John:** I was going to say The Post is based on real stories but it’s not based on any specific book, correct?

**Liz:** No, it’s not. It was never based on one specific book.

**Craig:** There you go.

**Liz:** It’s based on about a dozen different people’s stories. And actively Katharine Graham never wanted her memoir optioned, which was one of the issues everybody felt of adapting it. But in reality you don’t need that specific book to write a story about her life.

**Craig:** You don’t need it. Right.

**Liz:** And in fact that book is – by the way, personal history. Everybody should read it. But it’s specific to her perspective. And it’s her story.

**Craig:** That’s the other problem with this is that when you get these books you’re getting a point of view that you’re now locked into. If I had to pick one book about Chernobyl that show would not be what the show is because everybody has their focus. In fact, that’s how they end up selling the book. There is no event. Pick anything in – let’s just pick something. Vietnam War. There’s been 4,000 books about the Vietnam War. If you’re going to sell one now that somebody is going to option it has to be from a point of view that no one is like – this is a Vietnam War from the view of Viet Cong. He’s 16 years old. And he’s got to get from here to here. It’s his real story.

I get books like this now all the time. And I’m like that’s great. But, again, I’m only writing about that? That’s what I’m doing? Really?

**Liz:** Well, I mean, I think this is also 1917 which was a movie that I frankly was like dreading watching because I was like it’s another war movie.

**John:** And it was very specific.

**Liz:** I’ve seen this before. But, then I sat down and within five minutes I was like, oh, this is completely different because this is so specific. And it’s so personal.

**Craig:** It’s personal. It’s not a book.

**Liz:** First of all, I think it’s genius. But it’s so personal. And so that – I think there’s this dread of watching historical movies because you’re like it’s just going to be the same thing, or I’ve done all these, blah-blah-blah. If you’re encompassing one big story, you kind of have to do it either way. You’re either encompassing a huge story from multiple perspectives, or you’re doing the one. And I think that’s how you can do it now.

**Craig:** And you get to choose.

**Liz:** And you get to choose.

**Craig:** Whereas the book is choosing for you. And then when you show up as a writer, this is the other problem with these books, and these articles, and these podcasts, which I hate, is that you show up as a writer as an employee from the jump. Right? If you go and you say I have an idea, I want to write a history of the Washington Post and Katharine Graham and Ben Bradley and all these things that happened.

**John:** Or if you just go and do it yourself as a spec.

**Craig:** Or you do it yourself, exactly. I am the property. The writer is the thing that matters. As opposed to would you like to rent a room in my book house for a while, employee? And I just think we lose power from the jump with this stuff.

**Liz:** It’s interesting. Because I just adapted a podcast as a limited and I had never done that before. It’s a true story. And what I found interesting was actually–

**John:** It wasn’t Scriptnotes, was it?

**Liz:** It…

**John:** Oh yeah. Who is playing me is what I want to know.

**Craig:** I am.

**Liz:** Yeah, sorry.

**Craig:** It’s the weirdest thing.

**John:** That’s such a bold choice.

**Craig:** It’s so weird. Well she said that I knew you well enough and that I could do it.

**Liz:** I wrote him a cover letter and I was describing his character. And that’s how he agreed to do it.

But so I adapted this podcast and it was really interesting because it was kind of the best version of what we’re talking about because it actually was multitudes of perspectives. It was a podcast that was done by journalists and so there were dozens of people that they interviewed. And so what it was, they had done all the research for me.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Liz:** And so it was in one way for me the most freeing way to do that because I had all these different perspectives. Not just me, obviously. The team that I was working with. And that I think is really freeing. If that had been one person and that had been one person’s perspective on this story I don’t think there was any way to do it. And that’s very limiting. But because it’s IP everybody is really excited.

**Craig:** I’m with you on that. There was a podcast that I was considering adapting and it was very much like the one you’re saying. It was very broad in its scope and it was so brilliantly researched and done. And so I felt like, OK, this is the most amazing research partner of a general world of stuff. But these things where they’ll come to you, “We have a podcast about one family and their war against another family in this little town. And it’s crazy the things that happen.” I’m like, great, but that’s like, ugh. So it’s all real and it’s very narrow. And can I just listen to the podcast and then do my version?

Why do I actually need? You know? Anyway.

**Liz:** Why does every episode have to follow the episode of that? Yeah.

**John:** So Pogue’s article I think very smartly points to Argo as being really a key point in the progression of this. Because Argo is based on this Wire piece by the guy who founded this journalism company, Joshuah Bearman. And that became sort of the platonic ideal of sort of like what the true life story turned into good Hollywood entertainment. It had all of the pieces and beats that you sort of want to see. And I think we’ve referenced Argo a lot as we’ve done these How Would This Be a Movie segments. It’s like you’re taking a real life story and how you’re transforming it. But I really wasn’t thinking about the underlying piece of IP. I was just thinking about the actual events and assuming that a great script was written because it was a great script.

**Craig:** Well we will watch these things and appreciate them when they’re done really, really well. But the business layer in our industry looks at process. And they’re trying to duplicate a process. So a writer sent me an email this morning and he said, “I want you to know that I was meeting at a place,” he wouldn’t tell me where, “and they have asked their executives to just start compiling lists of industrial disasters.”

**John:** That’s amazing.

**Craig:** And I just was like you dumb–

**John:** Taking the wrong lesson.

**Craig:** Dumb, dumb dodos. Like you dopes. But this is what they do. So Argo is a remarkable story that, you know, as we do ours and we’ll do some today, some of these resist and some of these as you know just blossom in front of you. Argo is one that just like any one of us I think could have looked at that and said we know what to do. It was one of those. And not to take anything away from the brilliance of what they did do, but you could see how it could be something. And they don’t understand that.

They just see a process. Buy article. Sell article. Make money. Because so many of them make money from just things being made. Not from them being made correctly or interestingly or, yeah.

**Liz:** Well, I think it’s also what you’re talking about is the specificity of a writer’s voice, too. Because I think there’s also the version where the three of us see all of the events of what takes place in Argo and there are three different movies and none of them are actually Argo that Chris Terrio wrote.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Liz:** And so I think that, you know, The Post was a movie that wasn’t a remarkable and a unique idea to be like I want to make a movie about the Pentagon Papers and Katharine Graham. People have been sort of talking about it. When I was writing it I heard there were two other scripts going on at the same time that were, by the way, very different, that were much more focused on – I haven’t obviously read any of them but I was told much more focused on the Pentagon Papers.

So my unique vision on what to do was to follow Kay. And so that’s really specific. A dozen other movies could have been made about Ben Bradley. About The New York Times. About any other version of those stories, of those events. So I think like to people listening who are wondering like well I want to make a movie about the Vietnam War. I want to make a movie about this, but like every movie has been made about this, everything has ever been said. Well what are you saying that’s different? What are you bringing to it that’s going to be unique?

**John:** Yep. So, I asked on Twitter saying what stories should we talk about for a How Would This Be a Movie. And so here’s what I did not pick, but I want to single them out because they were some really, really great stories that I didn’t pick for this one. People asked like, oh, an adaptation of the book She Said, the Harvey Weinstein story. Sure. Great.

The History of the Vibrator. The Secret History of the Vibrator. It’s different than you expect. It was not actually done by a medical professionals for hysterical women. It was actually a very different origin.

A stripper named [Tanka Ray] who had a great backstory.

**Craig:** [Tanka Ray].

**Liz:** Love it.

**John:** What actually is happening in the Chevy/JD Power commercials, the ones where they keep revealing all these real life people.

**Craig:** Oh yes.

**John:** And JD Power. Like what the hell is JD Power?

**Craig:** And Associates.

**John:** The demon ZoZo who often shows up with Ouija Boards.

**Craig:** Oh, OK.

**Liz:** Wow, that was not a twist I saw coming.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** ZoZo.

**John:** Outsourcing of hitmen, so hitmen who keep hiring a subcontractor and a subcontractor.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**Liz:** Is that like Barry season four?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** It will be.

**John:** It is. This woman who falls in love thanks to being catfished. She actually falls in love with the guy whose photos were being used by the cat-fisher. And they actually–

**Liz:** That’s awesome.

**Craig:** She fell in love with the stock photo guy.

**John:** Yeah. Stock photo.

**Craig:** I love that. That’s amazing.

**Liz:** That’s great.

**John:** Ronald Reagan’s October surprise. Bic vs. Gillette. Could be the new Ford vs. Ferrari.

**Liz:** That’s the one we’ve been waiting for.

**John:** Yes. Firefighters who are saving the dinosaur trees of Australia. Tuna price-fixing. Ships frozen in ice at the North Pole. Soldiers battling wolves in WWI.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** There’s some good stuff here. But for today I picked political stories. Things that have a good political angle because I feel like we’re in a political moment. Liz, you’re a person who writes movies with politics involved.

**Liz:** Unfortunately. Sorry everybody.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The first one I want to talk about is Jeff Bezos and his phone getting hacked. Because this was a really complicated saga also with some iconic characters. It’s still kind of happening in real-time in front of us. Very short version of this. Everyone knows Jeff Bezos. This is a summary that John Gruber did. And so John Gruber has a site called Daring Fireball. And I really liked his pitch for what this saga was. I’m going to summarize it a bit here.

The richest man in the world, a billionaire a hundred times over, meets and exchanges phone numbers with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, the most powerful dictator in the Middle East. The richest man in the world happens to own as a mere side business The Washington Post, a newspaper whose news coverage and opinion columns have been highly critical of the Saudi Arabian royal family’s brutal and aggressive regime. The crown prince uses this superficial personal relationship with the richest man in the world to hack his phone by an infected attachment sent by WhatsApp using military grade technology seemingly crafted by a secretive firm from Israel that supposedly only offers its services to trusted governments.

With the information they extract they end up revealing an affair that he’s been having. His marriage falls apart. He brings in Gavin de Becker, a world-famous sort of researcher and protector to figure out what’s happening. The president of the United States is involved in the saga. The president’s son-in-law is involved in the saga. A team of Saudi agents brutally murder and dismember Jamal Khashoggi, who was a reporter for The Washington Post.

There’s just a lot of pieces here. So, the Jeff Bezos MBS saga, how do we start this movie?

**Liz:** Well, if it’s Craig there is a natural disaster or a manmade disaster probably.

**John:** Well let’s take a look at this on—

**Liz:** This is the article. This is the one you’ve been looking for.

**Craig:** This is it.

**John:** Let’s take a look at this on two fronts. First off, the actual story. And then I think we should also talk realistically about how challenging it will be to make this movie given the people involved.

**Craig:** Well, so weirdly I don’t think it would be hugely challenging depending on the company. There are some companies that are tied up with money from the Middle East, but generally not from Saudi Arabia. Look, I think one of the competitors to Amazon, whether it be Netflix or Hulu would be thrilled to maybe poke Bezos. It’s not like he’s going to kick their stuff off of Amazon here and there. But when I read through this story the challenge I see it as is that other than the Khashoggi story which was just terrible and shocking, I’m not sure I care that much.

In other words, it’s a billionaire who is getting poked back by another billionaire and his marriage falls apart. But he’s OK. And he continues to own that business and The Washington Post. It is concerning that Saudi Arabia is in possession of technology that can do this. But that’s it. It’s sort of like so it happens and then it’s like and how what. And did it change the world? Did it crack the earth open in any significant way? I don’t really think so.

So, weirdly my problem with dramatizing this is I’m not sure that it’s dramatic in any significant way. That’s kind of – yeah.

**John:** All right. Liz, you made another movie about The Washington Post.

**Liz:** I did do that.

**Craig:** Which was dramatic.

**John:** So I’m wondering where do you see – what characters would you focus on if you were doing this movie?

**Liz:** That I think was my initial reaction reading it was like who is the POV character in this? Because I agree. I didn’t have, again, I think aside from Khashoggi which that I think in this story and the way this article is laid out is almost an afterthought to what happened. And that for me is the emotional crux and the tragedy of this whole story. And so I wonder if there’s something there of that you’re telling the story when billionaires fight there are consequences. And it’s not just done over text message. There are actual legitimate fatal consequences to this power play and to whomever is in the White House currently.

And I think – so that for me was like I don’t know that this article is the story, but if this is the backdrop there’s probably a deeper emotional conversation to be had about the side effects of billionaires trying to play each other.

**John:** Yeah. So we’ll link to a couple different articles. And this to me of all – we were talking about sort of like whether things need to be based on IP or based on articles – I don’t think there has to be anything based on an article here at all.

**Craig:** No way. Yeah.

**John:** That question of POV, I would have generally said like I don’t care about rich people’s problems, and then I watched Succession. And I guess it turns out I really do care about rich people’s problems.

**Liz:** I love rich people’s problems on Succession.

**Craig:** Although, are they rich people’s problems? Because my obsession with Succession is that the richness exacerbates family problems. And that they’re everyone’s family problems.

**Liz:** Well it’s basically King Lear.

**Craig:** Yes. It’s King Lear.

**John:** But the degree to which Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, that it is a classic affair but taken to such a weirdly Titanic level. And so I think what might be possibly interesting about doing this story is that you have these characters who are almost like Olympian gods at this sort of Titanic level up here. And then you have the contrast of that with sort of ordinary people. And so I don’t know there’s ways you get down to the Amazon fulfillment worker and the researcher, or the hacker who is doing this one little bit of code, but there may be some way of just looking at how disparate these people’s lives are. The scale at which they’re playing. Because it’s true that also I think national/international policies is happening partly because of this affair. And this weird text message being sent back and forth has triggered something huge in the world over what should be something kind of inconsequential. I think that might be the way you get over the scale problem.

**Liz:** Yeah. It’s also a little bit like The Laundromat. It’s kind of the story of the little guys that are affected. You know, it’s the people who are not involved in the power plays and not involved in those conversations and not involved in the affair and they’re getting totally screwed.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s talk about some of the dangers about trying to tackle this story at all. Because you said that you felt like a Netflix or an HBO might be willing to some of this. I come back to thinking of Sony and North Korea. And I do wonder if you’re the company that’s trying to this thing you may be looking at not just legal challenges from Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, but also a government who is trying to destroy things.

**Craig:** Yeah. And they’ve proven that they have some technologies there. So, that is an issue. And it’s going to become more of an issue because we know for instance that it’s not possible to tell certain stories about China. This has been coming up a lot because I’ve been getting a lot of tweets and things about Wuhan and coronavirus and what the Chinese government is doing, which sounds very, very familiar to anybody that’s looked at the way other certain communist governments have handled these kinds of things. And the fact remains that I just don’t see how you could make a movie that is critical of the Chinese government in Hollywood today because of the intertwining of finances. It’s just not possible. I just don’t think it’s possible.

And that’s obviously of great concern. It’s going to become of more concern. This is not the first time Hollywood has had this problem. Curiously they did in the 30s. The Nazi government started basically pressuring Hollywood to not make certain kinds of things or they wouldn’t show the movies in Germany. And Hollywood in its typical way said, “OK.” Because Hollywood is cowardly and loves money.

So, despite all of the wonderful speeches that people in Hollywood seem to make about progress and freedom and liberty and so forth, it’s going to become harder and harder to do this because of globalization and the globalization of the marketplace. And more importantly the globalization of financing turns everything into a tricky mess. And sooner or later you just end up with whatever the safest villain is when we start making these movies.

So, famously the Red Dawn remake, right? It’s like, yeah, North Korea, what are they going to do, right? So I think in 20 years the only villains that we’ll have in movies will be the North Koreans. We’re telling some story about what happened when the United States invaded Grenada, it will still be North Korea. We’ll just change it to North Korea.

**John:** We’ll just have to invent some random country. Some island nation.

**Liz:** Yeah. I mean, I think it’s interesting talking about globalization and things like that because look at what happened with the NBA when Daryl Morey tweeted about Hong Kong.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. And the cowardliness was just kneejerk, right?

**Liz:** And I think there’s also the problem of people being undereducated to actually the things that are happening. I think people will just say kind of a blanket statement of like, oh, well this is what’s happening. But not knowing and not understanding. Frankly, I think the fact that the Houston Rockets didn’t fire Daryl Morey is a big statement and I think is good that they did not take it to that level and they didn’t fine him and things like that.

**Craig:** Right.

**Liz:** But it is really this conversation of fear and it is a conversation of, you know, look, I’ve not done a project because I was genuinely afraid that the people that I was writing about would take over my car and make me crash into the side of the building. There are those things.

**Craig:** Those thoughts have crossed my mind as well.

**Liz:** Yeah. There are those stories that there is a legitimate fear. And do I really want to write that one or am I OK just turning my car on and leaving that one on the side? So, Saudi Arabia is a little scary. That’s a little, you know.

**Craig:** It is.

**Liz:** I would prefer not to have them hack my phone.

**John:** All right. Also looking at globalization and probably the single person who most embodies globalization at this moment would be Carlos Ghosn. So this all happened while I was in Japan. I was there for the holidays. And so I was there as all this stuff happened. So, if you don’t know who Carlos Ghosn is he was born in Brazil to Lebanese parents, raised in Lebanon. He attended some of France’s best schools. He was working for the tire-maker Michelin. He worked on his English and became head of the North American company, for Nissan, Renault, Mitsubishi, that alliance.

He was arrested in Tokyo for basically hiding money, not declaring money that he’d gotten in. On December 29th he escaped and made his way all the way back to Lebanon, which should have been impossible, and he somehow did it. So, this feels like – what I love about this story is I can completely imagine a version of this where he is the hero and this remarkable, daring escape he’s made, or that he is a great villain who has fled from Japan.

**Craig:** Or a MacGuffin.

**Liz:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Like he’s like the light in the briefcase. First of all, Carlos Ghosn’s last name for a word puzzle nerd is such a gift.

**Liz:** Phenomenal. It’s great.

**Craig:** Like I’m looking at Carlos Ghosn. I’m like, OK, is there a puzzle where other names I can just remove. I can change one letter in the first name and one letter in the last name, both to T, and make a phrase like car lot ghost. So now I have a whole Carlos Ghosn puzzle I’m going to try and work on.

But, my take on this would be like you get hired by a company that’s like here’s the deal, we got to figure out how to get this dude out of this country over there.

**John:** Logistics.

**Liz:** 100%.

**Craig:** It’s logistics. And it’s a comedy.

**John:** A heist in a way.

**Craig:** It’s a heist where you’re moving a human through. And it’s really hard. And you have to make money. And maybe you kind of get to know him while he’s talking through the box or whatever. But I love the idea of kind of a logistics-based black comedy.

**Liz:** I think we should get the Ocean’s crew back for this one.

**John:** Totally. So, at one point in order to get into a plane he’s basically smuggled inside a box, because it was just too big to go through the normal scanner. So they don’t detect that a human being is inside that.

**Craig:** I don’t know. When you read it, because the thing is when you look at him it’s just kind of funny. Like I’m not scared of this guy.

**John:** No.

**Liz:** No.

**Craig:** He seems kind of like a goof.

**Liz:** He threw a Marie Antoinette-themed birthday party for his wife.

**Craig:** He’s a goof, right?

**Liz:** Like it sounds amazing.

**Craig:** Yeah. So it smells like a comedy to me also because his crime is financial. And while we know that financial crimes have impacts on real people, he’s not a murderer. He wasn’t like polluting the air with some evil chemical. He just, you know. And, look, he also kind of has a point. I mean, his point was I got arrested in Japan for this crime and their conviction rate is 99%. That’s a huge problem. Like that is legitimately a problem.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** It doesn’t appear that there’s such a thing as a fair trial in Japan if everyone is guilty. So I kind of got like a little bit of sympathy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know? Look, he’s probably a total criminal. But, I don’t know, I just thought it was fun.

**Liz:** Do you think the Japanese government was like, “We got to lose that one case so it’s not 100%.” Do you think they have that conversation?

**John:** A ringer.

**Liz:** We’ve got to keep it just at 99% guys. Because otherwise we’ve got issues.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I think they need to adjust that number. I’ve got to be honest with you. 99 is not–

**Liz:** I have questions.

**Craig:** Like I think the federal government has like a 90% conviction rate here in the US.

**John:** Which you could argue like–

**Craig:** They pick the winners.

**John:** They only try the cases that they know they can win.

**Craig:** But even there like, you know, like one out of ten. That feels like we’re normal. If you win every game as a pitcher you’re probably juicing, you know? So lose one.

**John:** I will put a link in the show notes to an article that talks about the Hollywood connection behind all this because – actually both of these stories have Hollywood connections.

**Craig:** That was the craziest.

**John:** Yeah. So Ghosn was talking with a producer about sort of like that his life felt like a movie in this way. And so this was before he had actually done this great escape. So I think that’s funny.

Going back to the previous story, there’s a Hollywood connection there, too, because the way the party at which Jeff Bezos and MBS met was here in Hollywood. Brian Grazer was throwing this party and Iger was there and other folks were there. So it’s so–

**Craig:** Never go to a Brian Grazer party. Never go.

**John:** That’s what tends to happen.

**Craig:** I mean, I’ve never been invited.

**John:** Nope.

**Liz:** Yeah, I was like how many of those invitations have you shot down, Craig?

**Craig:** Zero.

**Liz:** There you go.

**Craig:** Zero. But I’m just saying prospectively I’m not doing it.

**Liz:** You have a 99% of not going to a Brian Grazer party.

**Craig:** Of not going to a Brian Grazer party.

**John:** All right. Our third and final story is also political. This is about Holly Cairns—

**Liz:** Love this one.

**John:** Standing against partner Christopher O’Sullivan. This is in rural Cork. She is a candidate for the Social Democrats. He is a candidate for some other political party whose name I can’t pronounce.

**Craig:** But they’re like a moderate, moderate-left versus left-left.

**John:** Yes. But they’re both running for the same spot. It feels like a classic setup, but I was trying to remember what other movies had the male and female—

**Liz:** Competing.

**John:** Competing.

**Craig:** The Competition.

**John:** What other rom-com has the couple against each other?

**Craig:** The Competition is a great movie, Richard Dreyfuss and Amy Irving are both competitive pianists. And they’re falling in love while they’re at a competition. They’re not like already together. That’s a new one. Hmm?

**Liz:** I can’t pull any.

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t think so.

**Liz:** I mean, I really – reading this I was like – can we just do the sequel to Long Shot with this? Because it’s such a great story. I also liked that there’s also three seats available. So the two of them could–

**Craig:** Which kind of takes away the—

**Liz:** Takes a little bit.

**John:** The stakes.

**Craig:** The reality has lowered the stakes.

**Liz:** And also the article left that to be like the last line of the article.

**Craig:** Which I was like oh you people.

**Liz:** Yeah. You just got me.

**Craig:** And also but like the danger is the article, or at least one of the articles starts off with, “It sounds like a bad romantic comedy.” And you’re like that’s the problem. It kind of sounds like a bad romantic comedy. So how do you make the good romantic comedy version out of it? Because the two of them seem actually lovely. And they’re married and they’re staying married, which means there’s actually not a ton of conflict there it seems.

**Liz:** No. And you can tell they’re not Americans because they’re so just casual and like, well, we agree about everything except politics. So it’s fine. And I was like I’ve never – I don’t understand that. That’s not a sentence that’s ever been said in the United States.

**Craig:** And also like they’re both super good-looking. It’s actually really annoying. I hate them.

**John:** All right. So let’s talk about the challenges. If you get hired to do this story what are the things you’re going to be looking for in order to create the conflict, the challenge that you need? And so we’ve had other writers come on talking about the romantic comedy engine. What are we looking for in a comedy and in here that’s going to make this possible so it doesn’t just stall out?

**Liz:** I mean, for me I think comedy is always best when it’s organic and relatable. Like I think when you – character flaws are inherently comedic. Particularly if you see a reflection of yourself in them. So, I think this feels like a relationship comedy to me. This feels like two people who like the only reason they’re not together is because they disagree about everything. You know, so, it feels a little like a comedy version of like War of the Roses. And you get two really dynamic people who – and passionate people.

My only thing is I don’t know if the conflict of the movie can be sustained about two people arguing about politics.

**Craig:** No.

**Liz:** That feels like a–

**Craig:** Death.

**John:** But here’s where I think the upcoming election gives you a real benefit in this story that you don’t normally get in a romantic comedy. It’s like there is a deadline. There is going to be a decision reached. And normally when a couple has conflict about when do we have kids, are we staying here or are we moving, there’s never a decision. And actually it can feel like the population is getting to vote on some of these things.

**Craig:** Right. My gut is that there’s no way to do this story if they’re happily married in the beginning.

**Liz:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** It’s not a good marriage. It’s falling apart. And the fact that one of them chooses to run against the other is the ultimate shot across the bow. And then what they find, and this is a very romantic comedy sort of way of looking at it, is as they compete with each other they just start getting hotter and hotter to each other.

**Liz:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Again.

**Liz:** It’s a little Mr. and Mrs. Smith meets like The American President.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Yes. There you go.

**Craig:** Exactly. And so what happens is they are back together again and then one of them discovers that the other one has kind of screwed them over campaign wise. It’s that phrase all’s fair in love and war. No. There is an interesting movie where you say that’s nonsense. All is not fair in love at the very least. Right? And so it was like it started bad, it got good, it went terrible, and then there’s the election and obviously something good happens at the end you would hope.

The problem with these movies, and when I say these movies – movies where the climax is leading up to a competition. Sports movies have this all the time. Election movies have this. Someone has to win and someone has to lose. And there’s only so many permutations. The least interesting one is like the person that we thought would win would win. So you see in like, sports movies got smart. They used to be like “we win” and then they were like “we win the semi-final, who knows what will happen next.”

**Liz:** We got the emotional win. We got the character win.

**Craig:** And then they were like “we lose but we lose with honor.” So they’ve done so many permutations. And when you’re dealing with a man and a woman it’s like, well, if the man wins it just feels like, ugh, men win, cliché. But if the woman wins it also feels quite like, ugh, they had to let the woman win. You know?

All the nonsense gears-turning of people misinterpreting. So then what do you do at the end? Do they both lose? But then you feel like, ugh, they both lost. Screw this movie. What do you do?

**Liz:** Or do you do the version – and this is not the romantic comedy version – but this is like the romantic drama version where somebody wins and they breakup.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s so sad.

**Liz:** I know. Sorry guys. I brought you down.

**Craig:** Oh, and then there’s also the whole like Gift of the Magi version where it’s a tie and they each voted for each other. You know, like there could be something sweet. I’m such a sentimentalist.

**Liz:** Yeah, that doesn’t happen.

**Craig:** I know. I know.

**Liz:** That’s not happening. That’s not a thing that happens. Sorry. I think them breaking up actually is probably like the more interesting version if you’re going to do this. You basically do kind of like a high concept updated War of the Roses. And that like maybe the fighting has like pushed one of them to realize something they didn’t, but also realize we’re not supposed to be together.

**Craig:** I’m so old-fashioned. I want them to be together.

**Liz:** But maybe one of them is like, “I’m president, you’re vice-president, but we’re not going to be together. We’re the best functional as partners, but not romantically.” I don’t know.

**Craig:** Maybe there’s a way that they have to like – you know, like sometimes you can run for an office while you have an office. So let’s say she’s running for this office and he already has an office that he can keep. She wins. But she has to now work with him like as a coalition thing? Like I want them to be in love at the end.

**John:** Yeah. I do, too. A coalition government. That’s what we want.

**Craig:** Yeah. The Coalition is a good title, by the way.

**John:** Every relationship is a coalition government.

**Liz:** It’s true.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Liz:** That is accurate.

**John:** Every marriage is a coalition government.

**Craig:** Absolutely. Yes, I’ve been in the minority coalition my entire marriage.

**John:** It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is Trick Mirror. It’s a book by Jia Tolentino. The subtitle is Reflections on Self-Delusion. I thought it was great. Megana, our producer, had recommended it. And I read the first essay, The I in Internet, and thought it was so good I just reread the whole essay again. It was terrific.

She talks about growing up in a Houston megachurch. The sororities of UVA. The Peace Corps. Being on an early reality television show. She’s just a really good writer. You know there’s some writers who you’re like I’ll read whatever essay you write. I don’t care what it’s about. I’ll read that essay. And it was just great. So Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino.

**Craig:** Awesome. What about you, Liz?

**Liz:** Me? I’m going to do a health thing, which is really—

**Craig:** Ooh, health.

**Liz:** I know. So I’ve spent the last eight months in a room, which basically means I’ve stopped taking care of myself. And a friend of mine recently was like you need to drink more water because it’s going to make you healthier.

**Craig:** Oh, the water people.

**Liz:** I know, those water people.

**John:** They come. They come at you.

**Liz:** But she upped the stakes for it. Superior electrolytes. They are electrolytes you put into your water. It changed my life, genuinely.

**Craig:** Salt. So she sold you salt.

**Liz:** She sold me watermelon flavored salt.

**Craig:** OK. [laughs]

**Liz:** But here’s the thing. Genuinely I’ve been, again, this goes back to what we sort of always talk about which is taking care of yourself, and none of us do that. And particularly writers. It’s just so much easier not to. To stay sitting rather than get up. It’s a lot nice than having to walk around or exercise. But I’ve decided that I’m supposed to take care of myself now. And so superior electrolytes. They’re fantastic. I’ve actually genuinely in the ten days of doing it I found out I feel better when I’m hydrated.

**Craig:** Hydration is important.

**John:** That I totally believe.

**Craig:** Yeah, it turns out we do actually need – we are mostly water and we need the thing that we are.

**Liz:** Well, and if you work out you end up sweating, which is also horrible because that’s another reason we don’t work out.

**Craig:** It’s gross.

**Liz:** Yeah, it’s gross.

**Craig:** You’re peeing out of your skin. It’s disgusting.

**Liz:** It’s just a horrible thing.

**Craig:** It’s terrible.

**Liz:** But I highly recommend. This is a broader spectrum of things to say which is like take care of yourself. It is an important thing to do.

**Craig:** Always. Always, always, always. We’re big fans of that.

My One Cool Thing is a kind of a puzzle that I knew about for a couple of years because I’m a puzzle dork. I learned these little niche puzzles. Usually because I’ll get a puzzle and I’ll look at it and I’ll go what the hell is this. And then Dave Shukan who is my puzzle mentor will go, “Oh, that’s a this kind of puzzle.” I didn’t hear – what’s a that kind of puzzle?

So, a couple of years ago I was doing this puzzle and I’m like I don’t understand what I’m even looking at. And he goes, “Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. That’s called a star battle. It’s a certain kind of puzzle.” In the New York Times they do these big puzzle inserts at the end of the year and they included star battles. And they explained what they are. And people are very, very excited.

It’s such a fun puzzle to do. Very simple. It’s basically a grid. It’s like 10×10. And your job is to put two stars in every row and every column. But there can only be two stars in every row and every column. To make things a little trickier, but also a little easier, they also have these squiggly lines inside of the grid that are regions. In every region there must be exactly two stars.

So it’s this very elegant, very simple logic puzzle. And you’re like, OK, well I guess that shouldn’t be, and then it just absolutely possesses your mind. You can play them on the Internet for free if you just Google star battle puzzle. Like the very first hit should be one of those little online. And you can generate different sized grids and amounts of stars.

**John:** I love it.

**Craig:** Puzzles.

**Liz:** Have you ever played Wit’s End?

**John:** I have played Wit’s End.

**Craig:** What’s Wit’s End?

**John:** That’s the one where you have the little wooden walls that you put up?

**Liz:** No, no, no.

**John:** A different one. Tell us.

**Liz:** OK. So I’ll do one more quick thing. I’m a huge Trivial Pursuit nerd. We play Trivial Pursuit a lot in my house. The problem is we’ve run out of questions.

**John:** Oh! We call Wit’s End “smart people game.”

**Liz:** Well, Wit’s End is like an updated version of Trivial Pursuit. You can play with two more people. But the questions are very different. They’re not just trivia questions. There’s like word puzzle questions.

**Craig:** Oh I love this.

**Liz:** And there’s like ranking things. So you have to rank like the five countries that start with L from largest to smallest. And so—

**Craig:** I’m buying this thing right now.

**Liz:** It’s excellent. You can buy it on Amazon. It’s called Wit’s, like I’m witty, although I’m not, Wit’s End. Highly recommend. Really fun. Also goes very fast. Like we played two rounds in an hour. It’s great.

**John:** Great. Very nice. That is our show for this week. A reminder for our Premium members that we are going to do a bonus segment about books. If you are not a Premium member you can sign up at Scriptnotes.net. You can also give a gift membership if you want to give a gift membership to somebody. There’s a little button that says “send a gift.” So you can do that.

Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. With production assistance this week by Stuart Friedel and Dustin Vox.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro is by Lachlan Marks. 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.

Liz, you are?

**Liz:** @itslizhannah.

**John:** Excellent. You can find show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts. And reminder, Scriptnotes.net is where you sign up to get the Premium goodness. Liz Hannah, thank you so much for joining us here.

**Liz:** Thanks guys.

**Craig:** Thank you, Liz.

**Liz:** I want the jacket next time.

**Craig:** Done.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right. It’s time for our bonus segment. I want to talk about books and specifically what you’re allowed to do to a physical printed book.

**Craig:** Burn them!

**Liz:** I was going to say there’s one thing you’re really not allowed to do.

**John:** On Twitter this past someone showed a picture of like I find a way to make Ulysses more portable, basically they ripped it down the spine so you just take half of it with you at any point.

**Craig:** But people lost their shit. I mean, they went bananas.

**Liz:** That’s a tough one.

**John:** That’s a tough one.

**Craig:** I think book people think books are alive. [laughs]

**John:** And I grew up, I remember watching—

**Liz:** They have feelings.

**John:** They have feelings. I don’t know if it was a film or probably a film strip with like a [doop] that advanced to the next thing, we were talking about like when you get a library book or a new book you have to open it carefully and bend all the pages and how you don’t mark anything in it. And I’ve increasingly just started just writing in books or dog-earing pages.

Craig and Liz, what do you think is OK to do with a printed book?

**Liz:** I think anything except burning it. I really feel like that’s the one that you don’t do. I mean, I adapt a lot of books, so even in my professional career I have to highlight things. And have to underline things and stuff like that. So, I don’t know how I would begin to do my job without being able to do that.

I don’t think I’ve ever used a bookmark in my entire life.

**Craig:** Same.

**Liz:** So dog ear. Or if like it’s a hardcover sometimes I’ll try and do like the book cover–

**John:** Oh, the jacket.

**Liz:** The jacket into the page. But that inevitably, then the book jacket is gone.

**Craig:** It falls out.

**Liz:** And so inevitably it doesn’t happen. So, yeah, I think there’s just like one really big thing you don’t do with books, and then everything else feels OK.

**Craig:** And there’s one really big thing you do do with them, which is read them. So as long as you’re reading them, read them the way you want to read them. That’s what they’re there for.

**John:** Here’s a question for you. If I lend you a book, should I have any expectation that you’re going to give me the book back? That printed book?

**Craig:** Well, I mean, the word lend implies yes.

**Liz:** Yes. If I’m giving you a book then, no. But, what’s funny is I did recently give a friend of mine a book because I was like this book is great. And then he brought it back and I was like I really didn’t want it back. Like I don’t have enough space for this.

**John:** It’s not a boomerang.

**Craig:** Did you use the word gift?

**Liz:** No, this was yours. I gave it to you.

**Craig:** I’m giving you this book.

**Liz:** Yes. This is for you.

**Craig:** If someone says lend I immediately feel guilty and I’m in a panic and I want to send it back.

**Liz:** I also take care of it. I don’t mark it. I would say that’s something you don’t do. When somebody lends you a book do not highlight it. Do not dog ear it. That kind of stuff.

**Craig:** Well at that point what I usually say is because of the way I sometimes physically handle my books I’ll just buy it. Or, you know, get the e-book version which then I can do whatever I want.

**Liz:** Right. Who is reading Ulysses and needs to carry – we live with e-books and iPads in our world. By the way, you don’t have to tear anything off. And it’s lighter.

**Craig:** By the way, you don’t have to buy Ulysses. Isn’t it in public domain anyway?

**Liz:** I’m sure. I’m confused.

**John:** I’m confused, too. Well, I will say let’s talk about e-books versus printed books. Because like a previous recommendation was Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers, which is an 800-page book. And so I bought the book at Chevaliers where they’re doing the Arlo Finch book reading. Everyone should come to that. And you should go and support local bookstores and buy physical books, which is fantastic. So I bought this book at Chevaliers and I was like, oh my god, this book is so big and so heavy. It’s like uncomfortable to read. It’s just too big of a book. So I also bought the Kindle version. So, Chuck Wendig got paid twice.

**Liz:** There you go.

**John:** Which is good. But it was much easier to read that book. And Jia Tolentino’s book I just recommended, I did read the e-book version, although I had the printed version here at the office.

**Liz:** I do that a lot. I do the double purchase a lot.

**Craig:** I’ll do the double purchase.

**Liz:** Because I love having – I am a tactile person, so like actual reading of a book I enjoy. And like, you know, I keep a book in my bag whenever I’m traveling around waiting for meetings and stuff like that. You just have kind of a book.

But, you know, if I’m going on vacation I bring my iPad.

**Craig:** Totally.

**John:** I hate reading off the iPad. You’ll read a book on the iPad?

**Craig:** I do. But you read better from a book I think.

**Liz:** Yes, I do, too.

**Craig:** A proper book.

**John:** I read better from a Kindle.

**Liz:** I process it better.

**Craig:** I’ll get both versions for research purposes. Because you can search–

**Liz:** It’s so great.

**Craig:** Which is amazing, right? You can search, which is brilliant. And of course you can highlight if you wish, which is a little clunky, although the new pencil makes it a lot easier. But I still, a physical book I just find easier to deal with and easier – because that’s how I was raised. My daughter I don’t think ever reads a physical book unless it’s required for school or something. Everything is online. I mean, that’s how they’ve learned. It’s over, John.

**John:** It’s over.

**Craig:** It’s over. It’s over.

**Liz:** Well, we all knew that. Yeah, the only thing that I really actively read on my iPad are screenplays. Like I don’t read screenplays printed out anymore. I don’t do notes on printed out screenplays anymore. I do it on the iPad. And I just bought the big iPad.

**Craig:** Oh, the big-big.

**Liz:** The big-big one, which felt like an aggressive move until my husband was like, “No, it’s the size of a piece of paper.” And I was like, oh, well that changes everything.

**Craig:** Is that right?

**Liz:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh wow.

**Liz:** So one screenplay page is one–

**Craig:** That’s the one my daughter has. Oh, that’s actually kind of – is it heavy or?

**Liz:** Nope. It’s wonderful. Because you can do notes. And it’s not cramming them.

**John:** Is it the size of this one? Or is it bigger than this?

**Liz:** No, it’s bigger than that.

**Craig:** It’s the big-big.

**John:** Oh, I find that too big. But it works for you.

**Liz:** I thought it was going to be too big. And now I’m obsessed with it.

**Craig:** This is the one I have. I have the one that you have which is the standard size.

**John:** Which works well. But Craig, you and I used to – we grew up in D&D with physical books. And you’ve really transitioned to e-books for that.

**Craig:** OK, so like D&D wise, just having gone through the – so I’ve switched over pretty recently to just using the source books, because you can search. But the new revelation was I just built this new character with their character builder. It’s spectacular. It’s so good. And the best part is you never want to print it out. You always want to have it on your iPad because now you tap on something and it tells you exactly what it is. Like you never have to wonder or flip through. It is freaking great.

Obviously hugely relevant to your life, Liz. Hugely relevant to your life.

**Liz:** I just fell asleep for a couple minutes. No. No.

**Craig:** Once again, the light went out in her eyes.

**Liz:** There is just a little clicking off. No, you know, I tried. I tried.

**Craig:** Listen, that’s all anyone could ever ask. You don’t have to like things. You know, sometimes – I know I’m supposed to like kale. Right? It’s bad.

**Liz:** I feel the same way about kale as you do. Or you feel the same way about kale as I do about D&D. How about that?

**Craig:** I hear you.

**Liz:** That sounds good.

**Craig:** I hear you.

**John:** Consensus.

**Craig:** Consensus.

Links:

* [Liz Hannah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Hannah) on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/itslizhannah) and [IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2176283/), and Scriptnotes episodes [242](https://johnaugust.com/2019/austin-film-festival-2019) and [359](https://johnaugust.com/2018/where-movies-come-from)
* The [2020 WGA Award nominees and winners](https://awards.wga.org/awards/nominees-winners)
* [Arlo Finch in the Kingdom of Shadows](https://johnaugust.com/arlo-finch#kos-preorder) will be having a [Launch Event: February 9, 2pm at Chevalier’s on Larchmont](https://www.chevaliersbooks.com/john-august-020920)
* [Scriptnotes, Episode 434](https://johnaugust.com/2020/ambition-and-anxiety) in which we discuss Knives Out
* [MoviePass parent Helios and Matheson files for Chapter 7 and stock falls to zero](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/moviepass-parent-helios-and-matheson-files-for-chapter-7-and-stock-falls-to-zero-2020-01-29), on MarketWatch
* [All the Bright Places](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Bright_Places_(film)) comes to Netflix on February 28
* [They Made a Movie Out of It](https://thebaffler.com/salvos/they-made-a-movie-out-of-it-pogue) by James Pogue
* John Gruber on [the Jeff Bezos phone hack](https://daringfireball.net/2020/01/hacked_to_bits)
* The New York Times on [Carlos Ghosn’s escape](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/business/carlos-ghosn-escape.html) and [the Hollywood connection](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/business/carlos-ghosn-movie.html)
* [‘Like a bad romcom’: couple run against each other in Irish election](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/27/couple-run-against-each-other-in-irish-election-holly-cairns-cork) from The Guardian
* [Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L2JGLZ9/ref=as_li_ss_tl?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1&linkCode=sl1&tag=johnaugustcom-20&linkId=b6ea2f4ef065e37692c379f26e11577a&language=en_US) by Jia Tolentino
* [Superieur Electrolytes](https://superieurelectrolytes.com/)
* [Star Battle puzzles](https://www.wired.com/2010/12/dr-sudoku-prescribes-star-battle/)
* [Wit’s End](https://www.amazon.com/Game-Development-Group-11104-Board/dp/B00004W60G) on Amazon
* [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 Lachlan Marks ([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/436standard.mp3).