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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/five-star-podnerships).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. So today’s episode contains some explicit language. You might want to listen on headphones. Thanks.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** Craig, you have reindeer ears. This is our live holiday Scriptnotes show. Thank you guys all so much for coming. It’s the end of 2017. Thank you for braving fires for being here. You’re awesome. Craig, what a year. It’s been just a huge year. So much has happened.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Something that on Twitter this producer pointed out that the movie Kong Skull Island, that came out in March. That movie is from this year. This has been the most endless year of all years.

**Craig:** I want this stop. Perfect miserable discordant.

**John:** Absolutely. But that’s actually sort of the meme of this moment because as you guys all know as we’re recording this it looks like Disney and Fox, well, Disney is going to buy Fox. That’s a huge change. So we talked about that on the–

**Craig:** Dox.

**John:** Yes. They will call it Dox. Bart Simpson and Mickey Mouse together.

**Craig:** Ooh. Wow.

**John:** Something there.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. It is fascinating to see how they are – I mean, it’s not done-done, but they are doing this very careful carving up of Fox. So they’re taking Fox Television. That’s the part that produces the TV shows, but they’re leaving the network because you can’t own two networks, because Disney owns ABC. And they’re taking the movies. They’re taking the movie library. They’re taking the television library.

Nobody knows what they’re going to do with the animation studio. Blue Sky?

**John:** Blue Sky, yeah.

**Craig:** Fox News, not taking Fox News with them. Crafty Disney. Very crafty. And also they’re leaving the sports behind because they have ESPN. So it’s very strange. And I don’t know what’s going to happen to the lot. Do you know what’s going to happen to the lot?

**John:** I have no idea. So you have these two giant powerhouse companies. You have Disney and 21st Century Fox combining and something you said on the last podcast is like, you know, other companies are going to need to figure out what their plan is to do because you don’t want to be the last person without a partner.

**Craig:** Correct. Otherwise you’re in a competitive disadvantage.

**John:** So, Craig, what I want to talk about tonight is we need to be thinking about the future of our media empire and what we’re going to do because consolidation is sort of inevitable, so we need to figure out–

**Craig:** I don’t want to lose the money I’m not getting.

**John:** Yeah, so it’s crucial. We need to find ourselves–

**Craig:** We have to protect.

**John:** We need a podnership is what we need. And so I want to talk through some options. I put together a little small deck to talk through some of the options. If we need to merge up with somebody else–

**Craig:** Is that a small deck?

**John:** This is a small deck.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** So it’s only about eight slides that can talk you through my vision for what can happen down the road.

**Craig:** I’m super ready.

**John:** So we can survive.

**Craig:** Thank you, by the way, for consulting me.

**John:** Yeah. You’re welcome. First let’s talk through goals. What are the goals of this merger?

**Craig:** Money.

**John:** And what do we want to get out of this?

**Craig:** Money.

**John:** Well, yeah, we want to maximize shareholder value.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s crucial. So–

**Craig:** Do I have shares?

**John:** Well, you have a lot of emotional investment in this show, right? You have fans. You have people. People like Craig. You can’t buy love, Craig.

**Craig:** But you can’t eat applause either, right?

**John:** You also – we want to make sure we can exploit our library of valuable characters. And that’s where you kind of come in. Because you think about – a lot of the characters on this podcast, they’re Craig characters.

**Craig:** All of them.

**John:** A lot of them are.

**Craig:** There’s Robot, that’s you. You’ve got that.

**John:** I’ve got Robot, yeah.

**Craig:** But I got Sexy Craig.

**John:** Yeah, Sexy Craig problematic in this era. I just want to point that out.

**Craig:** Sexy Craig, actually there may be an article dropping. I don’t want to freak anybody out, but there may be an article dropping.

**John:** But there’s Whole Foods Craig.

**Craig:** Whole Foods Craig.

**John:** A lot of good synergies with Whole Foods Craig.

**Craig:** And Umbrage Craig.

**John:** But that’s just Craig.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Finally, I want to position us to be able to compete with Netflix, because that’s really the goal, because it’s clear that Netflix is going to become giant. And so we need to make sure that we’re ready when they do become giant.

**Craig:** What do we do?

**John:** Well, we need to look for another podcast we could merge with and sort of synergize with.

**Craig:** Oh, mega podcast.

**John:** And so maybe even sell ourselves out to somebody bigger so we can actually survive.

**Craig:** I just have to think of another podcast.

**John:** How about Pod Save America. So, Craig was actually a guest on Pod Save America and you were fantastic, Craig.

**Craig:** Oh, thank you. Thank you. I wasn’t really quite sure what it was until after I did it, which infuriated John by the way. Made him crazy. I love that part of it. That was a fun show. I actually did Lovett or Leave it which is the–

**John:** It’s part of the whole empire.

**Craig:** It’s part of the Pod Save America empire.

**John:** So maybe we can join their empire.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I think what would be good about it is you share a hatred of Ted Cruz. So that’s good.

**Craig:** I think that everyone qualifies on–

**John:** That’s true. They have really fun live shows.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** We have live shows, they have live shows. They do it every week. But we could do more live shows.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, we’ll step it up.

**John:** All right. Down sides.

**Craig:** Apparently they don’t want to be here every week.

**John:** There are too many Johns. So their show has Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, there’s me. So something has to go.

**Craig:** I’m honestly OK with it.

**John:** Finally, America may be done. So, that may be – the brand may be – I don’t know what the value is – what is the future of Pod Save America after America–?

**Craig:** You’re talking about the brand? You’re not talking about, like, just because Armageddon in general should be a negative for all of these.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t know that America has enough future to support a podcast called Pod Save America.

**Craig:** Right. The runway is starting to get a little short for us, isn’t it?

**John:** Shorter.

**Craig:** Yeah, shorter and shorter.

**John:** So we might need to go to like a narrative podcast.

**Craig:** Oh, great idea. Is it Stone?

**John:** No, it’s S Town, or Shit Town is the other thing you can call it.

**Craig:** Well, that’s just outrageous.

**John:** So Craig does not listen to podcasts. This is a thing. By applause, who has listened to S Town?

**Craig:** Liars.

**John:** So, S Town follows this reporter who goes to visit this guy. It’s a real thing. You would love this show because here’s some things you would love about this show. It talks about a grumpy loner with opinions on everything.

**Craig:** Oh, I remember hearing about this. And making a decision to not listen to it. Yep. Yep.

**John:** And he’s really fascinating. And there would be so many opportunities for How Would This Be a Movie. Because like pretty much everything he touches. He has a maze on his property.

**Craig:** Do you think that How Would This Be a Movie deserves its own acronym, really?

**John:** Totally does.

**Craig:** It’s not like Return of the Jedi.

**John:** In the outlines it’s actually called How Would This Be a Movie. Yeah, if you read the outlines?

**Craig:** But it gets a HWTBAM?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** HWTBAM.

**Craig:** HWTBAM. Okay.

**John:** Some downsides. Can you think of any downsides for this?

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t listen to this show.

**John:** Yeah. And also it’s too acclaimed. Craig, that might scare you aware.

**Craig:** I don’t like the tinsel. I don’t truck in awards.

**John:** And the show is also about whether this main character John was hiding gold on his property and that’s a little familiar for us.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Yeah. There’s gold hidden here.

**Craig:** He’s so rich because of this.

**John:** Dirty John. Who listened to Dirty John? So not as popular. It’s a coproduction with LA Times. Really fascinating. You know about this?

**Craig:** I read it.

**John:** So you know the history of this. So tell us a little bit about Dirty John.

**Craig:** I watched the podcast with my eyes.

**John:** So tell us about what it’s like to read a podcast.

**Craig:** It’s amazing. It’s just like you remember reading things, and that.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** Dirty John, great long story of a horrendous, sociopathic, manipulative man and a woman that he cons. One of many women that he had conned in his life. And it’s about her and her family learning the truth of him and trying to get free of him. And it ends in the most spectacularly violent way. It’s remarkable.

**John:** Yeah. It was a really enjoyable listen or read. So I feel like this is a natural brand extension.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Easy. Dirty John & Craig. Just you add an ampersand. We add you to the mix.

**Craig:** Dirty John & Craig. That’s like a great ‘70s band.

**John:** Absolutely. So, the main character, the main bad guy in the show, what was his profession? Do you remember?

**Craig:** Well, he claimed to be a nurse, right?

**John:** He claimed to be a medical professional, sort of like you.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So like he had a medical background, so that fits in really well with you. So those are good synergies.

**Craig:** Great point. I do know a lot.

**John:** You know a lot.

**Craig:** I know a lot.

**John:** Yeah. Some downsides of this? What do you think?

**Craig:** Somebody give me something.

**John:** I would say it’s in Orange County. We got to go to Orange County.

**Craig:** I forgot that it was in Orange County.

**John:** And if you listened to the podcast you’d hear the Orange County accents. It would drive you crazy.

**Craig:** What is the Orange County accent?

**John:** Listen to it and you’ll just claw your ears out.

**Craig:** Is anyone here from?

**John:** You agree with me guys, right?

**Craig:** Oh, there we go. Man.

**John:** That was tough.

**Craig:** You’re not going to do it?

**Audience Member:** What do you want me to say?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That was it?

**John:** That was it, yeah. Sort of curious but indignant.

**Craig:** Actually sounded like she was from London. What do you want me to say?

**John:** The last thing I’ll say is you don’t listen to podcasts but there’s these Hunt a Killer subscription boxes that were so creepy and I don’t want to go back to that. I don’t want subscription boxes on our show.

**Craig:** That one just didn’t work for me.

**John:** Because you didn’t see the show.

**Craig:** Oh, no, no, the Hunt a Killer thing. I got the box.

**John:** Oh, you got the box. Great. Did you find the killer?

**Craig:** I didn’t go past the first month.

**John:** I’m sorry. Yeah. Sorry.

**Craig:** Didn’t work.

**John:** Didn’t work for you. So you’d be a bad advertiser for that because you didn’t enjoy hunting the killer.

**Craig:** Yeah, we probably should stay ad-free just because of my–

**John:** Yeah. So finally Missing Richard Simmons. Did you listen to Missing Richard Simmons?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. It was a very popular podcast. Who listened to Missing Richard Simmons?

**Craig:** Why?

**John:** Because they like podcasts. They like our podcast.

**Craig:** I also don’t understand that.

**John:** So here’s what possibly could work about Missing Richard Simmons. Screenwriters as a whole are not necessarily the fittest bunch.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** So there’s opportunity for fitness.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Screenwriters not so healthy. He gets them–

**Craig:** He cries with us. We cry with him.

**John:** So here’s the other thing I need to tell you about this. Aline Brosh McKenna is obsessed with this show. She loved this show. So that’s a plus.

**Craig:** That’s a downside as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** It’s also a downside, too. A plus and a minus.

**Craig:** Nailed it.

**John:** And Richard Simmons, he also just wants to be left alone. That’s ultimately what you come out of the show learning.

**Craig:** Is that literally the big secret of Missing Richard Simmons is that he just wants people to F off?

**John:** Kind of yeah.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** That’s really Craig’s secret. He basically just wants to be left alone.

**Craig:** That’s not a secret.

**John:** So let’s take a look at the numbers so we can run through and figure out what we’re worth. We have about 50,000 listeners, a solid 50,000 a week.

**Craig:** That’s pretty good.

**John:** That’s pretty good. We’ll take that. People here in the room. We make money selling t-shirts and so t-shirts we sold $1,429 is how much we made on t-shirts off of this last thing. So thank you everyone who bought a t-shirt. Thank you very much for that. Yeah, absolutely. We’re rolling in cash.

**Craig:** My share of that is?

**John:** Is what you’ve always gotten.

**Craig:** Gotten. Gotten. God.

**John:** And we have monetized through advertising, which was zero dollars in advertising. Now, the Disney/Fox deal is about $60 billion is what I heard with the Disney/Fox deal, so I’m thinking maybe – keep it a little simple – maybe $59 billion.

**Craig:** To be fair, we bought about–

**John:** We will take Apple Pay, so.

**Craig:** We bought about 100,000 bitcoin about 12 years ago.

**John:** Yes. So we’re doing this for kicks and giggles.

**Craig:** That’s really what we’re selling. We’re just selling the bitcoin.

**John:** So if anybody wants to make a bid for $59 billion for us, Megan is here. She has her Square c ash reader, too. So anyway you want to pay, Megan is here in front. But let’s get on with the show.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** We have three amazing guests for you tonight. Our first guest is Julie Plec. Julie Plec is the co-creator and showrunner of Vampire Diaries, its spinoff The Originals. Also Containment. She developed Tomorrow People. And has written for Kyle XY. Julie Plec, welcome.

**Julie Plec:** Oh hi.

**John:** And so we need to tell everybody that Julie Plec is actually taking a red eye after this show. That’s how much she is devoted to the–

**Craig:** She showed up with luggage.

**Julie:** I did. I walked in with my suitcase. My parka.

**John:** Nice. Next we have Michael Green. He is the co-creator and showrunner of American Gods and Kings. He’s also the screenwriter of every movie you saw this year. Murder on the Orient Express, Blade Runner 2049, and Logan. Michael Green, welcome.

**Michael Green:** Hello. Good to be here.

**Julie:** Amazing.

**John:** Justin Marks who wrote the live action Jungle Book and its sequel. His TV series Counterpart debuts January 21 on Starz. Welcome the three of you. Thank you guys very much for coming here.

**Craig:** What a bunch of losers!

**John:** Oh, they’re fantastic. We know very little about TV, even though Craig is about to do a TV show, so I thought we’d—

**Michael:** Oh, why?

**Craig:** Well, it’s a miniseries. So I think of it as just a long movie.

**Michael:** Same.

**Craig:** No, because it ends. Isn’t that the problem with TV is that it keeps going and going and going? Justin, isn’t that the problem?

**Justin Marks:** Yes.

**Craig:** It just won’t stop.

**Justin:** Yes. That is definitely the problem with TV. It just will never leave your life.

**Michael:** In success you run till you die.

**Craig:** Till you die.

**John:** Julie Plec, your shows have run for a very long time. You’ve been on incredibly successful shows that run a long time. Originals is just about to end. I think that’s actually where you’re headed is to go to the wrap party for this. What is it like coming back season after season on a show? Is it great? Is it bad? Should Craig run away from it? Should he run towards it? What do is it like having a —

**Julie:** It’s sort of like to each their own, right? I’ve worked with writers who get two years in and they’re like, “Get me out. I can’t.” Their brain, their mind, just atrophies and they feel like nothing they do is fresh and nothing that they do has any value, et cetera, et cetera. Basic self-loathing stuff.

For me I get so much personal and emotional value out of building the community. When you make a movie you’re, you know, a few months in, six months, whatever. In and out. And you might never see any of those people again. And in television you can – year after year after year you’re working in success with the same people and you’re watching them grow from the bottom of their position all the way up the ladder till you’re partners. And there’s just something so emotionally fulfilling about that that above and beyond the storytelling it’s really – it’s a very full life. So even when it’s hard you still feel really satisfied by it.

**John:** Julie, you’re doing a traditional show where you are writing and shooting the show and editing the show all at the same time, but you guys had a more – the new wave experience where you guys – on both American Gods and on Counterpart didn’t you write everything before you started shooting? Is that correct? Justin, why don’t you start?

**Justin:** Yeah. We wrote the entire first season before we started the first season. And it has its advantages and it definitely has its disadvantages, too. But the hard thing is that you can’t, you know, you write these roles and it’s great – in TV you’re supposed to be able to see the actors and how they gel with it and how it works. And then you have these things and there are just a number of opportunities where you look at a role that you’ve written for ten episodes and then you see someone there and you’re like, oh my god, this person is in the show for the next nine episodes. And the other way around, too, sometimes people come on for two episodes and you’re like, oh my god, this person is great and you’re stuck with it. I mean, you’ve shot – everything is planned out and everything is done. So that ten-hour movie thing has, you know, some strengths. Some strengths.

**Craig:** Ten-hours is a lot.

**John:** Michael, so American Gods–

**Michael:** We were somewhere between the two for the first season of American Gods. And I should point out, so I’m the recently disgraced showrunner of American Gods.

**Craig:** What happened?

**Michael:** My partner and I on the show were let go last week. It’s in Deadline.

**Craig:** Why are we bringing this up in this show?

**Michael:** But I loved the experience. I’m very proud of it and happy to talk about it.

**Julie:** Shame!

**Michael:** Shame!

**John:** Shame!

**Michael:** I’ll answer the now boring question. We wrote about two-thirds of the season and made sure to leave the ending so that we could course correct and rewrote the hell out of the middle of it. Because it’s the best of both worlds. We were able to put in a bunch and know where we wanted to go but also say, you know what, we see the actor who we want to lean in to and can craft towards them and do the things that television does really well.

**John:** One of the things that TV did a lot of in 2017 was not just sort of like do shows that were like previous shows, but they literally just did the same show again. So we had Will and Grace come back. We have Roseanne coming back. Dynasty is back. As you guys, and Julie especially you’re writing for network, is there a pressure to just like come into them with a thing that is like exactly either – is literally the same thing they’ve done before? Do you get approached about like why don’t you reboot this series that already existed?

**Julie:** No. You know, weirdly I’ve managed to avoid the “just take that thing and make it different and preferably better” pitfalls. I think it’s because ultimately I’ve been locked in my own franchise for the last eight years, so I just keep making those again and again.

I was talking to somebody the other day and they said something like 80% of the stuff in development at the network is IP, whether it’s remake or whatever.

**Craig:** Welcome to movies. And so the golden age of television died.

**John:** Well, but there’s also just so much more TV being made. So you’re saying 80% at network, but it feels like where you guys are doing it, so on Starz or on Netflix—

**Michael:** Well, I worked on something that was IP. It was based on a book. But you had an original.

**Justin:** Yeah, it was original.

**Julie:** Hey, how was that?

**John:** That’s true. American Gods is based on a book. That’s right. I forget.

**Craig:** But it was based on a book, but there is a sense that in television now they’re starting to do this thing that they’ve been doing in movies forever where they take something that honestly really should have just been left alone, like—

**Michael:** Slinky the show.

**Craig:** Or Battleship, the movie. And Battleship. Still the best story ever told. And where is Earth? And they make a movie out of it and now they’re going and digging up these shows. Like for instance, a few years ago – you guys probably all got this call to write a Dynasty movie. I think it was at Fox. And now they’re like, ah, you know what, that’s a dumb idea. We’re not doing that anymore. For a while we were doing that. Now let’s just make the Dynasty show again.

**Julie:** But the thing that I don’t get is that like, I mean, I’m 45 and I watched Dynasty in high school. It was one of my favorite shows. But I’m not tuning in to watch younger Dynasty necessarily. Like I just–

**Craig:** You want those Dynasty people.

**Michael:** I would watch Dynasty reruns. I mean, I’m older than you. I loved – watched the shit out of it. And the more ridiculous it was, the more we loved it. Someone needs to have that experience.

**Craig:** Yeah, but like Melrose Place. I don’t need to see Melrose Place again. Like a new Melrose Place.

**Justin:** I really have to say as the resident person here, I have no idea what Dynasty is.

**Julie:** What?! Young child.

**Justin:** And I don’t know if that goes to your argument.

**Michael:** So there’s Alexis Morell Carrington Colby Dexter Colby. Look it up.

**Craig:** Dynasty was the show that came about because Dallas was popular. Have you ever heard of Dallas? Who shot JR and all of that?

**Justin:** Yeah. I know it’s in Texas.

**Craig:** Yes. Correct. So then Dynasty was like the Pepsi to Dallas’s Coke. It was not great.

**Julie:** Yeah, I mean, my point is like if you’re marketing – and by the way, all my Vampire Diaries crew ended up going to work on Dynasty. So yay Dynasty. And I hope it survives forever. But you’re building off of a franchise name or a brand or whatever, but it’s like so old that the people that remember it as being a popular viable brand are so far out of your demo that like what are you doing. That’s my question.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I will say, this is a very mild defense, but as a father of a 12-year-old daughter, there’s things – she won’t watch things that were shot before a certain time. Like she won’t watch things that are shot square, in like 4-3 format. She can just tell like, oh, this is old school, old style. And so like I tried to get her to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is brilliant, and she won’t because it looks old to her. It looks old-fashioned to her.

**Michael:** It’s like we wouldn’t watch the black and white Gilligan’s Island?

**John:** Yeah.

**Michael:** Those are the old episodes.

**Craig:** I would watch those. I was that kind of guy.

**John:** Justin, a question for you though, because Jungle Book is an example of taking an existing property and making it in a whole new way because you have new technology to do it.

**Justin:** But that’s what I don’t understand. I mean, not to pick, I don’t understand the – you know, parents who grew up on a movie like Jungle Book or something like that, it’s bring your kids. Is anyone really saying like, “I watched Dynasty, I’m going to tune in with my kids?”

**Craig:** Not a person.

**Justin:** Anyway, I interrupted the–

**John:** No, but I wanted to go back to sort of your sense of when you were doing Jungle Book, the degree to which how much are you trying to reinvent the story of Jungle Book or how much are you trying to do it with the same story with a new technology? Because I faced that with Aladdin, which was the pressure of are we trying to reinvent the whole thing and rethink everything, or are we trying to Beauty and Beast it and literally just do the cartoon? And you must have faced that same pressure?

**Justin:** I think it’s harder the better the original movie gets in that sense and the more complete the story is. In the case of Jungle Book, you know, it’s from a certain era and there’s a sort of episodic nature to it. And we just had a list of here are the things that you remember without being aided, you know, from the original movie. And you just sort of live with that. And then everything else in between you evaluate and you interrogate and you say is this as good as it could be, or can we make this better? Can we make this richer and more, you know, a little deeper, motivate the villain a little better? Anything like that.

But, you know, there was definitely a list of like half a dozen moments/images/ideas that absolutely had to be in the movie because I feel like no matter what you feel about the original you would want to see it again. That’s how you associate it.

**Craig:** And are you – this is a question for both of you guys, because you both move between movies and television. How is the balance? I mean, how do you work that out? Is it something that you are kind of edging one way or the other, or are you perfectly divided up here?

**Justin:** I think I’d like to know from the person who wrote four movies this year.

**Julie:** Four movies. Four credited movies. God knows what else you did.

**John:** It was really the year before was a lot of that, but still.

**Michael:** I can’t say there’s any balance at all. It’s like any project or when you’re balancing two or more things. It’s whatever bullet is coming at you, dodge that. Look for the next bullet. Dodge that. You know, and just get through it. I mean, look, four movies in a year is the product of five years of development, just all sort of like “fuck you it’s happening.”

**Craig:** Yeah, I think sometimes people think that you just went, like here’s a mountain of coke, and whaaa….

Yeah.

**Michael:** But there was definitely the weird summer last year when I was hopping between three sets. And I don’t recommend it. It’s not the way to do your best work. You know, if you have a family and you like them, or even better love them, you know, that’s not a good thing to do.

But it was mostly about, if I made any conscious decision it was television is getting so strange and volatile and new and unrecognizable, and features the same. So, I thought why don’t I just try to do two careers at once and maybe one will win out or be dominant at that point. And that means there are some times where you’re not doing shit in either. And then there are time when both suddenly the tinder lights.

**Craig:** And there’s neither one medium nor the other holds a greater personal or creative satisfaction for you?

**Michael:** No, I think like everything else whatever I’m doing I wish it was the other.

**Craig:** Ah. That is a Jewish Christmas.

**John:** Michael, I want to get back to the question that Justin tackled which was there’s an existing piece of thing out there that people are familiar with and then you’re going back and you’re tweaking it, you’re redoing it. So Murder on the Orient Express, there’s a book, everyone has read the book. Everyone – lots of people have seen the movie. Lots of people come into it knowing the twist. So how do you approach – like what were your first conversations about this property as you sat down to tackle it? What was your way in?

**Michael:** It was a bizarrely wonderful experience, because I went in to the studio. I had already worked with the producers on it. And it was the, “Hey, do you want to do this?” And the answer was yeah. And they said, “Well what would you do?” And I said, well, let’s do the book. Like let’s not fuck with what’s great. I don’t want to out Agatha Christie Agatha Christie. Yes, there’s an ending. I’m pretty sure Americans don’t remember it. If they do, then it’s like Bare Necessities in your – you know, these are the things we want to get to. And then they’ll look for how did you present it, can you make it emotionally resonant, can you add to it so that you do, “Yes, and?” But also like I’m just not going to try to beat out that, nor am I going to blow up the train. Nor am I going to set it in space.

But if you’re OK with that, let’s write the movie. And it was with Fox. And they were like, “That sounds great. That sounds like what we want to do.” And gave them a script and it was one of those things where everyone wanted to do the same thing. The planets aligned, so the gravitational pull was to the same direction, down to when you’re lucky enough to get Ken Branagh to direct it, and say he wants to star in it. Ok, now we know that it’s going to feel like the kind of movie we’ve been talking about.

So, it was the lucky thing of never having a moment where someone was trying to turn it into something weird or other. But that said, it’s IP. It is familiar. It’s British civil religion. They certainly remember the ending there, but they don’t mind that. They want the security of the Americans aren’t going to fuck it up. And we told them we wouldn’t by hiring–

**John:** Kenneth Branagh.

**Michael:** Their best guy.

**John:** Hire the Shakespeare guy to do it.

**Michael:** The most British man there is.

**John:** Basically they’re giant British fans for the original Agatha Christie, so they will know all that stuff.

**Michael:** Yeah, they’re rabid. That’s their baseball as I understand it.

**John:** Now, Julie, you have rabid fans from what I understand.

**Julie:** I do. Yes.

**John:** So, Nima who works for us is a rabid fan. He’s seen every episode of Vampire Diaries. And so he wrote a question which I’m going to now paraphrase for you. And you don’t even have to answer the question, but I want to sort of answer the meta question of this kind of question.

**Julie:** OK. OK.

**John:** So his question is on Vampire Diaries vampires have the ability to compel humans to obey their will. Could a vampire compel a human to not obey another vampire’s compulsion, or compelling?

**Julie:** Whoa.

**John:** See, yeah. Nima is excited that you said whoa on that.

**Julie:** Yeah. Maybe. Shoot, eight years, we never went down that road.

**Craig:** Probably because it’s the nerdiest road ever.

**Julie:** Should have gone nine.

**Craig:** Just saying.

**John:** So, my meta question is about that kind of question, because you must get that stuff all the time which is like someone who is a huge, huge fan of what you’re doing but wants to needle or poke or just ask things that either you don’t have an answer for or, you know, it just kind of doesn’t matter. How do you deal with that?

**Julie:** Most of my fan engagement and interaction has been on Twitter. And for the first four or five years I was very, very heavily involved in and invested in Twitter. And I would read all my mentions. And I would spend hours and hours. And that particular group of fans that I was engaging with heavily weren’t concerned with that kind of shit. Like literally they were like very worried about who Elena was going to end up in bed with. And it was very important. And when it didn’t go their way they were very mean.

Like if somebody had tweeted me that I would have been like, “Let’s talk man. This is great. I’m so excited.”

**Craig:** Finally something to discuss dispassionately.

**John:** Nima is here. He’s very excited to meet you. There’s Nima.

**Julie:** Oh hi!

**Craig:** But there is a certain kind of interaction now between television producers, particularly shows like yours which do have a very visceral connection for an audience. And I think a lot of the shows that I see, generally speaking sci-fi shows, horror shows, superhero shows, there’s a certain kind of fandom that gets really intense. And I watch it from the side and I will sometimes see these reactions happening on Twitter and I will get frightened just standing near it for the people that are making the show.

**Julie:** Yeah, well, you know, it got ugly. And it got sad and ugly because then I had to stop reading my mentions and I had to not engage on Twitter in that way. And for the last couple years I mean at best scroll through every now and then, just wanting to find that one person who is like asking, “Hey, how did you get into writing,” so at least to reward the good behavior, you know?

I mean, we could have a symposium on this. And I’m only really focusing right now on the negative side of it because obviously there’s a tremendous amount of positives. But the negative side of it is just this entitlement that is so toxic. Like just you are ruining the thing that I love, therefore you are terrible. And yet I’m like, but I wrote the thing that you love. You know, and it’s like, I mean, you love that. It just becomes so personal and it becomes not just about, “Oh, I’m not happy with the way this storyline is going,” it becomes about, “You’re fat. And you’re ugly. And no one is ever going to marry you. Thank god you don’t have children because they’d be ugly.”

I mean, like it’s all that stuff.

**Craig:** I should not have said any of that. I just—

**Julie:** And it’s just extraordinary. And it’s a high level, in a weird way because I noticed it all happening over the first couple years and I thought, hmm, like the world is going to a dark place and I’m seeing it happen through the sort of Twitter fandom. And then the world went to a dark place and now everybody talks to each other like that. And I saw it first.

**Craig:** It is frightening. I just wanted to say that I think that a lot of the people – I think anybody that falls in love with any television show or any movie, when we say we like it or we love it, what we’re really describing is a relationship that we have with it. That’s why people change their minds about things, right? We have changing relationships. As we grow older our attitudes towards things change. We revisit. I think people sometimes can have a very bad relationship with a show. It means something to them you did not intend. It is providing a function or serving a function for them. And then when you don’t do what they want or you kill the wrong person, because as we know sometimes that person is just wah-wah-wah, and so they’ve got to go. Right?

**Julie:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Craig:** These people lose their minds because you are disrupting this thing that they have an unhealthy relationship with.

**Julie:** Yeah, and I remember in early seasons them saying like, “You don’t understand this relationship.” Two and half seasons I have painstakingly laid in every little nuance and detail of the time their hands just sort of brushed, and the way that she looks at his lips before she looks in his eyes when they’re staring at each other. I like gave you that relationship that you love detail by detail. And now you’re, you know, you’re coming at me in such an aggressive way.

**Craig:** Geez Louise.

**Michael:** I liked when you touched my hand.

**Julie:** That was nice.

**Michael:** By the way, wait, to go back to your first question because Julie, who has had a brilliant career that I admire and tell everyone about because she’s one of the heroes, has gotten to work on her shows for long enough for people to have that relationship.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**Michael:** That is not a miniseries relationship.

**Craig:** Right.

**Julie:** That’s true.

**Michael:** And so the exchange rate for having – to be able to steep, to be able to play that long game, to be able to have your own emotional investment be reflected back in your audience’s emotional investment, the exchange for that is your life and health in like 15 years.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, you know, Dan and Dave, we had Dan and Dave on our show – Dan Weiss and David Benioff who do Game of Thrones – and those guys don’t look at anything. They have never looked at anything. And it has been fascinating, because every now and then I’ll be like, “Hey, how you are guys – oh, yeah, you don’t even know. Never mind. You don’t know about the firestorm that just occurred because of the episode in which blah-blah-blah happened.” Nor do they know when people are like, “Oh my god…” They are just completely isolated.

And, now it works for them because they are – well, they’re weird.

**Michael:** But do you read reviews?

**Craig:** I stopped. I have stopped.

**John:** So I, generally I stopped–

**Craig:** I have good reason to stop.

**John:** But this last time with Big Fish opening in London I was not going to read reviews, and so I was putting my phone away and someone tweeted at me, “Shame about the London reviews.”

**Craig:** Oh that, ugh.

**John:** Why are you doing this? And so I had an early flight, so I had already taken a Xanax so I could fall asleep. So like, you know what? Fuck it. I’m going to read all the reviews. And so I was already pre-medicated and I read all of them. And in a weird way it was good. I’m glad I did it because there were like two-star and five-star reviews, so it was a real range. And it was actually really good to actually know what it was, because there are times where I haven’t read reviews and I’m just kind of wandering around in a fog like I don’t know what’s out there. And so for me it was good to know–

**Craig:** I suppose in the limited circumstance where I can pill myself up and be on a plane, I’ll go ahead and read a few reviews.

**John:** Justin Marks, will you read reviews of your show when it comes out, Counterpart?

**Justin:** You know, it’s really hard because with the show especially you’re much more accountable to those reviews than you are on a movie where it’s done. I mean, there’s nothing else, what can I do? Can I go back and change the movie? No. So I’m curious for the people who do television, because I’ve never been through this process before. I think I kind of have to. I think I kind of have to know what’s working and what’s not working if there’s a collective consensus about something.

**Michael:** You don’t have to. You work for Starz, so here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get an email every day with the headline of whatever review came in and a parenthetical that says, “Positive, negative, mixed.”

**Justin:** And so you just look through it like that?

**Michael:** That was more than I needed.

**Julie:** I will say like I’m personally one of the writers who in television believes that there’s a social contract between a storyteller and the viewer. And I could introduce you to 50 writers who completely disagree with that and say I’m telling my story the way I want to tell the story and the viewer either likes it or they don’t. I like the fluidity of understanding what people are connecting to. And then trying to absorb why, you know.

And conversely, you know, I learned a lot about even just racial representation on my show through social media. Things that I had never considered, ever considered being a problem, and then sort of confronted with that. And that was so illuminating. I mean, I was mortified. And learned a lot in a way that nobody would have stopped me on the street and been like, “Do you realize that that person of color had two lines?” You know, that kind of stuff.

And so I wouldn’t ever want to like tune out from that relationship because it is a sort of focus group feedback that I think is really valuable.

**Michael:** There was one – we did an interview with this podcast Fan Bros and it’s a black audience for genre stuff. And they were great. And they kind of took us to task and said, “Well, we really love the show, but your black lead you’re doing a terrible job.” And we’re like tell us about that. And it was very helpful and our response was we hired them. We put them on staff. Because had we not heard that – they weren’t allowed to write reviews about the show anymore.

**Craig:** That’s how you get a job is you start a podcast—

**Michael:** Tell the showrunner it stinks.

**Craig:** Tell white people they’re fucking up.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** I could do that.

**John:** All right, so while we’re talking about reviews I thought we might play a little game. So, let’s move on. We’ve had some good reviews, some bad reviews, but this is Christmas, or the holidays, let’s have only five-star reviews. So underneath your seat you have some five-star reviews.

**Julie:** Oh my gosh.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** So we are properly set up here.

**Craig:** So excited.

**John:** So these all come from iTunes. And so we went on iTunes and we found reviews of different projects we worked on. And we’re going to read them now and we’re going to have to figure out – titles of these things are not on here so we’re going to have to figure out among us what they are talking about in these five-star reviews.

**Craig:** And the ones that we have in our hands, could these be any of our movies?

**John:** Any of our movies.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** All right, so I’m going to start us off. So this comes from Skip Hunt.

**Craig:** That’s not real. That’s like Mike Hunt.

**John:** So, “Not sure how I found this podcast. I think I was searching for info about the fountain.io markup stuff.” A nerd. “Anyway, I’m hooked and I’ve added this podcast to my regular playlist. I have not interfaced with Mark Mazin, but John August has been very generous and helpful with his time. Thanks for putting this podcast out. I’ve found most of it very helpful. Smiley Face.”

**Craig:** Now we’re supposed to guess what that’s for?

**John:** Yeah, I think we can figure that one out. That’s a pretty easy one.

**Craig:** Fucking Mark Mazin. I’ll tell you. That guy–

**John:** So that was Scriptnotes. Craig, read us another five-star review.

**Craig:** All right. This one is titled “Impressed,” by MJ Gingsham. “Very nice directing and editing. Actors are very decent and acceptable. The music is very cool aswell. 5 stars!” Huh? Music is very cool, as well.

**John:** As well. As well. This is punctuated exactly the way it was there.

**Craig:** Hmm, what do you guys think?

**John:** What do you think? What could that be?

**Craig:** I’m kind of leaning towards—

**Julie:** Are these all movies?

**Craig:** No, it could be a TV show, right?

**John:** It could be a movie or a TV show.

**Julie:** Oh, oh, oh.

**Craig:** Is it the Vamp? Is it Vamp Di?

**Julie:** I feel like if it’s just generally across the board a mediocre five-star review, that’s probably mine.

**John:** Julie Plec, you’re correct. Julie Plec, read us a review.

**Julie:** OK, from I Am Romanov 2, “This movie was much better than the Passion of Christ.”

**Craig:** The Passion of Christ. Oof.

**Julie:** Yes.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It feels like Jungle Book to me.

**John:** It could be Jungle Book. Lots of choices here.

**Craig:** Well, has anybody dabbled in a Christ movie other than Passion? No? No. No. Well, maybe Corpse Bride.

**John:** Could be Corpse Bride.

**Craig:** Because Christ.

**John:** Christ. Death. Resurrection. Yeah.

**Michael:** Frankenweenie. Same thing.

**Craig:** Frankenweenie.

**John:** Sure.

**Julie:** Who did Frankenweenie? Nice.

**John:** The answer is Michael Green for Green Lantern.

**Craig:** Why would you compare Green Lantern to Passion of Christ?

**Michael:** I don’t know. They were both hard to get through. They both hurt my soul for different reasons.

**Craig:** And the heroes did have super powers, so.

**Michael:** Also the CG suits.

**Craig:** CG suits. CG suits.

**John:** Yep. Nudity. Michael Green, read us a five-star review.

**Craig:** I would have never thought of that one. Your turn. You can read it right there.

**Michael:** OK, “Best movie of the year — This film did better than do the original justice. It’s a masterpiece!Ryan Reynolds stole the show and all the other actors did well too. Not to mention Hans Zimmers score completely fit and mixed in with this awesome epic of a film“

**Julie:** Is this the same movie?

**Craig:** That feels like Green Lantern again.

**Justin:** But Ryan Reynolds was great in–

**Michael:** Hans Zimmer did not do the score. So I’m thinking this is a Ryan flub.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**John:** So, what are you predicting?

**Michael:** Blade Runner.

**John:** Blade Runner 2049.

**Michael:** And you’re not fat.

**Craig:** Fooled me.

**John:** Justin Marks?

**Justin:** “I love this one by Ishiro Honda would be proud.”

**Craig:** How is that a name?

**Justin:** “This is the best movie I’ve seen so far this year and I’ve only seen 2 good movies this year. Amazing special effects, great characters and I felt like a kid again watching this movie. See it if you haven’t already.”

**Craig:** Jungle Book, right? It feels like Jungle Book.

**Michael:** Jungle Book.

**John:** It’s Jungle Book. All right. Next up, Miss Shorty Rocks says, “loved it — if u ppl have nothing good to say than don’t say nothing at all cause this move was good i liked it was really good i would watch it again again why dnt u all do me a fav n put the shut to up that means shut up.”

**Craig:** That has to be one of my fans. I mean, for a bunch of reasons not the least of which is she’s clearly arguing with the majority of people who are upset. So I got to – that’s got to be one of my people.

**John:** You’d be wrong.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** That is for Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li. Justin Marks.

**Justin:** Yeah, my mom does write under that Miss Shorty Rocks.

**Craig:** Wasn’t Ishiro Honda in Street Fighter? Wasn’t he one of the characters?

**Justin:** Was that a character? Don’t ask the writer of Street Fighter.

**John:** Craig Mazin?

**Craig:** Oh, I’ve got one here. “Wow,” by Edward Elrick Fan. “I wish I was bloating like the girl.i always wanted to bloat like that girl in the movie I wish I was her SERIOUSLY!”

OK, this has to be Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

**John:** It’s a movie about bloating. I love that he’s a bloat fetishist who is like you know what, I’ve got some time, I’ll leave five stars for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

**Michael:** Violet, you’re carrying water, Violet.

**Julie:** That’s amazing.

**Craig:** I was most just concerned with the lack of the subjective mood here.

**John:** Yes, that really is the biggest cue of that.

**Craig:** Edward, you wish you were bloating like her.

**John:** Seriously.

**Craig:** Were Edward.

**John:** Julie Plec.

**Julie:** Sponge Bob Girl 101 says, “You have your options in what movies you like. People say it was horrible and some people say it was good just give it a chance if ur not interested in cussing and comedy i recommend that u do not watch this movie. I enjoyed this movie a lot it was so funny. And i didn’t watch the trailer thats probably why i didn’t hate it”

**Craig:** Again, that feels like one of my people.

**John:** Yeah. Which movie though?

**Craig:** Notice fighting off others. Any one of them, honestly.

**Julie:** Cussing.

**Craig:** Not Winter’s War.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** I’ll go with Identity Thief.

**John:** Identity Thief it is. And Michael Green, I think you have the last one.

**Michael:** Mine is not a five-star review.

**Craig:** It’s a two.

**Julie:** Ouch. That’s mine.

**John:** Go for it.

**Michael:** OK. I think things are going to get mean. “Box of Bisquick,” by Woody Wood 123. Because there were 122 other Woody Woods. “Am I the only one who deleted this podcast after three episodes because, while the information was useful,” at least you’re using that well, “I just couldn’t get past John August’s manner of speaking like he just swallowed a box of Bisquick.”

**John:** Just swallowed Bisquick. I love that.

**Michael:** “Sometimes he’s barely intelligible. Good this he’s a writer.” Good this he’s a writer should be like. Oh. “A shame. I would have liked to be a follower.”

**Craig:** I would have liked to have be a follower. We would have liked for him to have be a fan. Just, this person was hearing the best of you, by the way. I just want to point out.

**John:** Absolutely. That’s after Matthew’s edited me carefully. So.

**Craig:** I don’t think it’s Bisquick.

**John:** What would you say I have in my mouth?

**Craig:** Quikrete.

**John:** Oh yeah. Something quick that fixes.

**Craig:** Some sort of marble and cement product.

**John:** Yes. I want to ask a practical question of our TV folks here in the room which is you guys are all not just writers but you are hiring writers to work on your TV programs. If someone is – as you’re reading through scripts and trying to put together a staff, what are you looking for in writers that you’re trying to hire onto your shows?

**Julie:** For me, just a voice. You know, like a distinct voice. Somebody that can write a funny line. Something that makes me laugh, even if it’s in a drama. Has a personality. Has some kind of cool twang to it. Because I don’t have time as I’m reading material to really dissect like, oh, structurally that was really excellent and I would have slid act two later. Like I’m reading it for my own enjoyment and if it grabs me, the voice grabs me if it’s got sparkle, I tend to read the whole thing. And if there’s no sparkle, even if it’s a great script, I just put it aside.

**John:** So how many pages will you read before you detect if there’s a sparkle.

**Julie:** About ten.

**John:** Ten. OK. Michael Green, what are you looking for as you read scripts?

**Michael:** Very similar. I’m looking for someone who I see something that will make my show better and different. I remember a showrunner I worked for back in the “22 episodes a year I don’t know how we did it days,” and I don’t know how you do it. But he said when he was hiring, and this stuck with me as a bad idea, he was looking for ten little hims. And I thought that’s terrible because you can already write like you. You know, and I can write like me all the time. I can’t stop. It’s awful. So I want people who can do what I can’t do. And then I suddenly realize reading that voice that if that voice was in my show, my show would be better. So that please.

Specificity in ten pages. Sadly, that does bear out. Showrunners read about ten pages because if it isn’t excellent in ten pages it’s never better by 20. It just doesn’t. And so polish the shit out of the first ten, please.

**John:** Justin Marks. What are you looking for?

**Justin:** I really try to look for writers who make me jealous. I think that’s really the thing that I feel like if there’s something – because I completely agree. That idea, and we’ve talked about this in the room a lot, like I can do me. I can do me pretty well. Like I feel like I know me and I can write for me and understand that. But if I am reading someone who really writes from a place, a voice that I’ve never really been able to bring out of myself then that’s exactly what I want to do.

And I will also say, I mean, yes, the question is about reading. So it’s leading in that sense. But I do think from a place, for me at least, the meeting is everything. We’re not having the meeting unless that spark has happened on the script. But I find that the best collaboration with writers in the room are people who – it also brings the best part of me out when we’re having this conversation and we’re talking about our favorite movies, or our favorite TV show, or our favorite book. You know, that’s the dynamic in the writer’s room every single day.

You know, you can bring a lot of diverse voices together, but if you don’t like the same stuff and want to do the same stuff I feel like that’s where you run afoul. So, yeah, I think it’s a combination of the two. And in some ways, depending on I guess the way everyone writes their show, I think it’s that meeting. What do we bring out of each other? That’s a hugely important thing.

**Craig:** Did you ever have any problems with control issues having come from a place of, look, I write by myself. I write. This is mine. And now I have to let you do it?

**Justin:** So badly for me. I mean, like so badly. I was so bad at it at the beginning. And fortunately the writers are really good when it comes to knowing that I was a first-time showrunner. But my thing was really like I just kept using this phrase, “I have to wrap my head around this.” And the only way I can wrap my head around it is to sort of just run through it and see it and keep doing it and keep doing it. And I realized I was making so much more work for myself. Like so much more work for myself to such diminishing returns as you’re doing it. Because it’s really like maybe it seems big to you as you’re sort of going through each page and each scene and each line of dialogue, but like you’ve hired brilliant people who can write this stuff. And, I mean, you’ve all worked it through together in the room and unless something has really just run sideways on the page, like there’s no reason to do it.

So, I had a hard time with that at the very beginning. And really like the first season was a tough journey to realizing like there are people around you. Ask them for help. That was a really tough thing. I wish I had learned that. I wish I had worked on a show. They should only, only let people run shows who have worked on shows. They should not have hired me.

**Michael:** The best day on your first season show isn’t when you get picked up for the second season. It’s when one of your writers gives you a draft that you don’t have to touch. Because it means you can now have a weekend, or now you just tell that person, “I’m sorry, you’re fucked. You’re going to write a lot.” Because otherwise you’re going to have to do every page and that’s not – there’d be dragons.

**John:** We’re going to have time for about four questions. I want to ask you guys about, you’re not just reading, and you’re not meeting with folks, but you’re also managing folks. And it feels like the management of a writing staff has become a – Harvey Weinstein was two months ago. It feels like it was six months ago, but it’s only two months ago. Has anything changed in the sense of how you guys are approaching life in the room? How you guys are approaching your shows in the wake of the sexual harassment stuff that’s come up?

**Julie:** I was just talking about this today. We had our little holiday lunch and I said – I said what is it going to be like for us moving forward in a writer’s room? And I was at a table full of women, so it was a very easy conversation to have. But I said, you know, we have to be as respectful of everybody’s space as we’re asking men to be of ours. And we can’t sit around and talk about like bras and periods all day long either, you know.

**Craig:** Aw.

**Julie:** I know. I know. There has to be a sense of mutual respect for everybody in the room. But on the other hand, I mean, when you go back to what they teach you at Warner Bros. in the sexual harassment training that I’m sure will be wholly revamped before next year is about the Friends lawsuit. And the Friends lawsuit back in the day was a woman who was in the writer’s room as a writer’s assistant, I think, who basically was just like the things discussed in the room, the words used in the room, the ideas discussed in the room were unacceptable to me and made me uncomfortable. And the defense, which turned out to be a winning defense, was but we’re in a creative space in which we are supposed to be allowed to be free to express ourselves without filter and without judgment.

And I really do believe that. And I think it’s just a difference between if someone is expressing themselves freely without filter but are also an asshole, then there are lines that have to be drawn. And a woman that I was talking to said, “If we could just get more comfortable saying, ‘Oh, that’s too far for me, or that’s too much.’” Or even better, if we don’t have to say it at all, she said, “I would love nothing more than to never be the woman in the room that says, ‘You know, hold on.’ But if some guy would tap his buddy and be like, dude.” And just move on. Say that’s a little too much. Hey bro, back off. And let it go. And don’t make a woman or a man or whoever is feeling objectified, or persecuted, or just offended have to be the one to sort of raise the Debbie Downer flag and be like, come on guys.

Although we did have a bell in my last room where like a writer brought in a bell and every time somebody swore inappropriately she’d be like, “Ding.” And then we’d laugh and we’d move on.

**Craig:** That’s not a bad idea. I mean, systems that are based on the male observational power generally are doomed. But if you have a situation where someone, like OK, you know that there’s a guy. Like let’s say I’m in your room and you can look at me and be like, and I’m like, OK, got it. Dude. Right? And then we just have a thing and then I know because I do need to be told. I think a lot of men need to be told. Because we’re just a little duh.

**John:** Let’s go to a question. Sir, your question.

**Male Audience Member:** So this is a bit of a champagne problem, but I hope there’s some general advice in here. So, it’s taken me ten years to get to this moment. And I have a spec script that’s going around town. And I got an agent. We had to move very quickly with that. And I’m at this lovely moment where every manager in town wants to meet with me, take me to lovely lunches. And I don’t quite know what’s the right way to pick a person to work with, hopefully for the long term. Like what is the trait to optimize. There are bigger places. There are smaller places. There are people that function like agents. There are people that develop.

You guys have experience. I will never have the opportunity to ask people like you this again. So I’m curious–

**Craig:** Correct. We all disappear after this.

**Julie:** What do you need in your creative process? Like if you had a perfect creative relationship with someone else that was on your team, would it be sit in a room with me for eight hours and help me break this story? Would it be I need really great comprehensive notes on my material? Or would it be like I wrote this, shut up and sell it? Where in that is what you would wish for?

Male Audience Member: I think frankly my agent team can take the shut up and sell it side of stuff. I’d like someone that I could kind of work with almost like a producer. I can call, I can game plan. I can be a little bit closer with. I don’t necessarily need day-to-day notes. I don’t need – I’m a grownup. I don’t need hand-holding. I don’t want to be told what to write. But I’d love someone to read stuff and give some feedback.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Some general advice I give to anybody who is looking for new representation is pick somebody who you won’t dread getting a phone call from. Because sometimes people will be like, “Oh, he’s a shark but he’s great. He’s on my side.” But if you don’t want to answer the phone, if you don’t want to talk to him, that’s not the person for you.

Julie’s question is very smart about just in terms of like knowing what you’re actually looking for. So are you looking for a bad cop? Are you looking for a good guy? Figure out what it is you’re going after. And Justin Marks, you and I have had a lot of discussions about managers because I was down on managers for a long time and you were like, “No, no, John, you don’t understand what’s actually going on.” Talk to us about managers.

**Justin:** Yeah. I think – and it’s interesting because I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as you get on a show and you’re just doing one job this whole time. And so my manager’s role in my life has changed significantly from the beginning. But in the beginning when I was just starting out I really think, and it’s only because I can count on less than one hand the number times a month I’ll speak to agents now. And my manager is the person who I’m always in the trenches with. He knows what I’m writing on a given day. He knows, you know, are you moving on to this? Are you getting this done? They’re calling about this. You have to get that finished. Whatever it may be, he’s the person who is really like a partner.

And I’ve had my manager since I was in college from the very beginning. We’ve been together and I have a very comfortable rapport. He’s the only person in my life who can tell me when something is truly terrible. He’s the person who calls to deliver bad news. And can do it fairly and without spin which is really important to me.

So, I feel like in this – and this is where our discussion was originally is I don’t think agents do anymore what they used to do.

**John:** I think everyone agrees with you there.

**Justin:** And maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because managers have come about. But I think it’s a very important thing especially because this is not true of all agents but I’ll just say it, I think the attention spans are very short. And if you have a good manager that’s not what it’s about. They have a very long attention span.

But you only get one shot of giving a piece of material to even your agent in that sense. You don’t want to damage that relationship. So to have a manager who you can really vet your material with and to do multiple iterations on it with I think is a really important thing.

Now my relationship with my manager is very different. I mean, he’s like my therapist more than anything. Or he’ll come to set and just sit around for a little while, and then we’ll go for walks where we just go for walks like in movies where someone is really down and going for a walk. That’s what we do.

So I guess it’s worth 10%. Right?

**Julie:** Well, I mean, I’ve always been down on managers, too, because working in television I always tell people don’t get a fucking manager, for god’s sake. That’s 10% of your income. You want to buy a house. You want to raise a child. You want to put him in college. You want to keep your money. Like for the love of god, don’t get a manager who is just going to put you on a show and then cash a paycheck for nine months out of the year.

But, what you get for that 10% is a fulfilling relationship if that’s what you need. You know? Whether it’s breaking every story with you beat for beat, or just walking around the block with you. If that’s how you want to spend your money to have that relationship, then just make sure it’s someone who is going to give it to you. Because there are way too many managers in this town who just operate like agents who will stay on the phone with you longer. And I think it’s total bullshit.

**Craig:** I agree with her 100%. And I will say you don’t have to sweat this decision. Pick one of them. And if you don’t like him or you don’t like her, fire their ass and pick another one. Because there’s a thousand of them.

**Julie:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Great. And just in case you are a Michael Green in a couple of years and you have four movies in a year, what’s your name?

**Male Audience Member:** Jeremy Cohen.

**Julie:** Good luck, Jeremy.

**John:** Jeremy Cohen. There’s probably a few other Jeremy Cohen’s on IMDb, I think, but–

**Craig:** You can only have one Michael Green or one Jeremy Cohen. You can’t have Michael Green and Jeremy Cohen. We’ll have to figure this out.

**John:** All right, on this side. A question.

**Female Audience Member:** So Craig is always talking about how he doesn’t make any money from the podcast. So what is going on there?

**Craig:** Thank you! Oh my god! Like all this time I’ve been waiting for somebody to ask the obvious question. What is going on?

**John:** So, I can actually honestly answer you. So that number about the t-shirts, that is true.

**Craig:** Oh god. This is going to be bad.

**John:** So, a bunch of you are premium subscribers. Yes, some people in the audience here. So people who get all those back episodes, that’s $2 a month. We get a dollar of that back from Libsyn. So that ends up being – we have almost 3,000 of those, so that’s $3,000 a month that’s coming in. So that’s good.

That helps pay for Megan’s salary. It pays for Matthew. And our transcripts. And so that’s kind of what it covers. There are podcasts that make good money, like those Pod Save America podcasts, they’re making bank. And it’s a whole different world. But we just decided we didn’t want to sell Casper Mattresses.

I mean.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Julie:** They do it so well. I mean, that’s part of the novelty of Pod Save America is they–

**John:** They do a great job of that.

**Julie:** The way they do their advertising is so funny and enjoyable.

**Craig:** I’m sorry. We would crush it.

**Julie:** You guys would crush it. It would be amazing.

**Craig:** We’re professional writers.

**Julie:** I want to hear you talk about–

**Craig:** By the way, you know who we should advertise?

**John:** Who?

**Craig:** Bisquick.

**John:** Bisquick. Yeah. Bisquick would be a fantastic thing. And so I can tell you guys here tonight, I think for the first time, that I am going to be doing another podcast in the New Year and that one will have ads in it. And so that will be a very different world for me. And it’s been an incredibly different experience learning how all of that works, because it’s not just two guys talking–

**Craig:** That’s not going to last a long time though is it?

**John:** No. It’s a miniseries just like yours.

**Craig:** Oh, OK.

**John:** Yeah, it’s fine.

**Craig:** No, you go and you have your thing.

**John:** Yeah. It’s fine. We can each do our own little thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. You love someone, set them free.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** The truth is I do love talking about it because it’s hysterical to me, but John really does all of the work. That’s the other thing I often repeat. And between Megan and Matthew who edits and then the hosting costs and all of the other stuff, it is – we break even.

**John:** Yeah. I should say Craig used to have to write me a check every month for the hosting and stuff. Craig used to write money out of his pocket. So that doesn’t happen anymore.

**Craig:** So like that’s how I get paid now is by not having to pay money. But if we did advertise, how much money do you think we could make?

**John:** We could make good money. We’ve gotten approached a couple times. Because you guys are obviously incredibly upwardly mobile people and–

**Craig:** That one guy is.

**John:** Yeah, that guy.

**Julie:** Jeremy Cohen.

**John:** We could advertise only to Jeremy Cohen.

**Michael:** You could advertise him.

**John:** Yeah. Absolutely. Be that guy.

**Craig:** Stuff that Jeremy likes.

**John:** Cool. Great, thanks. Another question.

**Male Audience Member:** As you guys have sort of underscored throughout the evening, it’s been quite a year. And I’m wondering how the sort of world climate/political climate, the darkness of the moment has influenced the creative decisions you’re making, both on a day to day level in terms of scene work, character work on the page, but also the projects you’re taking or the stories you’re interested in telling.

**Craig:** That’s a great question. Great question.

**John:** Yeah, it’s hard whenever you have a villain to sort of not go into a place where it’s like, oh, is it this kind of villain or is it this kind of darkness. It’s hard to write dystopian story now that doesn’t feel like, oh, you see outside your window.

So I’ve definitely been mindful of that stuff. But I would say that I was in France during a lot of this and then I was also writing my book for 10 to 12 year olds. So that was great to sort of have that escape hatch and not be sort of in the thick of it all the time creatively. How about you guys?

You wrote Chernobyl.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. Actually great timing. Here’s a story about Russian lies. And what’s been happening over the last year has been actually very influential.

I started working on Chernobyl about four years ago. And just a week ago I rewrote the very first lines of the show. There was a time when the show was at its foundation about a thing. I mean, obviously it’s about Chernobyl but what human point is there to all of this. And as I started writing through the episodes by the time I got to the end I realized it had become something else and it’s something that is far more relevant to what is happening now in the world around me.

I think in general as a writer I have become vastly more concerned about representation of characters. It is on the forefront of my mind. I am constantly asking myself questions like just checking the pitfalls. The pitfall of default white. The pitfall of this character doesn’t deserve a name. You know, all of these things. And just constantly running that tape in my head. Whereas before, honestly, nobody ever asked you to do that. Nobody expected you to do it. And if you did, they would ask you why.

Like I remember years and years ago, my gosh, it was for the Weinsteins. There was a script and there was a discussion that a character had with a guy who was just like at a reception desk for a hospital. And the guy at the reception desk I just happened to make Southeast Asian. And they were befuddled. Why did you do that? And I’m like because there are a lot of them. And they’re people in the world. Now it’s the opposite. And that’s wonderful.

I think actually in a great way the response to the fucked-up-ness has been really good for me as a writer. I think it’s been great for our business in general, not just in terms of weeding out terrible people, but also just in the day to day business of how we approach storytelling and how we approach each other as human beings. There is a strange optimism. It’s just every time I start to feel good then some other asshole comes along. So anyway.

**Julie:** Yeah. I’ve had a two-pronged experience which has been sort of fascinating and concerning, but also really great. So the fascinating/concerning part was I write, you know, Vampire Diaries was – it’s gothic romance. And all of the origins of that kind of like the bad boy, the murderous bad boy, and the love triangle, and vampires in general, vampires throughout literature are very sexual beings. And so I use a lot of bodice-ripper kind of influence and all the Harlequin romance novels that I read growing up, and soap operas.

And I remember hitting like Season Seven and I’m pitching, “OK, and then this happens, and she doesn’t want to go. And she’s refusing to go, and so he breaks her neck, throws her in the back of the car, and she wakes up and she’s in a hotel room against her will.” And the whole room went, “You can’t do that.” And I was like, “Why? You know, she’s a vampire. She would do it to him.” And they were like, “Because that’s rapey. It’s like rape culture shit.” And I was like, oh, god, you guys. And I’m being very glib right now to make my point. But I said “This is the show. Like the gothic romance. I’m a feminist. I’m a strong woman. I’m not advocating abuse here. I’m just – there is a quality of sort of titillating fun to this that has built the empire of the show. And now if I can’t dip into that well then what the hell are we going to do, you know?”

And I was filled with despair and it actually launched into this great conversation in which we agreed to disagree and ultimately modified the beat so she had more agency, which I outlawed that word for a year in my writer’s room. I’m like the buzz words.

**Craig:** The buzz words. Because executives have stolen them.

**Julie:** But, you know, and then you realize, OK, but there are now limits to what you really should feel comfortable representing. And so that was my sort of growing experience. And the sort of wonderful experience was after the election and our despair and coming back to the writer’s room of The Originals this year we were like, OK, what stories are we going to tell? And someone was like, “Well what if there’s this faction of vampires who think that only a certain kind of vampires are cool. And like they want to get rid of all the other kind of vampires. And they certainly hate werewolves. And they really hate witches. And they were like kind of vampire purists.”

And so just basically made our whole season about like–

**Craig:** Alt-Right Vampires.

**Julie:** Trump supporters, you know. And it has been the most liberating, wonderful, it’s just amazing. And it’s so on the nose you guys, and I’m going to apologize in advance. I was watching a playback today and I’m like, ooh, that’s really on the nose. But it felt so good all year. And we loved it. Loved it.

**Michael:** Sometimes you got to punch right on the nose.

**Julie:** Exactly.

**John:** Michael Green, how has it changed your process?

**Michael:** Largely a lot of angry writing. A lot of just channeling that. Actually I should say it’s a pendulum swing between escapist bullshit and really, really angry writing. So, Season Two of American Gods, like Season One we wrote in a progressive administration, assuming we were going into a progressive administration, before America decided to shit the bed. And it’s not funny, but we had written a lot of things about immigration, very culturally diverse. But it was kind of accidental that we were doing it. We were just writing what we thought would be positive and suddenly it became a sparkplug. Up until last week we were leaning into that with a lot more ferocity. And part of the reason we parted ways was we wanted to defend that stuff when circumstances would have prevailed that we might have had to not do it.

On the other hand, escapist bullshit. Like I was on the set of Murder on the Orient Express, or I went the next day after the election. And I was never so glad, like I walked across fake snow to a fake train. And I’m like 1930s! And all of a sudden I realized that 1930s Europe suddenly felt idealistic.

**John:** Justin, how has it changed you?

**Justin:** I will say, I’m sure it’s the same for all rooms, but so much of our time is taken up talking about this stuff now, just every single day of how bad everything has gotten. But what’s really interesting, we have a show about identity. That’s sort of the idea. It’s two worlds and it becomes a show about who would you be under a different set of circumstances and all these things. And so very often in the first season we’re exploring ideas of gender identity, of sexual identity. And then we come to this season and the conversation feels very different now.

And we have a very diverse room. It’s a very important part of what makes this show what it is. But at no point had we really had the conversation about racial identity and what that means. And it was suddenly like we’re having this conversation. It was a really interesting day when we started to talk about it because, you know, we take place in sort of Berlin and then an alternate Berlin in another world. And there’s all these kind of throwback themes to espionage in it. You know, this conversation started like, well, do we always have to have this conversation as it relates to it? And someone said, and it was the best thing, and it was just like a glass of cold water to the face for the whole room of, “We’re already having this conversation whether we want to be or not. It’s time we actually start engaging with it.”

And that changed everything for us. It suddenly became this, and you know, we tried to create I think a better way of also just talking to each other. It may be a sexual remark, but it may also be a racial remark or something like that. To sort of get a form of discourse where people are comfortable, not just criticizing but also being criticized, and not taking it personally. You know, especially I think the white male point of view immediately goes to a place of, well, hold on, but I voted for Obama. It’s like one of the good guys thing.

And it’s like, no, you really have to take a step back and listen to yourself and hear yourself in that way and feel – and ask aloud to a diverse room around you, “Is this OK? I mean, how does this make everyone feel if I say this. It’s different if I say this than if you say this, right? Is that what it is? Or, no, what is it?”

And it becomes a really interesting thing. And I’ve got to say, I can’t believe that it has taken this long for these kinds of conversations to happen so comfortably and so much in the open. So in that sense it is – I do share that feeling of optimism. I do share that feeling of – I mean, what else do we have? It’s like the stories, you read that Sebastian Younger book about a tribe where no one was happier than when they were in London during the blitz being bombed every day because at least they had a community. Like that’s kind of how I feel now with it is like—

**Julie:** Well, yeah, it goes to what we were saying about making something comfortable in the room. So, I am a very energetic room personality. And when we’re in a flow and we’re talking story and when I get onto an idea and I’m pitching a thread, I’m like oh and this, and boom, and that. And nothing – nothing ruins that more for me than someone is like, “Well, you can’t do that because that’s not – I’m going to blanket it not PC. But it’s basically that’s racist, or that’s this.” And I’m like, come on, you know. And you get so frustrated because the air is cut out of your momentum. And you’re like that’s not sexist. Or that’s not rapey. Or that’s not whatever.

But, somebody in the room thinks it is. And somebody in the room had the balls to say that to you. And especially somebody like me who is then going to have a sort of hilarious, never angry, but a hilarious meltdown of like, “Oh, the energy just got sucked out of my soul.” We have to create these environments where people, especially young staff writers, et cetera, can feel free to be like, “Um, hello, you can’t do that and here’s why.” And where I will then come off of my sort of downward spiral and say, “OK, no really, tell me.” And then I can still decide you know what I disagree or I hear you or whatever. But to make sure the conversation happens.

**John:** Cool. Thank you very much. We usually end with One Cool Things. We’re going to do something special this time. This is our new little thing called, let’s see if the slide will change, Secret Santa or Lump of Coal. So there’s no emoji for lump of coal, so we used a smiley pile of poop.

So this is something great from the last year that we want to make sure people are aware of, and something from the last year which we could do without. So, My Secret Santa would be this was the final season for both Please Like Me, which is a series I loved, and Girls, which I loved to death. And we can forget that these great things happened in this year. So, my Secret Santa are those two shows. Go check them out if you’ve not checked them out. Their last seasons were both great.

My lump of coal goes to post-credit scenes on superhero movies. Just stop. I mean, like I kind of dug it at first. It’s like, oh, it’s an Easter egg. It’s a little bonus thing for the fans. But now a movie will end and like, ugh, I’m pulling up Wikipedia, like is there a tag scene? Ugh. And by the time it actually gets to it, like ten minutes later, I’m like it was not worth it to stay. So, let’s just stop. We could all stop. We can all agree to be done. Or do it within one minute, but then it be done and say, OK, no, there’s no more. Done.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m with you. My Secret Santa, is that what the good one is? Secret Santa? Is something I talked about on the show before, but it’s become an integral part of my life. 1Password. You don’t have to use 1Password. There’s other things like 1Password. But here’s why I’m actually evangelizing this.

So, for those of you who don’t know it’s a password management thing on your computer. You put all of your passwords in it. It generates good passwords for you, really strong ones so that not everything is Baloney1. And it’s great.

But, here’s the best part about One Password. So now it’s like a subscription-based thing the way all software is going, which is annoying, but my wife and I now share a subscription and so we have all of it now as a family. So the point is if I croak, she has everything there. And we have to start coming to terms with this that when we die now we leave behind this minefield of digital shit behind us. And we also have these accounts and things and banks. So now your partner has access to it all.

So, be a good digital citizen and get yourself something like that.

Lump of coal. You don’t like those post-credit sequences on movies, what I cannot have any more are these stupid mini-trailers in front of the trailer. Show me the trailer. What is that fucking thing at the beginning of the – I’m already watching the trailer. You know I’m watching it. If I’m going to see your thing, that means I’m watching the trailer. The thing lasts like four seconds. It’s a mini-trailer in front of the trailer.

Go on YouTube, go to a trailer, and watch what happens. Oh, I’m going to watch this trailer. First there’s a mini-trailer. It’s four seconds long. It’s insane.

And then you watch the regular trailer. What is that? Make it stop!

**John:** Done.

**Julie:** Amazing. Amazing. OK, so my Secret Santa, we already covered Pod Save America, which has just been my absolute salvation this year. And I would like to be on it if anybody knows anybody. Honestly, Reed Morano and Susanne Bier I want to say is the last name, Byer, but it’s two female directors in television, Handmaid’s Tale and The Night Manager. And what these two women did visually was so spectacular. Just the art direction, the cinematography, the actual – the visual point of view. That’s where you really can understand a director at least kind of knows their shit a little bit. They’re not just telling a story. They’re presenting a world, a beautiful world to you. And female directors in television, the good ones are few and far between and growing by the day.

But I was so wildly impressed by their work and I think that they, along with Patty Jenkins, and of course Ava DuVernay, on the movie side have really just planted their flag this year and made us all look good.

And then my lump of coal is the six-act structure in broadcast television. It is the death of good storytelling. It is the quagmire of where formerly good writers go to die. It is – when you think about it, it’s really seven-act structure because your title card comes in there and then you’ve got to – every 3.5 minutes you have to turn something and twist something. And it’s horrible.

And somebody today said that finally networks are starting to say, good networks like cable networks, are starting to say, “Oh, we don’t care about the act out. We’ll like act out in the middle of a word if we want. Don’t worry about building to that.” And that is interesting at least to explore because it’s the worst.

**Craig:** Is this for commercial interruptions?

**Julie:** Yeah. The worst.

**Craig:** That’s bad.

**John:** Michael Green?

**Michael:** Secret Santa, The Leftovers.

**Julie:** Ah!

**Michael:** If you haven’t seen it, you do. If you’ve seen it, watch it again. Damon Lindelof, Mimi Leder, speaking of female directors, she’s an authorial voice in there that demands mention and notice. If you haven’t seen it, there was probably a reason. It felt like, oh, that’s too hard. Or maybe there’s some homework. And you know what? First couple episodes, yes. Yes. And there are 450 shows on the air. Anything that takes a couple episodes to get going, I get it. You don’t want to. Like why should I acquire a taste? It’s gross.

No. Just to get to the pleasure of seeing what real writing and what real television – I mean, what it can get to in the third season. It would be worth running a marathon and I will never run a marathon. It is gorgeous. It is liturgy. It’s beautiful. I admire it.

**Julie:** It’s a masterpiece.

**Michael:** It really is. It’s a masterpiece. And just to see how you can end a show by choice, word felt. I watched it and went, “I want to try harder, do better.” And it made me want to.

Lump of shit. This is probably not the room to say this in, but there’s this hashtag I see a lot, #amwriting.

**Craig:** Thank you. I know.

**Michael:** Like if you did that, you’re not. Secondly, writing is like, you know, if you’re a writer that’s hygiene. Like #ambrushingmyteeth. Or worse, it’s like people who declare they’re in love publicly. Then you’re not. #inlove. Like blast fuck you.

Just write and turn your wireless off and shut the fuck up.

**Craig:** That is a man after my own heart. No romance. None.

**Michael:** The romance about writing, just–

**Craig:** Oh, it’s the worst.

**Michael:** Just do your shit.

**John:** Justin Marks, bring us home.

**Justin:** My Secret Santa, and I can’t believe that I even have to say this in 2017, but I would say the thing I’m most grateful for this year is a free press. More specifically, and I want to see it around next year, and I think that especially the kind of press that values good investigative journalism and checking sources. And I think we’ve seen it both on a very high level and then in the last couple months here in this industry how much it can change things. And I really hope that we keep – in the age of the Internet when we’re just sort of pushing free journalism left and right, I hope we all have a newspaper subscription. I really, really do. Or at least the one that gives you the online version of it. That’s my earnest one.

The pile of poop, this is a thing, and I have it here. The fact that cell phones these days, they’re just getting bigger. I have the iPhone SE and this is too big still. I want a smaller phone than this. And I don’t understand why there’s not a choice. Michael has a new phone that I don’t know how it can fit in your pocket. And that’s what the thing is. We live in this age where technology is everything you can fit in a pocket, and yet it can no longer fit in your pocket.

And I just don’t understand why I cannot have a phone the size that I want it to be.

**Julie:** Right. But you’re not 40 yet are you?

**Justin:** No.

**Julie:** Because the vision starts to go and then you can’t see. And I’m like I need a bigger goddamn phone because I can’t read anything.

**Craig:** You ageist.

**John:** So for young bucks like Justin Marks, we want small phones.

**Justin:** Small things. Like really small, like the Zoolander phone. I don’t know why we don’t have that in smartphone technology.

**John:** Yeah, movies promised you the Zoolander phone and it never came.

All right. That is our show for this week. Guys, thank you so much. We have so many people to thank, so let us thank them.

We’ll start off with Chris from the Writers Guild Foundation for putting us on. Writers Guild Foundation, you’re the best. Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you, Chris.

**John:** We need to thank The Los Angeles Film School for hosting us, especially Daniel who did our AV. Daniel, thank you very much.

**Craig:** Thank you, Daniel.

**John:** We need to thank Dustin Bocks and Nima Yousefi for putting together all of these slides and stuff you saw.

As always, our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. Megan! It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who is in Japan, so cheer loudly for Matthew.

Our intro this week which truly was great, and so you’ll hear it on the real podcast, is Jon Spurney.

**Craig:** Brought to you by the devil.

**John:** Our outro is by Andy Roninson. If you have questions for us, write into ask@johnaugust.com, or find us on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is…?

**Craig:** @clmazin.

**John:** What are you guys on Twitter?

**Julie:** @julieplec.

**Michael:** @andmichaelgreen.

**Justin:** I’m really annoying. It’s @justin_marks_ because there’s a NASCAR driver named Justin Marks and it’s really bizarre.

**John:** That’s fine.

**Justin:** Don’t tweet him.

**John:** You can find the show notes for this and all episodes at johnaugust.com, or all of the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. You guys are the best. Thank you very much and have a happy rest of your 2017.

**Craig:** Merry Christmas.

Links:

* [Show slides](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Scriptnotes-Dec7-Live-Show.zip), in case you want to follow along at home.
* [Pod Save America](https://crooked.com/podcast-series/pod-save-america/)
* [S Town](https://stownpodcast.org)
* Dirty John to [listen to](http://wondery.com/wondery/shows/dirtyjohn/) or [read](http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-dirty-john/)
* [Missing Richard Simmons](https://www.missingrichardsimmons.com)
* Julie Plec on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0687096/)
* Michael Green on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0338169/)
* Justin Marks on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098479/) and check out his new show [Counterpart](https://www.starz.com/series/counterpart/featured)
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
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**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is Episode 328 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program we’ll be looking at how you pitch a television show. We’ll also wade back into the turbulent waters of sexual harassment to discuss what the responsibilities are of men, women, and labor unions to remedy it.

**Craig:** That’s not at all a minefield.

**John:** Not a bit of one. But a reminder, we have a live show coming up. That’s next week. Actually this week as you’re hearing this. This Thursday, December 7, in Hollywood we will be welcoming guests Julie Plec, Justin Marks, and Michael Green to talk about wonderful things, including television programs, so you should come. If there’s still tickets you should come.

**Craig:** That’s quite a group there. I mean, got some big movies in there and some big time writers and producers. And as always it benefits the Writers Guild Foundation, which is our favorite charity.

**John:** It is a fantastic charity. If you would like tickets go to wgfoundation.org/events and you will see us there and you can grab yourself a ticket. So, we still haven’t planned everything that’s happening, but I will have some surprises for you, Craig. Things you do not even see coming.

**Craig:** The good news is I don’t ever see anything coming. Everything is an endless surprise to me. I’m like a child.

**John:** Yeah. It’s lovely. You know, persistence of memory, you know, you cover something over with a napkin, oh my god it’s a surprise to you.

**Craig:** Right. You can play peekaboo with me and it still works.

**John:** That’s fantastic. It’s good stuff.

**Craig:** It is good stuff. Great stuff. That’s how I stay young.

**John:** It is. So, let’s get into sexual harassment because this is essentially follow up because in a previous episode we were talking about sexual harassment. Craig, you had some suggestions and guidelines you wanted to propose. And you got some feedback from that, so why don’t you take it from here.

**Craig:** Sure. I got a really interesting email from somebody that I know and I wanted to share it. And I spoke with her and so we’re going to leave her name out of it. We just agreed on the guidelines of things. And I’m editing down the email a little bit, but I think I’m hitting the important points. So I’m just going to go ahead and read this from an anonymous friend.

“Craig, you know that you’re one of my favorite humans.” You know, I wish I could I just stop there, John, honestly, because that’s amazing, right?

**John:** Like on a little thank you card, just write that. Just send it.

**Craig:** Just send it. Because I really appreciate that. Well, it goes on.

“Craig, you know that you’re one of my favorite humans but I feel compelled to disagree with some of what you guys said on the latest episode. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have had a minimal amount of weird and inappropriate interactions in my work life. I happened to have worked for mostly gay men and women. I’m cautious by nature and tend to remove myself when I feel uncomfortable. I’ve worked mostly in progressive areas in well-respected organizations and none of that has stopped me from having awful moments and interactions I would like to forget.

“You said that no one will be offended if you say you’re uncomfortable and I simply cannot stress how untrue that is. Offended may look different on different people. It may come off as anger, acting dismissive, annoyed, patronizing, etc. But it will be there every single time.

“I have been told I have offended people for far less than standing up for myself after a moment of questionable behavior by a colleague. The result of offended, no matter what it looks like, is the same. You will be someone that no one wants to work with.

“You also said to remove yourself when something feels rapey. Two things. I can’t ever remember worrying that a colleague would rape me. It’s almost never that cut and dry. If someone has a rapist t-shirt then, yeah, you should leave. Short of that, it will often just feel like you’re dealing with a guy who is maybe a little too interested but not crossing any big red lines.

“Second thing. If I remove myself from every workplace where there were someone that I had a bad gut feeling about, I wouldn’t ever work again. The conversation I would much rather have is around how do we talk to men about this situation. For women, this is almost mundane. It is such a part of our lives. Rather than us twisting ourselves in knots to figure out workarounds, can we talk about how men treat women?

“Let me tell you why this matters to me. The situations I had didn’t physically scar me or even traumatize me. Again, I’ve been very lucky. What they did do is slowly chip away at my sense of self-worth. They subtly tell you that the only reason you’re in the room is because you’re young and female and that your voice or opinions are irrelevant. You don’t get attention when you succeed or when you fail, which are net positive things. You get attention when you look nice and no other time.”

So, I read this and I thought this is a very fair criticism. I mean, first of all there’s a lot of great insights in there that I think you and I probably wouldn’t be able to have access to because we’re not in the same situation that women are in, so I really appreciated that point. And I also think that the larger point that she’s making which is it’s not easy to just say I’m offended and I’m walking away is true. And they’re right about that. They meaning anyone who agrees with that.

And I also think that it is true that even though we are trying to do a service by telling people how to manage difficult situations that are imposed upon them, it is true that we – I think you and I have a responsibility if we’re going to talk about that part of it to talk about the other part which is, “OK boys, how are you supposed to behave.”

**John:** Yeah. Fair. I think what I got so much out of her letter is that how do you deal with these difficult situations without being labeled difficult. And that she wants to be in that room. She wants to be doing her work and she feels like if she calls anybody on their behavior she’s immediately sort of ostracized as that person who is like, “Oh, she can’t play. She can’t hang. She’s not one of us.”

And that is a terrible situation. And so I think you’re right. We need to look at what are the responsibilities of men, women, and everybody else in that room and in those working situations to not let that happen. Because I think your advice was well-intentioned. You said that if you feel that you’re at an unsafe place, get yourself out of that place. And that is one end of this horrible spectrum of behaviors we’re seeing where there are literal attacks and assaults happening.

But in attempting to get yourself out of those possible bad situations, she’s saying you are opening yourself up for the other kind of bad thing that we see happening on the other end of the spectrum which is just like opportunities being taken away because you’re not longer seen as cool.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I think we heard a bit of this too from Dara Resnik and from Daley Haggar when they were on. And it’s a sense of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If you don’t say anything and you just stay there, you become a victim. If say something, protest, or try and get out, you become a complainer. And so what I think we’re hearing here, and it makes total sense, is that there are certain situations where there are no behaviors that women can engage in that end in a kind of victory. That really it’s just a competition between negative outcomes and you’re trying to look for the least worst situation, which isn’t ideal, so maybe we should be coming at this from the other side which is what can we say to the people perpetrating this stuff so that women aren’t in this situation of having to pick the lesser of evils.

**John:** Yeah. So I mean a couple thoughts. First is to listen to letters like this that make it clear that these situations happen. Because I feel like a lot of times I think men aren’t aware that they’re creating these impossible situations for the women they’re working with.

**Craig:** I agree. I think that that is very much part of what happens. I also think that there are a lot of guys who know exactly what they’re doing and just don’t care. And maybe, perhaps I’m naïve, but maybe if we just codify certain things it will be a little harder for them to get away with it.

**John:** Well let’s talk about codifying things, because I had a great conversation with a writer who is on a TV show this last week and he said that they’re looking in their room as they’re sort of figuring out for next season. They want to come in with a list of like “These are going to be the house rules. This is what we’re going to be doing. This is how it’s all going to work.” And the writing staff is going to vote anonymously on those things. And any one of those rules that gets like two people voting for it is part of the rules for that room. It’s part of the rules for how that show is going to work with the writers.

Will that solve everything? No, it won’t. But at least there’s a thing you can point to saying like, “Hey, this is how we’re going to do it.” And so if someone is breaking one of those rules, everybody sees that he is breaking one of those rules. And I think that helps not only the woman who is being harassed or bullied. It helps everyone else in that room be able to point out like, “Hey, this is not right. We agreed this was not right. You’re breaking the norms of what’s happening here.”

I think with rules you can help set norms. And norms are what’s not being followed here.

**Craig:** I totally agree. I think that’s actually really important that we distinguish between norms, social mores, and laws. It is illegal to sexually assault someone. But it is not illegal to make a joke that makes someone uncomfortable. And what it is is just a violation of a social norm and a social more. And I think a lot of times what happens is people throw up their hands and say, “Well you can’t legislate behavior.”

No, you absolutely can. Here’s an example. Let’s say I work in a writer’s room. And it’s lunch time. And we all eat lunch around the table. When lunch comes, I have the soup. And I decide to eat it with my hands. I just lift up handfuls of soup and just rub them into my face. That’s not illegal. There’s no law against that. It’s weird. It’s creepy. It’s wrong. It is a violation of a social norm.

Similarly, I can’t take my socks and shoes off and put my bare feet up on the table. It’s gross. We all know this. But somehow when it comes to creating a sense of social mores around the way we respect each other and particularly the way men respect women in a room, we get – we become uber libertarians who can’t imagine the notion of any kind of restraint.

Well, I have a bunch of restraints I’d like to suggest.

**John:** Well, Craig, I will say though both your soup example and your taking off your shoes and socks and putting your feet on the table, I have not worked on a lot of TV staffs, but I will guarantee you that someone could write in saying like that exact thing happened on our TV show. And the more powerful the person is who is taking off the socks or eating soup with his hands, the harder it is for other people in the room to call him out on that behavior. And so that’s I think part of the reason why you want to have some written out thing of like these are the things we – like if it says on the wall “Don’t take off your shoes and socks and put your feel on the table,” then we know not to do that.

And that is I think what I’m asking for people to try to do is to have a little bit more codifying of what it is that’s going to be OK and what is not OK.

**Craig:** I completely agree. I mean, I only really raise that point to say as a response to people who can’t imagine that it’s even possible to create rules.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So I have some rules.

**John:** Go for it. I want to hear them.

**Craig:** I have ideas of rules. Here’s an easy one. Keep your hands to yourself.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** I mean, this is a nursery school rule. This is kindergarten stuff. Apparently it’s difficult for some people. So, let’s just make it a rule. Keep your hands to yourself. I don’t need to touch anybody to do my job. We’re not massage therapists.

**John:** Josh Friedman had an interesting tweet back as all this stuff was starting to break that when he is in a work situation, like when someone is a writer on one of the shows that he’s working on, like even if that woman is a friend they’re not hugging. They’re not hugging in the room because it’s just this weird moment. And so let’s just maybe not touch each other.

**Craig:** Keep your hands to yourself. And then when it comes to things like jokes, which seems to be an area where a lot of things go wrong, here’s a general guideline and I think these are all incredibly followable. I try to follow them myself. Until you have a sense that a certain area of comedy is safe with another person, just presume that their mom or dad is there with you. Then you’re not going to say that certain kind of thing. You got to find out if someone is OK with some sort of comedy before you get there. And we all know what we’re talking about. We all understand that some humor pushes the envelope. Some humor is edgy. Some isn’t.

You know what? Hold off on the super edgy stuff until you get a sense of whether or not it’s OK with the other person. And if you think it is, and it turns out you were wrong, and the person is upset, stop. Just stop. Apologize. You misread it. That’s it. Say you’re sorry and don’t do it again. That’s that.

**John:** So when Dara and Daley were on the show they talked about you have to have a freedom in the writer’s room to sort of pitch out stuff and not censor yourself from bad ideas, bad jokes, and sort of going into dangerous territory. I get that. And also people are going to point out the Friends’ decision which I will quickly summarize by saying there was a lawsuit against the Friends TV show by someone who was working in that writer’s room and she lost. And essentially you could read it to say all is fair game in the writer’s room. That’s too broad a reading of that. That was a very specific situation.

What I would point you to is like there’s still the possibility of sexual harassment in a writer’s room if things go too far, if you create a situation where people feel unsafe.

Here’s a good tip for a joke. Pitch a joke about a character. Don’t pitch a joke about somebody in the room. Don’t aim stuff at people who are in the room in general. Just let it be about the characters and the show, not about the folks who are sitting around you.

**Craig:** I agree. And look when I talk about a sense of humor, a show has a sense of humor. If you go to work on a show that is dark, then the room will be dark, because people are trying to pitch for the dark show. If you go into The Simpsons, then you know what that sense of humor is. You should be pitching within it. This is less to me about what you’re pitching in a room to try and get comedy going. It’s more about what you’re doing when you bump into somebody by the coffee machine, or in the hallway. That’s what I’m talking about.

I think that’s where it gets particularly pernicious when you’re just invading somebody with a sense of humor that they don’t like. What is the point of a sense of humor if the other person isn’t laughing? Just stop.

**John:** Yep. Agreed.

**Craig:** Physical guidelines like — there’s certain rules that people generally follow, I’m talking to boys. You meet somebody, a woman, in professional situation. You don’t know her, or you vaguely know her. Maybe you met once a long time ago. It’s a handshake.

When you are working with women and you know each other very frequently, it is just very common in our business that people will hug. There’s nothing wrong with it. I call it the business hug. Nothing wrong with a business hug. But make it a business hug. There’s apparently a problem where people don’t understand how hugging works. It’s about a second long. And the purpose of the hug is to finish the hug as fast as you can. That’s the way I look at it. There’s no squeezing. There’s no holding on. It’s not a real hug. I mean, how did people miss this? It’s not a real hug. It’s not the way you hug your child or your spouse. It’s a quick business hug. It is a formal act.

Same with the cheek kiss. I don’t really like the cheek kiss.

**John:** I don’t like the cheek kiss either. Let’s rule out the cheek kiss. This isn’t France.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It was lovely while I was living in Paris. We don’t need it here. Here’s what I’ll say about the hug is it should be the same kind of hug if you’re hugging a guy or you’re hugging a woman. And guys hug here. It’s fine. It’s natural. But it’s quick. It’s really quick. So don’t linger. It doesn’t need to linger.

**Craig:** Yeah. No, that’s a great guideline. Basically you’re hugging this person because they’re a professional and this is what we do to greet each other as professionals and that’s it. So the hug is the same for a man. It’s the same for a woman. That’s that. Real simple.

And I would also say — another guideline I would give to boys is – I like saying boys, by the way. We don’t say boys enough.

**John:** Boys.

**Craig:** Women refer to each other as girls all the time. It’s affectionate.

**John:** Craig, I would say though does boys infantilize or take away some of the sting of it. So essentially you know like, “Oh, they’re just being boys.” That’s my only worry about the “boys” term.

**Craig:** All right. They’re men. They’re people with XY chromosomes who are moving through the world and they’re adults. Men.

**John:** Men.

**Craig:** Don’t be a physical reviewer in the workspace. It’s fine every now and then if somebody changes their hair to say, “Whoa, cool. Nice haircut.” And it’s perfectly fine if somebody walks in with some awesome new shirt or some amazing new kicks to go, “Oh, I like that. I like the shirt. I like the sneakers.” But otherwise just shut up about it. Nobody cares. Nobody wants to hear your opinions about how people look about their hair, their makeup, their clothes, their body type, their shoes, whether or not they smile, whether or not they don’t smile, their funny eyes, their beautiful eyes, their stupid eyes. Whatever. Just shut up. Nobody cares. That’s not why people are there.

So when our friend writes in and says you get attention when you look nice and no other time, that is such a disaster. And if you are in a workplace and you are sharing your workplace with women, as I imagine you are and should be, then you just have to get it through their head that they’re there because of their minds.

I mean, we are creative people. We’re not doing physical labor. They’re there because of their minds. Comment on the quality of their minds. That’s it.

**John:** So, here’s an opportunity. If you are about to make a comment about someone’s physical appearance, you might stop and think if there’s something else you could say. I mean, you’re basically just trying to start a conversation or just like to fill an awkward silence or just do the normal social interactions of things, think of something else you can say rather than commenting on how the person looks.

**Craig:** I think that you and I have a decent starting list here, but this is by no means all-encompassing and I’m sure that different places have different call for different rules and different guidelines.

I think the important thing though is that men in this business have to start talking to each other about generally speaking how we’re supposed to be. And I do believe that if you are in a situation where you are saying things that you know would be hurtful to somebody but they’re not there and they’re never going to be there. Look, humor does as humor does. And there’s different levels of intention.

I know that people are flawed and imperfect. This isn’t about perfection. This is about when you are with people and it’s about not making life miserable for these other human beings. And I cannot promise you that you’re doing it because it’s going to make your life easier. I’m just telling you you should do it because it makes you a better person. It makes you a more honorable person. It’s just basic human decency. And I think we’re all better off for it.

**John:** Yeah. So I would say that if people have additional suggestions for things that should be on that list of like how not to be a jerk as a man, tweet at us. Send us an email. And we can certainly add to this list and maybe post this for things that people can think over as they’re moving out into the world.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We have an email from Carlton who writes, “I wonder if you could see any role for the WGA in preventing sexual harassment in your industry. Could you imagine the WGA or other unions calling for a mini-strike at a company where there are allegations of sexual harassment or assault, which are safety issues if nothing else? One thing that victims have been saying in all these stories is that there was no point going to HR or even no HR department at all these companies. I know if I had a problem at my workplace I could always go to my union.”

So, Carlton has a fair question. You know, unions are set up to help the workers of an industry. Basically we are there to provide workplace protection. And this is a situation where some of our workers are either physically not safe or they are being treated poorly on the job.

So, yes, that is that is a union concern. It is a concern for the WGA, for the DGA, for SAG, for everyone below the line. Yes, every union needs to be thinking about sexual harassment and how they can make sure that their members who are working at these places are being treated OK.

So, there’s a lot kind of going on behind the scenes. And so I would say that you’re going to see a lot of stuff in the New Year about what happens next in terms of how the unions can address this individually but also impressively together to have systems that help protect workers in these situations.

**Craig:** well that’s good to hear. I don’t think that we can pull strikes per se legally against an entire company. Like I don’t think if somebody experiences sexual harassment at CBS that the Writers Guild could strike all of CBS. I don’t think we could do that legally. But certainly the union should be involved in these things. All those unions you mentioned should be.

Interestingly and trick-ily, who are the people that are doing the sexual harassment? Sometimes it is management. Sometimes it is our own members. I mean, when we talk about some of the showrunners, we’re talking about Writers Guild members. When we’re talking about a director with an actor, we’re talking about DGA members. So it’s not quite as clear cut as it might be say for somebody who is working in food services at a plant and so you’ve got your shop steward saying, OK, management is doing something to one of the workers. It’s complicated.

**John:** It’s also complicated because sometimes if it is management or if it’s a producer or if it’s somebody else, a manager, that is a person who is not under any sort of union control. So how do you – and that same person could be harassing writers and harassing PAs and harassing actors. And so how do you keep track of all that? Well, I think there has to be an industry-wide response to these situations.

Carlton’s also question about going to HR, well in order to file some of these lawsuits to get some of these actions to take effect you do need to go to HR. But what I’d urge anyone listening to this to know is that you also need to go to your union. And so the same time you go to file an HR complaint, you go to the union and the union can come with you. I know it’s true for the WGA. I’m sure it’s true for SAG and for DGA.

So there’s people there who have your back. And so it’s important to sort of like – the union has a role to play here and so does every member of a union.

**Craig:** Do we have a specific person at the Writers Guild that people should be contacting?

**John:** Yes. And so I’ll put a link in the show notes to that. So, yes, there’s a whole plan. And you’re going to see more stuff coming out from the Guild about exactly what steps to take if you’re encountering these situations.

**Craig:** Great. That’s very useful. Good.

**John:** Cool. A follow up question from Ben in Colorado. “On a recent episode you were both talking about how the screenwriters should not end dialogue with a parenthetical under it, except in animation. Can you talk about this exception and some of the other differences between writing for live action versus animation?”

All right, I can take this. So, in animation you do sometimes leave parentheticals underneath actor’s dialogue for sound effects or for like gasps. For things like that that would just be assumed in live action, but because you’re recording audio separately you actually mark all those gasps in there or like sneezes and other little things. You put them all in dialogue to make sure they actually get recorded when they go in to do the sound recording.

**Craig:** Efforts.

**John:** Efforts. Yes. The grunts. The groans. All that stuff. You put that in the dialogue track whereas you might drop that into action in a live action feature. Otherwise, animation scripts look almost exactly the same. The numbering happens a little bit differently because they do things by kind of these sequences, these reels situations. But other than that there’s not huge differences between the script that we as screenwriters are doing and for animation and what we would be doing in live action.

There’s, of course, a second step. So it goes from the screenplay into storyboards. And storyboards are these picture versions of our scripts. And things do change in that process. And so a lot of times the screenwriter will have to come back in and tweak dialogue based on the order of shots and sort of how the scene is shaping out when they actually board it. But script-wise it doesn’t look that different.

**Craig:** Yeah. I wouldn’t get hung up on it.

**John:** Last bit of follow up, the switch from documentary to narrative film. We had several people writing in to offer examples of adapted documentaries. On a previous thing you had said like, “Oh, it’s not a common thing to do to go from a documentary to a feature.”

**Craig:** [laughs] Apparently it happens literally every day. Sometimes I’m so wrong it’s like shocking.

**John:** Yeah. So do you want to read through some of these?

**Craig:** Well sure. So some examples that people sent in. Hands on a Hard Body was a documentary that follows a competition to win a new truck which Doug Wright and Trey Anastasio turned into a Broadway musical. A Broadway musical I saw.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Hunter Foster, brother of Sutton Foster, was starring in that one.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Man on Wire becoming Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk. And Loving based in part on the documentary the Loving Story. So, those were three. But it was like a cascade of them. And someone even said like, you know, I used to work in acquisitions where all we did was try and find documentaries and turn them into movies. So, I’m an idiot basically is the point.

And it’s important to say to people, you know, you can’t just trust people because they have a stupid podcast. That doesn’t mean a damn thing. Just don’t trust me.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Not a word.

**John:** I’d also say that it’s important when you are wrong to admit that you’re wrong and to say it on subsequent episodes.

**Craig:** Oh god, yeah. Sometimes I’m not just wrong. Sometimes I’m gloriously wrong. I actually feel like that’s really the goal. It’s not very interesting to be slightly wrong. You know? Like you stumble and people don’t really notice. But if you can really trip and land with your hands to your side, so you’re catching the ground with your face, that’s fun.

**John:** That’s the way you do it.

**Craig:** That’s how you do it.

**John:** All right. Let’s see if we can be gloriously wrong in our next segment which is about pitching television.

**Craig:** Oh, no, I’m going to nail this. This one I’ve got. Yeah.

**John:** Previously on Scriptnotes we’ve done episodes about producers and pitching. That was Episode 55. And pitching an open writing assignment. That was Episode 248.

But we got an email about how do I go out and pitch a TV show. And some of our other writer friends have been chatting about that recently, too, so I thought we’d just dig into what it’s like to pitch a TV show. Because I’ve done this three times. Craig, you did it for your Chernobyl show, but have you pitched other TV shows? Or was that the only one?

**Craig:** That’s the only one.

**John:** Great. So I can go through my experiences and we can hear what Craig’s experience was with Chernobyl. But it’s a lot like a feature pitch but you’re pitching some different parameters and they’re looking for very different things as you go into that room. So, let’s talk through pitches in a very general sense because this is what happens in every pitch meeting. You go into a room. There’s five minutes of chitchat. And eventually you transition into, OK, now we’re going to start talking about the thing that you’re here for.

What’s different about television versus feature pitches is in television they’ve invited you in for a specific reason. So, either you’re going into the studio or you’re going into the network. They know in a general sense what the story area is. They want you to be in that room. They’re in theory happy to hear your pitch.

In features, previously we talked about the elevator pitches, that really tight version of a pitch which you don’t use that much. We’ll have pitches where we’ll go into pitch on an assignment that started there, so it’s like an open writing assignment or it’s based on a property.

With these TV pitches it’s this weird kind of middle form where you’re going in and they know the general area that you’re pitching but you have to really walk them through the whole idea. And so a pitch might be 15 minutes. It might be 30 minutes. But it has to be a really complete package, not just for what the pilot is going to be, but for what this series is going to be and why they need to bid right now to get this series so they can make it for their season.

**Craig:** Yes. I find it to be a very different kind of pitch than a feature pitch only because of the nature of the medium itself. I feel like it’s actually much easier to pitch television because what you’re trying to do is create a sense of ongoing interest. And in features you’re trying to create something that is whole and finished. It’s really hard to pitch something to somebody and then tell them how it evolves and then tell them how it ends. It’s hard.

And in television you’re just – I think your job is to get them as excited about the potential as you are. In features, it’s not about potential. It’s about you’ve done it.

**John:** Well, it goes back to the very nature of what is a feature versus what is a series is that a feature is about a story that can only be told once. A television show is a story that can repeat itself, or can grow and change and become a different thing. And so for a feature you’re pitching this is exactly what I’m going to give you, versus a TV show. This is the area in which this thing would go. Like you’re pointing towards a trajectory rather than one destination.

**Craig:** Right. See, in television I always feel like you’re pitching – I always feel like. I pitched one thing for television, but in my mind if I go and pitch another thing this is what I believe. You’re pitching an experience. And in features you’re pitching a product.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And it’s natural, I think, for feature purchasers to want you to give them more of a sense of completion and more of a sense of the details having been worked out because you have one thing that you’re pitching, a beginning, middle, and end. In television, I think there’s a general relief valve. No one is expecting you to be able to pitch the beginning, middle, and end of ten episodes or 22 episodes. Not at all.

So, you can talk more about what the nature of the experience will be. I find that to be much more engaging for me. And I can only assume it’s more engaging for them.

**John:** So a writer colleague passed along this list by Peter Micelli who is an agent at CAA. I assume this is the list that he sends to his clients to send out. But it was a very good general sense of this is the flow of what a lot of TV pitches are like. You start by talking about the inspiration. Really like what the idea means to you. What you’re trying to convey is that this is, you know, something that is deeply emotionally connected to you, because remember you’re pitching not just this idea, but that you are the person to bring this idea to life. And that you are the person who is going to work 23 hours a day to get this show exactly right and perfect. That you’re passionate about it. So they want to hear that kind of from the start.

Then you’re pitching the general themes and sort of the concepts of it. This is what areas this touches on. This can also be the answer to the question why now. Why would we do this TV show in 2018 versus 2005? What is it about today’s world that makes this show especially compelling and really demands to have this kind of show be on the air? Why does it fit?

And only then are you sort of getting into kind of the show itself. You’re giving them the sense of the kinds of things that happen in the show. You’re starting to introduce the characters. But really at first you’re pitching a vision – a personal vision and then sort of a global vision. And only then are you getting into the meat of like so here are the characters, here’s how we’re seeing the characters do their thing. This is what happens in the pilot, but these are the intriguing things that are happening. These are open threads that are going to carry us through to future episodes, and ideally in the fantasy world into season two.

Was that at all your experience going into Chernobyl? Did you start with your personal connection, Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah. I had not seen this, but this is essentially what I did. And this is a guess, because I never sit in a room, nor have I ever sat in a room to hear a writer pitch me something to get me to give them money for it. But I have to imagine that the thing that person fears the most is somebody coming in there in order to get money from them. There are people, I mean, writing is a tough gig, and sometimes people need work. And sometimes people are desperate and sometimes people are trying. Sometimes people are trying to manipulate the system or game the system or get some employment. Whatever it is. And they come in and they just start going through the mechanics. And on the other side of the table they’re like, “But where is the heart? Where is the soul here? Why? I feel like you just want to get a job.”

And bizarrely that’s the worst way to get a job. It would never occur to me to walk into a pitch for a television show that I wanted to do and not begin with, “I want to do a crazy thing. It is going to take me a long time. It is going to be really, really hard, and I really want to do it. And here’s why.” Simple as that.

**John:** Simple as that. When we had Benioff and Weiss on to talk about Game of Thrones, their backstory on Game of Thrones was that they were just obsessed with the book. And I remember an anecdote where one of the HBO guys was at the gym and he saw – I think it was D.B. Weiss – just like going – like D.B Weiss was on the treadmill but still going through the book and marking stuff. And that’s when he saw like, oh, the passion. These guys are obsessed with making this TV show. That’s what networks and studios want is obsessed people who will work to death to try to make these shows happen.

So you have to start with that sense of like this is something I must do. I am the perfect person for this because of XYZ and this is the perfect time to do this kind of show.

**Craig:** Yeah. You become a force of nature then. See, like when I came into pitch my miniseries, I think they must have noticed that I was kind of on fire about it. And I had been thinking about it and researching it for a long time. A long, long time. And I was able to answer a lot of questions. And I was able to talk about specific moments. And really instead of trying to convince them of anything, all I was doing was sharing what had convinced me. So, that’s kind of the deal.

Nobody wants you to manipulate them into a decision. What they want from a good pitch, and I think this is true for features, too, is they want to be able to see, and feel, and experience what you saw and felt and experienced when you fell in love. And then, listen, sometimes they say, “You know what? You look at that and you see beauty, I look at it and I don’t. So, it won’t work out here.” But a lot of times they say, “Oh my god, yes, I’m seeing this through your eyes now and I’m excited.”

That’s the most important thing.

**John:** I’ve sold three TV shows as pilots. And in each case I genuinely loved it. I was genuinely obsessed with the idea and I could completely see what the vision was for the show. And I’d say – so I pitched to studios, and then I had to pitch to networks. And in every one of those meetings I was just as passionate about it. And some of them were like, “Yes, yes, we absolutely want this show.” And some of them were like, “Nah, not for us.”

And a lot of times I could feel as I left the room it was like, oh, that did not go well. That is not going to work for them. But in each time I was conveying the same excitement and the same enthusiasm because I really genuinely did want to do this. I wanted to put aside feature stuff to try to do this TV show. And they respond to that. They see that.

And even the places that didn’t pick it, they didn’t pick it because they didn’t believe in me. It just wasn’t a good fit for them. That’s still going to happen. You’re still going to have situations where they say no. But you’re going to have a much better likelihood of saying yes if they see that you are the right obsessed person for it.

**Craig:** That’s a really good distinction to make. I think for a lot of people that work regularly as screenwriters, television writers, we are being asked to come and help on things. And at that point what they’re saying is we want you. We want you for you. And there may be writers who hear, “OK, there’s an open writing assignment. A rewrite on blah-blah-blah. And so you’re going to go in and pitch on it.” And five other people are pitching on it. And what you’re pitching is you and your suitability for their needs. And when they reject you or pass on you, it is about you. And that can hurt.

When you’re pitching your own material it’s not about you at all. It’s about the material. They may love you, they just don’t want to make a movie about this. They may love you, but they have a television show already in development that’s kind of close to the one you have, or they once made a show that was a little bit like yours and it was a disaster for them so they just don’t want to deal with it. So it’s not about you. And that actually psychologically I think is a nice benefit if you are aware of it.

**John:** Absolutely. So, I would say it is about you in terms of like they want to see your passion and your excitement, but they can still see that and pass. And if they’re passing, then it’s not about you. It really is truly about sort of how it fits in their plan for what they’re going to try to make.

So when you were pitching Chernobyl, did you talk about the characters by their names? Did you talk about actor names? How were you describing the principal people who were going to be in your show?

**Craig:** Well, I narrowed it down to the three that I felt were the most important. And then a fourth that was important just so we understood what was happening with the other three. There are something like 100 speaking parts on this show. You can easily drown somebody in details. But ultimately I was able to say this is why I wanted to do this because of this person. And what this meant. Not only what they did, but what their whole connection to this whole process was. What it did to them. What it signified. And what it signifies for all of us. And their key relationships with these two other people.

And you sort of use that as a touchstone, because I do believe whether it’s features or television you should never talk about something that happens in a show or a movie without pointing out why it matters to a relationship, hopefully a relationship, but at a minimum to a character.

**John:** Absolutely. So when you are talking about these three characters, you used their – they’re based on real people – do you use their character names or do you refer to them as a Stellan Skarsgard?

**Craig:** No, I use their names. And because I don’t want to seem, I don’t know, too desperate or showy. I also feel like when you start mentioning actors you’re giving too much rope to the other side of the table with which to hang you. Because they may not like those actors for some reason. They may have worked with those actors and hated them. They may decide that your interest in those actors implies a certain poor taste.

You never know. So, what I like to do is only discuss that at the end if there seems like real interest. And then they say, “Well who do you see?” And then I’ll say, well, these are the kinds of people that I’ve been thinking about. And I never just put one down. But I have the one that I want.

And at that point I’m really kind of now – now I feel like I have them and now I’m actually kind of checking on them to see if they’re on board with me.

**John:** Absolutely. That can be a very useful thing. In a pitch I did last year, I needed to convey that it was a certain type of person. And so I ended up falling on it’s a Chris. It’s a Chris Evans, it’s a Chris Pratt. It’s a Chris Pine. It’s one of the Chris’s. Which was a useful sort of joke in terms of like there are a bunch of people who are sort of in that space who could do one of those things.

If you were in a TV show situation you could say, “Sort of like a TV Chris Pine.” That is a thing we can sort of understand. And so it provides a context for like the kind of person you should picture in your head for this role. And it was just helpful just for the pitch. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to cast a Chris Pine-type in that part, but just to get them through this 15 minutes of story it’s helpful if they have some image in their head of who this person is.

Some writers will bring in little boards with pictures on them to show different characters. I’ve done that. Sometimes it’s really helpful.

What can be helpful about having a physical thing is then when they’re going back through the pitch or they’re asking you questions they can point to the board that you were talking about then and it helps to remind them like, OK yeah, there was that moment. Tell me more about this guy again. And so having something physical they can point to can be useful.

Did you bring in anything in for Chernobyl?

**Craig:** Not a thing. And, you know, listening to you talk about the image board it strikes me that one of the mistakes that so-called gurus make, other than advertising themselves as gurus and taking people’s money, which they shouldn’t, is that they prescribe solutions as if this is the way to do things.

It seems to me that we are all very, very different. And the most important thing you can take with you into a pitch is your best move. The move that makes you most comfortable and the move that advertises your strength. And it’s not necessarily your strength as a writer you’re advertising, but your strength as an employee. So, you go in there and you show them this board and these images, because you’re comfortable – that’s your safe place. That’s a good place for you. You’re organized. You’ve thought it through. You’re planned. You have this thing here.

And for me, I find that more of an ad-libbed conversation, a back and forth, like a sense of mutual discovery of the show together is kind of – that’s how I’m happy. And while I’m doing it of course I’m leading the conversation. But I like a conversation. And whatever it is that works for you, do that. I mean, for god’s sake never let anybody tell you that you can’t do something like bring in an image board or just show up and talk if that’s what you’re best at.

**John:** Definitely. I had the opportunity to be on the other side of the table once for a project. We were going to do Tower of Terror over at Disney. And it all fell apart because it no longer exists as a ride.

**Craig:** That’s a good reason.

**John:** That’s a good reason. It no longer exists. I got the opportunity to sit across from three writers, or three writing teams, who had come in to pitch their version of it. And they were all fantastic. And I would have loved to have hired all three of them. We hired none of them because it never existed as a project.

But it was fascinating to see the different ways they were approaching the same material and the different ways they were approaching the process of pitching. And some of them were – they were all writing teams, so in some cases one person just did all the pitching and then the other person would come in for the questions and stuff.

Other times you could see it was a much rehearsed, like they’d worked through the whole thing. It was all a bit. It was funny along the way. Other times it’s just like one guy reads a paragraph, the other guy reads a paragraph. They can all work. The last one was probably the hardest to get through.

**Craig:** That’s a little rough.

**John:** But I will say that the ones that stuck with me most was not a person reading off a piece of paper. Because I can read. I don’t need you to read something to me. I need to see you describe it to me. And I need to see what your vision for this really is. And that’s especially important in television where they are making a long-term contract with you to be creating this show, running this show, to be there when everything goes horrible. So they need to see in your eyes that you really do have a vision for how this is going to work.

**Craig:** Such a great point. Because in features, in the back of their minds they’re always thinking, “Well, it’s a great idea. Let’s just—“

**John:** “Who could I have write that?”

**Craig:** Yeah. “You know what? Let’s pay this dude whatever we got to pay him, and then let’s bring her in because she’s great and we’ll pay her a lot. And she’s really going to write it.”

You can’t do that in television. I mean it’s theoretically possible. Occasionally it happens. But by and large they’re trying to avoid that.

So you’re absolutely right. For television they really are looking for long-term partners. I can only imagine they respond much more readily to confidence than to sweatiness. When you sound desperate, feel desperate, seem desperate, you are just immediately less attractive. There’s just no way around it. As an employee. There’s just no way around it. I’m not even sure that’s fair, because I think that a lot of people are not confident in that situation. But then would be remarkably confident in the room. And hopefully you have somebody on the other side of the table who can price that in. But generally speaking if you can be confident and most importantly if you can seem alive and interested.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** Then I think there’s something to hold onto. You want to be near people who have that positive passion.

**John:** Definitely. So a thing I think we should stress is that if you’re being invited in to pitch to the network, to pitch to the studio, you’re probably not a brand new writer. You’re probably a writer who has some credit under your belt. Either you were staffed on a TV show or there’s some other reason why you’re interesting or notable.

But that reason could be something really small or recent. So like when I came in to do my first TV show, D.C., my first feature Go had shot but hadn’t come out yet. I was newly hot. And so they were excited to meet with me because they liked my writing, they thought I was going to be a pretty big deal. And so I was able to convince them and convey that I’m the person who could do this show. But I was also coming in with an established producer who they had as a fallback. So they could look at my eyes and see the passion. They could look in his eyes and see that he can at least get a show on the air. And that was the combo.

So, it may seem like we’re pitching this pitching topic to the folks who are already staff writers on something or who are moving up the food chain, or the feature writers who are switching over to TV. But I really do think it’s not that far in the future for really anybody as a writer.

**Craig:** I agree. I mean, sooner or later, right?

**John:** Sooner or later.

**Craig:** I think everybody is going to be in a situation where they’re pitching something and they have nothing going for them. It may not be in TV, it may be in features, but I mean you and I both had those experiences. Every writer has that experience at least once.

**John:** Yep. The Duffer Brothers were just brothers at one point.

**Craig:** They were just brothers. [laughs]

**John:** The Duffer Brothers.

**Craig:** That’s right. And I remember those days and I remember understanding, OK, so I’m being brought in as a widget. They don’t know who I am. Their expectations are incredibly low. Every other widget is a certain kind of widget. I’m going to surprise them. I’m going to be memorable. I’m going to be smart and I’m going to be passionate. I’m going to get myself out of widget category. Sometimes you can. Sometimes – I remember very early on in my career I was pitching something — I won’t say who the executive is. I don’t think he’s in the business anymore.

And he just looked so bored. And so I just stopped and I said, “You know what? I’m boring you. I don’t want to bore you. Let’s just wrap it up. Let’s wrap it up.”

And he’s like, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You weren’t boring me. You weren’t boring me.”

I’m like, “It’s OK. It’s OK.”

And he goes, “Oh, you know, I’m tired.” And he had some excuses, but I got out of there. Because–

**John:** I’ve gotten out of that room, too. And I wasn’t so forthright to say like, “Oh, I’m boring you. This is done.” But you’ve ripped cords in your pitch. And we’re going to jump through and now we’re done. Clearly it’s just not going to connect.

**Craig:** Let’s just get to the end here as fast as we can.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** For those of you who are yet to do this, to have this experience, there are some bad pitches in your future. And nobody – nobody – manages to avoid them. At some point they will happen. Generally speaking part of the problem is, aside from the fact that you are new, because you’re new you’re pitching to people who are also either new or even worse not new but just slowly sliding down the ladder of Hollywood.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s the worst. Just the worst. And those are just awful because now everyone seems desperate. It’s like, “Oh my god, Willy Loman has come in to pitch Willy Loman.” Ugh.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah, both of you are just thinking let’s make this work. We could rub some nickels together.

**Craig:** Right. Everyone is just pathetic. It’s just like Jack Lemmon from Glengarry Glen Ross and Willy Loman. It’s the worst. And everyone is sweaty and sad and you didn’t even know what’s going on, or why. They’re coming. You can’t avoid them.

**John:** Yep. It’s gonna happen. All right, let’s do our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is super simple. It is a hair brush that was recommended on Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools, which is another thing you should check out because it’s a really good blog. I’ll put a link to that.

But my daughter has long straight hair and it is just a disaster to try to get a hairbrush through it some mornings. And so I’m usually the person who has to do that and I get sort of elbowed for hurting her.

**Craig:** Ah yes.

**John:** This hairbrush is really good. It’s called the Tangle Teezer. It sort of looks more like something you’d use to brush a horse. It has these really thin plastic things and you think, well, this wouldn’t work. But it works remarkably well. So you just go zip-zip-zip and it’s just a great piece of technology in plastic form. So I would recommend if you have long hair or hair that is difficult to brush with normal brushes, I’d say check this out because I was skeptical and incredibly impressed.

**Craig:** Yeah, the stuff that you and I know about hair. Oh boy.

**John:** Oh my gosh. Yes.

**Craig:** I’m lucky my daughter has always liked having her hair short. She has very thick hair and very straight hair, but she likes it short and purple. I think it’s currently purple.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** So I don’t have to worry about that. I do recall when she was younger and she had longer hair I remember hearing Melissa and her just having that classic argument. The ow…stop…you’re hurting…you have to…ugh.

See, oh man, your daughter is lucky she has you because if I were her dad she would just go to school with crazy hair. Real simple. Real simple.

I have a One Cool Thing this week that I just started with but I’m so far – so far so good. So far I’m impressed. It’s an app for iPhone and iPad called Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock, which is a bizarrely generic name for what it does.

So, it uses the microphone on your iOS device and it essentially analyzes your sleep and your snoring. And what it’s doing is it’s listening to you and it’s gauging how frequently you’re moving around. So we’ll put the snoring aside, just the moving around. Generally speaking, the deeper our sleep the less we move. The lighter our sleep, the more we kind of turn over or toss or wiggle.

And by listening to it and doing this analysis over a few days it starts to show you, OK, here’s how your sleep cycle is working. And it also will record you if you start to snore. So you can see how frequently you might have snored during the night and how loud it was. And you can play it back.

It’s also pretty smart. It knows to ignore your partner on the other side of the bed. It also knows to ignore kind of steady noise like a white noise machine or a fan. So it’s really looking for changes closer to it. It’s very smart. So far so good. I’m kind of digging it.

Oh, and the other thing it does is after it kind of gets you down, then you say, OK, look, I want to wake up – like I need to wake up tomorrow at 7:30. So you’ll say, OK, I need to wake up around 7:30. And it will say, “OK, we’re going to wake you up between 7:15 and 7:35. And we’re basically going to try and catch you on the upswing towards lighter sleep.” Pretty smart.

**John:** That’s nice. That’s very smart. So, I’ll check back in in two weeks and see whether you’re still using it.

**Craig:** Or find that just like, “Oh my god, I’m so tired. This thing is wrong.”

**John:** It would also be great if it was transmitting all your snoring data to be analyzed by machines or like if you’re talking in your sleep they’re building up evidence against you.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s probably what’s happening.

**John:** That’s probably what’s happening.

**Craig:** Now that you’ve said it that actually does make the most sense.

**John:** Yeah. Maybe we could have a podcast that’s just Craig snoring.

**Craig:** I still wouldn’t listen to it. [laughs]

**John:** All right. That is our show for this week. It is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Phil Baker.

**Craig:** Oh, he’s new.

**John:** 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.

We are on Facebook. Search for Scriptnotes Podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts at Scriptnotes. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there, leave us a review. That helps people find us. Also, if you’re listening on some other platform, there are other platforms, yeah, leave us a review there. That’s always great.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. I’ll also put up the outlines I have for the three TV shows I sold. So, basically I have kind of the pitch document that I went into the room with. It’s not exactly sort of what happens in the room, but it’s a good representation of the things I was talking about.

**Craig:** That’s good. You know, after Chernobyl airs, so we’re about–

**John:** [laughs] Three years away.

**Craig:** Well, a year and a half. About a year and a half away. But once it airs I will put all of that – I’ll put the scripts, the pitch documents, the bible. Everything. I’ll put it all up on your site.

**John:** Fantastic. You can find the transcripts for this episode and back episodes at johnaugust.com as well. Come join us on Thursday so we can talk to you and Julie Plec and Michael Green and Justin Marks about television and features and other great things. We’ll see you there at the live holiday show. Go to wgafoundation.org to get your tickets.

And if you want any of the back episodes, go to Scriptnotes.net. That is your best source. We also have a few of the USB drives left. They are $30 I want to say. They’re at store.johnaugust.com. They have the first 300 episodes of the program.

**Craig:** Doesn’t matter to me how much they cost because I don’t get any of the money.

**John:** You get none of the money Craig.

**Craig:** Go ahead. Charge $1,000. I don’t care.

**John:** Absolutely. The more we charge for them, the more we have to pay Megan and Matthew.

**Craig:** And to steal from me.

**John:** Yes. That’s the goal. Have a great week.

**Craig:** You too, John. See you soon.

**John:** See you, bye.

Links:

* Holiday Live Show [tickets](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-live-show-john-august-craig-mazin/) are available.
* A sexual harrassment [resource guide](https://www.wgaeast.org/resources/sexual-harassment-resource-guide/) from the WGA.
* The [Tangle Teezer](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001S261Q6/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) hair brush as recommended on Kevin Kelly’s [Cool Tools](http://kk.org/cooltools/)
* [Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sleep-cycle-alarm-clock/id320606217?mt=8)
* Initial write ups/pitch documents for [DC](http://johnaugust.com/downloads_ripley/dc-what-it-is.pdf), [The Circle (a.k.a. Alaska)](http://johnaugust.com/downloads_ripley/alaska_writeup.pdf), and [Ops](http://johnaugust.com/downloads_ripley/ops_writeup.pdf).
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Phil Baker ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_328.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/adjective-soldier).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Mazin is name Craig mine.

**John:** This is Episode 325 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program we’ll be answering a bunch of listener questions on topics ranging from montages, to life rights, to passive heroes.

**Craig:** That should be pretty good. That’s a nice spread.

**John:** It’s a good spread. So essentially what happens is people write in with these great questions ,and we always have a few of them on the outline to get to and we just don’t get to them.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, because we like chit-chatting.

**John:** We chit-chat. So how was your week, Craig?

**Craig:** Well, you know John, since we’ve entered the chit-chat mode, I have to tell you I’m still just every day I feel like I’m being smashed in the face with the news. It’s relentless. And dispiriting.

**John:** I guess I would take some inspiration. I feel like a bunch of stuff that has been percolating for forever is now getting out. And I do think we will emerge from this in a better place. It’s just you open up Twitter each day, it’s like who was the terrible person today?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And sometimes they’re the people you knew would be the terrible person. And sometimes it’s a brand new person. So, we’ll see.

**Craig:** I feel a little bit like, did you see Team America?

**John:** I did see Team America. We’re going to reference Team America later on.

**Craig:** Indeed. So there’s that moment where the lead puppet, I can’t remember his name, just gets super drunk and he starts vomiting in an alley. And the vomit just keeps coming. That’s basically me. Every day I wake up, I look at the news, I get on my hands and knees in a dirty alley and I start vomiting.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a natural feeling.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You are in the middle of casting your project, and a question for you is – obviously you don’t need to name any names – but do you feel that the discussion of casting has changed at all just with the revelations of this past month?

**Craig:** Yes. For sure. I mean, we have not encountered anybody that we’ve been considering who has at all been on the radar for any kind of problem. So it hasn’t come up in a specific sense. But we’ve had a ton of conversations about it, obviously. And I think what’s clear now is that anyone that’s now casting a show or hiring a director for a show is just not going to hire somebody that there’s even rumors about. Because the damage that is done – it’s fatal. These are fatal blows to projects. And naturally our first concern should be with the human beings who were victimized, but we know that businesses by and large tend to think about things in terms of money. They’re not people, they’re businesses, no matter what the Supreme Court says. And they don’t really have feelings.

There is an enormous amount of damage that is done when these things happen. So I think right now – I mean, look, you and I, we’ve heard some rumors about people and we don’t necessarily report on rumors, because we’re not journalists, and I guess journalists don’t either. But I would be shocked if any of those people were hired at this point.

**John:** Yeah. I think it’s an interesting time we’re moving into because traditionally when you go into casting you get really nervous casting somebody who you worry is going to screw up in the future. That they’re going to screw up during the course of your movie, or they’re going to screw up before the movie comes out, and there will be a liability. And so those are the people that make you nervous.

I think a change that has happened is that people who worried like, oh, something is going to come out about them during the time that we’re making this thing or when we’re trying to release it, and then we’re going to have to scramble or it’s going to taint this project. And so anybody who could potentially taint the project is a liability.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you know, this is actually a great study in sort of a before and after as the world has woken up to the reality of what’s going on. And I include myself in there because I didn’t understand the depth of the predation that was occurring. My concerns prior to all this stuff, we’ll call it pre-Harvey, was will this person be nice? Will they be difficult? That was basically it. Are they going to be nice or difficult? And now it’s this whole other thing.

And I think Hollywood – I don’t think we’ve quite yet processed or even have the capacity to process how this is going to change our industry. It is going to be a profound change in our industry. Profound.

**John:** I think you’re right. So that will be one of the topics I hope we will discuss at our live show December 7 in Hollywood. So, this is the official first announcement of that. December 7 here in Hollywood we’re doing a live show. We do our annual sort of Christmas-y holiday show. We don’t know who our guests are going to be yet, but we’re going to be looking for fascinating people to talk about these topics and other topics. We usually get into sort of the big movies of the award season, but also great TV. So we’ll have some amazing guests on stage, me and Craig, at the LA Film School. An event sponsored by the Writers Guild Foundation, our friends there.

So, if you’re in town, come join us for that.

**Craig:** And this event benefits the Writers Guild Foundation.

**John:** It does indeed benefit them. So, when the page is up where people can buy tickets, we’ll put a link to that. But just mark it on your calendar so you don’t double book yourself that night.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Cool. Let’s answer some questions.

**Craig:** Yeah, let’s do it.

**John:** Let’s start with a question from Anonymous who writes, “I’d like to get your take on the thought that all lead characters must be active, not passive. I’ve gotten the note about a passive main character numerous times, but it’s almost as if the passivity is essential to who this character is as he reacts to some of the absurdity and misfortune the world places upon on him.

“My script is a comedy and heavily influenced by pieces like Swingers and the TV show Louis where the main character is mostly passive and forced into action against his will.” So, Craig, let’s talk about some passive main heroes.

**Craig:** Well, the problem with passivity isn’t necessarily passivity, I think. I think the problem with passivity is that it generally is a symptom that your character doesn’t want anything. So, our lead characters are people that want something. And what they want can change. It very often does. But they are driven to achieve a goal. That is in a feature film.

In comedies, particularly episodic comedies, but we’re talking about sitcoms really where the idea is you’re watching things unfold over time, you can have cases of a show where the characters are reacting to the world around them. In Seinfeld the characters were often passive. Not always, but often. And were simply commenting. And it was a kind of dramatized version of stand up in a weird way. A show about nothing, so to speak, and that’s all right because you understand you’re visiting with these people for 22 minutes and there isn’t a beginning, middle, and end that has some sort of meaningful closure or growth for the lead character.

But for a feature, your character needs to want something. If you’re getting the note that your character is passive, it may be in fact a symptom.

**John:** I think you are correct. I think passive can be fine. Aimless is rarely a good quality in your hero, your main character. Aimless in the sense that we don’t know what that character wants. You’re not making it clear what the character is going for, either in the someday down the road future, the immediate future, or even like right what they’re trying to do within the scene.

If those kind of motivations are unclear, then there really is going to be a problem. You can have a character who seems to be stuck in a situation and is not driving the story. That can work as long as we understand what that character is trying to do. What this character is being prevented from doing. Even the character isn’t making like huge outgoing efforts. As long as we can see what they’re hoping for. What their aim is.

If we can see how that character imagines themselves in the future in a better place, that’s going to get you something. But I agree with you also that in movies you tend to have characters who take an action that changes their life forever over the course of that movie. Like a thing that could only happen once happens to them in the course of that movie.

In television, you know, it’s a repeated cycle. So you have so often in television comedy that main character is sort of the straight man who is reacting to the wacky characters around him or her. So you have, you know, the Frasier Crane character on Cheers is a more extreme character and is driving scenes by being sort of extreme. But when you take Frasier and you move him as the lead of his own sitcom, he calms down a little bit and everybody else around him gets a bit wackier. So, that’s kind of natural in comedy.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think if Anonymous is getting this note over and over and over it may be that he or she is working in the wrong genre, or the wrong format. It may be that Anonymous belongs writing episodic comedy as opposed to feature comedy. There’s nothing wrong with that. You kind of have to write toward where your voice is. It’s probably not so much about the passivity. I think you and I both agree – I think your word aimless is exactly right, because what else is an aim if not a want.

**John:** Yeah. I would also just look for conflict overall. Make sure there’s conflict happening within your scenes and overall between characters. I think so often newer writers tend to be afraid of conflict or putting their characters in bad situations. So, put them to the fire. And you may also just be new to the form. And so when you first have characters on the page talking to each other, you end up doing a lot of quotidian chit-chatty stuff. And that’s not a movie. That’s not TV.

**Craig:** No, I think you’re right that new writers will engage in the chit-chat because it’s a way for them to find a path toward naturalistic dialogue. And that’s fine. I mean, you have to learn one way or another. But the problem is if you include that in a screenplay what you’re also saying is “My training exercise to figure out how people speak naturally to each other is now also something that you are forced to sit there and watch because I also think it’s entertaining.” That is typically not the case.

The goal of the craft is to, A, write dialogue and exchanges naturalistically, and B, have them be purposeful and entertaining and fascinating and challenging and smart and clever and funny and sad. Whatever it is that you’re going for. So, these wandering kind of discussions are very common for early writers. I always feel like they’re grasping. It’s like they get proud because they say, “Look, this actually does sound a legitimate conversation.” Correct. Now, you have to just write one that people would actually care to listen to.

**John:** Yep. I just typed down purposeful but natural, which I think is an incredibly key thing you identified about good dialogue there. It feels the way characters could actually speak in that moment, and yet there’s a purpose behind it.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** Next question.

**Craig:** Next question. We’ve got something from RJ. I like that – it’s hard to tell – I’m just cheating ahead, the people that have written in. We have quite a few where you just don’t know the gender. It’s a mystery. I like it.

RJ writes, “How many montages are too montages?” How many montages, John? How many montages does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?

**John:** How many montages must a man climb before he’s, you know, seen the world?

**Craig:** Is there a number? I think the answer is 42. [laughs]

**John:** So back in Episode 268 of Scriptnotes, the episode was titled Sometimes You Need a Montage, we talked a lot about montages and different kinds of montages, but I think we didn’t really answer RJ’s question here, which I think is a good question. I’m going to say three?

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, three is a lot.

**John:** Three is a lot. But, here’s what I would say. It really depends on the kind of montage there is. So let’s just see if we could list different kinds of montages because they’re very different. So, we have to start with the classic training montage and when we say that we are required to play a snippet from Team America World Police. So let’s play that here.

[Snippet plays]

All right, so that’s talking about classically where a character starts learning how to do something. They get better at it and stuff goes along. But so that’s an important thing. But there’s other montages that aren’t quite so egregious or sort of montage-y. So there’s these sort of passage of time, where literally you’re just moving from one season to another season. I feel that will be a montage of shots, but it doesn’t feel like a montage. It doesn’t feel like a bunch of little short scenes. It’s just like you’re showing a passage of time.

You could have multiples of those in a movie and you’d be fine.

Changing into various clothes things, you get one of those in a movie. If you get two of those, you’ve got to be commenting on the absurdity of having two of those kind of montages.

And I would also just look for why you’re using montages. If it’s just because you don’t know how to do it any other way, or you’ve just got a bunch of stuff to stick together, that’s probably not a good reason for using a montage. There really has to be a purpose behind why you’re choosing to show it in that form.

**Craig:** You’re the best around. I think that there’s a certain kind of montage that we think of as a montage-y montage. So, the changing of the clothes, the training. Those things I think you get one of. I don’t even think you get one of each. I think you get one.

**John:** I think you’re right.

**Craig:** The other kinds that aren’t really noticeable as montages, so someone is driving through a new town and looking around at the churches and the restaurants and the houses, that’s just sort of – often times those will play under a kind of relaxed song or something, but I don’t think of those as montages where you’re trying to show growth, or change, or any of those silly things. It’s just the stick-outty montages. You get one, I think.

**John:** Yeah, I think you’re right. Here’s the other kind of montage which I think is appropriate in different genres can make it is sort of the heist montage, or the moving through a series of small steps that get you into a place or out of a place. That can be valid, too. So if you’re making a heist movie, you’re making one of those Now You See It movies, that you’re going to have multiple montages because that’s just the nature of it. Or there’s going to be some bigger event that you are going to compress into smaller sections. I get that for that kind of movie.

But for most movies, I’m going to say three. I’m going to stick with three. And only one of those can be a training or changing clothes montage.

**Craig:** Right. And we would like to get that training or changing clothes montage number down to zero. That would be good.

**John:** That would be good. You know what? I’m still going to allow them, but I would say like you have to be aware that you are entering into cliché territory and either be better than most of them, or be commenting on the nature of it to really work.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Cool. Christopher writes, “I’m working on an adaptation of a book. What is the etiquette on using direct quotes or lines from the source material?”

**Craig:** Well, I’m going to presume some things here, Christopher. I’m going to presume that the book is fictional, and I’m going to presume that you do not have the rights to the book, or else you wouldn’t be asking the question, I don’t think.

**John:** Oh, well maybe he would own the rights.

**Craig:** Well, if he owns the rights, there’s no etiquette. The etiquette is take whatever you want. And if there is some great dialogue, great quotes or lines in the book, by all means use them. If you don’t have the rights and you’re sort of doing this on spec and hoping that you can get them, then again I would say go ahead and take what you want as long as you acknowledge when you’re showing the screenplay to people that you don’t have the rights. And that the rights would be necessary. Which they would be regardless, whether you took lines of dialogue or not.

No one thinks of that as plagiarism. The whole point of adaptation is you’re taking a book and you’re taking a work of art, and you’re transforming it into a related work of art, but you’re taking the characters and the plot points and all sorts of stuff. So, yeah, you’re free to use whatever you want.

**John:** Yeah. Legally, morally, ethically, you know, owning the rights to a piece of property and adapting them into another work, what you have there that is usable you’re allowed to use. I’ve adapted many, many books, and rarely is there much that you get to take directly from the book. But if there’s something that’s great there, you use it.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was sort of an exception in that in that case I literally went through the book with a highlighter and I would save even like little bits of scene description as much as I could, just so it would be as Roald Dahl-y as possible. But most of the things I’ve worked on, there hasn’t been really a single line of dialogue that I’ve been able to take over just because dialogue in movies and dialogue in books is so different. So, you’re unlikely to be able to use that much of it.

**Craig:** Unquestionably. Same experience with me on the project I’m doing with Lindsay Doran. There is a novel and there’s not really much in the way of specific dialogue. There are a couple things here and there. There’s one line – really it’s a description of an object – and we loved the way the character described the object and we just lifted that exactly. So, it’s your choice. It’s entirely your choice.

Well, we’ve got our next question from Chris here in Los Angeles. Chris writes, “I have a question regarding the writing of screenplays based on documentaries. There are a few docs I’ve seen that have interested me so much that I have wanted to write a screenplay based on them. Because these documentaries are based on true events, are the stories public domain? Or are the rights to the documentary needed before writing a screenplay?”

**John:** So documentaries are not in the public domain. So you’re not adapting public domain material. You are adapting this documentary. It sounds like you are so entranced by how this documentary presented this material that you think that the documentary needs to be adapted into a screenplay. That is source material. That is a source material you would need to get the rights to in order to sell or make a movie based on that.

Now, it could be that you watched a documentary about some historic event that happened 50 years ago, 100 years ago, that you think is fantastic. And you don’t necessarily think it’s any one particular thing about that documentary that is fantastic, but you think the event itself is fantastic. So then you’ve gone out and watched nine other documentaries about it and you’ve read books about it and you’ve done research and you’ve taken notes and you are ready to write your own version of a movie based on these events. Then you’re free and clear I think both ethically and morally. But show your work. Show that you’ve actually done this research to create your own take on what this historic event was, or events were, and real life people.

But, yes, if you are thinking about adapting a documentary into a movie, that’s the same kind of getting of rights as working off of a book.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right, tell me your thoughts.

**Craig:** If there is a certain kind of narrative structure to the documentary that you want to convert into a screenplay form, then I think I’m completely onboard with you that there is something specific about that documentary and its narrative structure. The way it kind of moves around in time or the way it reveals things and how it reveals things. But the actual information in a documentary is not any more protected than information in a news story.

People who appear on a documentary and tell their story, and documentaries are always nonfiction obviously, they’re telling their story. That information is now fact. And people can’t own facts. So, if I watch a documentary about something that even happened a month ago, and all I want to do is take the information that I’ve learned from that documentary and then make a movie about it, then I can do it. However, there are some areas where you have to be careful.

If you are now creating fictionalized characters of people that you saw in the documentary, well for starters you can’t do anything to defame them, obviously. You can’t take somebody from a documentary and then present them as a drunk when they’re not a drunk. And you’re only really limited to the information that you can get through a documentary or news articles or any other nonfiction sources. So the documentarian can’t own the facts about those people. They can’t own what those people said onscreen.

But, you know, if you were to make a movie you would have to maybe think about going and getting some life rights so that you could actually speak to those people and get more information. So, it’s a little tricky.

Generally speaking, I agree with you though, John, that in the casual day-to-day affairs of doing business, if a documentary comes out and it really grips people and somebody wants to make a movie of that documentary, a fictionalized movie of that documentary, they would probably go and get the rights to adapt it so that there wouldn’t be any question.

**John:** So, let’s make up a documentary, and I’ll show you sort of the counter examples of what you’re describing in terms of it is based on real people so you have to go do it. Let’s say you watch a documentary about this chess prodigy in Northern Canada. He’s an Inuit whose grandfather learned chess in WWII, and it had a transforming effect in this village that he grew up in. You see a fantastic, compelling documentary about this.

If you want to go off and make the feature version of this, and this is the only sort of source you have for this. This is how you found out about it and there’s really nothing else written about it other than like articles about this documentary. If you want to go off and make the feature version of this without trying to get the rights to that documentary, I think you’re in a really dicey place morally, ethically, legally to try to do your version of it.

Because maybe all these people are now dead, so there aren’t even life rights involved.

**Craig:** Well, if they’re dead there’s even less of a legal issue.

**John:** I still think there’s a legal issue because you’re adapting the work of the documentarian who made this specific film and sort of put together this whole package of an idea in terms of what this chess prodigy Inuit living in a remote Canadian village, how he was able to transform the town. I think your framing of the story and what the impacts were could very well be legally if not just morally bound up in that original documentary.

**Craig:** Well, I’ll give you moral on that one, for sure. I mean, if there’s one documentary, there’s nothing else, and you just take it and you just do a fictional version of it, A, that feels wrong. B, like I said, if you’re following a documentarian’s narrative structure, then I do think that there’s a real case for infringement there.

The part about the facts, that’s coming – I’ve been having conversations with lawyers recently, just you know I was starting to talk to the folks at HBO just to make sure that everything in Chernobyl is OK because I’m just pulling this all from many, many, many sources. You know, tons of books and articles and documentaries and everything. And so I’ve been getting an education, and I’m in great shape. But I’ve been getting an education on how it works and it’s actually far more permissive than I thought.

**John:** OK.

**Craig:** Only in the sense that people can’t own facts.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** That’s really the big one. Is that they can’t own facts and they can’t own – if you film a real person saying a thing, so that person said, “Yes, you can film me saying this,” then that film in the world, that is now not ownable. The film is ownable, obviously. You can’t project that film. But what they said now is a matter of public record. And anyone can use it.

**John:** Absolutely. I’d also direct people back to — Irene Turner was on the show last year and we talked through things she was doing when she was making her movie based on Madeline Murray O’Hair. And the challenges that she ran into with the legal rights advisers for that because there were places where they had to sort of prove the sourcing on where stuff was, both in terms of not libeling and defaming people, but also just where these facts were coming from.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I’ve had to do a very, very, very extensive annotation, which I was helped with by our researcher, and then that annotation went over to HBO. And then they have their person who does an independent annotation of everything. And then we have a large discussion going through and making sure that everything is appropriate. So companies actually do quite a thorough job on these things. And for good reason.

**John:** Yeah. And so going back to Chris’s question, if in doing that annotation you were to find out that like, oh, almost everything is coming from this documentary, that’s probably a signal that something needs to be figured out in terms of how you are approaching the rights to that documentary.

**Craig:** It’s also a bit of a strange thing to do, I mean, we haven’t actually mentioned that. To turn a documentary into a non-documentary is a bit of an odd move. I’m trying to think of an example of it.

**John:** A few years ago there was an adaptation of Serial that was going to happen for television. And that was a case where it was moving from a documentary series about the case in the first season of Serial to a fictionalized show. And that, you know, that stuff does happen.

**Craig:** Well, that’s more of a branding thing, isn’t it?

**John:** I guess it’s a branding thing, but you know–

**Craig:** Because they weren’t going to tell the story that they actually told on Serial, right?

**John:** I don’t think it was ever quite clear.

**Craig:** Oh, interesting.

**John:** I remember getting the call about doing that. I’m like, “I don’t know how to do this.”

**Craig:** I say that all the time. How many times a week do you say that? I feel like I need a recording of myself saying, “I don’t know how to do that.”

**John:** Yeah. Actually just this last week I got sent a book that is based on a real life event that happened in a city historically – well, that narrows it down. But I was sent this and I was like, yeah, I get why that’s a movie and I totally get how that can be a movie that wins awards, but I don’t know how to do it and I don’t know how to sustain my interest in doing it for the three years it would take to make this happen.

**Craig:** Yeah. No one seems to care about our interest in things. They’re always just like, “No, no, no. We’re offering you a job. That’s enough, right? You say yes. I say here’s money, you say yes.” That’s the way it used to be with me, by the way. [laughs] And I was like, “Yes, I’m sorry did you say money? Yes, the answer is yes.”

Shall we proceed on to our next question?

**John:** Yes, let’s do it.

**Craig:** All right. We’ve got Josh in Enceladus City. Enceladus?

**John:** I’m wondering if it’s a joke. I’m wondering if this is a made up thing and it’s a reference we’re not catching?

**Craig:** Oh my god. Well, I’ll just ignore it and pretend it’s real. Josh in Enceladus City writes, “If I want to make a web series loosely based on someone’s life, a life,” oh, this is sort of a related question, “a life I know only through a Twitter feed, how would I go about doing this to protect all parties involved? The person in question is not famous or even Twitter famous. He’s an amusing blue collar guy who has a particular set of life circumstances that would make a great series. I’ve exchanged emails with him and basically said, ‘LOL, man, just go do it. I’d love to see that.’

“Initially this would be just a web series. Of course, we would hope that we’d follow in the steps of a web series like Broad City and eventually turn it into a TV show. So for the web series I’d be asking for a very low cost option on his Twitter account. But I would want to protect him so that if we were able to transition to a proper television show he would get paid a fair price or percentage. Obviously I want to protect myself as well, but the last thing I want to do is take elements of this guy’s life and screw him over.”

All right, Josh, well your heart is certainly in the right place. John, what advice do you have?

**John:** First off, I like Josh. I like that Josh is thinking not only of himself, but this guy as well. And he’s thinking about the future. And he’s thinking big. He’s thinking Broad City. So I hope all these things can happen.

When I first read the question I had skipped over the fact that he only knew him through Twitter, so I thought it was a real life friend, which doesn’t change the calculation that much, but the person you know on Twitter is basically a stranger, so you don’t know what kind of all the dynamics are going to be.

I would say that Josh is looking for an agreement that would say I am authorizing Josh to write a script and literary material – don’t even call it a script, don’t call it a television series – to write literary material based on my life and things that have been portrayed in this Twitter feed. I understand that the characters and circumstances may not necessarily reflect actual things. There’s going to be good legal language you’ll find for that. I’m going to put a link in the show notes to the NOLO legal guide for rights and rights purchases, which I think could help him out there.

But basically you want some letter that you’re both signing that states like, “Hey, here’s what we’re trying to do. Here is how we’re sort of overall framing this.” I wouldn’t get into the compensation or producer credit or anything like that in this first go around. I think this guy who you’re writing about, you know, he’s going to probably want some protection in him saying that it’s a non-exclusive option on these rights, so that you’re basically paying him no money. You don’t get to hold on to the rights to his stuff for forever, or do whatever you want for a long time.

Craig, what would you say to Josh?

**Craig:** I agree with you that Josh is a good guy. And so here’s the thing. Most of these things get worked out by the company. The company will want the most leeway possible. So they’re going to want to, A, pay him off one time. They’re not going to want to pay him a percentage of anything. And, Josh, I have to tell you, if you work on this show for five years and it becomes really, really successful, you’re going to get tired of paying this dude, too, every week.

Because he’s not doing anything. You’re doing it. You’re making the show. And the character is going to develop and evolve over time away from the inspiration and into what it is which is your creation that was initially inspired by somebody. So they’re going to want to do a payout. And the buyout means they are going to own the rights and life rights in perpetuity forever across the universe. For now, for you, I think the most important thing is that you actually have an email from him saying go ahead, do it. Believe it or not, that matters. He’s essentially given you permission. And you haven’t done anything yet to damage him.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** See, the damaging part, so this is how this works. People can sue you if you have damaged them. If you start to portray him using his real name and having him do things that he wouldn’t do that are embarrassing, hurtful to him, hurtful to his reputation, then he can come after you. But that’s not going to happen until a studio gets involved. Right? It doesn’t get produced and therefore cannot cause damages until a studio is involved.

They’re going to handle this. So, I think you’ve actually done what you need to do.

**John:** I think there’s a case to be made for getting something a little bit more in writing before you go off and shoot the web series. Because a web series could be that you’re spending a thousand dollars, or it could be that you’re spending $100,000, and you want to have some protection for yourself there. And some sense of a structure before you do that.

I agree though that it’s not until you get an actual series or feature deal or something else that it becomes important to do something bigger than this.

**Craig:** Well, yes. Look, Josh, if you’re the money behind the web series then you’re the company. Now you’re the company that means you need a lawyer to do the buyout. And you buy it out. And here’s the thing. The guy is going to get some money that he never thought he was going to ever get in his life for that. And he has a choice to make about whether he wants that money or not.

And, again, I’m not sure an ongoing percentage is fair. I think a lump sum and a buyout is a fair. In talking with an attorney, you may both find that it makes a lot of sense for you to change the name, because his name doesn’t mean anything. Rather than expose yourself and this man to any kind of potential harm, you just use him as an inspiration but you change the name and therefore you’re really well protected.

**John:** Yeah. I think you’re right. I’m curious, I haven’t looked up the backstory of Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld who is based on/inspired by a real person, so every once and awhile you see stories of the real Kramer. But I don’t know what he was paid or sort of how he was acknowledged in the genesis of the show. Our friend, Dana Fox, her show Ben and Kate, the Ben of that show was Ben Fox, her brother. And so I think he got some payment for that. But he was sort of the inspiration of that character and sort of the thought behind that character. But he wasn’t literally the actor on screen. It wasn’t exactly what himself was onscreen.

**Craig:** Obviously if it’s your brother it’s a bit different. Kramer, the real life Kramer, did file a defamation lawsuit against a former Seinfeld writer, but I don’t really know. It didn’t go anywhere. It was dismissed.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** So, but I don’t think it was about the show. I think it was about something that that writer had written in a book. I mean, if you are inspired by a real life person, but you create a character with an entirely different name there really – and you never talk about the fact that it was inspired by that person – the real person really has no damages. They kind of create the damages themselves by saying that person is based on me.

**John:** Anybody who enters into a writer’s life kind of – there has to be some sort of general acknowledgment that if you’ve enter into a writer’s orbit, you know, you may be portrayed in a fictional version somewhere down the road. And I think a bigger discussion to have is sort of what is a writer’s moral and ethical – and legal – responsibility to inform the person that they are taking that one little aspect of a character or there’s a person who does that, but essentially if you’re a married man writing about a wife there’s going to be some aspect of your own relationship with your wife that’s going to be portrayed there. That is just natural.

**Craig:** Yeah. For sure. And listen there is obviously the legal stuff that we’re talking about and then there’s the ethical stuff. And any time you write something, I mean, I hear these stories. I know people write something and then they hand it to somebody and someone goes, “Oh my god, that’s me.” And sometimes the writer says, “What? No it isn’t.” Those people are like, “Yes it is.” And they’re like no it isn’t.

And now there’s a problem. Sometimes they’re like, oh yeah, that story you told was so funny and so I used it for this. And this person is like, “Yeah, but I didn’t want anyone else to know that story, even though it’s not associated with my name, or it was mine.” So, you can create interpersonal problems. And you do have to be aware of that when you do these things.

**John:** I had a friend who wrote to me about an executive that he had an interaction with that’s like, “Hey wait, was that character in that one movie you wrote, was that based on her?” I’m like, “Oh no, god no, that wasn’t her at all.” I could totally understand why he might have thought that, but it wasn’t. It was just a general composite of that kind of person that I’ve met. But he was convinced like, oh no, no, no, you wrote exactly that person. And a couple times in my life I have had people feel like, “Oh, that was based on this person.” And I was like, yeah, I can see why you say that, but no. It’s just my own take on that kind of person.

**Craig:** Exactly. There’s only so many different kinds of people.

**John:** Indeed. All right, Travis in Santa Monica wrote to ask, “What happens to the copyright of films and film universe specific content that is based on source material when the source material enters the public domain? For example, Ian Fleming’s James Bond character has become public domain for those adhering to the Berne Treaty, which is 50 years after his death. So, can Canada make a Bond film?”

Craig, absolve all these legal issues for us.

**Craig:** Well, I will do my best. So, there are two different kinds of copyrights we’re talking about here. One is a copyright on source material and one is a copyright on a movie that’s made of the source material. And these things expire at different times because they’re created at different times.

So, basically what we’re saying is, OK, Sherlock Holmes, perfect example. That’s long now in the public domain. That means anyone can create a derivative work from the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. But you can’t take things from say the recent Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies because that’s still copyrighted by, I believe it’s Warner Bros.

So the copyright of the movies doesn’t change at all when the source material enters the public domain. All it means is now other people can make such movies. This is why for instance there are 14 billion different kinds of movies set in and around the world of Oz. But they can only draw on the public domain material, which is what L. Frank Baum wrote. So, for instance, very famously when Disney was making – what was it called, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the one with James Franco?

**John:** Yeah, Oz, Great and Powerful.

**Craig:** There you go. And at one point they have the witch turning green. Well, I don’t believe the witch is green in Frank Baum’s books. Warner Bros. I believe holds the copyright on the 1939 film which is still in copyright. And basically what it came down to is they were like when all the law dust was settled it was there is a shade of green that is our property. If you want to turn your witch green, she can’t be our green. So, it comes down to stuff like that, which is sort of fascinating.

Similarly with Bond, yes, so in Canada you can make a movie about James Bond. You cannot take any single element that has ever been in any James Bond movie.

**John:** Well, any single element that’s been in the movies that is not already in the book.

**Craig:** Correct. So, and you’d have to really make sure. And it probably couldn’t even look quite like it was in the movie, even if it’s a common element. And the truth is the movies are different than the books. And there have been so many since. So, it’s not quite so simple. And, of course, when it’s based on work that is not in the public domain in another country, like say the United States, I’m not sure how that exactly works. You may not be able to release it in the United States. So, tricky.

**John:** I have a half memory of an adaptation of 1984 done zillions of years ago that could not be released in the US because in the US 1984 was still under copyright. There was some problem with 1984 that it couldn’t be released.

Another thing I would point out – and I don’t know if this is the case with Bond, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is – trademark and copyright don’t line up necessarily.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** And so certain big characters are trademarked, even if their copyright has expired. And so, again, I don’t remember what happened with Tarzan, but for a while Tarzan was a trademarked brand. And so you could do a story that sort of uses the underlying novel of Tarzan but you couldn’t call him Tarzan because Tarzan was a trademarked character name.

So, there can be issues like that that are thornier than you would expect. I wouldn’t stake your house on trying to make your Canadian James Bond film when you move from Santa Monica back to the north.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, I would say that there is an interesting thing you can imagine where some of these things, like Bond for instance, let’s say the Fleming novels go into public domain globally. And eventually they will. To do a James Bond movie that is just a complete deconstruction would be fascinating. The truth is you can do that now anyway. I mean, really in the end what are you getting? You’re getting the name.

By the way, this happened because – so the Broccolis, I don’t understand the providence completely, but the Broccolis, the greatest of all names–

**John:** They are the producers of the Bond films.

**Craig:** Correct. The control that property. Somehow the copyright lapsed one way for one reason or another on Thunderball, which is one of the earlier Bond movies, and the book – I guess the rights on the book lapsed early before it this public domain stuff happened. And another company went and made – they brought Sean Connery back for I think it was called Never Say Never Again, or Never Say Death, or something like that.

**John:** That’s right.

**Craig:** And that was just Thunderball. Again, it was the same story, I believe, they just retold it different, just using the book. It has weirdly happened.

**John:** I should also say that our explanation of this whole copyright stuff is in no way intended to be a defense of how we do stuff. How we do stuff is genuinely crazy and needs to be sorted out. As writers, we want copyright because it protects our work. It helps us get paid. It’s fantastic for those reasons. But the way that copyright has morphed into this bizarre thing that sort of never ends and keeps getting extended is potentially really damaging for people who try to make art. So we want to make sure that we are in no way trying to defend what’s happening now. Just try to explain it.

**Craig:** There has been a trend in the United States to extend copyright over and over and over. And in weird way the big motivator is Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse should have gone into public domain some time ago. It is not. And so obviously the Disney Corporation has lobbied quite effectively to extend copyright protection in general. It is now longer than it has ever been before.

The Sonny Bono Act, I believe it was Sonny Bono, representative in Congress, who had his name on that particular extension. At some point it does need to be curtailed. I mean, the purpose of copyright ultimately was to be able to get works created in such a way that they would end up in the public domain. The copyright, the idea there – copyright is written into the United States Constitution. The idea is we’re going to create a system whereby people who want to create things will be so sufficiently rewarded in an amount of time that they will do it so that eventually it’s free.

**John:** Yep. Copy Right. It talks about the right to copy.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** The right to distribute stuff. So I read an interesting story this past week about Charles Dickens who was really frustrated because at the time in the US copyright protection for British works was not enforced. And so essentially his work in the US was being pirated wildly. And so he was not seeing any money coming out of the US. And so he lobbied to sort of get the laws changed in the US, unsuccessfully. Ultimately he ended up doing a big speaking tour across the US and making his money that way.

But it was just so weird to think of a situation where American copyright law was weak and so therefore this person was not getting paid properly. And so this has become so, so flipped.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure.

**John:** All right, let’s go to Brett in Portland. Do you want to ask his question?

**Craig:** Yeah. Brett from Portland writes, “I’m writing a western that takes place just after the Civil War. I have several different scenes that feature military troops and numerous soldiers. I’m having trouble distinguishing between the different soldiers. I’ve given more important characters higher rank and names obviously, but what about the soldiers who are just being given orders and such? Does giving characters numbers, for example, Soldier 1, just work from scene-to-scene? Or do those numbers continue throughout the entire script?

“I don’t want to have Soldier 1 through 10. Any advice on how I can differentiate between these smaller characters and keep them from running together on the page?”

**John:** Yeah, it’s brutal and there’s no perfect solution to this. I’m never a numberer of characters thing. I just find that so annoying and frustrating. And I hate reading it in the script. I find it confusing to follow up on those things. So I’ll always try to find some adjective to stick to the soldier to differentiate them from other people. Try to find some way to let us be able to track them over the course of the scene and hopefully over the course of the movie, if they do appear in multiple scenes.

If they do appear in multiple scenes, probably give them an actual name so that you can remember that. And so it becomes clear to the people. But it is truly frustrating. I would say one of the other pros to like doing the adjective name versus the numbered name is that it forces you as the writer to think something about who that character is and sort of be just a little bit more specific than giving a person a number.

**Craig:** 100%. Thinking about this, Brett, you say that some of these characters are just being given orders and such. Well they don’t need names at all because theoretically they’re not talking. They’re just getting orders. And in that case, I don’t bother distinguishing. You know, he turns to a soldier, gives him an order. OK, that’s fine. I know that then in the next scene so-and-so turns to a soldier, tells them to run. That’s probably a different soldier.

It’s really when they’re talking. And when they’re talking, well first of all, if they’re talking and they have one line, do we need that line? And then if we do, then I’m in complete agreement with John. I don’t like to do the number thing at all.

I just went through this actually with the production department on Chernobyl because we have like 102 speaking parts in this thing. And there’s a whole bunch of soldiers. And so a lot of the questions were, OK, we’re pretty sure these are all different soldiers, but is this soldier the same as this soldier? And so I just had to clarify, yes, this is the same soldier as this solider.

And then they get numbers, but those are production numbers. So now the production understands that what we know as soldier is actually actor number 73.

**John:** Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I was thinking back to Go and there’s a scene early on in Go where Ronna is in a van with some high school kids and she’s selling them fake drugs. And so each of those kids, they’re basically only in that scene. They sort of appear outside at one other point. But I didn’t want to just – I wanted them to be individual specific. And so like one of the kid’s names is Spider Marine, which in the Smashing Pumpkins song there’s a lyric, “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in the cage.” For whatever reason I heard that as – I heard despite all my rage as Spider Marine. And so I had been singing Spider Marine for like a year. And so Spider Marine was the name I gave to that one character.

And what’s nice about it is it kind of feels like — I don’t know why his name is that, but it gave the hair and makeup and wardrobe departments something to focus on. And so they picked something that spoke to them as Spider Marine. And it was useful. And so I’m always fan of just giving a descriptive name for those minor characters. Also so that when they scroll up in the end credits you can sort of figure out like, oh, it must be that guy. Like Overheated Customer in Bar.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That makes much more sense.

**Craig:** Yes. No question. I mean, with soldiers, they’re in uniform and so then really if they’re just meant to go run off somewhere then they’re a soldier. If there’s something important going on, then you do. You have to think about their face, their age, everything. And then a name may be called for.

**John:** All right. Let’s do our last question. This is from Carrie who says, “I’ve recently gotten to Episode 109 and I was wondering whatever happened to the first song Craig recorded on the podcast with the guitar? The episode should include it at the end, but then suddenly it’s not there. I’m assuming there may have been some legal issue, but if not, where can I find that song?”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. So Craig recorded a song called Killing the Blues. Who was that by originally?

**Craig:** It was written by someone named Rowland Salley and most famously recorded by John Prine. And then by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

**John:** So it is a fantastic song. Craig did a fantastic version of it. And the reason why we didn’t stick it on the USB drives or put it on Scriptnotes.net was really a rights thing. I was genuinely worried that the rights holders to the song could come after us and say like, “Hey, you’re selling the song without paying us royalties” and they’d kind of have a point.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So on a podcast in general like if you’re using a snippet of music or especially you’re talking about a song, so you’re basically critiquing this little part of it, or you’re doing something where that song is used in context for a specific thing, you’re generally kind of OK with that. If you’re using a lot of it, there’s a point at which you need to be buying the rights to be using that song, just like you would if you were using that song in a movie. And I did not want that sort of liability to come back and hurt the podcast.

So that’s why we snipped it off of the USB drives and off the Scriptnotes.net. But, Craig, it got me thinking there’s a place where people do song covers all the time. Like YouTube.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, that’s true. And, by the way, you can – again, it’s about damages. If you record a cover of a song and you put it on anything for free, there’s no damages. If you’re selling it, yeah, sure. But you could stick it on your website.

**John:** Yeah. So what I think I wanted to do, Craig, if this was OK with you, is we’ll upload it to YouTube, because YouTube can actually track the rights on that thing. And if there’s any money to be made off of it it would go to the songwriter for your cover of that song.

So, we’re going to stick a snippet of that as our outro for this week, but if you want to hear the full version we’ll have a link in the show notes where you can listen to Craig’s really good cover of this song. I found the original file and it was great. So, we’ll put that up there for Carrie and for everyone else who has written over the years asking where the hell is that song that Craig was supposed to sing.

**Craig:** Very good. Very good. Well, I guess it’s time for One Cool Things.

**John:** You start us off.

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing this week is a videogame, South Park: The Fractured but Whole. That is the best title ever.

**John:** It’s a good title.

**Craig:** Ever. It’s great. I played the first South Park videogame, The Stick of Truth, which was spectacular. The big surprise with that game was, OK, so it’s South Park and it’s got Matt and Trey doing all the voices. And all the writing. And all the directing. Great story. But also the game play itself was really, really good.

So, you kind of ended up getting a great game and also just this incredibly long and very, very screwed and funny South Park episode. And they’ve done it again. More of the same, but with a great twist on it. And just really, really good. So, I would strongly recommend South Park: The Fractured but Whole.

You know what my trigger warning for that is? All possible trigger warnings. Every possible trigger warning in existence for everyone. Everyone. Including white people. Everyone is going to get it in this game. And does.

**John:** That sounds very fun.

**Craig:** But it’s really, really fun. It is.

**John:** Cool. My One Cool Thing is the Adelante Shoe Co. And so this was recommended to us by other writer friends, mutual friends. So it’s this company that makes shoes, and they make nice looking shoes. I’m wearing a pair of their boots. I like them a lot.

What’s different about them is they work with shoemakers in Latin America, largely Guatemala, and they work with them to try to figure out how to pay them a living-well wage, which is basically a price that’s well above what minimum wage should be so that a person who is working for them who is making these shoes can do this and actually sustain a family on their salaries.

So, their website is cool. I’ll send you there. They talk about sort of their transparency, their accountability, and sort of what their mission is. I dig them. It reminds me of Kickstarter and some other B corporations, those sort of public benefit corporations that have objectives beyond just making the most money possible. So, I am wearing the Havana Boot. It’s really good. But all the stuff there has been really good. So, Chris Nee I think was the one who first turned me onto them. So, I would recommend you check them out for your boot and shoe needs.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Some housekeeping. Next week is the Three Page Challenge from Austin. So we recorded that a couple weeks ago, but you can listen to that. If you would like to read ahead, the entries for that episode are up in Weekend Read. They’re also at johnaugust.com/Austin2017. So you can read through the four different Three Page Challenges we read through and then listen to the episode and hear from the writers themselves, which is one of the best parts of doing that show live in Austin.

And that’s our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** Yeah, and whoa.

**John:** Matthew moved to Japan and actually just this week put up a video about his first two months in Japan which is well worth watching, about how his apartment is not haunted but sort of seems like it probably is haunted. But he was living in Akita, Japan, which I knew nothing about, and it was fascinating to see sort of what his life is like up there.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Our outro this week comes from Craig Mazin. But if you have an outro for us to play you can write into ask@johnaugust.com with a link to that. That’s also where you write in with questions like the ones we answered on today’s podcast. Short questions, I’m on Twitter @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

We’re on Facebook. Just search for Scriptnotes Podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts. Again, leave us a review if you are there because that helps people find the show.

We have all of the back episodes up now at Scriptnotes.net. We have transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with show notes.

We also have more of the USB drives. So people were asking for those. That’s the first 300 episodes, plus all the bonus episodes on one little handy dandy USB drive that you can carry with you as you make it through your day.

**Craig:** But the t-shirts are gone?

**John:** The t-shirts are done. So thanks to everybody who bought a t-shirt. So those t-shirt orders have closed. And they’re shipping out really soon, so maybe by the time people are listening to this podcast – or at least by the time they’re listening to the Three Page Challenge they can be wearing their brand new t-shirt. I’m so excited to have those on hand.

**Craig:** Wonderful.

**John:** Cool. Craig, thanks for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. See you soon.

Links:

* Tickets available for the [Holiday Live Show](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-live-show-john-august-craig-mazin/) now!
* Team America: World Police’s defense of [“Montage”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I_5Bw1U4s4)
* [NOLO’s Getting Permission: Using & Licensing Copyright-Protected Materials Online & Off](https://store.nolo.com/products/getting-permission-riper.html), a handy legal guide for rights and rights purchases.
* [Cosmo Kramer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmo_Kramer), from Seinfeld, is based on [Kenny Kramer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Kramer), who [sued a writer for defamation](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/seinfeld-writer-beats-kramers-defamation-718728)
* [James Bond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond) and [the Berne Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention)
* [Trademark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark), [Copyright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright), and a snazzy (https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-getting-started/trademark-basics/trademark-patent-or-copyright) on the difference between them from the USPTO.
* The [Copyright Term Extension Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act), AKA the Sonny Bono Act, AKA the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
* [Charles Dickens’](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens) struggle with piracy in the US is illuminated in [Fifty Inventions that Shaped the Modern World](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0735216134/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Tim Harford.
* [Go](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139239/)’s character, Spider Marine, comes from John’s mishearing the Smashing Pumpkins lyric [“despite all my rage.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-r-V0uK4u0)
* Craig’s [cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEHWE-pcK2A) of “Killing the Blues,” by Rowland Salley.
* The [South Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park) video game, [South Park: The Fractured but Whole](https://southpark.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/home/) (a sequel to [The Stick of Truth](http://southpark.cc.com/games/stick-of-truth#))
*all possible trigger warnings apply
* The [Adelante Shoe Co.](https://adelanteshoes.com) makes shoes for the discerning global citizen.
* Next week’s episode is the 2017 Austin Live Three Page Challenge — you can check out the pages [here](http://johnaugust.com/aff2017) or on [Weekend Read](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread/).
* Matthew Chilelli’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSNzEBS_KW8&feature=youtu.be) about his definitely-not-haunted apartment in Japan
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rowland Salley, performed by Craig Mazin ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_325.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/getting-stuff-written).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is Episode 321 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Last week, I was in London. This week, Craig is in London. We were literally flying through the air at the same time in opposite directions. But luckily, I found someone in the Pacific Time Zone to help us out.

Grant Faulkner joins us from Berkeley where he is Executive Director of the National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo. He is a writer and novelist himself, but the reason I mostly wanted him on the show this week is his great new book about writing. Grant, welcome to the show.

**Grant Faulkner:** Thank you for having me, John. I’m really looking forward to talking creativity today.

**John:** So, I said you were in Berkeley. Is that actually accurate? Because last time I met you, you were in San Francisco.

**Grant:** I am in Berkeley, and the NaNoWriMo headquarters is in Berkeley as well.

**John:** Can you talk us through what NaNoWriMo is for folks who don’t know the program?

**Grant:** Yeah. NaNoWriMo is many, many things, but I won’t go into the whole hour-long description of it, which is really kind of what it requires. But just to go through the rudiments, it is a challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days during the month of November. And so, it was developed really around the premise that everyone has a story to tell and that everyone’s story matters. But sometimes, so many people say, “I’m going to write my novel or my script some day,” you know, like that mythical “someday” when life is just easy and beautiful and you have money and a beautiful office and expanses of time.

But someday just rarely happens. In fact, I just read this in The New York Times, they did a survey and 81% of Americans say they want to write a book someday, but most of them of course don’t. And so, we exist to say “Make your creativity a priority for a month, in the month of November” and we want to ignite people’s creativity and help them realize their creative dreams.

**John:** So, I was aware of NaNoWriMo for a lot of years, and I’d never actually considered pursuing it until two years ago. I found myself at the end of October and realizing like, “Well, I don’t have a script that I have to write next, and I think I will actually just start writing a book and I will do that in November.”

So, I sat down at my computer. I was in Austin. I was there for the Austin Film Festival. And I started writing this book and it became Arlo Finch. So, my first book is actually a NaNoWriMo book.

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** Thank you to the program and also for the impetus. Most of our listeners are screenwriters. And so, 50,000 words, that doesn’t necessarily track to sort of what screenwriters do, but that’s sort of like — it’s a script. Maybe it’s sort of a script and a half. It’s a lot of words. So in order to hit 50,000 words, I think it’s 1,650 words per day that you’re supposed to be writing?

**Grant:** Yeah, 1,677 to be precise. And I was so impressed because you not only wrote Arlo Finch during NaNoWriMo, but you sold it, right?

**John:** So, that’s not entirely fair because I wrote about 15,000 words. I got nowhere near the 50,000 words.

**Grant:** Wow.

**John:** But I wrote the first six or seven chapters of it and that’s what actually became the book that we went out and sold. So, I sold Arlo Finch off the initial chapters, the outline for the whole book and that’s what’s got the whole thing started. So, it was a great sort of framework for getting me to sit down and actually just do the work of getting just started. So, I really, really enjoy it.

But since the time I did it, I talked to a lot of other people who have written during NaNoWriMo, and some of those people have sold books, but a lot of people just like, you know, actually sat down and like strung words together for the first time in a year. So I think you’re doing an incredible service to people who are curious about writing, who aspire to write, who wouldn’t otherwise have the motivation to do it.

**Grant:** Yeah. And it’s interesting to me because I think sometimes people think that NaNoWriMo is all about, you know, helping people not only write their novels but publish their novels, as if that’s always the end goal. And I’m really actually impressed by the number of people who sign up every year just to write a novel and to do it in a community of other writers. So, that whole notion of creativity for creativity’s sake I think is really valuable, even if your aspiration is to publish, just kind of keeping that notion, that sort of childlike approach, being playful with your words.

**John:** Absolutely. And I think the childlike focus comes into some of the other programs you guys do. You have the Young Writers Program which we help out with, with our Writer Emergency Packs but you’re in–

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** Like, 2,000 classrooms every year to sort of help young writers sort of get started in the process. There’s programs designed for really little kids and for middle grade kids. But I think it’s great that you’re sort of getting people thinking about writing as a thing you do even if you don’t intend to become a professional paid writer.

**Grant:** Yeah. And our Young Writers Program, what is remarkable about it for me, since I was a teen of course before NaNoWriMo was founded in 1999, and I’ll talk to 17-year-olds who have written five, six, seven novels during our Young Writers Program and they might have published some of them with a self-publishing company. And I never — when I was a teen, no one wrote novels. I was a geeky reader, writer and I wrote a long short story at most.

And so, I think like this year, we will have 80,000 teens sign up for our Young Writers Program and close to 350,000 writers for the NaNoWriMo main site. And then, with our Young Writers, we provide Common Core-aligned curriculum for teachers, free workbooks that can be downloaded. We send out novel writing kits and resources to 2,500 classrooms which include your Writer Emergency Pack which is actually good for any age of writer, I think. I like pulling out a card every once in a while.

So, yeah, our premise is just the world is a better place with more creators in it, and our approach to igniting people’s creativity is through writing.

**John:** So, for anybody who has questions about NaNoWriMo, they should go to nanowrimo.org and check out all the great work you do. But I want to focus today on the other great work you do which is this new book that I have in my hands. It’s a handsome little book called, Pep Talks for Writers — 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo. It’s published by Chronicle Books here in the US. It is about an inch thick. If you threw it at somebody, it would hurt them, which I think is a good measure for a book.

What was the impetus behind writing this?

**Grant:** Yeah. And for what I said earlier, one of the, you know, kind of breakthrough successes we have every year is when people find themselves as writers and creators during November and find themselves in our NaNoWriMo community. And they want to — they so often want to keep that creative momentum going all year long, but it can be really tough. I mean, you can’t do NaNoWriMo every month and I wouldn’t advise that. But I would like people to stay creative year-round and to finish those novels they wrote or just make creativity a priority in their lives.

And so, I wrote these 52 insights. The insights are really kind of short essays. Each essay is about two or three pages, I think. And then, each essay ends with an action that you can take within a one-week period. It’s not meant to be like a five-year plan or something like that. So, yeah, that was the purpose. And so, each essay is really just taking a different angle of creativity and help people reflect on being creative with their lives in a variety of different ways, whether it’s setting goals and deadlines to finish that novel or whether it’s going out in the world and practicing becoming a better observer, so just a range of topics.

**John:** Yeah. What I like about it so much is that so often these books are kind of “Yay, writing,” like, “Writing is fantastic. Writing is the best thing ever and just like follow these steps and you’ll be so happy.” And what I liked about your book is that, while I think overall it’s going towards a positive place, you’re really acknowledging some of the pitfalls and problems that sort of keep people from writing — either from starting to write or keep people from continuing to write. It’s a very challenging thing to sort of really dig in on. And even 20 years into this, I found myself nodding at a lot of the things that you point out about part of the reasons why it can kind of suck to write.

And so, I want to dig in to some of those today while I have you on the show to see sort of what insights you have and sort of what advice you can have to people no matter what they’re writing, be it a book, be it a short story, be it a screenplay, sort of get them through to that next step and that next draft.

So, if you’re ready, I just wanted to kind of dig in if we can.

Craig: Yeah.

**John:** Great.

**Grant:** That sounds great.

**John:** One thing you identify, something you call in one of the early chapters, “the Other Syndrome”, that writing is something that other people do. Like, can you talk to me about what you mean by other syndrome and I think we can probably tie it into something we’ve talked about in the podcast before, “Impostor Syndrome,” in a sense that I’m not really a writer. Where did that come from for you?

**Grant:** Yeah. I’ve never talked to anyone who didn’t struggle with this. “I am not a writer” is one way to put it or “I am not a real writer.” And so, I think, you know, for instance like me, I grew up in a small town in Iowa. And so, when I was growing up, real writers — they lived in New York City or Paris. They were adults. They just weren’t me. I didn’t have access to that writing world. And so, I think everybody can probably find a reason of how they feel other than what they determine a real writer is.

And I think if you don’t claim the “I am a writer” with some boldness, it will show with the words you write on the page. You won’t be able to write as bravely if you don’t claim it. If you say “I’m aspiring to write or be a writer. I want to be a writer –” I mean, the definition of being a writer is that you write. And I think the real part is even perhaps more inhibiting because I think what people mean by real is that they’ve been — you’re not a real writer until you’re published. And one publication can, you know, whatever, boost your confidence and make you feel like you are a real writer, it’s a really kind of flimsy and transitory feeling.

I find it like just kind of strange how I’ll wake up in the morning to write and open up my laptop and have a new assignment and I will just really struggle with those first words. It would be like the last thing I want to do is to write. Even though I’ve done it hundreds or thousands of times before and done it with success, each new project is like a totally new thing. And you can go back into all those sort of low moments of self-esteem or lack of belief in yourself no matter where you are in your writing journey.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s dig into psychologically why people have this sense that other people are writers but what I’m doing is not writing. And so, you were talking about growing up in a small town in Iowa. I think there is a sense that when we see writers portrayed in media, they’re always these people who live in big cities, off by themselves and who, like, they cloister themselves in their little rooms and they type these brilliant things and the editors love them. And if they do go out, it’s to mingle with other writers who wear little ascots. Like, it’s a very fancy kind of thing.

**Grant:** Exactly.

**John:** Writing is a really invisible process. It’s like just a person sitting there, doing something. You don’t see them on a daily basis. You don’t see people who are creative writers out there in the world so much. You might pass that person at the coffee shop who’s working, but like you’re not seeing them doing their work as much as you’re seeing an athlete practicing or playing the game.

**Grant:** Right.

**John:** You don’t see them the way you see musicians. Writing is just a thing that happens.

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** Last week on the podcast, we answered a question from a listener who asked like, “Is it okay to call myself a screenwriter versus an aspiring screenwriter?”

**Grant:** Exactly.

**John:** And I think our basic answer was a lot like what you said, is that identify yourself by the verb, not the noun. And if you are a person who writes, then you are a writer and that’s absolutely fair to say. And so, I think your idea of the “Other Syndrome” though also ties into I think we talked about it in the show before, which is the “Impostor Syndrome,” which is even when you’re doing it, even when you’re getting paid for it, you always have that sense of like “Oh, no. At some point, they’re going to figure out that I’m not really the person they should be trusting to do this work.”

I love that you included this quote that I’d never seen before. I’ll read the quote here. “I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out that I’ve run a game on everybody. They’re going to find me out.’” It’s a quote by Maya Angelou. And so, here’s a woman who’s remarkably successful as a writer and yet she still says that each time she sets out to do a new project, she’s like, “This is the one they’re going to realize that I’m not that good, that I didn’t deserve that praise before.”

And in your book, you talked through some of the reasons why even really successful writers have that sense. Like, what do you think that is?

**Grant:** Per what you were saying earlier, I think one reason that people don’t feel like they’re writers or that they aren’t real writers is that they’re only reading the final draft of their favorite writers, right? The novels they love have been through, who knows, five or ten edits and had professional editors look at them. Whereas, like most of us are sitting with our rough draft and it’s so easy to see how it might not measure up to what we want it to be.

So, writing is so crazily difficult and challenging and I think that that flows into what Maya Angelou was saying as well is that it’s an activity of self-doubt. It has like so many masochistic components to it. The joy and the meaning one finds from the kind of painful exercises is just such a different type of joy than you might find in other activities. And so, I think a writer is just constantly wrestling with that self-doubt no matter where they are in their writing career.

And I think if you feel, depending on the degree that you feel the “Other Syndrome,’ I actually think there are whole different layers. I mean, I’ve done an exercise where I’ll write “I am a writer” in the middle of a circle and then draw concentric circles going out to the perimeter. And I think some people are on the out, like the very edge of the first concentric circle and some people are really close to that middle, I am a writer. And so, I’m imagining Maya Angelou might have been on that closer to the perimeter. So, her natural self-doubt as a writer might really rear an ugly head from time to time.

But, yeah, I think the thing is, is that publishing also doesn’t solve these things. Fame doesn’t solve these things. Awards don’t solve these things. As a writer, you’re always struggling with yourself and your ability to put the right words on the page.

**John:** You talk in your book about the inner editor and how the inner editor is that force inside you that is constantly pushing you and it can be pushing you in a good way or pushing you in a bad way. It’s like that coach who sort of calls you out on all your mistakes and good coaches can sort of push you to your best work and bad coaches can make you quit the team.

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** I think that’s an aspect of this “Impostor Syndrome” as well. You have this inner critic who is saying, “You are not good enough. Look at how brilliant that other writer’s work is and how bad your work is.” But of course, as you point out, you’re only comparing this crappy first thing you’ve written, this crappy first draft you’ve written to the finished masterpieces of that other thing. So, naturally, it’s not going to be as good.

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** You’re always thinking about the worst of your stuff versus the best of theirs.

**Grant:** Exactly. And we’re not even the best judge of our own stuff, you know. I mean, I think writers just because of that inner editor, which can be — your inner editor has its place and you might banish it during the first draft, but you need it later on because your inner editor wants you to succeed, but it can have a harsh voice. And I think sometimes writers — I mean, we internalize that inner editor and it helps us refine and revise our novels but it can also, you know, I think add to our self-doubt sometimes.

And so, you know, I think when you’re comparing your draft to a published author’s, your eyes probably aren’t the best at that point to judge it.

**John:** Absolutely. Let’s talk a little bit about process because the classic NaNoWriMo process is basically a quantity kind of goal. Like, you basically just like turn off your inner critic, like, don’t listen to that voice that says, “This isn’t good enough,” just like keep generating pages and go through it.

Do you find that that needs to switch at any point? Can people keep writing at that pace and that speed? There’s a screenwriter who’s out there today who does a lot of work who famously can write zillions and zillions and zillions of words and yet the people will call them out on quality. Do you find that people who go through NaNoWriMo process, what happens in those other 11 months? Like, what is the next step for them after all those words?

**Grant:** Yeah. We definitely — I think I do know one person in the world who did NaNoWriMo every month for an entire year. She wrote 12 novels, 50,000 words a month and she’s a rarity and we don’t advise people to do that. After NaNoWriMo is over — you know, 50,000 words, a lot of people aren’t finished to start. They might need to write another 25,000 or 50,000 words to finish. So, I recommend that they finish because I think there’s just something so rewarding about, you know, writing The End after writing a whole rough draft and then revise of course, you know, and revise, you know, multiple times.

So, sometimes I think people think that we think that you can write a novel in a month and publish it in a month and that’s certainly not the case.

**John:** Yeah. One of the numbers you point out in your book is that if you wrote just 250 words a day, you’d get to 80,000 words in a year. 80,000 words is a pretty good sized book.

**Grant:** It is.

**John:** That’s a book to be proud of. It may not be the best book ever, but it would be about an inch thick and that’s sort of a way to measure sort of what you’ve done. So, you know, consistency even at smaller amounts can be a huge help as well. But how do you then sort of reengage the inner critique, that inner editor, after you sort of try to ignore him or her during that initial process? Like, what’s the way of sort of inviting that creature back in?

**Grant:** Yeah. I think writing a rough draft and banishing the inner editor, it takes practice especially for someone like me because I wrote with an inner editor very present in my writing life until I discovered NaNoWriMo. So, I still — I write pretty slowly because my editor is always somewhere whispering in my ear, “You can refine that sentence a little bit more before going on.”

I think editing and revising takes a lot of practice. I think a lot of people — I’ll see writers revise for the first time and they’ll really kind of only revise on the sentence level. You know, they’ll brush up their grammar and stuff, and revision is such a deeper process. One of my favorite quotes about revision comes from the author, Karen Russell, who said that 90% of her rough draft doesn’t make it into her final draft. I mean, I think you have to open to totally, dramatically changing what you wrote in that first draft, you know, and I always advise people not to attach themselves too much to the plotline or whatever it is in that rough draft because it’s just going to change so much.

And I think Karen Russell is not an anomaly. Most writers I talk to or most novelists, so they say the same thing. The rough draft sometimes as a story just changes so dramatically. It’s barely recognizable. In fact, I just talked with a NaNoWriMo writer who, she did NaNoWriMo I think like 9 or 10 years ago and that 50,000 words that she wrote, she just published her book, but most of those words she said it was kind of a seed of the idea.

So, the rough draft, you’re really exploring. You’re really trying to take different pathways and not be too attached to them. You’re really just trying to open up and find your story. And if I can impart one more quote, I just heard of this as well, Barbara Kingsolver says she starts on negative page 100. So, she’s writing 100 pages just to get to the beginning, just to figure out what she’s really saying. I think the rough draft can even be like a kind of like planning stage. You know, it doesn’t get talked about like that, but, you know, call it zero draft. You can write a rough draft and then outline it afterwards and then, you know, almost write a whole new story.

So, yeah, there are so many different ways to go about it and even though we do have this framework for NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo is a creative experiment from its beginnings and I try to experiment with my own creative process every year because that was the gift that NaNoWriMo gave me. The reason I did it back in 2009 was because I felt like I was in a — my creative process was in a rut. And so, I just want to shake it up and it led me to, you know, take these risks on the page that I wouldn’t have ordinarily if I’ve been writing in my kind of ponderous, precious mode.

**John:** Let’s go back a little bit there because you went to a masters writing program, didn’t you?

**Grant:** Yeah. I did. Yeah.

**John:** So, talk us through it. So, a small town in Iowa, and then, what was the process that got you started as a writer and also that led you to NaNoWriMo?

**Grant:** Yeah. I think there was something in me that was kind of predetermined to be a writer. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t want to be a writer. So, even when I was going down other possible, you know, career paths, it was always an idea writing some way.

I went to a study abroad program when I was 20 and basically sat in France and read novels in cafes and said, “This is the life for me.” So, I decided to be a writer and never looked back, never had Plan B. And so, yeah, in my mid-20s, I went and got my masters at San Francisco State. But then, that’s when the writing got really tough. It was when I was in my 20s, I was totally broke and needed to make a living and I worked as a journalist and worked in corporate communications and then finally found my way to the National Writing Project which is a wonderful nonprofit in Berkeley dedicated to helping teachers teach writing better. And then, that led me to the NaNoWriMo board.

Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, invited me on and I’ve been here for six years. So, I feel blessed that I’ve managed to find a job in writing that speaks to — you know, I’m a very mission-driven person. So, I really love that this organization helps so many people become creators and, you know, it’s like I get to think of creativity and talk with people who are engaged in writing every day. So, I’m always learning something.

**John:** But, let’s circle back to this Masters of Creative Writing Program that you took at San Francisco State.

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** So, what was that like because that sounds like kind of the fantasy, like, “Well, of course, he’s a writer because he went to that amazing program.” So, what were you actually doing during your time there and what was the process of like dealing with other students in the program?

**Grant:** Yeah. I went there somewhat casually. A lot of people are very directed and they choose, you know, very prestigious writing programs, but I was living in San Francisco and I enjoyed my life and just wanted to stay here. And I was reading and writing every moment I could when I wasn’t working, and I just thought I should get a degree for it.

So, I wasn’t really driven purposefully. You know, I didn’t have grand visions of learning things, in particular. But I think the things that I learned were the value of developing a writing community. It provided that, and I think a writing community can serve you in so many different ways, whether it’s getting feedback from your peers and friends or whether you’re getting inspiration from them or wisdom from their experience or networking opportunities.

Some of the professors definitely introduced me to new ways to write, Robert Gluck in particular. He taught experimental fiction. But, yeah, I can’t say that I had — you know, I think a lot of people go to programs and they want to find this mentor who will love them and that mentor will then, you know, open every door in the world for them to get published. And I think that does happen but it’s very rare. And so, I think you have to really think — I mean, if I were going to go back and do it, I would really think about what do I want out of this. I wouldn’t be so casual.

**John:** One of the questions we get most often on the podcast is, “Should I go to film school?” And I think our answers tend to be very much what you describe is that film schools are a great place to be surrounded by people who are trying to do the same things you’re trying to do and get that community, but you can’t go into it expecting “I’m going to go through this program and suddenly I will have the success in this field,” especially in something as esoteric and strange as writing. It’s hard to anticipate that you’re going to be able to graduate from that program and suddenly, you know, all the gates will be open to you.

**Grant:** It’s really true and what’s interesting to me is the number of people who go to MFA programs and they don’t write now, and they’ll quit writing soon afterwards. And I’m always like, “Why did you do it? That was a huge investment of time and money.” And I think it speaks to like what really makes a writer or a screenwriter is that inner passion. It doesn’t matter whether you have a degree in it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve taken any classes in writing at all.

You know, in fact, Chris Baty who founded NaNoWriMo, he hadn’t taken any writing workshops or anything like that. And I think especially with the novel, I don’t know if this applies to scriptwriting so much, but I imagine it does to a large part, is that the best way to learn to write a novel is by writing one, you know. You can’t really read about how to write a novel or just listen to someone lecture on it. You have to experience it in tandem with a larger conversation around it and you can find the conversation in books and in writing communities like NaNoWriMo, of course.

**John:** One of the things you talked about quite a bit in the book is sort of the virtue of being a beginner and sort of like how to sort of remember what it’s like to be a beginner so that you can, you know, approach things with an openness and interactiveness. There’s a quote you used by Matsuo Basho, “Seek not to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” And which is basically a great way of expressing to sort of be able to retain that sense of openness and curiosity that you have as a beginner.

And I think that may have been one of the main reasons I wanted to do NaNoWriMo is because I’m really good at screenwriting. I sort of think I know how screenwriting works. I really didn’t know how writing books worked. And it was so thrilling to be a beginner again at something and I think part of the reason why I keep trying new things is that I’m sort of a dilettante and hopping in between things is because it’s so much more fun to explore something new than to sort of than to sort of keep trudging over the same terrain again and again.

**Grant:** Yeah. And I think the more you stay in one field and kind of specialize in it, the more your sort of expert rigidity just keeps getting more and more rigid. It’s even hard for me sometimes to go back to my beginning stages of why I wrote to begin with. And NaNoWriMo provides that in the sense of the community. I get to talk to a lot of beginning writers and they help me remember that sort of — you know, it’s just so strange. It’s like traveling to a new city that you’ve never been to before. You’re just experiencing the world in such freshness.

And I do think that we lose that kind of childlike appreciation of storytelling the longer that we write. And so, the more that we can do to go back and remind ourselves about it and you mentioned one — I mean, the one thing that I love is like learn something new. Like, when I started playing the guitar five years ago, it was such an interesting experience to be a total beginner in another art form. And so, I think people should like embrace that really as a new year’s resolution. Learn one thing new every year because it brings you back to that beginner’s mind, and then you can apply that to your writing.

**John:** Absolutely. One of the things, a truism that we hear again and again about writing, we hear about screenplays but I think even more so about books is to write what you know.

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** And I like what you were sort of going into about that idea because so often it will be brought up, and it will be sort of immediately dismissed because like, well, that’s stupid because I don’t know anything about, you know, space travel, but I love to write about space. And, you know, there’s so many examples that people writing things that they couldn’t possibly have firsthand knowledge of it, yet it really works.

Where I think you do a good job of sort of digging deeper is looking at what you’re really trying to get out with writing, what you know, which is sort of the emotional memory, the stuff underneath the experience that is so crucial about writing what you know. What things should people be looking for when someone says, “Write what you know”?

**Grant:** Yeah. I think “write what you know” is funny. That’s like one of the top three probably maxims of writing, right? Like, people are always saying, “Write what you know.” And I remember when I first heard that. I was like, “What does that mean?” You know, because, if I take it at its literal face value, I think that I have to write about only those things I’ve experienced in my life like my small town in Iowa. But it’s not really about that.

I think like just what you said, you should never limit yourself. Like, if I — I don’t know, if I want to write about aliens on another planet, if I want to write about a region I’ve never been to in the world which I’ve done, you know, if I want to write about characters, whatever they are, like neuroscientists, so, I don’t know any neuroscientists, but we should give ourselves that permission because it’s part of the reason we write is to see the world through people’s eyes and to explore the world in different ways.

And so, I like the method acting or method writing approach that you’re really applying your own personal emotional experience to the characters you’re creating. Actually, there’s a Shelley Winters quote where she says, “Act with your scars.” And so, you can apply your scars to any character. But I do think that, you know, that requires, like method acting, a lot of introspection and not just like tossing yourself into characters willy-nilly but really thinking about the purpose of what scar and what experience of that scar is appropriate for certain characters.

**John:** When I read writing that feels very real, when the characters seem like they have flesh and blood, I do think it’s because the author has invested a bit of him or herself into their experience. And so, that, you know, author has a very clear sense of that character’s inner emotional life because he or she is using some things from their own life to sort of proxy for it.

When I was doing the script for Big Fish, there’s a sequence at the end where Will is sort of going through the story of his father’s death and I knew this is going to be an incredibly emotional thing for the character but also for the audience watching it. And so, I would — this incredibly method writing where I would bring myself to tears and then start writing.

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** And it seems crazy and why would you do it that way, but I’m pretty sure the only reason why I got to those specific words and those images was because I was at that emotional state as I was writing it. And that’s a, you know, it was an incredibly valuable exercise for me is to sort of let myself feel those feelings and then let those characters express themselves while I was feeling those feelings. And, you know, I would just encourage people to try those things because really what’s the harm of trying those things? And there’s something sort of embarrassing about feeling strong emotions or to psych yourself up into a place. But you do it for other things. You’ll rev yourself up before giving a speech. You’ll do other things to sort of get you into the emotional state. Get yourself into the right emotional state for the writing that you’re doing.

And that’s really what we’re talking about in terms of write what you know. Write those feelings that you know. Use the things that are specific and unique to you to help create some specific and unique moments for your story.

**Grant:** Yeah, that’s a great point. I think the stories that I connect with most I think, I agree with you, the writer or the creator has done something that is just so personal. He or she has made themselves vulnerable in a way that, you know, they’ve gone deeper. And so, I really think vulnerability on the page is more important than any craft advice, you know, or craft tips that you might write with.

And that’s where — with Shelley Winters, like act with your scars, it’s really going deep, you know. Like, be willing to reveal your scars on the page and go there.

**John:** You also bring up the idea of using a pseudonym to sort of give yourself permission to write something that you yourself wouldn’t feel personally comfortable writing. So, J.K. Rowling with her Robert Galbraith books, like she basically created a whole other character who is the person who is writing those books. And it’s a nice way of like, you know, giving herself some arm’s distance so she felt safe to have this other guy be writing those books, but also so she could write herself more into it.

It seems like it’s sort of an impossible sort of, you know, double twist. But by creating somebody, a proxy for herself, she could, you know, more personally invest in what she was writing. Have you had any experience with that personally?

**Grant:** I have, yeah. I know some somewhat renowned writers who have written what with a pseudonym or through a persona and they’ve done it to be more vulnerable on the page. You know, to be more powerful and write more bravely. Like just that shield, I guess, that the persona gives them helps them do that.

I mean, I think really, in the end, every time we sit down to write, we’re doing it through a filter of some persona, you know. Like I might think I’m writing with my natural self, but I think like there are ways to shift that, you know. What is your natural self, really? I sometimes like to pretend I’m somebody else just to try to access a different voice.

**John:** For me, you know, John August is the person I became sort of when I was 21, so I ended up switching from my born last name to use my dad’s last, middle and full name.

**Grant:** Oh.

**John:** And so, like it really was a process like, well, John August is the person who could do this. But the other John maybe couldn’t do this, but John August could do this. Like I was literally a different person who could do these things that were, you know, terrifying to the other John.

Whether I had to legally change my name or not, I think if I had given myself a pen name or permission to do those things, it might have been easier. I feel like the people who write fanfiction and slash fiction and do all that amazing work in that space. I think some of the reason why they’re able to do so much and sometimes do such great work is because they are writing under not their real names. And so, they can expose themselves more, because there’s no way to trace it back to them.

Like, the fact that they are 17 years old and living in Missoula, Montana is not an issue because they are just some avatar on a forum and some name they made up. I think that may be one of the things that’s giving them permission to write as much as they’re writing.

**Grant:** Yeah. And I think in some ways it’s interesting. Going back to the beginning of our conversation, that statement I am a writer or I am a real writer. You know, do whatever it takes to do that. And if it takes using a pseudonym or a persona or an avatar, you know, that’s a perfectly legitimate way to claim that identity.

**John:** For NaNoWriMo, has fanfiction or slash fiction become an issue in terms of like the kinds of work that people are doing? Do you guys talk about that at all as an organization or as part of your mission statement?

**Grant:** Yeah. I mean, our premise is we want people to tell their stories and we don’t really care what those stories are. We don’t judge the quality or the topics of people’s stories. So we do get a lot of fanfic writers and I think that’s great, actually. I mean, in some ways, I think all writing is a variation of fanfiction. We’re all writing through the voices and the stories that we’ve experienced. I love the metaphor of Odysseus, you know, being handed down from one oral storyteller to the next. And that is a kind of process of fanfiction, too. We’re always building on the original story.

So I think fanfiction actually is a wonderful way to learn to write because you’re taking these known characters and known plot lines and then going crazy with them.

**John:** It takes the pressure off of like, oh, I have to create something brand new, or I couldn’t create something brand new, I can use these things that already exist out there in the world. And of course we’ve seen that like, yes, you can do that but if you do that well enough, you can basically change the characters’ names and suddenly you have “Fifty Shades of Grey,” you have one of the biggest books of all time.

So, you know, I think it’s a way of giving yourself permission to be creative that you might not feel that you’re entitled to otherwise.

**Grant:** Yeah. And it may be similar to using a pseudonym or a persona, maybe writing through this known world is a way to feel safe and express yourself, you know, and be vulnerable on the page.

**John:** In your section on writer’s block, you talk about throw-away writing or basically the writing you might do at the start of your day so that, you know, it takes the pressure off of things that you don’t expect they have to be good so that it can — you know, there’s less consequence for it. And I think fanfiction could be one of those examples.

You talk about some exercises like Ray Bradbury’s list of nouns. Can you describe that to us?

**Grant:** Yeah. Ray Bradbury, I think he was the one actually, like his phrase throw-away writing, I think that came from him maybe. He says that every writer needs to write — I can’t remember if he says every writer needs to write thousands or hundreds of thousands of throwaway words. But I think that that’s a good way to view it because you’re essentially practicing writing through those words.

And when he first started becoming a writer and just in that kind of moment of like, “What do I write about?” Maybe instead of going to write what I know, he did this approach, he wrote down 20 nouns and he just made a list and they were totally random. And then he would write these very tiny little essays, like 100 or 200 words which he called pensays. And he would write them about each noun.

And within that sort of meditation on these words, he would piece together, like kind of the interaction of his subconscious and these real words, a story. And that’s how he wrote many of his most famous novels and stories, including “Something Wicked This Way Comes.”

**John:** In the book you go through a list of like these are the nouns that were interesting to him and he sort of looks for the factions between them and that became the basis of the story.

I always find it real interesting when people describe writer’s block as if they like, “I have no idea what to write.” And so rarely in my life has that actually been a factor. It’s more the factor of like, “Man, I just really don’t feel like writing,” or, “I really don’t feel like writing this next thing.”

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** And I kind of wish everyone would agree on a different set of words for describing those two different phenomena because they’re not really the same thing.

**Grant:** Not at all.

**John:** So, often I know exactly what I want to write, what I need to write, what I’m compelled to write. It’s just like it’s just torture to actually sit down and get into that next thing. And yet, through books and through movies, we have sort of romanticized this kind of ritualistic idea of writer’s block where it’s like this shrine to which we sacrifice ourselves. And it’s just rarely like that in my daily experience, and yet, you know, we as writers still talk about it.

**Grant:** Yeah. I think shrine is the word. Too many people sort of worship at that shrine almost. They’ll go years without writing and claim it’s just because they have writer’s block. And I think even when sort of famous writers have had it, it’s been overly mythologized.

I oftentimes think it can be just an excuse. Or as you put it, it’s more like it refers to other things like “I don’t feel like writing today” or “I have too many things happening in my life to be creative.” And I think there are so many ways to get around it, whether you’re using Ray Bradbury’s list of nouns, or a photo, or any kind of prompt. There’s a million prompt books out there that you can buy.

But just putting down one sentence on the page, I’ve never experienced a moment when that one sentence didn’t lead to a second and a third sentence. Writing is largely about beginning and establishing or creating some creative momentum. And, you know, there are throwaway words — you know, Julia Cameron, she has the technique, morning notes, where she says it advises people just to sit down and write anything, wither it’s like a list of 20 nouns or like a diary journal or diary entry, or whatever it is. Just to put the pen on the paper, write a couple of pages, throw them away and then begin on your real writing.

So there’s just so many ways to start writing that I think I would just banish the notion of writer’s block from your mind.

**John:** You have an interesting notion of muse. And so we talked about like the muse comes and like the muse sort of whispers in your ear and tells you the brilliant things to write. And like the fear for a writer is that like, oh, the muse won’t show up today. But you described it as a very different thing. You described it sort of more as a group of tiny pixies.

**Grant:** [laughs] Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the classic notion of the muse comes from Greece where they’re — you know, if you go into a museum, you’ll see a lot of, especially with old paintings, these paintings with the muse, you know, strumming her harp near the writer. And the idea with the muse is like whispering the story into the writer.

I mean, I don’t think that’s really the way the muse works. I think too often we’re waiting for that thunderbolt of inspiration to strike from the sky. And at least in my life, that kind of huge moment of inspiration, it happens just so rarely there’s no way I could build a creative process around it.

And so, yeah, per your comment about pixies, I think just putting the words down on the page and focusing on them, and I call them like little sprites that are whispering to you. Yeah, you’ll find the inspiration more likely on the page than you will from the thunderbolt in the sky.

**John:** Yeah. For me, I find it’s the combined momentum of like “Those words fit well together, okay, the whole sentence works well together, okay, that thing he’s saying leads to this thing leads to that thing.” Eventually, you know, there’s flow that happens and it’s just the right things are stacking up in the right way. But to wait for some great muse to strike you with either amazing inspiration or exactly the right words to express those ideas is rarely sort of what the real experience is like.

And, yeah, again, it’s one of those things like writer’s block where we’ve romanticized it to the degree that there is like, you know, this profound lightning bolt that comes out of nowhere that tells you what to do. And maybe you’ll get a few of those in your life where things really do happen that way, where if you’re Kevin Williamson, suddenly you go off and like in three days you write Scream because you just had like this vision for what it’s going to be.

But most writing isn’t that way. And I think we need to sort of really focus on the day-to-day of what most writing is like.

**Grant:** Yeah. And, you know, back at when you were saying like our movies always present writer’s block and contribute to that mythology, growing up, I thought that that’s all that writers did. They sat there by their typewriter with a, you know, shot of Scotch and a cup of coffee and a bunch of cigarettes and they’re wadding up paper constantly and throwing it at the waste basket. But that, for me, is more a metaphor of experimenting on the page. That’s the way I would like to interpret it instead of writer’s block.

And the fact is even when you’re having those moments where like, I don’t feel like writing today, like you mentioned, I mean we all have those moments, but so many times we have to sit down and write. And the fact that we do it in those sort of bad moments, I mean the next day, I’m always like, “Woo, thank God I wrote yesterday.” My present self thanks my past self so much because now I can like sit down and edit these words no matter how crappy they are.

**John:** There’s a movie from 2015, Trumbo, which talks about sort of this writer’s process and sort of the blacklist and like there’s all these wonderful novel things. But I see the scenes of him like, you know, in the bathtub typing with his Scotch. And even if it’s true, it’s frustrating because I just feel like there’s going to be another generation of people watching that movie thinking like, “Oh, that’s what screenwriting is. It’s sitting in a bathtub being cruel to your family while you smoke and drink Scotch.”

And maybe two or three of those things are accurate for most screenwriters, but the bathtub thing, no, most writers are not in bathtubs their whole life.

**Grant:** [laughs] Yeah. I haven’t tried the writing in the bathtub. Maybe that’ll be my next book.

**John:** Yeah. Craig and I are both big advocates of the shower, so there’s the shower for those moments where like you can’t figure out what to write next.

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** Something about the shower drops your inhibitions and you start being able to make stuff happen.

**Grant:** I think if you’re looking for an a-ha moment, yeah, go to the shower. They haven’t done research on this, but I’m pretty sure more big ideas have come in the shower than anyplace else.

**John:** I’ll tell you that one of the things I found most interesting about writing prose after writing screenplays for so long is the process of writing a scene for me in a screenplay is I can just sort of sit quietly and sort of loop through the scenes so they can sort of see like, okay, this is what’s happening in the scene and I think it’s of course very rough blocks and then as they sort of keep looping through the scene, I could that, okay, like this is the personalities of people in the scene, they’re moving through the scene. There’s a few things from like this. And I can basically visualize it here as the whole scene because scenes are short, they are mostly about three minutes long. So I can visualize and hear what it’s like. And once I have that, I can sort of quickly scribble it down and then just do the better version of it.

What I found so fascinating about doing prose by comparison is like you can’t do that. A person’s buffer is not big enough to hold a whole chapter or even, you know, a page. And so I have to really tie it down to sort of like paragraph by paragraph. Like I can’t sort of build it all in my head and then put it on the paper. I actually have to create the whole thing on the paper sort of line by line. That’s been one of the biggest and most interesting changes and challenges I found switching over to prose fiction after doing screenplays for so long.

**Grant:** Yeah. Like the three-minute scene you’re writing, so much of the work of that is happening with the camera, right?

**John:** Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

**Grant:** And so in a novel like the — all the camera work has to happen on the page, is that right? Is that difference?

**John:** I think there’s a lot of it because screenplays are so minimalist, it’s just going to be like there’s a dialogue and enough scene description to let us feel what is specific and unique about that scene in those moments. So there’s such an economy to screenwriting, that to get to that prose section you have like, “Oh, I can use all the words I want. I can describe all the sentences, I can do all these things.” But it’s also all those words tend to be sort of necessary to do certain things. And so finding your way through that sentence that feels good and that it will feel good next to that next sentence and the sentence after that. Those things are just such different challenges than what I normally deal with as a screenwriter.

**Grant:** Yeah.

**John:** I mean a lot of you take scene description really seriously, so I will slave over those sentences for a long time. But, you know, books are basically entirely scene description, and that’s just a lot of words and a lot of really precise details to these words to make things make sense. That’s I think — to the degree to which my inner editor was kicking in as I was writing for Arlo Finch, was like I can’t use the word because I used that word two paragraphs ago. And so I’m going to find different words so that I’m not repeating myself. Those are the challenges that you just don’t face as a screenwriter.

**Grant:** Yeah. And I think what — as a novelist, too, you’ve got to find that right balance, you know. You got to keep the narrative moving or the suspension, the tension of it. So you just can’t go off too deeply into description, at least depending on what you’re writing, you know. It’s a tough balance to strike sometimes.

And I do things that’s being — like writing scripts is good for novelists. I think a lot of novelists have a tough time moving the action forward. And, you know, by writing a script, you’re just naturally more focused on keeping the story moving. And so going — you know, and I mean because novels in some ways, they don’t have any boundaries.

**John:** Yeah.

**Grant:** So you can go into backstory for 50 or 100 pages and some people — some writers like William Faulkner have been successful in that, but most of the time you’re not contributing to the suspense and tension of the forward moving narrative.

**John:** Agreed. I thought we’d wrap up this discussion of your book by talking about envy because you do a nice job describing it. You have a quote here. “Envy is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” And so I was looking that up online to see who the person was who said that and it turns that you can find baically that same quote with almost every other negative word stuck into the word of the place of envy. So a grudge or revenge. And so basically any negative emotion is sort of like that drinking of poison, but it’s really kind of what it feels like. I remember early in my career being really envious of David Benioff. And then I got to know him, and like he’s a great guy so I thought it was ridiculous for me to be envious of him.

And yet, I also do wonder if just a tiny bit of envy can be good motivation for a writer starting out. Like it’s somebody that helps convince them to sit down to work because if I’m not working, that other person is working because — do you feel that? Or is it only a negative thing?

**Grant:** Yeah. I think envy can be a real creativity killer. I think comparing yourself to another — you’re setting yourself up, you know, as I put it in the book. Like Jonathan Franzen was my version of your David Benioff, you know. And when I encountered him on Time Magazine as the great American novelist, you know, I did — I was deeply envious, but later I did sort of my — you know, I realized, okay, I’m projecting this on him. He doesn’t know who I am, for one. And no one is keeping score, you know. No matter if it’s Jonathan Franzen or one of my best friends down the street who’s a writer having more success, I would be the only one keeping score. So Jonathan Franzen might have 100 points, right? I have two. But no one else is keeping score, so it’s totally negative energy that I’m putting into the world and mostly on myself. I’m the one drinking the poison.

But I actually do agree with you. I think there is a type of envy that can be motivating and can make you work harder and strive for more and try to get, you know, better and practice more and more determined. I’m trying to remember the author. I think it was Harold Bloom, the literary critic that wrote a book called — where I took this idea of the anxiety of influence. And his working premise was that every generation of writers is competing against all of history. So everyone is in their way trying to rise to the top. And I think that can be a healthy type of envy, at least if you kind of keep it in balance.

**John:** Yeah. I can definitely see that. And you’re always — for me, it was that I was able to look at other writers like Kevin Williamson, you know, as I started off. I could look at them and sort of see like they have a template. I could use that as like a — I could imagine myself getting to their place because they existed and so I was grateful for them to have been out there.

And then sometimes when people are more at a peer level, I could look at sort of like, oh, David wants to go down on this path. Well, I’m going this path. I could ask myself, have I chosen the right path? And both cases, like, yeah, you know what I chose a good reasonable path. And, you know, I think it was useful to see that there are other people out there doing different things. And I could sort of compare what they were doing versus what I was doing, and eventually stopped worrying about whether they were having more fun than I was having.

**Grant:** Yeah. I gotta say, one of the main benefits of growing older as a writer is that my envy decreases. And, again, it goes back to I think some of what we said earlier. It’s like why did we get into this in the first place, you know? I mean I started writing, you know, for many different reasons especially when I was a kid. I just wanted to tell a story just for the sake of it. I didn’t get into writing to compare myself to other people and to try to one up them or do better. So again I say it is that beginner’s mind moment where I think you’ve got to go back and think about the source of your creativity and what you were — why you write and why, you know, why — because it’s a tough profession, right? Instead of like — and envy is not going to get you through the tough spots of your writing journey, you know. You’re — the source, the real reason you do it is the thing that’s going to keep you going. In the end, that’s what success is always for me. It’s not the number of books that I sell or publish. It’s about sitting down every day and making meaning of the world through my stories.

**John:** That’s a great place to leave that on. So on our podcast, every week, we give a One Cool Thing. So do you have a One Cool Thing you could share with us? Something you’ve liked. It could be a book, a movie, something out there that you want people to know about.

**Grant:** Yeah. There’s something because I’ve been so absorbed in my book and National Novel Writing Month that I’ve barely been doing anything else, so I haven’t gone to many movies or plays or listened to much new music lately. But I do want to mention I’ve been reading Leonard Cohen’s biography since he died about a year ago. And he’s influenced me a lot since I was very young. And part of the reason I’m reading it is that I decided that I’m the type of person who — I experienced a lot of different things that may be only mainly on the top surface level. And so one of the things I wanted to do more in life is go deeper.

And so this biography is called I’m Your Man. It was written just before he died or published maybe a year before. And I’m reading it and one quote that came out that I thought I’d share with people is form Leonard Cohen’s mentor and older poet called Irving Layton and he would say like, “Leonard, are you making sure you’re doing it wrong?” And I thought that that was like actually great. Like I think every once in a while artists and writers should think, maybe I should do the wrong thing here, not the right thing, because sometimes the wrong thing leads to a more interesting story.

So I’m just going to mention Leonard Cohen’s biography, I’m Your Man. And another reason I’m reading it actually is because I love his voice, like his singing voice, but also his poetic voice. And when I have a writing hero like that, I really like to sort of live in their voice. So sometimes when I’m writing something it’s almost like the persona of conversation we’re having. Like I might write something kind of through his voice.

**John:** Very cool. My One Cool Thing is called “The Last Invention of Man: How AI Might Take over the World.” It is by Max Tegmark from MIT. And so it’s not quite a short story. It’s not quite an article. It’s more sort of an imagination of sort of how a group of motivated people could use AI or the ability for AI to keep improving upon itself to, you know, becoming incredibly powerful. So I don’t agree with a lot of what’s in here and particularly like Tegmark speculates that one of the first things that this AI would do would be to basically generate a bunch of like really good CG movies and sort of basically take over Hollywood and take over the entertainment industry with computer-generated movies that made a lot of money to help fund all the rest of the innovation that they’re going to do.

I think he is underestimating sort of how challenging it is to do the creative work we’re doing and also how long the feedback cycle is to know sort of like whether that creative decision was the right one, that sort of propels you forward in time. But I still think it’s a really interesting thought experiment, so I’ll point people to “The Last Invention of Man” and you could tell what you think of that.

That is our show for this week. Grant, thank you so much for being on the episode. It was great to talk through with you. If people want to find your book, where should they buy your book?

**Grant:** Yeah. It’s in all the usual places. So, you know, online, you can go to your favorite online book retailer. I won’t recommend one. But it is published by Chronicle Books if you want to buy it there. And then yeah, it should be most bookstores I believe.

**John:** And if people want to do NaNoWriMo this year, what advice would you give them?

**Grant:** I would advise them to sign up on nanowrimo.org. I would advise them to tell themselves, I’m a writer. I would tell them to believe that you can write the 50,000 words in a month. And before you do so, though, have a strategy. Go on a time hunt and think about where you can find time in your days because that’s the number excuse I hear, I’m too busy. So all of us are too busy, but if you cut out social media, if you cut out some binge watching, if you don’t go a couple of dinner parties, if you wake up an hour early sometimes or write on your lunch break, you can write a novel in November and that’s a gift.

**John:** That’s awesome. All right. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Rajesh Naroth. If you have an outro for us to listen to, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. It’s also a place you can send longer questions. But short questions, I’m on Twitter, @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Grant, you’re on Twitter, are you not?

**Grant:** I am. @grantfaulkner. F-A-U-L-K-N-E-R. Some people spell it F-A-L-K. But F-A-U-L-K.

**John:** Fantastic. That’s also a place where you can tweet at him to tell him how much you liked him on the show and that you’d purchased his book. You can find us on Apple Podcast. Just search for Scriptnotes Podcast. Leave us your review. We’d love that. Craig just — he stays up every night just reading reviews. It’s the only thing that keeps him going. You can find the notes for this episode at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts that goes about a week after the episode airs. We have all the back episodes of Scriptnotes. Now available at scriptnotes.net. And the first 300 episodes on the Scriptnotes USB drive so that you can click a link in the show notes to get to those. Grant Faulkner, thank you so much for being on the podcast this week.

**Grant:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Good luck with your book. Good luck with the month of November which you now own. So it’s going to be busy for you.

**Grant:** I hope you’re going to write a novel with us again this year, John.

**John:** I’m not going to write a whole novel, but I’m going to finish the second Arlo Finch in November.

**Grant:** Cool.

**John:** So that’s my goal and mission.

**Grant:** Great. Well, thanks too much for having me.

**John:** Okay. Thanks, Grant. Bye.

**Grant:** Bye.

Links:

* Grant Faulkner’s [website](http://www.grantfaulkner.com) and [Wikipedia entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Faulkner).
* Pep Talks for Writers by Grant Faulkner is available [here](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1452161089/?tag=johnaugustcom-20).
* You can participate in [NaNoWriMo](https://nanowrimo.org/), too!
* [I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061994987/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Sylvie Simmons
* [The Last Invention of Man: How AI might take over the world](http://nautil.us/issue/53/monsters/the-last-invention-of-man#comm) by Max Tegmark
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Grant Faulkner](https://twitter.com/grantfaulkner) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

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