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The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August. This is Episode 404 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig is off this week, but he will be back next week. Luckily I have somebody really remarkable to talk with about things. This is Charlie Brooker, the creator-writer-executive producer of the remarkable anthology series Black Mirror, the most recent installments of which dropped on Netflix this past week. Charlie Brooker, welcome to the show.

Craig Brooker: Hello. It’s a pleasure to be here.

John: I want to talk to you about so many things about the individual series, individual episodes, bigger questions such as what is television, what is reality. So…

Charlie: Yeah. I might not have answers to all of those things. I’ll try.

John: I’ll give you about 30 seconds. I’m going to plug the live show one last time.

Charlie: OK.

John: So be thinking.

Charlie: 30 seconds. Right.

John: Our next live show is this Thursday, June 13, and the Ace Hotel. It’s a benefit for Hollywood Heart. Our guests include Melissa McCarthy, Ben Falcone, Alec Berg, the showrunner of Silicon Valley and Barry, Rob McElhenney, the showrunner of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and his new Apple show, Kourtney Kang of Fresh Off the Boat.

Oh my god, we have too many guests. I don’t know how we’ll fit all that in, but it’s going to be a remarkable show. So come see us this Thursday, June 13, at the Ace Hotel. They released some more tickets so you can still get a seat if you would like to see that live show.

If you’re there at the live show there are going to be some games, there’s going to be giveaways, there’s going to be cool stuff that you can only encounter at the show. So, please come out and support a great charity, Hollywood Heart. Craig and I will be together on stage. Craig’s head will be immense from the success of Chernobyl. But, you know, he has still graciously agreed to participate in this live show.

Charlie: He’s lowering himself. You see, he’s lowering himself to take part.

John: So someone on Twitter this last week asked, “Have you and Craig ever had successes at the same time?” Because Craig has Chernobyl and I have Aladdin. And I said, no, not that I’m aware of. And so I think we’re going to become insufferable.

Charlie: You can’t call each other out on it.

John: No.

Charlie: Because you’d both be right.

John: So it’s going to be a really interesting live show. So there could be some fireworks.

Charlie: But you’re not going to listen to anyone. You’ll just be monsters. You’ll be like Godzilla.

John: Craig’s rider for just this live show has been crazy. It’s been months of negotiation. But I think we finally got through most of it. We’ll try.

Charlie Brooker, welcome to Los Angeles. People by your accident might guess that you do not live in America.

Charlie: No, I don’t.

John: I did not know anything about you or your show until I was on a live show for Slate Culture Gabfest with Craig. We did a little crossover episode. And Natasha Lyonne as her sort of endorsement, her One Cool Thing essentially, said you have to watch this series Black Mirror and I didn’t know what it was. I wrote it down and I started watching it immediately. It is a remarkable program. And I would have assumed that you had done nothing before that, but then I checked your credits and you’ve done a tremendous amount. You have credits all the way back to ’99.

Charlie: Yeah.

John: And most of them seem like comedy things that are related to cultural moments. Rewind your–

Charlie: That’s fair enough. I mean, I’ve had an odd kind of accidental career. I started out I was a cartoonist at one point when I was a teenager. Then I became a video games reviewer. Then I started doing a website that had sort of topical – it was extremely vicious satire of television on it. And that led me to get work. Simultaneously I started working for a topical comedy show in the UK. And I got a gig writing TV reviews for The Guardian.

So most of the stuff that I’d done until about 2008, in fact everything I’d done until 2008 was comedy. So all the TV stuff I’d done was comedy. And in the UK I sometimes present shows. So I do a show intermittently now that’s kind of Daily Show esque, I guess you’d call it, which was called Screen Wipe. It was about TV. Then we did News Wipe, which was about the news. Started doing annual 2016 Wipe or whatever you’d call it.

And then I sort of developed a parallel career I guess, 2008 we did a show called Dead Set which was like a zombie series. It’s kind of like a prototype Black Mirror in a way in that it’s an absurd premise that we then play straight. So a zombie apocalypse happens and the only people who survive are the participants in a series of Big Brother that’s going out in the UK. And they’re 10 people who have been chosen to not get on.

So, yeah, and then myself and Annabel Jones who is my sort of co-conspirator on all of this stuff, we were asked would you like to do something us. And we’d always been a fan of shows like The Twilight Zone, Tales of the Unexpected. I don’t know if you’ve got that over here.

John: No.

Charlie: It’s like Roald Dahl short stories. Really creepy. And Hammer House of Horror was another show, don’t know if you ever saw. And the show we came up with was Black Mirror and we that was in 2011. At the same time as we were doing Black Mirror we were also doing a show called A Touch of Cloth, it’s like Naked Gun. So polar opposite stuff.

So in the UK I guess up until 2008, 2011, I was mainly known for doing comedy stuff.

John: So talk to me about that initial conversation about the idea of Black Mirror. Going in they say how about an anthology series. What is the discussion that leads to the specific idea for Black Mirror and what does it look like in those meetings? What are you describing to them?

Charlie: Well, initially it was slightly different in that it was – there wasn’t going to be a focus on technology so much. It’s become sort of shorthand for that in a way. It was very much just going to be an update on Twilight Zone style stories. I’d read a biography of Rod Sterling. I felt that at the time those kind of things were missing from television. And when I was growing up – I didn’t see The Twilight Zone until I was a teenager, but the BBC used to put on really strange one-off controversial, thought-provoking, high-concept plays that would always generate a lot of controversy and often be quite horrifying.

And I felt that that sort of thing at the time was slightly missing on television. And then when they rebooted Dr. Who, which was about 2006 or so, I thought well maybe – because that’s almost an anthology show.

John: It is. Yeah.

Charlie: I thought well maybe there’d be an appetite for this. So that was what we – originally the pitch was it was going to be eight half hours. I was only supposed to write like two of them or something. And it said, I think originally it definitely mentioned technology might be one of the themes, but the idea was just to look at shows like The Twilight Zone and where they would be doing an episode about McCarthyism or something like that we’d be doing terrorism say.

And then because we were only doing three we ended up – the technological stories seemed to be the most interesting ones. Although actually I’d written a whole completely different episode first which we were about to start shooting that, again, didn’t have any technological element to it at all. It was incredibly earnest. And then a new head of Channel 4, the Channel that put it out in the UK, a new head of Channel 4 came in and she did not like this script. I have to say probably in retrospect she was right. They were going to pull the plug on it and if this wasn’t going ahead basically the whole show wasn’t going ahead.

So, there was some panic going on on our part. So I had a meeting with her where my job was to try and persuade her that this was a good idea, that this very earnest episode we were doing about the Iraq War was well worth her time. And if she wasn’t going to go for it, in my back pocket I had the idea for the national anthem episode which is the one with the prime minister and the pig. And I thought well if she doesn’t go for this I might as well pitch that because what have I got to lose.

John: Absolutely. Something versus nothing.

Charlie: Exactly. So, I ended up pitching that and luckily for me she laughed. Her first question was does it have to be a pig.

John: That’s a classic development note question. Does it have to be a pig?

Charlie: [laughs] Well, and we went through all the different things it could be there in the meeting. At one point I think I suggested a wheel of cheese or a frozen chicken. And then we went, no, a pig is probably best.

John: It has to be a pig.

Charlie: Yeah. And I went off and wrote the first ten pages or so, just to try and persuade her. And it was a parody of 24 that I was basically writing. And luckily for us she went for it. So, I mean, that episode is obviously one of our most divisive ones and I think in the UK it’s received slightly differently than it is say here, because I was known for doing fairly unusual comedy stuff.

John: Absolutely. So people could see the joke of it played differently there than it does here.

Charlie: Yeah.

John: But I want to get back to this idea of you talk about Twilight Zone, we had Tales from the Dark Side which sounds like a similar kind of thing, generally they’re self-contained stories that ask a question and there’s always a fantastical element or big sci-fi element that lets you focus on differently. In your case it’s technology and it’s a what-if on technology but a generally a very near technology. Things that are almost possible today. And how early in the process of these first three episodes of this first season – so the first three episodes are The National Anthem, which is the one with the pig, Fifteen Million Merits which is the prison-ish situation, and The Entire History of You. So those last two are much more clearly near future technology things. How soon did you know that that was the unifying theme?

Charlie: I guess it was, so Fifteen Million Merits had been written but so had this other earnest episode. As soon as that one was – the one that we were going to do was sort of scrapped, The National Anthem I realized there was a sort of drumbeat of social media going throughout it. And I thought, well hang on a minute, and we’d already been speaking to Jesse Armstrong who wrote The Entire History of You which was the third one. And so we realized well all three of these are about technology. And then we realized that, well, really we can use technology in the same way that The Twilight Zone would use the supernatural to tell a story. We can have fantastical things happening. And a lot of the technology we show is impossible, but because of the era we’re living in you kind of go along with it. As long as it looks grounded enough, and it looks like it functions the way you imagine it should, you kind of go with it. So, I think it was then. And then once we’d done that first – I think it must have been by the time we were finishing Entire History of You I thought well this is the way forward for the rest of the season.

It’s strange though, because then looking at the second season one of the episodes there is White Bear which – it looks like it’s a comment saying aren’t people on phones zombies. It’s a zombie movie with people filming things. So I think that was – sometimes we like to remind ourselves it’s not a sci-fi show basically. On the show itself we can lose sight of that.

John: Let’s talk about, as you’re figuring out an episode, because with an anthology show like this where each show is about a thing, are you starting with what the one-hour of entertainment is going to be about? Is it the idea or is it the character? Because ultimately the character has to drive that thing. But in this anthology that is so idea-driven you have to be able to sell that idea. So where was the push and pull between those two?

Charlie: Yeah. And that’s something that I think I got better at now. There’s certainly – when we’ve done weaker episodes it’s because the story is dictating what happens. It really depends. So sometimes – sometimes the story idea comes about from as you were saying a what-if, some crazy scenario that you imagined. You think, OK, that’s interesting. The different ways that could play out, I’m immediately interested in that. Other times it really depends – something like San Junipero which was – actually I’m going to rewind a bit. Actually Be Right Back was probably – Be Right Back was an interesting one.

So Be Right Back which is in season two, and I think it’s – I feel it’s one that’s slightly unjustly overlooked as an episode. It’s one of my favorites. And Owen Harris directed it who also did San Junipero. And that had stemmed from an experience I’d had that was in the ‘90s a former flat mate and friend of mine had died. And then it was one of the first times that somebody I knew had passed away. And then a couple of years after that, if you remember at the time when cell phones had limited memory and you could only store like a set number of phone numbers in there.

John: Oh, of course, yeah.

Charlie: And I was trying to make room for a new phone number in my phone which meant I had to delete old ones. And I scrolled through and I saw the name of this friend of mine and thought I can’t delete that. Even though it’s just a number I literally can’t ring that ever again. And there was something very strange – unexpected and strange about that moment. And so I knew I wanted to do a story that sort of spoke to that strange connection you can feel with – a very impersonal piece of technology can throw up something, an incredibly personal moment.

John: So I want to clarify that. So that leads to an idea that can be the premise of an episode, but it’s really an emotional spark. It’s like I have an emotional connection to this thing that I know is not the actual person. It’s just all of my memories is embodied in this slot in the phone.

Charlie: Yeah. It’s a little souvenir. It’s like one of the few reminders I had of this person. I didn’t have photos of this person. That was the one thing I had. And I was suddenly struck by it.

And then as is often the case, I think, with our episodes what happens is you’ve got an idea like that or really not an idea just a feeling, you’ve got that, and then I got really interested in the world of sort of psychics and mediums who purport to be putting people in place with their loved ones who’ve passed on. And these two ideas sort of glommed together and I was sitting up late one night. We’d just had our first baby. And I was doing the sort of night shift, which incidentally was weirdly a brilliant motivator because I knew I could only work in short bursts.

John: So many writers I’ve talked to say productivity actually soared because they knew they only had little windows of time.

Charlie: Yeah. It’s like Pomodoro technique or something that screams at you. And you can’t go outside. You can’t go anywhere. You’ve got nothing else to do. And I was on Twitter or something like that and I just saw updates from people scrolling past and I was just struck by what if I was the last person on earth, all these people were dead, and these messages were being generated by some kind of AI. And then you sort of remember these other ideas you had and you go, OK, I’m starting to see a story here.

Now, at that point I thought, so then you sort of end up creating the characters. I’m not sure the process by which I sort of thought who would find this the most upsetting possibly, if there was something that could generate text based on someone’s personality. Who would find that most upsetting? And the answer was a sort of recently bereaved widow who is expecting a baby, sort of my port of call, and so I think this is a very rambling answer I’m giving here.

John: I like it though.

Charlie: And that’s an odd one, because that episode I didn’t – at that stage in doing the show I hadn’t learned to plan things either. So I would write scripts as I went along.

John: You were just doing it by feel.

Charlie: Yeah. Just. Which meant that I ended up making all sorts of errors.

John: What’s an example of an error you would make by doing it that way?

Charlie: Ooh, in the original National Anthem there was a whole subplot involving the government picking up anyone who had ever been on some sort of terror watch list and trying to beat a confession out of them that tonally went – I was trying to play for comedy. It was like somebody gets beaten to death in an interrogation room and it–

John: Did it shoot?

Charlie: No. No it didn’t. So there was one scene in National Anthem as well that tonally, there’s a porn star he meets in National Anthem, there’s a guy they rope in to try and perform this act. There’s a moment when the two of them, the prime minister and the porn star meet in the corridor in the original script, and the porn star gives him the only good advice he gets all day long about how to deal with what’s about to happen. And we dropped it because just tonally it was very much at odds – but sometimes, White Bear I completely – White Bear is a good example of something where I totally messed it up. I wrote the whole – that was the next episode.

Now it’s one of my favorites because it’s got a really horrific twist and it’s a bit – I was trying to channel things like the Wicker Man and like there’s a short Spanish film called, I think it’s Spanish, called La Cabina. Have you ever seen that?

John: No, I don’t know La Cabina.

Charlie: Look it up. I won’t tell you anything about it except it’s about a guy and a phone booth. That’s all I’m going to say. It’s about 15 minutes. I was trying to channel that sort of thing. And I originally wrote that script three times. We were about to shoot it. I had written this thing, I had this notion about if you’ve seen White Bear there’s a story they tell the main character in it about–

John: About what’s actually going on.

Charlie: About what’s going on. And they say there’s a symbol appeared on all the TVs and everyone is behaving like zombies effectively. In the original script that was–

John: The actual premise.

Charlie: That was the actual premise. There was just this mysterious symbol appeared that made 30% of the population act like psychopaths and 30% act like bystanders. And 30% were the quarry. And I wrote it – it was very confused. But we had to shoot it because we were running out of time. We were literally scouting locations we were trying to work out, because I’d written in all these complicated locations, and we were based on a sort of former maybe US Air Force base in the UK. And we were looking for places to shoot the locations that were mentioned in the script. And one of them, it said it was a shop, but we couldn’t find a shop, but we could find this gas station.

And the location guy, we were looking around, and he said well you’ll have to film this way because there’s a fence around this whole place. So we can’t ever see in that direction. And I thought well a fence around the whole, that’s actually – oh, hang on a minute. And suddenly had a much more interesting idea. And just went off and rewrote the whole thing. Like just threw it away and rewrote the whole thing in like two days or something.

We had a director on board already, so we had to say to him, Carl Tibbetts, I had to say to him, sorry, I’ve totally rewritten the entire script. And luckily he was – but that happened because, and I’m in two minds about that. That happened because I hadn’t been doing any planning, I’d just been trying to write this story from a slightly confused premise. And then because I was forced into a corner suddenly I was in a position where literally I saw this fence around the thing and suddenly I sort of had a eureka moment and realized I could sort of dig myself out of the hole. You can’t dig yourself out of a hole, can you?

John: Well, you can dig a different hole to–

Charlie: You could dig some stairs?

John: Yes, you could use your shovel to maybe dig your way up to something.

Charlie: Yes.

John: That’s probably. You dug yourself out of it in a way.

Charlie: I dug myself, I stood on the shovel.

John: What it sounds like though is you’re trying to both plan for what you’re going to need, but also be flexible for better ideas as they come up.

Charlie: Yeah.

John: And so you were ready to be lucky. If you had felt confident about the episode that you’d written you probably would have ignored the fence and stuck with what you had.

Charlie: Yes. Definitely.

John: Because you allowed yourself to feel some insecurity you could say, oh, OK, there’s a better idea. There’s a way of containing this. Because I mean what you’re describing sounds like a completely different episode. Because I love White Bear. I think it is great. And it relies on that twist at the end about what’s really going on. And it sounds like if you hadn’t planned for the episode to be one way that twist never would have come.

Charlie: Absolutely. And that was why, I mean, I just knew it was – it was like sort of realizing at the altar you had married the wrong person or something. This was happening and I knew it wasn’t right. And everyone basically knew the script wasn’t right. And then so suddenly to have had this moment was such a relief, but it was also terrifying. And then on the next episode of that season, which was the Waldo Moment one, that’s where I really ran out of time. And I was kind of not happy with my finished script. I think there were lots of good ideas in it but I didn’t – weirdly it should have been a separate thing. It should have been like a separate miniseries or something like that. I should have had more time to develop.

John: Absolutely. It didn’t feel like it wanted to be in one hour of time.

Charlie: Yeah.

John: And let’s talk about that though because the format of an anthology series is about an hour long for episodes, although you’ve gone past those boundaries now. You have to set up your premise very quickly, or at least your world-building premise. Like this is what is possible in this universe of this episode. And people have a general expectation about what kinds of things can happen in a given episode, but there’s a pretty wide range.

You need to establish your characters very, very quickly. And you though have to decide at what point do you let the audience know what the episode is about. And that feels like a fundamental choice you’re making pretty early in the process or not?

Charlie: Yeah. I mean, White Bear was a good example of something where I guess in a way, I haven’t really thought about it, but because I had a story that I then was going to throw out but was going to use as the fiction they tell her within the episode, it meant that I had to sort of cover story that I could tell the viewer for about 75% of the running time. And then in a strange way, once you know what it is you’re hiding and you’ve worked out how long you’re going to hide it, it curiously makes some things easier because it actually limits your range of options. It sort of forces your hands on all sorts of decisions I guess. Which I hadn’t really thought about.

I mean, I found the stress of doing White Bear, it nearly falling apart and then me feeling like I hadn’t really done a good enough job with the Waldo Moment meant that when we did the Christmas one and that one I planned like meticulously. And that was interesting because that was another story where there was this big sort of reveal. We knew there was going to be a big reveal. Once you know that it sort of means you can spend, yes, and I’m always slightly worried that the audience is going to get there first. That they will – San Junipero, I thought people were going to get that in the first instance, like when they first – there’s a moment early on where Mackenzie as Yorkie is trying on different outfits. And it looks like a sort of a montage that you’d see in a John Hughes movie or something like that. Owen who directed that as well is a huge John Hughes fan and wanted to sort of channel all these things.

And in the script what it’s saying is that she – at one point it says she sort of magically changes outfits. And look. And Girlfriend in a Coma is playing on the radio at one point. And I thought everyone is going to immediately twig what is going on here. And I was pleasantly surprised when people didn’t. Although that’s again something – the other thing I guess I’ve learned is that I think that the most important draft in a way of the script is the edit. So myself and Annabel spend a lot of time in the edit and it never ceases to amaze me how much you can continue to tweak and change – you can rescue things that haven’t worked and you can bring in new things you didn’t notice yourself. And when you’re playing – when you’re revealing something that’s also crucial because that’s how you – you’re trying to gauge at what point people are going to understand exactly what’s going on.

White Bear actually there’s little flashbacks in that as well which I thought, oh, people are going to guess this.

John: And they don’t.

Charlie: And they don’t.

John: So White Bear is an example of sort of a two-stage reveal. First that the world is not what she thinks it is, and that we think we have good insight into who this character is or sort of that we’re seeing it through her eyes. And she’s a trustworthy narrator to some degree but there’s more going on. Shut Up and Dance is again that sort of same situation where we think we understand the premise quite early on that he’s being compelled to do these things and we don’t realize that there’s more to him than we sort of knew at the start. And looking back it’s like, oh, that is what that first scene was and we don’t know that’s why he was chosen.

Charlie: That was another one that changed actually. So Shut Up and Dance originally, so there’s like Kenny who is the young kid and Hector who is the older guy who he meets, and originally there was a reveal that Hector who Kenny – they’re both being blackmailed. For people who haven’t seen the episode they’re both being blackmailed by anonymous hackers. And originally the reveal was that Hector had been waiting for an underage prostitute in the room. And so the story was he’s sort of guiding Kenny along and he’s forcing Kenny into doing the more unpleasant aspects of this sort of horrible game they’ve been sent on.

And I came to the end of the script and we’re like it just doesn’t – you sort of know he’s a bastard from the first time he turns up and that’s not very interesting. Well, what if Kenny has got that secret then? That’s more interesting. And, oh OK, we care about him from the first time we see him. Then you can go back and you can go, well OK, what’s a good way of making us care about Kenny. Well, we’ll show him doing something that seems kind. So in just about the first scene you see him handing – a little girl has left her toy behind and he goes and hands it to her. And of course on the second watch that takes on a very sort of sinister – it’s actually Annabel’s daughter.

John: Oh no.

Charlie: Well no one wanted to put their own kids forward for that. [Unintelligible] She won’t mind me saying that. Her kids are all – they’re in lots of the episodes actually. And so afterwards you realize so that I realized was the beauty of knowing what the ending was. I’m so amateur. I realized that it’s helpful to know what the ending is when you’re writing the bit at the start. Because you can start kind of doing all of that stuff.

John: But everyone listening to this episode would assume though that you start at the ending. Like a mystery story where you sort of start with the ending and work your way forward. It doesn’t sound like that really is the process for you.

Charlie: Sometimes it is. Sometimes – I mean, when I get very excited about and episode, when it works at its best is when I sort of see what the end scene is. And sometimes then when you’re writing it that changes. San Junipero, good example where originally I did write a sort of story treatment for that. And, again, originally, I should say these things in order. So originally I’d written a short story treatment and it was a man and a woman. And the reveal was, oh, they’re old people. That was sort of the extent of it. And it ended at the point one of them meets the other one in real life and sees that they’re paraplegic. That was the ending.

And then I was sort of thinking, well, isn’t this more interesting – and they were going to get married in it, but isn’t this more interesting if they’re getting married – if we make it a same sex couple they can get married in 1987 which wasn’t possible in 1987 and that in itself is sort of more interesting. I started writing the script from this sort of rough outline I’ve got. And when I got to the point where they meet in real life in the script I thought, oh, I’ll keep going then. I don’t want it to stop here. I wonder what happens when they do get married then. So I sort of just kept going.

So from that point on it was much more – that was me sort of feeling my way along to the end. And then what that meant was, and I never used to believe it when people would say, “Oh, I started writing a scene and the characters just did this and I didn’t know where it…” I used to think you liar. And but that’s what happened. There’s a scene where Kelly and Yorkie have a kind of confrontation and you find out what is going on and what’s Kelly’s deal basically. And why she doesn’t really want to put roots down in San Junipero. A backstory with a husband and daughter. And that kind of just came out – and I don’t think that really changed at any point. And it was sort of like, you know, it’s one of the most powerful moments in the episode.

So, that was a good combination I guess of the two approaches, sort of planning it, thinking I knew where the ending was going. And then I went for a run in the middle of it, because like any basically dying mammal I now have to do exercise just to stay breathing. And I was going running and Spotify was on. And I was listening to ‘80s music because the thing was set in the ‘80s. And Heaven is a Place on Earth came on.

John: Perfect.

Charlie: And I was like, oh, that describes, and I liked the rye joke that they’re in a server basically on earth. And then I was immediately worried that we weren’t going to be able to clear it. And so I came back and wrote the ending really quickly. And so the whole script was one of the fastest ones I’ve written. It’s Sod’s Law that it’s turned out to be one of the most popular. It’s typical.

John: Now, after that season you went on – so season four had USS Callister, Metalhead, Black Museum. USS Callister sort of stands alone as just a great science fiction – it’s a remarkable episode.

Charlie: Oh, thank you.

John: Congratulations on it. But talk to us about the genesis of that because it’s obviously a very clear appreciation and reaction to a certain kind of Star Trek type TV show and, again, you established the premise really early on and yet our central character who seems like our point of entry ends up becoming the villain of the story. How does that develop as you’re working through story on that?

Charlie: That was, I can remember very clearly the genesis for – the whole story came about, we were shooting an episode for season three called Play Test and we were on the set and they were setting up for a scene involving special effects which we hadn’t used many of. And I said wouldn’t it be good, now that we’ve got this sort of tool, we can use special effects, why don’t we just do a space episode. That’s quite often how we think our way into episodes is how can – because we’re sort of almost – it helps oddly for me to imagine what’s the Black Mirror version of a space opera basically.

John: Sure.

Charlie: So, we knew we wanted to do an episode set in space and I’d also – somewhere along the lines been thinking what if you had – this is a horrible story – have you heard of Josef Fritzl? Do you know Josef Fritzl?

John: I don’t know who it is.

Charlie: He was this horrible man who kept a family in a dungeon. There was a guy in America who kept women in a dungeon. And so there was a sort of well what if you had someone who is a tyrant but they’re wielding ultimate power over a bunch of people who are copies of real people. And so those two ideas sort of glommed together and you think, OK, you could do – immediately there was something appealing about the idea of a world in which you have the captain of a spaceship who you think is the hero and then you realize none of this is real and he’s a madman effectively. Within this world he’s a horrific tyrant.

And then you think well why is he a tyrant in this world and then it’s like, oh, OK, he’s kind of – he’s enacting his grudged from his daily life where he feels powerless. And it’s office coworkers. And immediately there there’s a sort of comic gulf between the two worlds. That was an interesting example of, again, the first draft of that actually didn’t have the 1960s element in it. And I was thinking it would be fun if it had something else. I think it came about from an idea like well what should the spaceship look like. And I was like I’d love it if we did a Black Mirror episode that opened and it looked like Star Trek from the ‘60s. That would really confuse people. And then you think actually that’s quite interesting.

John: And appropriate.

Charlie: It’s a great look and also the power dynamics within there that now look dated, even though Star Trek was an incredibly progressive show, Kirk is going around the universe sort of trying to romance green women half the time. So, yeah, so that added an extra element. When we came to the – the original script that we shot, it was much clearer early on that Daly, there was something wrong with him. And I remember this was one of the times we got a note back from Netflix on the first sort of loose cut they saw where – so very early on Daly is in the office Nanette Cole comes in and they meet and he clearly – he’s delighted that somebody is being nice to him and seems to admire him.

And then Walton played by Jimmi Simpson comes in and sort of whisks her off and he’s very slick. And you see Daly looking sort of jealous. Now originally it was written in that you see his fist clenches. And Netflix said I don’t know that you need that actually. It’s really more interesting if you don’t know how you feel about him. And we cut it out and immediately it was much more interesting because it meant that the reveal that, oh, this guy is a bastard came just a few minutes later. You see him walk it onto the deck of the ship and grab Walton by the throat. And you realize he’s a monster.

So that’s a good example of something where losing something that I thought was a clever bit of a foreshadowing delayed the reveal to such a degree that it just had a lot more power I think for people. Because you really – people sympathize with him at the start because he seems – we also cut some dialogue, there was a bit where Michaela Cole’s character is talking to Cristin, who is Nanette, and she says, “Oh, Daly is a bit of a creep basically.” And we toned that – we cut – again, there was something in there that made it more apparent. She was like he’s creepy. She went into more detail. And again it gave too much away.

That was really good fun writing that episode as well because it meant we got to do all the stuff that we thought we could never do in Black Mirror. So it ends in a sort of chase through an asteroid belt towards a wormhole. All of that was just really good fun.

John: So let’s talk about, many of these episodes, I’m thinking of USS Callister, fresh example, is there’s a bit of magic hand-waving. You have to accept this is part of the world. And that’s true also in features. Like most features are based on sort of a premise concept that you have to accept that this is a thing that we’re going to say is legitimate in this. And so in the case of USS Callister it’s not only can he build these virtual worlds but he can just off a piece of DNA recreate the entire person.

Charlie: Yes.

John: So that doesn’t actually make sense and yet it is so fundamental to the premise that you are willing to accept it.

Charlie: Well that’s a very good point actually. Because we did spend, again, I’d forgotten this. This is one of those where you repress a memory. I’d forgotten that we spent a long time in the original draft, it was co-written with Will Bridges. And we spent a lot of time trying to explain why when Nanette wakes up on the ship she has all her memories in place. If she’s a clone she wouldn’t know anything.

And actually so in the original draft there’s a whole bit of business that involves – there’s a piece of technology from Season One/Episode Three, Entire History of You, the Grain, that records all your memories. So what we had, we had a whole explanation of that. Everyone has these memory grains and Daly has hacked her memory grain and he’s uploaded. And it was like well why would he do that? What’s the point? And also why do we have to establish that?

And I knew some people would go, “Well that doesn’t make sense.” There’s a line in it where somebody starts explaining, I think that Dudani starts explaining why they’ve got their memories intact. And Michaela Coel’s character just tells him to shut up.

John: Yeah. Yeah.

Charlie: And you kind of get away with it. I remember when we did Dead Set, the director of that was a guy called Yann Demange, and he used to wave away bits – I sometimes get very caught up on the logic of things. And he’d go, “It’s a movie moment. It’s a movie moment. It doesn’t matter. It’s a movie moment.” And he was right. I spent days arguing that it wouldn’t rain in San Junipero. Days. Because Owen wanted to shoot a scene in the rain and I was like, no, no, it wouldn’t – why would they make it rain. It’s paradise. Why would they make it rain? And he was like, “No one cares about that. It will look lovely.”

John: Yes.

Charlie: And he was right.

John: Rain can be nice. It can rain in paradise. One of the strange things about Black Mirror is that you’re writing about culture that is constantly changing and because you have become – because your shows have entered the cultural conversation people say like, “Oh, this is such a Black Mirror moment.” What does it feel like to be reflecting culture that you’re also changing? And to what degree are you aware that, you know, like these three episodes that are dropping right now, they’re going to enter the cultural conversation and change thoughts on that.

Are you mindful of that now in your success with the series?

Charlie: You can’t not be, I guess, to an extent. But you have to try. I mean, I just find that a terrifying thought. There’s something about that that’s absolutely terrifying. Because also it means that you’re – we generally try to give away very little about our episodes in advance because we want them to be a surprise. But we also know that, yeah, and I suppose also with an anthology where you’re – one of the things that, you know, we became known for was doing incredibly brutal endings and wiping all hope from the universe for a moment. Which I love doing every now and then. And sometimes we kind of almost deliberately overdo it, like Crocodile was a deliberate – well that’s a whole story actually.

So, you’re aware that – there’s a large subset of people who are coming to your show who want that. They want that horrible sort of feeling. But if you give it to them every time you’re not doing your job, I think, of the anthology show – of our anthology show we’re trying to be as varied in tone as we can within the… – I wanted to do an Airplane style episode.

John: Great.

Charlie: And I was talked out of it. I was talked out of it. I’m still not sure. I vacillate on that. I’m not sure whether it was a good idea or a terrible one. I really wanted to do one. I’ll have to do it under some other guise.

So there’s a weight of expectation I guess and I think – I mean, it’s very flattering when people go this is a bit like Black Mirror. Oh, that thing they’re doing in China, that’s quite Black Mirror. Oh, have you seen the news? It’s like an episode of Black Mirror. It’s flattering, it’s free publicity. It’s also terrifying as a mammal. It’s just frightening to think that the worst case scenarios that we’ve often been describing that those are reminding people of things they’re seeing in everyday life.

It’s something we don’t tend to – Annabel and I, we never really know whether the show has that much impact because we’re so busy. Because it takes so much time basically. Because they’re all – they’ve all got individual directors and individual casts. And a lot of the crew is completely different. We literally don’t really often get to go out and speak to people. [laughs] So it’s quite jarring when, I think last time I came to the US I was at immigration. They said what are you doing here. And I said I’m doing a thing, I’m doing a show. And they said what is it, and I said Black Mirror, and they’re like, “Oh!” And they called someone else over and said this is the guy who does Black Mirror. That’s really surprising and frightening because you think I’m going to just inevitably at one point going to let these people down.

I am now resigned to the fact that because we try – I think because we try to make the episodes as idiosyncratic as possible, when people inevitably compile their lists of which ones are their favorites you get some which are always near the top, but generally speaking I’ve read people hating on episodes that other people have loved. So you know that you’re never going to please everybody. And I think that’s sort of – hopefully that means we’re doing our job. Or at least failing in the right way.

John: I mean, you’re kind of unique in the realm of showrunners, and we’ve had many showrunners on the show, Aline Brosh McKenna, Benioff and Weiss, Damon Lindelof, who have been running these long time shows that have these huge fan bases who are invested in characters who they’ve seen over the course of years. And you don’t have that baggage. Every episode is its own thing and starting its own moment. So you don’t get the benefit of returning characters who can do stuff where you don’t have to set them up from scratch every time. But you get the freedom from expectation. A very limited set of expectations placed on any given installment of Black Mirror.

And I want to talk about Bandersnatch in relation to that because it’s billed as a Black Mirror experiment, a thing. Was it originally going to be a normal episode? When was the decision to make it its own event moment thing?

Charlie: Well originally it was part of season five. So we actually shot, so the season that we’ve just – they don’t like you to say dropped apparently. I was about to say dropped. No, no, no, it’s fine. I mean, I say dropped all the time. They say, “Don’t say dropped.” But I don’t think they gave me another word to say.

John: OK.

Charlie: So, what? Appeared?

John: Launched? No. Season five…debuted?

Charlie: Slithered? Slithered out?

John: Yeah.

Charlie: So Striking Vipers which is the first of the three, we’d already shot that. Smithereens had been written and there was some overlap with the filming of that with Bandersnatch.

Bandersnatch was always going to be interactive and that was an idea that – so Netflix had said to us, I think we were over for some season four stuff, and they said we’d like you to do an interactive story.

John: Oh, great.

Charlie: And they showed us how this tech worked. And me and Annabel both nodded and were very polite and said that looks great. And then we left the room and went no flipping way are we doing that because it’s going to be a gimmick. We don’t want to do it. And then a few weeks later we were having a – so the way it works – so I generally write all the scripts but I’m always working with Annabel, bouncing ideas off her. We have a healthy disrespect for each other, so she will not be shy about telling me that she thinks an idea stinks.

And so we have a sort of back and forth conversation. And during one of those conversations I had – I wanted to do another episode set in the past. And I wanted to do something about vintage computer games. That was–

John: Because that’s your background as well.

Charlie: Yeah. And so there’s a lot of real nostalgia for me in Bandersnatch. And then I had this idea which was, oh well, what if you’re controlling – it was about somebody starts receiving messages from their computer. And then I remembered the interactive thing they’d just shown us. And I was like well what if that’s you and then so he becomes aware that you’re there. Oh, that’s interesting.

And also, and I didn’t realize this at the time, but I’ll get onto that in a minute. Sorry. Because there’s a thing about interactive stories that’s just interesting generally. So that was it. Then we went back to Netflix and said, OK, we’ve got an idea. Originally it was much more simple. And then I started – so in trying to work out how to literally just write the story outline for this, I started out literally we were in the office and we had a whiteboard and I started with the flow chart. And then you quickly go on. I need a bigger whiteboard because I’ve run out of room. And then it was like, OK, there’s some software that does a flowchart for me. Maybe. No, actually, I need it to track what’s going on and remember what’s going on. And Netflix were also saying please test as many different things as you can.

So, then somebody said you should use Twine which is this interactive fiction software. And I looked at it and I thought I don’t have the time to learn that. That just looks complicated. It’s like html basically. And I used to do a bit of html stuff years ago.

John: But then you have to mark which characters are there and if there are any items that would carry through.

Charlie: Yeah. But what was useful, I ended up going back to Twine because it worked like flowchart software. So you’d make a cell and you’d type something in it and then it would automatically do the sort of piles that joined up. And as I did that it got fun. Planning it got fun. And it kept growing out into – so it kept expanding sort of length ways and width ways. And then suddenly you’d sort of think oh I can add a whole branch where this happens. And before you know it, you’ve of course fractionally it all expands out. So I did that. And then what I think what we realized I think was that it’s useful – if you’re doing an interactive story I think it was – what we stumbled across that I think was useful was because the main character of Stefan is separate, he understands that these commands are being given to him. It’s not like something where you’re just telling him what to do and he just does it. Because it’s hard to keep him consistent if you do that.

So I was playing Red Dead Redemption 2 which I think is a very, very good open world game. It’s great. There’s a scene in it early on where you go and sort of have a conversation with one of your lost loves. And it was like quite well done. He has a conversation with this ex love of his on the doorstep and it’s quite poignant. And the turns away, gets on his horse. And then I accidentally like ran into a pig and then thought, oh, I’ll get off. I think the pig ran at me. So I shot the pig, sort of by accident. And then like somebody came running after me. And I thought what sort of character is this guy now? Murders a pig on the doorstep of his lost love. He’s a psychopath.

Whereas when there’s some sort of narrative distance it means that no matter how successful people found Bandersnatch or didn’t, it meant that hopefully Stefan was always a troubled young man reacting to a problem. And so he would start to resist what you were telling him to do.

So that was interesting. And then I learned a lot – there was one big thing that we had to cut out, and it’s incredibly hard to cut things out of an interactive story. That was the other thing I discovered. So originally the whole thing was structured a bit more like an escape room. So there was a central puzzle that you had to work out, which we have a bit of it down one branch. There’s a bit to do with the phone number. The psychiatrist’s phone number.

It was originally structured so you would always come to a point where he was trying to remember a phone number and he couldn’t remember it. And the idea was that the first time you encountered this you’re like well how am I supposed to know what the phone number. I can’t possibly. And so you’d get frustrated and it would sort of loop you back. And then by the time you’d failed in two different ways you’d realize that these recaps it was showing you–

John: Had new information.

Charlie: Were telling you the number. We had to massively simplify it because people just did not – I mean, we shot it. But people just did not understand what was going on.

John: Well ultimately you’re making a show about a guy developing a video game and the end product is sort of like the video game. It has to be tested and played like a video game to see whether people can actually get it. It’s not normally audience testing. It’s literally like can you – and people aren’t necessarily expecting a puzzle.

Charlie: No. They’re not expecting a puzzle, although weirdly – well, we did get some feedback afterwards. People did understand, one thing which was terrifying was that it was appearing quickly that people couldn’t remember a number. It was a five-digit number they were given and they couldn’t remember it for more than like 15 seconds. That was one of the first big boulders in the road we discovered.

Then we had a problem with translation. Because I hadn’t really thought that through. The numbers were buried in dialogue. So there were numbers like two which were just it’s two, what, but obviously when you translate that around the suddenly you can’t do it. So that was a problem. And you can’t predict what – people did understand that it was a puzzle and it was interesting that they said that people appreciated the fact that there was a puzzle involved and they enjoyed that. That was something they came back and said they enjoyed. But they also found it quite confusing and baffling.

So I don’t think that’s something we quite nailed.

John: You couldn’t cross that gap.

Charlie: Yeah. And another thing was there were some things – there was one branch of it, this is one thing that frustrates me about it. There’s one branch of it where we completely break the fourth wall and you can tell the main character that you’re watching him on Netflix.

John: I really liked that moment. It’s absurd and also–

Charlie: It’s ridiculous.

John: And it makes you feel like, OK, I’m aware that there’s a comedy happening here.

Charlie: Exactly. Well, that’s the comedy. Totally upends it and it turns it into a comedy. The thing that I can’t quite – originally that was not accessible on your first go through. And then we were sort of concerned – it was one of these things where we were concerned that people would just get down to a more normal real world ending so to speak, certainly a less fourth wall breaking ending, and would miss that. And that was probably a bit of insecurity on our part to make that accessible from the start. But what that meant was that when it came to that point and it gives you two options, frustratingly slightly more people pick the Netflix branch because they didn’t quite understand what the other one was. It was like a symbol.

And so I think for some people that meant that their first experience of getting to a sort of fairly meaty ending broke the fourth wall and therefore sort of possibly undermined the drama of everything else in a way. So I’m not sure – I’m in sort of two minds about that. It was also a lot of business to do with dreams. Like you have to – where he goes through the mirror and stuff. There was such a logistical nightmare going on. Yeah.

And we ended up having to cut a couple of endings out because we just – it was just getting unwieldy.

John: Do you get data back showing which paths people took most?

Charlie: Yes. We had a whole sort of postmortem debrief they did where they showed us – or we don’t get numbers, of which I’m delighted about because there’s just such relief. But they did tell us – the one that really stuck in my head was when it comes to why the chopping up the body or burying the body it was exactly the same percentage split as Brexit in the UK. It was 52 to 48. Which surprised me actually because I thought most people would not want to – it was 48% wanted to chop the body up and I thought that would be much lower than that because that seemed such a gruesome option.

But generally speaking most of the sort of percentages were kind of roughly where we thought they would land. There were a couple of exceptions. There was a certain amount of stuff we could tweak because the whole thing was obviously weird because having done – just to rewind a bit – having done the story outline in Twine I then started – I realized that I couldn’t find tools that did this, that let you write screenplays in this interactive way. I just couldn’t find something that did that.

So, we ended up realizing, OK, what we need to do is assign a sort of number to each of these cells, at 1A, 2B, and so then I used Scrivener to create this confetti of individual little scenes. Wrote those up. And then had to export those into something else. Paste them back into Twine. So there was this convoluted route we went to. Because we had to get to a point where we had a script that you could read and it would say if you want to do this turn to page such and such.

And also you could read on an iPad and literally click on it and it would take you there, which sort of made life a lot easier for actors. But because the tools weren’t there it was one of those things where you end up with about five different applications open. Then Netflix built a tool for the edit which then managed to import – they imported my Twine thing directly into the edit which made life a lot easier. But it would crash. There would be things where it would be like, oh no, Colin is alive. He’s meant to be dead.

John: Yeah. Your episode crashed Netflix probably. The entire system probably.

Charlie: The outline crashed. The outline would crash. There was this whole thing where Colin Whitman can jump off a balcony and if he does he’s dead for the rest of the story. And sometimes he would just pop up again and we were like what’s going on?

John: What’s happened?

Charlie: Which was quite in character for him actually. That was why I kept adding more Colin Whitman. As soon as we knew we had Will Poulter I kept adding more and more Colin Whitman as well because he’s great.

John: We have questions from listeners and I picked a few that I thought might be good for you. Chelsea from London asks…

Charlie: I’ve come all this way to hear from somebody from London. And they’re called Chelsea.

John: “I watched Searching the other night, a film that’s basically all social media, and towards the end I found it was asking too much of me in terms of suspending disbelief. As writers, how can you tell when you’re asking too much regarding the suspension of disbelief? Obviously genre plays a large role in this, but for a film set in the real world how do you know where to draw the line?”

Suspension of disbelief. So, within your shows you are establishing the fundamental premise of sort of like what happens in this world. But do you struggle with suspension of disbelief in your episodes?

Charlie: You’ve cited a couple of examples. There’s a good example in USS Callister where we sort of hope you’ll just go with it. Striking Vipers, the new one, there’s a whole thing that they can do in this game that they shouldn’t really be able to do. But we just think you’ll go with it. So sometimes you just sort of gauge it that way.

I haven’t seen Searching so I don’t know specifically what it is. I often find that with the depiction of computers still a lot of the time in movies or TV they are shown doing things they can’t possibly do in the present day. And that’s often quite frustrating.

I think we do spend a lot of time kind of on product design as well to try and make it look like all the technology is just very functional, like quite sleek. A lot of the time we’re sort of trying to remove technology from the backgrounds as well. So there will only be a couple of little devices. And hopefully that makes it feel more grounded.

And there’s also generally that rule that you can withstand one fantastical thing happening.

John: Exactly.

Charlie: As long as that’s – I think as long as people enjoy that enough. That’s the other thing. As long as people enjoy that enough they’ll go with it. And if two impossible things happen. That’s the famous Speed example. The bus jumping in Speed where you don’t really believe it could do that.

John: No.

Charlie: Yeah.

John: So you get that fundamental suspension of disbelief that is part of the premise. And so I think your episodes tend to do that. It sounds like what Chelsea is reacting to is choices that characters have made or twists that are revealed that she’s not believing the characters are really doing that thing.

Charlie: Right.

John: It didn’t feel real to the rest of the world that she’d set up.

Charlie: I mean, well that is a trickier one. Because that is – and that’s just done to how authentically you think the character is reacting. I mean, in Black Mirror really quite often, and this is something that sort of depresses me when I look back at it, we’ve got in our episode somebody – it starts out somebody slowly realizes they’re in a trap. They start struggling. It gets worse. The end.

John: Yeah. [laughs] There’s a premise!

Charlie: So in a way we often don’t let them escape which is one of the reasons why hopefully people go with it. I don’t really know. I think a lot of it is just as long as you feel that the characters are reacting authentically to the moment then you will go with it. And in terms of the concepts, again, as long as you’re only trying to do one crazy thing at a time, again, people will hopefully go along with that.

It’s a difficult one though because, yeah, that is a tricky one. I mean, we’re lucky as well in a way that we don’t often I guess, because our stories are shorter, we can kind of burn all the characters up and the scenario up really quickly before the logic would strain it too much.

John: Well also the universes that you’re creating and because they’re only a single episode we can assume that this technology exists and we are seeing it in the context of this one story. And we don’t have to worry about like, wait, if you could do that your entire universe would be very different. I look at Westworld and Westworld is a show that has to grapple with that because there is technology that exists in Westworld and you’re like would it really be used in this way?

Charlie: Right.

John: And so if it is used in this way, what does the world outside of Westworld look like? And that’s what they’re dealing with in the third season of Westworld.

Charlie: See, now I deliberately haven’t watched Westworld because I’ll get crippling professional jealousy. I tend to avoid things that I think might be – and the number of times we’ve gone, “Oh, it would be great to do a Black Mirror western. Oh, hang on, Westworld exists.”

So another good example I guess, so Be Right Back. Actually so Be Right Back is a good example I guess of something where when writing it I was aware that – so it starts off she starts communicating via email, a messaging app, with her deceased husband. Then it sort of escalates and she’s talking to a synthesized version of him on the phone. Then he says would you like to meet me. And at this point I thought people are not going to go along with this. That there’s a sort of android version that shows up.

And there were two things that helped. One was the story was deliberately set in the middle of nowhere. So they were in an isolated farmhouse. She was on her own. So you’re not thinking does somebody down the road have one of these? And there’s a scene we cut out. There’s a woman who originally recommends this to her. And originally there was a scene where you see Martha phoning this woman up and going why did you do this. And you see that this woman is in bed with a robot of her own. I think we actually shot that and we cut it out.

So, we isolated them so you’re not thinking too much about the outside world. And so hopefully those logical questions don’t come into it.

John: That’s Westworld as well. Westworld is on a ranch.

Charlie: Yeah. The other thing we weirdly lent into the absurdity there, so when she gets this thing it literally comes sort of packaged up like a rubber man. And she puts it in a bathtub and drops nutrients into the water. And meanwhile she’s got Donald Gleason in her ear telling her how weird this is and weirdly acknowledging that it’s weird and it’s crazy.

John: You’re hanging a lantern on it to make it clear that this show is acknowledging that this is an odd moment.

Charlie: So you’re not sitting there going, well, come on, this wouldn’t happen. Because somebody onscreen is saying that. Saying isn’t this strange? So, I think hopefully, yeah, those are two tricks we got away with there. We quite often tend to isolate our characters generally because it means you’re not considering the whole of society.

Jesse’s original script for Entire History of You had loads of really great extra details about the world in which everyone is recording everything all the time. But it was just too much. Stuff for a whole movie or a series in its own right.

John: Brett asks, “As a musician transitioning to a writing career I’ve been wondering given the power of streaming in both music and film is this the best time or the worst time to get a foot in the door?”

So we are clearly in a really strange, interesting time. This is also a moment where I can ask, “What is television?”

Charlie: Yeah. I don’t know. I really don’t know what it is. And I don’t know what constitutes. I mean, if I look at, obviously Bandersnatch, what is that? I don’t know what it is. It’s sort of a game. It’s sort of a film. It’s not on a gaming platform.

John: But it could be. I mean–

Charlie: It could be.

John: If it weren’t filmed, if it were done all just with CG characters then it literally would feel like a game.

Charlie: The number of times I was like it would be so much easier to do, when we were filming it, would have been so much easier. Yeah, I don’t know. And then things like, so Roma I watched at home, because I’ve got two young kids, really busy doing the show all the time. Never get to go out to go to the cinema. So I watched Roma at home and I had such limited windows in which to watch it. I watched it over three nights in sittings, divided up, like it was a series I was binge-watching, which I was perfectly happy to do. Which makes me a huge philistine.

So like we don’t even know quite what, like Black Mirror is an anthology show, but then sometimes we do standalone one-offs. I think we’ll probably do more of that sort of thing as well in the future. So, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t even know. I know we got some stick for when we did San Junipero it was like 61 minutes long and it got entered into the Best TV Movie category. And I know that annoyed some people. But tough luck.

I mean, I was delighted that we won, but I sort of thought, well, hopefully that means if we can be entered in that category and then people liked it enough to vote for it, well, you should get extra points shouldn’t you for taking up less of people’s time in this day and age? Like the shorter the better.

Something like Russian Doll, I really loved Russian Doll.

John: Oh my god, l loved those episodes were so short.

Charlie: 30 minutes long.

John: Going back to Natasha Lyonne again.

Charlie: And, well I met her the other night because I went to a Russian Doll event and I told her my favorite thing to say to people who I admire their work, and it’s true, I said I liked Russian Doll so much it made me angry.

John: Oh, me too.

Charlie: I was furious that I hadn’t thought of this show and I hadn’t written this show. And obviously there were certain things that it had in common with Bandersnatch. It was brilliant. And it was short. Don’t you wish sometimes you could sort things by length? Make life easier.

Sorry. So the question–

John: The question is–

Charlie: Is it the best time or the worst time? I would say it’s surly one of the best times.

John: I think it’s one of the best times, too.

Charlie: Because there’s so much. I mean, there’s a sort of probably unsustainable mountain of stuff being made that that means by just logic would dictate that there’s a need for more stuff. The machine needs more coal being shoved into it. So, it’s a pretty good time to do that. And also I guess technology is at the point – the thing that sort of changed my whole career, so he talks about transitioning from one career into another. So I was a video games reviewer. And I did sort of comic strips. And I felt I was in a sort of ghetto. And I wanted to be doing TV comedy and things like that. And the way – and this was like 1998 – and the way I managed to make that jump was by doing this small little website that was sort of I guess uniquely mine. It was a small thing I was doing on a deadline that meant people were noticing it. And now the technology exists for you to make – you only get two chances to make your own stuff in your career. One is at the very beginning and then sort of near the end.

John: Yes. You’re either a nobody or JJ Abrams.

Charlie: Exactly. So you might as well, so you have the means to produce stuff. Write a script. Make a short film. Just do anything that is uniquely yours. And then hopefully people can see it. The problem is of course you’re up against everyone else who is doing the same thing. That’s the downside.

John: Absolutely. The firehose problem is that there’s so much content it’s hard to pull those things out. So there’s at least three series that I have sort of backed up, like I really want to watch those things because I know they’re fantastic. I just have only the same 24 hours.

Charlie: It’s like being air traffic control, isn’t it? These things are taxiing round and round and round. Well, I mean, even something like Game of Thrones which is like the most – was it the most popular show in the world? Still, you know, I watched it all. Most of the people I know haven’t seen it. It’s the most popular show in the world. This is the only period in history when – I was watching a reality show not that long ago in the UK and one of the contestants his job was described as TV Presenter and Barman. And I thought this is the only period in history where those two – that’s two valid careers that one person can have. Because there’s so much content around.

John: I think the other reason why this is the best time is that with the globalization of things your show and any show is available everywhere to the culture at once. And so when I was in Scandinavia doing Arlo Finch press I was talking to one of my publishers and she said, “Oh, what are you watching?” And I said there’s a few things I really want to watch. Haunting Hill House. And she’s like, “I love that.” And it had just dropped. Sorry, we can’t say dropped anymore.

Charlie: Oh, you can say dropped. No. Say dropped.

John: It had debuted worldwide. So she was watching it in her own language. I was watching it in English. And we could have this conversation in ways that never happened before. So that globalization of things is a unique moment now.

Charlie: And you can watch – so I binged watch – I mean they’ve given a terrible title in English, Money Heist. Have you seen Money Heist? It’s called La Casa de Papel which I guess translates as the House of Paper, or something. So that’s probably too close to House of Cards. I guess that’s why they changed it to Money Heist. It’s ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous. But it’s incredibly addictive. It’s basically 24, it’s Spanish though. It’s 24 about one bank heist.

John: Great.

Charlie: I mean, it knows it’s ridiculous. It gets so ridiculous. And it’s something that I probably wouldn’t have stumbled across if it hadn’t been for streaming platforms. Yeah. And that’s one of the most popular shows in the world I think outside of the US and Britain. It’s amazing.

We never thought Black Mirror would travel, because it seemed so idiosyncratic to us. But it’s very odd when they drop it. I’m going to say drop it. When they drop it. Drop it. What are they going to do? Delete it? They’re not going to delete it now. It’s too late.

When they drop it on the service it is a really weird sensation that you start getting feedback from around the world in a sort of wave as it goes through time zones.

John: So one thing I do want to point out that’s different though is Netflix, let’s hope it goes on for 100 years, but likely it won’t. And so at some point the episodes that you’ve made will exist somewhere? So traditionally there’s been a way to find old episodes of things and you can find those things, or a movie exists. We talked before about movies used to be on DVDs so you could at least like always find a movie. Sometimes you can’t find a movie. Something like the Bandersnatch episode without a server to run it on it doesn’t exist as a thing people can enjoy.

Charlie: But then someone will build a 2019 Netflix emulator. Emulation. I’ve got massively into emulation which is probably apparent from Bandersnatch. So hopefully the emulator – the emulation community will save the day.

John: Well, we’re already in a simulation.

Charlie: We are.

John: There will be emulation within the simulation.

Charlie: Yeah.

John: It stacks nicely.

Charlie: Which is something–

John: Turtles all the way down.

Charlie: We wanted to do that in the episode, have a bit in it where he’s playing a simple game and you actually – like a Frogger type game. But we didn’t have time.

John: I get that. It’s time for our One Cool Things though.

Charlie: OK.

John: My One Cool Thing, so I was back in Colorado this last week which is why Craig was hosting by himself. And we’re listening to Colorado Public Radio and there’s a voice and I’m like wait that’s me. And it was the only time in my life I’ve encountered my voice twin. I’m used to hearing my voice on the podcast. And this person sounded exactly like me. And so I listened enough so I could find out what his name was. His name is Matthew Zalkind. He is a cellist living is Colorado. And it was just a really odd moment for me because I almost only get recognized for my voice. I’ll be out at a Trader Joe’s paying for something and I’ll say something and they’re like, “Oh wait, you’re John August.”

Charlie: Right.

John: It’s almost entirely by my voice. So it was so odd for me to be hearing someone else’s voice. I could give this person a script and he could read it and be like, oh, well that’s John. If I do get hit by a bus Craig could just bring this person on to do my job.

Charlie: Well, and presumably the technology to do that anyway is five seconds away if it’s not already.

John: Oh clearly.

Charlie: I think it’s partly in existence. So it’s nice that you’ve discovered that voice just before the tidal wave.

John: And going back to some of your previous episodes, I think I brought this up on the show before is that I’ve taken all of the text from Scriptnotes, because we have transcripts for all of the episodes and broken them down into Craig and John, everything we’ve said separately. Run through a Markov chain generator. So I do have a little bot that can generate Craig sentences and John sentences and have them talking to each other. So at some point there will just be–

Charlie: Auto-generated–

John: Of Scriptnotes. We’ll have one episode that is just generated dialogue for me and Craig talking about things.

Charlie: It will be like, there’s a short Roald Dahl story about that. About an automatic writing machine. Because he was writing it in the ‘70s or something, it’s got literally foot pedals. He steps on a pedal to make it a bit more erotic and accidentally steps too far and stuff. So it’ll be like that. You’ll be able to just generate it constantly like 24-hour, an unending loop. What if it’s better?

John: What if it’s better? I mean, what is reality? Going back to your first episode of this new season which is the question of like who is the real person and what is reality if you know somebody only in a virtual way.

Charlie: And does it matter? If it’s as compelling as they’re finding it in that episode, yeah. Sometimes when we do stories like that it’s like I am no clearer on really – I don’t know that you always need to know the answer to the question you’re raising in a story, because I think it can be hopefully interesting if you literally do not know the answer to what’s going on entirely in that episode. I think that in terms of what that means is as confusing for me as it is for the characters I think. Maybe that’s just a weakness on my part and I should have just worked it out properly. Oh, you never know.

John: We’ll see. Craig could tell you because Craig wrote Chernobyl and he knows the answers to all–

Charlie: He does. But I have got to watch that. Literally everyone is telling me to watch that. And then I spoke to my wife last night and she was like, “I want to watch Chernobyl.” I’m like, all right. Yeah.

John: You’ll get home. You’ll watch it.

Charlie: Well, the government will make me watch it at this rate. It will be issued to me by the government. I have to wait. There’s an odd sensation. I have to wait. So I can’t start watching it now until I get home and watch it with my wife. We have to watch a nuclear meltdown together or my life won’t be worth living. And I’ll have to wait. I’m going to save that up. I’m going to save the Chernobyl disaster up to make my life better.

John: Charlie, what’s your One Cool Thing?

Charlie: My One Cool Thing is a game called Baba is You.

John: Baba is You.

Charlie: Baba is You. You can get it on the Nintendo Switch and I think from Steam and probably on other things. It’s a puzzle game and a logic game the likes of which is almost impossible to describe, but it basically involved – you’re a little white like a gerbil or a rabbit, I don’t know quite what you are in it. But you’re Baba. And you scurry around and you can push – how can I explain this? There are blocks of rules, so Baba is You could be one rule. Door is Shut would be one.

Now, you can shove the word shut out of the way and you can put You in its space and then you are the door.

John: Oh, fantastic.

Charlie: If you see what I mean. And so from that sort of – it’s quite a mind-bending premise in itself. And then it spins out these incredibly clever and mind-mangling puzzles. And my 7-year-old is obsessed with video games and I played it with him and had one of those incredibly humiliating moments where I was – because you can sit there sort of your brain sweating for hours as you try and solve one of these things. And we had one of those things where I was insistent that I knew the answer and I was trying to do something. And he eventually wrestled the joy pad from me and solved it in 10 seconds because that’s the future.

Just that. I’m obsolete. All of us becoming obsolete. But it’s brilliant.

John: Great. Baba is You.

Charlie: Baba is You.

John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It was edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Mackey Landy. 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 am @johnaugust. I believe you are on Twitter. Do you want people to reach you on Twitter?

Charlie: Well, they can. I don’t often – I generally use it now for shameless promotion and then I don’t look often.

John: But that’s how I reached you.

Charlie: That’s how we met. See, I sometimes use it. It’s for DM’ing. But I tend to skulk I think is the word. Skulking. Yeah. Because I figured it was bad for productivity and general mental well-being.

John: I think that’s often likely the case. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. We try to get them up about four days after the episode airs so we can Markov chains so that Craig and I can be talking in perpetuity for all time.

Some folks do recaps of the show and discussion on the screenwriting Sub-Reddit. So check us out there. Tell us what you think of the Charlie Brooker episode. I keep trying to drop your R.

Charlie: I constantly get that in America. Constantly I’m Booker. Everywhere I go. Is there a famous Booker here?

John: Well there’s Cory Booker. He’s running for–

Charlie: I’ve never heard of him. Who is he?

John: He’s running for President.

Charlie: How would I have heard of him? I’m from Britain. I’ve heard of Trump.

John: Oh my god.

Charlie: Of course I’ve heard of Trump. I had a proper argument with an Uber driver the other day because I got in the car, here, and he said, “Well they’re really rolling out the red carpet for Trump back in your country aren’t they?” And I said, no, people hate him. People hate him in London. And there was immediately an argument. Anyway. How did I get into that?

John: Because you have an R.

Charlie: Yes. There’s an R. And also I would like to make the case for like quite often I see people writing quite accurate parodies of Black Mirror where it’s my accent going, “What if, what if your mum run on batteries? What if you could 3D print an egg? Some British dude saying what-if.” And I think that is accurate, but I find it disturbing that Americans call the show Black Mir-Or. It’s not Black Meer. That sounds like a place. Black Meer sounds like a place. Blackmere. It’s Black Mirror.

But how do you say Mirror in–?

John: Mirror.

Charlie: You said it properly. Why do people keep saying Black Meer?

John: Because we live in slightly different countries and languages are constantly evolving.

Charlie: I feel churlish now. I feel like I’ve really – yeah, sorry. [laughs]

John: Well you’re coming from a land that often does glottal stops instead of syllables.

Charlie: We just can’t talk properly in my country.

John: That’s fine.

You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net or download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com.

You may want to check out the Scriptnotes Listener’s Guide to hear which episodes our listeners liked most.

Come to the live show. The live show is this Thursday at the Ace Hotel. Amazing people will be there. Also, I think by the time this new episode comes out Highland 2.5 will have shipped which has revision mode in it which is remarkable, so it’s what I’ve used to write all my stuff recently. You can have stars in the margins. You can use it for writing your next Twine episode.

Charlie: Yeah. I like the sound of that.

John: I’m going to send you a beta right now.

Charlie: OK.

John: Charlie Brooker, thank you very much for being on the show.

Charlie: Thank you. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

Links:

• Scriptnotes LIVE this Thursday, June 13th at the Ace Hotel with Melissa McCarthy, Ben Falcone, Alec Berg, Rob McElhenney, and Kourtney Kang, buy your tickets here!
• Black Mirror
• La Cabina
• Russian Doll
• Money Heist
• Matthew Zalkind John’s Voice Twin
• Baba is You
• Order your Scriptnotes 400 shirts, sweatshirts, and tanks (Light) and (Dark)!
• John August on Twitter
• Charlie Brooker on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Mackey Landy (send us yours!)

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/how-do-you-like-your-stakes)

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 402 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the program we’re going to be talking about the idea of stakes, what it means for a writer, and what it means for a character. We’ll also talk a little bit about Aladdin, fandom, and of course some agency stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But first we got to hype up our live show again. That’s coming up really soon, June 13, at the Ace Hotel. It’s a Thursday night.

It is a benefit for the amazing charity called Hollywood Heart. Our guests include Alec Berg of Silicon Valley and Barry, Rob McElhenney of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and his new Apple show, but also we’ve added Kourtney Kang of Fresh off the Boat and a new show coming up. She is fantastic. I got to work with her on a project. So we’re so excited to have these TV moguls up on stage with us.

And there will be more stuff to do too. We have some prizes. We have giveaways. We have special shirts we’re making just for that night so people buy your tickets if you have not bought your tickets yet.

**Craig:** Yeah. And correct me if I’m wrong, and I’m not wrong so you can’t correct me.

**John:** You’re never wrong.

**Craig:** I’m never wrong. Not about these things. And we have McQuarrie on a loop saying, “I hate to say it but Craig is right.” Hollywood Heart, which is the charity that this benefits, is a legal charity. Meaning if you buy tickets you can deduct them from your taxes.

**John:** I suspect that’s true. Because – and the actual value you’ll receive is just knowledge and joy.

**Craig:** And power.

**John:** Power. Yes.

**Craig:** And love.

**John:** We’re giving away power. Yeah. Love.

**Craig:** Yeah. So I mean why wouldn’t you come to this? It’s a great cause. And you know what? We’re in a bigger place. We got ambitious here. We need to fill a bigger venue so we need you listeners. If you are in the Los Angeles area–

**John:** We need your physical bodies in that space.

**Craig:** Yeah, we need you.

**John:** So that we will feel together.

**Craig:** I mean, look, in all seriousness, you know me. I’m perfectly happy talking to an empty room. In fact, I’m happier talking to an empty room. In fact, no one come. But really here’s the thing: it’s for charity. We’re trying to help kids. So, that’s why you need to show up. It’s not so much for me. Show up for John and the kids.

**John:** Yep. And our guests because our guests are phenomenal.

**Craig:** And our guests.

**John:** And there could be one or two more coming, but we can’t say that yet.

**Craig:** We’re always full of surprises.

**John:** Great. So hyping is done. I had my showing up at a place experience this week. This was the premiere for Aladdin. So Aladdin came out this past weekend in the US and most of the world. So I went to the premiere on Tuesday and it was weird. So I don’t think we’ve really talked about movie premieres so I thought we could spend a few minutes talking about what it’s like to go to a premiere as a writer.

So I guess, let me start how the day begin, because obviously I don’t need hair and makeup because I look just the same no matter what.

**Craig:** Well, makeup. [laughs] You could use a little makeup.

**John:** I get a little blush – no, I do nothing. So basically I get in a car, the studio sends a car, so me, Mike, and my friend Dan, we all went to the premiere together. We hop in a car. We got to Hollywood. This is at the El Capitan. They block off streets around it because they actually have blocked off all of Hollywood Boulevard for this premiere. So it’s actually difficult to get there.

They try – the publicists try to get you there so early. So the premiere started at 6:30. They wanted the car to leave my house at 4:30.

**Craig:** Oh god. Come on.

**John:** I’m like 10 minutes away. And so I said, no, 5:30 at the earliest. So we get in the car there. We get to the place where they’re dropping us off. There’s a greeter there who was fantastic. She took us around and did everything. And I specifically said that I wanted to skip the red carpet, so we’ll get into why I wanted to skip the red carpet, but Craig what’s been your experience when you do a premiere and doing the red carpet? Do you actually answer questions along that red carpet?

**Craig:** I have. It’s only been for certain movies, but I have. It’s weird. Definitely – it was less weird for Chernobyl because they seem to want to ask a writer questions in television. [laughs] When you’re in the movie business, so you walk down this red carpet and all these – you know, people have seen this I suppose in movies. The red carpet and all those people have their cameras and they’re like, “Look over here. Look over here.” And then the writer walks down and it gets real quiet all of a sudden.

**John:** Yeah. So there’s usually a handler beside you saying like, “This is Craig Mazin, the writer of the film.” Or they point to specific people who are already going to be asking you questions. Sometimes there’s little video crews.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Sometimes it’s just a person with a microphone there to talk with you. And, hey, can you tell everyone at Cat Fancy Magazine about Frankenweenie? And it’s like, are there any cats in Frankenweenie? I’m like, yes, there is. Let me tell you about Mr. Whiskers.

**Craig:** Yeah. And sometimes you speak to people who are from other countries. And, look, it’s all part of the machine. I mean, the thing to remember about these premieres, which I think a lot of writers don’t quite get early on, is that the purpose of the premiere is not to celebrate you, or the director, or the cast, or the movie. The purpose of the premiere is to sell tickets. It is designed to create stuffing for magazines and websites.

And so the parts that get the most stuffing generated that’s where they care. Meaning typically actors.

**John:** Yeah. Because those are the ones who are going to actually move copies of magazines if there were still magazines, but like clicks on websites.

**Craig:** Correct. Like if Will Smith for some reason was not able to go that day, because he had something else going on, they would move the premiere. [laughs] You know, it’s like he’s the thing that’s going to get all of the attention, right? I mean, he is the biggest name. So, it becomes that.

I mean, I watched it first hand at The Hangover 2 premiere. It was extraordinary. And it was right across the street. So Disney runs its family premieres at El Capitan and across the street you have Mann’s Chinese where a lot of big premieres take place. And they close off the street and it’s madness and people are there to see – they’re there to see Bradley Cooper.

**John:** Yeah. They’re not there to see Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** No! No. No one even in my house is there to see Craig Mazin.

**John:** So, approaching this premiere, this is a movie that I had worked on, very hard. I had stopped working on the movie. I had seen it several times. I had given notes on it. But it was not fundamentally my movie. And I knew I did not want to be answering a lot of press questions along the way because I can smile and sort of like, “I’m so excited to be here,” give those generic answers. But it was just going to be awkward and weird.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And I didn’t sort of want to give some honest answers on certain things. And so I said like, OK, I will go but we’re going to skip the whole red carpet thing. And my handler was fantastic. She whisked me through this little back way so I didn’t have to do any of the red carpet stuff.

And then you get into the theater, which the El Capitan Theater is beautiful inside.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Intimate but beautiful. And there’s like two other people inside the theater. And so even after delaying going there so early we had about an hour to kill.

**Craig:** I know. I know.

**John:** For everyone who was on the red carpet to start it.

**Craig:** I know. The timing of it all is so weird. At some point they start yelling at everybody to go into the theater, but no one is going in. I’ve got to be honest with you. I do not like these events at all. And if I can avoid them I do. If I don’t have credit on a movie but I’ve worked on the movie and I get an invitation to go–

**John:** I don’t go.

**Craig:** I can’t remember the last time I went. I do not like premieres because they’re actually not fun ways to see a movie. It’s so much of a hassle. And I just care about the movie.

**John:** I’ll take that back. The one time I did go was the first Iron Man. And it was a fun premiere and I was happy for everyone involved. And so I was there to celebrate them, but I just loved that it was not about me at all.

**Craig:** And, you know what? I’ll take it back, too. There was one. I went to Hail Caesar, because I was just really excited. I wanted to see it early. And you know what? I was not disappointed at all. I love that movie.

**John:** That feels like a good movie to see with a big crowd and with a group around you. And that is actually genuinely the fun of seeing these movies is because in the previous incarnations where I’d seen Aladdin I’d seen it in a screening room by myself, or nearly by myself, and so I’m watching this thing that is supposed to be a comedy and it is not funny to me because I’m sitting here scribbling into a notebook about things that I would encourage them to work on.

And then to see it with a crowd it’s like, oh, yeah, those are jokes that I wrote. And those jokes are getting laughs. And you actually get spontaneous applause at moments. Yes, the crowd is sort of extra hyped up because they know the folks involved and they’re applauding people’s credits as they show up. But it’s also a joyous moment because also it’s new for people because none of them have been spoiled by reviews or other bits of spoilers that have come out about what actually happens in the movie. So it was genuinely fun to see it with that group.

I met one of the composers who did the great new song for it, so that was cool. So, I’m glad I went to the premiere of Aladdin is the short summary.

**Craig:** I’m glad you went, too. It’s good. I’m glad. You know what? We’ve got to stay positive.

**John:** We got to stay positive. And it looks like, you know, we’re recording this on a Friday but it looks like the movie is going to do pretty well for the weekend and that’s a good thing, too.

**Craig:** It’s Aladdin from Disney.

**John:** It is Aladdin from Disney. That was kind of built in to the whole thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean not to take anything away from the accomplishment, but we’re talking about degrees of success at that point. There’s no chance that people aren’t going to show up. It’s Aladdin. It’s A Whole New World. For You and Me.

**John:** Basically thank you everyone who went out to see it over the weekend. I hope you enjoy it. I’m happy it actually turned out in sort of the right kind of PG. It’s truly a PG that you can take younger kids to. And I’m happy with a lot of how stuff went in the movie.

**Craig:** How many murders, onscreen murders, do you get before you get bumped into PG-13?

**John:** I don’t know. There is one onscreen murder that I really, really argued to cut. Sidebar here for a moment. It’s a thing that you encountered in so many different cuts of movies you’ve seen before where there’s a scene that is wedged in there to establish a character and it breaks the flow of everything else around it. Just like, oh no, this guy is a bad guy. See how bad he is? And I really, really wanted that scene to go and they didn’t listen to me.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, you know, this is – it’s what happens. You see, I mean–

**John:** It’s a collaborative medium. Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s a collaborative medium and maybe – I think what you should do is maneuver yourself into a position where you don’t have to collaborate that much. [laughs] And I’ve said this on the show many times. There is a way of doing something where you are going to do it mostly by yourself. You are going to make mistakes but the mistakes will be consistent with everything else because it all came from one brain.

It’s the mix and match of it all. Somebody may have a great idea. You know what the problem is? That character we’re supposed to be scared of him, but we haven’t seen him do anything bad. We should establish how evil he is. Great idea. Execution-ally there’s no chance of success because that came from somewhere else. It’s like throwing some weird instrument into the middle of another song.

**John:** And that’s a thing that happens in the writing stage all the time, too. Even what I’m writing right now, there’s a scene that I would kind of love to establish a little bit earlier in the script but like there’s no place to put that without breaking everything else around it. So, you know what? I have to do the hard work of figuring out, OK, if it is coming in at this later moment how can I make it work as this later moment beat. Because it’s not the same scene that would be happening earlier in the movie.

**Craig:** This is the life of the writer.

**John:** Mm-hmm. Writing and editing. They’re closely tied together.

We need to talk about the WGA and the ATA. But I would propose Craig, because last week it went on a long time, maybe could I set a three-minute timer and when the timer goes off we’re just done talking about it?

**Craig:** I need ten seconds.

**John:** All right. I’m starting three minutes, but if it goes less than that that’s great. And go.

**Craig:** Well, last week I was praying to the skies that everybody get back to the table. And they’re getting back to the table. Can’t claim causality there. I’m just happy that it happened. I’m optimistic and I’m very hopeful that you guys in leadership and the agency people can find a deal together.

**John:** Craig, you said you prayed to the skies and heaven, so this is a religious conversion for you is what I’m hearing. That you now understand that there is an all-powerful creator behind these things?

**Craig:** Sort of. By the skies and the heavens I’m referring to myself. So I’m the member of a new religion. The religion of–

**John:** Craigism?

**Craig:** It’s Craigism. And our lord’s prayer, “I hate to say it, but Craig is right.” [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Yeah, wouldn’t it be so funny if your first disciple was Chris McQuarrie?

**Craig:** My only disciple.

**John:** We should also briefly mention, because we have two minutes left on this time, which we didn’t even need. So another thing that happened this week was – I saw you single this out on Twitter – a writer who had been represented at Gersh shows up for a meeting at Fox. They say like, “Oh, no, your meeting was canceled.” And Gersh confirmed that they had canceled the meeting after he had fired them. That was not a god look for that agency.

**Craig:** No. That’s just dishonorable behavior. And even worse it is ignorant. This is not – in theory this will have an end. And we will want to return to agencies. And new writers are going to want to go to agencies. And Gersh will be one of those agencies, except now if anybody were to ask me about Gersh I would say they’re not great because as an institution they thought that would be a good idea. That’s a terrible idea.

That implies a poor sense of judgment. And that’s shameful. Shameful and stupid.

**John:** I knew almost nothing about Gersh, but this is the only thing I’m associating with Gersh right now is this incident. And so that ain’t great.

**Craig:** Just a huge error on their part and petty. And revealing. This is the problem. You reveal something about yourselves. Why in god’s name would they have done – what did they think they were going to accomplish? It’s the judgment thing that makes me – so it’s not a question of like, boo, you’re anti-writer. If they want to be anti-writer and somehow manage to be successful at the same time I guess OK. But there’s no successful strategy encased in that move. None.

**John:** Nope. None. And also it speaks to the question of who owns a meeting. And so if a meeting is set up between a writer and the studio, to my thinking is a social contract between the two of them that is not a thing that the agency owns in any meaningful way. I don’t think you can own an intangible thing. That’s the frustration to me, too, is that they felt that they controlled that meeting rather than the writer.

**Craig:** I’m sorry. It’s so arrogant. And you’re Gersh. No offense—

**[Alarm timer sounds off]**

Whoa.

**John:** I literally set a timer. That’s three minutes. We’re done. We can’t talk anything more about it.

**Craig:** That’s good. The people at Gersh are so happy. They literally got saved by the bell. [laughs]

**John:** Literally saved by the iPhone bell. Let’s get to some questions from listeners. We have not answered listener questions for a bit.

**Craig:** Somebody at Gersh was like shorten that timer. All right, listener questions. Are we doing listener questions or we doing stakes? What would you like to do first?

**John:** Well, our first listener question is about stakes so I thought we might start with this. Why don’t you take Vera’s question here?

**Craig:** Sure. Vera from Germany, welcome Vera, asks, “How do I raise the stakes in a true story? I’m involved in writing a feature film based on real events. Our producers are worried there may not be enough personal jeopardy in the story and I worry there may not be enough potential for it. The story is about young researchers who learn something of global consequence. They are ridiculed once published and their lives changed drastically after, but they didn’t know that beforehand.

“Almost all our main characters are alive today and still relatively well-known. We’re even in touch with them and they’re supportive of our project. So we can’t make their past selves look worse than they are and wouldn’t want to. They were good. How can I raise the stakes for the characters beginning early in this story?”

John, what do you think?

**John:** Well, first off, Vera, this is a fantastic question because it’s the kind of thing you’re going to face all the time. You have the extra difficulty of having real life people in there so you can’t manipulate backstories in ways that sort of get to reverse engineer what you want them to have.

But let’s talk about stakes overall, because we’ve talked about stakes in previous episodes but it’s good to have a refresher about what we mean by stakes, what development executives mean by stakes, why you hear this term used so much, particularly in features. You hear it some in TV, but you really hear it in features.

I think there’s two main questions you’re asking when you talk about stakes. First is what is the character risking by taking this action? By making a choice to do a thing what are they putting at risk? The second question is what are the consequences if this character or these characters don’t succeed? So it’s both the action that they’re taking and also the consequences of failure. How bad is the failure if they don’t succeed?

Chernobyl, of course, has remarkable stakes throughout the three episodes I’ve seen so far. Characters are faced with these kind of stakes questions all the time. Craig, anything else about the definition of stakes we want to tackle before we get into it?

**Craig:** No, it’s a very simple concept. What are you risking and what happens if we don’t succeed? It’s as simple as that.

**John:** Yeah. So you’re trying to pick the answers to those questions and to me what’s so crucial and so often missing is proportionality. You have to pick stakes that feel right for these characters, this world, this situation. Not everything can literally be life or death. Not everything is the end of the world. And so often I think especially in our blockbusters we try to make everything be the end of the world. Superhero movies especially have to sort of be saving the whole world and they probably shouldn’t be so often.

If you think about the world of the characters, it could be the end of the world to those characters. And so then you have to carefully define, you know, what is their world consisting of. Is it their social grouping? Their standing? Is it their family? Is it their dreams, their hopes, their wishes, their goals? What is at risk for them that isn’t necessarily of global consequence?

**Craig:** Yeah. We are currently in a state of stakesflation in Hollywood where everything gets upped. It’s not enough to destroy a planet, now you must destroy the galaxy. No, now you have to destroy multiple galaxies. Now you have to destroy half of everything that is alive which I assume at some point someone is going to say, “Well, we have to move that up to next time Thanos snaps his fingers it needs to be three-quarters.”

But when you think back to the first blockbuster, generally Jaws is considered to be the first blockbuster film, and the stakes in Jaws are there people on an island that are being eaten by a shark. And our heroes have to stop the shark before it eats another person. That’s it. That’s it. And it captivates to this very day because the stakes there are really not so much about random people getting chewed up, it’s about a man who has a certain sense of self and purpose and that self and purpose is being challenged to the extreme by a creature that seemingly is beyond his ability to handle. That’s stakes. It’s personal. I love it.

**John:** That’s stakes. So obviously when we talk about stakes our key focus has to be our hero, our protagonist, and what are the stakes for that character. But it’s important to remember that there should be stakes for most of these characters and they don’t have to be the same stakes. In the case of Jaws there’s the stakes of if we do this then we could hurt tourism. If we acknowledge this problem there could be issues.

I’m thinking to Chernobyl. So, we have your scientists explaining, no, if we don’t do this thing the next thing is going to blow up and it’s going to be worse. And we have another scientist who is saying if we don’t figure out exactly what happened these other reactors could blow up. But we also have government officials who are saying we can’t let this get out because if we do let this get out then there will be a panic.

Everyone has a different sense of what the stakes are and they’re taking actions that match their own understanding of what are the most important stakes.

**Craig:** Yeah. For some characters in the show the stakes are love. I want to be with the person that I love. I don’t want to abandon them, even though it puts my own life at risk. For other people the stakes are I have to keep this government together. And if I fail to then there’s going to be chaos. Right. Everybody had their different competing interests. And in those moments, for instance in Chernobyl there’s a moment in Episode 2 where Jared Harris and Stellan Skarsgård’s characters are on a helicopter and they’re approaching the power plant. And they both have stakes.

One guy is I have an order from the supreme leader of the Soviet Union. That is somebody with nearly absolute power. And I have to fulfill that because if I don’t I understand that my life and my position and my authority and everything I have is under severe threat. And the other character’s stakes are that’s going to kill us. Don’t go there. We’ll all die.

Competing stakes. Always a good thing to have.

**John:** And ultimately the helicopter pilot has to decide.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Who does he need to listen to in this moment? And he actually reverts to sort of a lower [unintelligible] hierarchy of needs to sort of get to, OK, I don’t want to die in the next two minutes and so therefore I’m not going to fly over this thing. I’m going to listen to the other person.

But I think that actually points to really the root of stakes which is needs and wants. I mean, wants are generally sort of the better way of thinking about it. But what is the character going after? And is the thing they’re going after a really primal survival kind of thing? In some movies it absolutely will be. In some movies it is life or death. It’s cliffhanger. It’s those movies where at any given moment you could die.

But for most characters in most movies it’s a little bit higher up the chain. So it’s about comfort, family, stability, self-realization, self-actualization. Their sense of identity is at stake if they don’t succeed in this venture and that’s the risk that they’re taking.

**Craig:** All these levels of things, what it comes down to is what can you make me believe. And when it comes to stakes I don’t really as a writer have to do much to make you believe at home that saving the planet from a space alien is high enough stakes. It’s just sort of baked into the scenario. Strangely, and this is something I wish our friends in the executive suites had a stronger grasp of, that reduces our interest because there isn’t much of a challenge to that question.

John, a space alien, is threatening to blow up the world, and we need you to solve it. OK. I mean, I’m on the world. What am I supposed to do otherwise? I don’t really have a huge choice there. But if I say to you, John, you have a dream of something that means a lot to you but to pursue it will put your relationship with your own family at risk. That is stakes that now I’m leaning forward in my seat and thinking, ooh.

**John:** So Craig let’s talk about another recent movie that did a great job with stakes and obviously this is a movie that had huge end of the universe kind of stakes but also had very personal stakes which was Avengers: Endgame, which I thought did a really brilliant job of blending the two. Because obviously it’s going to have these big superhero stakes. Half of civilization, half of all living things have been eliminated with a snap. And yet there were very clear personal stories that they focused on. The choices of – we see Hawkeye losing his family and sort of wanted to get his family back and so that was so important. But I thought what they did with Tony Stark and Tony Stark being reluctant to even pursue going after this solution because he didn’t want to risk this family that he’d been able to have in this intervening time. It was really smartly done.

**Craig:** Yeah. Markus and McFeely are experts at working what I would call understandable, empathizable, if that’s a term, stakes into movies where the apparent stakes are ka-boom and blech and pow, right. What they say is even something as dramatic and huge circumstantially as half of every living person dying in the universe they narrow it in. It’s like they kind of force you to tunnel into a relationship to that event through individuals.

What does this mean for me and the man I love? What does this mean for me and my brother? What does this mean for me and the sacrifices I’ve made in my own life to get to this point? All of it is – they just tunnel you into that so that the two things are enmeshed. And that is super important. I just think these broader stakes of something is going to blow up is ultimately irrelevant. There’s no Die Hard unless there is a man trying to win his wife back. It just doesn’t matter. I don’t care.

**John:** It doesn’t matter.

**Craig:** I don’t care about who is in the Nakatomi Building. I want John McClane to kind of earn some redemption and get his life back. That’s, you know, what I’m hoping for.

**John:** Yeah. And even movies that have similar kinds of plot devices the nature of the stakes is so key in why they work differently. So think about comparing the first Charlie’s Angels to a Mission: Impossible movie. They both have some of the same beats and sort of plot mechanics and sort of set pieces, but the Charlie’s Angels fundamentally like will this family be torn apart. Will they be able to save their father figure character? That’s a very different dynamic than what you see in a Mission: Impossible movie.

It gets down to those really granular details about what is the relationship between these characters. What do they really want beyond just the plot wants?

**Craig:** Yeah. And this kind of fine-tuning and understanding, this is where unfortunately we do drift out of the area of craft and into the area of instinct which isn’t really teachable. But what I would say to Vera is, in just garnering what I can from your question, Vera, it seems to me that you’re wondering if you have to make them look bad to create stakes and I’m not sure that that’s ever necessary. Those two things aren’t really connected. I think if they were good people but you understood watching it, and you may have to adjust, that they were risking something really important to them to put their research out into the world. And really important it can’t just be my job. Nobody cares. You can get another job.

It has to be how someone they love or admire looks at them. Or how it might disrupt their pursuit of somebody that they love. Or how it might affect who they think they are as a human being and what their value is. It’s got to be something I can feel in my stomach, you know? Then there are stakes. And, by the way, perfectly fine to create a movie with stakes and have a character “bet it all” and lose. That sometimes is the most interesting story at all.

**John:** Yeah. I think back to Erin Brockovich which this is based on a true life story. This character intervenes in these water poisoning situations. But it was the specificity of like what was in turmoil in her life that made it such a compelling story. And Susannah Grant had to look at all the possible stories to tell and pick the one that had real stakes for that central Erin Brockovich character. And her stakes were not the stakes of the people who were drinking the contaminated water. Her stakes are personal. They’re about her relationships. They involve her kid, her boyfriend, sort of the dynamics of her life.

So I would say look at the characters, the real life people you have in this situation. Try to mine for some interesting ways that they either fit together or that in taking the actions they are doing they’re not just disrupting their own lives or risking their own – I say lives, not their physical lives but their own status or place – but is going to have repercussions on those around them. And the degree to which they understand that, those are stakes.

**Craig:** Yeah. 100%. I think that that’s kind of what we’re dancing around here as we talk through all this. We’re really talking about character. I think sometimes this notion of stakes gets separated out by people who are analytic or – and by analytic I mean producers and executives who are trying to come up with something easy for us like, “Well what are the stakes?” And the truth is if the character is working, you’ll know what the stakes are. The character and the stakes should be embedded with each other. It should just be one in the same.

In the same way that the character and the story should be embedded with each other and be one in the same. And the dialogue and the character should be – character is the hub. Character is the hub of the wheel my friends. And stakes is just one more spoke emanating out of it. It’s all baked into character.

In the case of adapting real life, Vera, it’s OK to make changes in order to create some stakes. Sometimes you have to alter that but do it within the spirit of what you know really happened. And if in the spirit of what really happened there are no stakes at all, maybe it’s not a thing. But I suspect that there are some there.

**John:** I think there are. The last little bit I want to add on stakes is there’s a second kind of stakes which is not this overall story/character arch-y kind of stakes, but is very specific to a scene or sequence. And so an action sequence is the easiest way to think about that where if the character doesn’t succeed in this moment these are the consequences or the possible consequences. In those cases it is a little bit more craft, where you actually have to understand that the audience needs to be able to see what could go wrong or what the downfalls are of a mistake or a less than perfect performance in that moment.

When we had Chris McQuarrie on to talk about – on Episode 300 – to talk about the Mission: Impossible movies, he gets a lot into that. Which is basically how can this possibly end well. And to get the audience asking that question you have to make it clear what the jeopardy is. And sometimes as I’ve rewritten my own stuff or rewritten other people’s stuff it’s because it wasn’t clear in that moment, in that scene, what was the thing that could tip one way or the other.

So making sure that in those moments that is really clear to an audience.

**Craig:** Every scene is its own movie. And that means every scene has its own stakes. And all of that is connected back to a simple question: what is it you want? What do you want? Even if the scene is if that fiery gasoline trail hits that fuel tank then all those people are going to die, well, I want to stop that. It still has to come back to somebody wanting something. And ideally there’s somebody else saying, “No, I want it to explode.” And now we’ve got ourselves a scene. But even if the scene is I’m sitting down to tell someone that the nature of our relationship is changing there are stakes.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So it’s always there.

**John:** All right. Let’s move onto another question. This is from Daniel in Israel who writes, “I’ve been offered to write a TV pilot episode for a local production company. The thing I’m supposed to write the pilot around is essentially only a main plot point. Something someone might call an inciting incident. What I am lacking is the protagonist. Not his identity, but what he wants and what he needs in his life. What I’m trying to figure out is how to create this protagonist in light of this ‘inciting incident.” How would you construct a screenplay and its protagonist when all that you have to work with is this main plot point?”

So, a related question here really. Here Daniel is facing a situation where the plot of it, or at least the start of the plot is really clear. He’s trying to figure out who is the character to drive through this doorway into a story.

**Craig:** Great question, Daniel. And first of all, if we’re in a situation where somebody was just sitting around the house and thinking, “Oh my gosh, I have a great idea for a plot, but how do I come up with a character?” I would say you don’t have a great idea for a plot. Start with character.

But this kind of thing where somebody comes to you and here are your own stakes – there’s money. You’re trying to earn money as a writer.

**John:** There’s money, yes.

**Craig:** And they’re giving you an assignment. You have to figure it out. This happens all the time. I cannot tell you how many times I get a call where someone says, “We’ve got a script. It needs a little bit of work. Story works great. We just need characters. We need character work.” And I just think the story can’t be that great. If the characters aren’t good how is the story good?

So, Daniel, here is I guess the only practical advice I have for you is take your main plot point and ask this question: to whom would it be most interesting for this to apply? Because any random person can go into a situation and be confronted by a problem. But there are certain people who the nature of their lives and the position that they’re in and their past and what they want – they’re the best people to do this to. And typically it’s because this is the thing that will torture them the most. So, think of who that is and you may be off and running.

**John:** I agree. I think back to the How Would This Be a Movie segments we’ve done and they fall into two camps. There’s ones that have a really fascinating character and then you have to figure out like how would you actually build a story around that character. The other ones are the sort of plot machines. Oh, that is a really crazy thing that happened in the real world and you have to then approach it with like, OK, who is the character that should really be driving that story. So, it might be a real life event and there’s myriad characters around it, but you have to figure out whose point of view is actually the interesting point of view.

And I think Craig nailed it. It’s the character for whom the story is especially suited. Either because they are perfect for it, like they are the one person who could be the expert in the situation, or more often and more interestingly the person who is the least well-equipped to be doing this and is out of their element. And that is going to give you more conflict, more comedy if you’re going for comedy. It’s going to be the person who is relatable to the audience because they’re probably a good proxy for the audience in that they don’t have the information or the expertise to be grappling with this situation.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s call it the A side of things. In movies we talk about the A side and the B side. It’s sort of like an editorial term. Like the stuff that happens before, the stuff that happens after. So that’s the A side of it. And then the B side of it is for whom would the resolution of this plot point be the most interesting and satisfying? Think about it from forward and backward and you just might have yourself a solution there.

All right, let’s move along to Alex from New York, shall we?

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** All right. Alice writes, “I’m in a script writing class and I’m trying to pitch a story where there is no three-act structure. My professor responded by saying that for this class we can only make something that follows the structure. She then pulled out a book with the title How to Write a Great Screenplay.” [laughs]

“And said our script had to contain the six key moments. Of course there are many great movies that follow the three-act structure, but I also know that many of my favorite movies don’t – Boyhood, Nashville, A Serious Man come to mind. I guess my question is do you need a three-act structure to write a great movie or is this a sign that I should drop out of this overpriced school?” [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] I love people who answer their own questions. Obviously the answer Alice is you’re not in a very good screenwriting program. But I want to sort of move past that moment to talk about this idea of how you teach writing. Because it occurred to me this last week, my daughter for her English class has to write these five-paragraph essays. And Craig you remember these five-paragraph essays.

**Craig:** I sure do.

**John:** They have to have–

**Craig:** Thesis.

**John:** The thesis and then you have to–

**Craig:** The examples.

**John:** Exactly. Each paragraph has to be about a different thing of those things and has to summarize and have the evidence within them and then a conclusion. And I find it just a torturous form. And I want to push back against it, and yet I do feel like it’s important that she learn how to write this ridiculous form now so that she understands what it is and will hopefully never have to write it quite the same way again.

A thesis is important. A thesis, you know, a central idea behind which all of your essay hangs together – that’s important. And for screenplays an understanding of a three-act structure I think is important. That sense that movies do have beginnings, middles, and ends. And there is a natural flow through which you move through story.

But I don’t want to be as an adult be forced to pay money to take a class where someone holds up a terrible screenwriting book and says that you have to follow this template.

**Craig:** Someone has written a book How to Write a Great Screenplay. I’m going to go out on a limb here. Because I have not heard of this book. Therefore my conclusion, this is just supposition, is that the individual who has written the book How to Write a Great Screenplay has not written a great screenplay. What else do you need to know?

Now, when it comes to surviving classes and things like that, you can take any movie and slap a three-act structure on it. If you put a gun in my mouth and say, A Serious Man, divvy that up into three acts. I’ll do it for you. No problem.

**John:** Totally. Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s also a sign that it’s useless. It is a very fundamental thing. It’s a little bit like in math class when you were moving ahead and your teacher said, “No, sorry. You need to show all your work. You need to show me the 15 plus 24 equals, carry, the whole thing.” Can’t I just do it in my head? “No.” OK, fine. So that’s what it is. It’s a little remedial.

Our script had to contain the six key moments. Hey, Alice from New York, I don’t know what those are. John, do you know what those are?

**John:** I don’t know what they are.

**Craig:** Well, we’re doing all right. [laughs] You got Aladdin out. I got Chernobyl running. Things are going OK. Somehow we made it without not only reading How to Write a Great Screenplay. We’ve never even heard of it.

**John:** So, here’s what I will try to defend about this idea about teaching people this template-y thing. if the teacher were requiring you to just do an outline, like a one or two-page outline that talked about your story in those beats or like come up with a new story and make it fit those beats, that I could see being a valuable exercise because it might get you to think about whatever these elements are I suspect they are, you know, what is that transition between the first act and second act, which real life screenwriters do talk about. Where you’re really – you’re not in Kansas anymore moment. Where a character has crossed a threshold into a new part of the story. That does tend to happen in most places.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** One of these other elements could be kind of a reversal where the thing that looks like it was close is now actually much further away. That things have gotten much worse. That is probably a meaningful beat. And so if it was an outline thing, but to make you write and entire 100-page screenplay following this template I don’t think is a fair thing to ask.

**Craig:** No. Perfectly fine to suggest that this is how beginners can learn. This is an intro to screenwriting. But if somebody like you says, “Listen, as a paying customer of this institution I would like to attempt to do it this way.” Why in god’s name would they tell you no? Listen, do it that way. And if it stinks, and by the way, higher probability it will stink, because you’re trying something – you’re doing like a degree of difficulty dive here that’s different than the other dives – then people will tell you it stunk and you’ll learn something and you’ll move on. It doesn’t mean that three acts are going to save you from stinking, nor does it mean that not three acts condemns you to stinking. It’s just part of the learning process.

But I would say to your professor stop that. Just cut it out. That’s just bizarrely pedantic.

**John:** I agree. Chris writes, “I recently swapped scripts with a writer friend. Instead of offering me story notes he called out formatting ‘errors’ in my first couple pages such as how I bold slug lines, reference a song, italicize dialogue for emphasis instead of underlining, etc. I explained how I was under the impression that all these things were stylistic choices rather than hard and fast rules. That a writer should use anything to better paint a movie in the reader’s mind.

“As an underwriter he argued that script formatting must be much tighter so as not to give anyone reading it a reason to throw it away. Is this true or is my friend simply being overly nitpicky on things that are really a writer’s choice? I’ve read dozens of screenplays at this point and feel no two really format exactly the same way.”

Craig, where are you at?

**Craig:** This is guy is swapping with his friend. You know who likes that?

**John:** That guy, yes. That guy.

**Craig:** Sexy Craig. So we’re talking about swapping, huh Chris? You going to swap?

**John:** Apparently they’re talking.

**Craig:** Get out of here, Sexy Craig. You can’t answer this question. Angry Craig can answer this question. Umbrage Craig is here. How many times do we have to kill this? This zombie won’t – we shoot it in the brain. We cut off its head. We light its heart on fire. What do we need to do to stop this from happening, John? I’m at my wit’s end. What do we do?

**John:** I don’t know. So I feel like a lot of people do listen to the show, but I’m also aware when people like Chris writes in that not everyone listens to the show.

**Craig:** Wait, what?

**John:** There are a few people who don’t listen to the show, although I’ll say that I had some meetings this past week and I was just surprised like folks who aren’t writers who listen to the show. So shout out to those folks who are not writers who listen to the show.

But, yeah, I don’t know how we’re going to win them over. I think all we can hope to do is to our listeners remind them that, listen, the standard screenplay formatting is helpful. It’s helpful because it creates an expectation about how stuff is supposed to look and if you go wildly off of it we are going to wonder does this person really know what they’re doing. Even as we do the Three Page Challenges when we see things that are like that’s not how it’s done we will comment on that because it is useful because it can slow a reader. It gives a reader an excuse for putting it aside.

I don’t think that’s what you were doing, Chris. The things you were singling out are reasonable choices. Some bold slug lines. I like to bold slug lines. I didn’t always, but now I do. So I use italics fairly liberally. It’s OK.

I think we just need to always remind folks that the standards are there because they’re helpful and they’re sort of standard but they’re not hard fast rules. And anyone who tells you otherwise probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just stop giving your friends scripts. They’re useless. Sorry. Your friend is useless. I don’t know how else to put it. I mean–

**John:** Also, your friend is useless because your friend did not give you constructive notes about the actual story.

**Craig:** Exactly. Correct. All they did was demand that you conform to a system that they insist is real but I can assure you is utter nonsense. Nonsense. That’s what they did. You were looking for advice on the story, the characters, the theme, the dialogue, and they came back and said here are a bunch of things you’re doing that are incorrect factually.

And the only person that was doing something factually incorrect is your friend, who maybe shouldn’t be your friend anymore. Because, I’m sorry, I bold slug lines. And like you, John, used to not bold slug lines. I reference songs all the time. I italicize dialogue for emphasis all the time. I also underline. I use We See. I do all these stupid things.

And your friend, I guarantee you, is going to say, “By the way I heard on Scriptnotes that they were bagging on me, but you know what? They only say that because they’re successful. But if you’re not them then…” this is how he sounds by the way. “And then you’re going to send your script to readers. They’re going to throw it out. If they see that you italicize dialogue they’re going to throw it out.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this. And all I can say is no. No, I’ve been doing it this way since I began when I was nobody. Nobody cared. You know what they cared about? Oh my god, I like a script finally. This month of just sifting through one desperate, soul-crushing failure of a screenplay after another and finally something showed up that was, I don’t know, at least mediocre. It made their day. [laughs] That’s all they care about it. That’s it. They don’t care about the rest of this. For the love of god.

**John:** So I’ll say if people don’t trust my authority as a screenwriter on this, let me go back to 20 years to when I was a professional reader. My job was to read screenplays. And I would read two a day and I would write up coverage on them. So I read 200 screenplays. And it was my job to be that reader who passed things up or said no to things. And not once – not once in 200 scripts – did I ever single out for formatting. Oh, it’s a really good story but warning executives it’s not formatted exactly the way you’d want.

No one cares about that. If you’ve never seen coverage – it’s only pedants who say this.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, you know what? John, that – the guy that I was just listening to there, I’m going to call that, that’s Victory John.

**John:** Victory John.

**Craig:** Victory John. He knows when he walks into a room victory is assured. Victory John was great there. Nice work Victory John.

**John:** Done.

**Craig:** Chris, get rid of your friend.

**John:** Craig, let’s take one last question. Can you read Garrett for us?

**Craig:** Absolutely. Garrett asks, oh god, do we have to do this one?

**John:** I think we can – it actually goes into an interesting place.

**Craig:** Let’s do it. Fine. Garrett asks, “So many fans are furious about the conclusion of Game of Thrones. I am nowhere near dealing with this problem personally, but how do writers surprise insatiate rabid fans who spend all their time figuring out where a series or movie will go? It seems as though super fans will be disappointed whether the ending is too predictable or completely out of left field.”

All right, John, dig in.

**John:** Garrett, I think you are correct. Again, I like people who ask a question and then answer the question within their question. There was no way to land that plane that would keep everybody happy. Some people were really upset by how it ended. Some people signed a petition to redo the whole season. That ain’t helpful. That’s not going to happen.

We’re in this weird time where a fan’s ownership of a piece of material and sort of their sense that the culture belongs to them is really challenging and somewhat problematic. As a person who loves the show I was excited to see the show do what the show wanted to do. And I was excited that the creators got to do what they wanted to do. But that’s not going to be to everyone’s taste.

Craig, how do you resolve Garrett’s question?

**Craig:** I think that the shocking part of it all is that it is impossible to get that angry about an episode of television unless you love that episode or that series. You love it. And the only way you can love it is if the people who made that episode made what you love.

This isn’t a case where some other showrunner came along and took it over and everybody goes, nah, they don’t have the magic. That’s fine. I get that. But in this case Dan and Dave who made this thing you loved, not for one episode or one season, but for years, and who gave up years, a decade of their life, while their children were being born and raised, moving back and forth between Los Angeles and Ireland over and over and over. Doing all of these things and throwing their heart and soul into all of this and keeping a massive cast together and a storyline that involved god knows how many characters. I wish I could impress upon people how many decisions are required to make one episode of television. It is insane.

And they did it into the 70s of episodes of television and they did it in the highest level. And the very same creative ambition and bravery that led them to this material in the first place and allowed them to do it in such a remarkable way in the first place is the very same creative bravery and ambition that led them to deliver an ending that they thought was right.

And if you don’t like it, that’s OK.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** But why – the part that blows my mind, and this is where I agree with you Garrett, it’s a huge problem – is why people would suddenly say things like they’re bad writers. How dare you. How dare you. Not on the level of being insulting to Dan to Dave. They’re geniuses and they’re doing just fine. How dare you insult logic in such a crass and outrageous manner. To say that they are bad writers because they didn’t write a good episode of a show we love because they’re good writers.

I mean, get help. Listen, I get it. You can be super angry in an episode. I’ve seen episodes of things of shows that I love where I watch the episode and said I don’t like this. I don’t like the choices they made. But what I would never do is say because they’re bad writers.

I’m sorry, no one is going to bat 1,000. How about be happy for the good times and the joy they brought you, which is a decade of joy. Can’t we celebrate that? It just bums me out.

**John:** I don’t know who proposed this, but someone was pitching that HBO should film a reality show, sort of like a Project Greenlight, where they bring together eight of the biggest petition signers about wanting to do a new season and get them all together to write a new final season. And just film the whole thing.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**John:** And what that process is like. Because that would be–

**Craig:** What a cruel, cruel joke to play.

**John:** That would be pretty amazing.

**Craig:** And I do. I see things where people say, “I figured it out. Here’s what they should have done.” And they’ll stick it somewhere and then people go like, “Yeah, amazing.” And I’m reading and I’m like that would have been the stupidest, lamest, who cares episode of nonsense in history.

Remember, again, they are somewhat victims of their own success. This is a show where people would spend a lot of time and energy trying to convince each other that Bran was really the Night King. And that level of engagement is amazing. You don’t get to it if the people making the show haven’t done an incredible job. And they did for so long. And to turn your back on them because you didn’t like the last – well, they betrayed us. No. No, you betrayed them. You betrayed them. You bought into that show. You loved it. You cared about it. You told them how great they were. Because they were. And then the minute they do something that’s slightly a – I mean, oh my god, people lost their minds because Jon Snow didn’t hug his dog, sorry, direwolf. Well, guess what? He does later.

And then I hope people go, oh, oh, if he had hugged him there then this hug wouldn’t have meant as much. Yes. Have a little faith.

**John:** That’s probably true.

**Craig:** Ugh.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I’d probably [cut] myself – I’m going to get petitions now to have my head chopped off. I don’t care.

**John:** Back in Episode 296 I sat down with Damon Lindelof. So we talked through Lost.

**Craig:** Lost. Sure.

**John:** We also talked through The Leftovers. And interesting to compare the response to those two endings because they’re both kind of big puzzle box shows and people were incredibly frustrated by the ending of Lost. People seemed to generally love the ending of The Leftovers. And I do wonder if some of it was expectation management. I felt like on The Leftovers Damon did a very good job from season one saying do not expect that you are going to have one answer that will completely resolve everything about what happened and why it happened. That will not come. And I think that softened the – conditioned things a little bit better. And so that may be one of the things that showrunners unfortunately now have to think about is not only how do I get this plane up in the air but how do I land this plane in a way that is going to – basically how do I tell everybody right while the plane is going up where I expect to land the plane and condition them for what they’re going to be getting into.

**Craig:** It’s hard to stop, especially when the joy of something is in the process of it. I mean, I’m a Game of Thrones fan. I’ve seen every minute of every episode of Game of Thrones. Including every minute of an episode that no one else has ever seen. And I’ve loved the journey. And to me the joy was the process. It was the unfolding of this story over time and the collision of characters and things.

Ending is essentially counter to the purpose of the entire venture. So, of course people are going to be a bit confused or put off by some aspects of it because it goes against the DNA of what that show is. That show, the joy of it, is in that it doesn’t end. The world gets bigger and crazier and wilder as things smash together and the stakes grow higher. That’s the joy.

So, I mean, guys, it’s almost as if you would have preferred that, I don’t know, a piano had fallen on them and there was no final season. Is that what you really want? I shouldn’t have asked that question. Now there’s going to be a petition to drop a piano on them.

**John:** So, I would say if you are considering writing into me and Craig and telling us why we’re wrong, I would urge you to first listen to Episode 235. That is the one where Benioff and Weiss came on our show at our benefit for Hollywood Heart. They were gracious to fill in for Lawrence Kasdan when he could not make it. And they talked about the making of Game of Thrones and Craig’s involvement in that early pilot process. And how this is mostly Craig’s fault.

**Craig:** Like most things.

**John:** Actually, you’re somewhat to blame, Craig. Because if you had not intervened when you had intervened maybe Game of Thrones wouldn’t have become a thing and then we wouldn’t have been frustrated by the events of the end of the last season.

**Craig:** That’s such a – you know what, John? There you go. You want to save yourself disappointment folks, stop watching things. Stop falling in love with things. Stop opening your heart to things because it’s much better to have never loved than to have loved and lost. Is that what you are saying? I’m sorry. No one can deliver it perfectly. And if you point me to something and say, “Well they did it perfectly,” I’m going to say to you no they didn’t. Because they didn’t. There’s no way to do it perfectly. You just do it.

And years later people will come – I swear to you people will come back to this years later and say, “Well actually, here’s a think piece about why it’s brilliant.” That’s just how our culture works. Inevitably.

**John:** Yep. Those are the stakes of making a high stakes show.

**Craig:** Oh wow. Segue Man, that’s beautiful.

**John:** Got to bring it all back around. It’s time for One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a book I read this last week which I really enjoyed. It’s by Ryan North. It’s called How to Invent Everything. And the premise of the book is that you are a time traveler, whose rental time travel machine, has broken and this is the manual that comes in the little machine. And so, OK, you’re stranded in the past. Here’s how you have to invent all the things that get you back up to modern civilization.

So it goes down from basics of agriculture to metalsmithing to inventing logic. It’s just a very comprehensive guide to how you would get back up to as close as you can do modern day civilization if you were to be stranded in prehistoric times.

**Craig:** Before being eaten.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** That is a very smart idea for a book. I like that. My One Cool Thing is also some reading material, but as you know big puzzle buy over here. So there’s a magazine. It’s an online magazine called PANDA Magazine which is short for P and A which is short for Puzzles and Answers. It is published by a gentleman named Foggy Brume. That is his real name.

**John:** I would not buy that as a character’s name. No–

**Craig:** It’s his real name.

**John:** I reject the premise of Foggy Brume.

**Craig:** Foggy Brume. Very nice guy. I’ve had the joy of puzzling with him myself a few times. And he puts out a monthly edition. And I think this is true frequently he does these big puzzle boats once a year where it’s like a big mega puzzle to do. And then each issue has a little sort of mini mega puzzle where you solve, in this case in this month’s issue there are 12 puzzles that are difficult and each one gives you an answer that you plug into one big puzzle to get a big answer. PANDAMagazine.com is where you can find this if you’re big into that sort of thing. It’s a good challenge.

Each magazine comes with a whole bunch of puzzles where he provides the answers so you’re not miserable. And then there are some that are more of like a contest where he will eventually publish the answers once the submission date comes and goes. So, PANDA Magazine. Foggy Brume. A good subscription for the puzzler in your life.

**John:** I love it. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. Edited by Matthew Chilelli who also wrote our outro this week in the style of Chernobyl.

**Craig:** Whoa.

**John:** Who did your Chernobyl music? It’s a woman with a hard to pronounce name.

**Craig:** So her name is Hildur, well I’m going to pronounce it like an American. She is Icelandic. So the cheap pronunciation is Hildur Gudnadottir. In fact it is like Gudnadottir. I can’t do it because I’m not Icelandic and I think Icelandic is the hardest language in the world to learn and speak or something. It’s hard.

She is brilliant. You’re also going to be able to hear her work in Todd Phillips upcoming movie Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** So she’s amazing. And, good news, I believe that – so HBO has confirmed they are releasing her original soundtrack for Chernobyl for download and other versions of it. And I think it’s coming May 31. I think that’s when it will be available. I believe given the quality of the work she did on Chernobyl that that original soundtrack, that original score, is going to become a staple in editing bays.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** It’s going to be one of those temp scores that’s going to confound other composers for years to come I hope. Because it’s unique.

**John:** Nice. If you have an outro you’d like us to play you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also a 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’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts. They go up about a week after the episode has aired.

Some folks have started to do recaps and discussion on Reddit so you can head over there and see what people are talking about for this episode.

You can find the back episodes of this show at Scriptnotes.net or download 50-episode seasons in the store at johnaugust.com.

You may also want to check out the Scriptnotes Listener’s Guide at johnaugust.com/guide to see which episodes listeners recommend most.

Craig, thank you for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. See you next time.

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The original post for this episode can be found here.

Craig Mazin: Hi folks. On today’s episode there is some language, some salty language, so if you’re in the car with your children go ahead and stop playing it or put the earmuff’s on them.

Male Voice: What the F are you talking about?

Craig: Wow.

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

Craig: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 400 of Scriptnotes.

Craig: Wow.

John: A podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig: Oh my god.

John: Today on this, our quartercentenary, we are going to be talking about movie genres and sub-genres that aren’t getting made anymore, and how we can fix this. To help us out we are joined by a guest from exactly 100 episodes ago. Chris McQuarrie is a writer and director whose credits include The Usual Suspects, Valkyrie, Jack Reacher, the last two Mission: Impossibles, the next two as well. Chris McQuarrie, welcome back.

Chris McQuarrie: Thank you very much for having me.

Craig: So the deal is every 100 episodes we have worked up enough tolerance to have McQuarrie back.

Chris: You know, Craig–

Craig: Here we go.

Chris: You weren’t here for the last one.

Craig: That’s why it wasn’t very good. [laughs]

Chris: And I miss that.

Craig: I can tell. Chris McQuarrie and I have been engaged in a, what, 15-year-long argument about everything.

Chris: About everything.

Craig: Literally everything.

Chris: I don’t think it’s even much – it’s not so much an argument as it is a–

Craig: It’s a love story at this point.

Chris: It’s the duelists.

Craig: Yes, exactly.

Chris: I think that’s how you would describe our relationship.

Craig: Correct. You wake up in the morning, you go to work, fighting this man you must fight.

John: So back in Episode 300 I was talking to you and we were both living in Paris because you were directing Mission: Impossible. It hadn’t come out yet. You were in the middle of shooting it. It turned out really well, so congratulations on that.

Chris: Thank you.

Craig: Amazing.

Chris: Thank you very much.

Craig: And two more to come.

Chris: Two more to come.

Craig: So the idea is you’ll make these until they kill you? Meaning the movies are going to kill you.

Chris: It’s more likely that they will kill me than they will kill Tom Cruise.

Craig: No, nothing kills Tom Cruise. You’ve proven that. By the way, openly attempting to murder him through film. I mean, everyone knows what you’re doing.

Chris: I have been described as his enabler. He describes me as his enabler. I’m not actually trying to kill him, I’m just trying to–

Craig: Could have fooled me.

Chris: I’m trying to just – no, he would – he would be doing most of this stuff–

Craig: Movie number one, let’s drown him. Movie number two, oh, hang him off a plane–

Chris: Well the drowning I don’t think he would try to do.

Craig: Oh, hang him off of a plane. Then let’s drown him. Then let’s make him hurtle from a roof. Oh, he broke a bone. Too bad. Keep going.

Chris: Yeah, that’s true.

Craig: Wow. You’re killing him in front of us.

Chris: I’m whittling him away. But when you see him in Top Gun–

Craig: That’s right, Top Gun Deuce.

Chris: Top Gun Maverick.

Craig: Maverick.

Chris: He looks younger in Top Gun than he did in Fallout. And I can tell you it’s not surgical because there was absolutely no time in between for him to do that.

Craig: So magic?

John: Just magic.

Chris: No. You know what it is? It’s incredible. It’s diet and exercise.

Craig: No, I don’t like that.

Chris: He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t drink booze. Look, we know what the agers are. Stay out of the sun. Don’t drink alcohol. Don’t smoke cigarettes.

Craig: You just said three things that I hate.

Chris: Love what you do.

Craig: Love what you do, exactly.

Chris: And there’s a book you can read called Younger Next Year and it’s all about–

Craig: I’m not reading that shit. [laughs]

Chris: You should definitely read it.

Craig: Not gonna.

Chris: Because guys our age, we all have to read it. And essentially what the book says is once you start rounding the horn into your 50s you just start–

Craig: Dying.

Chris: Not dying. It’s decay. And that the more you exercise–

Craig: Sweet decay. Sweet decay.

Chris: The more you exercise the more you hold off that decay. Tom has been on a regimen for 30 years now that’s–

Craig: I’m going to argue that none of us are going to do that. That we will be here at 500–

Chris: Sitting at this table I can tell you there are three guys sitting at this table who don’t work out the recommended one-hour a day, six days a week.

Craig: Not a chance. Nah, but you know what, we know words.

John: We do know the words.

Craig: I mean, the vocabulary between the three of us is astonishing.

John: It’s got to be a lot. All of those words. Craig?

Craig: Yes.

John: This episode is a milestone not only in that it’s 400 but it’s also the first episode we’re recording after Chernobyl has reached the air.

Craig: Yes, we are post-Chernobyl.

John: We are post-Chernobyl.

Chris: Has it reached the air?

John: Yes.

Craig: Last night.

John: We’re recording this on a Tuesday. Monday was the first night that it aired.

Chris: I cannot wait to see it.

Craig: You don’t have to wait. It’s on the air.

John: It’s on demand already.

Chris: No, I know. From where we’re sitting right now I will run home and watch it.

Craig: Very good.

Chris: This evening on HBO.

Craig: You’ve always been a big backer of the show.

Chris: I have deep personal feelings of resentment about Chernobyl.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: I wanted to make that show.

Craig: Here’s what Chris said. Chris said, “I would like to direct Chernobyl.” And I said, but Chris, you’re making Mission: Impossible. And he said, “No problem.” And I said, I think a problem.

Chris: Well, actually, before that though I wasn’t making Mission: Impossible.

Craig: Sure. And then you were again. And you kept saying–

Chris: But in the window where I wasn’t making it.

Craig: Right.

Chris: I went to HBO and said I’ll make it. And HBO, they were very polite but I could see in their eyes they were thinking, “Well if he wants to direct it who else can we get?”

John: No.

Craig: Oh no. I don’t think so.

Chris: For sure.

Craig: I think maybe what they were saying was, “So in post he’s going to be prepping a Mission: Impossible movie.”

Chris: I would have been–

Craig: I think that may have been what it was.

Chris: Is this why I can’t get a job doing anything else? This is why nobody else will offer me movies just because they all think I’m just going to be in post on Mission: Impossible.

Craig: No, it’s because I’ve gone around town just killing you.

So, Chernobyl on the air at long last. Five years. I looked in my little folder. Do you guys keep a folder of all your–?

John: Old drafts?

Craig: Yeah.

John: Oh yeah.

Craig: And so the oldest document I have in my Chernobyl folder is from like May 12, 2014. Almost exactly five years ago. And it was actually very comforting because the header was “Stuff to Figure Out.” And it was just like what’s this about, who’s in it, what would the episodes be? It was just a bunch of questions that any idiot could ask. I guess they all start that way, don’t they?

Chris: No. I need to do that more often. I don’t ask myself those questions, which is probably why–

Craig: We’ll get into that.

Chris: Yeah. I will say this, the other thing I said, you remember you sent me the script. I was on the east coast getting on a plane.

Craig: Yes, you read them on a plane.

Chris: And you texted them to me just before the plane took off so I had two scripts to read. And I landed and I called you up and I said I would cut one word and I would change one word.

John: That’s why you did not get the job.

Craig: I threw a fit. How dare you?

Chris: Exactly. I guess the guy who they hired didn’t cut that word or change that word.

John: You’re not to do those things.

Craig: By the way, I tried to change that word many, many times and could never do it. I couldn’t come up with anything better.

Chris: Just couldn’t come up with anything better. Well, I could have made a suggestion.

Craig: Probably.

Chris: But more importantly that was a damn good script. Scripts. I read two episodes.

Craig: So now it’s a show and I don’t know what like ratings are per se, but the response has been very positive.

John: Part of the reason why you’ve gone for some episodes is you were talking at the UN. You were at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Craig: Yes.

John: You got to do all these amazing things.

Chris: Dear god.

John: You recorded a whole other podcast series with Peter Sagal.

Craig: Yes.

John: Which I started listening to which is great.

Craig: Yes, yes. So the idea there was because so much of what the show is about is the cost of lies and narrative and the way narrative distorts truth I felt that it was important that we hold ourselves accountable for the ways we changed things to be able to tell the story. So Peter Sagal of NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me and I recorded a companion piece. So after each episode airs on HBO or on Sky Atlantic over there in the UK then there is this little companion piece that comes along that you can download from Stitcher or Apple or any of those podcast places. I’ve learned, by the way, that Stitcher is a thing. I had to learn that for this.

And we just have a discussion about what we changed and why and illuminate other various topics of interest.

Chris: We did something like that on Valkyrie actually. Nathan and I did a second commentary track where we went through and said here’s all the things we changed and what really happened.

Craig: Why do you think people – I think it was incredibly – I thought very satisfying to do it. I felt honest and good. And I didn’t sense that, and John, you listened to it so I’m going to ask you. Did you feel like maybe by learning that some things had been changed that I had in any way undermined the experience of watching the show?

John: No. In the first episode you talk–

Chris: You mean the fact that Chernobyl didn’t really happen?

Craig: There is no place called Chernobyl.

John: It’s all made up in fairy land. For example, that a key character actually had a family and you portray him as not having a family.

Craig: Correct.

John: That is a big distinction in a character’s life, but it doesn’t change the fundamental nature of the event that happened.

Craig: Correct. And that kind of was the rule that we tried to follow which is I really did not want to change anything that would fundamentally make things more dramatic or–

John: You didn’t want to chat to make it more exciting.

Craig: I didn’t want to cheat.

Chris: Because the events surrounding Chernobyl need punching up. [laughs]

Craig: Yeah. Kind of like let’s just let the truth be the truth here.

Chris: Well, and I remember calling you and saying, OK, what of this, having done of adaptations of like what is true, what did you gin up? And we had had a conversation very early on before you started writing it.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: You were in London. We all went out to dinner.

Craig: Yes. And then I think you were on a plane to Alaska or something like that.

Chris: Yes. I was going to the Ice Cap, which didn’t happen.

Craig: As one does.

Chris: As one does.

Craig: That’s what McQuarrie does.

Chris: I was going to do research and I was on my way to the Ice Cap and from London to get to the Ice Cap you have to fly from London to Las Vegas, Las Vegas to Seattle, Seattle to Alaska, where you get off the plane and go across the airport to where the military C130 with skis on it is waiting to take you to this ice station.

Craig: Jews don’t do this. Ever.

Chris: And the Ice Cap – I got to Vegas and turned my phone on and there were all these text messages saying the Ice Cap is breaking up and they are going to evacuate the ice station and you’re not going this year. And I have never made it.

Craig: Well, at the very least it was a short flight from London to Las Vegas.

Chris: Well, I got to spend the night in Vegas.

Craig: Oh, hey!

Chris: Which is better than an Ice Cap.

Craig: This podcast is absolutely out of control. John’s eyelid must be twitching by now.

John: It’s fine. We’re vaguely on the outline still. I mean, the Ice Cap was a diversion, but–

Chris: Yes. I see on the outline it says lose the plot.

John: Lose the plot.

Craig: Exactly.

John: To get back on plot, we should also say that we actually have a live show coming up.

Craig: Yes.

John: Every year we do a benefit for Hollywood Heart, which is a great charity that provides services to homeless youth and youth with HIV. We always have great guests. This year we will again have great guests for our live show on June 13th. The big change this time is we are trying to sell out the Ace Hotel. Which is a much bigger venue.

Craig: It’s a great theater. It’s a big venue. It’s a great venue. Definitely please come see us. Buy tickets. We always deliver on the guests. Don’t worry about that. But really aren’t we enough?

John: We should be enough.

Craig: We should be enough.

John: But the guests are really the topping on the ice cream sundae.

Craig: The guests are the topping.

John: So it’s Thursday June 13 at the Ace Hotel. Tickets are available now and there will be a link in the show notes for those.

Craig: For charity.

John: For charity.

Craig: And this is a charity that our good mutual friend, John Gatins, is on the board.

Chris: Oh lovely.

Craig: So this is all part of Gatins’ world.

Chris: We love John Gatins.

Craig: We do.

John: Also in celebration of 400 episodes we have new Scriptnotes shirts. So I’m showing these to Craig and Chris right now. So this is–

Craig: Those are so great.

John: This is the light version of the shirt. This is Scriptnotes 400. It has a sort of blank VHS videotape, was the feel I was going for with these shirts.

Craig: You nailed it.

Chris: You nailed it.

Craig: That’s amazing. I love it.

John: The dark version of the shirt.

Craig: Ooh, dark is nice. Dark kind of gives me a little bit of an Atari vibe. Yeah, I love it. That’s a little bit Breakout. I love it. This is a good shirt.

John: Good shirt.

Craig: Percentage of proceeds that go to me?

John: Are none.

Craig: Consistently zero. 400 episodes.

John: Still not making any money out of this.

Craig: Still not making any money.

John: But at least you don’t have to pay money. Early on in the first like 50 episodes Craig would have to write a check for hosting fees and all that kind of stuff.

Craig: Now John drives a Rolls Royce that’s tacked on top of a Maserati.

Chris: Is it sponsored the podcast?

Craig: No, we don’t do ads.

John: We have no ads. We have nothing.

Craig: We are free in every freaking way.

Chris: In every freaking way. You do this out of the goodness of your heart?

Craig: This is the only thing I do out of the goodness – first of all, I don’t have a heart, as you know.

Chris: Or goodness.

Craig: Correct.

Chris: I was looking at John.

Craig: But I simulate – it’s how I simulate humanity.

Chris: Yes.

John: So these shirts which Craig gets no money for are available in black and white and navy. We also have hoodies this time, so check them out.

Craig: Ooh, I’m getting a hoodie. You know I love a hoodie.

John: We all love a hoodie. Now we finally get back on outline to talk about the feature topic. And so every once and a while we do a This Kind of Movie, where we took a look at a genre, a sub-genre of movie that is not currently popular and we discuss how we would make that movie in 2019 or really 2020, or 2021 realistically. As we’re recording this Disney just put out a list of all their upcoming movies through 2023.

Craig: Right. Which are all Star Wars.

John: They’re all Star Wars or princess movies. But if we wanted to try to make one of these movies what we would need to do to get those on the Disney schedule?

Chris: Oh, onto the Disney schedule?

John: Or really any schedule. Any schedule.

Craig: Witchcraft at this point I think.

Chris: Not true.

Craig: Oh, here we go. Oh, look, I’m having an argument with Chris McQuarrie.

Chris: It’s not an argument. An argument would be a conflict of two different opinions.

Craig: He’s arguing about us having an argument. [laughs]

John: No, no, we’re not having an argument. You don’t understand. This is not an argument.

Craig: How dare you?

Chris: I’d like an argument please.

Craig: I love that sketch.

Chris: See, an argument would be if you had an opinion and I had an opinion, but you’re not allowed to have an opinion anymore.

Craig: Ugh.

Chris: If you just avoid opinions and stick to facts.

John: 100 percent facts.

Chris: Yes, then I can’t get into any trouble.

John: Chernobyl.

Chris: Don’t have an opinion. And that’s why we are not arguing.

Craig: The truth matters. The truth matters.

Chris: Because I’m right.

Craig: Let’s get back to the topic at hand. It’s turning into The Morning Zoo.

John: In previous installments of this segment we have saved romantic comedies. I mean, I think we can all agree that romantic comedies were dead and then we brought them back to life.

Craig: We did. We resuscitated them.

John: I think we also did some work on westerns.

Craig: They’re back.

John: So I went on Twitter and asked people for other genres or sub-genres that need saving.

Craig: That have been sort of underserved.

Chris: So I have a long suffering script. A script that’s been sitting around for years and years and years. I don’t own it. I was commissioned to write it by a producer. You would put it in the category of it’s a redemption story, personal drama, you put it in that kind of Verdict sort of–

Craig: Oh, OK. What is the genre-genre?

Chris: It’s a drama.

Craig: Just sort of people?

Chris: It is a female-driven drama. Woman goes to prison.

Craig: OK, prison.

Chris: No, beginning of the story she goes to prison. Two scenes later she gets out of prison 14 years later and is trying to reconnect with her sister who was four-years-old when she went into prison and has been lost in the system.

Craig: OK.

Chris: OK. So the kind of movie that in 1973 would have been released every other weekend.

John: Totally.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: And Netflix. Post Mission: Impossible Netflix said we want to do this. And what Netflix is after now, they’re fairly genre-agnostic. They’re really looking for, A, content.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: They’re frantically trying to line their pockets with content.

Craig: That appears to be the case.

Chris: Before Disney fires up the whatever they’re doing. But also building relationships with talent. And they looked at this thing and said this is imminently cast-able. There is now, I can’t say who but there is a great actress interested in the role. And Netflix is just standing by and they’re going to do it.

Craig: That’s awesome.

Chris: The kind of movie that even two, three years ago would have been inconceivable. Another project that I was briefly attached to, I’m attached to it now as a producer, was a WWII movie, but a WWII drama. It’s not a WWII–

Craig: Shoot-shoot-bang-bang.

Chris: It isn’t Saving Private Ryan. It’s a guy behind enemy lines personal drama. Again, the kind of thing, you hear WWII and you just start falling asleep.

Craig: Even if there were explosions it would be a hard sell.

Chris: Yes. It’s dead in the water. And so you have with that mechanism if you can attach the right elements to a piece of material–

Craig: You can get yourself on Netflix or Hulu or Amazon or HBO.

John: With each of these categories I want to talk about venue basically. Is it still a big screen idea or is it something that is more designed for a smaller screen, be it streaming, be it some other way to do it. But also I want to talk about what is the essence of this kind of movie. What is the biggest difference between making this movie now versus when it was originally popular? Who are the characters and then with those characters who would you cast in this kind of movie? Who writes it? Who directs it? And what are the big obstacles getting in the way of making this kind of movie again?

Craig: All right.

John: So, let’s start with sports comedies. Sports comedies used to be incredibly popular.

Craig: The Ron Shelton area.

John: So Ron Shelton had Bull Durham, White Men Can’t Jump. But we also have things like Dodgeball. Happy Gilmore. Major League. Caddyshack. Bad News Bears. A League of Their Own.

Craig, I’ll start with you. What is the essence of a sports comedy to you?

Craig: Underdogs. Generally speaking we have underdogs. And usually there’s somebody struggling with a – you know, there’s a term in baseball, I don’t know if carries to other sports, the yips. Oh, yeah, actually in golf too the yips are when you just psychologically are struggling with something and so your game falls apart. So typically in these movies somebody with innate skill is struggling with something and so–

Chris: Tin Cup.

Craig: Tin Cup is the best example because it’s literally about a therapist helping a guy with the yips.

Chris: Bull Durham.

Craig: Bull Durham. I mean, all of them. All of them. There’s a romance falling apart in White Men Can’t Jump. And Caddyshack which is I guess probably the broadest of these there’s still a romance at the heart of it that goes bad and has to be put back together. So it’s really about – the essence of these things is an athlete’s personal life is disrupting their game. And they have to fix their personal life to fix their game.

Chris: Wow.

John: I think that’s a fair assessment.

Chris: I hate to say this. Craig is right.

Craig: Hold that. Repeat it.

Chris: Pains me. Pains me to say it.

Craig: Put it on a loop.

John: What’s so interesting is the sport itself is incredibly important for the marketing and sort of what the visual language of the movie will be, but it’s probably not very important for what the actual story will be. The sport rarely has a very direct connection to what the character’s journey is. The unique thing about that sport is probably not a big factor. I guess whether it’s an individual sport versus a team sport that’s a big factor. But, you know.

Chris: It can’t rely on the sport.

Craig: Right.

Chris: Somebody who doesn’t know anything about the sport ideally would be able to watch the movie.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Which means you generally–

John: You teach them the rules of the sport.

Craig: And one of the stock characters in these movies is somebody that doesn’t know the sport.

John: Yeah.

Craig: So they are the people that are asking questions or just looking around going well none of this matters, but that personal part matters.

Chris: Yes.

John: So looking at the biggest difference between doing it now versus doing it then, one of the things as we list these movies is they’re almost all male characters driving this. And so–

Chris: My next question.

John: So I think honestly centering this around a female character is going to probably be your best way in. Whether the whole team is women or it’s unusual for a woman to be in that sport. Something about a female athlete feels more promising.

Chris: Is that going to alienate the men as well? Are you trying to make a four-quadrant movie?

John: That’s a great question. I mean, I think we always use to think about big screen comedies needed to, if not four-quadrant than sort of broadly successful. But if you’re making it not for a big screen movie maybe it’s even better that it’s not kind of for everyone.

Craig: A League of Their Own was pretty much four-quadrant.

Chris: Without question.

Craig: Of this list it’s maybe my favorite of them.

Chris: Well, and Tom Hanks is a hugely important character in the movie.

Craig: Yes, he’s part of it.

Chris: And quite wisely not the dominant character in the movie. It’s also a movie directed by a woman.

Craig: It is. And so you can obviously if you’re centering your new sports comedy on let’s say a female, like a Bend it like Beckham which is a female sports comedy, which I think a lot of male footie fans enjoyed, you will have male characters. The fascinating thing about this list to me is how white it is.

John: It’s super white.

Craig: I mean, sports are one of the areas in American culture where people of color dominate in terms of numbers they’re far over-represented. And yet in this list they’re almost nowhere with the exception of White Men Can’t Jump. I mean, it’s crazy now that I’m looking at it. It’s pretty white.

Chris: I’m wracking my brain.

Craig: It’s kind of nuts. And if you keep going you’ll see it more and more and more. Like a lot of baseball movies take place in the distant past, so when Roy Hobbes is out there in The Natural it’s sort of like, you know, there they are, the nine white guys. And Dodgeball is just sort of lily white. I mean, it’s not lily white. That’s not true. Because Chris Williams is in it.

John: Yeah, but it’s goofy.

Craig: These are largely white casts. And it seems like they’re largely for white guys.

John: So I think we’re talking sort of women, non-white characters centering. Also, you know, there’s a chance that maybe the sport you’re picking is not a sport that is currently popular in the US. So if you’re to make an American cricket movie about like a cricket team that needed to sort of – that was part of the obstacle they overcome. Like they don’t even know what cricket is or sort of that aspect.

Craig: So it’s kind of like the – what’s it, the Jamaican bobsledding team, Cool Running. So Americans try and go to cricket but they’re basically in India or Pakistan getting their asses handed to them.

Chris: Adam Sandler is working on this movie right now. Yes, he’s working on this movie.

Craig: Cricket!

Chris: But when you’re pinpointing these things, you know, about women and diversity, are you suggesting the way to make an outlier or to get it made? Because I have to imagine–

Craig: I’d go get it made on that one, for me, because I actually feel like – I mean, it’s not that you can’t make a movie like this again in the same mold. But it will be in the same mold. There’s something so familiar about it.

Chris: Oh, of course.

Craig: And this list barely even scrapes the surface of what there is. So, it seems like something new would be great in some way or another. New is good. And I think in this category–

Chris: So the Bad News Bears, but done–

Craig: Well, I mean, and they tried to remake it.

Chris: But they tried to remake it–

Craig: They did. They remade it.

Chris: They remade it and they remade it kind of in the same mold but with none of the things you could do.

Craig: Well, that’s the thing.

Chris: The spirt of it.

Craig: This is one of those interesting areas where over time we’ve gotten less permissive. You could not make the actual – I mean, the Bad News Bears was Rated R. There was alcohol. There was smoking. There was racism. And they were children. That’s not doable now in any way, shape, or form.

Chris: No. Because it in no way reflected reality and movies have to reflect reality now.

Craig: Hold on, let’s wield the soap box on.

Chris: No, no, this is what I read. I got the email.

Craig: There it is.

John: But here’s what I’ll say. I feel like a sports comedy is still a movie. And that it’s more of a movie than it is a TV show, than a series.

Craig: Yes.

John: Because I feel like a game of sport, whatever sport you want to pick – I knew you were going to laugh, I said a game of sport.

Chris: Remember there was a TV show. Do you remember Ball Four?

John: I do not remember Ball Four.

Craig: Oh, based on, what’s his name, Jim Bouton’s book.

Chris: Jim Bouton’s book. Lasted for about seven episodes.

Craig: It turns out that in sports there is this built-in ticking clock. Are you going to win or not? I mean, there’s a big game in the beginning, there’s a big game at the end. There’s a big fight in the beginning and there’s a big fight at the end.

John: And Friday Night Lights is an exception but it’s not a comedy. It’s an ensemble drama that is centered around a football team.

Craig: Correct. About family life.

Chris: And the culture. And it’s high school. So it’s not pro and it’s–

Craig: But it started as a movie. Started as a movie.

John: It did. Next category, ensemble dramedies. So we used to make things like St. Elmo’s Fire, The Big Chill, Breakfast Club, Big Fish, Terms of Endearment. So we used to make things that had big casts, where a bunch of folks came together, where characters did grow and change but it was an ensemble. It wasn’t sort of one character’s story. Is that a thing we’re going to be making on the big screen soon? We’ll start with what is the essence of that kind of story. What is the essence of an ensemble dramedy?

Craig: Let’s make McQuarrie take a shot at that one.

Chris: It seems to me as I’m running through the list that you just – nostalgia is a big part of it. It’s my understanding that somebody did a breakdown of why people go to see movies and the number one reason was to have a nostalgic experience. An emotional nostalgic experience. I think that probably plays into sports as well, especially plays into why a lot of sports movies seem to go–

Craig: Back in time.

Chris: Back to that. And you look at The Big Chill. The Big Chill was very much a nostalgic movie.

John: It’s a reunion of friends who had separated. St. Elmo’s Fire, while it wasn’t a nostalgic movie, they were at a specific turning point in their life. They were kind of looking back at—

Craig: See, to me that’s it. We have a group of people that represent some kind of contemporary arrangement. Whether we’re catching them later or they were contemporary or we’re in their contemporariness like for instance The Breakfast Club. But they are at a moment where things are changing.

Chris: Yes.

Craig: And we watch that happen. That to me is the essence of these things. But for the love of god I cannot imagine anyone putting this on a screen anymore. It just doesn’t seem like they will. It’s a bummer.

John: Yeah, it’s tragic. I mean, on a big screen. I think you can absolutely make these for streaming.

Craig: No question.

John: But in so many ways though the one-hour series have sort of taken, even like short series have taken the place of these, where you can see those characters grow over the course–

Chris: Oh, This is Us.

Craig: This is Us.

John: This is Us as a movie.

Chris: Modern Family.

Craig: Correct. And interestingly Dan Fogelman–

John: Yeah, he tried to do it as a movie.

Craig: He sort of tried to do it as a movie. He tried This is Us as a movie and it didn’t connect with audiences. But he’s obviously incredibly good at it because tens of millions of people watch This is Us and it gets all these awards. There is something, I don’t know, we used to be able to go and watch this – maybe it’s just that we used to expect less. You know, we would go to the movie theater and we weren’t asking to have our brains blown out the back of our skulls.

Chris: I went to see Hell or High Water.

John: Oh, which is fantastic.

Chris: Which I loved. And I was talking to Tim Talbot shortly thereafter and I said did you see Hell or High Water? And he said, “Yes.” And what did you think about it? “That was a great movie.” In 1987 that would have been a good movie. But he’s right in that that sort of stuff – I remember going to the movies every weekend. It was not an event. Now when you ask anybody under the age of 25 why they go to the movies they will say in one form or another, “Because I have to go.” They want to be part of a discussion.

I tried to get to see Avengers, which I finally saw yesterday, as quickly as I could because I was tired of having a self-imposed media bubble. There were things in that movie I really didn’t want ruined. Getting to that state. Whereas the stories that we’re talking about, what television does so well now especially is there is a collective history.

If you tried to tune into Game of Thrones now you don’t understand and it wouldn’t – the number of people who are saying three years into Mad Men going, “Yeah, I tried to get into that show and I just couldn’t.” It’s like, of course not, if you turn middle of season three none of this makes any sense.

Craig: Start at the beginning. That’s true. But I do think that one of the problems for – like I remember going to see St. Elmo’s Fire. And my expectation was that I was going to see a group of people that were somewhat older than me dealing with problems. And I knew at some point somebody was going to like, I think Rob Lowe was going to light a torch on fire with some hairspray or something, and Demi Moore was in a corner super dramatic. And I think thought, OK, I’m going to see some sort of human drama. That would not do it anymore. Now when people go to the movie theater it’s like, well, this is going to pin me back and it’s going to blow my mind. And I’m going to see stuff and it’s going to be an event.

Chris: An event.

Craig: An event. I just think people go to the movies for a different reason now.

Chris: But don’t you think also what you can get from television is very different than what we could get from television.

Craig: No question.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: No question.

Chris: You could not make Game of Thrones as a feature film. Any of the content in Game of Thrones would be NC17.

Craig: Nor could you have made it for television prior to this kind of strange change.

Chris: Yes. It’s the networks. As soon as basic cable met the British model of television which was you make a good television show and when it stops being good you – when it reaches the end you stop.

Craig: Isn’t that nice?

Chris: Yes, it’s lovely.

Craig: You know what? This is going to be six episodes long. Great.

Chris: Yeah, or six episodes this season instead of 22 every season.

Craig: Which is why I take my hat off to people like Derek Haas who are still doing it, not just on one show, but multiple show. I mean, the amount of story that has to be generated by those guys is bananas. But, yes, the format has become not just flexible but there is not format. It doesn’t matter.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Let’s get back to movies. Next let’s save the legal thriller or the courtroom thriller. We’ll put these things together. So, obviously we have all the John Grisham based ones, The Pelican Brief, The Firm, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker. We have Michael Clayton. We have Primal Fear.

Craig: Love Primal Fear.

John: Love Primal Fear. Presumed Innocent. Disclosure. A Few Good Men.

Chris: The Verdict.

Craig: The Verdict.

John: The Verdict. I hadn’t thought of The Verdict.

Chris: One of the all-time–

Craig: Well, and 12 Angry Men.

Chris: Yes, oh my god.

Craig: Which is sort of the [unintelligible] courtroom drama.

Chris: Well, 12 Angry Men and And Justice for All.

Craig: And Justice for All.

Chris: We can probably go on.

John: We can.

Craig: Yes, I think we could.

John: So what is the essence of these kind of thrillers? So traditionally I think you have an authority figure who is generally the prosecutor or could be working for the defense who is very smart at the law who has to intercede in a specific situation. They generally didn’t commit the situation. They’re there to solve a problem and in trying to solve the problem they uncover something remarkable that puts themselves either in moral jeopardy or literal jeopardy. We don’t make these. We haven’t made them for a while.

Chris: No. Well, when we were talking about 12 Angry Men and The Verdict, both Lumet movies. 12 Angry Men is a morality tale, sort of a study of–

John: And it feels like a play.

Chris: Yeah, feels very much like a play. The Verdict is a redemption story. The Verdict is in a lot of ways a boxing movie.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

Chris: It’s the palooka who comes back for–

Craig: And I think that that’s a good distinction because some of these movies like A Few Good Men also feels like a boxing movie where basically a guy whose dad was a great boxer and who has decided to throw fights instead for a living is going to come back and take on the all-time champ and go down dying if he has to. So, there are those.

And then there are these movies that are they turn on grand questions of justice. What is justice?

Chris: That’s And Justice for All.

Craig: And Justice for All. Or A Time to Kill is very much like that. So those are two different, I mean they always have fireworks. They always have the certain venues that we know. And there is a verdict that is a little bit like the game in the sports movies.

Chris: The Verdict actually ended without the verdict.

Craig: Without the verdict. Well.

John: But here’s a distinction is like a sports movie they want to be a single movie because it’s not a thing that’s going to continue well over time. And so like Murder One was an attempt to take one case–

Craig: Kelley I think.

John: Over the course of a whole season and it just didn’t work. It wanted to be part of one thing.

Chris: I don’t want a mystery to last that long.

Craig: Right.

John: No.

Chris: And first of all the struggle in television, they referred to it for years as the Twin Peaks problem. That you can only lose audience. You couldn’t gain audience. Because when that show was on unless you videotaped it you couldn’t catch up on Netflix, you couldn’t binge it. And there was something fascinating about that. To think about it now, that television actually just spilled out into the universe and that was it.

Craig: And you either caught it with your hands or you missed it. It was gone on the floor.

Chris: Yes. It comes back to urgency. The urgency, how and why one watches a television show or a movie is very different now.

John: I think people should write a legal thriller, I mean, I feel like it’s the kind of movie that you could still imagine making today. I mean, what do you need to make a great legal thriller? You need a star. It is actually a star vehicle. It’s that person you cast as the central lawyer is great. You look at, you know, I think you can make Primal Fear at any point where you also have a great supporting character. Like you look at Edward Norton–

Chris: Well that’s a thriller, like that and Jagged Edge.

John: Oh, of course. Oh yes.

Chris: Have you watched that recently?

Craig: Yeah, it’s amazing.

Chris: I’ve been going back and watching the–

John: He is innocent!

Chris: Yes.

Craig: So great.

Chris: And the other one I went back and watched recently, which was fascinating artifact is–

Craig: Artifact.

Chris: Basic Instinct.

John: Oh yeah. We’re going to get to sexual/erotic thrillers. And that’s there.

Craig: Thank god.

Chris: Can we just skip to that?

John: We can skip to that next.

Craig: I think that there is some space for it, the problem is it is the most trod-upon ground. Because we have 4,000 episodes of Law & Order. And it will never stop. Neither will CSI. NCIS. That arena, the courtroom procedural aspects of it have been just beaten to death. So the question is how can you do it – I think you could go back all the way to 12 Angry Men and that kind of idea.

Chris: Yes. If you ask what they all have in common as I’m sitting here [unintelligible] is the discovery. There is some reveal. There is a hidden secret that sort of turns the case. Those are hard to do.

Craig: What’s the Dershowitz one with–?

Chris: Claus von Bulow.

Craig: Yeah. Claus von Bulow.

Chris: Reversal of Fortune.

John: Reversal of Fortune.

Craig: “No one shook Sunny.” That’s my favorite line.

Chris: And what I love about that is the reversal is the last line.

Craig: The reversal is the last line of the movie.

Chris: “You have no idea.”

Craig: “You have no idea.” And then weirdly Alan Dershowitz has had his own fascinating reversal. But that’s for other podcasts.

John: Absolutely. But I think we can make a legal thriller. And so do you make a legal thriller for the big screen? Maybe. A really good legal thriller I think could also be an awards contender. The same way like The Post was a journalism thriller. That was back in that space.

Craig: Yes. It has be specifically crafted for the Academy Awards. I would think you would need two huge stars. I could see—

Chris: Let’s talk about who those huge stars are.

Craig: Streep v. Washington.

Chris: Regardless of our genre.

Craig: Meryl Streep v. Denzel Washington. Two lawyers going head-to-head over something that is actually legitimately relevant to our society now.

Chris: Well, you’d be talking about abortion, gun control, really hot topic issues.

Craig: Police brutality.

Chris: Police brutality. And then the trick of making that movie is making a movie that is for both halves of the audience, not one.

John: Yeah. I don’t know that you need like a marquee issue. So if it was about sort of corporate control, some way to do it–

Craig: Yeah, you know, he’s not wrong.

John: Because you want a thriller. You still want the thriller. You also want the legal drama.

Craig: You still want the thriller aspect. Because the truth is the thing at the heart of A Few Good Men is not a hot-button issue. There’s an interesting theme to it, but it isn’t a hot-button issue. And maybe it would actually be better without one. Maybe I just want two people – you know what also was really good? The Insider.

John: You know who would also be really good in this? Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise could do a good job.

Craig: Well, he’s done it though.

John: He’s done it.

Craig: Can he come back and do it again?

Chris: Well, I would love to see Tom do a version of The Verdict. I’d love to see him do the broken down. Jerry Maguire is his Verdict.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Oh my god. We could talk about Jerry Maguire forever.

John: We can.

Craig: I’ve got huge love for that script.

Chris: Talk about a weird. What’s the pitch to Jerry Maguire? I’m going to make a movie about a sports agent who is having an emotional crisis.

Craig: My pitch for Jerry Maguire is imagine a man whose life is deeply flawed who has a moment of clarity where he describes exactly who he should be. And that’s the beginning of the movie. And then the entire movie is him trying to become that guy.

Chris: But would you have picked a sports agent?

Craig: No, but that’s fun. I get it.

Chris: No, I mean, it’s such a – the fact that the movie works and resonates–

Craig: There’s comebacks. Makes sense.

Chris: Well, that helps.

Craig: Finding a scum-baggy kind of job like sports agent. I don’t know any sports agents. I apologize.

Chris: Well, yeah, so you just blanket called them all scumbags.

Craig: A little bit. Sorry.

Chris: It’s the whole agent thing.

Craig: Should we go to the erotic thrillers.

John: Erotic thrillers.

Chris: Erotic thrillers.

John: We’ve got Fatal Attraction. We’ve got Basic Instinct.

Chris: Now what does an erotic thriller need? What’s the central elements of an erotic thriller?

Craig: I believe boobs are high on the list.

Chris: Yes.

John: Color of Night. Killing Me Softly. American Gigolo. Gone Girl I would say is an erotic thriller. Or has aspects of that.

Chris: Yeah.

Craig: Well…

John: It’s definitely a thriller. There’s a sexual aspect to it.

Craig: I don’t think of it’s an erotic – I don’t think of it as–

Chris: It’s a neurotic thriller.

Craig: Neurotic.

John: But it’s pulpy in the way that you want an erotic thriller to be.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: Sea of Love. Nice pull. So I’ve got to go back and watch that one.

Craig: It’s good.

John: So erotic thrillers, at the time it was sexual content on screen that you just couldn’t see other places. You certainly couldn’t see it on TV.

Chris: And now you can’t see it in theaters and there’s nothing but on television.

John: That’s absolutely true.

Craig: Or your phone. You can just see it on your phone.

Chris: Yes.

John: Literal pornography.

Craig: There should be a list of – there’s probably a website that has a list of perfectly reasonable civil Google searches that will absolutely blow your mind with the images that come up. I just feel like old people are always, you know, like–

Chris: There’s no parental control strict enough–

Craig: They’re just like, oh, I’m just searching for something normal. Yeah, and then look what just came up.

Chris: Yes.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So what distinguishes an erotic thriller from just–?

Craig: Porn.

John: From porn or from things that have–?

Chris: Sexual obsession.

John: Sexual obsession. All right.

Chris: Sexual obsession. So in Jagged Edge it’s the forbidden nature of the sexual relationship. There is an inappropriate boundary that is being crossed. Michael Douglas is investigating Sharon Stone so he should not be having sex with Sharon Stone.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And Glenn Close is representing Jeff Bridges so she should not be having sex with Jeff Bridges.

John: You know what we left off this list though is Fifty Shades of Grey which really would fit underneath this general category. So it’s romance–

Craig: A thriller?

John: But, I mean, it actually has thriller elements. There’s bad people doing bad stuff in it, too. Her life is in danger.

Chris: Yes.

John: So I think it would fall into this general category. So there clearly is a market for making that kind of movie. We just don’t make it–

Craig: Yeah. I mean, look, this kind of old school classic ‘90s, or early ‘90s/late ‘80s erotic thrillers were weirdly in their own way Puritanistic because they would basically reinforce that transgressive sexual behavior would automatically lead to blood on the floor. It’s all basically a lesson in staying monogamous and don’t get out of your lane and don’t give into temptation.

And people who were overtly sexual are equated with evil. And you see it come up over and over and over. If there’s any reason why we don’t make these now beyond the obvious, which is that there’s kind of no market for them, it’s probably that our sexual mores have kind of come further than anything else.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Can I point out one common thread? There are these erotic thrillers that are starring men as the protagonist and erotic thrillers that are starring women as the protagonist. The ones starring men, the men are kind of bastards. Fatal Attraction, Michael Douglas is sort of perfect in that role. You have a character who is violating the audience’s trust.

Craig: Yes.

John: Cheating on his wife.

Chris: If Tom Hanks was in Fatal Attraction and made the decision that quickly to have sex with Glenn Close you’d be like, what, Tom? Whereas Michael Douglas you kind of believed it.

Craig: Yeah. A little lizardy.

Chris: Yes. And I’m looking at Richard Gere who in that stage of his career loved playing an abrasive bastard. There was almost something where he was antagonizing the audience. Cruel Intentions, Ryan Phillippe in that movie is playing a version of Valmont and is enjoying being a bastard. Al Pacino in Sea of Love, that’s like The Verdict meets erotic thriller. He’s that drunken messed up cop. An element that I’m seeing in this is the casting and the writing of the male character they all seem to be – and, by the way, Douglas comes back in Basic Instinct – a little bit of it seems to be the audience enjoying watching this guy get his comeuppance for having broken the rules.

Craig: Right.

John: Yes.

Craig: Morality plays.

Chris: And casting the right actor in a morality play is a big part.

Craig: But they also in some way start to turn these men into passive movers. Because these women come along and tempt them and turn their heads and confuse them. You know, I don’t know, I just think it’s all a bit old-fashioned.

Chris: There was nothing confused in Michael Douglas’s performance in Fatal Attraction. They’re out having a drink after having had a meeting and he makes a decision instantaneously.

Craig: Sure. Yes, he does. But then the movie basically says, OK, fine, that happened. But look how crazy she is.

Chris: Have you watched it recently?

Craig: No.

Chris: Go back and watch it. There’s the whole thing that she’s pregnant. And all he’s trying to do is shut it down. She’s definitely got issues.

Craig: She won’t be ignored.

Chris: But Michael Douglas is not – he handles it the way a panicking male would, not the way the hero of a movie would. The other great thing about that movie is Anne Archer.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Amazing.

Chris: Anne Archer is this–

Craig: I do remember her being like–

Chris: She was the ideal. And for Glenn Close, that’s kind of an unconventional role for Glenn Close. And it’s interesting that she is in almost back-to-back erotic thrillers. And if you go back and watch, look at those two movies which are shot within a few years of each other. And by the way, The Natural was right in there, too. So you look at Glenn Close playing three–

Craig: This like luminous angel.

Chris: Yes, she’s the Madonna. She was this tough lawyer, a little bit corrupt, kind of compromised. And then playing that woman in Fatal Attraction.

Craig: Sort of on the edge, mentally on the edge.

Chris: Who you cast in an erotic thriller is a big, big deal.

Craig: Well, Glenn Close is pretty, pretty good at her job. I think we can all agree on that.

John: Although we’re probably not casting her in the next erotic thriller.

Chris: Expecting great things.

Craig: I don’t think we’re going to be seeing the likes of those.

John: Craig, can we skip ahead to something that you know especially well? Spoofs and parodies.

Craig: Spoofs and parodies.

Chris: Spoofs and parodies.

John: So movies like Airplane, Spaceballs, Not Another Teen Movie, Scary Movie series, MacGruber, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie. Tropic Thunder. Shaun of the Dead. Vampires Suck. Austin Powers. Blazing Saddles. We’re not making many of these movies now. And I have a theory why, but I’m curious what your theory is why we don’t make these movies.

Craig: As David Zucker would repeatedly say, “Spoof is dead.” And his thing is that he would say spoof is dead, he said it before spoof came back. Spoof was dead. I remember Jim Abrahams saying that he was mixing mafia, a Jane Austen movie, Jane Austen’s Mafia.

Chris: Jane Austen’s Mafia.

Craig: And he walked down the hall where they were mixing and on another mixing stage they were mixing There’s Something About Mary. And he just sort of watched a few minutes of it and then went back and said, “Yeah, we’re fucked. Our time is over.”

And it was over. And then the Wayans Brothers brought it back with Scary Movie. But following the success of Scary Movie, and 2, and 3, and 4, there was this sudden – suddenly they were everywhere. And the marketplace was flooded with a lot of cheap stuff. And honestly as one of the people that wrote Scary Movie 3 and 4, I mean, the pressure that we were under from the Weinsteins to make those movies as quickly as possible was brutal. And we couldn’t do them as well as we wanted to do them. And we did them with David Zucker and Pat Proft and Jim Abrahams.

So by the time all that unraveled it was mostly I think killed at the moment by just the marketplace being flooded. But also you got the sense pretty quickly that the Internet was essentially mooting the entire point of this.

John: Yes. That was my instinct.

Craig: Because every joke, I mean, we used to be like, OK, you want to make fun of this movie. Well, four or five nights from now Leno is going to do the joke. Well, now they’re doing the jokes while they’re watching things. There’s no more time. It’s over.

Chris: That’s very true.

Craig: It’s over.

Chris: Everything is – yeah, the Internet is a spoof.

Craig: The Internet is essentially a spoof machine.

John: There’s no way to make the movie quick enough to do it. And even like on YouTube they can do the crappy effects version of that joke anyway.

Chris: But Blazing Saddles is on this list. It is a spoof but it is a spoof with a higher purpose.

John: So it’s not a spoof of any one movie, it’s taking genre conventions–

Craig: Of a genre.

Chris: Of a genre.

John: And Shaun of the Dead is a great example of like taking the genre conventions and upending them in a way that’s—

Chris: Well that’s a mashup.

John: Yeah.

Chris: And a great one.

John: Fantastic.

Craig: It’s still I would say really hard now. I mean, Airplane was a direct spoof of a movie called Zero Hour from 1956 or something, or 1955, which no one had seen. That was sort of the oddity of Airplane that they just did this random thing. But somewhere along the line spoofs became connected to either genres as a whole or when it got really bad pop culture. And that’s when it just all to me absolutely fell apart.

There’s probably room for somebody to make a spoof of some weird movie that has been forgotten.

Chris: Well, but and Austin Powers is taking shots at movies along with Bond. Matt Helm. And some really–

Craig: In Like Flint.

Chris: Yeah, In Like Flint. When the phone rings, that’s directly taken from In Like Flint.

John: But you look at the ones of these that we feel like you could still make is that these films actually have individualized characters who sort of have an arc and have a point of view. And the movie doesn’t exist just to make fun of the movie that came before it. The character is existing within a world and is consistent within a world. So Austin Powers is a spoof of another kind of character, but is also a character himself. And Dr. Evil is a character himself.

Chris: Yes. And it’s a time travel comedy in a way. They both are, at least two of the three, are.

Craig: I mean, the people that kind of come the closest now to doing spoof and parody in their own way is Chris and Phil.

John: Lord and Miller. Yeah.

Craig: Yeah. Lord and Miller in a weird way do. I mean, Lego has certain spoof aspects to it.

John: Their Spider Man also has aspects of like it’s an awareness of where this is fitting inside the culture.

Chris: Meta.

Craig: Yeah, it’s Meta. Their Jump Street movies are kind of spoofing Jump Street.

John: Oh yes.

Craig: Like it’s a self-spoof. But it’s different. It’s not like, I mean, thank god, by the way. Because honestly nothing is harder than writing those things. I will never work harder in my life than I did writing Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4. It was just—

Chris: It’s one of the reasons Chernobyl is not as funny.

Craig: Yeah, I know. It took the jokes out.

John: It took all the comedy out of me.

Chris: You didn’t make the effort. I know.

John: Let’s take the jokes out of biblical epics, and/or sword and sandals movies. So things like Gladiator, Ben-Hur, Noah, Passion of the Christ. King in Heaven. Spartacus. Ten Commandments. Braveheart, to some degree. Lawrence of Arabia. Like we used to make these things. That was actually a staple of original Hollywood. We have the giant ranches here because we used to make these epics.

Chris: Giant movies.

John: Giant movies. We don’t make them anymore.

Chris: No.

John: So here’s–

Chris: Because they don’t win awards anymore.

John: They don’t win awards anymore.

Craig: Precisely.

John: Even though Game of Thrones is being show on smaller screens, it is that kind of sword and sandals thing.

Craig: Correct.

Chris: Yes.

John: And so we’re making them, but we’re making them for smaller screen.

Craig: TV. No question.

Chris: But is TV – I have a very large television. It’s not terribly expensive. I would imagine a lot of people have maxed their credit cards for a large TV.

Craig: You’re comparing your large TV to the TV you grew up, which was like the TV I grew up. That 9-inch black and white thing in the kitchen, with the single antenna shooting out.

Chris: It was a letterbox.

Craig: Correct. But my kids only know those TVs. But those TVs are still not – I mean, they’re not movies.

Chris: No.

Craig: It’s not a movie screen.

Chris: No. But most people, the way their viewing habits are now, we’re making a Mission: Impossible. We have an IMAX segment in it. And people are saying well why don’t you just shoot the whole thing in IMAX.

Craig: No one is going to watch it.

Chris: It’s never going to be seen again. You’re making this balance. And there are times I’ll be framing a shot and Cruise will walk up to me and go, “You know when this is on the big screen and I pull my phone out of my pocket—“

Craig: Here it is.

Chris: This is the screen now. It’s not that it will only be watched on television, but for the life of the film.

Craig: For the life of it. Primarily.

Chris: The theatrical lifespan of a movie is 12 weeks.

Craig: Whoa. 12 weeks. What is this hit movie you’ve got that’s in there 12 weeks?

Chris: I’m talking like by the end it’s in eight theaters

Craig: Yes. Correct.

Chris: I’m giving a conservative—

Craig: Really it’s four weeks is what it is.

Chris: Four weeks. Yeah.

Craig: It used to be months.

Chris: Yes.

Craig: It is now about four weeks.

John: So what is the essence of these biblical epics we’re talking about? So, if you’re talking about a Gladiator or a Ben-Hur, it is a character in a long ago time, typically a Roman time, who is coming up against an authority system. He is leading, it’s always a he in these movies, is leading–

Chris: It’s a Christ figure against Rome.

Craig: Thank you.

John: Christ figure against Rome.

Craig: That’s exactly what it is. Every single time. Christ figure against Rome. Doesn’t matter what you do.

Chris: Doesn’t matter if it’s Rome or not Rome. Doesn’t matter if it’s Christ or not Christ.

Craig: That’s what Braveheart is. That’s what Ten Commandments is. Even when it’s Jews it’s still a Christ figure against Rome. Some hero will rise in a kind of faded destiny way, usually out of nothing. And they have special powers, special abilities. They are spat on, tortured, hurt. Their family is killed. They are persecuted. And ultimately they do some incredibly self-sacrificial thing and the world is saved. And the last scene is people sitting around going, “God, he was awesome.”

Chris: He was a great man.

Craig: He was a great man.

Chris: And it’s always a man.

Craig: And it’s always a man. Patriarchy.

Chris: As a matter of fact there’s a biblical epic with a woman. Mary Magdalene is coming soon.

John: Yes.

Craig: Really?

Chris: Rooney Mara.

John: Rooney Mara plays that.

Craig: Wasn’t there already one of those that like [Murray Bowen’s] company did? Didn’t he do? Oh, I thought he did.

Chris: Maybe we’re talking about the same one.

Craig: No, no, that one was [crosstalk].

Chris: But, yes, I saw a trailer. Joaquin Phoenix is Jesus.

Craig: Ooh. Jesus is a phoenix. I’m down with that.

Chris: Pretty interesting. It’s an interesting Jesus.

John: Yeah. So I guess that’s the question. Is this type of movie really about the setting or is it about specifically that sort of Jesus against Rome kind of thing? Because even Braveheart you could sort of look at as Jesus against Rome.

Craig: Directly.

John: Yeah, so it’s the same concept.

Craig: No question.

John: And to what degree do they need to be big screen movies versus – in a weird way–

Chris: Time.

John: Time.

Chris: Time and distance. When you want to talk epic scale, Lawrence of Arabia is a giant event.

John: But isn’t a miniseries better suited up for this kind of epic storytelling? I think it could have been kind of a fluke that the only thing we had were movies. And so we had to tell the Ten Commandments as a movie.

Craig: And they were very long movies.

John: They’re very long movies.

Craig: Ben-Hur is endless.

John: But the better form would have been as a series.

Craig: I agree with you. I think that there is – these things will generally work better, live better, as series. I think it’s probably where they’re generally going to happen. But one of the few segments of audience that still reliably goes to movies are faith-based audiences.

John: Yes.

Craig: And I’m not a faith-based person. I don’t even really know what faith is. I mean, I know the definition. I’ve just never felt it before. But regardless, they will go to these things. And so you have this other weird segment of movie where every now and then you’ll look at like on Deadline what were the top five movies this weekend and number four is, wait, what the? What? It’s a Prayer for Jimmy? And what is this?

Chris: And it’s why they made that last remake of Ben-Hur.

Craig: No question. Oh yes, yes. Ben-Hur was—

Chris: Was a direct calculated aimed – it was very much targeted at that group.

Craig: I mean, nothing is more cynical as far as I’m concerned.

Chris: No, no, The Passion of the Christ caught everybody off guard.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Yes.

Chris: Nobody expected. And that was kind of the thing. And remember it came out at a weird time of year. It was January, when January was–

Craig: A cold, dead January.

Chris: That’s the place where movies went to die.

Craig: January, February. By the way, is there any month now where movies go to die? I don’t think there is.

Chris: Yes. Back to school week. The first week of September is still – somebody’s going to do it. But that is–

Craig: Actually a great idea for just a movie is back to school week, let’s go see every movie. It’s just one horrible movie where all of the junk gets dumped.

Chris: Oh yes.

John: All right, let’s maybe wrap up with buddy cop, which was a frequent suggestion. Buddy cop, come on, there have been amazing buddy cop movies. 21 Jump Street. The Other Guys. Hot Fuzz. The Heat. Bad Boys. Men in Black. K-9. Lethal Weapon. White Chicks. Shanghai Noon. That idea that you have two mismatched people who have to work together to solve a crime and to do things. It’s a classic paradigm. You know, Abbott and Castello. We’ve always seen these two, this [unintelligible] go through things. But we’re not doing a lot of them now. So what’s – how do we get to it?

Craig: Well, you know what? I think the Too Fast Too Furious, I just always give Derek Haas credit for that. And let’s so also say RIP John Singleton, the director of Too Fast Too Furious. But the Fast and Furious franchise is kind of a buddy cop writ large with multiple buddies.

John: True.

Chris: Dragged Across Concrete is coming out.

Craig: Yeah. I think they still do these.

Chris: I don’t know that that’s a comedy.

John: Central Intelligence is essentially a buddy cop movie.

Craig: That’s right. That’s buddy cop. And there was just a movie, wasn’t there a movie with Regina Hall just out and – I think that they keep making these.

Chris: Oh, well the Sandra Bullock, Miss Congeniality.

John: Oh, The Heat.

Craig: Oh, that’s way back. But then there’s The Heat with Melissa McCarthy. Yeah, I think they still make buddy cop movies.

John: So I think we may need to step away from the idea of cops. So as long as there are two people who are tasted in a professional job of doing some kind of police-y thing.

Chris: The Odd Couple with guns.

John: An Odd Couple with guns. Thank you.

Craig: Odd Couple with guns. That’s pretty much what it is.

Chris: What it boils down to.

Craig: And they become each other’s family.

Chris: Yes.

John: And so as long as, you know, you can make them for the big screen. You have to have a certain production value and a certain size to make them for the big screen. Weirdly you don’t see as many of them in TV shows anymore. So I guess right now on the air we have MacGyver, we have Magnum PI which is sort of–

Chris: Yeah, cop shows on TV are definitely more dramas.

Craig: Procedurals. Well, because the essence of the buddy cop is that they don’t start as buddies and they end up as buddies. But you can’t end up as anything on a serialized show. You have to keep going. So it kind of has to be a movie.

Chris: Yes. A lot of this conversation seems to be about how technology has disrupted what we imagined the plain of cinema to be. There seems to be a really clear shift.

Craig: And just wait.

Chris: From no home video, to home video, to no home video again. Now it’s home theater. Now it’s home – it’s content. That’s where I think the line is blurring. It’s big screen/small screen.

Craig: And the amount that’s available now is – and the resources that are being poured into it. I mean, better or worse, however you want to chop up the money, there was just way less money. I mean, there were five studios and they gave you some studio. And there were three networks and they gave you some money.

But now we’ve got just billions and billions rushing in to make more and more stuff. It is transforming things. But there aren’t that many more screens. In fact, I’d probably argue there are fewer screens than there used to be.

John: Well, there’s not more time. There’s not more time for people to view things. And so even though we have new people coming in and new distribution outlets, we have new money chasing new things–

Craig: Time is a flat circle.

John: Yes. And so we don’t have the ability to watch more things. And so we have to choose how we’re going to do this.

Chris: I’m looking at the–

John: So I skipped over some things. Is there a genre there you want to tackle?

Chris: Westerns.

John: Let’s talk about westerns.

Craig: Hmm, westerns.

John: On this show we’ve talked about Unforgiven. We’ve talked about 3:10 to Yuma. We’ve talked about sort of westerns. But what is it about westerns that you think can be suited towards the big screen. Because also we had Scott Frank on who talked about his great Netflix show.

Chris: Yes.

Craig: Godless.

John: Godless. Which was sort of exploding what a normal western—

Craig: Meant to be a movie. Written as a script.

Chris: He struggled with it for years, right? He was trying to get it down to something movie size.

Craig: Well, and he does it with all of his movies. But, I mean, look, it was movie size. It’s just that what he was struggling was to get somebody to pay for it as a movie. Because essentially people kept saying well the western is dead, the western is dead, the western is dead.

Chris: And that which is the WWII movie is dead. You hear about this all the time. And then the number of times I’ve seen a dead genre—

Craig: Everything is dead until it’s not.

Chris: Yeah. Dunkirk was a really great example of a dead genre that people don’t go to see anymore.

Craig: My favorite example is nothing could have been a deader genre than pirate movies.

John: Oh yeah, of course.

Craig: Pirate movies. Not only dead—

Chris: Do you remember Pirates with Walter Matthau?

Craig: Yes.

John: Yes.

Chris: Oh my god.

Craig: But before they made Pirates of the Caribbean we had Cutthroat Island which had sank an entire, like a hedge fund disappeared.

Chris: It killed Carolco.

Craig: Yeah, Carolco. An entire company was dead. And before that–

Chris: Killed careers.

Craig: Careers. Renny Harlin. And then – and the thought of making a pirates movie was considered almost obscene.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Yes.

Craig: And…

John: Pirates of the Caribbean. Just takes one.

Craig: There we go.

John: It didn’t start a new genre. There weren’t like other pirates movies coming after that. It was only the one pirate movie.

Craig: Exactly. Everybody else was like you know what, let’s let them have it. We’re still not making pirate movies.

Chris: We’re still not making pirate movies. And it so specifically hinges around a kind of storytelling and a character. Johnny Depp.

Craig: And a brand.

Chris: Exactly.

Craig: I mean, just built in.

John: It was also supernatural. So you had a supernatural vibe to it which is different than other stuff.

Chris: But the western, Unforgiven represented a shift towards deconstructionist from which the genre never seemed to – 3:10 to Yuma was its own darker western. Godless was its own. What I miss – what I’d love to see is—

Craig: Shane.

Chris: The Magnificent 7. And Shane. Silverado. The Big Country. Movies that are more of an adventure and more a morality tale as opposed to – watch slow west.

Craig: It’s never going to happen. It’s gone. It’s over.

Chris: I will fight you on that.

Craig: Well, look, I think as a country and a culture we have lost the ability to go back to the kind of idealized west. We just know too much.

Chris: No, I don’t think it’s idealized. I think – you look at The Big Country, it’s not idealized. The country is rough, but a man walks into it who refuses to play by those rules. And I think that’s – if you take westerns there are two kinds. There are kind of westerns noirs where the west just chews you up and spits you out. And there’s the place where one can prove one’s self.

Craig: Sure.

Chris: And it’s this rough and lawless place where somebody, you know.

Craig: Maybe a book would do it.

John: A book might do it. I mean, I think it comes back to the discussion we had with the ensemble dramedies which his that we used to go to see those movies that didn’t have a lot of high stakes in them because that was fine. We needed to go see a movie.

Craig: What the hell else were you going to do on a Saturday afternoon?

John: And so I just wonder that this non-deconstructed western that is just truly a western whether it’s actually going to get people to go out to see it on a screen.

Chris: Hell or High Water.

John: Hell or High Water—

Chris: It was contemporary but it’s a western.

John: It totally is.

Chris: It’s a bank-robbing—

John: It’s a pickup truck western and I loved it for what it was able to do. But that was not a breakout smash hit. It was a good performer, but it was not—

Chris: I think it did OK financially and it got nominated for Best Picture.

John: It did, absolutely.

Chris: Which for movies of that size is kind of the – that’s your life blood to keep in the theaters for another—

Craig: John Lee Hancock has kind of made a western in a sense with The Highwaymen.

Chris: The Highwaymen. Sure.

Craig: But, again, Netflix. I mean, and that’s where John Lee lives now. You know, those are the movies he’s going to be making now because – and here’s a guy who made, I don’t know, $14 billion for Warner Bros and Alcon with The Blind Side. And today I don’t think they make The Blind Side for theatrical. That’s what’s happened. I fear that we have lost something kind of permanently in the economics of making these movies.

And it may have literally just come down to the cost of marketing. Because—

Chris: That’s everything.

Craig: Right. I mean, Netflix, the way they market their movie is they don’t. It’s just there.

Chris: When you turn on Netflix they’re like, hey, do you want to watch this?

Craig: Correct.

John: Absolutely. And they bought every billboard in Los Angeles but that’s just for us.

Chris: But here’s the upside to that. Here’s the less than dystopian way of looking at that. In the current culture where the business is suddenly waking up to the fact that they have to diversify, this is something I experience a lot on the movies that I get called in to come in and do fixes on. The business was predicated on a male director makes a $5 million movie that makes $50 million. Let’s give him $200 million in hopes it makes $1 billion. Women were not afforded those same undeserved opportunities.

Craig: Correct.

Chris: Which they are now.

Craig: And were punished—

Chris: And were punished – exactly.

Craig: If they didn’t do the impossible.

Chris: Whereas the way to look at Netflix is Netflix could be the farm system. Now there’s many more movies being made for lower budgets creating – and I see lots of women directing television now.

Craig: Way more opportunity.

Chris: The director lists that I’m now being handed for the TV shows I’m working on are 50/50 and you’re actually looking at, oh, that person is being hired for the quality of their work, which is very encouraging. Is it possible that what we end up with is – you know how the Oscars have sort of divided into—?

Craig: Yes.

Chris: You know, there’s Oscar movies and there’s money-making movies. Now could there be there’s Netflix movies and there’s feature films? And that the feature films because of marketing requirements need to be bigger movies that make more money. And then Netflix becomes the farm system that teaches people how to do stuff.

You could live within the Netflix bubble and make a 14, a 25, and a $60 million movie.

Craig: Yeah. I think we’re there. I mean, I think that’s where we are. The real question, is there any kind – well, question number one. Is there mobility from Netflix type of movies or other TV movies to the big ones? Or do people even want to go? Because here’s the thing. I think a lot of filmmakers don’t – you know, we were talking to Mari Heller about this. Mari Heller made this incredible movie, Diary of a Teenage Girl. It was amazing. And people came to her and they’re like here’s this huge superhero movie, you want to do it? And she was like I feel like I’m supposed to, because we’re trying to advance the cause of female directors and we’re trying to get into those big seats, but I don’t want to.

I want to do this.

Chris: Well, there’s no point in making it if – you look at her and that dilemma knowing that – having nothing to do with who is directing a movie how those movies get made. The script is not ready.

Craig: Yep. [laughs]

Chris: The movie is going in three weeks.

Craig: Correct.

Chris: You’ve never done anything like this.

Craig: The actor is kind of in charge.

Chris: The producer, whose name is on a bunch of giant movies, will not be there.

Craig: Correct.

Chris: And this is all going to be your fault. Do you still want to do it?

Craig: It is really terrifying.

Chris: Correct. And again, it takes a special kind of director to get into that kind of trouble and then accept the help when they bring it in. Because you are essentially now, it’s very embarrassing. You’re at a point where you’re in way over your head. And not because – this is not hubris. They’re promised support, and then it’s just not there. So now suddenly you lose control of your movie. It takes a lot having never been through the process to know that it’s all going to be OK in the end. When the movie works you’ll still get credit.

Craig: That’s a lot to have faith in.

Chris: It’s very wounding. So I can see somebody looking at that and saying—

Craig: Nah.

Chris: But there’s the other side of that is the grass is always greener. You’re going to have people making big giant movies. Michael Bay made Pain & Gain because he really wanted to make it. Michael Bay, some part of Michael Bay – I don’t care, any filmmaker you can name at that level – some part of them wants to make their little movie about—

Craig: Their podium movie.

Chris: [laughs] They want to make their podium movie.

Craig: They want to make their podium movie.

Chris: Yes, and the same thing I would imagine is just – the Duffer Brothers have some big feature they want to do.

Craig: Big ass dumb movie they want to do.

Chris: Yes, they’ve got some big ass.

John: Well, I think Duffer Brothers are a great example because Stranger Things had an effect on popular culture which was terrific and because it was a really popular series. But if that had just been a one-off movie I don’t think it would have had that effect on popular culture—

Chris: No.

John: The way that a movie that’s released on big screens can actually bend culture in a way. So Black Panther can bend culture.

Craig: We have proof of that. Because even though I admired it, Super 8 is Stranger Things.

John: It is.

Craig: And it just doesn’t work as a movie the way Stranger Things works as a series.

John: Yeah. And that was the case where J.J. Abrams wanted to make this smaller movie.

Craig: Well, what do you say we wrap this up by heading into One Cool Things?

John: Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing this week?

Craig: I do have a One Cool Thing. I hope that you have a One Cool Thing.

Chris: I have Two Cool Things.

Craig: Well, it’s called One Cool Thing, Chris.

John: He can do two. It’s the 400th episode.

Chris: I have to pick one?

Craig: No, you can do two.

Chris: One of my Cool Things is in the other Cool Thing.

Craig: OK, fair enough.

Chris: Neither of them may be cool.

Craig: They’re nested.

Chris: They’re nerdy.

John: Kangaroos.

Craig: My One Cool Thing this week is a recommendation from grand crossword nerd Trip Payne. And it is an app called One Clue Crossword. Very clever. So you get a little – it looks like vaguely a crossword. It’s not like a proper crossword. But there are no clues except for a picture. And all of the answers—

Chris: I’m already obsessed.

Craig: Are things that are contained in that photo.

Chris: Oh, come on.

John: Oh great.

Craig: And you’ve got to figure out what goes where in the interlocking grid.

Chris: Genius.

Craig: Starts off easy, gets harder and harder and harder.

Chris: By the way to everyone listening, this is the guy who does The New York Times Crossword Puzzle in 2.5 minutes on every Monday. You are like Mr. Crossword.

Craig: No, Trip Payne could – this dude literally was once the actual champion of all crossword puzzles. He’s amazing.

Chris: But it’s you and Megan Amram and David Kwong and Rian Johnson.

Craig: Shannon Woodward and Rian Johnson and Chris Miller.

Chris: And I was a fly on the wall watching you guys and looking at my time. I can’t type that fast. I don’t know how, right?

John: I tried, too, and I can’t.

Craig: Practice.

Chris: If you gave me all the answers.

John: I couldn’t fill it in.

Chris: If you were standing over my shoulder going, “Just type this,” I couldn’t. I couldn’t do the Wednesday in two minutes.

Craig: There was a great, one of the great, great crossword constructors of all time was a guy named Henry Hook. He would make crosswords for The Boston Globe I think. And he was notoriously fast. And one guy once raced him with a crossword, except the twist was that the guy had written the crossword. It was his crossword. And he lost to Henry Hook. Yep.

Chris: That’s amazing. So don’t you think that there’s some sort of a physical hand-eye component?

Craig: You get faster as you. What can I say?

Chris: Well, I definitely – because you’re able to track it on the app. Yeah, my times have improved but I’ve hit a wall. There’s no—

Craig: Yeah, you started too late man.

Chris: That’s the problem.

Craig: You’ve got to get in there when you’re a kid.

Chris: The brain is just rusty. You’re right. I should have done it.

John: So my One Cool Thing, this winter I had a cold and so I had my humidifier out. The humidifier worked great. And I found that I was still using the humidifier because I kind of liked the noise it made.

Craig: Nice white noise.

John: White noise. But like I didn’t need to have this thing out in my room and this fan spinning. So I ended up finding a really good white noise machine. I went on the Wirecutter and picked their best white noise machine. And you know what? They were right. It’s a really good little white noise machine. It’s called The LectroFan High Fidelity White Noise Sound Machine. $46 on Amazon. It’s a small little hockey puck that makes really good sound.

And the thing I learned is that some of these machines they just have a sample that they’re playing, a sample sound. This one generates it algorithmically so it’s always completely random.

Craig: That’s really random. Because I use an app.

John: For traveling I use an app.

Craig: And the app is on a loop. And what will happen is if you’re having a bad night—

John: You’ll hear the loop.

Craig: You start hearing the loop. And now you’re F-ed.

Chris: That’s got to be like delirium.

Craig: No, it’s super bad.

Chris: Horrible. Do you have trouble sleeping?

Craig: Not the way I used to. Not the way I used to. As I get older I find that actually I’m looking forward to going to sleep. I used to dread it. And now I’m like, oh yay, I get to give up.

Chris: Ooh, it’s nighttime.

Craig: I get to quit on life and just unplug.

Chris: I never realized that insomnia was just refusing to embrace surrender.

Craig: No question. For me, insomnia was always just like do not die.

Chris: In your sleep!

Craig: In your sleep. What are your nested Cool Things?

Chris: My nested Cool Things are I brought this computer bag.

John: It’s a good-looking computer bag. It’s a black bag.

Chris: It is a black bag. It is made by a company called eBags. And you can see how there’s one strap. There’s actually two, but you can undo this and tuck it in and it becomes—

Craig: Like a briefcase.

Chris: Like a briefcase bag.

John: Nice.

Chris: And usually the two-in-one king of thing really turns me off. This is great in terms of all its many pockets. My favorite one being this rather large pocket at the bottom.

Craig: Or?

Chris: The case itself comes with a hard shell so you can store all of your cables in here. I took it out and this is where I put my toiletries when I travel. Because you have to take all of your liquids out.

Craig: Right. You’ve got to pull out that stupid clear bag.

Chris: Yes. And this bag just places you right through security.

Craig: That’s great.

Chris: It’s a great bag.

Craig: You know what? There’s a topic, by the way – traveling for writers – that we’re going to have to cover. Because god knows I’ve done it enough this year.

Chris: Oh yes.

Craig: And I got travel wired up.

John: I’ve gotten much better because I’ve done all the book tours.

Craig: Right. Exactly.

John: You just pulled something from this. So what is this?

Craig: Is that a battery?

Chris: This is not a battery. This is a laptop stand. Because writing flat on a desk – when I travel—

Craig: It’ll screw your wrist.

Chris: It screws your wrist. This is made by a company called, I hope I’m pronouncing it correctly, AViiQ. Which is how one would spell AViiQ.

Craig: Naturally AViiQ.

Chris: And for people not watching it—

Craig: That’s everyone. [laughs]

Chris: It looks like a ruler. Right? Well I’m talking – that’s not. You guys are here.

Craig: I’m not looking.

Chris: And it’s like origami. It’s made of aluminum. It unfolds.

Craig: Oh, wow, that’s great.

Chris: And feel the weight of it?

Craig: Oh my god, I’ve got to get this.

Chris: It’s like a few sheets of paper.

Craig: And this I assume is made to fit say a MacBook Pro?

Chris: I’ve had every laptop from a Pro to an Air.

John: Oh my god, it’s so light.

Chris: Everything on it. You don’t even know it’s in your bag.

Craig: That’s great.

Chris: It’s great.

Craig: AViiQ.

Chris: AViiQ. Everybody just go and look at it online. Because there’s no way to describe it where it makes any sense.

Craig: I’m buying that. I’m buying that. That’s brilliant.

Chris: OK, good. I’m glad. And by the way—

John: It was worth the two things.

Chris: This bag, this computer bag, is like $130. It’s not extremely prohibitive.

Craig: It’s not cheap, but it’s not extremely prohibitive. It’s not made of Panda skin.

Chris: Correct.

Craig: The way one would expect Chris McQuarrie to roll.

Chris: And the AViiQ thing is like $20.

Craig: I like that.

Chris: It’s been a while since I bought it.

Craig: I hear you.

Chris: All right. It’s $10,000.

John: [laughs] It’s diamond-encrusted.

Chris: Yes. It’s made of conflict medals from—

Craig: Conflict medals!

John: As we wrap up this show we should remind people that they should buy t-shirts. The Scriptnotes 400-episode t-shirts are available. They should also buy tickets to our live show coming up at the Ace Hotel.

Craig: 400.

John: We’ll have links to both of those things.

Craig: That’s like eight years of podcasting.

John: It’s a lot of podcasting.

Craig: Oh my god.

John: It’s not even counting the special episodes, of course. So, the things that aren’t part of the number sequence—

Craig: Can’t believe it. Wow.

John: Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Rajesh Naroth.

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 shorter questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

Craig: Chris McQuarrie is?

Chris: Cryptically enough @chrismcquarrie.

John: @chrismcquarrie.

Chris: I’m in the midst of a Twitter moratorium.

John: It’s a good thing.

Craig: Tweet at him anyway.

Chris: Yeah. I answer questions in DMs now.

Craig: Be disagreeable with him. He loves it.

Chris: Yeah, I like being disagreeable.

John: You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. We try to get them up about four days after the episode airs.

Some folks have started doing recaps and discussion on the screenwriting sub-Reddit. I don’t know if you’ve seen this, Craig?

Craig: No.

John: If that continues that’s great. But basically they’re just recapping what happens on the show.

Craig: Oh, I hope they recap this very moment.

John: You can find all the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net. or download 50-episode seasons at store.johnaugust.com.

And if you’re doing that you should probably check out the Scriptnotes Listener’s Guide at johnaugust.com/guide to find out which episodes our listeners recommend most. You were on Episode 300. We already have you penciled in for Episode 500.

Chris: Yes, done. I’m there.

Craig: No question. I mean, that’s our Diamond Jubilee.

Chris: OK, great. I’m there.

John: Chris McQuarrie, thank you very much.

Chris: Thank you guys.

Craig: And you know what, John? Thank you. 400 episodes.

John: It’s been nice.

Craig: Thanks man.

Links:

• Order your Scriptnotes 400 shirts, sweatshirts, and tanks (Light) and (Dark)!
• Join us for Scriptnotes LIVE on June 13th at the Ace Hotel to benefit Hollywood Heart. Buy your tickets here!
• Watch Chernobyl on HBO
• The Chernobyl Podcast with Craig and Peter Sagal
• Scriptnotes episode 300, From Writer to Writer-Director with Chris McQuarrie
• LectroFan High Fidelity White Noise Sound Machine
• One Clue Crossword
• eBags and AViiQ Portable Laptop Stand
• Find past episodes and Scriptnotes Digital Seasons are also now available!
• Check out the Scriptnotes Episode Guide
• Submit to the Pitch Session here!
• Chris McQuarrie on Twitter
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Outro by Rajesh Naroth (send us yours!)

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/notes-on-notes).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is Episode 399 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

So, this afternoon Craig and I did something different. We went over to Amblin and spoke to a group of about 30 development executives to discuss what it feels like as a writer to get notes. And to offer them suggestions for how to give notes that will actually achieve what they want.

In many ways this episode reminds me most of Episode 99 where we sat down with therapist Dennis Palumbo to talk about psychotherapy for screenwriters and the weird ways that writers process emotion. In the first half you’ll hear me and Craig sort of giving a presentation. Then we open up for discussion with the whole group. Enjoy.

Ah, so nice. So this is theoretically going to be Episode 399 of our show. 399 episodes of our show, which is crazy – crazy, crazy. And on one of these episodes Craig proposed you know what we should go in and talk to studio executives about how they give notes because we as people who get notes a lot could give them insights in how to give notes. And so Craig made this offer. Someone took us up on this offer. We went and talked to some folks at Disney.

**Craig Mazin:** Yep.

**John:** It was a good conversation. A much smaller conversation than this group. Ben, thank you for bringing us in here to talk with this larger group about our notes on notes. Because usually we’re coming in here to hear these notes and we are filled with sort of this emotional response sometimes to these notes and we’re trying to figure out how to do them.

But I thought if we talked through the process of giving notes and hearing notes we might honestly be all able to do this a little bit better. So that’s the impetus behind this presentation.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is mostly to help you guys help us. I mean, it’s always self-interest really. Because we are kind of allies, whether we realize it or not, there’s a little journey that we’re all going on to try and make something which is impossible to do, as we know. And so we are allies and that means we have to figure out how to help each other along the way. And I think sometimes in everyone’s zeal to help the opposite occurs. I won’t say what that word is. It’s hurt. You’re hurting people.

So, anyway, we know that all the intentions are good, but hopefully we can give you some practical advice just so you can hear how things filter through our minds when we have these experiences with you.

**John:** Yesterday Craig emailed me to say, “That thing we did at Disney, did we have a script? Did we have anything we were working off of?” And I said I don’t think so, I think we just winged it. He’s like, “No, no, I’m pretty sure we had some sort of script.” And then Craig texted me last night saying like, “I found it. I found the shared Google doc.” So this is the shared Google doc we’re working off.

**Craig:** Should inspire a lot of confidence in the two of us.

**John:** Yeah, absolutely. So these are the notes on our notes on notes. And it keys in with this slide show, so that’s why I was hoping we could stick a little bit on this first–

**Craig:** Yeah, let’s do it. Where should we start?

**John:** Why is it so hard to get notes? Craig?

**Craig:** Got it. So, when our work, and I include all of you – your work, everything you do – when it is exposed or critiqued we feel emotional pain. That’s common to every human being in all circumstances. I don’t think that that is a sign of weakness, even though you may have been taught that, particularly if you grew up in the ‘70s. But rather it is a sign of being human. So congratulations.

But here’s a question that might seem obvious until you really think about it. Why? Why should being criticized or critiqued make us feel emotional pain? Well, it turns out there’s a good answer. Let’s talk about a little science. This is the last bit of science you’ll have to deal with today. So Chernobyl – no – neurologists know that emotional pain doesn’t come from this part up here. So our neocortex or frontal lobe, this is all of our rational human thinking/processing/reasoning brain. Emotional pain comes from this little lump underneath called the limbic system. I can’t get there because it’s underneath. But it’s basically an inheritance from rats and lizards and birds. And all it really does is control our fight or flight response.

And this fight or flight response happens before the human smart part of our brain even knows what’s happening. A little bit like if you touch a hot stove your spinal reflex will have your hand moving back before the rest of your brain goes, ow, that’s hot. Well, similarly when you get negative threatening input the limbic system is going to fire off messages before the front of your brain even has a chance to process what has happened. And unfortunately the limbic system only has one alarm message to send. It’s very stupid. Again, it’s from rats and birds. And the message it sends to you, to the front of your brain is you are in danger of dying. That’s the only phrase it knows. You’re in danger of dying.

So, start fighting or starting fleeing. Now, that may sound a little dramatic, but if so–

**John:** Craig, it sounds a little dramatic.

**Craig:** I can make it more dramatic.

**John:** But honestly I’ve had that response to notes in a room where I felt like the floor was collapsing underneath me. And so therefore I have to do something. I have to take an action right now which is not just sitting and listening.

**Craig:** Yeah. Another writer we know told me a story once that in the middle of a notes meeting she just asked if she could take a break to go to the bathroom and then she vomited. And then she came back. This is – I understand this.

Here’s what’s happening. When you’re writing or directing or creating something you’re creating a kind of external expression of yourself. We put ourselves into these things. And what you’re doing is essentially recreating the contents of your mind on page or on screen. And the more you care the better you are at it frankly. The more you invest of your own humanity and passion and love, the more enmeshed you become with it. It becomes hard to figure out where you stop and it starts.

If you have kids, and I don’t know, it’s a pretty young crowd, but if you do have children you will understand this. The children are not you, but if they are threatened well then you will feel fear and pain and adrenaline. The limbic system is pounding its alarm system. You made the so they are you. Rationally we understand that the script isn’t us, but the limbic system sees no difference at all.

**John:** Yeah, it’s sort of the mama bear syndrome. You see your cub being threatened and therefore you must protect your cub. And so how do you get past that sense of like I must protect this thing that is partly me that is in danger.

**Craig:** Yeah. And to try and connect it a little bit to what you guys do, if you’re not also writing things, I want you think of how you feel when somebody criticizes something that is inherent to your identity or your being. There they are. I want you to think about how you feel when somebody criticizes your appearance. Your weight. Your sexuality. Your race. I want you to think about how you feel when someone essentially says you’re not good enough the way you are. I’m talking about your parents basically.

That’s why you’re here in Hollywood. You’re not good enough the way you are. Here’s a bunch of things that are completely wrong with you. Let me enumerate them and go into detail. Here’s what you should be instead. And please listen carefully.

Well, when these things happen it’s quite likely you’re going to want to run out of the room or wring their neck. It’s fight or flight. And in these instances now switching back to writers when they begin to feel emotional pain writers will get angry, they will get sullen, they will get argumentative. They’ll get snippy or passive-aggressive. Does any of this sound familiar? Have you seen this happening? It’s fight or flight.

**John:** From the writer’s perspective, this sort of is a natural reaction. They feel like they’re under attack. From the outsider’s perspective it’s like why are they being so weird about all of this. We all have the same goal. We’re trying to make a better movie, a better pilot. We’re trying to – theoretically rowing in the same direction. Why are they acting so weird?

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s actually a great sign. I know it’s annoying to deal with in the moment. If you’re dealing with a writer who is like, oh yes, who is reacting to your notes as if they didn’t write the script at all, that’s a psychopath. And also probably a bad writer.

But John is absolutely right. That the irony is all of that emotional pain and the response to that emotional pain has nothing to do with making the movie better. And this is where writers kind of start to circle and cycle a bit because the more emotional pain we feel the worse these meetings and encounters get, which leads to worse interaction, which leads to more emotional pain. And we could even start to become viewed as the D word. Difficult.

And it’s hard because the front of your brain is saying, “Hey, they’re going to start thinking of you as difficult.” But underneath there’s this little blurb saying, “Kill them.” And that’s a rough one to correspond. Yes, you will look at it from your side as somebody trying to make some sort of intellectual or angry defense of what they’ve done, to deny what you’re saying, to essentially negate everything you are putting into this. But that’s not what’s happening. It’s just somebody who is terrified that they’re about to die and they’re trying to stay alive, whether you realize it or not.

So, John, how do we do this better for us and for them? Can we get into some practicals?

**John:** Let’s do some practicals. Let’s talk about some dos and some don’ts, which are almost always going to be sort of opposite reflections of the natural instinct versus what’s probably most helpful at the moment.

So let’s start with owning an opinion. And so when you have an opinion and you’re sharing an opinion, really take possession of that opinion. Really feel it. Have it be a meaningful opinion to you that you think will actually improve the project. Not just an opinion you’re repeating because you’re supposed to be passing it along.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, that’s essentially why you have your jobs. You have your jobs because somebody says, “Look, you’ve got good taste. I like the way you respond and react to things.” So it’s really important that you own that opinion. But what you should not do is convert your opinion into a fact. It’s OK. Opinions are good enough. It’s just good enough. I think sometimes there’s this game that happens in these rooms. You’ve probably watched it or maybe even participated. It’s called the battle of examples.

Here’s my opinion. And someone says, “No, because they did that in this movie and it didn’t work.” And then someone says, “But, they did it in this movie and it did work.” Someone says, “No, that movie is different.” Someone says, “No, because of this.” No because of this. Everyone is trying to [empiricize] an opinion.

Here’s the deal. The first person to do something well in a movie that works – that’s original and they win. And the first person to do something poorly in a movie that doesn’t work – that’s stupid and it was a bad idea. It doesn’t matter what happened before. There is no way to turn your opinions into fact. You might as well just say it’s how I feel. That actually is good enough.

**John:** Yeah. And when you try to make your subjective opinion into an objective fact or presented as an objective fact we immediately go defensive because we can see logically that’s not actually an objective fact so then we start to doubt everything else you’re saying, too. So saying your opinion as an opinion, as your subjective take on a situation, is great. And it also reminds the writer that they’re being hired for their subjective opinions, for their subjective skills and sort of negotiating this emotional terrain. So keeping it in the realm of opinion is really helpful.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** A do. Do share your reactions and your questions. You are often one of the very first audiences for a script so share what you felt. Share what you felt as you were reading through it because as we’ve been writing a thing we’ve been living with this thing for months and so we don’t have clean eyes on stuff. You guys do have clean eyes. So phrasing what you find in what your first read was, what it felt like to you to be sitting in an audience watching it on the screen of your mind is really helpful because particularly when there’s things that aren’t clear or places you thought the story was going that it wasn’t going that’s great for us to hear.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you guys have all been in focus groups in screenings and there are people in those focus groups who say when this happened I felt this, but when this happened I felt this. And we think, OK good, we’re getting our NRG money’s worth. And then there’s that guy who, you know, “Actually,” because he goes to cinema school and he’s thought about this during the screening. You’re like that’s useless. What we need are true honest human reactions, right?

So what you want to do is hold on to those for sure, but try to avoid announcing the conclusions of your reactions. Because that’s where you’re sort of short-circuiting a natural process. If something worries you in a script as you’re reading it or confuses you or makes you annoyed or bores you that’s really valuable. We need to hear that. Tell me where it got annoying. Like right here, or this is where I got confused. Where it becomes less useful is when people say to us as writers, “You know what, she’s too angry. This character is too angry. She’s too mean. She’s a turn-off.” That’s a conclusion. And we don’t know quite what to do with it.

And what it really sounds like is, “And that’s a fact and somehow you missed that.” When what is useful is to say, “I don’t understand why in this scene she’s so harsh with him given the circumstances. Can you talk about what you were going for because what I felt was put off?” That’s a discussion. That’s a conversation.

**John:** Absolutely. Because now you’re talking about what your reaction was to something that you read and we can discuss that moment. We can discuss what our intention was behind that rather than she’s too mean. We can’t do anything with that. There’s nothing we can write that fixes “she’s too mean.”

**Craig:** You’re kind of just inviting us to say, “Well, I don’t think she is.” And now we get into an argument over a fact that is not a fact at all.

**John:** A suggestion, speak towards the passion. What you’re interested in. Speak towards what you want. Even if it’s in the context of criticism. So always be discussing where you want things to be going rather than sort of where things are right now that aren’t exactly what you want. So speak towards what is getting you excited about the project, not what is turning you off.

**Craig:** Yeah. You wanted to do this in the first place for some reason. Something excited you about it. If the script isn’t there say, “Listen, when I got to this place I wanted it to go here. How can we get it there?” That’s a thing where you can move toward.

What we really don’t know how to process as writers is how to write away from something. There is really no way to write away from a thing. So, here’s an example. Don’t make this scene so talky. OK. You’ve probably felt that a lot of times. Don’t make this scene so talky. This scene is way too talky. That’s writing away from something. Don’t bother with all this plot language. There’s too much plot language. Less. That’s writing away from something.

And these notes are generally born of fear. That’s not a knock on you guys. That’s really useful. I mean, that fear is necessary to kind of evaluate this material. You’re scared that an audience, to whom you’re accountable to, is going to get bored, or turned off, or confused. Your fear is completely warranted. Just please keep it to yourself because we are drowning in our own fear and we cannot handle your fear as well.

And also to help us write towards something just re-contextualize these things. For instance, OK, this scene is too talky, please write it less talky. Write away from that. Not as helpful. But what you could say is, “These two characters have this great vibe in this scene where they say almost nothing, when they’re kind of just reading each other’s minds because it’s clear that their relationship works like that. They don’t need as many words as two other people might. And so they’re intimating things like for instance this point.

This scene here, how can we move this scene more toward that? Then the writer goes I know how to do that. It’s not even about buttering them up and saying, “Look, you did it really good here.” It’s not that. It’s just giving them something to write toward.

**John:** Absolutely. And you’re giving them characters to write towards. In all your conversations talk about characters and talk about the choices the characters are making. Talk about it in terms of these characters being living creatures within the universe of your movie or your TV show. And what they are literally doing. And so that way you let the focus of choice less on the writer and more on what the characters are doing.

**Craig:** Yep. Because characters are talking. Characters are boring. Characters are beautiful. Characters are interesting. Characters are illogical. What we weirdly don’t know how to work with effectively is discussion of the scene or the script, which seems odd. But the scene or the script is this other thing that is a function of characters. So, when we hear talk about scenes in scripts and stories we’re weirdly jarred out of the mindset, the writing mindset, where we solve problems. Because where we generally solve problems is in the realm of character. Well, OK, if this isn’t working how can I make it a better function of this character? Or how can I change this character to get more like something else?

If all you do – if literally all you do – is write the notes as you would normally write them and then say now let’s just funnel this through a filter of characterize it. Let’s just put all these notes now within the context of character notes, you’re already going to be literally 50% closer to getting what you want.

**John:** When you’re giving notes, give the notes that can lead to meaningful changes in the screenplay. So here’s an example of the most meaningful note I ever got on a screenplay. And so this was right here at Amblin. It was Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen. I was up in their office, they were in one of the bungalows. And it was the second draft of the script. And in the script I’d written Will tells a story of how his father died, but he tells it at the funeral rather than telling it to Edward Bloom while he was in the hospital bed. So their note was what would happen if you told that story to Edward rather than about Edward. And it was just – I did have that immediate like, “oh no, they want me to change something,” but then the light went on and I was like, “oh, that is just so much better.” That is a meaningful change. It is not a huge change, it’s not a huge amount of work for me to do, but it is a huge change in sort of how this all works. And it was just – it was a fantastic note. And it was a meaningful note that changed a lot of things in the script.

There were other small things which wouldn’t have been as impactful. So be thinking about what is the thing that opens up possibilities.

**Craig:** Quality. Not quantity. Here is another kind of note which you and I have seen. This is an actual page note that I received from an actual studio. “Let’s cut Elena saying please at the end of this scene.” Well that’s just stupid. And it’s stupid for so many reasons.

But the most – I guess the most prominent reason is anybody that has spent any time on set or in an editing room knows that of all the resources that are required to make motion pictures and television the amount that is expended to add one more word to the end of a scene is zero. You are already there. That’s dumb. And when we get notes like that it kind of starts to undermine our confidence.

It may be that you think I really don’t like that she says please there at the end. Fine. When it comes time for the editing room if people have still left it in you make that argument there. That’s a meaningful note in the editing room. But it is not a meaningful note when you’re writing the script.

**John:** Yeah. And there’s some meaningful notes that are meaningful on set but not in the script. So this is an example from me. “Page 71, Aladdin’s line at the middle of the page, ‘I want to show her I’m someone worth knowing,’ feels a bit too direct and declarative. Can we find a way to say this with more subtext?”

I get why they gave the note. They were trying to be specific and kind of creative and helpful, but it had no relation to the actual we made. There is not a single moment in Aladdin that is anywhere near this subtle or with this kind of subtext. I can guarantee you.

**Craig:** I mean, that’s already way more sub textual than the rest of it.

**John:** Oh yes. Oh yes. It’s a very declarative movie. And this was like an actor line reading. Honestly it was trying to get way too detailed on a moment that was not – we just weren’t at that place. And so trying to use really fine pens on something where like we’re still kind of at Sharpie level here. And that was the wrong note for the moment.

**Craig:** We understand, by the way, that in many ways the notes process is your last attempt to exert control over this material before other people come and kind of start doing things that you cannot control. And we know that that is terrifying. But just be aware that controlling the script is really a thin substitute for controlling the shooting of the script and the editing of the script and the performance of the script and the direction of the script. It’s not going to get you what you want.

So the real thing is how can you work together with the writer to build in those protections so that you do get what you want?

**John:** How do we set up the world of the movie where this note makes sense? That’s sort of the macro.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Do – present a unified set of notes. Try to give one set of notes to a writer rather than three conflicting sets of notes to a writer.

**Craig:** He said try.

**John:** Try.

**Craig:** Try.

**John:** And the converse is don’t pretend you’re giving one unified set of notes because that’s even more frustrating.

**Craig:** That’s the worst. Because sometimes you will get like the three groups of notes. They don’t overlap whatsoever so you are essentially paralyzed. By the way, paralyzed after reading three different documents explaining why essentially you’re stupid in different ways. So then you call up, say can you guys just agree on why I’m stupid. That would be fantastic. And then they send you an agreement of why you’re stupid and then they call you afterwards and say, “No, no, no, that’s not why you’re stupid. You’re stupid because of this, not because of that.”

And so it goes. Again, you’re trying to do your jobs. And we know that your jobs are difficult. We understand that there’s a lot going on back there. We don’t know what to do. We are – I mean, I will tell you this much: we’re naïve about how the situation works back here. And you want us naïve. You don’t want us thinking about that stuff. We just don’t get it. So if there are battles to be fought and battles to be won, fight them and win them, but do them before you get to us. Because it just stops us dead.

**John:** When you make a note stand by your note. If you truly have an opinion on material it shouldn’t change based on outside opinions or based on what worked last week at the box office. And so we’re going to believe your opinions if your opinions are consistent through time rather than they feel variable. Because if it feels like it’s a moving target it’s tempting for us to just kind of wait and see where the target is next.

**Craig:** It takes effort on our part to get past our pain to absorb the value of your reactions and your opinions, your honest thoughts and your honest opinions. Then we do. And we take them in and we become enmeshed with you and with your opinions. And then someone else comes along, like a director, or an actor, and they say, “Nah, what if we did this instead?” And you say, OK. And it’s all gone, like that, in an instant.

I’m not accusing any of you individually of doing this. But it has happened to me many, many times. And you start to think well then why am I ever listening to you about anything. If you’re not going to stand up for this, if you’re going to be so fastidious and insistent and specific with me, and then so flippant and casual once somebody else comes along, why bother?

**John:** Yeah. And I’ll say that sometimes it just naturally does happen that a director or some other powerful person has a note that directly conflicts with everything else you’ve been trying to do. In those moments acknowledge it to us privately. Otherwise it feels like we’re being gaslighted. That this was all – they never said that thing before. No, they did set it. This really is a change and this is why we’re making the change.

**Craig:** This is a really important point because I think sometimes it’s a natural instinct to think if I call up a writer and I say to them, “You know that thing that I was really on you about that I finally convinced you of that you believed in too that I just rolled over on completely?” If I call that writer up and admit that I’m going to look weak to them. I assure you it is the opposite. You only look weak to us when you pretend it didn’t happen. We know it happened. We know it happened. And we know why it happened. And if you call and say, “I fought as best I could but this is the deal, so I’m saying my powder for another bigger fight. And I apologize, but this is how it’s going.” We get it. And then we love you again.

**John:** Indeed. A do – do make it your goal to love the script. And that your notes are on a path towards loving it even more. The converse would be don’t attempt to win the who-can-complain-more game, which is a thing that happens. Sometimes it has happened in rooms where there’s multiple people all trying to fix a problem. Or sometimes it’s not a thing that I’ve written but it’s a project that I’m being brought in to rewrite and it just becomes this who can bitch most loudly about this thing that’s a problem.

**Craig:** Yeah. A little bit like those nature movies when the gazelle gets brought down and then all the hyenas come in and it’s just like fun at that point. It’s happened. The dam is broken. Let us tear this thing apart. Obviously if you’re doing it to a writer and she’s written something and everybody in the room is tearing it apart that’s incredibly traumatic. And it also begins to feel cruel.

The whole point is that we’re trying to improve something. If the point of the meeting is let’s all try and outdo each other to see who hates this more, why are you having the meeting? Just fire her and move on. You know?

But if you are going to have that meeting then you have to sort of get back to first principles. Why we loved you. Why we hired you. What we hope for you. And it may be that she can’t get there. But she’s definitely not going to get there if the tenor is a kind of one-upmanship of critique. Somebody among you must be the advocate in one way or the other.

**John:** Do ask writers how they like to receive notes. And so what is most helpful for the writer. And so you may have a process that’s your normal process and maybe that’s going to work great, but ask them first. And if there’s a way that you can actually communicate with them better try doing it their way.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, some of us like conversations. My preferred mode is a conversation. I don’t actually read the printed out notes. Just totally admitting it. I don’t read them. It took me a while also to realize that they’re not real. That they are a representation of a lot of – like some sort of power-brokered consensus among a lot of people. And that eventually you get to these notes and you’re like well this is a weird one. And then someone goes, “Yeah, none of us really agreed with that, but X wanted it, so it goes in.”

And the reading of it just for my brain when I just flip through and it just becomes like mush and it doesn’t work. But if I have a conversation, if I can see your eyes, and I can feel your emotional response, because those things are so dry. They’re so dry. Then I feel like I’m getting somewhere and I can have that conversation and you’ll actually get way further with me just talking than handing me the document.

But other people do not get – like the face-to-face thing tears them apart and they run into the bathroom and throw up and they really do need that document to kind of ease them into the process.

**John:** And also because we’re writers we will dwell on a specific word choice far too much. And so “it feels gloomy,” I’m like gloomy? Gloomy? What does he mean by gloomy? Foggy London gloomy? And so I end up getting on the phone and I’m like what do you mean by gloomy? And he’s like, “Well it feels like serious.” And I’m like, oh, serious, OK, serious. That’s not gloomy. It’s like you went through your thesaurus and found gloomy because you didn’t want to say serious, but–

**Craig:** Yeah. You’re bad at wordsing.

**John:** Yeah. You are bad at wordsing. So, that’s why actually conversation is so much more helpful usually than a document.

Finally, do reread your last set of notes before you get the next set of notes before you give the next set of notes because we will and we’ll remember and it’s not a good sign. But at the same time don’t feel like you have to defend your old notes with the new ones. If they’re bad ideas don’t feel like you have to defend them. You can move forward. Just make sure you’re moving forward in a consistent direction.

**Craig:** You’re allowed to be inconsistent. You’re allowed to change your mind. Just don’t pretend that you’re not. That’s the most important thing. It’s the gaslighting factor that makes us feel like we’re going insane. Just say it. I changed my mind. I change my mind all the time. I change my mind while I’m writing. I’ll do an outline and then I’ll do the script and some things are going to change because I changed my mind. It’s totally fine.

But if I was like, “No, that’s what I said I was always going to do.” What? It’s insane.

And, you know, that will kind of get you out of a lot of problems, too. It’s also OK to admit that you made a mistake in notes. Very frequently what will happen is because we know the script better than you do just because we wrote it – that’s not a knock on you – it will say, “On page 86 she says this, but she couldn’t have known that because she never ran into so-and-so.” Yes, she did, on page 5. You just missed it.

“Oh, OK. You know what? My bad.” I’ve been in meetings where they’ve been like, “Yeah, but not really.” And I’m like we’re going to change the movie because you skimmed? Nah. That’s bad policy. Yeah.

**John:** Let’s imagine some perfect notes. So if we could ever see some perfect notes in the world they might describe a movie that you want to green light, not a draft you want to read. And that’s really helpful for you talking in general about notes, it’s like always talk about the movie, don’t talk about the script. The script is a way to get to a movie, but don’t get so focused on this 12-point Courier. It’s always talking about the vision you have for a movie that’s going to be in a theater.

**Craig:** Yeah. I refer to it as the document. And I know that it’s tempting in those meetings to talk about the script, the script, the script, but in every other meeting you have you will talk about the movie. In casting, in pre-production, in budget, in hiring directors, in lighting, locations, movie, movie, movie, movie, movie. You sit in the room with the writer, document. The writer will go along with that completely. The writer will follow you right down that document hole and perfect a document. That’s not what you want the writer to be doing.

What you want the writer to be doing is to helping you perfect a movie, the theory of a movie, the imagination of a movie.

**John:** Perfect notes celebrate what’s working and not just what works in the first paragraph of notes.

**Craig:** Congratulations.

**John:** Yes, congratulations–

**Craig:** On a terrific first draft.

**John:** There’s so much stuff we love here.

**Craig:** However, we have a few remaining concerns.

**John:** Yes. I have to tell you, you know, 20 years at this and very rarely do I get notes that midway through will say like, “This is a fantastic moment. We’re so happy with this scene.” And they may feel that. There’s moments that they’ll independently say it, but they don’t ever acknowledge it in a notes session about how much they love a moment. Telling us what you love about a thing is so helpful because it lets us steer the ship towards something. And lets us know that we’re not crazy. We actually were able to do something good here.

**Craig:** This may be the biggest piece of advice for you guys. Because it does two things at once. Obviously we are desperately craving love and attention that we didn’t get from our parents. And so you can help provide that. In a very real way in the psychological phenomenon of transference you become our parents in this process and we are desperate for your approval, no matter age we are. No matter what level we are.

So, dropping those things in the middle makes us feel good. But John is absolutely correct when he says us knowing what you love is just as useful to us from a writing towards point of view as us knowing what you aren’t responding to because now we get like, OK, there is an aesthetic that we are forming together as part of our relationship. We had an opinion, you had an opinion, we’re finding points of commonality. And from there we make more points of commonality. And the notes process somewhere along the line just became a Negative Nelly list. Which is fine. We’re not running away from Negative Nelly. But we need to know Positive Patty because if we don’t all you really are doing again is writing away from something.

**John:** Finally, perfect notes inspire the writer to explore and create. The times in my career when I’ve had just great notes I’m excited to get back to that next draft because I’m seeing all the new things I can do. I don’t have the answers to things, because the notes didn’t provide answers. They provided really good questions that made me want to explore new things. And they got me past some of my hang-ups. They got me to realize like oh you know what if I did cut all of that then I’d have this space to do all this other stuff. They got me excited to build new things. And that’s what notes should ultimately do is it’s a plan for what is possible to create going forward.

**Craig:** There’s a phrase in family therapy, “Do you want a relationship or do you want to be right?” And that’s kind of how it works with this. You want a relationship. And you can be right, but through the lens of the relationship. If your goal at the end of a notes meeting is to make sure the writer has heard every single thing that you want to change, shape, control, move around, or alter, you haven’t done it right.

Your goal at the end of that notes meeting should be that the writer is excited to get back to the computer to make this new thing better. And that takes effort. And it also means you’re going to have to kind of sublimate some of your needs and your desires, too. But just keep in mind in the emotional tally sheet we’re taking it much harder than you are. Even though you’re the guys that paid all the money. We’re still emotionally taking it harder than you.

**John:** So this is not meant to be just a lecture. It’s meant to be a discussion and a conversation.

**Craig:** I wanted a lecture.

**John:** Yeah, he wanted a lecture.

**Craig:** I’m all about the lecture.

**John:** So now we’d love to talk with you guys about sort of about your response, questions you have, push back on anything you want to push back on. Who would like to ask a question or raise a hand? A silent group.

**Craig:** We also may have just been perfect.

**John:** Yeah, it’s entirely possible.

**Craig:** Oh, no, not perfect.

**Male Voice:** What do you find the note that comes up again and again most frequently in a general sense that you guys either don’t like or you don’t know what to do with? And I know that you’ve given some examples here, but something more specific that, you know, the scene isn’t working, or yeah. Go head.

**Craig:** The, and I think we’ve said this on the show before, the note I hate the most, the note I respect the least, and the note I think should be stricken from everyone’s development vocabulary is “this character isn’t likeable enough.” Good. Those are the good ones. Every movie I’ve ever loved was full of unlikeable characters. We are here – are we allowed to say where we’re doing this? We’re recording this at Amblin, the home of Steven Spielberg. Go watch Jaws and find me the likeable character. It’s wonderful.

So, it just has to go. And I know that it comes from places. Marketing has wormed their way into things and so on and so forth. But just fight back. Fight back as hard as you can. And if you can’t, if you lose that battle, then preface that note by saying, “I am so sorry to say this and I don’t believe it myself, but I am forced to say this. This character isn’t ‘likeable’ enough.”

And it’s particularly bad when it’s about a female character. I find that at that point we’re starting to drift into the whole like trope, you know, she’s got to be, you know. That one.

**John:** My biggest one is probably “faster.” Basically like can we get to this moment faster and basically like can you not do all the stuff that you’re doing to set up the world. And somehow have everything already be set up so we can get to this moment faster. And I think so often because we are rereading scripts and rereading scripts again we know what’s going to happen, and so therefore we’re always anticipating the thing happening and we forget that for an audience watching it they have none of that information. And so they are coming into it at a speed and they have to get that information.

So, I would say that we are constantly in push to get to those moments faster and faster and faster in ways that are not helpful usually for the story.

**Craig:** Yeah. The classic one is the first act is too long. And this ending is a bit abrupt. And I’m always like the first act should be longer and the third act should be shorter. I love first acts in movies. It’s when the people are meeting and I’m discovering them and this world is being built. And when I get to the climax I just want them to blow stuff up as fast as they can and get me back to the relationship because I know like, ugh, [croaking noise]. So yeah, rushing the first act in particular, I think try and fight that one as best you can. Because it does translate into movies where you end up reshooting because people don’t connect with the characters.

**John:** Funny how that works. Yeah. Moments you cut out. Other questions.

**Female Voice:** When someone gives you a note of like this is the bad pitch.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Female Voice:** Is that a more or less preferable note in general, and also do you prefer having more specific direction or the response and then you guys decide?

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Great questions. So I would say the bad pitch or the bad version, so the bad version is this, I can hear that and understand why it’s being said that way, which is basically don’t do this thing that I’m telling you to do because I know how incredibly cloying it is or how it is just clunky. But the effect that I’m hoping we could get to is this, so that I can take that really well. Some people will bristle more at it, but I’m actually fine with the bad version.

It’s kind of like giving an actor a line reading. You’ve got to be a little bit mindful of that. In terms of specifics, specifics help if they are giving – if it’s specific to what your response was. But if it’s trying to provide a solution then we’re going to be like then why do you need us in a certain way. So it’s trying to be really clear on sort of why you are feeling this way, you’re feeling it as you’re reading it, but not sort of like therefore this must happen.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that that’s exactly right. It’s a little bit writer dependent. I mean, the only thing I’ll caution about the bad version is it’s the bad version for a reason. And so John’s right. You’re trying to get at kind of an effect, but just make sure that you’re policing yourself that the effect that you’re not going for is also just bad. In other words, sometimes it’s like, god, that would really solve this here and also make it boring and same-y. Right?

And for suggestions, I find that if someone says, “Here’s a solve, and take it or leave it if you want, but maybe in my proposed solve you find some interesting thing to take off and blah, blah, blah,” that’s great. If it sort of comes down as, “Here’s what I want you to do. Do this and this and this.” Then you begin to just lose your will to live.

**John:** You feel like a typist rather than a writer and that’s frustrating.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** More questions?

**Craig:** Yes, come on down.

**Male Voice:** Honestly, I kind of want to dive in more to the likeable character question, because I think I gave that note yesterday maybe.

**Craig:** Of course you did.

**Male Voice:** And it’s not that I want a perfect Disney princess as the protagonist, but I usually will be feeling that when I’m not connecting to the character. I’m not engaged in their journey.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. And so there is a mistake that happens in our brains when we are not connecting with a character and that character has qualities that are difficult or confrontational or testing we associate it with that. But those aren’t the problems. I love a great villain. I feel deeply connected to great villains. Like I watched The Little Mermaid again the other day and Ursula is the greatest.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** She’s not likeable. I mean, she’s a bad octopus lady.

**John:** You understand exactly why she’s doing what she’s doing.

**Craig:** Correct. And so the issue is how do you find a way to make that person’s unlikableness relatable. Relatable is not likeable. Relatable means that I understand it. You know, a lot of Melissa McCarthy characters work this way. And we just talked about this with Mari Heller. She was on the show talking about How Can I Ever Forgive You. Is there an Ever in there? No. How Can I Forgive You? Can I–

**John:** Can You Ever Forgive Me?

**Craig:** Can You Ever Forgive Me? Will she ever forgive me? And the entire process was managing someone who is not likeable. And about finding moments where you can relate to the not likeableness because all of us go through our lives having moments. I mean, unless one of you is just a saint everybody has moments. And so you don’t want to push things into likeable. You want to push things towards relatable, meaning make me understand and sympathize with the conditions that make her or him unlikeable.

**John:** Yeah. Mari Heller was also talking about Diary of a Teenage Girl and how important it was for that character to have a voiceover at the very start, or not even a voiceover, where you’re picturing the world through her eyes so you can see how she perceives herself before she tells you that she’s having an affair with her mother’s boyfriend. So, you know, that is an unlikeable character thing to do is to have that relationship, but we loved her before we sort of knew that thing that was happening. And so it sounds like what you’re describing in this note that you said unlikeable is that you were having a hard time connecting with the character to see the movie through that character’s eyes and to really want to sign up for the journey with that character.

And so Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day is very unlikeable.

**Craig:** The worst.

**John:** But also funny.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And because he’s funny you’re willing to go on this journey with him and sort of see him grow and change. So, phrasing things as not being able to click into them is I think going to be much more helpful to than saying unlikeable because then a writer is going to be like, “Well, can I just spackle something on them? Can I just spray a little likeability perfume on them so that they’ll pass the test?”

**Craig:** Or sand off the edges. Unsharpen the pencil.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** And then everything just gets sort of generic and soft. And we just lost interest.

**John:** Or you give them a puppy to make them likeable.

**Craig:** Give them a puppy.

**John:** Give them a puppy. Other questions or things you want to push on?

**Craig:** You can tell us we’re wrong. We’re OK with that. You can give us notes.

Yeah, so the question is what do you do when you’re developing a comedy and people, meaning the producers, the executives, don’t like the jokes versus the story. So that comes down to sense of humor. And there is no note. The note is we don’t think you’re funny. The note is you’re fired, I’m pretty sure.

Now, there is obviously a lot that goes into a comedy, but I’ve always felt from the work that I’ve done that if the plot and characters aren’t connected inextricably with the sense of humor and the comedy and the jokes and the set pieces then just something is wrong. I don’t know if you can properly write a comedy using somebody over here dumping character and plot sauce on it and someone over here doing the jokes.

I mean, I’m sure you guys have been in a lot of those roundtables where we do like the punch-up. And everyone just laughs for six hours and maybe get one usable joke out of there because none of it is connected to anything. It’s just floating on top. Like that goop on top of soup. So, I think in that case the note is you’re fired. I just feel so bad about saying that, but I mean why torment somebody. They’re not going to become funny the way you want them to be. I don’t think that’s how it works.

**John:** No. The other thing to remember about comedy is that if you’re reading the same script ten times, 15 times, it’s going to stop being funny. And nothing changed about the jokes, it’s just that it’s not fresh to you anymore. And comedy is about surprise and unexpected twists and characters doing things you couldn’t expect. And once you expect them it’s not funny anymore.

I’ve been to so many test screenings where suddenly the audience is laughing, they’re like, oh that’s right that was a joke. I completely didn’t remember that that was a funny thing, but that’s a joke apparently. And that absolutely happens.

One of the most edifying experiences for me was I did the Broadway version of Big Fish and I’d have to swap out jokes from one run to the next run to the next run. And you’d just see like what gets a laugh and what doesn’t get a laugh. And you just don’t know until you try it. And that’s the hardest thing about comedy. You won’t know if that script just in 12-point Courier is funny until you get it on its feet and sort of see it with people. That’s why if you can get a reading together that’ll help.

**Craig:** I will say for comedy features that generally speaking the people that write them are technicians. And so they’re way more concerned about getting laughs than you guys are. Way more concerned. I mean, every first screening of a comedy I’ve ever done I’ve gone with a Xanax in my pocket, right here, and I’ve had to take it a couple of times because when you’re not getting laughs it’s the worst feeling in the world. So, partly I would say if they have a track record trust the track record. If they’ve made people laugh in a dark room before, they’re going to make people laugh again.

You may not necessarily see the connection from the page to the room but they’re working it and they know what they’re doing in theory. So, some of it is an act of faith. Which is scary.

**John:** So the question is what are the best practices for when a writer is brought on to rewrite a different project. How can you set them up for success as an executive? So what I always tell writers who are being brought on to a project is if at all possible talk to the previous writer. And that way you can sort of know where the bodies are buried. What things were tried that didn’t work? It’s a cleaner handoff. It won’t always be possible. Sometimes it’s not a happy situation and it’s just not going to be realistic.

But for you as an executive who is like bringing in a new writer to the project I think having a discussion about some of the things that have happened before, but most importantly is where you see this headed and sort of what the overall goal is and what the intention is. Again, talking about what the movie is going to be rather than what the script is right now. And the times that I’ve come on to rewrite projects where it’s gone well I could take a look at the script and say like I can see what the intentions are here. I can also see where there was a bunch of just crud that built up over time. A lot of my job is just to scrape away the crud and get you back to what the clean movie of it is and make it all read better so you can see like, oh wait, we had a really good movie here and I couldn’t see it anymore because so much stuff had been built on top of it.

**Craig:** Yeah. When a movie works it all seems just intentional, like it just fell out of a camera in one big chunk. And there it is and it’s done. And sometimes when you arrive as a rewriter what you’re looking at is a script that’s more like, you know, the way the city looks in Blade Runner. It’s like a city built on top of a city with a thing that’s sticking out this way. And it doesn’t look intentional at all. Nor will it ever look intentional. And it has to be kind of torn down.

One thing that helps me when I come in is an understanding that the people involved are aware that they’ve gone wrong. I mean, unless it’s one draft – unless it’s one and done, and even in that case there has to be some shared culpability for kind of it just didn’t work. We’ve made mistakes. We as a group have made mistakes. There is no shame in that. And being able to say, “You know what? We think our mistake is this, but what do you think our mistake is? And we definitely shouldn’t have done this, and what do you think we should do?” That’s all fine and good.

But the dangerous thing is when you come in, the jobs that I will routinely turn down are ones where people say, “It’s just two weeks. We just need two weeks.” And I go you do not. You need all of this – there’s no way to – “Oh, we just have to fix the first act. That’s it.” What? Oh, we’re going to change the first act and everything – all we have to do with this house is fix the foundation. That’s all we’ve got to do. That’s all we’ve got to do. The rest of it will stay just fine. We’re just going to undermine everything and it will magically float and then we’ll put…

No. And so owning it a little bit I think and just being honest about the work that’s going to be required and thinking about your rewriter as a craftsperson. You know, like if a plumber says to me, “Look, I could do this, but you don’t want me to do this,” then I go, you’re right, I don’t. Don’t do the thing that you don’t think I should do. Let us be plumbers. If we say, “You need to do this the right way,” and then you go, “OK, do it the right way.”

**John:** Sir?

**Craig:** OK, so the question is how do you breakup with someone? It’s coming to an end. You can’t continue working with the writer. You would love to. That was your intention. But it has to end. What’s the sort of best way to end it and still stay in a relationship and maybe something in the future will happen?

**John:** The best example I can give you is Dick Zanuck. So Dick Zanuck produced a zillion things but the first time I met him was on Big Fish. And I remember he called me on Dark Shadows. And he called to say, “John, I’m so sorry to tell you but Tim and Johnny decided to bring on a different writer to do this next pass. These are the things that they said they want me to do. I talked with them about it, but I wanted to make sure you heard it from me before you heard it from anybody else.”

And he was so awesome and such a gentleman. I was upset and he let me be upset and angry, but I wasn’t upset and angry with him. I was upset and angry with the situation and sort of the stuff that was going on. But I would have willingly worked on another movie with him tomorrow because he was so straightforward with me about what was going on.

What kills you is when you’re just ghosted. Or when you find out from somebody else. When Craig texts me and says like, “I can’t believe they hired this writer.” I’m like, oh, on that thing that I thought I was still on. That’s–

**Craig:** I didn’t know that that was happening. I swear to god. I thought you knew.

**John:** Yeah, I know. And I didn’t know. And like that is what kills you when you find out, you’re like I assumed this was my movie and it’s no longer my movie. That is what sort of really kills you. And so just as soon as you can and being really clear that you value them and the work that they’ve done. And that you would like to work with them again. I think that’s the message you want to–

**Craig:** The spirit in which you ask the question is your answer. You feel something for this person. You have a natural empathy for them. Let them know. It’s OK. I mean, this is business. Things happen. Things are going to happen to us. Things are going to happen to you guys. But let them how you feel. And let them know that you tried your best and they tried their best and if it’s your decision let them know why and how it’s sad for you, too, but it’s what needs to happen.

It is always I think about intention. And if we feel seen and heard and treated like a human being. Of course, there’s no way to make us not feel sad if we want to stay, but at the very least we know that the relationship that we had with you it was legitimate. Because you’re feeling something, too. That’s why I would come back because I know, OK, if you’re all puppy dogs and sunshine and then one day it’s like ghosted, bye, or oh, sorry yeah, we’re moving on, OK, well why would I ever go back to you? The puppies are not real. That sunshine is a lie.

So, just, yeah, and that requires you guys to be vulnerable. And I’m sure somewhere there is a kind of like executive and producer school where they’re telling you don’t be vulnerable and don’t show any of this stuff and don’t get embedded with these people. And stay like tough. And all I can tell you is it’s not going to work well with us. You won’t get better work out of us that way.

It requires you to feel. I mean, my favorite development person in any capacity is Lindsay Doran. And Lindsay Doran feels more for my work than I do. The hardest arguments I’ve had with Lindsay are about things that I wanted to cut. I’ve literally had a discussion with her where she read it and she said, “Well, you cut that one line and now I just don’t care about the characters anymore.” I’m like that’s not possible! It was a line.

But she is so emotionally invested and, you know, we have a movie together that’s set up here and we had a director on it that we loved and then the studio just wanted to go a different way. And we had to say goodbye to somebody. And we both felt a lot. And we shared that with that person. And I would like to think that that mattered. It may have not made things better at that moment, but it means that we showed what is true which is that our relationship with this person was real.

So, do that. And you will be rewarded with repeat business.

**John:** Cool. Last question.

**Craig:** Oh, she’s reading a question. Oh, this is a great question. Boy did you just stand in front of a target and ask us to wheel a cannon in front of you. So the question is what should be achieved in a producer’s pass. And the answer John is?

**John:** Ah! I mean, we should just stop on the term “producer’s pass.” Producer’s pass does not exist. You won’t find it in any contract. You won’t find it written down anywhere. Here’s the reality from a writer’s perspective is that we think we’re done. We hand it into producers. I think I’m done. And they’re like, great, there’s just a little fix up. And it’s like, OK. And so we do this little bit and it’s like, oh a little bit more, a little bit more. And then we find out they actually did turn it into the studio and we’re actually getting the studio development executive’s notes back. And so it’s a whole extra pass before we’ve turned it in.

I get this at my level, but when I talk to newer screenwriters it’s endless drafts for them to actually get a thing in. And producer’s passes are a useful way of pretending that it’s not a real thing but it is a real thing. So here’s what I’ll say is that if a writer is choosing to give it to this producer for a weekend or whatever for sort of last looks/clean some stuff up, that’s fantastic. But it can’t be about profound changes to the script. It can’t be a week’s worth of work or two weeks’ worth of work. That’s just crazy.

**Craig:** Yeah. There is no producer’s pass. And producers have gotten away with murder. They really have. Congrats. Good job.

**John:** I will say some sympathy for producers. I think they have a really tough job right now too because they are scrambling to get movies made in a tough environment. They have tremendous expectations on them. Writers are often dealing with one-step deals which is a problem.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** I don’t want to slam producers for trying to get too much free labor out of us, even though I sort of am slamming them for getting too much free labor.

**Craig:** Well, but it’s logical. I mean, look, the economics of producing are such that you don’t really get paid unless the movie gets made. Development isn’t a job. Getting movies made is a job if you’re a producer. That’s where all the money is. And everybody deserves to make a living. And then on top of that the studios have taken away two-step deals. They give you one step. You now have one shot with this person that you argued for to make it work. And if you don’t maybe this whole thing dies. So of course you want a thousand drafts for that one draft.

The problem is that’s not fair to the writers. What we should be saying to our partners at the studios is make two-step deals. If you want a producer’s pass how about we all get the pass together? It’s called the second draft. There used to be a thing called the second draft. It’s less important honestly for me or for John than it is for new writers. I really strongly urge you guys if you know a writer is getting paid less than twice scale, which is lot of writers, give them two steps.

It removes this panic. And then you’re able to get the draft. If you want to do your three days of twinklies, do your three days of twinklies. And then turn it in and then everybody can talk about it. And everybody can have the conversation. And then they write a second draft.

But if that’s not there what ends up happening is people do get abused. So, that’s my big thing there. For me, when it comes time to – and look, we’re going to have this experience. You and I are about to have this experience. I’m going to hand over a script to Samantha. You know, if you need a couple days here or there, no problem. A couple days, here or there.

**John:** But let’s say you need more than a couple days. Let’s say you have a writer who is making scale or twice scale, but not a lot of money. And you do need more than just a couple days. It’s gone into the studio and they’re like, there’s just this little thing before it gets up to our top boss before we can actually get it – we just need a little bit more work.

There’s already a provision in there for a little bit more work. Everyone has a weekly. And there’s a scale weekly which is not expensive. Pay that writer for the one week or the two weeks of work it takes to get that next thing in between their real steps.

**Craig:** Pay them an optional polish if you want.

**John:** Move stuff out of order, but it’s when you hold somebody on with the promise like maybe they’ll get to that second draft that’s where it becomes exploitive.

**Craig:** And the say like, “Look, if you don’t do this then you’re going to get fired and the movie is not going to get made.” And it just becomes this kind of thing of, well, if what you’re telling me is I’m going to get fired unless I work for free, yeah, I’m fired. That’s what fired is.

**John:** You’re taking a person who is making scale and making them the villain in the situation, which isn’t good. Them not doing that free thing is–

**Craig:** We just got all Che Guevara on them. I love it. That’s great.

**John:** Sorry.

**Craig:** But it’s true. It really is true. And I will also say that for – if you can – if you’re working with a writer and they agree early on, before deals are made or anything, if they agree early on to write a treatment, some writers don’t write them. I don’t think you’re a big treatment guy. You know I’m a huge treatment – I love a treatment. I’ll write a 60-page treatment. I’ll write the hell out of that thing. You’ll know what the movie is before I ever write in Fade In or Final Draft.

If that happens, then your producer’s pass is baked in because you’ve had a chance to discuss and go through that. And I like to do that specifically so that when I’m done with the draft I’m done. There it is. Now you know what the weekend is going to be like. But you’re going to like it. It’s good. It’s good.

**John:** Thank you guys very much.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** And thank you for putting this together.

**Craig:** Thank you guys so much. Thank you guys.

**John:** And that’s our show. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It was edited by Matthew Chilelli. Special thanks to Ben Simpson and Samantha Nisenboim for putting this session together and for the folks at Amblin for hosting us.

Our outro this week is by Mackey Landry. 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 am @johnaugust.

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Links:

* Episode 99, [Psychotheraphy for Screenwriters](https://johnaugust.com/2013/psychotherapy-for-screenwriters)
* Episode 394, [Broken but Sympathetic](https://johnaugust.com/2019/broken-but-sympathetic) with Mari Heller
* Now accepting recommendations for updating the [Listener’s Guide](johnaugust.com/guide)
* Submit to the Pitch Session [here](https://johnaugust.com/pitch)
* Watch Chernobyl May 6th and listen to [The Chernobyl Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chernobyl-podcast/id1459712981) with Craig and Peter Sagal
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Mackey Landry ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

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