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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/holiday-live-show-2019).

**John August:** Today’s episode of Scriptnotes contains some explicit language. Also, for this live show we have three guests, one of whom uses sign language. So you’ll be hearing the voice of her interpreter. It will make sense in context, I promise. Enjoy.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is the Holiday Live Show 2019 for Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig, tell the listeners at home where we are.

**Craig:** We are currently recording live in Hollywood – I was about to say that, live in Hollywood – live in Hollywood at the LA Film School.

**John:** It’s nice. So we do this benefit every year for the Writers Guild Foundation which is a fantastic foundation which does a lot of great work throughout the year. A question though for the folks here in this audience. It’s a very packed house. Do we have any assistants in the house? Oh my god, look at all those hands going up. That’s really nice.

**Craig:** Why aren’t you at work?

**John:** So, we have heard from a ton of assistants over this last couple of months, and so it’s so great to see so many folks here.

A tiny bit of news happened this past week. Verve, the agency, stepped up and decided to pay its assistants more, which is great. We are always happy to congratulate the folks who are doing better, so we don’t have to chastise the folks who are doing worse.

**Craig:** Yes. Although, well, I actually love that.

**John:** Because they’re not a bad guy.

**Craig:** I feel like that’s not the last.

**John:** I hope it’s not the last.

**Craig:** Of the important organizations that employ assistants.

**John:** Absolutely. So, hopefully we’ll be also applauding the second, the third, the fourth, and the 15th places that do step up and start paying assistants better. It’s certainly a goal for 2020.

**Craig:** And then we collect a little piece, just a little taste. Whatever your increase is, just, you know.

**John:** Is that called a Vig? I don’t know.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** A little something.

**John:** A little something.

**Craig:** You know, wet my beak.

**John:** It works out. Now, Craig, while we’re talking numbers, I think it’s important at the end of the year for us to sort of review our numbers and really take a look at where we’re at and sort of where we’ve been and where we’re coming to. So let’s take a quick look at the numbers here.

**Craig:** Statistics.

**John:** Statistics. So Scriptnotes, where are we at in terms of the numbers? You’re the guy who crunches the numbers, so tell us.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah, I’ve worked real hard on this. We are currently at 430 episodes of Scriptnotes.

**John:** Nice. That’s good.

**Craig:** Yes. For which I have been paid zero dollars.

**John:** Not a cent.

**Craig:** We have every week an average of 80,000 listeners.

**John:** 80,000 listeners across the world.

**Craig:** 80,000.

**John:** We have listeners here from Germany, which is awesome.

**Craig:** Fantastic. Our staff is you, it’s me, it’s Megana, our producer, and it’s Matthew our editor.

**John:** Yeah, that’s good. Every week that’s what we get it done with, four people.

**Craig:** Although I do notice a former staff person here.

**John:** Aw, Stuart Friedel is here.

**Craig:** Stuart. You know, we used to talk about the Stuart Special, but it’s our Special Stuart.

Every week we receive on average 103 emails.

**John:** That’s a lot of emails. Megana is reading a lot of emails. So thank you for sending in–

**Craig:** 99 of them are stupid, but man, those four. Whew.

**John:** Some of them are good emails.

**Craig:** We get some winners. And, of course, we continue to provide transcripts for every single episode.

**John:** Every single episode. So transcripts are a way for people who can’t listen to the show to experience the show. Also it lets me Google to see how often we’ve mentioned Kevin Feige on the show, which is a ton.

**Craig:** Yeah. Weirdly. Mostly critical, so we’ll get into it.

**John:** Yeah. Now.

**Craig:** Because I want to commit career suicide.

**John:** That’s a good idea. All right, so last year at this show we were talking – the big thing was about all the mergers, so we had Disney and 20th Century Fox was merging. That was a big, god, remember that?

**Craig:** I do. For sure. That was crazy.

**John:** That happened. We had Comcast and AT&T.

**Craig:** Wait, I thought AT&T was Warner Bros?

**John:** Oh, I did make that wrong. Somebody else was buying out – it’s so confusing.

**Craig:** That’s Warner Bros.

**John:** Who owns who now?

**Craig:** I don’t know.

**John:** That’s the thing. We don’t know who owns who.

**Craig:** I’m pretty sure that that Death Star owns Bugs Bunny.

**John:** OK.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** So I got a little freaked out this show last year because I was worried like should we merge with somebody, because we could just be swallowed. So I was thinking we could merge with Pod Save America. I mean, that feels like a good, safe choice.

**Craig:** It’s a good show.

**John:** S-Town. S-Town is really popular. I mean, like there’s some problems with it, but it’s a popular show.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And then Dirty John. Really the serial killer thing.

**Craig:** Dirty John.

**John:** Yes. I could be a serial killer.

**Craig:** It’s the partner of Sexy Craig. Dirty John.

**John:** So ultimately though you convinced me. Craig, what did you convince me?

**Craig:** That we should stay indie, man. Because my indie cred is crazy. Yeah.

**John:** So this is to announce we’re not merging with anybody. We’re staying the same way we’ve always stayed.

**Craig:** Which is free.

**John:** Free.

**Craig:** With no ads. It’s sad that I have to look at this to tell you I’ve done 430 of these. We come out every Tuesday as you know.

Now, only the most recent 20 episodes are available freely to everyone. And generally speaking we didn’t do a lot of bonus stuff.

**John:** We didn’t. So we do have a premium feed. For the last couple of years we had a premium feed. And the premium feed has all the back episodes. It has bonus episodes. It requires a really janky app.

**Craig:** That app was jank. It was called jank.app.

**John:** So frustrating. At least like 45 of those 100 emails are about the app. And it’s confusing. Signing up for it was confusing. So we asked our listeners what would be better. And they said anything would be better. And so we’re making some changes here.

**Craig:** We like clear feedback, it’s our favorite feedback.

**John:** So people wanted things to be simple. People wanted to use their own player rather than the janky player. They wanted more bonus stuff. And they wanted all the back episodes.

**Craig:** I know what, let’s use Patreon.

**John:** We talked about Patreon, Craig.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** I’m sorry.

**Craig:** No, we didn’t do it.

**John:** So, here’s the problem. Patreon is simple, kind of.

**Craig:** Just like me.

**John:** You use your player. Great.

**Craig:** Just like me.

**John:** More bonus stuff.

**Craig:** Just like me.

**John:** The problem is we couldn’t get all the back episodes in Patreon.

**Craig:** Also just like me.

**John:** There was no way to do it. So, we ended up going with the folks who do Slate. So we partnered up with them. They didn’t buy us out, though. We’re still indie.

**Craig:** Indie, man.

**John:** Indie, man.

**Craig:** No sellouts here.

**John:** But this is Scriptnotes Premium. Scriptnotes Premium is now the thing. Simple. You can use your own player, whatever you use to listen to normal Scriptnotes in. Listen to it in this. More bonus stuff. And all the back episodes.

**Craig:** Now, as you know, I’m not great with this. So let’s say I have a way I like to listen to podcasts. First of all, let’s imagine I listen to podcasts.

**John:** Yeah, Craig who hosts like multiple award-winning podcasts.

**Craig:** I host them, but listening is–

**John:** I know.

**Craig:** So, let’s say I have my favorite app. But now there’s the thing. How do I get it to go to my favorite app?

**John:** OK. Three steps. First step, you join. You go to Scriptnotes.net. You put in your email address and your credit card. That’s it. There’s no password. There’s no username. Just those two things.

**Craig:** This is where the money comes to me?

**John:** You click subscribe. Then you can subscribe to the Scriptnotes Premium feed, any of the back episodes. We broke it down by seasons so you don’t have to download everything at once. Finally you just listen to it in whatever app you like to use.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** That’s pretty cool.

**Craig:** That is pretty good.

**John:** Craig, you get confused sometimes about sort of how stuff works.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** We made stuff even simpler. So you just put in your phone number and it will send you a link to how you actually install it in the app. So it’s pretty–

**Craig:** So then I just tell it what I want it to–

**John:** You don’t have to use Siri at all.

**Craig:** I text back, “I use this.” So I’m talking to a robot.

**John:** You tap a link. Can you tap a link?

**Craig:** I talk to a robot all the time.

**John:** Ha, you do. You tap a link. You tell it which app to install it in. It’s installed and it’s there.

**Craig:** This is fantastic.

**John:** And you subscribe.

**Craig:** Even I can do that.

**John:** So you get all the back episodes. All the new episodes. We’re going to do some bonus stuff, too. Craig, talk us through some bonus stuff that we might end up doing.

**Craig:** Well you know we like to do a deep dive every now and then on a classic film.

**John:** Absolutely. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Little Mermaid.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** What should we do first?

**Craig:** I’m thinking Die Hard.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I think Die Hard should be the first episode we do. Let’s have it come out on Christmas.

**Craig:** Let’s. Shall we? Because it is a Christmas movie.

**John:** A couple other things. Scriptnotes comes out every Tuesday. Honestly, Megana gets it done on Monday. You get the episodes on Monday afternoon when she’s done.

**Craig:** That Megana.

**John:** And we’ll also try to do things like advance tickets for shows like this. Because we now have your email address, which we never had your email address before, which was weird. So that is the–

**Craig:** To recap, if I may. Nothing is changing about the classic Scriptnotes that theoretically you love.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Scriptnotes Premium does not require that weird, janky app anymore.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Huzzah. And there’s a bunch of new stuff, including early episodes and bonus segments. So that’s pretty great. And you can literally subscribe now to it, although again I just want to make it clear I get none of the money.

**John:** No, Craig will still get nothing.

**Craig:** None of it.

**John:** This money will pay for Matthew. It will pay for Megana. And honestly we probably need to hire somebody new because it’s just been a lot. So it will help us pay for–

**Craig:** The emails alone.

**John:** The emails on assistant stuff alone has been crushing. So, this is Scriptnotes.net. You can sign up for it on your phone right now. But no one in this room should do that because we are going to draw one ticket and that person is going to get a free lifetime subscription to Scriptnotes Premium.

**Craig:** Lifetime.

**John:** Craig, that box is right behind you.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Take a seat and draw one of those cards.

**Craig:** The price will go up yearly. So, ultimately this will be worth millions of dollars.

**John:** Now, technically I should say that this has no cash value. I think it’s something about a raffle, you’re not supposed to say–

**Craig:** I said a million dollars.

**John:** A million dollars.

**Craig:** It has absolutely no value. That’s a weird thing to say. We’re raffling off something that is absolutely valueless.

**John:** Worthless. Last four digits maybe?

**Craig:** Last four? Got your tickets out? 3-2–

**John:** Yeah, people sweating there.

**Craig:** You guys are going to walk out and leave. Raise your hand if you’ve got 3-2. Who has got 3 and 2 so far. Oh god, we’ve got to winnow this down. 7. I know. Who do we have left now?

**John:** Stuart Friedel has his hand up. If Stuart Friedel wins we’re drawing again.

**Craig:** Really? We so are. Stuart, with your fingers what do you have? You lost. Again. 1. Yes.

**John:** Sir, what is your name? James. After the show find me or find Megana and we will sign you up. All right. Hooray. That is the introduction of all this.

Now it is time for our actual show. We are so excited with our guests. We’ve had amazing guests in previous episodes. I’m sort of especially excited by this group of people we have. We have acclaimed writer-directors. We have acclaimed writer-actors. We have a person who created a whole cinematic universe. This is going to be good.

Our first guest is Lorene Scafaria. She is an actress, writer, producer, and director, best known for Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, The Meddler, and most recently for writing and directing Hustlers starring Jennifer Lopez, Constance Wu, and Julia Styles. Welcome back to the program Lorene.

**Lorene Scafaria:** Thank you so much. Appreciate it. This is very nice and overwhelming.

**John:** Overwhelming in a person who has had a movie that has played everywhere that has gotten huge acclaim.

**Lorene:** Yes.

**Craig:** Still overwhelming?

**Lorene:** Yes. You guys are going to use big words and I’m not going to understand half of them.

**Craig:** We won’t be sesquipedalian I promise. Oh my god, I’m so sorry.

**John:** Lorene, I’m going to take a chance here.

**Lorene:** Oh god.

**John:** So April 2018 I was in the backyard of Dana Fox’s house. There was a benefit dinner thing. And I was talking with you about a movie that had just fallen apart. Was that this movie?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**John:** This is Hustlers. It had just fallen apart. You were really frustrated and heartbroken and I felt so bad for you. And now I’m so happy.

**Lorene:** That’s very nice.

**John:** That it got back together again.

**Lorene:** Yeah, thank you.

**John:** So Hustlers is an amazing achievement. On the show often we talk about How Would This Be a Movie. And this is something that’s based on and inspired by an article. Can you talk us through the How Would This Be a Movie for you? What was it about this story that was the first impetus of like, oh, I see how this could be two hours of amazing entertainment? What was the click for you?

**Lorene:** I mean, it was an incredible story. It was really compelling. I read the article that it was based on in the summer of 2016. And it just felt like a world that we haven’t really seen through a certain group’s eyes. We haven’t really followed dancers in a strip club in this way before. So, I was really just taken in by the world and the story and these characters who I think are often misunderstood.

And then there was a crime drama. And a friendship story. And it touched on so many themes I was really excited to talk about. Gender as it relates to the economy and women under capitalism. And all that good stuff.

**Craig:** And when you’re going through that article, the article is just facts. I mean, they create a bit of a narrative but mostly it’s facts. Do you instinctively start to go I’m going to use that, I’m going to use that. That I can’t use. This I got to change. How fast does that happen, that engagement as a writer?

**Lorene:** I would actually look back at the article every now and then just to see if I could read between the lines, if I missed something. You certainly have to embellish a lot. Have to add a lot. It’s obviously creating scenes and dialogue. But that central relationship between the two characters, in real life I think they were more like business partners and it didn’t run that deep, and it wasn’t that mentor/mentee dynamic.

**Craig:** Mother/daughter kind of.

**Lorene:** Yeah, mother/daughter. Whatever kind of love story that is being told. So, yeah, there’d be a sentence that would talk about Christmas. And I would think I can’t wait to see what Christmas looks like for these women. And then my own research, obviously, talking to strippers. Going to clubs. And speaking to people. That all informed a lot. But, yeah, it always felt like the crash, the financial crisis was kind of the end of act one and where to go from there. There is a rise and fall story. There are a couple different timelines. It jumps around. And it’s kind of a reflective story that Constance Wu’s character is telling to this journalist played by Julia Styles. So, there’s some back and forth there. And that was in my original pitch actually for how I would adapt the article.

**John:** Talk us through that original pitch. So is this an article that you found or someone came to you?

**Lorene:** No, it was sent to me by the producers, by Gloria Sanchez and Annapurna who was the studio at the time that was making the film. And they sent it to me. It was certainly not my job yet. And they wanted to know what my take was and how I would adapt it to the screen. So I went in for that meeting and, yeah, gave them my whole pitch and talked about why I thought it was an event movie at the end of the day, even though I thought there was a really nuanced conversation to be had and a very specific way to kind of see their world it felt like at the end of the day. You know, we were going to bring the club to the theater.

**John:** So in that original pitch how closely does that resemble the movie that we saw? So in terms of its central protagonist/antagonist relationship between the Jennifer Lopez character and the Constance Wu character, and in terms of the flashback structure. Did you have all of that when you walked into that room with those producers?

**Lorene:** I had a lot of it. I mean, I look back at my old notes and we stayed pretty true to what I originally set out to do, so that was certainly nice to realize with a large group of people. So, yeah, it was pretty similar. I knew that the journalist was a really compelling, important part of it, not just a device, but a very integral part of the relationship and the dynamic and the judgment that the audience sort of imposes on these women. There was a lot of that in there. And certainly a tone that I think that the tone was what was shifting a little bit. I think the concentration on that central relationship, that love story between them, that changed a lot.

There was an unreliable narrator in the article that I kind of hung onto for a little too long that no longer felt important at some point. So that was different.

It felt more like a story being told by these two different characters. And it was kind of pitting them against each other in a way. So I did a million drafts. The movie fell apart. We lost a home. We brought the script around town to everybody who hated it. [laughs]

**Craig:** Hollywood. Always with their finger on the pulse of America.

**Lorene:** Well, I think maybe a lot of them identified with other characters in the movie.

**Craig:** Huh. Do you mean Lizzo?

**Lorene:** Yes. That’s exactly.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Lorene:** So, yeah, it took a minute to find the right home and we were certainly questioning a lot. I kind of did this page one rewrite after we found this new home and kind of just smashed the script on the ground and opened up at title page and changed it to Destiny and Ramona, the two main characters. And then wrote this love story, this relationship. And, yeah, it was different. A lot of scenes came out of it. The training sequence that’s there. The sort of dynamic between them. That came out of it, that mother/daughter relationship.

But it ultimately wasn’t the right movie, so had to kind of smash it on the ground again and start from scratch.

**Craig:** And you get it to a place where you feel like you got it right. You do have a home. They have given you the funding. You have this great cast. And now I’m always fascinated by writer-directors, how did director Lorene handle her relationship with writer Lorene on a day-to-day basis?

**Lorene:** I did refer to the writer often as—

**Craig:** An asshole?

**Lorene:** An asshole. Yeah, painted us into a lot of corners. And wrote really something too ambitious. It was a $20 million budget which sounds like a lot but it’s not. It grew.

**John:** Oh. For listeners at home she was pointing at Kevin Feige at that moment.

**Craig:** Kevin earlier asked me if the budget for this was $20 million. So he has no sense whatsoever. None.

**Lorene:** And shooting in New York for what it was, so we had a seven-week prep, a 29-day shoot, and an eight-week director’s cut. It was all pretty brutal. Don’t recommend it.

**Craig:** That’s actually a great way to think of it. On any given day you had a plan. And when your writing your plan is perfect. That’s my perfect plan. And now you’re short on money, you’re short on time, you’re dealing with weather I assume occasionally here and there.

**Lorene:** Yeah. Actually out of those 29 days it rained 26 days.

**Craig:** Of course it did.

**Lorene:** Because it was April.

**Craig:** Yeah. So on those days how do you adjust without losing maybe the heart of what it was that you needed to do that day for that moment between those characters?

**Lorene:** I mean, it was certainly a race every single day to finish it, but those fights happened in prep. The cast wasn’t fully on board other than Jennifer and Constance before we got there. So that whole journey I remember there were days where they said like, “Well you don’t need to shoot anything on Wall Street.” And I was like I don’t know about that. I think that’s actually a pretty major part of this, something that we really need to see. So you make compromises here and there. But I think part of it was to go in with a really strong plan and to shot list everything. And to sort of continue to make the arguments that we wouldn’t need much in order to achieve this. We need these locations. We need this amount of hair, makeup, and wardrobe. We need to create a period piece. We need to capture the authenticity of this place. We need a real strip club. We need 300 extras.

**Craig:** Extras are surprisingly expensive.

**Lorene:** They’re really expensive.

**Craig:** Bob Weinstein, true story, once looked at a tent full of extras and then turned to me and said, “Do we pay them?”

**John:** No, Craig, they’re just there for the fun of it.

**Craig:** No, they’re slaves, Bob. Sicko.

**Lorene:** I’m sure they were.

**Craig:** Yeah, they’re expensive.

**Lorene:** They are. They are. And, I mean, yeah, dressing them is expensive. And dressing them in 2007 clothes requires its own truck. And that truck costs money.

**Craig:** You could have just come to my closet. That’s what I’m in right now.

**Lorene:** Well that was just it. Eventually we kind of had to ask these guys to bring your own bad shirts.

**Craig:** No problem.

**John:** Now, Lorene because you’re here I get to ask you a question that struck me the moment I saw your film. Which is the moment that Constance Wu comes up on the roof and she sees Jennifer Lopez there in the fur coat is iconic. As you were filming it did you know this is the movie? This is the moment when people will gasp and recognize I’m in the hands of a master.

**Lorene:** Yes.

**John:** You knew it at that moment? You knew as you were shooting it?

**Lorene:** Yeah, Jennifer Lopez is in that outfit underneath that coat sitting on that rooftop.

**John:** To stipulate it’s absurd and absolutely marvelous. It’s such an iconic thing.

**Lorene:** Oh that’s nice. I mean, I say yes, obviously, just because we were in the throes of it and it was so exciting to finally get there. It was the first scene that I wrote in the whole script. I think the last thing we shot. Or second to last thing we shot. So they had already come full circle their relationship. They were so close by then so there was just that magic in the air. But, you know, a lot of thought went into it because I had thought this was the scene. This was the crux of the whole movie. The moment that Jennifer invites Constance into her fur coat. That really is the moment that everybody’s lives is changing.

So, yeah, it felt really, really important. The rooftop felt important. We built that sky light. That fur coat was a journey to find and to convince people that it was something that we needed. You know, just making sure they sat in the right position. I remember there was a moment where they were sitting next to each other and I was like crumbling inside going like, no, it’s not what I was imagining all this time. So, you know, we just found that rhythm. And, yeah, it felt magical.

Honestly, when she reclined with the cigarette that was not something that I had fully envisioned. That was something that just happened in that moment and I thought, yes, we need to cut to this. We need to – when we found that in the edit we first played it for people, it was this laugh out loud moment. And sometimes an applause break.

**John:** Oh yeah. In my theater people did applaud. That’s magic.

**Lorene:** That’s wild. That’s, obviously, but I credit Jennifer Lopez with half of that certainly.

**Craig:** And I’m going to bring up something from your past slightly.

**Lorene:** You guys.

**Craig:** No, but it’s – years ago when they would talk to you, they meaning the press, there was probably something that would come up a lot. Do you remember a name? A special kind of name that would come up frequently? Fempire. Do you remember the Fempire?

**Lorene:** Yeah, yeah.

**Craig:** Back in the day female screenwriters were so rare that they had to give you a special name, like Seal Team 6. And it seems like without saying that we are where we should be, as one of the women that was there in the beginning for me, you know, where I was beginning you were beginning, how do you think it’s going in terms of progress? Bad, good, steady?

**Lorene:** Oh, it’s definitely not steady. I think it’s good and I think it’s muddy. And I think it’s like soup that we’re all kind of sitting in right now and trying to figure it out. So, I don’t know. I think a lot has improved. Obviously the last few years have shed light on a lot of bad behavior and we’ve rooted out some of that. But I think there’s work to do at the root, you know. I think there’s something to just speak to and have nuanced conversations about what the root cause is of all of this and how much of this is unconscious. And not just the broader strokes and the numbers which are important to speak to. But I think also there’s something about female stories and viewing them cinematically. And what does that mean? So there’s something to talk about, the percentage of female directors and all of that, but I don’t know. It’s like I want to get into it a little bit and get a little more nuanced about it. And not just that kind of black and white story.

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** All right. It is time for a game.

**Lorene:** Oh, good.

**John:** We are going to read you a list of award shows. You need to tell us if it’s a real award show or if it’s a fake one that I made up.

**Lorene:** I’m so happy about this.

**John:** Now, here’s the twist. Several of these you’ve been nominated for.

**Lorene:** Oh, that’s torture.

**Craig:** So don’t screw those up.

**Lorene:** That’s bad.

**John:** We’ll start with the Gotham Award. Real or fake?

**Lorene:** That was real. I was really there.

**John:** Yeah, Hustlers was nominated. Marriage Story won. Chernobyl lost.

**Craig:** Lost. I like that she got nominated and I got lost. It was the same thing.

**Lorene:** I didn’t win. You lost. I just didn’t win.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. I lost hard. Viewfinder Award.

**Lorene:** Fake.

**Craig:** Fake. It’s so fake.

**John:** The Hollywood Film Award.

**Lorene:** That sounds real.

**John:** It is real. Kevin Feige and Victoria Alonzo won this year for Avengers: End Game.

**Lorene:** Hey, congrats. That’s awesome.

**Craig:** How about National Film and TV Award?

**Lorene:** You know what? This, I’m not kidding, I am so confused because I saw one tweet, only one, that said Jennifer Lopez won.

**John:** You’re right.

**Craig:** She did.

**John:** It is from the UK and she did win.

**Craig:** It’s real.

**Lorene:** OK. But I only saw one tweet so I was like this could be someone just playing a trick on all of us.

**Craig:** That’s a pretty generic name for an award, I got to say.

**John:** Hollywood Critics Association Award.

**Lorene:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. You are nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Female Director.

**Lorene:** Oh, thank you guys so much.

**Craig:** Houston Online Film Critics Association Award?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**Craig:** No.

**Lorene:** Oh.

**Craig:** No, there is no online critics association.

**John:** They merged them. So it’s all one critics association, online and print in Houston.

**Lorene:** What do you mean? Now what is it?

**Craig:** It’s just Houston.

**Lorene:** Houston. Just the city of Houston.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** The Golden Globes.

**Lorene:** Oh, I am wracking my brain. They are very real.

**Craig:** Deeply real.

**John:** Jennifer Lopez is nominated. Craig is nominated, Chernobyl for four Golden Globes.

**Lorene:** Oh my gosh. Craig! That’s amazing. Four.

**Craig:** Well. Golly. The Rose Door? The Golden Rose?

**Lorene:** Why are there are two names.

**John:** It’s French.

**Craig:** I’m just translating it for you. The Rose D’Or. D’Or. Door. The Golden Rose.

**Lorene:** I mean, it sounds real just because of all this fanfare. But I’m going to say no.

**Craig:** It’s absolutely real. Chernobyl won two of them.

**Lorene:** Congrats.

**Craig:** I got two Golden Roses, my friend. I’m a double-roser.

**John:** The Satellite Award.

**Lorene:** That’s real. And that was the only thing I’ve ever been nominated for before Hustlers.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Nice.

**Lorene:** We got one of those somewhere.

**Craig:** OK. The Palm Dog Award. Palm Dog.

**Lorene:** No. No, no, no.

**Craig:** It’s real.

**Lorene:** No.

**Craig:** Yes it is. It’s a yearly alternative award presented by the international film critics during the Cannes Film Festival. And this year it went to Sayuri for her performance as Brandy in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

**Lorene:** So it’s for dogs?

**John:** It’s an award for dogs.

**Craig:** It’s for dogs.

**Lorene:** We had a great dog in Hustlers.

**Craig:** Not great enough.

**John:** Something to shoot for, Lorene. Something to shoot for.

**Lorene:** You have no idea.

**Craig:** Step your shit up, Lorene.

**John:** Lorene, the Annie Award?

**Lorene:** Real.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** Animation.

**Craig:** Animation. AARP Grownups in Film Award.

**John:** That’s AARP.

**Craig:** I say AARP.

**Lorene:** Hell yeah. It’s real.

**Craig:** It’s totally real. Jennifer Lopez nominated for an AARP award, which should be pronounced the R-P.

**John:** The Spotlight Award?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**John:** Yes, real. Jennifer Lopez won for Hustlers. Palm Springs International Film Festival.

**Lorene:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** The Dorian Awards.

**Lorene:** I mean, that can’t be real.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** Location Managers Guild Awards.

**Lorene:** No, no, no.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Chernobyl won.

**Craig:** Yeah, we won.

**Lorene:** Really?

**John:** They did.

**Craig:** Our awesome location manager, Jonas Spokas. Great job, Jonas.

**Lorene:** Wow. I might have to boycott, because we had a great, great–

**Craig:** Not great enough. Saturn Awards?

**Lorene:** Yes.

**Craig:** Yes. Of course.

**John:** Aladdin was nominated for a Saturn Award.

**Craig:** Well done Aladdin.

**John:** Finally, the last one here. The BRAs.

**Lorene:** It’s real.

**John:** It is real. It is the Black Real Awards. An annual awards ceremony hosted by the Federation for Augmentation of African Americans in Film. Hustlers is nominated.

**Craig:** You got a BRA.

**John:** Congratulations.

**Lorene:** I didn’t know that. I got a BRA.

**Craig:** You got a BRA nom.

**John:** Lorene Scafaria, congratulations on your film. Congratulations on all the nominations and the awards.

**Lorene:** Thank you. It’s been nice.

**John:** I’m so, so happy for the journey that’s come from that backyard at Dana Fox’s house. I’m so happy your movie is out there in the world. It’s so damn good. Lorene Scafaria.

**Lorene:** Thank you. That’s very nice.

**John:** Craig, introduce our next guest.

**Craig:** Oh, I’m so excited. I was lucky enough to meet Shoshannah. We were doing a panel at the Television Academy, a place that up until recently would have had me removed by security. Shoshannah is fantastic. She is an actress and a writer, known for her roles in Jericho, Weeds, The Hammer, and Supernatural. You left off my favorite, Another Period. Spectacular on that show.

She currently stars in This Close, a dramedy series about two deaf best friends navigating their 20s in Los Angeles. Shoshannah co-created the show with her actual best friend and fellow deaf writer-actor Josh Feldman. Spectacular work. Shoshannah Stern, come on up.

**Shoshannah Stern:** I’m disappointed that you have the mic because I want to make – drop the mic. I never actually used a microphone in my whole life, so I wanted to drop it once.

**Craig:** It turns out they’re expensive actually.

**Shoshannah:** I’m sure it is.

**John:** Shoshannah, a thing Craig and I were talking about this afternoon, your show is fantastic. And impossible to watch.

**Craig:** Not because it’s hard, because you can’t find it.

**Shoshannah:** Mm-hmm. Yep.

**John:** So your show is made for Sundance Channel, but it’s hard to find on that. Sometimes you find it on YouTube. Is it frustrating to have made something–?

**Shoshannah:** It’s on YouTube?

**John:** Sometimes.

**Shoshannah:** I mean, I hope it is. I hope it is.

**Craig:** It is not.

**John:** So my question, so many of us are making shows for streamers, for other places, and I’m so happy they made your show, but it’s frustrating that you don’t know if someone is going to be able to watch your show. As you’re writing this, as you’re putting it together is that a worry for you?

**Shoshannah:** It was. I think I’ve made my peace with it, so there’s only so much you can really do – that’s really in your control. And I think it’s like as a woman and as a deaf person creating a show, you know, we’re just reminded that there is no precedent for it. And you sort of have to prioritize what you have to worry about and sometimes you can’t because you just kill yourself over it. So, one of the things that I, you know, unfortunately yes it’s impossible to find the show. But the reason why that happened is because we actually made it for Sundance Now, which is a streaming service for AMC. And then we re-aired it, the first season on Sundance TV while we were shooting season two. I guess we just showed up and we were shooting it and they said your show is doing better than anything. So, we’re like, great, all right. So they were like we’re taking it. And I said, oh, OK, cool, great.

And I thought it would be cool because then I thought people would be able to find the show by just clicking, flipping through their channels, and they might happen across it, and they would find it. Because on Sundance Now you had to buy it, you had to purchase it, in order to find that show.

So, apparently it is now just impossible to find.

**Craig:** It’s very upsetting to me because I – so you said, “You got to watch my show.” And I said, you’re right, I do have to watch your show. And there’s one episode of the new season that’s available online for free. And so I watched it and I was like this is a great show. I mean, I legitimately got into it immediately and I want to watch the rest of it. So, I kind of did ask you to bring me a USB of bootlegged episodes of the show.

**Shoshannah:** You said that like I know how to do that.

**Craig:** I know.

**Shoshannah:** Biggest Luddite ever.

**John:** A question for you. So we were talking with Lorene about how she was pitching Hustlers. What was the pitch for This Close? When you were describing the show to people how were you describing it?

**Shoshannah:** We kind of had to pitch it three times, but in three different iterations. First of all, the idea with my writing partner Josh was about a deaf woman and her hearing gay best friend. And I think I was just so conditioned to seeing a deaf person on screen with a hearing person, a hearing scene partner, a hearing foil, really. You had to have a hearing foil. A deaf person always had to have in order to explain this is my life and it’s different than yours. So really that was what we were used to seeing on the screen.

So we pitched the show that way. And with one production it seemed like it was going pretty well, better than it had in the past. And then finally at the 11th hour they came to us and said, “You know, it’s a great show but we don’t really get why your character has to be deaf. Does she have to be deaf?” And I was like, well really I tried to explain the rationale and I couldn’t tell them. I needed to show it to them. So, I was like, OK, fine, cool. That’s where we’re at.

And we decided just to do it ourselves. It was in that hour that we made a decision over happy hour. We were just like we should just do it ourselves. So we decided to do that. And then just like why don’t we just go balls to the walls and make both of the characters deaf. Because we felt at that point like no one is going to do it anyway. So Josh said to me, “But who is going to play Michael if we do that?” And I just looked at him like, um, and he gave me an expression like, o……kay. And I looked at him and said, ah-ha, that’s who is going to play it.

**John:** Now, Shoshannah you are an actor. You’ve been acting for years. But Josh was not an actor. He was just a writer. And so he does great on the show. And you guys have a wonderful chemistry. Did you know it was going to work from that initial moment? Was there any fear whether the two of you together could work onscreen?

**Shoshannah:** No. I didn’t know. We were just drunk.

**John:** All right. That’s perfect.

**Shoshannah:** I think I just knew that if the show were going to work that it would have that chemistry. And I just felt like we needed to see two deaf people on the screen and if we’re going to have two deaf people and at the heart of show it’s about a friendship and my friend is sitting right here across from me at happy hour. So yeah.

**Craig:** That story kind of mirrors I think in a way the tone of the episode that I watched. The only episode that is available.

**John:** I watched the first season.

**Shoshannah:** Because it’s impossible to watch. Yes, I am aware of that.

**Craig:** Correct. We will keep re-traumatizing you about that.

**Shoshannah:** Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** No problem. But the show does a beautiful job of tone shifting. It is funny and it is also very, I don’t want to say serious, it’s earnest at times in the sense that it’s real. It’s not a sitcom but it has no problem with somebody fainting and dropping out of screen, which is hysterical in that particular moment because it’s set up beautifully. So, I’m just curious how you guys maneuver that – it’s a very difficult thread to maneuver. You don’t get too broad. You don’t get too sugary. You find this interesting way to move back and forth without feeling like the tone is jarring and the shifts are jarring.

**Shoshannah:** Mm-hmm. I don’t know.

**Craig:** You got drunk again?

**Shoshannah:** Well, yeah. Sure. That’s the answer. We’re drunk pretty much every day during filming. No. I think we just wanted to write things that felt real to us. And we also knew what we didn’t want to write. What we didn’t want to see. I think we knew more about what we didn’t want to show than what we did initially. We wanted to show characters that are centered, not have it be about them being deaf. I felt like that was my problem with the characters that I’d seen before on the screen. Characters that I’ve played to be honest. But the reason why I started writing with Josh is because I had an awful, awful audition and it’s hard to find truth in a character that’s written from somebody else’s perspective about what they think your life is. And you’re trying to find truth in something that’s actually not truthful. So, especially it’s hard when the character is written as a mantle, you know, to carry, you know, like Jesus. You know, Jesus you’re just carrying. I represent all deaf people in the world. It’s impossible.

You can’t write one female character that represents all of the women on the planet. And so there are characters that are underrepresented, misunderstood, and that often happens – it happens more often than we know. So we wanted to write situations that were messy. You know, that were in the gray areas. Deaf characters are messy, too.

**John:** Can I ask you about process? Because we’ve talked to other writing teams who write stuff together. What is the process with you and Josh? Are you in the same room together writing? Do you write an outline and split up? What is the process for you guys going through a script?

**Shoshannah:** Josh and I have a very odd process. You know, it’s sort of what the fuck are they thinking is the process. And that works for us. So we sit in a room and we outline it together. And once we have the outline we go off and we write our own version, each of us, of the script. On our own. Separately. Completely. A complete version. A to Z. And people are like, wait, a complete version on your own, separate from one another? Uh-huh. Yeah, that’s what we do.

So we go off and do that. And then we merge together again, which just means that one of us sits at the computer and the other person is breathing over their shoulder pretty much and says, oh, I like this line better than that line and we kind of merge our two versions together and we submit that. And we get 5,000 notes on it. And then we do it again.

**Craig:** Do you have some epic fights because, man, that sounds like it’s good fuel for arguing?

**Shoshannah:** You know what? Never.

**John:** That’s what a gay best friend will do.

**Shoshannah:** There you go.

**Craig:** It’s true.

**John:** Now, we have a game to play and we would love for the two of you to help us out with this game. So this is something that Craig actually introduced at the last show and Craig set us up.

**Craig:** OK. So this is a game that I originally – it was originally a puzzle that I included as part of a puzzle hunt that I did with David Kwong at the Magic Castle that you attended. And Lorene were you at that one? You were at the one before. Shoshannah, are you a big puzzle solver/crosswords? Oh, OK.

**John:** She’ll be good at this.

**Craig:** And we’re going to have you come to the next one then. So the idea here is – well each of us, we’ll all do this in turn, we read a movie quote and we have a contestant trying to figure out what the quote is.

**John:** We actually have two contestants. So we pre-drew the contestants. Can you come down here to this microphone and re-introduce yourself?

**Craig:** Come on down contestant one and two.

**John:** Hi Zoey. I remember you from before. I’m sorry I forgot your name.

**Zoey:** It’s OK.

**John:** Do you watch a lot of movies?

**Zoey:** I watch some.

**John:** You watch some movies. That’s probably all you need for this competition. And behind you is another person coming up to the microphone. So Lauren and Zoey. Here is what’s going to happen. We are going to read a quote aloud from a movie, except that Craig has–

**Craig:** I’ve basically just created literal versions of these quotes. You’ll get it from the start. Shoshannah is going to do number one because she said earlier that she liked it, so I’m going to let her do number one.

**John:** Fantastic. All right. So Shoshannah is going to give a quote and you need to figure out – so whichever one figures it out first raise your hand and then you’re going to say what the actual real quote is. All right.

**Craig:** OK. So you’re ready to do number one.

**John:** No one yell out in the audience.

**Shoshannah:** I am finished in a good way as a result of our relationship.

**John:** I am finished in a good way as a result of our relationship. Do either of you – Lauren or Zoey, can you name this famous movie quote?

**Female Voice:** I’m really bad at this.

**Craig:** You complete me.

**John:** You complete me. That is what we’re going for. You complete me, from Jerry Maguire.

**Craig:** You got it. This is going to be bad.

**John:** This is hard, Craig.

**Craig:** I mean, that was the easy one.

**Shoshannah:** We have to work together.

**John:** Craig, try the next one.

**Craig:** I’ll do the next one. Strike it from your memory, JJ, or whatever nickname you go by these days. This neighborhood is largely populated by immigrants from Asia’s largest nation.

**John:** Any – all right? Yes, Zoey.

**Zoey:** Forget about it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

**Craig:** Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

**John:** All right. One to nothing right now. We will say first to four.

**Craig:** Malodorous tokens of authority. None are in our possession, nor are they necessary. Therefore I’m not obligated to display them as such.

**John:** Do either of you know this?

**Craig:** Audience?

**John:** It’s the we don’t need any stinking badges.

**Craig:** The audience is pretty good. I got to say. All of them together are a little bit better than the two of you.

**Female Voice:** Yeah, this is embarrassing.

**John:** Lorene.

**Lorene:** OK. None of us came ashore on this famed Massachusetts boulder. Rather we were injured by the boulder metaphorically.

**John:** Well let’s try it one more time. Laughter was high.

**Lorene:** None of us came ashore on this famed Massachusetts boulder. Rather we were injured by the boulder metaphorically.

**Female Voice:** Just give it to the audience.

**Craig:** Audience. That’s your Malcolm X right there. OK, Shoshannah do you want to do number five?

**Shoshannah:** The primary directive of this melee association is that the existence thereof must be denied.

**Craig:** The primary directive of this melee association is that the existence thereof must be denied.

**John:** So melee – it’s a very D&D word.

**Craig:** Is it?

**John:** It is a very D&D word. It’s a melee round.

**Craig:** I think of it as a French word myself.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** It means fisticuffs. Nothing?

**Female Voice:** Sorry.

**Craig:** Audience?

**Audience:** First rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

**Craig:** Again, the audience a little bit better than you guys, I got to say.

Female Voice: It’s pretty obvious afterwards. It’s like you’re standing up here, but then when they say it you’re like, yes, it makes sense. But they’re not standing.

**Craig:** We’re not accepting your excuses. No, no, no.

**John:** No, no, no. Zoey and Lauren, what you guys can’t see is I see a lot of people are like moving their mouths as if they’re talking with the crowd. They really didn’t know.

**Craig:** All right. How about this one. You got this one. They got this one. Ready? Don’t turn away.

**Female Voice:** I want to watch.

**Craig:** No, that’s called cheating. Look at me. Here we go. You’ve got this. Early salutations, country once known as French-Indochina. Early salutations country once known as French – oh, they’re just blatantly cheating now. Go ahead. Go ahead.

**John:** Go ahead. Say it.

**Female Voice:** Good morning, Vietnam.

**Craig:** Yes, good morning, Vietnam. Yes! Yes! I do love this one. Lorene, do you want to do number seven, or the next one?

**Lorene:** Explain your grave nature. Explain your grave nature.

**John:** I have the answers and I kind of don’t get this one.

**Craig:** It’s a hard one.

**Lorene:** Explain…

**Craig:** The speed with which you just gave up was remarkable. Audience? Why so serious? OK. Shoshannah, would you like to do this one?

**Shoshannah:** Man whose last name is synonymous with sharply defined, my condition is unwell.

**Craig:** Hmm. Man whose last name is synonymous with sharply defined, my condition is unwell.

**Female Voice:** Oh.

**John:** One person got it.

**Craig:** Audience? Yes, just you?

Female Voice: I don’t feel so good, Mr. Stark.

**Craig:** Yes, Mr. Stark I don’t feel so good. OK, you guys are dismissed. You did a great job.

**John:** Hey, hey, thank you very much for playing.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Craig, I think this was actually a really good moment for everyone in this room in defining sort of like what you’re like and what I’m like. Because you picked something that was wildly too difficult for this.

**Craig:** No, I’ll tell you what’s too difficult. It’s the bonus question.

**John:** All right. Bonus question. See if the audience can get the bonus question.

**Craig:** Audience, this is for all of you. And this is a TV quote. And I’ll help you out. It’s from a show currently on the air.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** So I’ve limited it to 14,000 television shows.

**John:** Including This Close.

**Craig:** Weirdly that one is not, because we can’t find it. OK.

**Shoshannah:** Oh, you’re killing me. Oh, my heart. I’m stomping on it.

**Craig:** Sanctified female parent splitting in two like a road. Clothing for a torso. Round objects. Sanctified – you got it? Holy mother forking shirt balls. Nice work.

**John:** Well done.

**Craig:** That’s my kind of guy right there.

**John:** From The Good Place.

**Craig:** From The Good Place.

**John:** All right. Thank you for participating in this game. Craig, thank you for putting together this game.

**Craig:** No, no, the hell with them. I’ll make it harder next time. I’m going deeper.

**John:** All right. Our next guest, Kevin Feige, has been the driving creative force behind the Marvel cinematic universe. In his current role as producer and president of Marvel Studios Feige is hands-on producer who oversees Marvel Studios’ feature film productions, whose 23 films released have all opened at number one at the box office. And collectively grossed – that can’t be right – $23 billion worldwide.

**Craig:** $23 billion dollars. That’s the same budget – oh, no, you said million. I’m so sorry.

**John:** $23 billion dollars. And you have Black Widow coming up next. Kevin Feige, you are the person who has been mentioned most on Scriptnotes without ever actually appearing on Scriptnotes.

**Kevin Feige:** Is that true? Why is that true? I want to know.

**John:** Tell him, Craig.

**Craig:** We actually like you.

**Kevin:** Oh, phew.

**Craig:** It would have been weird if it had been like, here we go. You’re like the Final Draft guys. Oh, that was a great one. Kevin, we were talking earlier, and I have an interesting question. I think it’s an interesting question. And maybe you don’t have the answer, but you have such a unique job. And I’m sure that while you have your own kind of definition of what it is, is there anybody else in Hollywood that does the job that you do? Or is it separate and apart from what everyone else does? Because that’s how it seems to me.

**Kevin:** I produce movies and I oversee movies. And I think there are a lot of people that do that. I think there are a lot of creative producers out there, many of whom I work with at Marvel Studios, who do what I do which is try to shepherd projects to the screen. The nature of the Marvel element of it, which is fun, and which gets a lot of the attention is the interconnectivity of them which is fun and which early on – I’ve been at Marvel almost 20 years. August of 2020 it will be 20 years, which is almost half my life, not quite.

And for the first six years at Marvel we worked with – we were the IP holders that didn’t have a lot of contractual control, but on the other studio films, on the Fox Fantastic Four films and X-Men films and Daredevil films on the Sony Rami Spider Man films. But I was around and wanted to be in the room where it happens as they say and be a part of the brain trust.

I’ve forgotten what the question was now.

**Craig:** This happens all the time.

**Kevin:** Oh, nobody does it. Yeah.

**Craig:** You’re different, right? I mean, it feels like you run a studio of a kind.

**Kevin:** Yes.

**Craig:** But you’re also a producer. But you’re also planning all of the movies. You are kind of an interesting hub it seems.

**Kevin:** I’ve been a part of maybe ten Marvel movies by the time we became Marvel Studios. And we knew with Iron Man 1 one of the things that could set us apart, because we didn’t have the “A-list” characters, was that we could start interconnecting them. Like the comics did.

**John:** We talk a lot to showrunners on our show, and your job is kind of analogous to a showrunner in that you have a bunch of things that have to continue. So it’s not just this one episode, it’s how it’s going to fit into this greater pattern. The knock we sometimes hear when some of our showrunner friends come on is that like, oh, but you didn’t know what you were doing, or you were vamping, you were making up as you were going along. To what degree as you’re starting Iron Man 1 did you have a sense of where you wanted to be three movies in, six movies in, nine movies in? And how much could you anticipate what the plan was?

**Kevin:** It’s a nice balance. It’s a nice combination of knowing exactly where you want to end up, but changing the ways, being open to changing the ways that you get there. And when we started Iron Man 1 the goal was very simply make Iron Man 1, and also the Incredible Hulk which we were doing at the same time. Go from being fully responsible for zero movies a year to we have to deliver two by summer of 2008. And that was an amazing experience of being like, you know, you take it for granted. I think people still take it for granted that when you see a poster in a movie lobby and there’s a release date on it the movie is coming out on that release date. That is not a given. There are a lot of people that have to work to make that happen.

And there was one terrifying moment during Iron Man 1 where I went that’s us. We’re the ones responsible for making that happen. And the dream was always because we’ve got thousands and thousands of comic books that you make a movie that succeeds and the reward is you get to make another movie. That’s always been the viewpoint that I’ve had. Let’s succeed so we get to do another one. And that was very true with Iron Man because we would not have been a studio if Iron Man didn’t work. And Marvel would have lost the film rights to ten of its characters.

So, we knew midway through Iron Man 1 around the time Sam Jackson agreed to come do a little cameo for us in a tag that we wanted to get to Avengers. That we wanted to do those first five, six films in phase one. After Avengers we started building out towards what became End Game.

**Craig:** So you have this interesting combination of fear that you won’t even be able to hit a release date for your one movie, but you’re planning for like five movies. And I like that combination. But you did have, of course, the benefit – I was a Marvel kid growing up. There’s Marvel kids and there’s DC kids. I guess there’s some kids that are bi-comical or whatever. But I was a Marvel kid. And there was this big book that was like the Marvel compendium of characters.

**John:** Oh yeah, it’s great.

**Craig:** I would just flip through it and there were so many. There’s so many. And so you have this interesting possibility. But I want to read you something. This is I think the first time we brought up, this is without even mentioning your name, but the first time we kind of brought you up. This is all the way back in Episode 44. July 6, 2012, Ah. Remember that?

**John:** Oh my gosh. What a different world we lived in.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Back then Craig didn’t have an Emmy.

**Craig:** I would trade everything.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah.

**Craig:** Everything. OK. So John said, we were talking about Avengers I believe had just come out at that point. And John said, “Joss Whedon was kind of a risky director to pick for that movie. The director hadn’t made anything of that size and that scale. But other studios aren’t going to learn that lesson. They’re just going to learn that it was big and therefore it’s good. Whereas Marvel is smart. Marvel is smart. But that’s not the only lesson to take from that.”

And I said, “No, the lesson to take from that is hire a director and a writer, in this case it was the same person, with a specific point of view and a proven track record with an audience. And have him deliver the goods as best he can. That’s a risk worth taking. It doesn’t always pay off. But to me that’s so much more interesting of a risk and so much more potentially rewarding than the other way of thinking about it with I guarantee you is going on right now where people are sitting around going, ‘OK, please list for me at my studio here all the various heroes we have, create a team for them to be on, and do our version of the Avengers.’ And I guarantee you that that is going on.”

And John says, “Yeah.” And then I say–

**John:** I say yeah a lot.

**Craig:** And I say, “And all those movies are going to be annoying. And people are going to smell it.” It does seem like people have tried to copy the model of what you do. Is there any hope for any of them? I mean, legitimately would you say to them, “Please, no, you’re never going to get there. Or yeah, there’s actually a way for you to do this with any of your stuff?”

**Kevin:** Well, first of all I compliment the transcript because it clearly comes in handy that you do that on every podcast. That’s impressive. The truth is as I just said we set out to make a movie. We didn’t set out to make a universe. We happened to be making movies based on our comics and our comics are an interwoven universe thanks to Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and the whole team there that came up with what may be the longest running fictional narrative ever. So it didn’t seem revolutionary to me that I worked at Marvel Studios and wanted to try to emulate what was in the comics. But I wanted to do it slowly because I wanted to make movies. And I wanted to make a lot of movies. And make a lot of different kinds of movies, which is why our first ones were a technological thriller/sci-fi Iron Man film and a crazy outer space Norse god film and a WWII film leading up to – and a monster movie – leading up to The Avengers.

Because what was always cool about Avengers to me in the comics wasn’t that it was a bunch of heroes together, that it was a bunch of heroes that I cared about from other stories interacting with one another. So, I always say we never set out to make a universe. We set out to make movies. And that’s still true today. We set out to do individual stories that have the fun of, a bonus sometimes, of interconnectivity. But we spend as much time going it’s too much. The movie has to stand on its own more, in the development process. The movie has to stand on its own more.

**Craig:** I mean, essentially your advice is stop doing the thing that you people are doing. Because what they do is they start by saying here’s a bunch of our IP, which is a phrase I hate anyway, and let’s make a universe out of it. Absolutely backwards.

**Kevin:** When I started working at Marvel people used to talk about IP and I slowly got the nerve to ask what is IP.

**Craig:** Good for you.

**Kevin:** What are you talking about?

**Craig:** It’s sad. People talk about IP – the first time I heard it I was so depressed. But I think of this as art. And you guys are talking about it as intellectual property, like a product. Same thing when I heard franchise. I was like, ugh, now they’re like McDonald’s now. Now everyone says franchise they’re like, yay, it’s our favorite franchise.

**John:** You will have writers, directors, there’s filmmakers you want to work with. People are coming in to talk with you about doing movies based on your characters, based on movies you want to make. What is it that clicks with you about a certain person to do a certain project for you? What is it that you say when that person comes in the room that makes you say like, OK, that is the right person for me to bring onto this project? What are the things that work for you?

**Kevin:** It varies. I mean, we always start – we don’t have open auditions, so to speak. We don’t have people coming in and going here’s this character, would you make a movie about this character, would you make a movie about this character. We internally at Marvel Studios decide what movie we want to make, kind of what the movie is. So Thor, we decided we wanted to do a third Thor film because we love the character and we love Hemsworth and we thought there was great potential there.

But we knew we wanted to break the mold a little bit. And I was on the set of Age of Ultron talking to Hemsworth and he was in his full regalia for a big sequence. And he was saying, “May – what are we doing for the next one, May? What are we doing?” And I said, well, the truth is on the first Thor, Thor was blond hair, a red cape, and a hammer. Now Thor is you, Chris Hemsworth. So we can smash the hammer, we can rip off the cape, we can cut off the hair. So that started leading us into a general direction of what we wanted to do with it.

It was Taika Waititi that turned it into what we all know and love as Thor: Ragnarok with those elements. And we wanted to put The Hulk in it. And so we have these discussion documents that we call them, share them with writers or filmmakers, and then have them come in and pitch us a better version of it that sometimes is very similar and is sometimes totally different but way better. And that begins the then two to three year process of working together intensely.

**Craig:** You guys are drawing from this enormous base of what I consider to be literary work. I mean, comics are drawn, they’re illustrated, but I always read them. No one says I looked at a comic today. I read it. And because we’re writers and this is a show about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters, you know, I’ve had this interesting experience in television and I know you guys are getting into television in a huge way where as a writer they say you are the author here, go and create something. In features, traditionally, the writer has just sort of been a widget. And then the director is viewed as the author.

At Marvel because you seem to be kind of in the, like I said, the hub, in the middle, how do you – and this is not a trap. Don’t worry. They won’t attack you. Feel free to, by the way, if he answers wrong. But how do you balance the authority of the writers and directors that you employ because you do employ a lot of the same ones over and over like Marcus and McFeely and the Russos, etc.

**Kevin:** Yeah. That’s the perfect case example. And, again, it varies person to person of course. I don’t think writers are widgets. I think that they make the whole thing possible. And when you find great writers like Marcus and McFeely who are willing to dedicate their art and their talent to projects you love and want to do, it’s amazing. And that’s why we got to Infinity War and End Game is because of those two.

You know, we were in either post on Iron Man 1 or prep on Iron Man 2 when we were taking meetings and first met Marcus and McFeely to do what became the first Captain America film. And the relationship with Marcus and McFeely and Joe and Anthony Russo is great. Yes, the Russo brothers are the directors of that film, but the authors of the film are the four of them, myself, Trinh Tran, Lou and Victoria from my team at Marvel who spend years together in a very relatively small conference room with more index cards than you’re ever seen in your entire life, putting together those movies. So it does vary.

When you find writers that are as authorial as Marcus and McFeely you keep them around and the directors will listen to them. When you have writers that you’re just starting out with and it doesn’t work, then you find another writer. That can happen with filmmakers, too.

In television, though, it is different as we’re learning. Because we’re trying to do our shows as close as we can to the way we did our films, which is to say it’s one filmmaker on the entire series. And one head writer on the entire series. They have a room because there’s so many–

**Craig:** So many scripts to write.

**Kevin:** Yeah. Although that was the understanding going in. There have been a few moments where that needs to be clarified that in the writer’s room the writer is overseeing much of it. On the set, the director is overseeing it. We haven’t gotten to post yet on those two projects.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s going to be fun. I would like to just come by to watch that. I don’t want to watch what’s on the screen. I just want to watch the people in the room.

**John:** So you’re now moving into a new phase of things. At the end of Avengers: End Game a lot of the characters and the relationships we built up are done and now we’re moving into a new phase. Is it weird for you that you’re both in this moment, but you’re also many years ahead? So is it hard for you to sort of flip back and forth to like, oh that’s right, the rest of the universe doesn’t know that this is a thing that’s happening? Do you find yourself–?

**Kevin:** Only when I’m speaking in public like this is it hard to realize, oh, it’s not 2023 yet so I can’t talk about that. But when you’re in it, no. And, again, like with Iron Man 1 the movie that comes out next gets the most attention. Because sort of nothing else matters. So in that case right now it’s Black Widow. And the primary focus is Black Widow, even though we have another film in production, another film about to go into production, two series in production, another one about to go. What comes next is the focus.

**Craig:** I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up Scorsese-gate. But I don’t want to just—

**Kevin:** Is he here?

**Craig:** Yes. Huge fan of our podcast.

**Kevin:** How many times have you mentioned him?

**Craig:** Way less than we’ve mentioned you.

**John:** That tells me a lot about our show.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. Which kind of feeds into this question. Because it’s not so much what he said, but rather what I find interesting is that the movies that you guys make have—

**Kevin:** What he said. And what he said again. And what he wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about. And what he said again.

**Craig:** I see you’re not at all sensitive about it.

**Kevin:** OK. I understand.

**Craig:** That aside, so you’re not the only one that I traumatize. I like to do this to everyone. Except Lorene. So, your movies occupy an outsized place in global culture from the time that you started with Iron Man to now. They have made an impression on the world. And they are now interwoven with just our global culture. And I’m kind of curious, rather than talk about what’s cinema and not cinema, because I don’t even know what that word even means. I’d rather just ask you where do you think Marvel films sit in our culture. What do you think they actually mean to people?

And is that what you want them to mean? Or are you airing for a kind of changing place in our culture?

**Kevin:** I think in ways that are both flattering and not flattering over the past decade the word Marvel has come to mean blockbuster movie. Blockbuster movies, “blockbuster movies,” that have a genre spin to them, or have action to them, or have visual effects to them have been the dominant form of box office entertainment my entire life. And that’s why I wanted to make movies. Those are the movies – I’m going to listen to your Die Hard episode on December 25. That movie I loved. And I remember thinking this is the best regular movie I’ve ever seen. And what I meant by regular was there was no time travel, there was no space, there were no aliens.

Because that was my primary – there were no super heroes, no super powers.

**Craig:** Best regular.

**Kevin:** Best regular movie ever. So those have always been the dominant, or maybe just to me, maybe just to my focus. In terms of place in the culture I never, ever think about it. I think about making movies that I always wanted to make with people that I’ve always wanted to work with. And make the movie that we would want to see.

And we have eclectic tastes. And the great thing about the Marvel comics is you can sit down and go, yes, we want to make an Iron Man movie, we want to do another Hulk movie. But we could also say I want to do a WWII movie. We want to do an outer space adventure. I want to do a time travel movie. I want to do a heist film. We want to do a ‘70s political thriller. We want to do a story, which is shooting now, about immortals who have been on earth for years.

All of those genres exist within the Marvel comics. And you can find them and flesh them out. And, again, Black Widow is our 24th film that Marvel Studios has produced in my almost 20 years. We want to keep doing different things. Disney+ has allowed that with the series that are also very different than things we’ve done before. So having the platform to continue to do lots of different types of movies that are shared by two things. One, they originated at some point in our comics. And, two, they have a genre element/sci-fi element to, which I enjoy in movies.

**John:** Kevin, will you come back on Episode 800 and talk us through how the next couple phases went?

**Kevin:** We will see. We’ll see if the references go down between now and 800. Yes.

**Craig:** I think you’re saying you want to keep being mentioned.

**John:** That’s what we’ll do.

**Craig:** Not a problem. Keep making those movies and we will keep praising them.

**John:** All right. We also do a thing on our show called One Cool Thing where we talk through small recommendations. Craig, did you remember One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** I do. I have a One Cool Thing. I’m an enjoyer of the Twitter. And lately a little bit of an issue with Nazis. Just I encounter them and I say things to them. And they get upset. And so I find myself getting into arguments with Nazis, which is generally bad. But one of the upsides is you start to figure out who the Nazis are.

**Kevin:** Nazis are not your One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** No.

**Kevin:** To be sure. Sorry.

**Craig:** Not since forever. But every now and then you run into a head Nazi, like the head vampire, and just like in movie mythology if you can kill the head vampire – if you can kill the Night King all – all – of the dead people go, right? So I encountered a head Nazi the other day and I was like I’m going to block her but I also want to block every one that follows her.

And there is a way to do it.

**John:** Oh, tell us.

**Craig:** It’s called Block Chain. Ah, amazing. So, it’s an extension that you can use in a Chrome browser. So, you know, that’s the only thing you use Chrome for. That’s fine. And you put in the person’s name that you want to block and you also want to block everyone that follows that person. And it’s smart enough to know that it shouldn’t block any of her followers that you follow, because sometimes people follow weird people to see like I’m going to keep tabs on that Nazi, which is fucking bizarre, but regardless. And this particular Nazi had about 80,000 followers.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Well, she probably had 400 humans and a whole bunch of Russian bots. But regardless, they all got blocked. I just watched the number – it was incredibly satisfying. So, if you do manage to run into a Nazi here and there, block chain. Spectacular.

**John:** Nice. My One Cool Thing is a very simple little thing. It’s called AI Dungeon. Some people here may have tried it. It’s an AI thing that generates, sort of like a text-based adventure like Zork. Did you ever play Zork? Ah, yes, you played Zork.

**Craig:** I played ever InfoCom game there was.

**John:** And so what’s clever about it is you’re doing the same things like, you know, look at door, pick up thing, but it’s all using AI. And so you can tell it to do anything and it will change whatever is happening around it to sort of fold that in. So if you said teach Craig to dance it will generate stuff like, you know, you start playing some music and Craig starts dancing.

**Craig:** So if I said pick up knife it will just say, ah, there’s a knife there.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Great game. I’ll play that.

**John:** Tonight. Kevin Feige. Do you have a One Cool Thing to share with us?

**Kevin:** I was given this question early and just did nothing but give me anxiety and go what am I going to give – what’s one cool that that’s going to be interesting. Because I knew you guys would have something super cool and interesting. Nazis.

**John:** Nazis.

**Craig:** And AI.

**Kevin:** And I got in my car on the way over here and put on the album I’ve been listening to time and time again and thought, oh, I’ll just say that.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Kevin:** Even though it might not sound like the coolest.

**John:** Was it MMMBop?

**Kevin:** Much more obscure than MMMBop.

**Craig:** That’s Kevin Feige.

**Kevin:** There was a documentary called Bathtubs Over Broadway that has an accompanying soundtrack about industrial musicals. And I like to listen to the soundtrack of industrial musicals from the Bathtubs Over Broadway documentary.

**Craig:** Oh wow. That’s awesome.

**Kevin:** That’s a cool thing that I’m enjoying right now.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** That’s awesome.

**John:** Thank you very much. Shoshannah Stern, do you have something you would like to recommend to our audience here?

**Shoshannah:** Yeah. I do. But it requires a backstory. So my daughter is four and three-quarters. And I had an unplanned C-section, which I did not want to have. But it happened very quickly. And I asked if in the OR if I could see her. And they said, yeah, sure.

But at the last minute then I was in the OR and I couldn’t see her. This was the first time that I was really responding to having a physical reaction to sound. Because I heard her cry and I knew that it was my baby and I couldn’t see her. And I had some kind of attack of some sort and I was seeing all of the doctors standing around me looking at me. But I could only see their eyes. I couldn’t read their lips. I couldn’t see anything because they were just looking at me with these masks. And there was this sound but I didn’t know who was talking.

And I just was like, I screamed, “Stop. You’re crucifying me,” because of the IVs and I couldn’t sign. So I was just like grabbing at the IVs. So they brought me my baby. Yes, they did. Thank god. But I was like wow, it’s kind of fucked up to be a deaf person in that situation.

So two months ago the FDA approved a brand new kind of a mask where there’s a clear plastic area on the face mask so that deaf people can actually look and see the lips moving of the people who are wearing them.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**Shoshannah:** I won’t have to go through that fucked up situation again. Or a fucked up situation like that ever again.

**John:** Lorene Scafaria, top that.

**Lorene:** Why?

**John:** [laughs]

**Lorene:** Dolly Parton’s America Podcast.

**John:** Dolly Parton’s America. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Almost as good.

**John:** Almost.

**Craig:** Almost as meaningful.

**Lorene:** Humiliating. It’s really good.

**Craig:** Is it that good though?

**Lorene:** Nope.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** And that is the end of our show. So we want to thank our amazing panelists. Lorene Scafaria. Shoshannah Stern. Kevin Feige. Our producer, Megana Rao. Megana! Our editor, Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** And of course this is all in service of the Writers Guild Foundation and the Writers Guild Foundation has supported us in putting this event on. So of course we want to thank Enid and Dustin and all the volunteers from the Writers Guild Foundation.

**John:** Tonight I want to extend an extra special thanks to our amazing interpreters, Elizabeth and Robby. Thank you very, very much.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Thank you to LA Film School, especially Hunter and Jared for tonight.

**Craig:** And finally we’d like to thank you. Our listeners. And a reminder that you can sign up now at Scriptnotes.net. This is why we’re ad-free. You can sign up now at Scripnotes.net. Scriptnotes.net for the Premium Feed. Happy Holidays and good night.

**John:** Happy Holidays everyone. Thank you all very much.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Thank you.

We have someone lined up here at the microphone.

**Male Audience Member:** Just to say thank you. This is amazing. My question is to Kevin. But before I do I want to say to the ladies thank you. As a writer-director you guys are an inspiration. Thank you.

**Lorene:** Thank you.

**Male Audience Member:** Kevin, last year at the Produced By Conference I asked you about Ms. Marvel movie and you said you’re going to focus on the Captain Marvel and then you’re going to introduce. Now it’s going to Disney+ with Bisha attached to it. I was wondering if you’re ever going to bring it to the movie world or maybe with Wolverine or something. What are the future–?

**Kevin:** That’s two different questions I think for me. We shifted to Wolverine. Ms. Marvel is coming to Disney+. Yes, Bisha is our head writer on that. And, yes, the intention with that character very much is to introduce her on a Disney+ series and then bring her into the films. And everything we’re doing at Disney+ will start to go back and forth between the streaming service and the movies. Some characters like Falcon, Winter Soldier, and Wanda Maximoff and the Vision and Loki will go from the big screen to Disney+ and back. Some characters starting with Ms. Marvel will be introduced on our Disney+ series and then go into films.

**Craig:** I honestly thought he was asking about Lorene. I heard Wolverine, I heard Wolverine. I think he’s suggesting that Lorene direct.

**Male Audience Member:** Why not?

**Lorene:** That’s what you’re here for. That kind of pressure.

**Craig:** Just putting that in the world. Put it in the universe, see what happens.

**John:** Hello, welcome.

**Male Audience Member:** My question is for Kevin as well.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Male Audience Member:** So you said the comics gave you a good framework for the interconnected narrative. But I’m sure there’s some points where you were at a fork in the road deciding to adhere or to depart from what was already given to you. Can you talk about some specific examples and some of the harder decisions you’ve made and how you decided whether to stick or to depart?

**Kevin:** Well it’s always that decision of how close do you stick to the comics. The comics are both inspiration, sometimes very specifically, sometimes generally. Marcus and McFeely had the task of Civil War when I decided that now was the time to do Civil War. And it was a great comic and ten years before we were developing the movie reading the comic month to month. It was published. It was amazing. Going back and looking at it, it did not apply. It took place, as all the comics do, in the narrative of that moment of the comics’ universe. Did not match up hardly at all with what the Marvel cinematic universe was. But the general idea of Iron Man and Cap representing two different sides of a theological argument was the inspiration. And Marcus and McFeely and Joe and Ant fleshed that out based on where we were in the cinematic universe. So that’s one where it was very specific, even taking the title from a comic, storyline, which we rarely do. But really that was a jumping off point.

**Craig:** I don’t want to stereotype the group that’s waiting, but—

**Male Audience Member:** I got you, Craig, don’t worry about it. My question, not actually directed to Kevin at all. I’ve never heard of any Marvel movies. But I know that there’s this whole Pay Up Hollywood thing. And something that’s very new. And the question that I have to John and Craig is where does accountability come into play? Obviously this is a very difficult city to make it in. And everything that we’ve heard is I can’t afford $1,500 rent. OK, well maybe you need a roommate. I can’t afford to put fuel in the car. Well, you have a car. That sounds pretty nice. And I can’t live off $50,000 a year. Well, there’s seven million people who make that happen.

So, where does accountability come into play?

**Craig:** I have an answer for you. Before I ask people who are making $50,000 to be accountable I’d like to ask the people who are making $50 billion to be accountable. I am, listen, I’m a parent. So I’m always thinking about how to make sure that my kids understand the value of hard work and the value of responsibility. But the fact is that the people who do these jobs, and we know them, and we’ve seen them, are not being treated fairly.

You can extend the argument of accountability down to anything. Well, you’re eating. I mean, a sandwich is a good thing. So, if you get a sandwich a day you should be happy. At some point, right, it’s a slippery slope. So the point is it’s not about subsistence living. It’s about being treated just reasonably.

**John:** I have a related question. A related question and answer here. So I say that accountability is useful for thinking about it in terms of you can’t direct it back at the person who is asking to be treated fairly to say like so often implicit in the answer is, well, I suffered when I came up through this scenario so it’s not – it’s the same for you.

There’s two problems with that. First off, it wasn’t the same. Second off, just because it did happen that way doesn’t mean it was ever right. And that’s a thing that we learned out of #MeToo. It’s a think we need to be talking about now.

The second thing I want to stress to all of us, and as we go into 2020 to be thinking about. It’s great news that we have a higher hourly wage happening in some places. You don’t pay rent with hours. You pay rent with dollars. And so we need to always be thinking about what is the dollars that people are making every week that is going to make it possible to live in Los Angeles. And for people who are coming to Los Angeles with this dream of moving to Hollywood and working in this industry, so they know what dollar figure actually they need to be making in order to stay and survive here. Because equity of access is the first step before we get to equity of outcome where the people who can come to this industry can actually afford to work in this industry and go up the ranks and thrive and write movies for Kevin Feige.

**Craig:** Yes. Absolutely. And I would also say that there is a temptation to think that tough love gets results. That deprivation makes people work harder. It doesn’t. As it turns out, treating people fairly and with respect will get more out of them. I do believe that. And this is a general philosophical mistake I think we make.

And so this is something that we’ve been talking about on our show a lot. And we’ve been talking to agencies. Obviously Verve made a big announcement about this. After we stop talking to the agencies I very much want to start talking to the studios about this. So we’ll be coming. We’ll be coming. But not now.

**John:** Not now.

**Craig:** Not now.

**John:** This is a fun night.

**Craig:** Thank you for your question.

**Male Audience Member:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Thank you. One last question. A lot of pressure on your shoulders. You’re wearing the mantle of the final question of the night.

**Craig:** And surely this is for Shoshannah or Lorene.

**Lorene:** The Hustlers cinematic universe.

**John:** Oh, I want to see that universe.

**Male Audience Member:** This is actually for all three of you. I just wanted to ask very simply what when either you’re going to your computer and you’re trying to break a scene, or you go into your writer’s room and maybe you’re trying to break a film, or a TV show, or you’re on set and you get this wonderful inspirational moment from one of your actors and it inspires a story idea, what are some creative rituals that you do before you go onto set, the writer’s room, or your computer just to kind of get those creative juices flowing? What are some places you go to to get some inspirational ideas from?

**Craig:** Shoshannah, you want to start?

**Shoshannah:** Sure. It’s really simple, but I just put my feet on the ground just to carry my weight evenly on my two feet, fold my hands. I’m not so much praying but I’m just feeling the flow. And I just try to remind myself that I’m grateful to be in this moment, right here, right now, doing what I love really. I just center myself and then do it. You know, whatever is blocking me or whatever I feel might block me I let it dissipate. I just let it go away. It’s not a very interesting answer. Sorry.

**John:** Oh my god, that was fascinating. That’s your ritual, too, right?

**Craig:** I mean, she’s kind of better than all of us.

**Shoshannah:** Say that again. I didn’t quite catch that. I didn’t hear it.

**Craig:** You heard me. I liked your first answer better which was I go with Josh to a bar and we get drunk. I think that’s truer.

**Shoshannah:** Maybe.

**John:** Lorene, do you have any go-tos?

**Lorene:** Yeah, I mean I think in my soul I think trying to reframe things like instead of saying I have to do something it’s saying I get to do something. So trying to remind myself of that at the beginning of a day, or a task. On a set I try to have three or four beverages first thing. I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before lunch and then a peanut butter and jelly sandwich after lunch. And no lunch.

**Craig:** That is so weird.

**Lorene:** It’s so weird. They got me a big cake on my birthday on Hustlers. It was shaped like a giant peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Humiliating. 41. So, yeah. Those are silly rituals, too.

**John:** Kevin, any rituals for you?

**Kevin:** I have relatively severe OCD that I could give you lots of rituals that utterly a waste of time and worthless and I wouldn’t recommend at all. But the notion that I have to keep in mind a lot is when there’s a lot of pressure, when you can’t think of an idea, when there’s a story problem and it gets very frustrating and I’ve pulled all of my hair out already, but you’re realizing no, no, this is a good thing. I remember being an intern and being jealous of anybody there that was employed. Anybody there that had a job. And I would hear them complain. And there was always stuff to complain about. That’s fine. Nothing wrong with complaining.

But I remember being like if I was there I wouldn’t be complaining. So, wherever I am now if I start complaining or start getting – it’s not even about complaining. It’s about just getting agitated. You realize, no, this is – exactly what Lorene said – that we get to do this and we’re very, very lucky.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** That’s a great final answer right there. Thank you.

**John:** Thank you.

Links:

* [Sign up for Scriptnotes Premium](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* Thank you to our incredible guests: [Kevin Feige](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0270559/), [Lorene Scafaria](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1032521/), and [Shoshannah Stern](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0998074/), for joining us! And thanks to Robbie Sutton and Elizabeth Green for interpreting the show.
* [Scriptnotes, Ep 44: Endings for Beginnings](https://johnaugust.com/2012/endings-for-beginners)
* [Twitter Block Chain Extension](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/twitter-block-chain/dkkfampndkdnjffkleokegfnibnnjfah?hl=en)
* [AI Dungeon](https://www.aidungeon.io/)
* [Bathtubs Over Broadway Soundtrack](https://www.bathtubsoverbroadway.com/)
* [FDA Approves Transparent Surgical Masks](https://www.theclearmask.com/product)
* [Dolly Parton’s America Podcast](https://www.npr.org/podcasts/765024913/dolly-parton-s-america)
* [Kevin Feige](https://twitter.com/kevfeige) on Twitter
* [Lorene Scafaria](https://twitter.com/LoreneScafaria) on Twitter
* [Shoshannah Stern](https://twitter.com/Shoshannah7) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) and Intro by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_431.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/the-new-one-with-mike-birbiglia).

**Craig Mazin:** Hi folks. This is Craig. Today’s podcast episode will contain some salty language. So if you are with kids in the car or people that just don’t like that kind of talk, go and put the headphones on. Or pull over and stop.

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 427 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast it’s a new round of the Three Page Challenge, where we look at writing samples sent in by listeners and discuss what’s working and what’s not. To help us do that we’re excited to welcome back Mike Birbiglia. He is the writer-director-performer of Sleepwalk with Me, Don’t Think Twice, and The New One now playing in Los Angeles and coming to Netflix very soon. Welcome back, Mike.

**Mike Birbiglia:** Thanks so much.

**Craig:** We got the Bigs.

**Mike:** I’m Patient Zero on the pod. I was one of the first listeners.

**Craig:** You’re the only person that calls it The Pod, by the way. Nobody else calls it that.

**Mike:** Really?

**Craig:** You’re the only one.

**Mike:** First of all, I love The Pod. And then second of all I plug The Pod.

**Craig:** Really?

**Mike:** When I did the tour, The New One, in DC and went back to Georgetown to my screenwriting class taught by John Glavin I told the students, “You should listen to every episode of Scriptnotes or at the very least the top 20 recommended ones.” It is a great public service that you’re doing for free—

**Craig:** Well, I’m doing it for free. John has been paid very well. [laughs]

**Mike:** But that it’s a great service and it is as good, I believe, as any film program in America. If not better.

**Craig:** Correct me if I’m wrong, not free?

**Mike:** No, they’re quite expensive.

**Craig:** Yeah. They’re quite expensive.

**Mike:** Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

**Craig:** So if you could have something for free, or something that’s like it but not as good for $50,000 a year?

**Mike:** I’m going to go with free.

**Craig:** You’re going to go with free.

**Mike:** This is the ad. It’s a 30-second spot. We’ll run it on Fox Business.

**John:** Love it.

**Craig:** Right. Do we have our own personal 800 number so that we know to give credit to Birbiglia for these subscriptions?

**John:** Absolutely, yes. So use the promo code Birbiglia to save 100% on your zero dollar—

**Mike:** Use that easy-to-spell hashtag Birbiglia.

**Craig:** Yeah. But take out most of the Is, but not all of them. Keep the one that matters.

**John:** While you’re searching for Birbiglia on Scriptnotes you could listen to Episode 121 and Episode 261, your early ones on the show. So thank you very much for coming back the third time.

**Craig:** It’s his third time. You’re going to get a jacket soon.

**John:** The fourth episode.

**Craig:** I think the fifth. SNL does a five-time club.

**Mike:** Wow.

**John:** Craig, we have a live show coming up. We can plug the live show. December 12, it’s a Thursday, in Hollywood. People can get their tickets right now. They should get their tickets right now. Craig, why is this the episode they should come for?

**Craig:** Well we have fantastic guests. One I think is going to be a big draw particularly, but the other ones should be equally as big. We have Lorene Scafaria, who is fantastic, and recently wrote and directed Hustlers, which is a big hit. And she is a wise individual.

**Mike:** She was great, one of the times I heard her on this show was tremendous.

**John:** She’s amazing.

**Craig:** By the way, didn’t seem to realize that it was going to be a live show. Yeah, she just said, “Wait, this is live?”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yes it is Lorene. We also have Shoshannah Stern and Josh Feldman who are the co-creators and co-stars of This Close which is on Sundance Channel.

**John:** It’s a fantastic show.

**Craig:** Amazing. I met Shoshannah on a panel for the TV Academy. She was remarkable. Super funny. Really smart. Just one of the – you know sometimes you meet somebody and you’re like, oh yeah, yep, your brain, my brain, we’re the same kind of screwed up.

**John:** In a world of coincidences, Josh Feldman was assigned to me by the Sundance Labs to – I’m his mentor. And so I’ve been meeting with him for the last year.

**Craig:** Shoshannah has selected me as her mentor now.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, yeah.

**John:** Our mentees are going to battle it out live on stage.

**Mike:** I think what’s special about the live event, because I did one in Austin with you folks once.

**John:** That’s right.

**Mike:** Is that the level of nerd in the audience is so beautiful.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah.

**John:** Oh, just wait till this one.

**Craig:** Wait.

**Mike:** And, no, hold one. But I believe that the level of nerd is so strong that I think, especially if you’re single, perfect place to find your life partner.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** That’s beautiful.

**Mike:** Another screenwriter.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** We have not had a Scriptnotes wedding yet. I think that is a goal for–

**Craig:** We might have.

**John:** We might have.

**Craig:** No one has told us.

**John:** Tell us if it has happened. But first tell us who the fourth guest is.

**Craig:** If you wanted to increase the concentration of lovely dorks, our kind of nerds in the audience, what better way could you do than have Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel, the chief creative officer of Marvel.

**Mike:** That’s pretty over the top.

**Craig:** Show up. So Kevin is a producer. Kevin is a studio executive. Kevin is sort of also a writer of a kind. He’s the puppet master of all of these Marvel movies, all of which have done remarkably well. So Kevin is going to be joining us. And I have a feeling that we’re going to bring in different nerds. I mean, we have our nerds. And I think we’re going to get some new nerds.

**Mike:** Do you have Scorsese coming by?

**John:** Oh my god. We should get them together.

**Mike:** I would love to see that conversation.

**Craig:** You know what we’ll do? I will be Martin Scorsese. I’ll do my Scorsese impression. I’ll be Scorsese. It’ll be great. I’ll be Scorsese doing a Birbiglia impression.

**Mike:** What you do isn’t cinema.

**Craig:** You’ve got to go really fast. So the thing is, the thing is, when you look at the movies, when you look at all the films, when you look at the great films, you’re talking about like The Searchers. And Marvel, I’m not taking anything away from them. They’re great movies. They’re great movies. People love them. But is it cinema? Is it cinema? It’s not cinema.

**Mike:** Oh my gosh.

**Craig:** It’s like Martin Scorsese is here.

**Mike:** It’s pretty good.

**John:** It was really good.

**Craig:** It’s not as good as my Birbiglia.

**Mike:** No, but that’s strong. What’s your Birbiglia? What’s your Birbiglia?

**Craig:** The Birbiglia, this is all I have so far. So Jenny and I were doing great. We were doing great. We were talking to each other. We were having a great time. We were sharing the sofa. Everything was going great. Everything was amazing. And then one day she said to me, “Hey, I think I want to have a kid.” And I said, oh no.

That’s it.

**Mike:** I think it’s OK.

**Craig:** It’s not bad, right?

**John:** But it’s not fantastic.

**Craig:** Your assistant thinks it’s F-in amazing.

**Mike:** Peter, yeah.

**Craig:** Peter is all over that. Two thumbs up from Peter. You’re so angry.

**Mike:** The vocal quality isn’t right.

**Craig:** Well, I’m not that kind of impressionist.

**Mike:** It’s kind of a summary of some stories that I’ve told. A summary of the stories I’ve told.

**Craig:** It’s a style. It’s a style. I think what it is, is it’s fast and the stop and then the heartfelt.

**Mike:** I think it’s more of a [pray-see] than a precise.

**Craig:** Correct. It is an imprecise [pray-see].

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Correct. But if you are not feeling well tonight, because you have a little bit of a cold, and you need me to just do it. I’m not sure 100% of the audience will know.

**Mike:** I’ll call Bill Hader.

**Craig:** Right. If Hader says no.

**Mike:** And then if Hader says no, I’ll call you.

**Craig:** Then you call me. That’s what they do on Barry, by the way.

**Mike:** Hader does one that’s menacingly mean. One of the things about the SNL folks, Fred Armisen does, too. One of the things about the SNL folks that people don’t often realize is that not just can they do impressions of famous people, they can do them of their friends. And they’re pitch perfect. And they’re mean. They’re mean-spirited and they make you feel bad.

**Craig:** I hope that mine didn’t make you feel bad.

**Mike:** No, no, no, that was fine. But one time I did a show with Fred Armisen at a college in New Jersey and he just got on stage and he did five minutes of me.

**Craig:** Oh my god.

**Mike:** And it was hilarious, but like impressions are mean. I mean, you basically pull out a thing that’s notable and then you put it times ten.

**Craig:** Here’s a non-mean. Have you ever heard Tig Notaro’s impression of a clown horn? It’s really great. It’s like – it’s really good. I like that one.

**John:** Good stuff. Other bits of news. The premium feed is going to be coming pretty soon. So we’re setting up the new thing that’s going to replace the old thing, which was bad, and janky, and broken. But in fixing some stuff we had to change some pipes behind the scenes. So if this episode did not show up as you expect it to, just go and re-subscribe in whatever service you’re using.

**Craig:** How would they know if it didn’t – how would they hear this?

**John:** So what I’m saying is if it’s been a while and you’re like I can see this episode on iTunes, but it didn’t show up for me, you should actually just go ahead and re-subscribe because something got broken. I think it’s going to be OK for most people, but people are on weird players sometimes.

**Craig:** And is my share of the revenue going to increase?

**John:** All of those details are going to be announced at the live show.

**Mike:** There’s a lot of news at the live show about your revenue streams, Craig.

**Craig:** I think we know what’s happening.

**John:** But one of the things I want to test out, were going to do a trial run today, which is to have a bonus segment after the credits. So just like Marvel movies have a little bonus segment afterwards, so in our bonus segment today after the credits I want to talk about scams.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Because you and I have both encountered scams this past week.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. And, Mike, for a while that was your main source of income was just running scams.

**Mike:** Yeah, yeah, that’s what I do.

**Craig:** On the streets of Brooklyn.

**Mike:** Yep.

**John:** Finally. A bit of follow up. We’ve been talking a lot about assistant pay. One of the ideas that came in from listeners was to have a town hall. That is actually happening. So Sunday November 24 at 3pm at the SAG Building there’s going to be a town hall. The venue is pretty small, so we’re going to try to live stream it as well. Details are going to be in the show notes for this episode or just check my Twitter. This is not an official Scriptnotes event. I’m going to be there, but it’s really the folks behind PayUpHollywood and the Young Entertainment Activists.

**Craig:** How much are you charging assistants to show up?

**John:** That is a free show.

**Craig:** Oh, you’re not charging them? [laughs] How great would that be? We’re charging assistants to come to a town hall about improving their pay.

**Mike:** That’s Hollywood in a nutshell, by the way.

**Craig:** That is kind of how it works, isn’t it? Have you been following assistant – Peter, have you been following along? Oh, yes, yes, Peter is pulling his credit card out right now for us. Excellent.

**Mike:** To buy a ticket to the assistant pay event.

**Craig:** Oh, Hollywood.

**Mike:** I’ve only been following it a little bit. I saw a few threads that John I think had retweeted that I thought were very powerful. And I think it’s a good movement.

**Craig:** Hopefully it’s an effective one, too. You know, one of the other ideas that we had heard was the notion of some kind of pledge, and we don’t know necessarily what the details of it would be, but a worthy topic for the town hall. A pledge that is essentially a kind of minimum, where you can say as an employer, whether I’m a show runner or I run a large company, whatever it is, I’m signing onto this pledge and promising I will never pay an assistant less than this dollar amount per week. No matter what the hours are, this is the base pay. I’m not going under it.

And in that way people could look and see, oh, here are the people that are at least not terrible. It may not be necessarily people that are great. But if we could remove terrible from the equation it would be a huge improvement.

**Mike:** I think that’s great.

**Craig:** We’ll see.

**John:** Mike Birbiglia, you’re in town because you are at the Ahmanson doing The New One, which is a new show. What do you actually call that thing that you are doing? Because it’s not standup. It is a one-man show, but it’s not a one-man show in the way that other – what do you call what you’re doing?

**Mike:** People call it many things. And I have no problem with whatever people call it. Some people call it standup. Some people call it a solo play. Some people call it a one-man show. Some people call it a monologue. It’s something that, you know, I did four of them now with my director, Seth Barrish. Sleepwalk With Me, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend. Sleepwalk With Me, which became a movie. My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend which is on Netflix and maybe right now on Prime. Thank God for Jokes which is on Netflix. And The New One, which comes out November 26 on Netflix. And they are, you know, they take about three or four years to develop. I develop them in front of audiences. I tour the country with them. They have a story to them. They have a singular story that contains stories within them. They form an arc. They sometimes have emotion, depending on how the audience experiences it.

Some people love them. And some people are perplexed by them. I think the same way that some people loved and were perplexed by Hannah Gadsby’s show that won the Emmy, which I loved. But some people were like, “Wait a minute. It’s not jokes the way I understand jokes to be.” But I’m proud of that. I think the same way that Hannah is. And other people who do these kinds of shows are.

**Craig:** I listen to standup all the time just on Slacker on Internet radio in my car, just to keep up. I like to keep up with comedians. And there is a set that Janeane Garofalo did and at some point she said someone came up to her after one of her sets and said, “I really enjoyed your talk.”

**Mike:** Your talk.

**Craig:** Here it is. That’s it. That’s what I do. That’s it. I do a talk. But there is something very writerly about it. You are maybe writing this thing in slow motion because I assume you’re amending and—

**Mike:** Every night.

**Craig:** Every night.

**Mike:** Every show. Even now when it’s already in the can.

**Craig:** So every show you’re—

**Mike:** And when people hear this I believe Monday there will be eight more performances at the Ahmanson. I’ll still be making changes and it’s already in the can coming out next week.

**Craig:** I think I’m seeing maybe like your second to last show or something like that.

**Mike:** It will be a good one.

**Craig:** You know what? Maybe don’t do one more after I do it.

**Mike:** OK.

**Craig:** When I’m there you’re done.

**Mike:** Wow. This is a real power move. I’m going to bring this up at the assistant event.

**Craig:** Well you’ll have to pay your way into that.

**Mike:** Yeah, $40.

**Craig:** It’s a lot.

**John:** So all four of these shows are autobiographical. And we had Lulu Wang on last week talking about the autobiography that was in her movie. To what degree as you’re developing this are you being absolutely faithful to the sequence of events, how they happened, versus what actually works on stage?

**Mike:** Well it’s funny because, you know, David Sedaris who does this I think as well as almost anybody, if not anybody, people ask him that a lot. How true is this? And his answer makes me laugh. “True enough for you.”

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah.

**Mike:** And I think that that’s part of it. What you want to do is tell a story that has an arc and makes people feel and experience something. You also want people to believe that it happened. And so does it have to be true to a police log? No. It doesn’t.

**Craig:** But true enough to the spirit of what you felt and—

**Mike:** Absolutely. And it absolutely is that.

**Craig:** I always think about, especially when someone is telling stories about their own family, and you’re telling stories about your wife, at some point she’s going to say, “Yeah, that’s not true enough.” Do you get that from her a lot?

**Mike:** Sure. Constantly. Jen wrote this show with me and this is a very specific thing. At a certain point I reached this point where I was – the spirit, if people haven’t seen the show, the spirit of the show is the first half of the show is about all of the reasons no one should ever want to have a child. Second half of the show is about how I had a child and how I was right. And then in the emotional twist how I was wrong. And that sort of is like one little tease of the ending, of like, oh, OK, there’s hope for this person.

Because it’s dark. It’s a very dark comedic show.

**John:** Looking at yourself as a character, you’re not entirely sympathetic through a lot of this.

**Mike:** No. Absolutely not.

**Craig:** Ever. Even on this podcast. Ever.

**Mike:** But at a certain point, you know, my wife is a poet and I would say like, “Hey, could you tell me what it was like? What did it feel like – because she’s such a character in the show – what did it feel like when our daughter was dealing with different milestones, crawling,” and you know, and so for example she showed me – she goes, “Well, I wrote this poem about her crawling.” And I read that and I just go, well, that’s better than anything that I could write. And so I thought I’ll just read this on stage. And so then she became a credited additional writer on the show.

And so it really became – to Craig’s question of how much do you sort of vet the stuff – with this one it’s like I’d say every line in the show is vetted. And to the point where like, it’s funny, I won’t spoil – Elizabeth Banks came last night and she was – which is a huge honor, because I’m a huge admirer of hers. And she was laughing about there’s this line where I admit something about myself that maybe I’m not pulling my weight around the house quite enough. And she was like, “Oof, that moment is so devastating.” And I said to her, I go, “It’s not true. I actually do, do that thing.” And you take one for the team as an autobiographical writer because the drama wants conflict.

**John:** Yeah.

**Mike:** And the drama wants the protagonist to be wrong.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** So that the protagonist can grow and change and do all of these things.

**Craig:** And there’s a great tradition of this. I mean, you know, very famously Dean Martin would host all of these wonderful roasts and be drunk off his ass and everybody loved him because he was old Drunk Dino. And he didn’t drink at all.

**Mike:** That’s hilarious. I didn’t know that.

**Craig:** It was apple juice. Because you can’t function at those things and have timing and be funny if you’re literally lit. So he just faked it.

**Mike:** That’s fascinating.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s just what we do. I mean, not on this podcast.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** 1.5 glasses of wine.

**Craig:** 1.5 glasses.

**John:** For a morning show like this 1.5 glasses of wine is perfect.

**Craig:** 1.5 glasses.

**John:** Talk about the writing process. So, the idea for doing The New One. Obviously you’re having a kid. A natural life event that’s happening. But what is the start of writing and when do you have stuff on a page that you’re starting to put in front of people to listen?

**Mike:** So for years I had – Jen and I had talked when we got married. She’s an introverted poet. I’m more of an extroverted comedian who talks about my life on stage. And we talked about when we get married I’m going to talk about us on stage. That’s sort of the nature of what I do. And I don’t know what to do. We talked that through.

When we had our daughter, when Jen got pregnant she was like, “I don’t want you talking about this.” And so I was like, OK. And so I wrote Thank God for Jokes which has nothing to do with me really. It’s about the concept of jokes and context really. And at a certain point we were at the Nantucket Film Festival for my movie Don’t Think Twice, and the director of the festival said there’s a storytelling night and the theme is jealousy. And Jen in the car looked at me and goes, “Well you’re jealous of our daughter Una. You should talk about that.”

**Craig:** Oh, you got the green light.

**John:** Yeah. OK, great.

**Craig:** You cracked the seal. Watch what happens now.

**Mike:** Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, OK, great. I’m going to talk about this. And it killed.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Mike:** I told a story about being jealous of our daughter because the premise being, and this ends up being a line in the show, which is my wife and daughter love each other so much and I’m there, too. I’m the pudgy, milk-less Vice President of the family. And that became essentially the thesis of the show The New One, which is about how Jen and I were two people who were one. And then at a certain point another one came and I was on the outside of that group. I was the one and they were the two. And then ultimately the communion of the ending of the show is that three becomes one.

**Craig:** Theme, my friends. Unifying theme. It works for everything. And it does elevate everything. And you mention Don’t Think Twice. So now I have to ask, because I was there during the early midwife-ing of Don’t Think Twice.

**Mike:** You were in my living room, on the couch, which I reference in the show, in the special.

**Craig:** And I thought the movie turned out beautifully.

**Mike:** Thanks.

**Craig:** And I’m of course, greedy audience member that I am, I’m wondering, OK, when is the next big cinematic Birbiglia experience coming? Or are you out of it?

**Mike:** I’m writing it.

**Craig:** Oh, you are? Are you?

**Mike:** I am. I am. There’s a few things I’m writing. I’m writing something for the stage that I’m very excited about. And it’s different from anything I’ve ever done. And I’m writing something for the screen that’s very different from anything I’ve ever done. And then Jen and I just finished a book called The New and Painfully True Stories from a Reluctant Dad with poems by J. Hope Stein that merges comedy stories and poetry. That comes out for Mother’s Day.

**John:** That’s great.

**Mike:** So those are the three writing projects I’m working on right now.

**John:** Very cool. That’s a lot.

**Craig:** The Birbiglia industries are humming along.

**Mike:** Yeah. Yeah.

**Craig:** Beautiful.

**Mike:** Well Bill Gates asked me if I could raise productivity.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** And so said well I have to.

**Craig:** Well as a – I mean, I own quite a bit of stock in – what’s the stock symbol? BRBG?

**Mike:** Yeah, that’s what it is.

**Craig:** BRBG. I own a ton of BRBG. Yeah, so please. Faster.

**Mike:** Keep up the—

**Craig:** More and faster. More and faster.

**Mike:** If I could plug one thing, if people like what I’m doing, if they watched the special on Netflix, sign up for my mailing list on Birbigs.com. And what you’ll get is I’m doing a pre-order of my wife and my book, which comes out in May, and if you order that you’ll get a card, like a holiday card from me, and then my wife’s poetry book Little Astronaut, which is gorgeous.

**John:** Cool.

**Mike:** It’s spectacular. And this is actually – it’s a subject of a special that I’m working on for a couple years from now, but I’m increasingly a huge fan of supporting what you like. If you like the local pizzeria, go to the local pizzeria. If you like the local bookstore, go to the local bookstore. If you like small movies, see it in the theater. And I feel that way about my work. Like I so appreciate my fans. Because I’m not supported by a studio or network, it’s just people signing up for my mailing list and pre-ordering things. And that makes me able to make more things.

**Craig:** And what percentage of that money do I get?

**Mike:** Wait, you don’t get any of it.

**Craig:** Again? Is there any revenue stream I share in?

**Mike:** I think that you—

**John:** Chernobyl DVDs.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I get a little something from that.

**Mike:** The way that Elizabeth Warren feels about you, Craig.

**Craig:** I’m the problem. I’m the problem. I know. I know. I know.

**John:** I have a question about a specific technique I saw you do in the show, and I’m wondering sort of how you get to it. There are moments where you’ll finish a thought and sort of blunt cut to a completely different thought. And it feels like there’s a ticking clock you have to get back to to tie it back in in a short period of time. But it was the first time I ever noticed you doing it, but it works really well. It felt like in a weird way kind of a cinematic technique where you cut to something different, and like got to get back to how this is going to fit in. Can you talk about that?

**Mike:** It’s funny you should say that. The show in a certain sense is a spoken film in a certain way. Like my director, Seth Barrish, and I would always think in terms of pictures. You know, it’s like, you know, it’s more evocative to talk about sitting on the couch than just to talk about a conversation between me and my wife. Lying on the couch together, sharing hot and sour soup is more evocative than just talking, etc.

And yet in terms of like the driving force of the show, my director and I talk about a lot, is all about intent. And that the audience knows that we’re going somewhere. I’m digressing about how people with kids are like zombies. And I do like a flourish of four minutes of comedy about that. I come back to ultimately what I’m really saying is Jen says to me, “I think that if we had a kid I think it would be different.” And there’s a focus in the part where I’m saying Jen said this that I bring my voice down. The lighting designer does a nice job of coloring it in a way and focusing the lights so that the audience knows like pay attention to this part. Because this is actually the spine.

**Craig:** It’s kind of a nice mirror of who you are. Because you are very, like you say, you’re effusive, you’re outgoing, you’re funny. And so there is a lot of stuff coming out of you. And then I think sometimes you stop and go, wait, hold on. I’m in trouble.

**Mike:** Sure.

**Craig:** Or I feel a certain thing. And it reminds me – you get the best of all of it. And it’s a natural separation I think for you.

**Mike:** Thanks. Exactly. I would say the free association quality of the show is an outgrowth of my personality and how I communicate, but it’s essentially honing that thing. Codifying that thing.

**John:** So, in a traditional standup set you can sort of jump to another thing and there’s not expectation that everything has to circle back around. Because it is meant to be a dramatic piece it all comes back together at the end. You have to build a trust with the audience that you really are going to get back to this place.

**Mike:** Yeah.

**John:** All right. Three Page Challenge. You’ve listened to the Three Page Challenges before on this podcast. So what we do is every once and a while we invite our listeners to send in the first three pages of their script. It could be a pilot. It could be a drama. It could be a – kind of whatever. Some of these are web series apparently. But we take a look at them and give our honest feedback. So this is all voluntary. Everyone who signs up for this knows what they’re signing up for. If you want to send in your Three Page Challenges you go to johnaugust.com/threepage. If you want to read these Three Page Challenges there will be links in the show notes to them.

All right, our first Three Page Challenge is called F.T.S, Episode 1, Menstrual Pain, but Danielle Motley. Mia, late 20s, sits in the large stall of her workplace restroom facing a period stain on her pants as an automated air freshener spritzes in her face. Mia asks Siri on her phone to call a contact named Fuck Boy before two women enter the bathroom and Mia hangs up before the call connects. Mia responds to text messages from Fuck Boy, who is annoyed that she called if she couldn’t talk.

Mia waits for the women to finish their conversation and leave. Mia then calls her sister, Bug. Mia begs Bug to bring her a change of clothes. After teasing her, Bug says she’ll be there in 30 minutes. Stuck in the stall until Bug comes, Mia hears a tiny girl enter the bathroom and explode the next stall. The air freshener stops working.

That’s where we’re at at the bottom of three pages. Mike Birbiglia, we’ll start with you. So, all four of the Three Page Challenges we selected this week are comedies or comedic. What was your first impression looking at F.T.S.?

**Mike:** So what I like about it, and this is a challenging thing for me. You guys do this all the time. I listen to it on The Pod.

**Craig:** Cast. [laughs]

**Mike:** It’s hard to be critical, because I want all writers to know the thing I tell myself is keep writing, essentially. And so it’s hard to be critical. What I like about it is it’s personal. And it’s sensitive. It’s writing from a place of pain, literally, which I think is great. And I think it’s a good place to start comedy from. I always think that’s a great place to start comedy from.

I flagged like one thing just as a rule of thumb in comedy which is there’s a character named Basic Bitch and I think that that’s a trope of some kind. Basic Bitch. I think it’s someone else’s joke maybe. Or not. Or just it’s a trope. And I just think if you’re writing comedy whenever you have something that is a trope just think of three alts for it. What else could it be other than Basic Bitch? Because I think that your equity with the audience, your trust from the audience, is that you don’t use tropes. As a comedian, the moment when I’m watching a comedian use a trope I go like I’m not sure I trust the writer anymore.

**John:** There’s some tropes in some of these pages and I think we should point them out when we see them. Craig, your first impression of these three pages?

**Craig:** I struggled. I struggled. I want to talk through where I thought things were going well, Danielle, but also where I think you ran aground.

Let’s start just with what you want me to see and how you present the thing you want me to see. Because there is a moment here right off the bat. And right off the bat what you’re telling me is that this woman is not just simply going to the bathroom. She’s a surprise period, right. So, it’s gotten on her clothes and she has a huge problem. In disbelief she says, “This is bullshit.” That’s terrific. I like that opening because that felt very real to me.

The problem is I’m going to read back to you, here’s what I get. I am in a woman’s bathroom in a corporate building. I’m not sure how I would know it’s a corporate building just from this woman’s bathroom, but that’s fine. In the largest stall, the one that’s supposed to be reserved for those with disabilities, Mia, late 20s, sits on the toilet, pants and underwear at her knees. Her neat braids pulled tightly into a chignon, regrettable college tattoos hidden under expensive clothing.

I’m already frustrated. I can’t see those tattoos. Why are you telling me about them now? And then you say she is without a disability, by the way. Also cannot know that at this point. And then you say she is not, however, without a huge period blood stain on her silky green panties and brown slacks. That’s how you would relate that maybe in prose, but what’s happening here is I’m seeing this person. I’m seeing her looking at this. Then you’re showing it to me and she’s saying, “This is bullshit.” And the problem with that is that means she’s been staring at it long enough to have already said this is bullshit.

This is a weird thing to go through, because it’s so logic intensive and it feels picky and annoying. But I promise you it actually is the essence of what makes things funnier not on film. If you show me this woman in a stall staring down and she says, “This is bullshit,” and then you show me what she’s looking at, then I will probably laugh. But if you show me what she’s looking at and then she says, “This is bullshit,” it feels very stilted. So there’s a rhythm and an order thing that you have to kind of consider.

The other issue is I think Mike is 100% right. Chatty Bitch and Basic Bitch means that you just don’t know. And by the way there’s nothing – Basic Bitch wasn’t any less chatty than Chatty Bitch, so I wasn’t really sure what the difference between the two is. There was sort of a faux attitude there. So your character names are implying an attitude that will not come through because they don’t have name tags on that say Chatty Bitch or Basic Bitch. And their discussion that these two women are having just felt like water treading to me. It just didn’t matter. It could have been just wah-wah in the background while she’s trying to figure out at the same time how do I solve this problem.

I’m not sure why she calls Fuck Boy as opposed to her sister first. But, you know, so be it. But I don’t also quite get a sense of her – I know you want me to think that she is in trouble, but it doesn’t seem like she’s in trouble. It’s weird.

**John:** There’s a lack of urgency to it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, your comment about it feeling a little bit like prose, like novel writing versus screenwriting, I agree with you. Because there were some stuff that was really smart and funny but it’s going to not really work on a screen. The example being the deodorizer thing. There’s probably a way you can shoot that where you actually the little spray. Because it pays off nicely at the end. But it felt more like a novel kind of joke. Because since we can’t smell anything on screen we’re not getting the hit of it, which you could describe it in a book version.

**Craig:** When it first comes in, let’s see. Where does it first show up?

**John:** It first shows up on page one.

**Craig:** Ah, yeah, right there, the “automatic air freshener mounted on the wall above her eeks,” that’s misspelled by the way, “ekes out a puff of scented aerosol spray. Rolling Meadow scented to be exact.” That is prose. It doesn’t matter to me – that’s cleverness that I can never get credit for. But what I can get is if she says, “This is bullshit,” and then the next thing in the action is a buzz above her and air freshener squirts out some horrible smell that’s slightly better than the smell in the bathroom. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. And then, buzz, again. You can just have buzz, puff. And then we would know that there’s this sound, you know. Something…

OK, and then last thing here. Danielle, there’s a certain focus that we have when we’re doing body comedy, so any kind of comedy that surrounds bodily functions there is a cumulative effect. It can be incredibly funny. God knows I’m not above it, clearly. But what is really hard to do is two kinds of body comedy on top of each other. Monty Python had better blood jokes than anybody. So people would be bleeding, squirting blood.

**Mike:** Incredible.

**Craig:** it was the greatest. But they wouldn’t also have somebody shitting at the same time. It’s like you get one body function at a time. In this case it’s period blood. I don’t think we can handle the shitting.

**John:** Mike, you do a lot of body comedy in all your acts. So Sleepwalk With Me obviously—

**Mike:** There’s a lot of physical maladies that I discuss in my shows.

**John:** And so you’re trying to create a visual, visceral reaction to it which makes us sympathetic to your situation but it’s not sort of the main point of it. It’s to be able to talk about something else.

**Mike:** Yeah. And I think that one of the things in my show is I sort of go out of my way to phrase bodily things in a way that I’ve never heard them be phrased before. And I think that that’s sort of the key to comedy because – one of the keys to comedy – because you want to surprise people. We’ve all seen things that have shitting in them. We’ve all seen things that have period blood in them. But it’s like what’s your take? What comes to mind when I think of period blood. I think of Superbad had that really memorable period blood in it. And I think what was – what was so memorable, like they’re dancing or something.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Mike:** And there’s something about it and it’s very subtle. And it’s very like all of a sudden you’re like, oh, I see what’s happening here. The filmmaker, Greg Mottola in this case, is sort of clearly thinking about the ways that period blood have been depicted in cinema historically and then he’s making a choice to do it. I’m going to do it this different way. Because bodily functions are so much a part of the human existence that you have to think about how has it been done, how am I going to do it differently?

**Craig:** And there has to be more than just it. Right? So if you’re going to be doing a joke about someone having their period and surprise period, then it can’t just be, “Argh, blood.” You know? And if you’re going to do a joke about somebody shitting it can’t just be shitting noises, right? They’re crazy. There has to be a context to it of some kind or another that makes it, I don’t know, just more panicky, more funny. We just can’t rely on the fact that it exists. In and of itself it’s not that funny.

**John:** Wrapping this up, I want to emphasize some things that I really did like about these pages. And so on the bottom of page one Basic Bitch shakes the locked door to Mia’s stall. Twice, underlined. Mia, “Really?” Like that twice moment was a very specific thing. Like when someone doesn’t rattle it once but rattles it twice, like you didn’t get it the first time? That tells me that Danielle is noticing something about what that situation is.

I like the idea that Fuck Boy is called Fuck Boy. I didn’t buy using Siri to call it. That’s not a thing I believe. She’s in the stall. There’s no reason why she needs Siri to do it. So I didn’t quite get that.

We talk a lot about texting in movies. It’s absolutely a valid thing to do and to show. In this case I would have probably bolded those texts just because I think there’s the risk that people are going to skip over those texts because they’re not seeing them as crucial dialogue kind of information.

And here’s an example of a confusion that happens. On page three, the door opens again and a tiny woman in clear discomfort rushes into the stall furthest from the one Mia is in. Mia jumps as she slams the door. The she and Mia is confusing. So you’ve got to be looking at your sentences to make sure there’s not a confusion there. Because you read it twice, you’re like, wait, did Mia slam the door? So just always be looking for ways that people could get confused.

**Craig:** And where’s the camera? I mean, I’m with her. She’s talking with her friend. And then are we cutting out of the stall to see this woman running in and running into a different stall, pause, pause, pause, pause, go back into the stall and her whisper yelling, like she had to wait for the camera to leave the stall. Just why?

**John:** Yeah. Really thinking about it as what we’re going to see on screen I think will help this.

**Craig:** Yeah. Geography.

**John:** I think Danielle actually has a sense of what’s funny and what can work. It’s making it cinematically funny is going to be the next step.

**Craig:** You know what? I agree. And I would say to her this is very common. This kind of comedy is really hard to do. And you’re going to need passes at it. Just like imagine yourself as a 3D printer. You’ve laid down your first. Now you have to lay down the next layer. The next layer. The next layer.

**John:** Craig, do you want to talk us through Dunked by John Bickerstaff?

**Craig:** Bickerstaff. This is Dunked by John Bickerstaff. Inside a beautiful church we watch as a line of handsome young teens, first a young man, then a woman, submerge and emerge from their baptisms. Behind them stands 16-year-old pudgy and scared Simon. Simon receives a kiss from his girlfriend Emma before stepping into the tank and into Pastor Roy’s arms.

Pastor Roy tries to gently lean Simon into the pool, but Simon won’t budge. He says he can’t swim. So Pastor Roy reassures him and applies more pressure. Simon resists, even using his mouth to hold onto the lip of the tub. When Pastor Roy finally does dunk Simon, Simon reaches up and slaps him across the face.

Later we find Simon sulking in the bathtub before his mother barges into the bathroom. She feels guilty that since she home-schooled Simon he never learned to swim and she’s bought him swim trunks.

Well, John, why don’t we start with you on this one?

**John:** So, there’s a lot here I liked. And so I want to talk about two scenes that we see here. There’s the baptism scene and then there’s the bathroom scene with his mom. Let’s talk about the baptism. Totally valid idea. It gets you into the crux of what this story is about right away. We see that he’s obviously a kid in a religious setting. There’s going to be a baptism. We have a sense that after these first two kids are being dunked that there’s going to be some problem. Just a natural sort of setup/payoff kind of thing that happens in comedies.

And the way he resists going underneath the water – I can see the joke happening there and I can also see when you’re on the day shooting that thing you can try a bunch of different ways and it can be really funny. So I can see that all working.

I had bigger problems in the second scene, which is the dialogue between Simon and his mom. There was a lot of stuff in there that I wanted to cut. And I also sort of want to discuss with you guys about tone and voice. “Cheese and Rice Ma!” felt too impossible even for the world that I think we’re supposed to be in.

So there’s a lot of stuff here I enjoyed. I didn’t think it all worked.

**Mike:** Also, Cheese and Rise, Ma, so that we don’t think that we’re in Cheese and Rise Massachusetts, one of my favorite towns in America.

**Craig:** I mean, bad drivers. Great food.

**John:** Just the absolute best. Other things I’ll point out. Simon, 16, tubby and terrified. Great. I get tubby and terrified.

**Craig:** Here we go.

**John:** Emma, 15, his girlfriend.

**Craig:** That’s it.

**John:** Period.

**Craig:** Girlfriend.

**John:** Girlfriend.

**Craig:** Oh, I know how to cast that. Let’s find…girlfriend.

**John:** We’re looking for…girlfriend. So, all we know is that she’s one year younger. Who dates a tubby and terrified 16-year-old? That’s a fascinating choice. So you’ve got to give us something specific about this, because otherwise we don’t know who this is.

**Craig:** Girlfriend.

**John:** Craig, what are your–?

**Craig:** Similar issues. Just as an interesting thing that happens right off the bat is a question of perspective. So we have our main character, Simon, and he is terrified of being baptized specifically because he’s terrified of going into the water. He thinks he’s going to drown, I guess. I mean, that’s sort of implied here.

Well, then his perspective matters. I want to see him looking at that water. I want to feel his fear of that water. Right now what I’m getting is a handsome guy and another handsome guy and Pastor Roy, 45, rugged but nebbish, which is an impossible combination.

**John:** Good luck, casting director. Find rugged but nebbish.

**Craig:** Well, we looked through every single person on the planet. There is no one. So, that’s not a combination you can do. But that guy guides him out of the tank. He brings in a teen girl into the tank. And meanwhile it’s just happening. And then we show this guy and he’s nervous. And I don’t know why. I don’t know that he’s nervous because of the water. I need to know he’s nervous because of the water because otherwise he’s just vaguely terrified of nothing. And his girlfriend says the weirdest thing in this moment, which I kind of thought was remarkable and could be amazing if I understood why she said it. She says, “I love you.” Why? Why is she saying that? Is she saying it because she knows he’s terrified? Is she comforting him? It could be great.

And the physical comedy of this I think could be really funny. I would make it bigger. So I don’t know if you’ve ever seen what it looks like – one of the things if you’re training to become a lifeguard they teach you – you have to be really careful because drowning people will try and kill you. They are in a full panic. They will try and kill you.

**John:** Fight or flight kicks in.

**Craig:** 100%. If I go in that water I’m going to die, therefore I have to fight you. And I want this to just get bigger.

**Mike:** That’s a really smart point.

**Craig:** And Pastor Roy is big. And Simon is probably not in great shape. And this could be a great – and also the idea of getting beaten up by a pastor in a church while this organ music is playing is really funny.

**John:** And also remember that as an audience we have an expectation that something is going to go wrong, so you have to meet that expectation but also exceed that expectation. And still continue to surprise us even though we knew that something like this could happen.

**Craig:** Yeah. The only other thing I would say is I agree with you, tonally in that second scene, and I’m kind of curious what you think about this, too, Mike. Everything was sort of fine. I mean, even like Cheese and Rice is sort of like well maybe they’re Mormons or something, even though they’re not. But where I tripped up was Mom says, “Si, what are you doing in there?” Which is a weird question also since he’s just in the bathroom taking a bath. It’s not that crazy.

And he says, “I’m baptizing myself. In the name of the humiliation, the mortification, and the condemnation. Amen.” So I don’t believe that. I just don’t know where that line is coming from.

**John:** That line does not exist in a reasonable world.

**Craig:** Sometimes John what we’ll say is that line feels really written, meaning, OK, you might be super proud of the combination of words there, and they are smart. But they just don’t belong coming out this person’s mouth, so you don’t get credit for it.

**John:** Mike Birbiglia, talk us through.

**Mike:** Yeah. It’s funny you should mention that, in the name of humiliation, mortification run, because I didn’t have the exact note you did, but I found myself reading it three or four times. Because I kept thinking – and that’s what you don’t want. You don’t want people in their head as the reader going, “Did I miss something? I’m going to read this again. Wait, did I miss it again? I’m going to read it again.” Like you want people going, going, and going, and they’re in. And I found myself out at that point.

I think that what I liked about the pages is that I found it immediately visual in a way that understood in one page, which is impressive. To do anything in three pages is very hard. In one page I understood the dunk tank and I understood what was happening. And that’s impressive and a lot of potential for comedy in it, which I think is great and original. I haven’t seen it.

And then what I liked was title card, Dunked, pivot to the tub water, which to me feels cinematic and it feels like it has a vision. It’s presenting a visual language. And to me I’m reading someone’s pages who is trying to make a film instead of just a comedy.

**Craig:** Right.

**Mike:** They’re not just trying to make me laugh. They’re trying to tell a story with pictures. And so immediately I go, oh, OK, what is the relationship between the baptism and him in the bath. This is going to be what this is about, but in a way that I don’t understand yet. But I’m intrigued.

**Craig:** I agree with that. It seems like there’s potential for this to be a really interesting story. Just needs to be some sort of – you know, it’s the same thing. Just rigor. Apply rigor to it. And at no point should anyone hearing any of this feel like they’ve failed. This is what writing is.

**Craig:** To John’s point about girlfriend being a generic, there’s this great story from an interview I think years ago I read of Noah Baumbach where he was saying like when he wrote Squid and the Whale, one of my favorite movies, it was on hold for so many years that he rewrote it from all the different character’s perspectives. He’d do a pass for, you know, the Jeff Daniels character. He’d do a pass for the Laura Linney character, etc.

**Craig:** There you go. Yeah.

**Mike:** And then what you end up with something so layered that you could never in a million years think of those characters as girlfriend, or boyfriend, or mother, or father.

**Craig:** Also, you couldn’t in a million years write that all at the same time. So that’s sort of my—

**Mike:** To your layer point.

**Craig:** Yeah. Make sure that as we go through this that you guys give yourselves breaks and understand that this is part of the process. You can’t get it all right all at once.

**Mike:** Yeah. And you guys have said this on the show a lot, and I’ll say it even again, both of my movies, Sleepwalk with Me and Don’t Think Twice, I’d say 12, 13, 14 drafts, full drafts, is what is on the screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I gave you a little bit of a high colonic on—

**Mike:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** On your last one.

**Mike:** You crushed me.

**Craig:** I didn’t crush you.

**Mike:** You gave me really tough notes that were very helpful.

**Craig:** I mean, yeah. Well I’m glad they were helpful.

**Mike:** They were.

**Craig:** But they’re the only ones that matter, I guess. You know? It’s like you just have to kind of – you have to go through it. Everybody does. I’ve gone through it a billion times. Never let Scott Frank do it to you, by the way.

**Mike:** Oh, I can’t even imagine. I’ve heard him on the podcast here and holy cow.

**Craig:** I wrote a script once. I showed it to Scott Frank. He spoke about it with me for about two hours. I took the script. I put it in a drawer. Literally never looked at it again.

**Mike:** Oh my gosh.

**Craig:** It’s gone. I purged it from my mind.

**Mike:** Wow.

**Craig:** Yeah. No one could have killed something with more – it was actually – his killing of it was far better than the script. I should write a script about what he said.

**Mike:** One time I was trying to explain to my wife who Craig was, because she had just met him once in our living room after a reading. And she goes, “Is he the guy who was shouting at you after the reading? With the beard?” Oh yeah, that’s Craig.

**Craig:** I can’t imagine I was shouting.

**Mike:** No, I don’t think so.

**Craig:** No, you see what happened? That’s true enough.

**Mike:** True enough.

**Craig:** That’s true enough.

**John:** I want to talk about Karen on page three because while I want to get rid of some stuff on page two that she does, her voice is actually really interesting and passive-aggressive. So I do like, “Well, you shouldn’t be doing anything you need a locked door for anyway. What if there’s an emergency? I’m not strong enough to break down a door.” She’s going through the list, well I might need to break down this door.

Also, we do a cut of dialogue here which is good and appropriate, so people just take a look at it. She says, “Which I don’t think is entirely true. I can’t. But I home-schooled you.” So when characters interrupt each other, that’s a thing that happens a lot. And so you’ve done a good job here on page three interrupting in a way that is actually helpful and sort of conveys more information. So I did like that.

Finally, I didn’t buy the floral bathing trunks at the end. It just didn’t feel like they would have to exist. It felt forced to me.

**Craig:** Yeah, like a prop joke.

**John:** Yeah, a prop joke.

**Craig:** Ha-ha, flowers. No, she could have bought any bathing suit theory.

**Mike:** Or they could have done the floral trunks and they don’t even mention it.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Mike:** And you don’t hang a lantern on it, so as to tell the audience to laugh.

**Craig:** You just have the kid, you can have Simon just look at it like WTF mom.

**John:** Excellent. Do that.

**Craig:** Good point.

**John:** Let’s stop there on the Three Page Challenges. I think those were two good different examples.

**Craig:** Terrific.

**John:** And we have a listener question that comes in from Akiva Schaffer.

**Mike:** Oh gosh.

**Craig:** Here we go. It’s a good one.

**Mike:** Heavy hitter.

**Craig:** So Akiva wrote this in. Avid listener of the podcast.

**Mike:** Podcast, yeah. Who I have made a film with. I played a small role in Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.

**Craig:** Never Stop Never Stopping.

**Mike:** Never Stop Never Stopping is the subtitle.

**Craig:** So great.

**Mike:** From The Lonely Island. Brilliant director.

**Craig:** Akiva is one of the – yes, along with Andy Sandburg and Jorma Taccone who is another friend of our show, and your neighbor. Your wall neighbor.

**Mike:** Was my wall neighbor. We just recently moved down the street.

**Craig:** Oh, to get away from Jorma.

**Mike:** Which by the way, the—

**Craig:** And Mari Heller.

**Mike:** And Marielle Heller, whose Mister Rodgers film is tremendous.

**Craig:** I hear that. And she is also starring in Scott Frank’s, the aforementioned Scott Frank’s—

**Mike:** I know. I know. She’s a great actor, too.

**Craig:** You know what? Scott never showed me that script. I never got a chance to yell at him over that script.

**Mike:** Oh wow.

**Craig:** He knows. This is what Akiva writes. He says, “Hey, I have a bit of Hollywood umbrage.” Nice. He does listen. He listens to the show.

**Mike:** Well done. Well done.

**Craig:** “And it’s so petty and privileged that I don’t know where to put it.” We’ll welcome you in, Akiva. “So I thought maybe you were the show that would have the platform or correct showbiz audience where it could be appropriate. It’s about screeners, specifically the waste.”

**Mike:** Yes, this drives me nuts.

**Craig:** Yeah, so let me just back up for a second for those of you wondering. Around the award season, which is—

**John:** Starting now.

**Craig:** Roughly now, around Golden Globes, Academy Awards, the Writers Guild Awards, the DGA Awards, SAG Awards, the companies that have movies and shows that are up for these things will start mailing you at home a DVD of them if you are in one of those groups. God help you if you’re in all of them. Because you will get one of these for all of them. So you will get eight – I think the most I got was like eight versions of Us. For whatever reason in the last Academy cycle, or last award cycle I got eight Us DVDs. I don’t know why.

So, what he says is, “First we have the materials themselves. The paper, the cardboard, the DVDs, the huge boxes, the random photo presentations or posters.” Mrs. Maisel is a huge—

**John:** Oh man. The wrapping paper. The poster.

**Craig:** Crazy. “Then there are the duplicates. Last year I received three copies of most movies because I’m in the DGA, the WGA, and SAG. There are the trucks that deliver them. For the TV screeners it’s even worse. There are bigger box sets.”

**Mike:** It’s endless. It’s endless.

**Craig:** “It’s a ridiculous waste and no one uses DVDs anymore. Can’t we be more eco-conscious?” I’ve abridged this slightly.

**Mike:** He’s absolutely right.

**Craig:** He is.

**Mike:** It’s infuriating. And also you can’t to my knowledge – I researched this last year because I had the same frustration. You can’t really recycle DVDs.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. You can’t.

**Craig:** They live forever.

**John:** Because they’re metal and plastic.

**Craig:** So, I’m sure John you are in the Film Academy.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I am now in the Television Academy.

**John:** Congratulations.

**Mike:** Wow.

**Craig:** That’s right. That’s right. I’m in an Academy now.

**John:** He’s an Academy voter.

**Craig:** I suspect that one of the things we would hear if we brought this issue to our respective Academies is, “Uh, yeah, no one uses DVDs anymore under the age of blankety-blank, but we have a lot of voters who are over that age and they do use them.” What do we say to that?

**John:** It’s the first mover problem. The first studio that stops sending DVDs is going to feel like they’re at a disadvantage for awards.

**Craig:** Yes. Of course.

**John:** That’s going to happen. So I know the studios aren’t supposed to collude about stuff and get together to meet about things, but I think an outside group could bring them all together perhaps and say like what if you all agreed to send out DVDs, then I think we could do it. Because honestly the digital codes they do send out for some things, they work, and they actually help prevent privacy because they can see how many times each of those have been downloaded and stop a URL from downloading again if they need to.

**Craig:** I would love for them to stop this. It does seem absurd.

**John:** I think I want to give Warners credit. I think Warners was the first one to have a good For Your Consideration app that installs on Apple TV that you can register it.

**Craig:** That just sounds so much better.

**John:** It is better. So the devil’s advocate, like there are times in which you are off the Internet and there are people who go to their cabin in the woods and watch a bunch of screeners. I’m sorry. That’s going to be more difficult now.

**Mike:** There’s also an upon request version of it.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. Like I need a DVD. Send me my DVD. But otherwise, yeah. Default to it. I think the Academies actually could just say we’re going to make the rules that if you send physical screeners by default you’re not eligible for an award. How about that? Problem solved.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And a lot of angry art members. I will be an art member soon.

**Mike:** I work as an actor on the show Billions.

**Craig:** Of course. Yes.

**Mike:** And it’s a much more eco-friendly set than I’ve worked on in the past.

**Craig:** Brian Koppelman is 100% recyclable.

**John:** [laughs] Indeed. It’s really compostable, but it’s really the same idea.

**Mike:** Actually if you recycle him he actually comes out as Scott Frank.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Funny how that works.

**Craig:** Levine, not recyclable. Cannot–

**John:** He’s like the Terminator. You have to melt him down.

**Craig:** David Levine is one of the nicest people ever and his face – his face just implies that he wants to murder you. He has—

**Mike:** That’s true.

**Craig:** He has such an intensity about him.

**Mike:** And he’s in great shape.

**Craig:** He’s in amazing shape.

**Mike:** Very intimidating thing about him.

**Craig:** He’s tough as nails. But he’s nice. He doesn’t want to murder you.

**Mike:** Yeah, very nice.

**Craig:** But his eyes say take a step back, I might murder you. Whereas Koppelman, you know, 100% recyclable.

**Mike:** Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

**John:** All right. It’s come time for out One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a thing called Spleeter. It’s an open source music separation library. What this actually means is it can take a track of music and split the vocals out from the—

**Mike:** Oh my gosh. Really?

**John:** It seems like a magic trick. So I’m going to play this here for you. So here is a demo. Here is Lizzo’s Truth Hurts.

[Truth Hurts plays]

All right, so that’s the vocals. But useful, more useful sometimes is getting the actual backing track so you can do your–

**Craig:** Do some karaoke.

[Truth Hurts Plays]

**Mike:** That’s incredible.

**John:** So it’s machine learning that does it. So basically they’ve just—

**Craig:** That’s terrifying.

**John:** They’ve gone through thousands and thousands and thousands of clips and are able to figure out like oh this must be voice, this must be background, and then it’s filling in the pieces that are missing.

**Craig:** It’s terrifying.

**John:** Yeah. So it’s the same thing that enables people to do face swaps essentially.

**Craig:** I just took a DNA test. I’m 99.5% that Ashkenazi Jew.

**Mike:** Oh wow.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s how Jewish I am. That’s how Jewish I am. I just drew a target on myself for racists, again.

**John:** Craig, One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** Sure. So I probably talked about this before. One of the great mysteries of medical science is why do we sleep. We don’t really know why, or at least we didn’t really know why. And this goes across all mammals for sure. It’s not that we sleep because we get tired. Something is going on. And if you prevent people from sleeping they will go crazy.

**John:** And die.

**Craig:** And then they will die. So what is actually happening? So there is a new study out from Dr. Maiken Nedergaard, a professor of neurosurgery at The University of Rochester, and an author of a study in Science. And basically what they found was they know that as our brain works and metabolizes and does things throughout the day there is a creation of harmful toxins. There are proteins and plaques. These things eventually can build up and cause dementia and Alzheimer’s in old people if they can’t be cleared out.

How do they get cleared out? Well they get cleared out by cerebral spinal fluid. What they found is during sleep the flow of cerebral spinal fluid in the brain increases dramatically, essentially washing away harmful waste proteins that build up between brain cells during waking hours. It’s washing our brains. We have to sleep so that our brains can wash themselves.

And they’re doing this literally in a kind of cyclical way like a dishwasher. Brain cells when we sleep actually kind of shrink, making easier for the fluid to kind of go through and move in and out. It’s bananas.

So we may – and by we, I’m not one of the authors of the study. But we humans may have finally figured out why we have to sleep and what’s actually going on.

**John:** Now if you’re intrigued by this topic I think I may have made this a previous One Cool Thing, a book I read a couple months ago, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker goes into more detail not only about sort of the cleaning up of proteins but also why we have the two kinds of sleep, the REM and NREM sleep and sort of the specific functions that they’re trying to do in those things. And you need both kinds of it. So one of it is for more physical stuff, one is for memory formation. And if you interrupt those things – basically you read through this book and it’s basically a bunch of horrifying studies where they keep waking people up and up and up and up.

**Craig:** And this I assume is of some specific interest to you because you very famously have a fairly rare but serious sleep disorder.

**Mike:** I have a sleep disorder, and like you’re saying, it’s a field of study that people don’t know the answers to the questions. Why do we sleep? Why do people sleepwalk? You know, and there’s researchers who are doing tremendous work. But yeah, it’s endlessly fascinating.

**Craig:** Well maybe based on this in ten or 15 years you can take those mittens off when you sleep. Your sleep mittens.

**Mike:** Indeed.

**Craig:** You should sell sleep mittens.

**Mike:** I’ve thought about selling a lot of things, Craig.

**Craig:** That’s birbigs.com.

**Mike:** There’s a sheet that you’ll see in the show that I sleep – instead of sleeping in the sleeping bag lately I created a fitted sleep sheet that fits me into my bed with a hole for my head.

**Craig:** Oh wow.

**Mike:** Yeah, and it’s pretty inventive.

**Craig:** Like a nun.

**Mike:** And the reason – and people always say you should sell that, you should sell that. There’s something about the medical liability.

**John:** Oh of course.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**Mike:** That scares the lights out of me. This idea of like what if someone is hurt or injured or god forbid dies trying to do this thing, and it’s like Mike Birbiglia’s sleep sheet killed them. Look, man, I’m just trying to make a living out there.

**Craig:** You sell that thing and literally 98% of people that use it die.

**Mike:** Yeah. With my luck.

**Craig:** Exactly. It wouldn’t be just one rare case that you have to deal with. It’s almost everyone.

**Mike:** So my One Cool Thing harkens back to something I was saying earlier which is – it’s something Mark Duplass had tweeted recently which is supporting local. Supporting local bookstores. Supporting local pizza. Supporting your local cinema.

It’s in some ways, you know, in my case I live in Brooklyn. We buy all of our books from Books are Magic. It’s a tremendous bookstore run by an author. Her name is Emma Straub. And she opened her own bookstore. And I feel like in some ways this local movement is political. It’s a political response to the wealth disparity in society right now. There’s people with billions, there’s people with nothing. And I feel like let’s support the people who are making good food, who are selling good groceries, or selling good books and putting a lot of heart and soul into their work.

**John:** Buy local, buy Birbiglia.

**Craig:** Buy Birbiglia. The guy has no store. You will. His death sheets are currently on sale.

**Mike:** Oh my god.

**John:** We’re going to make our own death sheets and we’re going to put your face on them.

**Craig:** I’ve got thousands of these things. I don’t know what to do with them.

**Mike:** Oh my god. This will be the end of me.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Mike:** And you, for $19.95.

**Craig:** I mean, I’ve been waiting for the end for a long time. Bring it on.

**John:** That’s our show for this week. A reminder to stick around after the credits because we’re going to talk briefly about scams. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by James Launch and Jim Bond. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions.

For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. You are @–

**Mike:** @birbigs.

**John:** Nice. You’ll find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. You’ll find details about the town hall, about Mike’s show, all sorts of stuff. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. We get them up about four days after the episode airs. And you should come to our live show which is December 12.

**Craig:** Oh yeah, you got to come to that. We’re the Jon Bon Jovi of podcasts, so you do need to get your tickets immediately. They will sell out.

**Mike:** Jon Bon Jovi now or Jon Bon Jovi 1987?

**Craig:** Always. Just all Jon Bon Jovis.

**John:** Let’s talk some scams. So Craig and I both got hit up by serious scams this past week.

**Mike:** Oh wow.

**John:** Craig, summarize what happened with you and the Amazon thing.

**Craig:** Very strange. I received a package addressed to me from Amazon which happens all the time. I buy things on Amazon all the time because I spit on Mike Birbiglia’s buy local theory. No, no, I love buying local, just sometimes there are things that are not available locally.

**Mike:** Sure.

**Craig:** So I get them on Amazon. But I open this package and I did not recognize any of the items as something I had purchased. There was a toy car. There was a selfie stick. And there was a vibrator. The vibrator was not called Selfie Stick, but I’ve been thinking that that would be a great name for a vibrator.

**John:** That is a selfie stick, yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a kind of a selfie stick. So I said, hey Melissa, did you buy a toy car, a selfie stick, and a vibrator. And she said no. And I believed her. Because of the toy car. So I called up Amazon and I’m like what do I do with this. And they’re like, oh, it must just be a mistake. You can just keep it or throw it out. So we kept the vibrator.

Then the next day another package shows up with junk in it like hemp oil and a phone case. This happened like seven or eight times. And I got more and more angry. And what basically the scam is this. This is what we found out. Either they get ahold of a credit card that isn’t theirs, or they have their own credit card they’re using, or gift certificates. They purchase these items and they create an account using your name and your address, but they register it under a phone number that isn’t yours.

**Mike:** Terrible.

**Craig:** And then they send these things to you and because it has been delivered to you on Amazon they’re able to now review their own product as a verified purchaser, which moves the product up in the algorithms. It’s called brushing. And Amazon appears to be one billion miles behind this problem. Like they are nowhere near solving this. They’re barely acknowledging it exists. And the more I read about it, the more it seemed like it was everywhere. Like this is going on constantly. Yeah, it was a real bummer. But we seem to have shut it down. For now.

**John:** So my scam that happened is we ordered from Door Dash a pizza delivery and so the guy picks up the pizza, calls us and says, “Hey, there’s a problem. The wrong Door Dasher picked up your pizza. I’ll stay here and I’ll get the order refilled. Sorry about the hassle.” And so we’re like, oh, this is a very helpful guy.

But then he sort of keeps calling, and that’s where something is not right here. And says like, oh, so you need to call Door Dash and cancel the order and that way they can refund your money because this is taking too long. I was like, yes, we can do that. And through the app you can cancel the order. And then Door Dash calls and says like, hey, did you cancel this order. And I’m like, yes, but we think the food is still on the way.

It gets really complicated. But the guy then calls and says, “Hey, I’m nearly at your house. I’m here.” So I go down and meet him on the street. At this point I’m already suspicious. Something is just not right here. And essentially the scam is that they get you to cancel the Door Dash order and they say, oh, I paid for it myself and so you can pay me all of the money. And they try to use Apple Pay so that it feels like it’s a legitimate thing happening through the app, but they’re not really using the app at all.

**Craig:** How did they know how to get in between you and your pizza?

**John:** So he was – he genuinely did work for Door Dash. And so he picked up the order and then pretended that it had been canceled. So I don’t think that’s a scam with long life to it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But what I was impressed by is he had very good social engineering on the phone and in person. Like when I actually met him I was like, oh, you’re one of those people who is trying to pull the gold ring scam in Paris. Like you just have a whole pattern of how this whole thing works.

**Craig:** I mean, to pervert pizza, which is something that you and I both feel so—

**Mike:** It crosses a line.

**Craig:** It really does.

**Mike:** It slices right through the line and divides it into eight slices.

**Craig:** Delicious slices.

**Mike:** Perfect, perfect triangles.

**John:** So Mike, do you believe in the goodness of humanity?

**Craig:** Not anymore he doesn’t.

**Mike:** Well, we talk about that quite a bit in the show. I think people are fundamentally decent and trying.

**John:** Yeah. That’s good. That’s a good approach to it. I genuinely do believe and trust people because I feel like in the absence of trust and the absence of the ability to believe that this thing will happen and this person is going to be a good actor society just breaks down. But I will say it was incredibly – it rattled me. For a good two hours afterwards I was just like down on humanity.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. I mean, that’s how I am every day. So what you experienced there briefly was my life. I generally trust people when I sense that there is a baked in component of mutual benefit. So I trust that somebody is going to stay stopped at that red light when I go through the green light because that’s to their benefit to do so.

**Mike:** That’s right. Defensive driving, so to speak.

**Craig:** Yeah. If there’s a situation where somebody is going to benefit for sure more than I am, then I don’t trust them. I don’t trust salesmen. Why should I? I know for a fact that the entire point of sales is to manipulate and lie to get you to give them money. That’s how it works. I’m not even angry at them for it.

You talk about how expensive the sofa was, right? And when I was a kid I worked at a clothing store. And they were like you have to try and sell these today because we have too many of them. The specials.

**Mike:** The same thing when I was a waiter. Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s a lie. The special is literally the opposite of special. So you just have to be aware of that. So I just – caveat emptor – I don’t blame people for it. I don’t think it’s necessarily immoral on those kinds of levels. It’s just people have to survive and they’ve got to do what they’ve got to do. And also sometimes, you know, we all have to do it to some extent to get through the day. Although, I don’t know, as writers we don’t really do that. We don’t have an opportunity to do that, do we?

**John:** If we – there are very few scams that we can pull, because ultimately our name is on it. So that’s the thing, this Door Dash was sort of anonymous but sort of not anonymous. So ultimately when I reported him I could say like it was this person and this was the phone number I got a call from. But I was relying on this faceless entity who I didn’t know, this company, to be doing the work of actually stopping him for doing this to other people.

**Mike:** This might be off-topic, but the subtle scam of show business I find – and this is not all personal managers, but some personal managers are essentially taking on too many clients. They’re managing 30, 40 people.

**Craig:** Sure.

**Mike:** In the hopes that one of them hits it and then their 10% of that fortune. If five of them hit it then they’re blah, blah, blah. And so I dealt with this in my career where I worked with many managers over the years where they’re basically pretending that they value me in a certain way and see my trajectory in a certain way, but secretly they don’t think that.

**Craig:** I think it goes both ways, too. I mean, listen, I know that no matter what your agent says to you about how much they love or care for you, if you start sucking and you can’t get work, they’re going to dump you. And similarly no matter how much you say to your agent, “I love you and you’re so wonderful,” if the best agent in the world shows up and says, “I’m ready to take you on,” then you’re gone. It’s going to happen. Because it’s not – that is a business relationship and I don’t even think of that necessarily – that to me is sales. It is a little bit of like it’s in the zone of sales.

**Mike:** Right. You have to be a better consumer. A smarter consumer.

**Craig:** Caveat emptor and caveat vendor. Right? But there are very few scam-scams that writers can pull on you. I guess the closest is there are writers who take on too much work.

**John:** Of course.

**Craig:** Knowing fully well that they can’t do it all, or can’t do it all well. So that is a kind of a scammy sort of theft thing. It’s just it’s not self-sustaining.

**John:** Yeah. So you and I both know – I’m not going to actually say his name – but there was a writer who was notorious for like taking on a bunch of projects that he was not himself actually writing.

**Craig:** Mike Birbiglia.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Oh, I wasn’t supposed to say.

**John:** So he would have a team of young writers who were actually doing all of the work. But I don’t hear about that anymore, I think because it doesn’t happen, but maybe I’m being naïve.

**Craig:** No, I mean, there are people that still do these things, or people sometimes take on a weekly assignment which is very highly paid thing to get and then they just don’t deliver, which you know, like I say even if it’s not a scam, even if it’s just, I don’t know if they got tired or they weren’t right for the job, the point is it’s not a self-sustaining thing. Because everyone talks and it is so hard to get on the list of people that they give weekly assignments to, and it is so easy to get booted off of it. Like just don’t take the job. It’s going to cost you more in the long run to take one of those jobs and not do it right then it is to just do it right.

**John:** Do it right.

**Craig:** Do it right.

**John:** Thank you, sirs.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Mike:** Thanks guys.