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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/second-draft-doldrums).

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

**John August:** My name is John August.

**Craig:** And this is Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

**John:** Craig, you did a great job with that.

**Craig:** Well, I’ve heard it 198 times.

**John:** Yes. So it’s big episode 199. It’s near the bicentennial, I guess we’d call it?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You can call it centennial for things that aren’t years, so sure.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, it’s exciting. It would have been really embarrassing had I — I didn’t practice, I swear. I gave a talk about some general creative topics at this very interesting place called Bricksburg. Are you familiar with Bricksburg?

**John:** I’m not at all. Tell me what this is.

**Craig:** It’s the LEGO Movie headquarters.

**John:** Oh my gosh, that sounds amazing.

**Craig:** So they have all these artists and everybody and the woman who introduced me mentioned that I did the podcast with you and she said, “And this podcast about screenwriting,” and then there was this artist sitting there sort of to my left who just mouthed, “And things that are interesting to screenwriters.”

So, if she could get it, I’m pretty sure I could get it.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Nailed it.

**John:** You did a fantastic job. Yeah, I wanted to mix things up for this next to the 200th episode show. And so I threw this at you and you just caught that ball and you ran with it. So, well done, Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, my whole thing is I’m not a big planner, but I like saying yes to stuff.

**John:** Fantastic. Today on the show we are going to talk about ageism in Hollywood. We’re going to talk about unsung heroes. And finding your way out of the woods on a draft of your script.

But first we need to talk about the 200th episode which is coming up next week, which seems impossible.

**Craig:** I know. So, 200 episodes is a lot. And when I put it into years, that’s where I start to actually feel kind of shocked. Because I don’t —

**John:** We’ve been doing this a long time.

**Craig:** We’ve been doing it for over four years.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It doesn’t feel like that to me.

**John:** It doesn’t to me either.

**Craig:** But yet we have been. We’re going to hit like, what do you think we’re going to hit, like 10,000? [laughs] When do we stop?

**John:** I don’t know. The technologies will change. Things will move on. It was weird cutting last week’s episode, we did the centennial episode, and so I was recutting the 100th episode just popping in every once and awhile to offer some perspective. And it felt really recent, but it was 100 episodes ago, which is just crazy.

**Craig:** I know. I know. It’s just nuts. Well, it will be fun. So, where did end up on that? Are you going to do a Google Hangout kind of thing?

**John:** So, we’ll do something like a Google Hangout. So it will either be a Google Hangout officially, or it will be something through Mixlr, which is the live streaming thing we’ve done before. Regardless, whatever it is, we will announce a few days ahead of time, so follow us on Twitter and the website and we’ll tell you what we are doing for the live show. In fact, I might even cut it into this episode if we know what the details are. But it will be you and me and hopefully Aline. We’ll be hanging out. We’ll be here at our offices. And we will just do our show, but we’ll do it live for everyone to hear.

We’ll do it in the evening so it can be sort of after you’ve come home from work. You can listen to us and we’ll have Stuart or somebody else on hand so you can tweet in your questions and we can answer and be with you live in the room as we do it.

**Craig:** Maybe we can have a segment like maybe Stuart do stuff, and then people just send in things and he has to do them.

**John:** Yeah. That’s pretty much what daily life is like for Stuart. So, it would be good.

**Craig:** Excellent. Well, I’m looking forward to that.

**John:** I’m looking forward to it as well. So, let’s get onto today’s work. A bit of follow up here. This is just as we were about to start recording, Deadline had a story about Mr. Holmes. Did you see this?

**Craig:** I did see it. Not only did I see it. I even read the filing.

**John:** I read the filing, too. In a previous episode we talked about the Gravity lawsuit and this is Tess Gerritsen’s claim that the movie Gravity was really based on her book. This is similar, but different. This is a filing from the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle saying that the new Sherlock Holmes movie, Mr. Holmes, infringes upon the copyright in some of the later works of Arthur Conan Doyle.

And we’ll see what happens. Craig, what was your initial assessment based on reading through the filing?

**Craig:** Well, first of all, it’s sort of a fascinating thing. The idea here is that this new movie is based on a novel. The novel uses the character of Sherlock Holmes. It’s about Sherlock Holmes. But, I like most people, was under the impression that Sherlock Holmes at this point was entirely in the public domain.

It may actually be entirely in the public domain in England. So, what happens is copyright length is different from country to country. The United States has actually amended copyright length a number of times and always in favor of intellectual property rights holders.

So, I’m not sure what the situation is. But the deal is that the last ten Holmes works by Arthur Conan Doyle are not yet in public domain. The copyright has not lapsed. The copyright is controlled by the estate. It is intellectual property. What they’re alleging is that the screenwriter of the movie, who was the writer of the novel that the movie is based on, essentially infringed on the copyright of that protected stuff.

And so I looked through the complaint and I took a look at their areas of comparison and I must say I found their complaint formidable.

**John:** Interesting. I read it much more briefly than you did, so I sort of skimmed through those little sections where they talked about those things. It reminded me a bit of an arbitration claim. I don’t know if you felt the same way, too. It felt to me like an overwritten arbitration claim where they’re trying to say like, “Well, in this book, in this Arthur Conan Doyle short story he says this, and in the book he writes this.” And the movie is apparently similar, because they don’t officially have access to the movie yet, I don’t believe. So I think they’re claiming that it’s similar enough, that the same things infringe across this boundary between what the book was and what the movie was. Interesting that they didn’t go after the book when the book was published, because theoretically if the book infringed, they could have gone after the book.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They did not. The thing that gives me pause and makes me wonder if they’re going to have any success in this is that apparently they’ve tried to do the same sorts of things to other Sherlock Holmes works and have not succeeded. And they’ve had those cases thrown out.

So, I’ll be interested to see whether the fact that this is apparently focusing on a portion of the fictional character’s life that was written about in those last ten stories, who knows.

As a writer, I find it incredibly frustrating and challenging that really esoteric details about like, well, in the early Sherlock Holmes stories he doesn’t like dogs, and in the later Sherlock Holmes stories he likes dogs, so therefore this movie infringes upon our intellectual property. Well, you’re being impossible, people.

**Craig:** Yeah. That was not compelling. A couple of things. One, they don’t really need to see the movie. If the movie is based on the book, then the movie is part of an extension of rights from the book. So, there’s sort of an original sin they’re alleging there. And then all derivative works from that theoretically tainted work are now part of the whole tainted property.

I want to read very briefly two sections that they cite here. This is where I stopped and went, oh, that’s not good. So, first I’m going to read this very short paragraph from Arthur Conan Doyle’s story Blanched Soldier, which is one of the copyrighted stories.

“Perhaps I’ve invited this persecution since I have often had occasion to point out to him,” meaning Watson, “how superficial are his own accounts and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste instead of confining himself rigidly to facts and figures. Try it yourself, Holmes, he has retorted, and I am compelled to admit that having taken my pen in my hand, I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in a way as may interest the reader.”

Okay, that was Conan Doyle. Now, this is what Cohen, I can’t remember his first name here, but Mr. Cohen, the author of the novel, this is what he wrote in the novel.

“During the years in which John was inclined to write about our many experiences together, I regarded his skillful if somewhat limited depictions as exceedingly overwrought. At times, I decried his pandering to popular tastes and asked that he be more mindful of facts and figures. In turn, my old friend and biographer urged me to write an account of my own. If you imagine I’ve done an injustice to our cases, I recall him saying on at least one occasion, I suggest you try it yourself, Sherlock. The results showed me that even a truthful account must be presented in a manner which should entertain the reader.”

That’s pretty close.

**John:** I agree. They’re talking about the same kind of thing. It’s not close enough that it feels like plagiarism to me, because he’s not using the same words. He’s expressing this overall same idea and the fact that it’s about the same underlying character could make that troubling.

The only way that it could be legally troubling is if you believe that this character and his work are still fully under copyright and that is a murky situation in the US and overseas and every other market.

Further complicating this is the claim in this lawsuit over the Sherlock Holmes trademark. And trademark is a completely separate legal creation where they’re trying to basically trademark the name Sherlock Holmes. I don’t know the degree to which they’re going to be successful in using the trademark defense of Sherlock Holmes as a thing.

But I can tell you that it is a real challenge that you run into sometimes as a person adapting things. Tarzan is a trademark. And it is really frustrating that the underlying works of Tarzan are public domain and yet you can’t say the word Tarzan.

**Craig:** Yeah. Trademark is a very murky area. I mean, to be honest, even this notion — I mean, you mentioned plagiarism. Plagiarism is a term of art. Obviously every court hopes for those slam dunk cases where it’s a simple case of cut and paste. But that’s rarely what goes on.

When, for instance, journalists uncover plagiarism, usually it is in the form of a slight rephrasing and really an intentional rephrasing of somebody else’s work. So, for here, for instance, the last line is, “I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in such a way as my interest the reader.”

And Cohen writes, “The results showed me that even a truthful account must be presented in a manner which should entertain the reader.” He’s copying there, I believe. I’m not a judge; but I believe he’s copying the work here. The entire paragraph is about the same thing. It’s about Sherlock Holmes saying to his chronicler, “Won’t you please stop embellishing and stick to the facts.” And then the chronicler says, “Well, you try it sometime. It’s hard.” And then he says, “I did try it, and yeah, I realized that sometimes you got to glam it up.”

So, here was an area where what happens now is essentially a judge or jury, I don’t know how these things work.

**John:** A judge in New Mexico, of all places.

**Craig:** Oh, a judge in New Mexico is going to have to make a decision. And it’s a decision that will be informed by dramaturgical experts, I’m sure. And there’s going to be some brouhaha here. But this complaint, I will say, at the very least provides some concrete evidence, whereas the Gravity one was just — felt like it was throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping bits of it stuck.

**John:** Yeah. So, we will follow this as it shakes its way through. I think the interesting take home for screenwriters is a character you might assume is in the public domain like Sherlock Holmes, because lord knows there’ve been a zillion versions of Sherlock Holmes, is not entirely in the public domain and that can come back to haunt you.

And in the case of this one paragraph that Craig is citing, this one paragraph might be enough to hang this whole weird lawsuit on.

**Craig:** It could. And I must say in conclusion here that I feel so bad for Bill Condon who is a very nice guy and a fantastic filmmaker and couldn’t have possibly known. I mean, you know, he was making a movie based on a book. And obviously then there’s this whole other process to make a movie. I can’t imagine that he knew that there was this landmine buried in there somewhere, or at least a potential landmine. But what happens in legal cases is that people get enjoined, which is one of the nastiest words in the English language.

Well, I’m suing this guy, but you were vaguely involved. I’m enjoining you. Now you’re getting sued, too. That sucks.

**John:** It does suck. I would also say beyond the legal decision that will come out of this, I think the greater/broader picture is looking at sort of what it is that’s happening with copyright in these days. So the fact that Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate can sue over this really honestly esoteric bit from this tiny slice of the Sherlock Holmes character that exists in still copyright-protected work is really troubling. And that this character who is 99% public domain can still stay 1% protected and that 1% can be something that can be financially beneficial to people who had nothing to do with the actual creation of the work.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s not the intention of copyright. And it is a very frustrating time to live in. And I think it could lead to some of the kinds of trollery we’ve seen in intellectual property in the computer sphere as well.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m a pretty staunch supporter of intellectual property rights. And I’m not much of a copy-fighter at all. In this case, I agree, this feels cheap. It just feels cheap. I don’t like it. And they may win. Or win, you know, there will be a settlement. But, I don’t like it so much.

Here’s what I do like, though.

**John:** Tell me.

**Craig:** A little second bit of follow up for us, sort of follow up. I received a letter from a doctor, Dr. Ryan Dadasovich, M.D., who works at Yale New Haven Health, something or another. [laughs] Northeast Medical Group. And that’s in Connecticut. And he sent me this letter and said, “Craig, I know you’ve been taking umbrage for years. But I’m worried you were obtaining it illegally. Internet umbrage can be, quite frankly, dangerous. I’ve included a prescription you could fill at your local pharmacy, a safe and FDA-approved source. If questioned by the police or authorities for any reason you can show them your legal prescription. I think the XR formula will be most effective to sustain you. Good luck.”

And he did, in fact, give me a proper prescription. I get Umbrage XR 500mg. Take one a day. I get two refills, which is nice. I now have a piece of his — I don’t think I could do anything with this, but thank you Dr. Dadasovich. That’s super nice. Can you snort this? Is this snortable?

**John:** I’m sure you could. I think it would be incredibly dangerous. I think the thing I would question is whether in taking umbrage, Craig may have too much umbrage. And so really do you need to provide more supplements for Craig who takes umbrage relatively frequently on the show, or me who sometimes doesn’t take enough umbrage. So, it’s a question of like what is the proper amount of umbrage you need to have in your daily life, or in your daily diet.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, obviously that’s different for people and I’ve built up quite a tolerance. I feel like Dr. Ryan is sort of like, hey man, whatever you need to get up on your feet and do your show. I’m like Judy Garland now. People are just shoving pills in my mouth. Go to bed, wake up, sing. Go to sleep. This is great.

**John:** It’s a good life.

**Craig:** Anyway, thank you Dr. Dadasovich.

**John:** That’s very, very nice of him to send that through. So, previously on the show, back when we did our dirty episode, which is sort of two-part episode, we had Rebel Wilson come on and she was just amazing. And she continues to be just amazing. And she was in this little movie that did some business called Pitch Perfect 2.

**Craig:** Just a touch of business.

**John:** Just a touch of business. Just, you know, a huge blockbuster. A sequel to blow off all sequels. So, congratulations to Rebel Wilson. But then you put in the show notes here about something I wasn’t even aware of, another article had come out. So, talk us through it.

**Craig:** So, apparently what happened is over in Australia there was a bit of brouhaha where the press figured out through their pressy ways that Rebel Wilson, who was according to IMDb is 29 years old, is not 29 years old. In fact, she’s 35 years old. And Rebel Wilson isn’t her name. Her actual name is Melanie Elizabeth Bownds. And that Rebel Wilson was not brought up by Bogan parents, meaning sort of Australian white trash parents, but in fact perfectly fine middle class parents that were not Bogans. And that it was all just sort of a made up thing.

And, you know, over here in America I think we all looked at each other and went, what, who cares. Like that’s what everyone does. We all know that Tom Cruise is Tom Mapother. Nobody cares. It doesn’t matter.

And lie about your age, I mean. So, women in Hollywood, particularly actors, are damned if they don’t lie about their age, and now apparently they’re damned if they do lie about their age. You know who lied about her age? Mae West. This is not new.

But what I found so interesting was Rebel’s response. So, she said, in response to the investigative journalism she wrote, “OMG, I’m actually a 100-year-old mermaid formally known as CC Chalice. Thanks shady Australian press for your tall poppy syndrome.” And tall poppy syndrome was something she discussed with us when she did our show. And sure enough, here’s the proof.

**John:** Yeah. I think what outrages me the most about the whole situation is that we’re calling it investigatory journalism, like there was some great secret being kept and hidden. There really wasn’t. And so I think it’s well known throughout town that Rebel, we knew her real age, and we knew sort of what that was. Entertainment Weekly had published her real age back I think when the first movie came out.

So, it’s not like there was some great secret. So, to portray it as like this big revelation about who this person is just crazy. I think it also speaks to this weird thing we’re insisting upon our celebrities these days is that they have to be 100% authentic, but also 100% untouchable gods that are completely incapable of being wrong in any way. So, it’s this weird bundle of expectations we put on our celebrities that I don’t think is at all justified. And certainly it’s not borne by history in terms of like what we do to create our movie star actors.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s really stupid. I mean, this is — investigative journalism? It was neither investigative nor journalism. This is, I mean, truly file under who cares.

Maggie Gyllenhaal had a sort of an interesting parallel moment to this this week when she mentioned in an interview that she’s 37 years old and she was told recently that she was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55 years old. And when I read that, I’ll tell you, I had two reactions. My first reaction was, yup, I believe that. And my second reaction was, man, that’s awful.

And I just thought it was interesting that “yup I believe that” came so quickly, because it seemed, yup, I totally believe that that happened. I can hear it happening. It fits everything I see about casting in movies where aging male stars are constantly paired with women who frankly are their daughter’s ages. And now these people are going after Rebel Wilson.

Hey, here’s something to report. Want to report something? How about this. Rebel Wilson is a woman in her 30s who is completely convincing as a college student.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** How about that?

**John:** So, this whole discussion made me think back to Riley Weston. I don’t know if you really remember Riley Weston.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I do. I do.

**John:** That was back in 1998. She was a staff writer and an actress on the TV show Felicity. And I remember it very distinctly because I was doing my own TV show the same time this was all coming out.

So, Riley Weston, she was sort of hailed as this wunderkind for like being this great writer who could really speak with the voice of an 18-year-old because she was so young. And then it came out that she wasn’t that young at all. And she was actually in her 30s. And she just seemed really, really young.

So, in the show notes I’m going to link to two things that talk about it, her Wikipedia entry, but also this Entertainment Weekly article from ’98, and the URL for it is funny. It was Riley Weston Fooled Us All About Her Age. And they’re essentially taking umbrage for like how dare you make us think that you are younger than you were.

You know, in the case of someone who is a politician, someone who is running for office, someone who we have to rely on them telling the absolute god’s honest truth for us to trust them to do their job, I can see sort of how this could be a big deal. But I find myself going back in time to this 1998 Riley Weston thing and saying, “What were we doing? Why we running her out of town for allowing us to misbelieve her age?” And that is incredibly frustrating to me.

**Craig:** I mean, the one thing about Riley Weston that I recall is that she was kind of promoting herself via publicity. And, okay, when you sort of make a publicity point, a self-promotional point about something that turns out to be not true, I think there’s a fair reaction there to say, hey, you were using us, you know.

But in general, Hollywood is an illusion business. Our job, our industry, is to create entertaining and interesting lies. Charlie Sheen is Emilio Estevez’s brother. They are both Estevez. Nobody cares that he’s Charlie Sheen. Nobody cares that Martin Sheen is not Martin Estevez. It just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what anyone’s real name is. I know what Elton John’s real name is, because I’m a dork, so I know it’s Reginald Dwight. But I don’t care.

**John:** What you’re talking about really is branding. And so both Elton John and Rebel Wilson and Charlie Sheen have chosen like this is what my — this is the person I want to present myself to the world is this person with this name. And that is a choice a person should be able to make. And so Rebel Wilson changing her name to Rebel Wilson, well that name fits the woman who came to talk on the show much better than whatever her born name was.

Just like John August fits me much better than my born name, which is German.

**Craig:** That’s right. Your name isn’t John — oh my god. Someone get the Australian press.

**John:** Ha-ha. They’ll correct everybody. But this last week I also encountered this actor. So we were both waiting for a meeting over at Sony and I knew him through a friend. And so we were talking and he was saying that he was going in for casting on something, I think Marc Cherry show, and Marc Cherry said like, “Wait, I didn’t know that was you.” And it’s because his agents had sent him in under like his — so he has a normal Anglo name, but his mother was Latina, and so they started using his mother’s Latina name to send him in for casting so he could get roles that were going to Latino actors. And he’s like, that’s crazy, that’s not my name. Nobody knows me when you send me in as this name.

But they’re trying to create an expectation. And they’re trying to essentially rebrand him so that he could get cast in those Latino roles. And that’s, again, it’s the illusion that we’re creating. It used to be back in the time of Rita Hayworth they were trying to de-Latinize somebody, and now we’re trying to Latinize them.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. And this is what people do. Actors in particular, their stock and trade is to pretend to be somebody else. So, oh my god — I mean, this is the dumbest thing. I think it is tall poppy syndrome. I think this is absolutely just a general resentment of somebody that’s doing well. So, boo Australians, hooray Rebel Wilson. That’s what I say.

**John:** Two other examples that sort of came up that I wanted to talk through with you and to get your perspective on, sort of where you stand with them right now. First off, James Frey, and A Million Little Pieces. So, James Frey if you remember wrote this book which is supposedly a memoir of drug addiction that was a huge bestseller. It was supposed to become a movie and then it came out that some of the details in the book did not actually pan out. He had not been arrested for the things he said he’d been arrested for.

The book was ultimately pulled. It was moved from nonfiction to fiction. Lots of stuff happened. Craig, where do you land on a James Frey situation as a memoir theoretically?

**Craig:** Very scornful of James Frey. I think that the difference is this. When you create a piece and you present under the auspices of trust, and you say that this is a true story of my life, and I want you to learn from it and feel things about me because of it. And it turns out that you have invented it, that is just flat out manipulative lying.

That is different than changing your name because you like a different name. That’s different than changing your age because you want to try and get some parts. You’re not asking for public trust there, at all. You’re just doing something because it might help you get some jobs and you’re not hurting anyone.

When James Frey writes an account of his drug addiction and is trying to use it to inspire other people and then it turns out that he made it up, yeah, that’s hurting people and it’s violating public trust.

**John:** So, let us imagine a situation in which Rebel Wilson wrote a bestseller comedy thing, the same way that Lena Dunham would, same way that Tina Fey or Amy Poehler did, and she were claiming her Bogan parents and all that stuff. Would that push you through to the level of Rebel you betrayed us?

**Craig:** Yeah. If Rebel Wilson wrote a book and talked about — and it wasn’t about pure comedy — but rather talking about the hardships of growing up in poverty or with parents who didn’t fit into society and how that affected her as a child, absolutely, that would be a violation of trust. I can’t imagine she would ever do it.

**John:** Absolutely. And I think that what you’re talking to is sort of the social contract we make with celebrities, that it’s a different than the social contract we make with writers. And the social contract we make with writers where like we’re reading their books and they’re telling us their own personal story is that you’re going to tell us the truth. And that I’m going to invest in you to tell you the truth.

The social contract we make with celebrities is basically you are going to be great in this movie and you are going to perform this weird Kabuki thing we do at press junkets. And we are going to pretend like everything is happy and good because that’s sort of what we do. And that’s a reasonable deal we’ve made with celebrities that some celebrities are delighted to do, and some celebrities hate.

Some of the folks who do the Marvel movies hate doing that dance. I don’t know if you saw that really uncomfortable interview with Robert Downey, Jr.

**Craig:** I did.

**John:** Where he walked out. And like god bless you Robert Downey, Jr. I totally understand why you’re upset because that guy was breaking the contract of like what movie publicity is supposed to be doing. You don’t sit down to talk to Robert Downey, Jr. about Iron Man and then like let’s drag up terrible things from your past. That’s not the performance that’s happening there.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, the press junket people I think 98% of them understand their function, which is to help sell a movie. So, they’re helping Robert Downey, Jr. sell a movie, and Robert Downey, Jr. is helping them sell clicks.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Occasionally 2% of them start to get this thought that maybe they’re Woodward or Bernstein, which they’re not. [laughs] Because they wouldn’t be at a press junket if they were. And then they go a little wonky and in a sense it’s very self-serving because suddenly they’re the story. But it never works for them.

Here’s the interesting thing. Robert Downey, Jr. is still famous. That guy has been forgotten already.

**John:** Yes. The last hypothetical I want to throw out to you to get your opinion on. So, there’s a friend who I went to college with and he is also a screenwriter, but he came to Hollywood later than I did, and so had another career and then he came to Hollywood. He looks younger than me. And he sort of comes off as younger as me, I think partly because he has a writing partner who is younger. And so they’re perceived as being a team and everyone thinks of him as being quite a lot younger.

And so when we talk to people, it’s never actually sort of officially said, but it’s sort of like implied like, hey, maybe don’t say we went to college together because that ages me up. And that was never said, but that was sort of kind of implied. So, I find myself saying like, “Oh, we went to the same college rather than we went to college together,” because that would automatically put him in his 40s and people don’t think he’s in his 40s at all.

Is that fair to allow people to misassume your age?

**Craig:** Yeah. I think so. If you — I mean, I’ve never had any perceived value attached to my age at any point. I’ve never thought that anybody would give a damn. And I still don’t think so. But, for people who do, if they prefer to be thought of as a certain age and people are thinking of them as that age, I don’t care.

I know there’s a very big time writer-director out there who lies about his age. And I know he lies about his age, for sure. I wouldn’t say anything. I don’t care. I don’t know why he does it. It’s kind of stupid. So, you know, I don’t necessarily respect non-actors who lie about their age, because I think that’s kind of ridiculous and narcissistic because they’re not trying to get parts. You know what I mean?

But whatever. I mean, there’s worse things to do. It doesn’t bother me.

**John:** I’ll close with one little example that happened at a lunch. This is many years ago. And I was talking to a producer and she described a project. And I was like, oh, that sounds really interesting. And she’s like, “Oh yeah, we’re looking for a younger writer for that.” I was 30 at the time. [laughs]

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** And really what she meant was she meant newer. She meant less expensive.

**Craig:** Cheaper.

**John:** Cheaper. Cheaper is really what she meant. She meant like a baby writer. But the word she said was younger. And there was some degree to which that was true. And there is a degree to which being the young person in the room can be really helpful. It was very helpful for me when I was going out for meetings after Go because I was like, oh, I was the guy who could be hired to write these teenage things, or these younger things. I was a guy who could get a show set up at the WB at the time. So, my comparative youth was an advantage.

I’m always mindful of the fact that youth is one of the qualities that you can be bringing into any discussion that can be useful. Because when you don’t have experience, youth might be another useful thing to offer.

**Craig:** I’ve been in a race to get old my whole life. I like getting old.

**John:** Basically you want to get to the appropriate age for your level of crankiness and umbrage.

**Craig:** That’s right. I want to get to an appropriate age where I don’t have to wear pants. Yeah. I’m just running. I’m running towards a future where all food is soft and pants are loose.

**John:** It sounds like a wonderful future.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’m going to have a scooter.

**John:** Good stuff.

**Craig:** Ooh, I can’t wait.

**John:** You put the next topic on the list and it deals with a screenwriter who has been working for quite a long time, and so a good transition between ageism and a guy who’s flourishing and quite late into his career.

**Craig:** So, I thought we could have a new feature. I don’t know how frequently we can do it, but unsung screenwriting heroes of Hollywood. So, what if I told you that there was a director. And the director directed the following movies. Karate Kid. A Walk in the Clouds. Fifth Element. Transporter. And Taken. One director did all those movies. I’m thinking you would know that director. That would be kind of a big name.

**John:** Yes. And because I recognize those last three credits I would say like, wow, Luc Besson directed Karate Kid?

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** But I would say, yes, that is a very notable list of credits.

**Craig:** It’s Luc Besson-like. Well, one writer wrote all of those movies. Robert Kamen has been doing what we do since 1981. He wrote the movie Taps. Did you ever see Taps?

**John:** I saw Taps.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, he wrote the movie. That was his first credit in 1981. And then came The Karate Kid, which obviously was a seminal work. And then A Walk in the Clouds, Fifth Element, Transporter, Taken. And what is so remarkable about him, and I’ve never met him. I don’t know him. But I’m fascinated by his career because first of all the — his ability to be relevant is just remarkable.

It’s not only that he wrote Karate Kid back when you and I were teenagers and captured that time perfectly. But Taken is culturally relevant. So, this is somebody who has remained culturally relevant for decades. That is harder than it sounds.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** And he’s done it across genres. And I just find his career fascinating. And always, by the way, here’s another thing I love about this guy. He never drifted off into let’s call it kind of indie la-la ville. He’s still writing good genre popcorn theater-filling movies. I love that.

**John:** How did he come into your radar, Craig?

**Craig:** Well, you know, the truth is I — sometimes I go on a little click hole expedition. And for some reason I found myself fiddling about with The Fifth Element. I happen to love The Fifth Element. I’m just a big Fifth Element nut.

And when I was looking at the screenwriter’s name, I felt like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I feel like — that’s not the guy that wrote Karate Kid? That can’t be, because they’re totally different movies. And they were from different times. So then I went, and yup, it’s him. And then I looked at his list of credits and my jaw dropped. Just dropped. I couldn’t believe.

Robert Kamen is a name that everyone should know. They should know that name like they know Luc Besson or they know Steven Spielberg for that matter. He’s an incredibly influential filmmaker. And I do think of screenwriters as filmmakers. And so Robert Kamen, you are the inaugural unsung screenwriting hero of Hollywood.

**John:** I think it’s a great first choice because I kind of half recognized it. I recognize like, oh, I’ve seen that name, but I couldn’t tell you what the credits where. But I was trying to figure out like why don’t know his name better. And some theories, which I’d love to talk through with you.

First off, he doesn’t seem to work — he doesn’t seem to live and work in Hollywood. So, looking up the stuff I could find online, it seems like he lives in New York and in Sonoma where he owns a winery. So, he’s not in our circle, so we’re not seeing him sort of at the usual watering holes. So that might be part of it?

**Craig:** I think so. Sure. And I guess that when you write movies like he has, and god knows how many moves he’s written on that he doesn’t have credit on, that plus all the residuals from these things. Yeah, you own a winery. That sounds about right.

**John:** A second thing I was thinking about is because so many of his more recent credits have been with one director, you tend to sort of forget that he — you forget about him as an individual. So, you just lump him in with his director. And you don’t think about him as being an individual person.

The same way that a writer who might work with Ang Lee consistently, you don’t think about them as the individual writer. You think of them as being Ang Lee’s person. Is that possible?

**Craig:** Well, it is possible. And that’s something that for instance Ruth —

**John:** Ruth Jhabvala.

**Craig:** Exactly. Ruth Jhabvala kind of struggled in the shadow a little bit of Merchant Ivory. And maybe she liked being in the shadow. You know, not every writer particularly wants the spotlight or notoriety. And perhaps Mr. Kamen is that way. But I think it’s incumbent upon people who care about movies and filmmakers for them to know who is actually doing the work here. And so he deserves plenty of attention from those of us who care.

**John:** Very good. Next time we are over at your house playing D&D, I think we should get a bottle of his wine and drink it.

**Craig:** Done.

**John:** Done. Next topic is also your topic. And you have this listed on the outline as finding your new home, but it seems to me based on the things we have in here that it’s really talking about what happens when you kind of get lost with a script. Is that what I’m feeling?

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, it’s a little bit like when you’re homeless in your own project. So, there’s this thing that happens where you create a movie on paper. You write your screenplay. And that’s a home. You don’t hand it to somebody until you feel like, okay, this is whole and done, at least for now, and I’m safe with it.

And then you hand it to people, and they read it, and then there’s a collaboration that ensues. And you get notes and thoughts and things and you write a new draft. But in the writing of the new draft, you end up at a place and you’re not sure it’s right. The problem is though that you’ve drifted far enough away from your first script that you don’t feel like you could go back to that at all. You start to think that’s not right either.

So, suddenly I’m like a person that’s sold my house and bought a new one, but the new one is not built yet. I’m outside and it’s raining. And that’s a very scary feeling because essentially you begin to be lost in your own project and disconnected from your own movie. Have you ever felt that?

**John:** Oh my god, yes. And so I think maybe the reason you brought this up because you and I might both be at those kind of moments, or recently experienced that, where you turn in a draft and then you do the revisions. And most of the things you’re happy with, but it’s not your initial vision of what it was. And you’re not sure that some stuff is working, that some stuff is not working. You’re trying to make sure all the pieces fit together and they fit together in a real and meaningful way. And you don’t know how to feel about something.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a weird feeling to look at your own script and think, “I don’t know this. Who are you?” You know, it’s like waking up next to your wife or your husband and not recognizing their face. It’s distressing.

And so you’re right. It’s certainly — I feel it every time, by the way, I’m in a second draft. Every single time. Without fail.

And so I wanted to talk through some possible strategies for dealing with this feeling when it happens because it can be debilitating. So, first, the simplest of all things is take a break. And we have kind of an unparalleled ability as writers to take breaks without anyone knowing. You don’t have to call people and say I’m taking a week off. Take a week off. Just don’t think about it for an entire week. Don’t do anything related to it for an entire week. If you don’t want to write anything else, don’t write anything else for a week. Take a week off.

And then when you come back, hopefully some of the panic and concern has been flushed out and you can get a cleaner look at what you actually have.

The second thing that might help is to read it out loud, which we talk about all the time, but reading things out loud will start to snap things into view a little bit. Reading out loud reminds you that you will one day be on a set. And it will one day be a movie. And you may find that it’s actually working better than you think.

I also recommend at this point sharing it with a friend. And the friend is hopefully somebody that you think understands how to read your work and help you, which isn’t everybody. So, you have to kind of figure out who that friend is.

**John:** And you need to actually set up the expectation with that friend properly. I have a friend who sometimes reads my stuff and she will quite candidly ask, “Do you want me to tell you that it’s great, or do you want me to find the mistakes?” And those are equally valid things. And I think at this point you’re asking for the please tell me it’s great, and problems too, but mostly I need you to tell me that I’m not crazy and this is worth my time.

**Craig:** Well, and that brings me to this fourth strategy which is to actively seek praise. Praise, in general, is underrated. I think everybody that grows up in our business and the business of developing screenplays is trained by their higher ups to avoid praise and to instead drill down into what’s not working, because frankly in a bloodless sort of way that probably is the most efficient way to get towards fixes.

But, praise is really important because what praise does is it helps you, the writer, understand what is working. And what is working, frankly, is more likely to get to you to more is working stuff, than hearing about what isn’t working.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** So, you want to seek praise. And there is nothing wrong with saying to somebody, listen, I want you to read the script and feel free to be honest with things that aren’t working, but I need you also to be vehement about the things that are working. That will help me. And when you give people permission to do that, they do it.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** It’s very encouraging.

**John:** I was just on a phone call with a friend right before we started recording this and I was talking through this pilot that he wrote. And there were things that were great about it and things that weren’t great about it. And luckily, thank god, there were things that were great about it. And so I could say in a really very true, real way, “I love where this gets to. I love the tone you’re able to find. You were able to create this really unique special thing. I think you can find ways to do that throughout the whole rest of the script. And if you’re up for it, let’s talk through ways we can get more of what’s working so well there to be working throughout the rest of this.”

It ends up being a much better conversation when you can tell somebody you’re awesome. This part is great. And I think you can do this same kind of stuff for the whole script.

**Craig:** Right. Right. Exactly. When you get a series of “I don’t like this” you begin to feel stupid. You begin to feel like nothing you do is any good. And you also begin to extrapolate to say, oh, and they’re leaving out a bunch — they basically hate everything.

When people zero in on something and say this was wonderful, let me tell you why it was wonderful, let me tell you how it made me feel, that will embolden you to think about those moments and think about why those moments are working as opposed to other moments. It’s very important. Not many people do this instinctively.

And I would urge those of you who listen to us who are development executives, studio executive and producers, to really make this part of your deal. Not because you’re there to make writers feel good. But because you’re there to actually make the script better. Believe it or not, that will make the script better.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And in general, when you’re lost, you have to remind yourself that when you can’t see things, you can’t see them. And then you do see them. There is an impatience there. You think, well, if I really strain, I’ll see it. No. You’ll see it when you see it. Things are never as good as you think. And things are never as bad as you think. So, take heart in that. And remember that you’ve been out in the rain before. And then the new house is finished and you go inside.

**John:** I do encounter this experience on almost every second draft. And sort of a second draft ennui where there’s this real gap between what it was I initially set out to create and what I’m looking at on the page right now. And I’m trying to figure out what the movie wants to be next. And so the suggestions you’re offering I think are all really valid ways of getting you to think about the movie that it’s becoming, rather than the movie that it was.

And praise from smart people is part of it. Hearing it out loud is part of it. And it’s also reminding yourself what’s no longer there, but what is also new about this new draft and what is going to be exciting about this new pass.

And also you won’t know this until you’ve done a couple of these, but reminding yourself that this is the process. That feeling this way about your second draft is the same way you’re going to like want to kill yourself after you see the first cut of a movie.

It’s the same way that the first day of production will be overwhelming. Those are all just real things that are just part of the nature of the process. And to allow yourself to feel them.

In recent things I’ve been though, I’ve gotten a couple of those emails where just sort of I point out the problems, things like let’s fix these things. And I have to remind myself that they’re singling out these things because they’re small things they think they can address rather than spending 45 minutes to tell me all the stuff that they loved. But if, I don’t know, I just feel like great producers and great studio executives find the time to tell you what is terrific so that you can be inspired to do more stuff for them.

I know when I’m giving notes to somebody, I always try to look for those highlights of this is why this is worthwhile. This is why you should pay attention to the rest of my notes, because I really did read it, and I really did understand what you were going for in this moment. And this one really succeeded.

**Craig:** Yeah. If you tell people that this is something I like, then the writer is going to think to themselves, okay, there is — this person does get me. This isn’t a situation where there’s nothing I could write that would make them happy. There is something I write that makes them happy. What is that thing?

And a lot of times, I think everybody, writers and note-givers will sort of say let’s skip past the formalities of I like this, and I like this. I don’t need anyone to say, oh, I really like this, or I really like this. What I need them is to stop and go, no, this right here I loved. I loved this. I don’t need — hopefully there’s more than one, you know, but if you love something, you tell me because I need to know. Because that’s going to help me.

**John:** Craig, do you think that some of the reasons why they might be reluctant to tell you those things is because they know from experience that those things might get cut, those things might change, or their opinion might shift on those? Are they protecting themselves by not telling you that they love something?

**Craig:** Maybe. If there is a psychological resistance to it, I suspect it may be connected more to a fear that they will be demotivating you. They think, well, if I tell you that I loved something, you’ll just start to think that you’re great. And you don’t need my help and you don’t have to change anything. The writer that development executives and producers fear the most is the “I’m okay/you’re not okay” writer. The one who thinks that I wrote it, therefore it’s great. Screw you. So, they’re hesitant to tell you they loved something because they’re afraid that then you’ll say to them, well, the same person that wrote that thing you loved wrote this thing, and so you should just defer to me.

In fact, that’s just not how we work. And I think if they really put their minds to this, they’ll understand we’re not looking for empty praise. If you say, “I love this,” that means nothing to me. If you say, “I love this, now let me tell you why,” then it does, because now we are talking about the script. We’re talking about how the machine is working. And it’s very crucial for us to understand what is working. More crucial I think than not.

**John:** And the process of understanding what is working sometimes really is a process of interrogation, of really figuring out like what it is that’s not happening in the other person’s head that is happening in your head.

So, last Sunday before we were playing D&D, I was talking to Chris Morgan about this note that I got that I just fundamentally didn’t understand. And I started to sort of rehearse my sort of defense of the way things currently were in the script. And Chris, who has been through this rodeo so many times, said, “You know what? Just call the guy and just ask him what it really means and see if there’s something that’s sort of in the middle that could work out right.”

And so I had that conversation and it ended up being so much better than I had anticipated because it was literally just what I had on the page, partly because of trims I’d made to try to tighten stuff up, the intention had gotten lost in his read. And so it was a matter of restoring some things that could make the scene be about what I really mean the scene to be about, rather than what he was reading the scene to be about. And that can be useful.

**Craig:** Not only is it useful, but I think that is the stuff in which positive development relationships grow. They give us notes and then we leave and they go back to their office and think, “They’re not going to do any of that. And I’m still responsible for what they turn in.”

When you call and you say, “I don’t understand this. Let’s talk about this,” they think, oh good, you were listening. I’m happy to explain this.

**John:** That’s part of the reason why I think the screenwriter’s job is so unique and weird and different. Because I was trying to think about what the equivalent would be for a novelist. And so a novelist would have an editor and the two of them would have a discussion about this moment, this scene, this line. Sort of what’s going on in this section of the book. And they would have a relationship and a discussion, but ultimately the novelist is not bound to do whatever the editor says. It’s just, you know, this would be my suggestion, but take it or leave it.

It’s not a take it or leave it with screenwriting. That executive, that producer, that director ultimately can say yes or no and can make some changes that may not be the changes you want to make, or the thing can proceed to the next stage or not proceed to the next stage, or proceed with you or without you in ways that’s so different from other forms of fiction writing.

And that’s part of the reason why a person could be a terrific novelist but just not actually have the social skills to manage that relationship.

**Craig:** Social skills and psychic strength. You know, novelists are creating the end product and we’re not. And so part of what happens is you become incredibly aware that you have shifted your job description from creator to protector. Now, you have to figure out how to safeguard the stuff that matters the most through this gauntlet of other people’s opinions and other people’s authority.

And it is doable, but it is not doable perfectly. It’s simply not. And that’s even if you are the director and writer. Even if you’re the director, the budget will get you. Or the studio will get you. Or an actor will get you. Something — it will rain on the wrong day. Something is going to get you.

So, you can put aside your visions of purity and instead engage in that notion of how do I protect all the way through here. How do I keep as many of these eggs, you know, to carry them to full term? That’s kind of what’s going on.

**John:** Yeah. And the wisdom role that you have to make here is that in trying to protect my script, am I actually protecting the movie, or am I really just protecting my self-esteem? Am I protecting my ability to believe myself as being the guy who wrote this script which is so, so good, or am I really looking out for what the final product is and what’s going to make it to the screen?

And every one of those decisions is going to be tough. And so part of my discussion with Chris was I don’t know whether maybe the note is right and I’m just being stubborn and not seeing that the note is right. What do I do? And the answer was to have the conversation and in this one case it was the right choice to make.

**Craig:** Great. Well, I’m glad that that worked out.

**John:** Cool. Let’s get to our One Cool Things. Craig, talk us through it.

**Craig:** All right. I’m sort of continuing a theme here of One Cool Thing that will happen one day. I saw this trailer for a new game that I don’t know if it’s going to be a mobile app or desktop only. I’m not sure yet. My guess is mobile, as well as desktop. It’s called Oxenfree and it’s from a company called Night School Studio.

And it appears to be on the one hand kind of a straight up adventure puzzle kind of deal where some characters that it looks like they’re high school students are hanging out on some island as part of like a high school getaway bit and then crazy stuff happens. And from the trailer I kind of get the feeling that it’s going to be a little bit like sort of that standard puzzle thing of, okay, I’ve got to get my guy from here to there. What do I do? What do I press? And what do I move? But what’s so interesting about it is the dialogue is really good. I mean, it’s written in a way where you could tell they cared, that the characters are vibrant and the dialogue is on point. It’s well acted.

There’s also appears from the trailer to be an interesting dynamic to interactions where most of the characters are answering per a script, but occasionally you have choices where you can select what your answer is. And I assume that would influence how the people respond to you. Maybe not go so far as to influence how the game goes. I mean, this is the way video games are. They are trying to disguise the fact that you are on rails, but I really loved this trailer. I can’t wait to play this game.

So, hopefully it’s a cool thing.

**John:** It’s a gorgeous trailer. I clicked through the link when you put it in the show notes and it really is just terrific looking. And I agree that the dynamic, you know, Dragon Age and lots of other games have done that thing where you get to choose what your answer is back to things, but very cleverly like just having the little thought bubbles and you get to pick which little speech bubble you want to pick for your answer seems like a really clever dynamic.

So, I’m curious to see what this will become as well.

**Craig:** Excellent. And what about you?

**John:** My One Cool Thing is the TV show Silicon Valley, which I may have already harped about how much I love the show, but this last week’s episode, which by the time this airs will be two weeks ago, was particularly spectacular over this one moment that was so incredibly well crafted. And it was well set up throughout the run of the episode, but just so brilliantly done.

So, it’s two of the character, Dinesh and Gilfoyle are trying to figure out whether to tell this really annoying douchebag character that his son is actually going to kill him. And they make this SWOT board which is Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats for this very Silicon Valley way of trying to make a decision. And the cards they put up on there for Let Blaine Die are so hilarious. And the degree to which you have to pause the show to read them, I’m going to put a link in the show notes that shows you all the cards that are up on that board.

But it was such an incredibly well structured episode, but also that scene and that moment and every card that’s up on that board, and then within that scene, the structure of the scene, of like they could just let the guy walk out and that would be hilarious, but at just the right moment they reveal to this character that these guys are considering letting him, basically plotting murder, which was just geniusly handled.

**Craig:** Yeah. I love the show. Alec Berg, who is the head writer, kind of Mike Judge’s right hand man on that show is one of my best friends in the world. And so I’ve been kind of following along his Silicon Valley trials and tribulations. I mean, it’s a tough show to make. But, you know, that show — so the whole thing with the Let Blaine Die, and it kind of reminded me a little bit of the way last season’s finale was structured with the —

**John:** End to middle out.

**Craig:** Tip to tip. It’s very Alec. Alec with his former writing partner, I guess they still collaborate on some things, Berg, Schaffer, Mandel, they ran Seinfeld sort of in the latter series of its run. And Seinfeld was always — the episodes were kind of masterclasses in recursive plotting. You know, that in the end every episode was a callback to itself. That’s the kind of way they worked. And that the end would kind of go, oh look, the thing from the beginning is paying off. It’s a Rube Goldberg plot.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then Alec and Jeff and Dave did Curb Your Enthusiasm and it’s the same deal. And now, Silicon Valley doesn’t always work that way, but in this case it did, and it was very Alec. It was just a very Alec thing. I loved it.

I particularly loved Dinesh and Gilfoyle, god, they’re just great. Those characters are awesome. So, Kumail Nanjiani and Martin Starr are just spectacular in those parts. I would honestly watch those two characters talking about anything for 12 hours. It would make me so happy. But my favorite character on the show has to be Jared.

**John:** He’s so good.

**Craig:** Zach Woods.

**John:** So, I mean, it’s a variation on a kind of character that we saw him do in the American version of The Office, and yet he is so needy and yet so sweet, and so trying to be the den mother to this group and yet keeps getting batted down in a way that’s just fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah, like the character, so Zach Woods, this character that he’s playing, first of all, Jared isn’t even his name. The character’s actual name is Donald, but somebody called him Jared once and it stuck because he just felt like he didn’t want to disturb them.

So, Jared is the answer to this question. How nice can a person be? Jared is in fact I think what Jesus Christ would be like if he were alive and working in Silicon Valley. [laughs] That’s basically what he is. He’s Jesus. He’s awesome.

And when he’s — oh my god, his face. Ah, his face. I just want to hug him.

**John:** He does crushed so well.

**Craig:** Crushed and sort of hopeful also.

**John:** Absolutely. He’s a puppy who just got scolded but really thinks that maybe you’ll let him hop up on the lap.

**Craig:** Yeah. Silicon Valley is the best. If you’re not watching it, you’re stupid. Honestly, you’re just dumb.

**John:** That is our show this week. Our show, as always, is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. I’m not sure who did the outro this week, but if you have an outro that you would like to send in for us, you can send it to ask@johnaugust.com. Send us a link to the SoundCloud. It would be fantastic way to do it.

ask@johnaugust.com is also a great place to send questions, those longer questions. Little short things we can answer on Twitter. I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

We are on iTunes. So, if you’re listening to this show on the John August Blog, that’s fantastic, but it would also be great if you can subscribe to us on iTunes, because that helps people find the show.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Leave us a comment while you’re there. We got some really nice comments this last week, so thank you for those people who did that.

**Craig:** Oh good. Thanks.

**John:** We have an app. And that app is also found through the App Store. You can find it both in the Apple iOS App Store and on the Google Play Store. That lets you get to all of the back episodes as well. Back to episode one.

Next week we will back with a 200th episode. We will record it live in some capacity. It might be audio. It might be video. We might have Aline. We might not have Aline. But we will figure out how we’re going to do it. And you should follow us on Twitter and we will give you ample warning that we are going to be doing the show. It will be sometime in the evening, so it will be post-work. And you can hear us do the show live and read some questions. It should be fun.

The police in the background are coming to arrest Craig Mazin, so we should probably wrap it up.

**Craig:** You know, I did it again.

**John:** And we have promised at some point that we will do a bonus episode that is nothing but all the sirens that have come after Craig. Because at least I would say five minutes of every week’s episode has to be trimmed for sirens.

**Craig:** Trimmed for Sirens, title of my biography.

**John:** It’s going to be good. It fits really well with the umbrage theme.

**Craig:** Yeah. Absolutely.

**John:** Craig, thank you so much. Have a great week.

**Craig:** Thanks, John, you too. Bye.

Links:

* Follow [@johnaugust](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) and [@clmazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) for details on the 200th episode live stream
* [Deadline on the Mr. Holmes lawsuit](http://deadline.com/2015/05/mr-holmes-lawsuit-arthur-conan-doyle-estate-sues-bill-condon-1201431854/), and [the filing itself](https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/mr-holmes-conan-doyle-estate-infringment-lawsuit-wm.pdf)
* [How Hollywood Taught Rebel Wilson To Lie About Her Age](http://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/how-hollywood-taught-rebel-wilson-to-lie-about-her-age?bffb&utm_term=4ldqpgz#.psOGAW3W5A)
* [Scriptnotes, 182: The One with Rebel Wilson and Dan Savage](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-one-with-rebel-wilson-and-dan-savage)
* [Maggie Gyllenhaal Was Told She Was ‘Too Old’ to Play 55-Year Old’s Lover](http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/maggie-gyllenhaal-too-old-lover-1201502936/)
* [Riley Weston on Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riley_Weston) and [Entertainment Weekly](http://www.ew.com/article/1998/10/30/riley-weston-fooled-us-all-about-her-age)
* [James Frey on Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Frey)
* Robert Mark Kamen [on IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0436543/), and in [Script Mag](http://www.scriptmag.com/features/interviews-features/interview-robert-mark-kamen-2) and [Wine Searcher](http://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2015/01/q-a-robert-mark-kamen-kamen-estate)
* [Oxenfree from Night School Studio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGwz4ovskx4)
* [Silicon Valley: Read every card on the Let Blaine Die SWOT board](http://www.ew.com/article/2015/05/15/silicon-valley-read-let-blaine-die-swot-board)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Travis Newton ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-long-and-short-of-it).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 196 of Scriptnotes. A podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we will talk about writing tight versus writing long, producer credits in US television, the trend of hiring multiple writers simultaneously, screenwriter’s dress code, the jealousy over other writers’ success, and several other questions related to previous episodes. Craig, it’s going to be a very, very big and busy show.

**Craig:** Yeah. You want to pray for traffic right now. You need time folks. You need to settle in now, calm down, relax. You’re in a safe place. We’re going to walk you through everything.

**John:** Absolutely. So, this is a great podcast to listen to as you’re driving to the West Side, or from the West Side. If you’re in New York City, maybe this is a great time for the subways to slow down a little bit. If you have a big chore in front of you, like a lot of dirty dishes, maybe dirty up some extra dishes. Make an extra big pot of chili because this is going to be a lot of stuff today.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm, this is a five-chili podcast.

**John:** [laughs] In follow up, last —

**Craig:** I don’t even know what means. What does five-chili mean? I don’t even know what that means.

**John:** A five-chili podcast, I mean, is that a hot podcast?

**Craig:** I guess. It’s like you have to make five pots of chili. It really makes no sense. But sometimes when I say things that are stupid, I like to just keep talking about it. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. It’s always important to dwell on the things that make no sense at all.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, what do we got today?

**John:** Last week on the show we had Ryan Knighton and he was fantastic. I loved that episode. And he talked about writing while Canadian. And people seemed to have a great response to that.

**Craig:** He’s a really intelligent guy. And he has this very interesting perspective on screenwriting because he’s an outsider. He’s an outsider because he’s Canadian. He’s an outsider because he’s a novelist. He’s an outsider because he’s blind. And he’s completely blind, by the way. Before we started the show, sometimes people say well they’re visually impaired, I can see some things. He actually smashed his head into the microphone. He’s that blind.

But he had all of these things that made him kind of an outsider and yet somehow through, oh my gosh, talent and hard work, he’s about as inside as it gets, writing a screenplay for Ridley Scott. And I feel like, frankly, everybody is an outsider until they’re an insider. And so I think that was part of it. But he was just particularly good at expressing what his perspective was and how it had changed over time. It was a great discussion.

And maybe my favorite part of it is that you and I got into a fight in front of him about what he looked like.

**John:** Yes. And so I want to sort of go back to that thing, because I said — we were talking about some project that he was involved with and someone had brought up Chris O’Dowd. And I said on the podcast, oh yes, I think Chris O’Dowd could play you in the movie. Or I said basically like you look kind of like Chris O’Dowd. And we threw it out to the listeners about whether our guest, Ryan Knighton, looks like Chris O’Dowd.

And the votes came back and I was wrong, apparently. He does not look like Chris O’Dowd.

**Craig:** No. He looks nothing like Chris O’Dowd. And it was interesting because usually when you say to somebody, oh, I think you look like so-and-so, they will either say, “Yeah, I get that,” or, “What?” But Ryan was like, “Oh, do I?” Because he hasn’t seen his own face in a really long time. So he might now look like Chris O’Dowd.

But, no, Ryan, you do not. I don’t know what —

**John:** I had a hunch I was going to lose this bet because Stuart Friedel was tasked with trying to find two photos to put in the show notes that would show how Chris O’Dowd and Ryan Knighton looked like each other. And he had a very hard time doing that.

So, he picked the two that looked the most alike. But he said, “You know what? You’re going to lose.” And I lost that bet.

**Craig:** Yeah, he just doesn’t look like Chris O’Dowd.

**John:** Scott wrote in and said, “As someone who is legally blind, though I am still able to use a computer and type, it was inspiring to listen to today’s podcast. One of my biggest fears is if I do lose all my sight completely, I wouldn’t be able to continue with my dream. That’s clearly not the case. Thank you. I listen to your podcast religiously, but not cultistly, and treat you and John like my film school.”

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** So, that was a very common email we got in. People loving that episode with Ryan Knighton. But I wanted to highlight that one because that last sentence, “I listen to your podcast and treat you and John like my film school.” So, it was written as if it was written to Craig, which is so strange because Craig never checks the email.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** He doesn’t even have the password for the email.

**Craig:** I would if you let me.

**John:** It was so weird.

**Craig:** Yeah, you don’t — you keep me away from all that stuff. That is odd.

**John:** So I assume it was written towards Craig, not written towards Stuart, but maybe it was written towards Stuart. I don’t know.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t think anyone is treating you and Stuart like their film school.

**John:** Yeah, probably not.

**Craig:** I mean, listen, there’s something about me that either drives people away, or draws them in tight. I’m either the worst or best.

**John:** I think there may be like a daddy thing, honestly, where because daddy has strong opinions, you’re sort of like — you push back against daddy, but then you’re also sort of like, oh, but I love daddy. So, if daddy is on my side, I think you’re kind of the daddy of the podcast. If I’m the professor, you’re the father. And you give people stern talking’s to, but sometimes they love you for it.

**Craig:** I think of myself as the Oracle and you as the Architect.

**John:** Oh, great. Yes, so back to the Matrix.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Great.

We have some questions for our listeners. So, this is episode 196. We are approaching episode 200. And we are trying to figure out what is going to happen at 200 and what is going to happen beyond 200. So, spoiler alert, there is not going to be a live show with an audience like we traditionally have done for some other big events, and that’s all because of Craig. Craig does not want to do a live show with an audience because he has stage fright suddenly.

**Craig:** Well, I just, I don’t know. We’ve done a lot of them. And I get this kind of panic, a little bit of a panic, that we’ll do one and suddenly we won’t be the Jon Bon Jovi of podcasts anymore. And we’ll have half of an audience full of people that have been there before. And they’ll all be like, “Yeah, you know…it’s all right.”

**John:** They’ll want us to play our greatest hits. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, I figured, oh, well, you know, if you don’t go away, how can they ever miss you. But, you had a really interesting idea because then Aline started yelling at me, which as you know, is an intense experience.

**John:** So, if you’re the Oracle and I’m the Architect, who is she in this? Is she Neo? Is she Trinity? Who is she in the Matrix analogy?

**Craig:** I think she’s the Merovingian.

**John:** Oh, wow. I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** Oh, you didn’t see the sequels?

**John:** I did see the sequels. I just didn’t understand them.

**Craig:** [laughs] I actually understand them. It took me a long, long time, and I had to do a lot of reading. It’s actually kind of amazing. I don’t — the third movie just does not entertain me. The second movie is incredibly challenging and entertains me and actually has some remarkable things going on philosophically and in terms of what they’re suggesting.

I don’t know, one day we’ll have that discussion. But the Merovingian is the French guy in the restaurant who is very, very aggressive, but also French. And she’s French and aggressive.

**John:** That is Aline, because she’s French and she’s aggressive. Done.

**Craig:** Done. Right? Although she would probably want to be Monica Bellucci, his wife, because she’s super stylish. I’m still going with the Merovingian on that one.

Anyway, you had this really interesting idea that maybe what we should do for the 200th episode, since it deserves some kind of attention, is a Google Hangout where we basically — anyone can see it, right? So anywhere around the world people can just hang out with us while we do our show.

**John:** Yes. So I think that is what we will try to do, something like that. And so I’m throwing this out to listeners basically saying, help. So, if you are a person, a producer, who does those kind of things where everyone can sort of tune in and listen and watch a livestream happening, that is a thing we would be interested in doing. And we would be happy to come to a place and do that and perhaps bring in a guest and do that.

But we don’t want to sort of have an audience big situation. We just want to have us doing the show live there. And maybe be able to take some real-time questions and comments from listeners around the world.

So, I know it’s very possible to do it just with a standard Google Hangout. And worst comes to worst, we will just do that. But I have a hunch that someone who listens to us in the Los Angeles area probably has a setup that is kind of custom made for this. And if they would like us to use their facility, we would be delighted to use their facility.

And so it would be probably a nighttime kind of thing, so people could watch it after work. And sit back and watch us do our show.

**Craig:** That would be nice. I just don’t want to wear pants. I mean, that’s really the thing.

**John:** Well, it’s going to be from the waist up, so it’s all fine.

**Craig:** Good. That’s better than from the waist down.

**John:** Oy. That’s never a good podcast.

Now, if you have a suggestion for that, you can write in to ask@johnaugust.com, our standard email address, or on Facebook or Twitter. Just tell us that you are a person who knows how to do this thing.

I have two other questions for our listeners. First off, would you want a 200-episode USB drive? So, way back in the day when we hit 100 episodes, we put out a USB drive that had the first 100 episodes on it. And we updated those later on to 150. I’m not sure if people still want them. And so we haven’t been selling them for a while. If people are interested in a 200-episode USB drive, let us know.

So, again, you can tweet at us, you can let us know on Facebook. If there seems to be sufficient demand, we will make them. If there does not seem to be sufficient demand, we won’t make them at all.

Last question for you, this is something we talked about at lunch. If you had to pick your favorite episodes out of the 200 episodes of Scriptnotes, or basically like a beginner’s guide to Scriptnotes, what would those episodes be? Because there certainly are a lot of episodes. And I’m trying to put together a blog post about here are the top episodes of Scriptnotes. And it’s actually kind of challenging, because they’re all so very different.

The ones that keep getting brought up on Reddit are things like the Final Draft episode, or the more recent sort of investigatory episodes. But there’s also episode 99 about Psychotherapy for Screenwriters. There’s the Frozen episode. There’s Ghost. I don’t know which you would recommend as being the top episodes. But I would love our listeners to provide a listener’s guide. So, if you have ideas for that, email us, send us on Facebook, tweet us to let us know, and we’ll talk through those next week.

**Craig:** That’s a good plan. I like that plan.

**John:** Yeah. Just off the top of your head, are there ones that you’d want to single out for people to pay attention to?

**Craig:** Well, aside from the ones you mentioned, I think Raiders of the Lost Ark was our first in depth movie study. And I really enjoyed that one. Craft-wise, I thought our episode on conflict was really good. I’m trying to think of like one of the more oddball guests we’ve had, because we’ve had quite a few now at this point.

You know, I think the Lindsay Doran interview is great. The truth is that like everybody else I’m going to have some recency bias.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** So, I think that people should dig deep. Dig deep into the back catalog. Look for those B-sides. Find something cool back there.

**John:** Sounds good.

All right, let’s get to today’s work. The first question comes in from Danny who asks, “Do you always strive to write the tightest, most economical ‘perfect script,’ or do you ever purposely write extra?” Craig, what is your answer to Danny’s question?

**Craig:** Well, I’m not sure that this is advisable. I don’t know if what I do is right, but the answer is, yeah, I always strive to write the tightest, most economical, ‘perfect script’ while I’m doing it, knowing full well that there is no such thing as perfection or even close to perfection. I might be completely off by 180 degrees. I might think that I nailed it and other people might hate it. This is just the life of what it means to be a writer.

But I don’t ever turn a script in — this is just me — I never turn a script in that I haven’t really carefully tightened all the little tiny screws and bits-a-ma-bobs in. I really try and keep it tight. Yeah. So I do a lot of editing and a lot of careful work.

I don’t write — purposely write — extra ever. I will save things that I think, okay, I’m taking this out and putting it aside. And this may be why I work well with Lindsay because she is the most — I thought I was the most obsessive about these little tiny things. You know, laser cutting the edges. And she’s even more so like that. I mean, every period, comma, everything is discussed and tightened and made just so.

So, that’s my process. I don’t know if it’s right. It’s just that’s the way I do it.

**John:** Yeah. I’m very mindful about where I’m at in the process. And in those early drafts, which are just for myself, when I’m just first putting words on the paper, I will try to write something that feels like the final scene, but I won’t freak out about making every sentence the leanest possible sentence it could be, or I won’t stress out as like, oh you know what, I bet I could do that in two sentences rather than three. I will just try to get it down on the page. And I think it’s most important, you know, the scene that is written is better than the scene that is unwritten.

So, I want to make sure I get something down on the page that reflects the intention. I will go through before it’s a draft I show to anybody and try to make sure that I’ve gotten the scenes as tight as I can and I’ve taken out the scenes that just are never going to make it into the movie. And that’s one of those hard things that only comes with time where you recognize, you know what, this is a lovely scene. We could shoot this scene. It will never make it into the movie. And so sometimes I’ve had to cut a five-page sequence because I recognize this is never going to actually make it in there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But there have been times, and even recently, where I’ve looked at stuff with that sort of really sharp editor’s eye and said, “Will this ultimately make it down through the process into the final cut of the movie?” And I can’t say with certainty that it would. But then my question is will this help the people who are trying to make this movie understand what the movie feels like? Will this help get the cast and the directors to take this movie seriously?

If the answer sometimes is yes, then I would be more inclined to leave that scene, that line, that moment in the movie in the script for right now, because it helps inform the kind of movie that we’re trying to make. It’s helping be part of the trailer for let’s make this into a movie. So, sometimes I’ll recognize that this might not survive, but it’s important to be in the draft for right now.

Do you ever do that?

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure. I mean, the distinction I make is this is good for the read, as opposed to this is good for the movie. There are times when something is good for the read. And there is value there, because a good read will get you to your movie. And a good read will also clarify your intentions and, as you said, fill in some of the blanks for people, even if it’s not required in the movie itself. And it may be cut in the editing room. It may be cut prior to shooting, but that’s one of those spots where you do have to acknowledge that while we are writing a movie, we’re limited. We’re limited. We just don’t have the tools that a movie has.

That’s why we don’t charge tickets to stand around and read screenplays. So, yeah, sometimes you want to keep something in there for the read. But I wonder if part of the difference between our techniques or work practices is just in the way we — you know how some people are auditory learners and blah, blah, blah. So, when you’re writing, do you find that your writing occurs while you’re writing, or is your writing occurring in your mind and then you write it?

**John:** I think it’s happening in both ways. I’ve described before on the show that essentially my process of doing a scene is just looping it, just visually looping it in my head and hearing the people talk, and figuring out, like filming the scene in my head, essentially. And then trying to get a version of that down on paper as quickly as possible. Then going through and finding the absolute best possible words to describe it.

So, it’s the looping. It’s the scribble. And then it’s the real writing. And obviously all of those phases are real writing, but we tend to think of writing as being that final phase where you’re picking which nouns and which verbs go in which order.

**Craig:** Well, I suppose my theory is no good, because that’s pretty much what I do, too. I mean, I play the scene in my head and I have people talking back and forth. I will start to edit dialogue in my head as I’m going. And then I start to write. And before I kind of say I’m done here, I do really read it through. And this is one area where I know you and I are different. I am a re-paver. I will go over it, and over it, and over it, and over it, and over, and over, and over. Then I move on.

I don’t feel comfortable moving on. I need — it’s like a security blanket. I need to know that if they had to shoot that tomorrow, there wouldn’t be a problem. So, it’s mental.

**John:** And because I write out of sequence, that’s not a huge factor for me. So, I don’t worry about that.

**Craig:** The thought of writing out of sequence makes my heart race.

**John:** But I want to circle back to this idea of how lean you can write, because there always is that option that you could take out that sentence. You could take out that parenthetical. If you really wanted to, if you looked at the final movie and you just wrote down here’s what the actors are literally doing, and here’s what they’re saying, that would be the screenplay of the movie.

It’s a representation on paper of what the movie is like, but it’s not a real plan for making that movie. And often the carefully written sentence description that is giving the feel of what that scene is like is as important as the lines of dialogue being spoken. And so I’m always very mindful of as I’m cutting, wow, I hope I’m not cutting meat and, worse, I hope I’m not cutting into the bone as I try to slice this thinner and thinner.

And as I’m trying to trim pages, as I’m trying to get the movie in its best fighting shape, I’m often mindful of like, wow, you know what would be better? If we just took out this whole scene, rather than trying to cut the scene down so short. I would be better writing around this problem than trying to just make a shorter version of this moment.

**Craig:** This is a constant inner battle. You don’t want to be the person who cuts nothing. Nor do you want to be the person who goes cut happy and starts to hurt your own movie. That’s almost scarier. This is where having a trusted partner is an enormous help, because when they are with you on the ride the whole way, whether you’re working very closely with a director, or working very closely with a producer, or those of you who write with writing partners, it’s baked into that situation.

Somebody can say, “Actually, we’ve hurt the movie. And so losing that hurt the movie, and we need to put that back.” And I’ve had those moments with Lindsay for sure. I sometimes get a little over zealous. And it’s interesting — somebody else defending your work and its worthiness of being in the movie is more compelling than you doing it to yourself, you know?

Because we are not objective, of course. I mean, it’s easy enough to fall down the trap of, well I read it, it’s good. If somebody else says, “You wrote it, and it’s good. Please put it back.” Maybe you should put it back. So, it’s good to have somebody like that along for the ride if possible.

**John:** There’s always this talk about you shouldn’t direct from the page, which we’ve dismissed many times. Of course you are trying to provide a vision for the movie. But I’d also say you shouldn’t try to control the Avid from the page. And if you are writing so tightly and so specifically that it literally feels like there’s exactly one way you could shoot this and no other way could possibly work for this, that may be a signal that you are writing a little close to the bone. And that you’re not giving enough space for this to exist in a scene, exist as a moment.

And there have been times where I’ve come into a scene and realized you are trying to park in too tight of a parking space and you’re not giving yourself the options of how you’re going to actually handle this moment.

**Craig:** Well, then, of course, reality will intrude. And so even if you’ve written the scene to be the tightest parking space of all time, hopefully you are still in communication and partnering with the production. And they’ll call you and they’ll say, “We got to change this. We can’t shoot it this way. But here’s what we have.” And then you go to work.

So, you’re right. There is a point of diminishing returns on fastidiousness. And you do have to be aware of that certainly, because ultimately the world will not conform to your micrometer-measured sentences. There’s going to be some confirmation to the world around you as you shoot.

**John:** A real world example that happened pretty recently. There’s a movie I wrote where I got these notes about tone and I realized what they were actually responding to was essentially I had edited it a little too tight. And there were moments of sort of scene description and sort of feeling that I had taken out just kind of for the economy of getting to the next thing. And without those it was feeling rushed.

I had taken out some of the painting of the world, a little bit of the feeling, the looseness, the suspense in some cases. And I needed to sort of put that back in. in some cases it was literally like adding a few more line breaks so that those — there was a little bit more air on the page.

And it’s so hard when you’ve looked at it a thousand times to recognize like, oh yeah, I actually do need that extra little bit of space there, because people are going to zip through this and not pay attention.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’ve become accustomed to your own material and it becomes part of your experience of the script to the point where you don’t need it anymore. It’s no longer a crutch for you. But everybody else needs it. Everybody else — they’re reading it for the first time, essentially.

**John:** I think it may have been Aline on the show who talked about you look at a joke a hundred times, like, wow, this joke is not funny anymore. It has to be cut. And then everyone else, like it’s funny for them because it’s the first time they’re seeing it. And that can be a real challenge, too.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’ve got to really be careful about that stuff. And, you know, as you’re going through — this is where, by the way, actual production experience is very helpful, and watching movies get edited is very helpful. Sometimes I will have discussions with producers or executives and they’ll say, “Well you know, we’re just wondering, do we need this line?” And I’ll say, I don’t know, but you’re there and you’re shooting. And it doesn’t require set up. It’s free. It’s essentially free.

So, where I take “do we need this” notes very much to heart is when it will actually impact the day. But if it’s not going to save any time, well, just do it. Why not? Unless people just don’t understand it, you know?

**John:** Yeah. There’s always that sense of, well, we could cut this. And they’re trying to point out like this is not absolutely essential. And so there’s this sense that anything that is not absolutely essential could be cut, and therefore maybe should be cut. And it’s a question always worth asking, but it’s never an automatic guarantee that you should cut those things.

A lot of times I’ll have moments, and I’ll know that in the back of my head like well that could disappear. And I’ll think through the editing math of like well if that moment, if that scene, if that line went away, would it be possible for everything to still make sense? And I’ll have a plan for it. But that doesn’t mean that the line should go away, because it could be incredibly integral to everything.

Certainly going back to our discussion of Ghost, there are so many scenes in Ghost that could go away, but that movie would be diminished if they went away.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And if they had cut those scenes during the writing process, the movie would not exist.

**Craig:** And then, of course, there were scenes that they did cut. And that’s the thing — sometimes I feel like when people are discussing a screenplay, the writer is there with the producer and the studio and the director, but there’s this fear of being humble. There’s a fear of admitting that we’re all guessing. But, it’s important to admit that right off the bat, because everyone who has made a movie has gone into that first screening and been shocked by something that worked, and shocked by something that didn’t.

Sometimes the biggest laugh in the movie is a line you didn’t even think was that good. It’s just —

**John:** Oh, 100 percent.

**Craig:** It’s the weirdest thing. So you have to kind of be humble enough to appreciate that there’s a chaotic factor to this that cannot be predetermined. It cannot be divined. So, if you’re on the fence, sometimes it’s good to skew in favor of inclusion.

**John:** It reminds me of the common thing said about when, I think it was Sony was buying Columbia Pictures, and the legend is always that one of the Sony execs pulled the Columbia exec aside and said, “By the way, we only want to make the hit movies.” And the similar thing for in making an individual movie is like the director saying, “Well, I only want to shoot the scenes that are going to be in the movie.” Or, “I only want to shoot the exact shots I need to make the movie.” But, of course, you don’t really know that. And so what you’re doing is your best guess about what things you’re going to want to have in the editing room to construct the final movie.

And so the writer is coming up with this material and hopefully shaping it in a way that if followed to the tee and really following his plan, you will have a good movie. But you won’t really know. And you won’t really know until you’re in your seventh cut of this film.

And so you’re trying to get the best material possible so you can have the best shot of making your film.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s the great paradox of writing is that you have to write it like you’re shooting it, and that is all that will be shot, but at the same time you have to be flexible enough to change it.

**John:** Yes. Our next question comes from Michael in Liverpool who asks, “Can someone please explain why the TV show The Following has a list of producer credits the same length as my penis?” And I don’t know —

**Craig:** Does he give the length?

**John:** So he says that his penis is attached as a PNG, as a graphic, but that is not in fact true. There is no graphic attached.

**Craig:** Oh…

**John:** So we’ll have to assume that his penis is about 13 names long, which is how many names —

**Craig:** I think you need to read this question like you’re from Liverpool. The same length as my penis?

**John:** Can someone please explain…?

**Craig:** No, that was kind of Irish.

**John:** I’m not great with my British accent at all.

**Craig:** This is The Beatles thing. The same length as my penis? Uh, well, how long is his penis? Let’s find out in names.

**John:** In names. So, there are 13 names listed on this episode of The Following. And so I went through and I did my homework and I actually looked up on IMDb like who those people were. And so of those 13 names, nine of them are writers, which is not surprising because in US television, most of the names you see listed as a producer are high level writers. So, they are writers who are no longer at the entry level. They are no longer staff writers or story editors. They have moved up the ranks.

And when you move up the ranks in TV writing, you get a producer credit. And those producer credits escalate as you rise higher and higher on a show, or sort of moving show to show.

Way back in 2004 I wrote a blog post describing sort of TV credits. And so this was the hierarchy that I listed then, which is largely accurate. So, you’re looking at given TV show, you’re looking at the credits scroll by, one of the executive producers is almost always the creator of the show. And that creator of the show may also be the showrunner, the person who is most in charge of the show at the moment, but it may not be the case.

There could be other people listed as executive producers. Below that, co-executive producers. Below that, somewhere in that vicinity, a consulting producer, a supervising producer, a producer, then a co-producer. Then below that would be a story editor and a staff writer.

Now, sometimes those aren’t exactly accurate, but that’s a general sense of what that is. The other producer credits you might see are a line producer, or an associate producer. Those are almost always not writers. Those are usually the people who are responsible for the physical production or the editing. So, those are some of the names you’re going to see. And that’s absolutely true with the credits for The Following.

Because there are so many names, we’ll have a list in the show notes, but essentially of the 13 names listed, nine of them are writers. So the only ones who aren’t writers there, there’s a woman, Lauren Wagner, who based on her credits I think she runs Kevin Williamson’s production company. Kevin Williamson is the producer/creator of the show.

Kevin Bacon is Kevin Bacon. He’s the star of the show. He’s listed as a producer. There’s a man named Michael Stricks who is a production manager. And there is Marcos Siega who is a famous director, a big director who is the director of this TV show.

Everyone else there is a writer. So, what’s with all the producers? Well, there’s a bunch of writers. And so that’s employment. That’s great.

**Craig:** It’s essentially a symptom of the fact that television is written by a staff. So when you have a large group of employees working on something, somebody somewhere has to figure out what they’re going to be paid. And anytime you’re paying groups of people stuff, what immediately begins to happen is a codification of salaries and leveling. So, we’re not going to pay everybody ad hoc. Nor are we going to pay you more money than the person that’s your boss. So, eventually titles occur.

And it’s very much a military system here. I mean, just replace lieutenant and corporal and captain with consulting and supervising and co-executive. That’s kind of what’s going on.

In movies, that’s not the way we do it. There’s one writer working at a time. And so there isn’t a staffing system and a ranking system. Sometimes the writer that ends up with the credit for the movie, the writer that’s written it all, well she actually got paid half as much as the woman who kicked the whole thing off, who got paid more. So, the salaries are all over the place, and therefore in features the producers are typically not writers — sometimes they are — but typically not and they are more running the business and creative end of the company of the movie.

But here I think it’s probably about salary.

**John:** Yeah. It’s about salary, it’s about experience, and responsibility on the show.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so the people who have been doing this for a long time, they’re going to rise up the ranks and they’ll have higher producer credits on a given show. And that is a way of reflecting that and a way of paying them for that.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** So, Craig, in your last answer you said that features do not have multiple writers simultaneously, but now unfortunately that situation seems to be happening more and more. Jay writes in, “My writing partner and I are repped working writers in the studio system with about five years of credits on relatively big studio movies, sadly none yet produced. But more importantly we’re big fans of Scriptnotes and have been since the start.”

**Craig:** That is more important.

**John:** Jay, you’re awesome.

**Craig:** That’s the most important.

**John:** It is more important. Yes.

“We just saw this disturbing report that WB is hiring established screenwriters like Will Beall, Jeff Nichols, etc., to start writing first acts for their upcoming DC movies. That is pitting three writers against each other to work on the same outline and write competing versions of Aquaman’s act one, for instance. Do you see the industry as a whole moving in a similar direction with writer’s rooms? Paramount is setting one up for Transformers, for example. Is this a larger trend in bake offs?”

A related post to this is Kim Masters at the Hollywood Reporter wrote a long piece about DC and Warners and them trying to figure out how they’re going to do their movies. And so both Aquaman and Wonder Woman have this situation where there are multiple writers working simultaneously on things and it apparently is not always the happiest situation. Craig, what do you think?

**Craig:** Well, the Kim Masters piece in the Hollywood Reporter, I think, puts its finger exactly on the big difference between what they’re endeavoring to do with the DC properties and what Marvel does with the Marvel properties. And I understand that at Warner Bros they’re looking at the way Marvel does it. They probably see some version of kind of a writing room system. And which is, by the way, the way that movies used to be done way back in the day.

And they’re thinking, well, let’s just copy that. It’s working. And I understand that. But, the main difference is there is one authorial vision being imposed on all of those Marvel movies and that’s through Kevin Feige who runs Marvel. And Kevin Feige is renowned for not only doing his job well but being an extraordinarily educated Marvel-ologist. He was hired, I think, in small part because of his encyclopedic knowledge of what is a very large collection of characters and storylines that interweave and reboot and restart and have various versions.

So, he is imposing a singular vision. If you are going to hire multiple writers to work on one movie as a bake off situation, they must be guided by one creative authorial vision. They have to be, or you will just end up with a bunch of parts that don’t fit together. And I’m not even getting into the fact that I think this is just kind of bad for writers and bad for movies in general. I think it’s not going to works. Unless there is somebody that has Kevin Feige’s knowledge of Marvel but for DC, I don’t see how this works.

It’s tempting. I know why they do it. It’s tempting. It seems like, oh, well it will go faster. Instead of hiring three writers in succession, we’ll just hire them all at once. It just doesn’t work that way.

**John:** Yeah. If writing were the kind of thing where you could clearly tell like well this is the version that won, and therefore we are going to get behind her script and her vision and she will be the one to deliver it and praise everybody — this is the one — then I could maybe see it working. I could maybe see the consensus of rather than have a bunch of people pitch their takes, we will pay them money to write it up and we can look at their actual words and say like this is the person who has the vision for what this movie is.

We will support her 100 percent and go with her vision. But what this article says and what we know from our other conversations is that is not at all what happened. And it’s not what seems to be happening in the DC movies. And it’s never really happened anywhere else. You might say like, “Oh, we’re going to have these three versions,” and then you’re going to have a bunch of different opinions about what is the best of those three versions. And then you’re going to hire on a director who is going to have different opinions about what the best of those three versions is.

And so rather than having one writer pulled in a bunch of different ways, you’re going to have three writers pulled in a bunch of different ways and everyone is going to be extra confused.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s this thing that happens when one writer writes all the way through. They will get some amount of it right. They will get some amount of it wrong. No one is perfect.

Consider Joss Whedon, for instance. Joss Whedon is I guess the other singular vision over there at Marvel who has had enormous influence obviously on the movies that he makes, but on the movies around him at the same time that are touching on his movie. Well, Joss Whedon doesn’t get everything right. Joss Whedon makes mistakes. I’m sure Joss Whedon would be the first person 20 years from now to look back at Avengers and say, “Well here’s a bunch of things I think I could have done better.”

But here’s the thing. They’re his mistakes. They are mistakes that are consistent in voice, tone, and vision with the stuff that works. When you’re looking at a movie that’s been cobbled together from three, or four, or five different writers, like a Frankenstein monster, the mistakes will be incredibly jarring because they have nothing to do with the stuff that’s working.

They won’t be consistent mistakes. They won’t be part of the same feeling. That’s where things start to come apart. And I’ll tell you, when you watch a movie and it has that cobbled feel, it’s hard to even say what exactly is putting itself between you and the movie, but something is. It’s like there’s a thing between you and it. It starts to take on an artificial hollow vibe.

So, for instance, I’m a big fan of Chris Nolan and his Batman films. I can look at each one of those Batman films and say well here’s something I just don’t like, but the mistake is consistent and it’s part of Nolan’s vision and so I am okay.

**John:** I get that. Thinking about other situations where multiple writers are working on a movie simultaneously, James Cameron is trying it right now for the Avatar sequels. And so he is essentially the showrunner and he has — I believe it’s three writers who are writing the movies with him/for him. I don’t quite know what is happening in that room. Josh Friedman is a friend, but I don’t know any sort of secret insights about what’s actually happening, but the goal is for them to work together and create something that is better than any one of them could do separately.

Is that possible? Maybe it’s possible, but they certainly have a very strong showrunner in James Cameron who is going to direct these movies and has the vision for what they’re supposed to be.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s a situation I believe would work, rather than three writers reporting to a committee of people who then have to figure out what is actually going to happen and what’s going to go on. That seems to be the challenge.

**Craig:** It seems like Warner Bros is leaning on Zack Snyder to be their singular overarching vision bringer. But he’s been making this most recent Superman vs. Batman movie. Well, if you’re directing a movie you can’t do this part, right. So, Kevin Feige can do this part while Joss Whedon is making Avengers. So, it seems like they’re missing a vital piece there if this is the way they’re going to go.

And if they don’t have that vital piece, and frankly I don’t know if — for better or worse, the DC universe does not really inspire the same kind of obsessive encyclopedic curiosity that the Marvel universe does, then I think they may want to consider — I’m talking like I run Warner Bros. Isn’t this great? They may want to consider kind of returning back to their original model which worked extraordinarily well with Batman and that is to say find a filmmaker with a singular vision and give them that thing. But, the problem from them is they want — everybody wants the shared universe. Everybody wants to do what Marvel is doing.

It may not be possible.

**John:** The other question will be whether the Star Wars universe and sort of what they’re trying to do and Kathleen Kennedy’s role in bringing together all the Star Wars movies, will that be possible. Now, in that case they don’t multiple writers working on one script at the same time, but they are trying to build the future of this whole universe, and there has to be considerable creative collaboration and creative consensus in what that world-building will be.

And whether that falls on her shoulders or someone else, somebody has to finally make those decisions. Someone has to be the Kevin Feige in those decisions. And that will be interesting to see how that shakes out.

**Craig:** No question. I think that it probably very much is Kathleen Kennedy. But they’re making I think the right choice of, for instance, okay, so J.J. really took this next movie and did it. And Rian Johnson is taking the movie after that and he’s going to do it. And they are allowing a vision. They’re allowing a singular voice. And we should also acknowledge that J.J. brought in Larry Kasdan. And Larry is, you know, kind of the great keeper of the flame of the Star Wars universe.

So, Larry and J.J. were that first one. Rian is going to be the second one. That’s the right way to go. I feel like that’s the way to do it. This kind of Frankenstein — and also, frankly, pitting three writers against each other is — any time I hear a studio say, “Well, we’re going to do a cut and paste version,” I just think, yup, you’re done. That’s it. Movie is bad. That’s it.

**John:** Yeah. You and I have both in situations where the cut and paste has ended up happening because there have been multiple writers employed over the course of time. So, someone is brought in to rewrite something, you and I have both rewritten somebody, and we’ve both been rewritten. And sometimes those movies turn out just fine.

And lord knows it can sometimes work out, but are any of those movies as amazing as they might have been with a single writer writing all the way through? I can’t think of any. That doesn’t mean that it could never happen. But it’s generally not the best sign when multiple writers have been working on a movie. That’s the reality.

**Craig:** At the very least, if multiple writers are working on a movie, one writer needs to be the one that does the final reconciliation. You can’t have non-writers doing their cut and paste. They simply won’t see the mistakes that — and screenplay mistakes ripple forth like tiny little seeds that blossom into awful things.

Sometimes you just can’t see them there in the script and then, kaboosh. So, you know, I’ve been in situations where I’ve looked at three drafts and I’ve done something, and then somebody else has come in, and then I come back and they’re like, “Look, we want to keep this and this.” And I’ll say, great, but I still need to incorporate it properly. I can’t just slap it in. There’s a craft to this. There’s an actual job, [laughs], writing. I know, it’s crazy. Crazy.

**John:** That’s crazy.

A simpler question. Adam writes in, “I’ve always been someone who for lack of a better term dresses up. I feel more comfortable in a sport coat and tie rather than a hoodie. I have nothing against sweat pants. It’s just how I roll. I treat every general or pitch like something in between a job interview and a first date. And looking back I’ve probably been the best dressed person in the room more often than not.

“I’m sure I’m overthinking it because it was only brought up after Craig made it clear that there isn’t a writer’s dress code. But do you think there is a subconscious message I’m sending out by not wearing a t-shirt and jeans? Does the writer in a bow tie come off as less authentically creatively than the writer in a graphic tee?”

Craig, what’s your thought?

**Craig:** Well, I mean, I wish it weren’t so, but maybe. I mean, you know, this is one of those things. We’re all taught not to judge a book by its cover, and then everybody goes around judging books by their cover. And particularly in Hollywood where the cover of the book is the most important part of the book to the people that spend money hiring writers. [laughs]

Yeah, if you show up really buttoned up in a jacket and nice pants and a bow tie, it may put other people a little bit ill at ease. Like nobody likes to be the worst dressed person in the room. The writer’s job in Hollywood is the one place where being the worst dressed person in the room kind of makes you cool. And that’s okay.

You know, that said, Adam, I feel like you walk in and if you just acknowledge and you’re like, “By the way, this is how roll. I just like bow ties.” No will care. I mean, whatever immediate impression they get from your bow tie, it will be obliterated by the things coming out of your mouth. So, as long as you yourself are not a non-creative seeming person, I wouldn’t worry about it.

I mean, just know that it’s there. It will be something you’ll overcome every time.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t even necessarily know that it’s an overcome. I think it’s just being aware of expectation. And I think in most cases the expectation is going to be, well, writers don’t dress very well. And so if you dress very well you are pushing against that expectation. And that could be to your benefit or to your detriment.

Let’s say you are a Wes Anderson type. Then you wearing a bow tie is fantastic. Because they are bringing you in, they want to meet with you because they have a perception of you are and it fits that kind of brand. And so if the things you write are movies that people would wear bow ties in, they’re delighted to see that.

If Wes Anderson showed up for a meeting and he was scruffy and wearing dirty jeans and looked like he hadn’t bathed in a while you would say, “Wait, that’s not the Wes Anderson I was expecting.” So, looking like the person that they are expecting could be useful to you. And so if that is a dressed up person and you are writing dressed up movies, that’s fantastic.

Now, if you’re writing dark and gritty crime thrillers, if you are writing big goofy dumb comedies, that may be a bit of a challenge and you’ll just have to figure out what that is when you’re in the room and how you play that.

But, I wouldn’t necessarily change how you dress. You just want to come in there confident. And if confident for you is dressing up some, go for it.

I think my biggest caution against dressing up for these things, and when you say first date or job interview, that makes me feel nervous. And it makes me feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, or that you’re a newbie. And that you are nervous about this whole thing. And that is not a position of strength to be coming into that room.

**Craig:** I agree. Well, hopefully that will help you pick out tomorrow’s sartorial selection. But now we have something about writers judging each other. This is a question from Bobby. He writes, “I have a question/concern regarding all the to do over This is Working. That was the all-script, all-page challenge that you and I did. It sounds like a great script, and I do believe you’re right in your assessment of K.C.’s talents.

“I am filled with vicarious joy, but also jealousy at hearing him get such praise on your show. Basically the thought that occurred to me as I was listening to you continue to praise him in your follow up episode was ‘why him?’ And I realized that gets to the fundamental rub of all Hollywood success stories. The answer essentially comes down to ‘just because.’

“I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling jealous that his pages were picked over mine. I’m sure I’m not alone in believing I’m every bit as talented. I hope this doesn’t come across as critical, and certainly don’t take it as pouting or childish. I recognize that I had as much chance being picked as K.C. did. And that’s really what I’m trying to get at here. It’s all a lottery. Maybe your podcast just changed K.C.’s life. I’d be surprised if it didn’t.

“But it could have just as easily been someone else. And I guess I’d like to get your general take on that sentiment.”

What do you think about that, John?

**John:** I think Bobby is largely right. I think it could have been him, or anyone else. And also that feeling of why him, why not me, that doesn’t go away either.

And I’ll tell you quite honestly as I look at success of other people, or I look at somebody getting that great book assignment, that will still come up in my heart of hearts, too. Where it’s like, but why did that person get that thing, and why didn’t I get that thing? That is a natural human emotion and it doesn’t ever go away.

What I think the lesson to take from this feeling, and from K.C. Scott, is that to some degree it is a lottery, but you don’t win the lottery without buying some tickets. And K.C. Scott took a big risk by putting himself out there and entering the Three-Page Challenge, but then also being willing to send in his script and not know how we were going to receive it. And really tell us more about his life and his own worries and thoughts about the future. Those were all sort of brave choices.

So, while it could be anybody, it’s more likely to happen to somebody who is brave and someone who is taking some chances. And so if there’s a lesson to take from this, it’s that fortune does favor the bold.

**Craig:** I come at this from a slightly different angle because I recognize that this is something that a lot of people feel. And I think you’re probably right; it’s one of those things if you feel it, you feel it, and then it’s all really about what meaning you assign to that feeling.

I have all sorts of mental problems. They’re all related —

**John:** But that’s well-established.

**Craig:** [laughs] And a lot of them are connected to my work. The guns that I have are almost always pointed back towards my own chest. I have never felt jealous of another writer. I don’t have it. And I don’t mean to come off like a saint, because I’m not. I just don’t have that. I’ve never been jealous. If I’ve gone for something and somebody else gets it I just think, huh, well, they must have done something better. [laughs] I don’t know, that’s just the way I am.

But I’m never jealous about other writers. I always feel good when good things happen to other writers because I just don’t have that bone. I wish I could tell you it’s because I’m enlightened. I think it’s just because I’m actually missing that chunk of neurons. I have other chunks of neurons that cause me all sorts of trouble. So, I guess really I’m not much of a help for you here, Bobby, other than to say on my side of it, it’s actually quite nice to not be burdened by this. If there’s a way for you to be less burdened by it, then all I would say is this: it’s not going to help you. And it’s not going to get you anywhere. And it’s not going to motivate you.

And so when you feel it, just recognize it for what it is which is a meaningless feeling. It doesn’t mean that those people are better than you. And it doesn’t mean that you’re better than them. It doesn’t mean that the world is specifically unfair to you. The world is pretty much generally unfair to everybody. So, that’s the only advice I can give you over here in the oddly, weirdly, non-jealous camp. I don’t know. I’m a weirdo that way, I guess.

**John:** I would say that I am genuinely happy when other writers who I know are able to succeed and get great projects. And I’m genuinely happy for them when these things happen. But there’s always a voice in my head that says, “Well, why didn’t I get that call?” And then some of those self-doubts creep back in. And it makes me wonder, well, is it because I am too expensive? Is it because I am the wrong person for this project? Is it because I have this relationship with this person?

What is it that made it so I did not get that call? And Bobby is describing a version of that call, like why did K.C. Scott get called up to have this spotlight put on him. Well, the answer is sort of that kind of random lottery in this case. It was literally Stuart read a bunch of Three-Page Challenges. He sent us the ones he thought were the best. And we said we agreed. And we said, yes, this is the thing.

But just as easily it could have not happened.

I think the thing to take from this is that, yes, there is an aspect to this that is like a lottery. And the good thing about that is you can buy a lottery ticket. And the game is not fixed before you start to play. You can increase your odds of winning this lottery by figuring out ways to just literally increase your odds. Take more swings at bat. Take more general meetings.

Do what Ryan Knighton did in this last episode and he takes like 20 general meetings in the course of a week. That is how you get lucky is by making situations where you can get lucky.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Yeah.

**John:** That’s the lesson here.

**Craig:** I think that’s right. And, you know, you’re making a good distinction, actually. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “Okay, I just heard a friend got a job. I’m happy for them. I am also wondering why didn’t I get called for that.” Those two things are different and can be maintained simultaneously.

And when you ask yourself I wonder why I didn’t get called, that’s a useful question, because that question can lead to strategies, plans. Okay, what am I doing now that I could differently? Because obviously there is something I want that isn’t currently here. Let me actually exercise some thought and care and take some action and see if I can’t change my circumstances. That’s valuable.

The part of jealousy that’s not valuable is the part that doesn’t let you enjoy, truly enjoy, when something good happens to somebody else. Even if it was something that maybe you wanted for yourself, that’s the part where you are in a weird way robbing yourself of what I think is one of the great pleasures of life, which is celebrating somebody else’s good fortune with them.

I love that feeling. When Rian told me that he was going to be writing and directing the next Star Wars, I mean, my little heart just about exploded. I was so excited. I mean, I just didn’t know, you know, like, ah, it was just the best feeling ever. I felt like — in a weird way I felt like I was doing it now because it’s my friend, you know. [laughs] I was so happy. So, that’s the only thing, Bobby. Just make sure that you don’t kill that, you know.

But, it’s a good thing, I think, what John is saying, too. Then sort of step back and go, “Well gee, if this is something that I feel I ought to have but I don’t, what can I do to change those circumstances?”

**John:** Yeah. The other thing you can take from that is it is possible for a person in this situation to achieve this thing, so therefore it is possible for me to achieve that thing. And that is a great take home from K.C. Scott is that this is a person who wrote a good script, put it out there, and got a great response from it. And that is possible for anyone who can write a great script.

**Craig:** Correctamundo.

**John:** Great. Circling back to our discussions of arbitration, David writes, “I’m a WGA member who has gone through an arbitration a couple of times. So, I found the episode about arbitration especially fascinating. I was reading that Donna Langley was defending her decision to hire E.L. James’s husband to write 50 Shades Darker, the sequel to 50 Shades of Grey, because he had done some work on the first movie.

“But he didn’t get a credit. Only Kelly Marcel did. Was Donna Langley legally allowed to say that? Was it against WGA rules to publicize uncredited writers? Or does that only apply to writers themselves?”

Craig, what is the actual rules here? What are common best practices? Talk us through what is legitimate for an executive like Donna Langley to say about that situation.

**Craig:** It’s an interesting question, actually. I mean, on the writing side of things we have working rules, which are union rules. They govern our behavior as union members. And we are subject to union discipline if we break them. And union discipline is essentially, it could be a fine. As far as I know the union hasn’t disciplined anyone for anything in forever.

But, one of our working rules is that we would abide by the credits as put forth and that we wouldn’t publicize a different credit. So, if we wrote on something and we don’t get credit for it, we don’t do interviews where we say things like, “I deserve credit on that,” or “I wrote a lot of it,” etc.

Now, was Donna allowed to say that? Probably yes. I think that the — almost certainly yes. The way the contract works is that company is forbidden to publicize incorrect credits. Once the WGA determines credits, they can’t print up posters, take out ads in newspapers, put a different credit on the screen or on video or when it runs on TV.

But it’s a simple free speech issue. And individual is certainly allowed to say I hired somebody to do something. That’s — I don’t think in any way that Donna did anything wrong there. And in that circumstance I think it kind of was something she probably had to say. I think, I mean, it’s a tough spot. Right? You’re hiring the author’s husband. It feels like, on its face, it feels kind of like crazy nepotism. So, you kind of need to be able to say, “No, no, no, he’s actually a screenwriter, too. He was hired to write on the first movie.”

That’s a fact. I think that was fine for her to say. She didn’t say he deserved credit on it. She didn’t say he was the screenwriter. So, I think that’s fine.

In general, it’s not something that you see executives doing because, frankly, they have as much investment as we do in our system of credits.

**John:** I agree with your separation of facts from sort of general policy and practices.

So, you know, by rules they’re not allowed to stick his name on as a writer. That very clearly would be a violation. But facts are facts. And so you can’t just pretend that reality doesn’t exist and that he wasn’t hired. I think it’s a completely reasonable thing for her to say in this situation.

And people will ask me about a film that I’ve worked on that I’m not credited on, I will happily say, “Yes, I worked on that movie, but I never claimed I should have gotten credit.” Yet, all the same, you will see the situations, we talked about the situations on previous arbitrations where people have been very unhappy. And so you can’t go back through and enter into a time machine and un-say all the things you said about who you thought should have gotten credit on the movie.

You said that aloud and that was a thing that happened. And that’s why I think it’s important to be very, very mindful about the kinds of things you’re saying publicly about movies that have not yet had final credits because you don’t know what’s going to happen.

And so just treating everybody fairly and nicely, and being kind, is a general good rule.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s one of those areas where restraint is a good policy. If you must, for extenuating circumstances, as was I think the case here with Donna, yeah sure. But, you know, otherwise if you don’t have to, don’t. You know, it just feels more professional to me, at least, that we not do that sort of thing.

**John:** So, our next question comes from John in London. He writes, “I don’t think my question has been covered yet on the show, but the longer I wonder about it, the more it feels like a time bomb. I’ve begun to write film criticism for a website here in the UK and I’m having a great time of it. I would love to eventually work in Hollywood as a screenwriter. And I have the slightest paranoia that some of the reviews I’ve written, some of which have been mildly scathing, but eventually make me someone that can’t be hired.

“What do you think about this? Have I been watching too many ’70s paranoid thrillers? Or is there cause for concern about publicly criticizing one’s work, and then having it come back to bit me?”

**Craig:** Good question. Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest to you that you stop being scathing, just because I don’t really feel that that’s productive or helps anybody. Criticism is different than scathing. I don’t know what “mildly scathing” means. That’s an oxymoron. Regardless, film critics routinely overestimate their importance and impact on the business.

I actually think barely anyone would notice. It’s possible that if you wrote something and you sat down with the director that you wanted to direct your script, and you had destroyed that person, they would have something to say to you and rightly so because at this point you’d kind of be a hypocrite.

But, if you sat down with a studio, they don’t care that you gave their movies bad reviews. You know what they care about? If their movie bombed or not.

If you give a hit movie a bad review, it’s like you didn’t happen. If you give a bomb a bad review, it’s like you didn’t happen. [laughs] It kind of doesn’t matter, because the movie was going to bomb with you or without you. And the movie was going to be a hit with you or without you.

There is an interesting thing that happens with — it doesn’t happen frequently, but occasionally film critics will become screenwriters. Rod Lurie I believe was a film critic who became a screenwriter. Stephen Schiff, who I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, is an excellent screenwriter and he was a film critic for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. So he was pretty high up on that food chain.

And I once asked him about it, and it was sort of a version of your question, John. And he said, “Maybe three or four months after I had left my job as a film critic and started my job as a screenwriter, it kind of all came to me in a rush that the entire time I was writing film reviews and critiquing films for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair I had no idea what I was talking about. None.” And he said occasionally he would see a lot of his old cohorts who were still writing reviews and it was the feeling that he suspects ex-smokers get when they see their friends huddled outside of a bar all puffing away.

You know, there’s this other thing on the other side that actually is, frankly, more rewarding. So, I’m thrilled that you want to work in Hollywood as a screenwriter. I think that’s spectacular. And I would suggest to you that you would be better served working on that now than spending too much time writing mildly scathing reviews of movies. I don’t think that’s going to help you achieve what I think you’re saying you want to achieve.

**John:** I agree with you, particularly because your name is going to be associated with a bunch of reviews of movies that aren’t especially good largely. I mean, yes, hopefully you’re reviewing lots of really good movies and you’re saying very smart, wonderful things about them. And maybe you can be a champion for some movies that otherwise would go unnoticed.

But more likely, you’re going to have to see some terrible movies and tell everybody that they’re terrible. And your instinct will be to use your clever words to describe their terribleness in a way that is rewarding to the audience for having read through what you’re writing. And that’s not going to serve you well down the road.

If people do find those reviews, they will be mildly annoyed by you when you try to sit down with them for a meeting. If you want to be a screenwriter, I think you’d be better off writing screenplays than writing reviews of other people’s movies. Just, you know, it’s great to watch movies. It’s great to watch movies to understand movies, but just like we’ve talked about before, writing a bunch of coverage on screenplays is a great way to learn about screenplays and then you have to stop because it will just burn a hole in your brain.

And I think being a film reviewer will ultimately burn that hole in your brain and hurt you as a screenwriter down the road.

**Craig:** I agree. Our next question is from Kirk who lives in Huntington Beach here in sunny California. And he says, “What are your thoughts on using sizzle reels in pitches? Specifically Ripomatic ones? I found this term online, so I don’t know if it’s something people actually say. If not, I’m referring to when one would edit together clips of existing movies/copyrighted footage.”

So, as an aside, yes, people do say Ripomatic. So, the idea is that you would find bits of movies that would be sort of like the thing you’d be doing in your movie. And then you edit it together to show them sort of what your scene might look like.

Kirk continues, “I have a professor who swears by them. He has actually worked in the industry. But he also says not to use recognizable people, for instance, movie stars, the people in all existing movies. I have watched a few online.” I think he means a few Ripomatics. “Including Rian Johnson’s for Looper. He used voiceover from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the eventual star, but he used stuff from Se7en and we saw Brad Pitt very clearly.

“Is it better to use a variety of people, not just one actor as a stand in? Or is it okay to use one actor as the star of the sizzle reel? Or is it not wise to make or use a sizzle reel at all if I were to be pitching as a screenwriter and not a writer-director?”

John, what do you think about this?

**John:** I think sizzle reels are terrific for directors. Sizzle reels are a useful tool for a director to land a job or to convince people that as a writer-director that you should be hiring them to direct this movie. I don’t think writers should be making sizzle reels. I think writers should be writing scripts and that is where they should largely focus their time and energy.

But sizzle reels I think are good. I think they’re a useful way of describing to somebody what the movie is going to look like because words will fall apart. And people will see different things when you describe a movie. But if you show them what the movie could look like, that will get them excited and they will lean in and I think it will be a useful tool for you.

So, I strongly encourage sizzle reels. In terms of using one actor or multiple actors, it’s going to depend on what your project is. In most cases, I’ve found sizzle reels are much more useful to describe the world, what the movie feels like, rather than try to show a hero’s journey. Because frankly you’re going to be really Frankensteining something together to try to show this actor from different movies to try to make that feel like one movie.

What’s your thoughts, Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean this is not something screenwriters ever do. If you’re trying to sell yourself as a director, if you’re trying to get financing for a movie, sure. But we’re paid to create a movie through words only. That’s our gig. So, if we can’t pitch at using words only, then we have a problem. If we can’t provide some sample of our writing that is words only, we have a problem.

So, when you ask is it not wise to make or use a sizzle reel at all if I’m to be pitching as a screenwriter, my answer to you is it is not wise.

**John:** 100 percent agree. Now, there have been times where I’ve brought visual aids in, and that I think can be very, very useful. Like when we were pitching Prince of Persia, we brought in artwork that showed kind of what the world looked like. That was useful; it was something for them to — it was literally just like mounted on cardboard and showed what that thing looked like. Great. Terrific. Absolutely do that.

But if you’re having to stop and show a reel for something, then you have lost their interest in what you are pitching for your take. So, I would not recommend that.

**Craig:** Absolutely yes. Still photos, I mean, we did this with the movie that I’m doing with Lindsay. We had a collection of still photos that we submitted along to say, look, this is what certain things will look like. And that was very helpful. But no Ripomatics. No. And those are our questions. Those are the questions of the week.

**John:** There were a lot of questions, but we covered a wide range of topics. So, it’s almost time for One Cool Things. Before we get to One Cool Things, a few weeks back I had invited our listeners if they were in the Los Angeles area and wanted to join us for a play test of this new game we were trying, I would love them to come help play test it. And they did. They showed up. And they were wonderful. And we had a really good play test.

And we’re actually really close to being able to launch this game. So, the game is called One Hit Kill. It is a card game. It is fun. And if you want to see what the artwork looks like for it, even the people who came to the play test were testing some sort of generic artwork, so you can see what the real artwork looks like. We have a site now. It’s just onehitkillgame.com. And you can see what the cards look like. And it’s good. It’s fun.

And there’s also kind of a meta game happening on that site, so you can unlock additional cards. As we are recording this on a Thursday, no one has actually unlocked all the cards, so perhaps when this episode comes out on Tuesday someone unlocks it all on that day, I will know it just because of Scriptnotes and I will tweet my congratulations to you.

So, if you want to see this new game we’re about to launch, it’s called One Hit Kill and you can find it at onehitkillgame.com.

But now it’s time for the real One Cool Things. Craig, what is your One Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing is called Rocketbook. This was tweeted to me by one of our listeners. It’s an Indiegogo campaign, so forgive me.

**John:** Ha-ha. I can’t forgive you for this, Craig.

**Craig:** I kind of can’t forgive myself. I can’t.

**John:** But tell us about it.

**Craig:** Well, it’s a sort of fascinating little product here. And their goal was $20,000. They have currently raised $669,000, so they’re doing pretty well. It looks like a standard school spiral notebook kind of deal. But it’s a bit more than that.

So, you take notes in it, and there are multiple pages. I think their typical one is like 50 sheets. And you take notes in class or wherever and then at the bottom of the page there are a bunch of icons. One of them is for Dropbox. One is for Evernote. One is for Google Drive. You know, stuff like that. And you can check which one of those you want your notes to go to. And then the idea is when you’re done, you use their app to take a picture of the double fold, you know, so you open up two pages at a time. Take a picture of those two pages at a time. It will read the pages, scan them, I think it OCRs them. It also sees which of the things you’ve checked off at the bottom. Sends the things to the various spots you want them to go.

And then in perhaps the niftiest little bit of all, if you use these particular kinds of pens called Friction pens by Pilot, you can erase the pages by microwaving the notebook. [laughs] I’ve stunned you, haven’t I?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I’ve just put me you into like a —

**John:** You have not stunned me at all. You have stunned me in many ways, but I want you to finish. So, talk me through the pros and cons of this product.

**Craig:** Well, I think the number one pro is microwave! I’m microwaving my notebook. I love the fact that there are multiple selectable paths to upload things. So, I’m taking notes on one page because I know I want them to go into a Dropbox thing, but on this page I’m doing stuff on a project that I’m sharing with other people, so I put it in a shared box at Google Drive. That’s really cool.

The fact that I can erase it that easily, so I don’t have to use pencil, I use pen, and it erases that easily is brilliant.

The only con as far as I’m concerned is that you have to actually take pictures of the pages which is kind of a pain in the butt. If you do this regularly, it’s very manageable. If you have six weeks of notes, which is probably not advisable, then it would become a huge bummer.

But, you know, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be that expensive. $65 gets you two of the Rocketbooks and a six-pack of the Friction pens. That’s pretty reasonable for a product like this. You know, in my mind I was thinking would this help my son because a lot of times the pages come out, they fall out of the binder, they go bye-bye in his room. So, I thought it was pretty cool. What do you think?

**John:** Great. So, I was fascinated by your choice of this because first off it’s Indiegogo, so it’s essentially Kickstarter. You’re recommending a Kickstarter project.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** That’s fascinating. Second off, episode 100 of our show, we’re approaching 200, episode 100, what was my One Cool Thing? It was the Friction pens. And we were up on the stage in front of a live audience and you and Rawson made fun of me for the Friction pens.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, of course. The pens alone. Who cares?

**John:** Who cares? So these are the erasable pens. And so the reason why they’re erasable is it’s actually heat friction that erases them. So, yes, is it a clever idea to microwave the notebook to get rid of them, yes. But any notebook you microwave with a Friction pen on it will erase. So, that’s essentially nothing magical about the notebook.

**Craig:** I’m standing by Rawson and myself that you need both to be exciting.

**John:** So the microwave — I applaud them for using the microwave as a marketing hook.

**Craig:** Very clever.

**John:** I do salute them for that. So, this app that you point the camera at and it scans, that was another one of my One Cool Things. That was Scannable App from Evernote which does the same thing.

**Craig:** Oh really? Huh?

**John:** So, yes, that was a previous One Cool Thing, so we’ll have links to both of those there. It is a free app for Evernote that does the same situation. So, what is genuinely clever about what they seem to be doing is that you have multiple paths, so you can send it to Dropbox, whatever. So, I applaud them for that. But the $65, whatever that pledge tier is, any piece of people will work as well as the notebook. And the Friction pens you can get at Office Depot.

So, they’re making a lot of money on that. So, what you really essentially are paying for I think is the app, which has no small amount of engineering, so I applaud them for that, but I do find it fascinating that other previously dismissed things of mine packaged together are Craig’s One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** Well, I guess, you know what? You’re jealous. [laughs] That’s the deal. You’re just jealous.

**John:** That’s what it is. I’m deeply, deeply jealous.

**Craig:** All I can say is this. When you said it, nobody cared. When these guys said it, they got $670,000. There’s some magic in their pudding, man. They got a flavor in there. It’s like a special flavor. I don’t know.

**John:** I’m going to say that adding microwave to One Hit Kill will clearly be the thing that would push it over the top.

**Craig:** You could try. I’m just saying.

**John:** I should try.

**Craig:** You should try.

**John:** My One Cool Thing this week is the new trackpad on the 12-inch MacBook and on the 13-inch MacBook Pro. So, what is remarkable about the trackpad now is that it seems completely unremarkable. Like you click on it, it’s like, oh, it’s fine. Until you find out how it’s actually working. Have you seen how they actually do the trackpad now?

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not moving at all. It’s just using this haptic thing so that it seems like it’s clicking. But it’s not clicking.

**John:** Yeah. It’s not clicking. It’s all an illusion. So, if you go into an Apple store and you go to one of their computers, if you were to turn it off, go to shut down and actually turn the power off, and you tapped on where the trackpad is, like it doesn’t click at all. But the minute you turn it on, it clicks. And it’s all an illusion. And so essentially there’s a little motor underneath it that is creating the vibration that really makes your finger think that it is clicking.

And so because it is all an illusion, it can also create the illusion that if you push harder on it, it has a second level of depth and it clicks down deeper. And it is remarkable how well it fools your finger into thinking that it’s done something that it has not done at all. So, I would just encourage you to try it out next time you’re at the Apple store because the first time I was at the Apple store and I was trying one I was like, oh, this must not be the new one because this doesn’t feel any different. But it was completely different.

**Craig:** I’m waiting on that one just because I’m looking for them to release a new cinema display that works with their USB 3.0 port. How are you — like for instance, right now, you have to plug in your microphone and you also have to plug in power. It wouldn’t work with this?

**John:** It really wouldn’t work with this. And so I was debating getting the 12-inch. I tried typing on it. I hated it. And people I know who have used it, they’ve said like, oh no, the typing is fine when you get used to it, but no one loves the keyboard on it. Or very few people love the keyboard.

So, my travel computer was an 11-inch MacBook Air. And it was just too small. The hard drive was too small. The screen was too small. And I was making do and I decided to stop making due. So, I ended up buying the 13-inch MacBook Pro and it’s great.

**Craig:** That’s what I use.

**John:** I’m happy with it. It’s heavier, but it’s fine. And the screen is delightful. And I got the new trackpad, so I’m delighted.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s cool. All right. Awesome. That was a good show. Good show.

**John:** Good show. Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did the outro this week.

If you have a question for me or for Craig, you can write to us on Twitter. I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

Longer questions like the ones we answered this week, you should write into ask@johnaugust.com.

At johnaugust.com you will find the show notes for this episode and every episode. You will also find transcripts for every episode. So, thanks Stuart for getting those all edited because that is a huge part of his job every Thursday is getting those transcripts up.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If you are listening to this on the website, you should also go over to iTunes and subscribe, because that helps people find out about our podcast and sign up themselves. You should also leave us a comment, because we love comments, because we’re human being. You can also leave notes on Facebook for us or on Twitter. Specifically on Facebook we’d love to know your thoughts about, A, do you have a great venue for hosting our 200th episode where we can livestream it; should we do more USB drives; which are the best episodes we’ve ever done? Facebook can be a great place to tell us about that, or you can email us.

You can also find all of the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. Some of my favorite episodes that you will find there are the bonus episodes, the ones that never got released to the main feed, especially like the Dirty Episode with Rebel Wilson.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Her story about the beret will make you never want to actually look at a beret the same way again.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was gorgeous.

**John:** It was gorgeously filthy.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, that was a fun one. So, if you’re a new subscriber to the premium feed and you haven’t listened to the Dirty show, maybe listen to the Dirty show.

Final plug for One Hit Kill. It’s at onehitkillgame.com if you want to see the artwork for that. And we will be back with you next week. Craig, have a good week.

**Craig:** You too, John.

**John:** See ya.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, 195: Writing for Hollywood without living there](http://johnaugust.com/2015/writing-for-hollywood-without-living-there)
* [Email us](mailto:ask@johnaugust.com) or [leave us a Facebook comment](https://www.facebook.com/scriptnotes) and let us know your favorite episodes
* [John’s 2004 blog post on producer credits](http://johnaugust.com/2004/producer-credits-and-what-they-mean) and [screenwriting.io on the television writer/producer pecking order](http://screenwriting.io/what-is-the-television-writerproducer-pecking-order/)
* [Superman vs. Batman? DC’s Real Battle Is How to Create Its Superhero Universe](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/superman-batman-dcs-real-battle-792190) by Kim Masters
* [See artwork from our new game, One Hit Kill, and play our mini-game now](http://www.onehitkillgame.com/)
* [Rocketbook: Cloud-Integrated Microwavable Notebook](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/rocketbook-cloud-integrated-microwavable-notebook) on Indiegogo
* [Scriptnotes, the 100th Episode](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-100th-episode)
* [All our past One Cool Things](http://johnaugust.com/onecoolthings)
* [The MacBook’s new trackpad will change the way you click](http://www.macworld.com/article/2895758/the-macbooks-new-trackpad-will-change-the-way-you-click.html) on Macworld
* [Scriptnotes, Bonus: The Dirty Show with Rebel Wilson and Dan Savage](http://scriptnotes.net/the-dirty-show-with-rebel-wilson-and-dan-savage)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2015/poking-the-bear).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 194 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, on the last episode we promised that this would be a really big show this week. And we will not fulfill that promise.

**Craig:** No. Well, it is a big show because we have a lot to talk about and it’s all good stuff, but the big thing that we were really excited about we’re kind of pushing down and episode or two. Look, here’s the best news of all: I think people are going to listen to this episode. They’re going to go, whoa, you mean that’s a B for these guys? That’s an A plus for everybody else.

**John:** Absolutely. We’re going to raise the bar even higher for that episode that we pitched and promised but didn’t actually deliver this week.

**Craig:** Yeah. We will.

**John:** Yeah, we will, eventually. Last week on the show I told you about a special screening of Ghost and Jacob’s Ladder that’s happening this week and it’s happening this Saturday, the 25th, at 5pm. If you are a WGA member you can RSVP for it. And if you do, you will get to see me speak with Bruce Joel Rubin, the writer of both of those movies, at a Q&A between those two films. So, if you want to come see that and you’re a WGA member, there is a special link in the show notes you can follow for that and RSVP.

There’s a pretty good chance that they may open up some seats for everybody else who is not a WGA member, so if you follow me on Twitter, @johnaugust, I will let you know if it becomes available for everybody else. And that’s it for the news.

**Craig:** Nice viewing experience there at the Writers Guild Theater. And Ghost and Jacob’s Ladder, just not only two good movies, but just entertaining movies.

**John:** Absolutely. We didn’t do a special episode about Jacob’s Ladder, but we could do one.

**Craig:** We could.

**John:** And, of course, we have the episode about Ghost. You can go back to and listen if you want to get up to speed with your Ghost experience.

**Craig:** Word.

**John:** Craig, did you see in the news that the Writers Guild East added some new members?

**Craig:** I did. They went and organized, that’s our union term for bringing people in an employment situation under the fold of the union and under the fold of the union agreement. They organized writers at Gawker, the website notable for gawkery. Whatever they do over there.

**John:** Or for commenting on things in culture, I guess.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re kind of a gossip — they’re a gossip website. I mean, let’s face it.

**John:** Gossipy, yeah.

**Craig:** Sort of a junkie gossip website. But that’s okay. Sometimes you’re in a junkie gossip mood.

**John:** Totally.

**Craig:** And occasionally Gawker — in that Internet way they defy their own brand. Sometimes they do remarkable stuff actually. So, they kind of —

**John:** Totally.

**Craig:** They hit extremes of god, and wow, very cool, as do we all. What’s interesting about this is that this is not audio visual and I think this may be the first time that anyone who does not do an audio visual job has been organized into the guild. I could be wrong, but I think this may be it.

**John:** So let’s talk about this, because we think of the Writers Guild representing film and TV writers and sort of people who make fiction stuff for screens is what I sort of think about. But we do have some journalists who are part of the Writers Guild. There’s a few little bits of things that are not what we think about as being Hollywood in the Writers Guild. And this is a new direction.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, the Writers Guild does represent some writers for news broadcasts in Los Angeles and back east, mostly back east. Some radio news as well. But it’s always been audio/visual. And whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

This is new. Now, on the one hand, you know, I’m fine. Look, the East — the East is the East. One day I’ll do a whole thing about the East and how they drive me crazy. But there’s nothing to complain about here. I mean, I think anybody that works a writing job that can be afforded union protections, salary, minimums, credit protections, pension and health, those are good things. I hope they get all of those things. And since they are working as work-for-hire, it makes sense.

Is there a downside? No. It’s just that there’s no larger upside for the union. You know, when the union talks about organizing, the idea ultimately is that you should be organizing, there are two basic strategies. One strategy is organize massive quantities of workers so that you can use your total strength as leverage for individual contract negotiations. Like, SCIU.

**John:** Yeah, that service workers union is incredibly powerful and huge.

**Craig:** Enormous. And they have — if you said well what’s a service worker? Anybody from a janitor to a nurse. I mean, they’ve got — it’s just an enormous range of types of employees and types of work situations with god knows how many contracts. I mean, I can’t even imagine how many contracts they negotiate on a rolling basis.

The Writers Guild has always been the other kind which is to organize a specialized group of people who do something rare and because you essentially control the rare employees that people want, you have leverage to bargain on their behalf. And that’s SAG essential, the SAG/AFTRA version, definitely the DGA version, definitely the Writers Guild version.

The East seems to be kind of dabbling with this other version, which is fine. I don’t think they’ll ever accrue massive quantities in such a way that it would kind of sway industries, but it’s good for those writers. So, I guess the winners are those writers.

**John:** I would hope so. I definitely see what you’re saying though in terms of there’s the model of going really big and sort of getting as many people into the fold as possible, but you risk losing focus. And in the times where I’ve had conversations with Writers Guild members who are working in TV journalism, it is just such a different world that I worry sometimes that we’re not able to adequately represent their special needs and concerns. You know, on a daily basis they’re not facing the same kinds of things we’re facing.

So, the useful thing about having a guild be so focused on one specific thing is we can keep our eye on that ball and nothing gets sort of dropped. and I worry that in trying to get more people involved with the guild, you’re going to lose that kind of focus.

**Craig:** You’re right to be worried about that. The way that the West and East break things out, as you know, because you’re on the negotiating committee frequently, the West takes negotiation point on the big contract for film and television writers — the film and television writers making primetime TV shows, writing movies, and so on and so forth. Cable shows, too.

The East takes point on news contract negotiations primarily. They do have a culture of this on their end of things. It’s preferable, if you’re choice is I work at Gawker and my choice is no union or the Writers Guild East, no question. The Writers Guild East will — should be at least better for you.

But what would be better still would be joining a union that actually represents a lot of shops like Gawker. And that is not the WGAe. Nor, will it ever be.

**John:** Yeah. Being naïve, I don’t know that there is any union organization that really is representing these kinds of writers right now. And I think there’s a case to be made for — right now it’s Gawker, but there’s certainly companies that are making things that are more like what we normally do. So you look at BuzzFeed with the video stuff they’re doing. You look at Maker Studios or any of these places that are doing video design for the Internet, some of those places are in this murky middle where it’s very much more like our TV kind of model.

And when we do the big negotiations for the big contract, whenever we’re dealing with our major studio partners, the web stuff that they’re doing, that’s always a concern for sort of we want to be covered when we’re doing that. But these little indie shops, maybe you start covering more of those writers and getting them the pension, health, welfare, everything else they should have.

**Craig:** Yeah. The tricky part is you would probably need to create a separate contract. So, here in this case, they don’t even have a contract. What they’ve gotten essentially is approval from those writers to represent them. And now they’re going to negotiate a contract with the company. By the way, that may not work. I mean, that’s the other thing. But hopefully it does. I would be surprised if it didn’t.

For us on our end, when you look at something like BuzzFeed, it is a non-union shop. It’s a massive non-union shop. Most of this stuff out there now is non-union. Everybody’s been trained to work non-union. So, it’s harder and harder to organize those places. If we do organize them, we will need to create a new contract.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And what the Writers Guild is particularly good at is enforcing one contract that blankets one industry. What the Internet is really good at is defying that. So, you can’t find a contract that both BuzzFeed and Gawker and HuffPo, and some other major provider, that they’re all going to agree to the way that Fox, Sony… — Frankly, the situation that we have almost can’t ever happen again.

The situation we have with the studios, which is why I’m always keen to preserve it, I think, for as long as it’s preservable. But, you know, for the Gawker writers, I think this is a good thing. I hope it’s a good thing. And I hope that the Writers Guild East does a good job on their behalf.

**John:** Sounds good. So, for the bulk of our podcast today, we are going to be talking some follow up about the previous episode and the credits situation. So, we did a long podcast last week about how credit is determined for writing feature films. And so we had a bunch of questions from listeners who wanted to know more stuff, or had specific situations, so we’ll try to address those questions and concerns. We’re going to talk about Writer X, who is a mysterious figure who showed up on the scene to annoy Craig mostly.

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s true.

**John:** And we’ll talk about sort of the role of anonymity and sort of authority in that space. We’re going to look at this sort of weird email we got from somebody about this iFilm group and what appears to be sort of a really shady situation. And we don’t know anything too specific about his one company, but sort of general patterns to watch out for if someone says they are interested in your script. Well, let’s make sure they really are a real person. And, finally, we’re going to take a look at the GLAAD inclusion report, which is basically the gay and lesbian group that looks at media portrayals of gays, lesbians, and transgender people in movies and how they felt we did this year, or this past year in 2014, and how we could do better. So, we’ve got plenty of show this week.

**Craig:** So much show. Let’s dive in.

**John:** All right. So, let’s start with follow up on our credits episode. So, we’ll start with a really simple one. Somebody on Twitter wrote me to ask, “Being an arbiter seems like a lot of work. Do arbiters get paid?”

**Craig:** Yes. We get paid $400,000 per arbitration. [laughs]

**John:** Wouldn’t that be so wonderful?

**Craig:** It would be so wonderful.

**John:** Everyone would line up to do it.

**Craig:** I know. No, in fact, we get zero dollars.

**John:** Yes, we get zero dollars. So that’s another reason why it’s a huge commitment, because that’s money you’re not making doing your writing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** There has been discussion about should we have professional paid arbiters, and there’s logic for that and logic against that, and we won’t get into it, but it’s a source of great controversy.

**Craig:** Yeah, we’re basically — it’s the jury system. Essentially you’re a citizen of the United States, that comes with a bunch of benefits. One of the costs is you got to show up every now and then and do your part.

**John:** But jurors do get paid. Not much.

**Craig:** Well, in that case it’s not at all like the jury system. Scratch that. It’s so much worse. Not like the jury system was great anyway.

**John:** It’s the worst thing ever. And also like being a juror is not that much work. It’s tedious, but it’s not that much work. Being an arbiter is a lot of hard work. There’s a lot of reading involved and thinking.

**Craig:** I’ve clearly never been a juror.

Joe from — I just like saying Rancho Cucamonga — Rancho Cucamonga writes, “A script I co-wrote is tentatively going into production this summer and I fear the issue of credit is going to be a problem. This is a non-union, privately-funded indie movie, so I know I’m completely at the mercy of how the co-writer, who is also the movie’s director and executive producer, will assign credit. But I’m curious to know where I would stand if I were in the guild.” Good use of subjunctive.

“The script originated with the co-writer/director/executive producer as a simple log line and an extremely vague outline, about a dozen general plot points with virtually no details to any of them. I took it from there and fleshed out a more detailed outline. Then I came up with character names, their jobs, the settings, the subplots, all the supporting characters, and changed the ending. We worked off of that outline and we’re each happily sharing screenplay credit, but he made it pretty clear to me that he doesn’t think I should share story credit.

“He came up with the original idea and the structure, but I really came up with everything else. Should I share credit or is he right to claim that for himself?”

**John:** So, first, Joe, congratulations on your movie hopefully going into production. I hope it turns out really, really well. Your situation is sort of why you would love to have a Writers Guild contract for your movie, so that these things could be determined correctly and fairly. You have very little leverage in this situation, so you’re going to probably take the credit that you receive, which will be the shared screenplay credit and that’s how it’s going to be. And unfortunately that’s how it is for most of the film producing world.

Most of the film producing world doesn’t have the equivalent of our Writers Guild to figure out who the credited writer should be. And it is that sort of horse trading kind of nonsense that you’re experiencing right now. Craig, do you have any advice for Joe?

**Craig:** Well, no, because you’re right, and he’s acknowledging there’s really nothing he can do. I guess his question is “but is this right?” And, frankly, unless we read the material, we have no way of telling you if it’s right or not. I mean, what you’re saying is that you contributed to story. That in and of itself does not automatically qualify you for story credit. You would need to show per the Writers Guild arbitration a significant contribution to story.

And that, of course, is a term of art and interpretation.

**John:** So, let’s pretend that we are two of the three arbiters who receive this. Let’s pretend it goes to WGA arbitration. The kinds of things we’d be looking at when we’re determining story credit is we would be looking at written material. So, probably first piece of written material we’d get was this original sort of beat — whatever this co-writer/director came up with. And if it really is as vague as he says, and it’s 12 bullet points and a vague sort of premise of things.

You would look at this thing and if there really were no character names and there were no sort of details about who these people were and what was going on and sort of how the story progressed, maybe Joe could make a good case for sharing story credit. What would you be looking for for figuring out story credit?

**Craig:** Well, right off the bat he says he has a fleshed out outline that he did. So, now he has an outline. And outlines are by definition story material. They do not contribute to screenplay. They contribute solely to story. Sometimes I think to myself one of the ways you can determine what’s what is could this go in an outline, or would it need to be part of a screenplay. The fact that he invented a bunch of characters and a bunch of subplots, the fact that he changed the narrative, the basic narrative of the ending, these are all things that do contribute significantly to story.

From what he’s describing, if I believe everything he says, then of course, yes, he should share story credit. If he’s a little delusional, and it happens to the best of us, maybe not. But, given the situation that he’s in, I think there’s really no purpose in fighting over it. There are no residuals. It is at this point it’s essentially a question of vanity and fairness. Right? It’s both things.

Well, let’s discard vanity and let’s unfortunately just acknowledge that this is what happens. When you take the money to write a non-union project, you are in part taking money to absorb a certain systemic unfairness and this may be one of those.

**John:** So, our friend Howard Rodman would be upset with us if we didn’t mention the fact that there is an indie contract for the WGA. And in the future, if in this kind of scenario, you might look into whether that indie contract would be useful for you in the situation.

I cannot recall the details, whether arbitration is a thing you get with that indie contract or not, but it does give you certain protections down the road. It does give you the ability to have a little bit more control over your work than you might otherwise have. So, it would be something for a writer like Joe to look at in the future.

**Craig:** All right. What’s next?

**John:** Will Eisner’s Ghost writes, “The opening title sequence for Netflix’s Daredevil reads ‘Created by Drew Goddard.’ It seems strange for Goddard to take this credit when he’s simply adapting preexisting characters and preexisting plots. I’ve noticed very little in terms of actual content creation, but direct plot and character adaptation.

“Frank Darabont took a ‘Developed by’ credit when he put together The Walking Dead. And Dexter’s opening credits are ‘Developed for television by James Manos, Jr.,’ then ‘Based on the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.’ My question is that if enough of the creation of the plot and characters was done for Marvel comics as a work-for-hire, and then directly adapted by Netflix, might these comic book writers protest the WGA credits for Daredevil TV show? Even if they are not WGA writers and the work was done for another medium?”

Craig, what’s your take on this kind of credit situation?

**Craig:** Well, to be fair, I consider myself a feature film credits expert. I do not know much about television credits, so I can’t tell you exactly what the rules are that govern the created by credit versus the developed by credit, and how they do source material credits. What I can tell you is that the comic book writers of Daredevil have absolutely no standing to protest any WGA credits. They are not WGA members. They did not contribute material under a WGA contract to this television show.

The copyright for Daredevil is owned by Marvel. Marvel obviously made an agreement with Netflix. That agreement included a licensing of the material. And I presume a provision that the source material be acknowledged. But beyond that, no, the comic book writers unfortunately have no say. Just as, by the way, you and I have no say if they take — you know, we have some separated rights as part of our deal, which comic book writers don’t. But generally speaking when we write a movie for a studio, they get to do with it whatever they want, and we don’t really have much of a say at all.

**John:** Yeah. So, it is important, that distinction that all the rights to Daredevil, that is a copyright controlled by Marvel. And so when those writers who were writing stuff for Daredevil, everything they did, 100 percent of that gets owned by Marvel. And so when it comes time to make it into a TV show, that whole bundle of rights, it’s as if the author is Marvel, not that the author is the individual writers underneath that. And so Marvel gets to say what the source material is.

In terms of whether it should be created by or developed by, there are specific rules in the WGA contract about what that language is supposed to be, but it’s also a negotiated thing as well. And I’ve seen developed by on certain properties, and created by on other properties. And I cannot honestly tell you why some are one thing, and some are another thing.

I remember the old Lois & Clark TV show was the first time I saw the Developed by credit, but there’s been other cases where a similar kind of situation would have a Created by credit. So, I don’t know the specifics of Drew Goddard’s case.

**Craig:** All right. Well we did as best as we could with that, Will Eisner’s Ghost. We had something here from Jake. He says, “I began working on a project several years ago with a friend of mine. We did not get very far in the writing stage, just had a few of the basic plot points worked out, and some character notes. Since then, that friend and I had some problems and do not speak anymore.” Ooh, this is getting good.

**John:** I actually cut out one sentence here.

**Craig:** Oh really?

**John:** I cut out one sentence that talked about sort of like how the friend was really lazy.

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, I guess it’s back in, isn’t it? Cause the problem was laziness. Jake continues, “Recently, I’ve picked that project we were working on back up. I’ve made great progress.” Boy, do we get this all the time. “I’ve made great progress and I am currently past the outline and now actually on a first draft. I’m worried, though, that if this script gets produced he will have problems with not being involved anymore. I’m willing to negotiate some credit, I suppose, but don’t really know what those credits should be. Neither of us are WGA members yet, so this question isn’t so much about arbitration yet as it is about ethics. So, what do you think?”

Well, John, what do you think?

**John:** I think this is an incredibly common situation. And you are best served by having the conversation now if possible. You might be even better served by writing something else, because it could just be a really uncomfortable thing down the road.

I think it would be amazing if Jake actually ended up being the co-writer and director from the previous — the Joe from Rancho Cucamonga example. At one time I want to have like both sides of this conversation of the same thing.

**Craig:** That would be nice.

**John:** Like this guy says he should get story credit and he’s completely insane. This happens a lot where you’re sort of sitting around and you’re spitballing something and you’re like, yeah, let’s write this together, and then you kind of start, and you kind of stop.

I can think of at least a dozen examples of this happening among my friends. And in every circumstance the best situation would be to have the conversation right at the very start about how you’re going to do it and just write up an agreement between the two of you. No one ever does that, and so the next best solution I think would be to have the conversation now. The third best solution is to write something else or write something so different that it’s not recognizably the same idea. Craig, what’s your thought?

**Craig:** Well, I think that Jake is correct that it is about ethics, but what he’s leaving out is that it’s also about the law. Because he did in fact work on material with somebody else. They co-authored stuff. He may say that it’s some basic plot points and some character notes, but it’s stuff. That person owns the share of copyright on that stuff.

What Jake is doing now is creating a derivative work based on somebody else’s stuff. That is no bueno. If you go and you sell it, then what’s going to happen is your friend that you don’t talk with is going to get a lawyer and the lawyer is going to say, no, you actually can’t sell anything without us and we could scotch the whole thing, or hold you up for a bunch of money. Either way, you’ve wandered down a fairly treacherous path here, Jake.

And John is absolutely right. You must talk to him now and you must set an agreement now. And he should be included in some compensatory manner if you do sell it. But he also needs to kind of waive other interests in it. In other words, you want to be free and clear.

**John:** You do. And I’ve been in other situations where writing teams have broken up and what they’ll do is they’ll just sort of pick the projects and like each of them gets one of the two projects, or they’ll divide everything in half so that they don’t get weirdly entangled this way. Like the things that they were thinking about writing but they never really got started, they’ll make a list and actually divide those things up just to make things clear and safe and not crazy.

Since this was apparently the only thing you worked on with this person, you don’t have that ability to say like, hey, why don’t you take this idea and let me take this idea, and we’ll all call it even and be happy. You probably don’t have that, so you have that conversation and you say, hey look, do you remember that thing we were talking about writing? I think I have some really good ideas for it and I want to be able to do that. Are you cool with that? And if you are cool with that, can we just write something down agreeing on that? And the minute you say write something down, your friend’s barriers will go up. But, maybe you get through it.

**Craig:** Well I think then if I were Jake’s attorney I would say, listen, what we’re going for here is to get him to release all claims on this material. In order to release all claims on the material and to assign full and complete copyright to you, he’s going to need something in return, otherwise he’s a goof. So, what you promise in return is some percentage of any money that you make off of the project. And you can limit it in various ways, up to a certain amount, or so on and so forth, but that’s what a negotiation is.

Essentially what we’re talking about, Jake, is buying him out. And you don’t have to buy him out with money upfront. You can buy him out with a promise of some piece of money should you get anything. But you really can’t go forward without handling this now, because you are doing something that is both ethically wrong and legally untenable.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t know that he’s doing anything ethically wrong yet. I mean, I think thinking through and figuring out what something could be is a natural function of a writer. It’s trying to sell it or trying to represent it as your own would be ethically wrong.

**Craig:** Well yeah. Precisely. I mean, I guess that that’s — I’m presuming. Yeah, if he writes it and puts in a drawer, sure, no harm/no foul.

**John:** Danny writes, “I have a question regarding where ghostwriting fits within the credits system. Obviously the term implies that no credit will be given, but who makes that decision? Is the WGA cool with that practice? And I guess more broadly, how prevalent is ghostwriting within the industry?”

**Craig:** Well, that’s an interesting question. There isn’t a lot of ghostwriting the way we think of it in terms of novels and so forth where Pete Rose writes a book about playing for the Reds, but we know that he didn’t write it. [laughs] Some guy wrote it and took a bunch of money and just let Pete Rose say I wrote it.

Far more common in our industry is a bunch of people openly work on something and then one of them is assigned credit. There are times when individuals don’t want credit. I’ve worked on things where part of the deal was I don’t want credit for this. I’m not doing it for credit, it’s not the kind of movie that I think I should have my name on, or I deserve to have my name on. Or, I’ve done a job where I knew the people who I was rewriting briefly and I frankly just didn’t want to get into a thing with them, because I like them. So, in those cases you can say as a writer I’m requesting that I don’t receive credit, and the Writers Guild and the arbiters tend to honor this, unless it seems extraordinarily fishy, no problem.

There are pseudonyms where you can write something under a name that isn’t your own. Those are subject to some rules. For starters, you have the right to use a pseudonym if you make under I think it’s $250,000 for the project. If you make over that amount, you don’t have the right to use one. You have to ask. You have to ask the studio for permission. And we can understand why that exists, because sometimes they want to say “From the writer of so-and-so,” or they want to say award season voters, look, we got this guy to write this thing.

There are times, I have heard of situations where writers are paid to write something and then they do what we call farm it out. They turn around, they hand the job to somebody else who truly works in the ghostwriting way, writes the material. Then the writer who has been hired kind of does it a once over, or blesses it, and then sends it in as his or her own work.

I’ve heard of this. I’ve never actually seen it happen. There’s no concrete examples I’ve ever been shown of it happening. Personally, I find that notion to be odious, to the extreme. But I guess that would be the breadth of ghostwriting in our business.

**John:** Yeah, I was going to initially sort of dismiss this question altogether saying like ghostwriting doesn’t really exist. And it’s not a term you actually hear. Like ghostwriting is something you think about with books. It’s not a thing you think about with movies, partly because we have a whole credit system and there’s a reason why people are credited as writers.

But that last scenario you described is a real thing and whenever you hear about it happening you’re like, whoa, that’s crazy. And I actually haven’t heard about it for quite some time. But there was sort of a legend of an A-list screenwriter who apparently did have a team of people who wrote with him or all together and they would do a first pass and he would clean it up. And it always felt really, really weird and gross and fishy.

**Craig:** Well, it’s not a secret. It’s Ron Bass and he talked about it at length. Ron was a lawyer prior to becoming a screenwriter. And when he became screenwriter, he hired a lot of people as essentially interns, writing assistants, writing — I don’t know what you’d call them. And he would give them assignments and he would give them assignments on things that he was writing, but the idea being and now I’ll collect it and now I will run it through my typewriter and so when it comes out it’s my work.

And he was open about it and I think that in part was why it wasn’t unethical. Nobody that paid Ron Bass money didn’t know that this was part of how he worked. And for the time that he was working constantly in the business, people appreciated the work, so everything was fine.

It’s — I’ve heard of a couple of people though that do this quietly. And the idea is, okay, as writers we know it’s a little bit of feast or famine. Sometimes it’s frustrating when you hit one of those feast patches and you take a job and then somebody calls you up five days later and says I’ll give you twice as much for this. And you think, oh well, I would sort of — I could see myself writing that, but I can’t because I’m writing this. Oh, I know, I’ll take the money, [laughs], and I’ll turn around and I’ll pay some tiny pittance of it to desperate writers who want a shot. And they’ll understand it’s a ghostwriting situation. And then I’ll get all that money.

Well, great, except boo. That’s not cool. I mean, what we have is our name. We are representing that this is our work. And, frankly, if you do that, you’re going to sink your own ship pretty quickly.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, it’s your reputation.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a different thing than I know writers who are sort of in that feast period who will be approached with something and say like I cannot do it, but I will oversee another writer doing something, and where they’re not coming in as — or basically they’ll team up with somebody to do it, like somebody who has a little bit more time on their plate. That I totally get. But what you’re describing, that sort of shady like someone else is actually doing it feels not only kind of unethical, but is actually probably in violation of the contract that they signed.

**Craig:** Oh, clearly.

**John:** Because the contract that they signed with whatever studio said that you will actually do this work. And for them to farm it out to somebody else is not going to be kosher.

**Craig:** 100 percent. It is a violation of your contract, both your legal contract, and your personal contract that you are going to do the work. When writers are supervising other writers, those writers are hired as the writers. They are participating writers. They are the ones who are up for credit. They’re acknowledged. Everything is above board. Essentially the screenwriter acts like a producer in that circumstance and that’s absolutely fine.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** All right. We got one more here. Stephen Lancellotti writes, “I just listened to the credits podcast a week after IFC Midnight released a poster for my movie, The Harvest. I’m now curious, is my name supposed to be on the poster in the same font size as the director? Probably won’t make a stink about it, but just wanted to know for the future.” And we’ll include a link to the poster which makes a very big deal of — it says The Harvest, and then underneath a Film by John McNaughton. And then tiny type for everybody else.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If this is a Writers Guild movie, I don’t think that’s okay.

**John:** I don’t think it’s okay either. I think if you’re crediting the director in that larger type size, I think you have to credit the writer in the same size type. I think it’s a problem.

**Craig:** I think you do. I think you do. So, but the rules are arcane. There are all sorts of little twisty bitsies. You know, maybe if it’s a promotional thing, or if it’s prior to credits being fixed, or maybe if it’s home video as opposed — I don’t know all the ins and outs. But —

**John:** That’s what I was thinking, too. I think there might be a special case for home video versus theatrical.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But I think Stephen has a valid point. But he also has a movie, so congratulations on your movie existing in the world.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure. You know, you can call up the guild and just ask them the question and they’ll walk you through it. I mean, I’ll tell you, if it wasn’t a guild gig, then all bets are off. They can do whatever they want.

**John:** Yeah. But you know, Craig, someone who might have the answer to this question because this person knows a lot about sort of how writing works is, well, I say it’s a he but it could be a woman. Because it’s Writer X. Writer X is a brand new person who has just shown up on the scene thanks to a blog post on the Final Draft website.

And this got tweeted at us on Thursday or Friday, and it’s just delightful.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** So, I’m going to read just a little bit of it because we’ll read the sort of preamble and then we can get into a discussion about what Writer X is saying. So, this is me as Writer X. Okay?

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** “Hi, I’m Writer X. I’m a working screenwriter in Hollywood. Within the past five years I’ve been represented by two of the top talent agencies in town. I broke into the business with a spec. It got on the Black List and eventually became one of those elusive million dollar spec sales. Afterwards, I sold another spec, but that one only for half a million.”

**Craig:** Aw.

**John:** “Still, it’s not a bad quote for someone just starting out. In addition to my spec sales, I’ve made successful pitches to two major studios. One of those pitches I did with an A-list director. We pitched it to the president of Universal Pictures. I’ve also nabbed several writing assignments with pretty much all the major studios and a number of A-list production companies. And I sold two TV pilots to two different networks.

“A-list actors and directors have been attached to my work. I’m collaborated with them.” It really does say I’m collaborated with them.

**Craig:** And I’m collaborated with them. [laughs] Wow.

**John:** “I’ve been in the homes of the rich and famous and seen some pretty crazy stuff. Guess what I was doing before I became a professional screenwriter? I was a dishwasher.”

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Craig, I mean, I think we should maybe just stop doing the podcast because we’ve just been knocked off our perch.

**Craig:** We’ve been knocked off our perch. I mean, this person, what a life they lead. [laughs] It just sounds so awesome. I mean, they’re —

**John:** It does sound awesome.

**Craig:** They are collaborated with them. I love that “I’ve been in the homes of the rich and famous and seen some pretty crazy stuff.” This is so exciting. Who put this forth? Oh, Final Draft. Okay.

So, how did this get received on Twitter, John? [laughs]

**John:** I think people loved it. I think among all the screenwriters I talked with, everyone loved every bit of this.

**Craig:** Yeah. The —

**John:** But maybe for the wrong reason.

**Craig:** Right. There was I think a 100 percent consistent reaction of absolute disgust for so many reasons. I mean, to start with, the boasting tone of this is kind of excruciating. There is this kind of writing that people do when they’re talking to people who want to break into something where they really casually rattle off this long list of wonderful things that have happened to them, just incredible things, and then they end up by saying, “And by the way, I was just like you.” Ooh, good sales pitch.

**John:** Yeah, I mean, if we could have gotten Tom Cruise and his Magnolia character to do this introduction, that would have been fantastic. Because you can sort of see him with a little mic and just like talking a little bit hyper and energized and the boom, like I was a dishwasher. I was just like you.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s pretty obnoxious. Well, it’s BS.

So, the first question is: is this person real? Or is this the marketing department? I honestly hope it’s just the marketing department inventing someone as a come on sales pitch because if it’s a real person, I’m embarrassed for that person. I’m embarrassed for them. And, frankly, I’m not angry at them because if they’re real, I feel like they’ve been hornswoggled and bamboozled. I blame Final Draft, because they must be getting compensated for this.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t understand the angle from anyone’s point of view.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And I was looking at this from Final Draft’s point of view, and like well is this all a marketing department thing? But if it is the marketing department, it’s just so odd because it’s not on their front page at all. And I guess people only know about it because it was in some release that Final Draft put out, or some email that Final Draft put out. But even the URL for it is really strange.

So, the actual URL to get you there, it’s FinalDraft/ —

**Craig:** Discover/Videos. Yeah, it’s under a videos thing, even though it’s not a video. Like they’ve really buried it.

**John:** It’s buried. And it’s in a folder for Final Draft Writer App for the iPad/meet Writer X.

**Craig:** It’s almost like they were like, you know what, we’re going to be viral man. I

**John:** Yeah, maybe they wanted people to discover this.

**Craig:** It’s a hidden thing. Yeah. Well, we discovered it. That’s the bad news.

**John:** We discovered it.

**Craig:** So, putting aside Writer X, if Writer X exists, I would urge you, Madam or Sir, to reconsider this. This isn’t what you should be doing with your time. It’s not, frankly, what professionals do. We really don’t talk that way, for good reason. It’s obnoxious. And if you’re taking money from Final Draft, I don’t understand why since you’ve sold a script for a million and then sold another thing for half a million, and you’ve nabbed several writing assignments with all of the major studios, and a number of A-list production companies. You seem to be doing great, so you don’t need this money.

So then the question is well what’s in this for Final Draft, why are they doing this? And it really comes down to the nature of this kind of pitch, which is very common and you’ll see it in real estate a lot where somebody who is just soaking in prosperity comes on your television set and says to you, you poor retch at home, “I used to be just like you, but then I discovered the secret. And If you share my secrets, you too will be rags to riches.”

And what’s so insidious about this is that they’re going to give you some baloney secrets. I mean, in this case one of them is apparently Writer X is going to tell us what screenwriters are supposed to wear.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That there’s these secret, what is it? The secret dress code?

**John:** The secret wardrobe?

**Craig:** A secret dress code of writers, which is insane.

**John:** I’ve written about the secret dress code and what I’ve always said before is the writer should be the worst dressed person in the room, but that’s one sentence. That’s not —

**Craig:** It’s also, it’s not a secret. [laughs] It’s just you’ve already put it out there for free.

So, they’ll give you all the — yeah, it’s the unspoken dress code. Guess what? It’s been spoken. And then how to decipher the Labyrinthine language in Hollywood. For example, “If a studio exec just reads your first draft and tells you the writing is great, you think that’s good, well it’s not.” Uh, sometimes it is. Sometimes they say the writing is great and then they make the movie because the writing is great.

“Are you familiar with the phrases too broad or character’s arc? Well, you will be.” Oh, lord.

So, they’re dolling out these things that are either stuff everybody already knows, or just things that aren’t true. But what’s behind all of it, of course, is, oh, and naturally you’ll want to write on Final Draft. I mean, you’ll want to spend the whatever it costs now, $150 or $200.

**John:** Yeah. So, there’s no sales pitch in any of this so far. And so it’s the promise of like this is the first of like a regular series of columns. I would be surprised if there’s a second column, but it’s mean to be that this is going to be a bunch of columns coming through. And maybe eventually there’s supposed to be like some sort of Final Draft sales message, or it’s just supposed to be content that’s getting you to the Final Draft site. Or lend some authority to the Final Draft site.

But it’s a weird, gross kind of authority, or it’s not even authority. It’s trying to trade anonymity for secret or sort of like, you know, insider knowledge that no one wants you to have. But we want you to have the information. There’s nothing — there’s no secret information to have.

**Craig:** There is no secret information to have, but that ruins the promise. That ruins the hook.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** There’s this sect of evangelical Christianity called Prosperity Theology, which is all about preachers telling their congregation if you follow the bible the way I explain it, you’ll get rich. But not rich in spirit. [laughs] You’ll actually have money.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** On TV, I’m a big infomercial nut, so I’m sure some people out there remember Tom Vu. Tom Vu was a bus boy, see, same thing, who made millions.

**John:** A bus boy!

**Craig:** He made millions starting from nothing in real estate. Went on to be sued by his former investors. And then there was Don Lapre, the high school dropout. “I’m a high school dropout who learned the secrets of making money and now I want to share them with you.” And he was arrested, charged with fraud, and committed suicide in jail, which I hope doesn’t happen to Writer X or Final Draft, but you know, when you’re kind of playing in the same field as those guys, you got to stop and ask what are you doing here. For those of you who come across this stuff, just continually ask why.

Why is this here? Why does any company that’s looking for money out of my wallet, why do they need me to believe that for instance there are places that screenwriters should hang out. No, there ain’t. Not one. There is no one special secret place where screenwriters go and money falls from the sky and your scripts get better. No. It’s all baloney, right?

So, rags to riches stories are scam bait, 100 percent of the time. Secrets I’ve learned and will now share with you, scam bait, 100 percent of the time.

**John:** Yeah. I bet you could just sort of build a regular expression matching pattern and sort of search the Internet for that and you would find that invariably that is a scammy sort of come on and proposition. Like any time that you see that phraseology used together, there’s something bad and dangerous around there.

I was thinking about this from the perspective of this guy/this woman who is writing this and sort of what made them say yes, because I don’t get it. Like if we’re taking this at his or her word, that all this true, this guy has a million and a half in his pocket and has these writing assignments, I mean, unless there’s an extra punch line is like “and then I lost it all to drugs,” then I’m interested. Then I’m intrigued. But that doesn’t seem to be the situation here. So, what is the appeal of writing this column? And why not write it under your own name or write it some place that’s not on the Final Draft website?

I just fundamentally don’t get it. And that’s a strange thing to me.

**Craig:** Well, it’s so safe to do this. You know, you and I have used our own name forever and we are really among the very few. Most writers just don’t want the unwanted attention of jerks and there are jerks out there.

**John:** Yeah, there are.

**Craig:** And a lot of writers are nervous that if they say things under their own name that there are going to be reprisals from studios and so forth, and you and I have just never — we’ve never had that problem. And I also feel like we made calculations early on that we frankly weren’t going to be saying anything that should get us into trouble with somebody. And if it did, that’s not somebody we want to work with.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** Everybody, I think, has a desire somewhere in them to want to be the sage on the mountain dolling out brilliant advice so that everybody can gather around. Okay, so here’s a rule, [laughs] baseball has the 5-10 rule. The 5-10 rule says if you’ve been with the same team for five consecutive years and you’ve been a Major League player for ten years or more, then you can’t be traded without your consent. 5-10 rule.

I like a 5-10 rule. You can be the sage on the mountain after five credits, or ten years of steady work.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** Until you get the five credits, or the ten years of steady work, please do not doll out advice like the sage on the mountain. And, by the way, when you finally do get that stuff, don’t actually be the sage on the mountain. You and I, I don’t think either one of us feels like gurus or anything. It’s ridiculous. We’re just guys trying to do this gig and help people. So, you know, don’t.

**John:** You know, well what’s weird is I looked at all of Writer X’s boasting, and Writer X has not gotten a movie made. And that is a fundamental sort of flaw there in the sense of, you know, you look at the 5-10 rule, like well Writer X has zero credits. And so in many ways it’s back to sort of everyone else who is just writing about how to be a screenwriter. It’s like, well, this is where you’re at so far. And I think, you know, if you and I were to sit down with this Writer X and talk with him or her about what that journey has been so far, I bet there really is some interesting stuff to learn about what it’s like being on the Black List, what it’s like having those initial meetings. The things you’ve learned and done.

But doing it under this veil of anonymity, like you’re suddenly Julia Phillips and like you’re writing a tell-all memoir about Hollywood is just crazy-pants.

**Craig:** It’s particular crazy-pants when you’re using it to humble-brag or brag-brag, unhumble-brag. You know, you and I, we don’t talk about how much money we make. We don’t talk about who bought our pitches. We don’t talk about who we sat in a room with. And we don’t talk about that stuff because it’s gross. It’s just gross.

How will that help anyone else? You know, the people that are baiting a hook are making you jealous of them so that you want to be like them so that you can spend money towards them and something, right? Well, we don’t want your money. We just want you to be you.

You don’t need Writer X. You don’t need Final Draft, now more than ever. You don’t need the secret place, the dress code. You don’t need anything other than your talent, your hard work, a unique point of view, a passion, that’s what’s real.

Sorry, no pill for your weight loss today.

**John:** No, I’m sorry.

I just wanted to close on this topic of anonymity because I look at some of the Twitter accounts I follow, and I’ll follow like Mystery Creative Executive or Anonymous Production Assistant, and I find those things really interesting because in some ways they’re telling truth about little specific things that happen in their life. And they’re not trying to give you advice, but they’re just like articulating what it’s like to be in that place.

And there are in some cases really good reasons for their anonymity, because if they told you more about who they were, they would lose their job. And so that I totally get. And there’s a long tradition of that sort of anonymity. Like, look at the Federalist papers. Like those Fathers of the American Revolution, they didn’t sign their names to all those little pamphlets, but they were trying to sort of rally people to a cause or to explain what it’s like and what their opinion was, and that’s a great, wonderful, protected thing.

I don’t feel this at all here. I don’t feel like there’s any sort of call to action other than sort of like, hey, look at me how great I am. There’s no sort of insight here that is worth my putting up with your anonymity there. Everything that this person said in that initial column, if I knew their name I’d think, well, you sound like kind of a jerk, and kind of like a boastful jerk.

And it’s not making me feel any better about the advice you’re giving. It’s just frustrating.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s why they didn’t use their name. I mean, there’s nothing that this person said warrants anonymity. [laughs] Nothing. Right?

The only benefit that anonymity provides them, other than making them sound better than they are, is shielding them from direct vitriol. And shielding them from people calling them out directly and saying, what? For instance, I know this person and they didn’t do all that. Or, I know this person, and I don’t like their scripts. Or, I know this person, they’re cool, but what do they do — why are they telling people that there’s a dress code? There isn’t.

You know, and then it’s about you. You know, you and I are accountable for what we say. This woman or man — not so much. So, don’t listen to people that aren’t accountable. You can listen to them, but, you know, take it with a grain of salt, because they’re not accountable.

I mean, that’s why I love that Rachael Prior who used to be Mystery Brit Executive came out of the closet, so to speak, segue coming, and revealed that she was in fact Rachael Prior, an executive at Big Talk Productions, which is a very reputable British production company that’s co-run by Edgar Wright. It’s a real company and she’s a real person and they make real movies. And she finally said, you know what, I think it’s okay. I think I can actually just be me. So, I like that.

**John:** That’s been the new trend, is not anonymity, but actually like owning your words. A lovely idea.

**Craig:** How about that?

**John:** All right, next on the docket of things that will enrage Craig. This was an email we got from a woman named Esther who writes, “A friend reached out to be for advice after getting a real scammy looking email from someone claiming to want to buy his script. Apparently these are going around and a lot of young writers are paying to get the ‘special report’ so their script can be bought, only to realize it was a scam by a company that offers script coverage for dollars.”

And we’ll link to other people who are writing about this same situation. So, this is the email exchange that went back and forth. This writer received an email from James Cole. Do you want to be James Cole?

**Craig:** I’m be James Cole, sure. I have recently reviewed your film script and as head of development for iFilm, I am interested in acquiring your screenplay with a view to producing the film in the near future. iFilm is currently tasked to produce a number of films with our partners/investors. Please let me know if you would be interested in selling the rights and optioning your script.

**John:** So the friend got this email and said, sure, yeah maybe, I’m interested. Tell me more. And this is what the guy said.

**Craig:** Great. In that case we can escalate your script up to our investors, but we would need an independent FR script report attached to. If you get this professionally done by a script editor, we will arrange rights options which are negotiable around £25,000. If you’re unfamiliar with script editors, I can recommend some.

**John:** So, do you want to guess who he might recommend?

**Craig:** Well, I’m going to guess he’s going to recommend a company called Bentley Marks.

**John:** And so, Craig, you did some detective work on Bentley Marks. So what did you find out about Bentley Marks?

**Craig:** Well, to back up for a second, a bunch of people have gotten these letters, not just Esther’s friend. Apparently, this company iFilm sent a bunch of these letters to people whose scripts they found at various levels of success through festivals and websites that host these things. Some of the scripts were quite old. And so they all say, yeah, we want an FR script report. By the way, I guess it stands for Film Ready. There is no such thing.

But then the company says, but you know, we’re not going to give you this money and we won’t give you your lottery winnings from Nigeria unless you pay for the report. But, here, use this company Bentley Marx.

So, Bentley Marx, a company that I’ve never heard of, and for good reason, seems to be located in Dubai. But if you take a look at the registry information for their domain name, they are registered to a James Hore who is at 43 Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London.

If you look at iFilmGroup.com, their domain is registered to James Colby, 43 Berkeley Square, Mayfair London. Huh. What is 43 Berkeley Square? Is it some massive complex that could possibly hold two different companies? No, it’s a virtual office service. That address is sold by a company called West One business in the UK and the idea is you pay them a monthly fee and they host this address that looks like it’s a real place and then they just forward it to your personal home, this way your company looks real as opposed to something you’re doing out of your basement, or whatever they call a basement in London. I don’t know what they call it.

**John:** Or a basement in Dubai. Or wherever this is actually.

**Craig:** Precisely. And the funny thing is like Bentley Marks, they have an address in Dubai. It’s not really — they’re not — they’re registered to the same — they’re the same people! The point is this scam is obvious. Right? I mean, as far as I can tell, unless I’m missing something here, they troll the Internet for screenplays. They send an email to that person saying we might make this, but you got to pay this other company some money. I don’t know what it would be, $150 or so for notes. And that money goes right into their pocket. And if 20 people bite on this a month, and they’re charging even $100 a pop, well all right. Now we’ve got, what is that, $2,000 a month? Not bad.

**John:** Yeah, some money.

**Craig:** It’s some money. Point being, this is not at all cool. And I have no problem, if I’ve gotten wrong, iFilm, come on the show and explain yourselves. But this certainly sounds like baloney to me.

The actual iFilm Group website does feature some movies that they have either produced or going to produce. They are not what you would think of as mainstream releases. They do look very much like direct to video, B2C kind of movies. Let’s see if we can find some titles of what iFilm Group is working on these days. They’ve got Fatal Insomnia.

**John:** Yeah, that’s the worst kind of insomnia.

**Craig:** The worst kind. They have Dark Rage 2. I don’t know if they have Dark Rage 1. And they have Exorcism. And then one of the strangest titles of movies ever, Internal. It’s just called Internal. Uh, I don’t think that too many of you have caught Fatal Insomnia.

So this is rough. I hate seeing stuff like this. It’s just really, really lame and —

**John:** We often knock against people who are trying to scam young writers saying like I’ll teach you the secrets of writing or, you know, buy my book and stuff. But this is like you are representing yourself as somebody who is going to buy their script, which is sort of the fantasy for a lot of first time writers. Like someone wants to buy and produce my screenplay and make it into a movie. And then it ends up being one of these sort of scammy not really real companies.

That’s just a shame. And even the name iFilm, I just looked it up on Wikipedia. So, there was a company called iFilm, but it’s been defunct for quite a long time. So, they’re trading on sort of like half memory of like I kind of think I remember iFilm, sort of. And, yeah, there kind of was a company that became, it was like an MTV Network that became Spike. There was a history to that name, so it sounds kind of legit and kind of real, but this is not legit or real. And it feels bad.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s also ridiculous on its face. A company is calling you and saying we’re interested in giving you £25,000 for the rights to your screenplay, but we need somebody else to tell us if it’s any good. What? How does that make any sense at all?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I honestly would be surprised, no, I take that back. I would not be surprised if somebody fell for this, because every year somebody falls for the Nigerian lottery scam. Every year.

**John:** Every year.

**Craig:** It doesn’t matter how ridiculous it seems. This just feels like a scam. And if we’ve gotten the facts wrong, happy to hear from the people at iFilm Group. But certainly on the face of it, it does feel like they’re doing something scammy and unethical and for shame.

**John:** Yeah. Craig, have you ever been scammed or has someone tried to do like a physical scam on you? Because last time I was in Paris for the first time, someone actually tried to do the gypsy ring scam/trick.

**Craig:** Oh really?

**John:** It was actually fascinating. And so it happened and it’s like, oh, that must be a thing. And so I went back to the hotel and Google and was like, oh, that’s a whole thing. And that guy did exactly that act. And so this is sort of what happened. I was jet lagged, so I was just walking around Paris early in the morning. And this guy said like, oh excuse me, sir, you dropped something. And I was like, no, I didn’t.

He’s like, no, here is a ring. And he had this little gold ring he’d found. And he’s like, oh here, just take it. I don’t want it. Like, no, no, you take it, it’s fine. And I was like I don’t want it, goodbye, thank you. Because I just sensed that something was wrong. But so on the Internet, I read sort of what the rest of that story goes, and essentially there’s a whole plot that sort of happens where they get you to take the ring and it’s like, oh, but we’ll split the money, or this — and it becomes this long conversation. And you essentially have to pay this person to go away.

And so the only solution to it is just to never touch the ring and to go away. And the ring itself, sometimes it starts as a pretty good ring that you can tell it’s actually pretty good, and then it’s sleight of handed to like a cheaper brass ring. Most of the time it’s just a brass ring and it’s a way to start them talking to you.

Other times it can result in pick-pocketing and other things, but it was fascinating to see this thing happening right in front of my face. And in some ways this email had the same kind of markers of this scammy thing about to happen.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah. I’ve never — that’s not happened to me. I think I just look mean. I look like a real problem. You know, [laughs] like —

**John:** Yeah, you do look like trouble. People cut a wide berth around you.

**Craig:** I kind of do. I look like trouble. I look like the kind of person whose not only going to not take the ring, but lose his mind and do something crazy. I’m just not worth it. I’m the kind of guy that’s not worth it. I just have that look. I have resty angry face.

**John:** [laughs] Our final big topic today, GLAAD released a report about the 2014 movies. And so GLAAD is the organization in the US that takes a look at media portrays of gay, lesbian, transgender people in films and in TV programs and tries to advocate for better inclusion and awareness of those issues.

And so for 2014 they looked at all of the releases by the major studios. There were 114 movies they looked at. And they do statistics year after year showing sort of like how many gay men are portrayed, how many lesbians, how many bisexuals. Sort of what the nature of those portrayals were. And in no year is it especially good. In some years there’s better portrayals versus worse portrayals.

This is the first year I sort of looked closer at it and they actually break it down by studio and they sort of articulate what exactly they are seeing and what the trends are that they are noticing.

So, I will send you to the report. I’m not going to sort of summarize it for you. But they had this interesting thing called the Vito Russo test, which was based on the Bechdel test which we talked about before on the podcast. So, the Bechdel test is a way of looking at how women are portrayed in films. And so it’s asking like three simple questions about sort of how a given movie is portraying its women and then you either pass or fail the Bechdel test.

The Vito Russo test is a similar kind of structure. And it’s pretty straightforward. So the film contains a character that is identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender. So, does it do that? If so, that character must not be solely or predominately defined by their sexual orientation or gender identity — i.e., they are comprised of the same sort of unique character traits commonly used to differentiate straight and non-transgender characters from one another.

So, it’s like if it’s a gay character, they can’t only be gay. They have to be some other function.

The LGBT character must be tied to the plot in such a way that their removal would have a significant effect, meaning they’re not there to simply provide colorful commentary, paint urban authentic, or perhaps most commonly set up a punch line. The character should matter, which is an interesting way of looking at inclusion and sort of inclusion that counts for something.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So we’ll send you to this report. They break it down by studio, which is kind of interesting, and within the studios, the sort of indie arms of some of those studios as well. So, Craig, what did you take from looking at this?

**Craig:** Well, the numbers are seemingly better than they used to be, I guess. I didn’t love the way they arranged the — I wish that the studio content had been broken out better, because you had to click on each individual studio and I just got tired of doing that.

But in general it seems like things are getting a bit better, not for transgender characters, but for gay men in particular seem to be — most of the inclusive films, let’s see, 17.5% of the big studio releases contain characters identified as either lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. That’s not a bad number.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** You know, I mean if you’re sort of going by general population, I mean, the percentage of the population that’s gay is a very hard thing to pin down because of lying, [laughs] but 17.5% doesn’t seem terrible.

**John:** It doesn’t seem terrible. But if you actually look through the individual reports, you realize that they’re being very inclusive about who they’re sort of folding into that. So, like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movie counts as being gay because Ian McKellen is gay.

**Craig:** What? But that’s not — he’s not gay. We don’t know that. He never said anything about men or women in that movie.

**John:** Yeah. So honestly very minor gayness is enough sort of to count for this. So that’s a thing to keep in mind when you look at that number.

**Craig:** That’s strange.

**John:** It’s inflated.

**Craig:** It’s odd that they would inflate that number. You would think that it would be in their interest to be as accurate and parsimonious as possible with handing out that. Well, regardless, what’s interesting to me as a writer is maybe less the numbers than in the way the portrayals have occurred and how they have changed over time. Because it doesn’t help anybody if 80% of movies feature gay characters and it’s pejorative or negative portrayals.

There has been a remarkable evolution I think over the last ten years, some in the last three years. I just think the evolution of the portrayal of gay people in popular culture has just been moving so rapidly and in a very good way. In drama, traditionally being gay was associated with tragedy, being ill-fated or twisted somehow, or the fake lesbians to just make men happy, or the gay guy who was the girl’s best friend.

And interesting that the Vito Russo test sort of calls this point out that often homosexuality was considered remarkable and determinative in and of itself. That if you’re a gay character in a movie, that’s your character. Gay character. [laughs] Rather, meaning that has so much more significance than straight character. There’s no character that’s defined by their straightness. That I feel has been changing pretty dramatically, no pun intended. What do you think?

**John:** I think so, too. You know, you look at both in the dramas and the comedies, you see more characters who you can identify as being gay or lesbian, and it’s not being made a big deal of it, which is great. I think there’s a lag in feature films versus television. And I think television was faster because television moves faster. And television is usually much more reflective of the current state of culture and films by their long development process tend to be lagging a few years behind.

One of the real challenges though is that on television you’re seeing characters over a long period of time, so if a character is gay, you have more time to actually experience that and sort of see the richness of their life. In a film, you know, that third lieutenant could be gay, but if there’s no reason to actually know that, there’s no scene that’s going to get that to you, that information may never come out.

And so you’re going to be — gays sometimes are going to be less visible in feature films just because there’s no opportunity to actually see that they’re gay or to sort of identify them as being gay because there’s not a point to it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Versus other minority portrayals, where you can visibly see like, oh, well there is a Pacific Islander and that person exists in the world. You can just spot that. And so sometimes it’s harder to spot gays in feature films because there is no scene in which they have the ability to identify as gay.

**Craig:** Yeah. If a gay character doesn’t have a love story in a movie, then you might not know, but I think an awareness now that there are certain non-romantic signifiers that we have all the time. Characters leave their home and there’s a wife who is a day player, has no line, waving goodbye.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** There is a woman at work who has a photo on her desk of her and her husband. You know, these things I think are well worth considering as we kind of go through. And in a way it helps make the movie realer, because that’s the way life is now. It wasn’t that way ten years ago. It simply wasn’t. Now it’s different.

And movies should keep up with the world around them. So, that’s something that’s worth considering as we go through as writers. Comedy is a whole other area, because in comedy for so long, and really up to I would say just a couple of years ago even, gay was considered in and of itself funny. And I’m as guilty of that as anyone. Anybody that works in comedy, anybody, including gay comedians would find this inherent comedy in being gay, even if they were gay-friendly or gay positive.

The thing is, it’s not funny anymore. It’s just not. Now, there’s a question. Should it ever have been funny? That’s a hard question, because the thing about comedy is funny is what people laugh at. Funny doesn’t really have a morality to it. What has a morality is morality. Comedy kind of follows social mores.

So, you can watch the Friar Roasts from the ’70s, they’re on YouTube. And there will be race and gay humor in those that just make you wince. Forget not funny, you actually go, “Ooh, god.” All the people on the dais are going bananas. People in the audience going bananas. Roasts today, there is still a ton of race and gay humor, but it turns on bravery and defiance. In a weird way the joke of the race and the gay humor is, oh my god, look, they’re being bad on purpose, in front of each other, and in a way that sort of signifies how confident they are as people of color, as gay people, or as straight people around people of color, or gay people.

But I guarantee you in — I don’t know how long it’s going to be — maybe five years, maybe two, maybe 20, I don’t know, that too will one day make us all wince. I think that comedy basically echoes the world and it always will, which is one of the reason why comedies often don’t hold up, but comedians have to kind of go where the funny is.

**John:** Yeah, comedy so often it’s finding those moments of friction in the real world, like those things that are sort of you dare not really quite talk about, and like finding a way to talk about those things, but then the conversation moves on. And if you’re still trying to talk about that, like oh no, that’s not funny anymore, that’s just really uncomfortable and weird.

And so I agree with you. You look at some movies that were genuinely funny back in the day and there are moments that make you wince because it wasn’t political correctness or anything else, it’s just like that’s just not a thing that could be funny anymore.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. Now, there are really interesting cases where I think you can look at something now and laugh at it in a different way. When Airplane! came out in 1980, Stephen Stucker who played the flamboyantly gay — I don’t know what you call it, the air traffic control tower guy, I don’t know what his actual — you know, they were all up there and the air traffic controller guy. And he was hysterical and everybody loved him. And they were laughing in part because, oh my god, that guy is so gay. Look, the gayest of gays. But when you watch him now, and Stephen by the way was a member of the Kentucky Fried Theater with David, and Jerry, and Jim, and had kind of come up with them, when you watch it now it’s still really funny, but you’re not laughing at him, you’re laughing with him. He’s just remarkably witty. The fact that he’s gay is so no longer what’s funny. What’s funny is specifically what he’s doing. It’s actually — I think there is a gay comic sensibility and it is as broad as straight comic sensibility, but there is this — it’s a subset. There’s a thing there. And he does it so brilliantly.

So, there are times where these portrayals can last and actually the way we find them funny changes. But there is the idea that, oh my god, I kissed a dude. No, that’s not funny anymore.

**John:** It really isn’t funny anymore. And rape culture is not funny anymore, either. That idea like, oh, you’re going to go to prison and you’re going to get raped. It’s like, ooh, man, that’s just really uncomfortable. So, both that gay panic and sort of gay rape panic are not funny anymore.

There was a period of time that Saturday Night Live went through, and I think Janeane Garofalo talked about it when she left the show, where like every episode there was some sort of like alien anal probe rape joke. And it was really weird and uncomfortable. And thank goodness we moved past that.

And now the joke would be trying to make that joke. I mean, like it would be — it’s lucky that you sort of get to a place where like you can comment on that as a joke type.

Recently they had a commercial where it was some sort of anti-depressant for parents when your kid is acting super, super gay. And it was right at that uncomfortable level of like, ooh, but like the commercial was making it really clear that like it’s not the kid’s fault. You just have to get over it.

**Craig:** Right. That worked.

**John:** That worked, because it was understanding what the pain was underneath there, and what the uncomfortable feeling was, and sort of leaning into it in the right way. So, I would argue that you’re never trying to — you can’t stop making jokes that involve gay people. You just have to find ways to sort of use them in comedy that is appropriate for today and also hopefully for the next five years. You don’t know what ten years is going to be.

**Craig:** And this is why comedy is hard, because sometimes go out on a ledge where you need to live as a comedian, and they fail. And when they fail, especially now in our culture now, everyone goes insane. And Patton Oswalt has spoken a lot about this on Twitter and elsewhere in his lengthy protracted war of words with Salon, which Salon tends to act like the Internet’s schoolmarm.

And his point was, you know, comedy is supposed to be dangerous and occasionally when you do it you’re going to miss. You know, you’re throwing knives, you will occasionally miss and hit something you weren’t supposed to hit, or hit it the wrong way. And that’s part of the gig. That’s part of the occupational hazard of being a comedian. But we do know that you have to — as comedians, the really good ones, they’re listening all the time, really carefully.

Louis C.K. does not do some of the material that he used to do, because it’s not funny anymore. You know, there was a time when all of America loved The Honeymooners, men and women loved The Honeymooners. And the catchphrase was Bang Zoom. The catchphrase was “I’m going to beat you, Alice.” That was the joke. It’s just not funny anymore. A lot of times white people will say, “Why is it that black people get to stand up in a comedy club and make fun of white people, but if white people stand up and make fun of black people, everybody goes crazy.”

Here’s why: it’s not funny, that’s why. It’s just not funny. Just go where the funny is and be aware that it changes. So, I hope that GLAAD, I like that they concentrate on general numbers, but I also like that they’re starting to look at context, because to me that’s really where things are going to change. And I think about it now. I never thought about it. Never, never, never, never. Ten years ago, I’ll be totally honest, I never thought about it whatsoever. Wasn’t a problem. I think about it all the time now, because it’s right to. It seems like what I ought to bed doing.

**John:** Yes. I think we all ought to be doing it as well. And we should also do our One Cool Things, because it’s been a long show so far. So, I will start with my One Cool Thing. This week is Rage Quitting, and it’s this article by Chi Luu, it’s looking at this new kind of term that’s sprung up in the last few years. Words like rage quitting, ugly crying, stress cooking, humble bragging, which we used earlier this podcast, angry cleaning. It’s that construction where you take two things and jam them together. And it’s a weird construction because the first word is almost always negative and the second word is an activity.

And so you get what it means, and so like you know rage quitting is a thing. I’m storming out of this job all of a sudden. Stress cooking, ugly crying, we get what these things mean. But they’re sort of a new way of forming things. And I just love when language finds ways to sort of create new terms for things. And concepts that can exist only because we’re jamming these two words together in this sort of accepted way of doing things.

**Craig:** Yeah. Hate watching, isn’t that one of them?

**John:** Hate watching, absolutely. The perfect thing. And so that first word is always negative, and you don’t talk about joy cooking. I think you could do that, but you don’t. It’s always a negative that leads into the verb. So I thought it was really fun. And the article also talks about some of the other sort of ways we create new terms, like adding holic to things, so like, you know, I’m a workaholic or whatever, adding holic as an idea.

A thon, so a podcastathon, we understand that it’s something that goes on for a long time.

Mc, as a sort of shortening down of things, or a cheap version of things, so like a McJob, not being a real thing. So, I just love when people are describing new words and especially when people are describing the way we create new words. So I will point you to this article.

**Craig:** I wish there was something called Workahol, where you could just —

**John:** I’m going to drink a fifth of Workahol.

**Craig:** Workahol. And I got so much done. I’m a workaholic, but I do get a lot done. My One Cool Thing was briefly alluded to way back in episode 150 by somebody who was writing in, but I’ve had some personal experience with it now so I thought I would mention it here on the show. It’s called Kano. And it’s for children. It’s a computer kit. And the idea is that your child can actually build their own computer. Don’t go crazy, it’s not quite your MacBook Pro, but it’s sort of like a Lego-ized version of a computer with circuit board, and a container, and connect ribbons and so forth.

And it comes with this wonderful little instructional guide that helps you put it all together. And it’s actually kind of cool. It runs on Raspberry Pi. And you can hook it up to your TV with an HDMI cable. And it’s got little games and things, but more importantly it also has the ability to instruct you on programming. You can learn to code. You can make games. It’s very cool.

And it’s a little pricey.

**John:** Did you build it or you just saw it in action?

**Craig:** I didn’t build it. My daughter built it. So, she’s ten, and she just sat down — she’s a self-starter. She just sat down and did it. She built it. She was super crazy excited. And when we hooked it up and we saw text scrolling as Raspberry Pi loaded up, she just jumped up and down for 30 seconds, which it took because this is not a fast computer. But she was so excited.

So, it’s great for kids who like building and like technology like my daughter does. And it’s a little pricey. It’s $150 at Amazon. But, I suspect maybe you might be able to find it a little cheaper if you went on eBay or something like that. It doesn’t need to necessarily be brand new.

If you have a kid who is into this sort of thing, it’s a nice place to look. So, that’s Kano. And their website is Kano.me.

**John:** Fantastic. That is our show for this week. So, if you would like to write to me or Craig with your thoughts on things, the place for those longer things like we read today is ask@johnaugust.com. Little short things are great on Twitter. So, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

If you follow me this week, I may be having an announcement about the Ghost special screening, if we open it up to the general public. Right now it’s only for Writers Guild people. But if you are Writers Guild and want to come, you should RSVP for that. We are on iTunes. So, you can search for us on Scriptnotes and you can leave us a review while you’re there. It’s fantastic if you would do that.

We also have an app. We have the Scriptnotes app. You can download that and listen to all the back episodes going all the way back to episode one. Scriptnotes.net is the place you sign up for all those back episodes. It’s $1.99 a month. And our show this week is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who also did the outro this week, another great outro by Matthew Chilelli. And, Craig, I will see you next week.

**Craig:** See you next week, John.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [RSVP here for the April 25 WGAw screenings of Ghost and Jacob’s Ladder, featuring a Q+A with Bruce Joel Rubin moderated by John August](http://www.wga.org/content/default.aspx?id=229), and [follow John on Twitter](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) where he will let you know if tickets are released for non-WGA members
* [Gawker Media Editorial Staff Welcomed by WGAe](http://www.thewrap.com/writers-guild-of-america-east-welcomes-gawker-media-editorial-staff/)
* [Scriptnotes, 193: How writing credits work](http://johnaugust.com/2015/how-writing-credits-work)
* LA Times on [Ron Bass and his in-house team](http://articles.latimes.com/1997/aug/10/entertainment/ca-20955)
* The poster for [The Harvest](http://www.screenrelish.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/the-harvest-poster.jpg)
* [Meet Writer X](http://www.finaldraft.com/discover/videos/final-draft-writer-app-for-the-ipad/meet-writer-x)
* [The not-so-well-dressed screenwriter](http://johnaugust.com/2004/the-not-so-well-dressed-screenwriter) from johnaugust.com
* [Tom Vu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Vu) and [Don Lapre](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Lapre) on Wikipedia
* [Stage32 discussion on iFilm Group](https://www.stage32.com/lounge/screenwriting/iFilm-Group-iFilm-Ltd)
* [The Paris Gold Ring Scam](http://www.everywhereist.com/the-paris-gold-ring-scam/)
* [GLAAD’s 2015 Studio Responsibility Index](http://www.glaad.org/sri/2015/overview)
* [More on Internet Neologisms: Rage Quitting is a Thing](http://daily.jstor.org/more-on-internet-neologisms-rage-quitting-is-a-thing/) by Chi Luu
* [Kano is a computer you build and code yourself](http://www.kano.me/kit)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))