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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2018/infinite-westworld).

**John August:** Today’s episode of Scriptnotes contains a surprising number of F-bombs. So, if you’re listening in the car with your kids, this is your strong language warning. Now this episode was recorded live last week at the ArcLight in Hollywood. It was a great venue for a live show and a surprisingly terrible one for recording sound. So between the wireless mics and a buzzy soundboard editor Matthew Chilelli had his work cut out for him. So we’ve done the best we could.

If anything, I think it’s a reminder of why it’s great to see these shows live in-person, so you can see and hear everything properly. We had listeners coming in from Texas, Chicago, and Sweden. I got to talk to a bunch of you after the show. That is awesome. And so we love to chat with our listeners live and in-person.

Our intro this week is by Jon Spurney and our outro is by Matthew Chilelli. Enjoy.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

So we are here in Hollywood. We have a giant crowd here. Thank you all so much for coming out here. Hollywood is in Los Angeles, otherwise known as LA. It is the only city in the world that is known by the initials. Is that correct, Craig?

**Craig:** Not according to the kind folks on Twitter that angrily told us that DC also works.

**John:** DC. Who would have thought of DC? I actually created a television program that ran for four episodes called DC. And I didn’t think of that once.

**Craig:** Well, if it had gone for five episodes possibly.

**John:** Five episodes. If Dick Wolf had given me that fifth episode then it might have been the one. Craig, you are back from a city. You are back from Chernobyl.

**Craig:** I’m back from actual Chernobyl.

**John:** Actual Chernobyl. So, is it safe for me to be standing this close to you?

**Craig:** No. Nah, you’re okay. It’s totally safe…they’ve told me.

**John:** All right. So tell us about your experience being in actual Chernobyl because this has been a project you’ve been working on for so long. What was actual Chernobyl like?

**Craig:** It was kind of amazing. I mean, I’ve been working on this for four years and we’re shooting it right now, largely in Lithuania. A little bit in Ukraine. But I went with the second unit team to scout. So we went to actual Pripyat which is a little town right next to Chernobyl. I don’t know if you guys have ever seen any images of the ghost city next to Chernobyl. And then we went into the power plant itself. I had lunch in the Chernobyl cafeteria.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** Not great. I should be honest, not great food. Also, you get what they give you. Still kind of Soviet there. It was remarkable to be somewhere that I felt like I’d been in my – you know, you guys are all writers, right? We have one. So great. I don’t know what the rest of you fucking people do. But things seem so real in your head when you’re doing them and then for you to go somewhere that matches up to that, it’s exactly the same. It’s so strange.

So, it was great. It was very surreal. But it was very safe. We were all taken care of. And, yeah, things are going well. I’m excited for people to see that show. But that’s not for a bit.

**John:** Nope.

**Craig:** Still shooting.

**John:** But tonight we get to talk about the same kind of thing you went through where you’re creating a world in your head and you’re seeing the world come to life. You get to see this imaginary scenario that you’ve built come out in front of you and you have to figure out what are the things you want to see, what are the things that actually happen. We have four people here who I think are remarkably talented at talking about that thing. So let’s bring out our guests.

**Craig:** They may be remarkably talented at doing it. We’re about to find out if they’re good at talking about it. So let’s see.

**John:** I assumed perhaps too much.

**Craig:** Shall we?

**John:** Let’s bring out our guests. First, I want to welcome Lisa Joy who came into screenwriting after practicing law with her 2013 Black List script Reminiscence. That became one of the biggest sales of the year. She’s been staffed on Pushing Daisies, Burn Notice, and is currently set to write Battlestar Galactica for Universal Pictures.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** She created – Lisa Joy – it is a pleasure.

**Craig:** Welcome Lisa Joy. Welcome.

**John:** She created a show called Westworld with Jonah Nolan. Jonah’s credits include the story for Memento, screenplays for The Prestige, Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, and before Westworld he created the CBS series Person of Interest. Jonah Nolan, welcome to Scriptnotes. A pleasure.

**Craig:** Welcome Jonah. Welcome aboard. You’re doing great so far by the way guys. You’re doing great. Nailing it.

**John:** Nailing it.

**Craig:** But we have more.

**John:** We have more.

**Craig:** People. Because that’s not enough. We like to have the best of all worlds. We bring you the best of television and now we bring you the best of film. There’s a small film out you may have seen written by these two folks, Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus. Markus and McFeely. McFeely and Markus, if you would. They wrote three Captain America films, The First Avenger, The Winter Soldier, and Civil War, along with Thor: The Dark World, and this year’s very small failure, Avengers: Infinity War.

And also its untitled sequel: Infinity Plus One War.

**John:** More than Infinity.

**Craig:** Their other credits include The Chronicles of Narnia film franchise and ABC’s Agent Carter. Earlier this year they signed a new deal as Co-Presidents of Story for the Russo Brothers new venture. So welcome aboard McFeely and Markus and Markus and McFeely.

It’s an impressive group.

**John:** It’s a really good group.

**Craig:** All to save lives, by the way.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We’re saving lives. Right?

**John:** We’re saving lives. We’re saving children’s lives. Hollywood Heart. We’re doing it.

So what I was so excited to have the four of you here to talk about to start with is world-building, because you guys all had to come out and figure out what is this universe we’re going to create. And so I want to start by talking – Lisa, I’ll start with you, because you’re next to me – about the literal geography of the place that you’re building. As you’re coming up with your plans for Westworld, you have Sweetwater the town, you have the ranch, you have the mesa. How early in the process were you figuring out literally where things are and how much to show our audience about how stuff is structured, like geographically structured in your world?

**Lisa Joy:** Well, we basically – Jonah and I before even shooting the pilot we sat in a room for about six months, because I think I was pregnant at the time probably, and we just papered it with all the deep mythology that we were talking through. And one of the things that we talked about was the geography of the place. We had this idea that the epicenter of it would be the most calm, idyllic place, Sweetwater. And that the further out you pressed from it, the more wild, dangerous, lascivious the park would become. So it basically created a soft border that kept pushing you back towards the center.

And then we sort of started charting and plotting out the different locations that we thought we would feature. We have weird maps that we drew in that endeavor. But, I mean, as it turns out, you really experience the park through the host perspective, so it’s a very slow unveiling of that. So you only kind of come to see shades of it through their lens. So, we could have slacked off a little bit because it took us a while to get to some of those places.

**John:** And Jonah how much mythology, I mean, how much geography – how big were your Tolkien maps of this? Because in the second season we learn like, “Oh, there’s Shogun World.” And there’s this whatever – I don’t even know if we know the title for the Indian kind of world of it all.

**Jonah Nolan:** The Raj.

**John:** And so there’s bigger spaces, but you guys probably had a sense of that right before – the six months leading up to it.

**Jonah:** Yeah, I’m big on geography. And I think actually we’d gone to see Sleep No More in New York a year before we started writing the pilot. And one of the things – I don’t know if anyone else here has experienced that. It’s a very, very cool sort of live action immersive experience in New York, sort of a mishmash of Shakespearean plays and you got to put on a mask and the audience kind of follows things around. But they laid out the geography beautifully in that experience because you start at the bar, always the most important part of any experience. I will be there in about 45 minutes.

And the geography is really simple. If you got lost, you go back to the bar. The bar was the center of it. So we thought, “Oh, that’s perfect.” And what we wanted with Westworld was we wanted an experience for the guest. We sort of designed the theme park first. How does the theme park work? Where would all the rides go? How would the corporate structure look like? But you also wanted an experience that required no owner’s manual, or no user manual rather. The experience, as Lisa was saying, reveals itself to you intuitively. So the geography was kind of all important.

And then we added five more parks all around, but didn’t tell anyone.

**Craig:** In terms of that concept of geography, geography can either be limiting in the sense that when they stand in front of that holographic dome image you get, OK, the park has an edge to it like all parks do. But we don’t necessarily know – you haven’t shown us all of the area. We don’t know scale necessarily. So we’re not sure how deep in.

But narratively speaking, too, you have a choice as people writing a series, you can say this narrative has an end point. We get to it and it’s over. Or, do you not see the borders of your own story? I’m kind of curious like how you guys conceive of the narrative? Is it ongoing and extensible endlessly? Or do you have a kind of end game in mind?

**Lisa:** Yeah, we have mapped out for the series kind of these tent pole moments I would say. You know, Westworld posits some kind of intellectual, philosophical questions. And we wanted to at least suggest some answers. And also in terms of our characters, we wanted to know where they would go and how we would keep renewing, and refreshing, and exploring different things.

So the really large sweep of their arcs we planned out in advance. But then as you’re writing, as you’re going into series and you’re writing the individual scripts, you know, the fun of it is when you find these opportunities to dance and linger and stay a moment with a character or a place, or you find some great chemistry between your actors and it opens up a whole new world for you. So there’s wiggle room in there.

**Jonah:** And I’ve done broadcast TV, and I’d very gotten very use to the sort of endless churn. I liken broadcast TV to getting a tie caught in a shredder. You’re just fucking all in. The prevailing rule of broadcast television for decades was once you’ve got that magic formula, that franchise of cast and characters and the story of the week, you just keep doing that. And I never had any interest in that whatsoever.

I think with Westworld much more explicitly we set out not using the rules of television, because TV has now expanded to fit so many different formats, it’s kind of the Wild West. We looked more at the rules for franchise filmmaking.

**Craig:** Got it.

**Jonah:** We’d say, “OK, you’ve got a consistent cast, you’ve got a larger story you’re telling, but you’re going to settle your obligations to the audience by the end of each season.”

**Craig:** And that’s fascinating because I feel like you guys – things are meeting. Because when I watch your movies I feel like now more than ever I’m seeing these enormous, very expensive, very elaborate, but really well-crafted episodes of this very big television series. It seems like there’s a series-if-ication of movies and there’s a movie-fi-cation of series. Do you feel that as you’re doing what you do?

**Stephen McFeely:** We do, but Kevin Feige would hate to hear you say that.

**Craig:** Well, that’s why I don’t work at Marvel. He’s not here I think.

**Stephen:** But it’s serialized storytelling. There’s no way around it. And I think that’s why people have embraced it because it treats the audience as if they’re in on something. I find – it’s a little funny that a lot of critics will go, “Ah, that’s too much for me to pay attention to. This movie is like…“ Well, your audience is clearly getting it.

**Christopher Markus:** Well, also it keeps it alive. It makes it not sequel after sequel. It makes it the next episode. So there’s a reason for it to exist outside of commerce.

**Stephen:** It rewards investment.

**Christopher:** Yeah. And I think with TV now there’s a reason to stop it outside of commerce. And people are paying attention. The narrative is done. Done. Let’s stop.

**Jonah:** That’s a good idea.

**John:** Lisa was talking about the moments that you discover where you get to linger, where you get to sort of hold onto a place. And what was so impressive about your film is there’s not a lot of time to sort of linger. You guys have to crank through a tremendous amount of stuff. And even the geography of your movie is really complicated. You’re creating brand new worlds that we’re seeing for the first time and you have basically very little time to establish anything about the world, but I guess the difference is we know those characters so we can see the world through those characters and that’s all that sort of matters. What was that – the new worlds we visit in your movie are extensive.

**Stephen:** Well, they’re actually not that extensive. We have very few choices in terms of what was still available to us, because we’re doing a movie with six MacGuffins, right? And five of them were established. So, we were going to visit places that if you were an audience member that already knew the movies you were expecting. So, the decisions we got to make were where was the soul stone, and where do you hold the third act. So basically we chose what combat and we made up a story about the soul stone and plucked a name of an old Marvel planet and put it there.

**Christopher:** And Thanos’s home town.

**Stephen:** Thanos’s home town. Sure.

**John:** But there are also environments–

**Craig:** Did you know that that was Thanos’s hometown, or did you just find out right now?

**Stephen:** We didn’t make it up. He’s from Titan, which is–

**Craig:** I just feel like he was maybe telling you. Covered meetings.

**Christopher:** You should come to more meetings.

**John:** I want to give you guys credit. There are moments – you can say like, oh, those places are already established in canon, but like we’re seeing them in your movie and the characters are suddenly there and we have to sort of like run with it. OK, we are at these [unintelligible] forages and like just roll with it. That’s brand new. We’re seeing this for the first time.

**Christopher:** Well, I think that’s the confidence that the franchise has built by this point is trust us, you’re going to be OK. This does make sense. We might be jerking you around a billion more miles than we usually do, but we know what we’re doing.

I do, however, miss those lingering moments and look forward to getting back to them.

**Stephen:** I mean, that was one of the things about that movie is that we had plenty of lingering moments in early drafts and it was a three-and-a-half hour movie and it turned out we needed something propulsive that only brought you in when a stone came up or a purple guy came to punch you in the face.

**Christopher:** Captain America’s dissolving relationship with his girlfriend was a great scene.

**John:** It was really good.

**Craig:** You can imagine it.

**Christopher:** Yeah, you can just see it.

**John:** But part of world-making is not just the literal worlds, it’s also setting the rules and the expectations for the audience. And so you guys in Westworld had to really clearly set rules for what the hosts are able to do and pushing past those rules. That’s the journey the hosts are on. But also rules for the universe and our expectations of like what’s happening outside this world. Because the first season we don’t get to travel outside this world to see what the rest of it is like. So, what were the rules you set originally for the hosts and for yourselves about how we’re going to venture into this world?

Was there a deliberate process of figuring out what it is that you wanted the audience to know were the rules of the world? Because in the second season Maeve is able to do things she couldn’t do the first season. So how do you set the rules for powers?

**Jonah:** It sort of came – the grounding in it for me was in working in the superhero film world for ten years with the only superhero who doesn’t actually have any super powers other than money and anger.

Male Voice: And rage [in a Batman voice].

**Jonah:** But the rules in those movies are all important. And we knew that the rules in Westworld were vitally important as well. Not that you want to belabor them for the audience, but I think – I know when I’m watching movies or TV I can feel sometimes when the writers haven’t put in the work. I don’t need to be told what the rules are necessarily, but I need to feel that the writers have spent six months sitting in a room, driving themselves nuts trying to figure out how it works.

2001 is a great example of that. You’ve got Arthur C. Clarke, you read the novelization of it. It’s like, “Oh shit, it all actually means something.” When you watch Kubrick’s film there’s very little exposition, but you feel there’s an underlying thought process that’s gone into – even the most sort of hallucinatory sequence at the end you can kind of feel that there’s a set of ideas that’s been woven into it.

So with Westworld from the very beginning we felt like we got – I mean, I literally we drew the map, maps, and then a corporate flow chart for how people work. And then we were like, “OK, we’ll set aside two days to figure out what consciousness is and then figure out the rules set for that.” Did not quite work out.

But, yeah, you’ve got to put in the leg work on that or the audience sniffs it out immediately. And that allows you to go to exciting places because if you know what their limitations are you can push through them.

**Craig:** I want to talk a little bit about the consciousness thing–

**Jonah:** Oh dear.

**Craig:** Because I got so excited–

**Jonah:** It was all going so well.

**Craig:** Here we go. You guys bring up this concept of the bicameral mind. I took a class with that guy in college.

**Jonah:** Julian Jaynes?

**Craig:** Julian Jaynes.

**Jonah:** Come on, really?

**Craig:** Julian Jaynes.

**Jonah:** Is he cool?

**Craig:** Well, he’s dead now. So no. But then, he was like a wise old owl. He was very cool. The book was incredibly influential on me. I bought it hook, line, and sinker, even though my other professors were like “This is bullshit. There’s no fucking evidence for that.” And it’s true. There is no fucking evidence for that.

But, it’s a fascinating theory and actually weirdly after I graduated I called him up one day, this is before he died luckily, and – because I had this idea that you know when we dream, I’m not high I swear to god. But if you are high this will make more sense.

So, we have dreams and in our dreams there are people that talk to us, and there are people that talk to each other, and we’re constantly surprised in our dreams. I mean, that’s why nightmares work. But that’s all from our own head. And it seems to me like we’re fragmenting our consciousness all the time in dreams. And I said isn’t that kind of evidence of – and he said, “No, I don’t think so.” And then that was the end of that, and then he died shortly thereafter. I may have killed him with that question.

But when I was watching this I couldn’t help but think how in a way your entire show, and specifically that point, is a great description of what it means to be a writer. Because you are fragmenting your mind into these interesting things. You’re hearing voices that are from you. And you’re also the god of creatures that you are responsible for that begin to in a strange way take on their own life. I can imagine only when drunk that this comes up all the time between the two of you.

**Lisa:** We weren’t oblivious to the sort of meta aspect of writing this, which is why we like to make fun of ourselves in it through the character Lee who is just such a high maintenance pain-in-the-ass. So, it was kind of, you know, our way of exorcising our demons through him. I don’t think we’re quite the pains-in-the-asses that Lee’s character is, but yeah, that’s what he’s there for.

**John:** Well, speaking of writers who are pains-in-the-asses, so you guys have a ton of characters that you have to manage in the course of your movie, some of which you’ve worked with before, some of which are brand new. You’re having to deal with machinery that’s been put in place largely through your movies but also through other movies, certainly through Black Panther you’re dealing with Wakanda which is a new thing for you to be touching. What is that like to be stewards of these characters, this story, to be controlling this universe but also know that it’s going on to another thing? What is your, as creators, what is your sense of responsibility to those characters and to those storylines?

**Stephen:** I mean, it’s make the best movie in front of you. Right? That’s always been Marvel’s watch word and it’s certainly ours. We’re selfish in that we’ll try to take everything for our movie and someone will have to pry things out of our hands and say, no, that’s somebody else’s. And I think we’re confident in our place enough now that we can ask for advice, help, and input. So we flew Taika Waititi in and said what the hell are you doing to Thor – we need to talk about this.

Because it was a radical re-toning of the character for the better clearly. But, you know, we didn’t know how far they were going to go with that. James Gunn is very specifically entwined with the Guardian, so we needed to talk to him. That kind of stuff happens all the time at Marvel. For all of its success it’s a very small shop, so that’s really easy to do.

**John:** So what is the conversation as you’re going in to work on this movie and the movie thereafter, you’re describing your overall plans for things and do you know – it feels like if you’re working on one of these movies you have to know not only what’s happening in your movie but what’s happening in the movie before you and happening in the movie afterwards. And that’s a complicated decision. It’s like if Lisa and Jonah were running your show, but somebody else was running another show that–

**Stephen:** Like if you had to know what was going on in Barry or something.

**John:** Exactly.

**Christopher:** And it’s particularly annoying because we were writing movies that we had to start making before they were making theirs, but theirs were going to come out first.

**Craig:** Oh.

**Christopher:** So we’d look like idiots because our movie didn’t mesh with theirs, even though they had to go after us. So there was a lot of, well, a lot of reading drafts and a lot of going just promise me you’ll leave him standing right here. I don’t care how he gets there, do whatever you want, just standing right there at the end of your movie and everything will be fine.

**Stephen:** It was also an opportunity, right? I mean, put yourself in our spot. Three years ago, we’re looking at a board that says Avengers 3, Ant-Man and Wasp, Captain Marvel, Avengers 4. You can either freak out by that or you can go, “Oh well, maybe we can use that to our advantage.” So the tags, spoiler alert, on our movie is a little teaser for Captain Marvel. Undoubtedly you’re going to figure out what that pager device is, right, and that’s a weaving. Ant-Man and Wasp will be the same thing, which means you’ve got to watch both those movies to get what’s going on in the next one.

**Christopher:** Well it’s also a selfish way of getting them to do a tiny bit of our work for us so that in the two movies – it wasn’t just a pause, the story was evolving as it went on.

**John:** Lisa and Jonah, a thing you and I have talked about is how important the “previously on” cuts are for a show. As someone is sitting down to watch an episode of your show, figuring out what it says on the “previously on” so you can set the right expectation about what’s going on there and remind people about what’s important. How early in the process do figure out what needs to be in that “previously on?” Is that a thing that’s happening in the writing stage or as you’re looking at the cut to see like you need to remind our audience that this is stuff that’s happening?

**Jonah:** I don’t think we get writing stage, although you start drawing up maybe a tiny list. One or two things. And then we do – I think unusually we cut our own. We cut our own in-house and we ship the cut to the network with a “previously on” on it. And then they recut it and they say – they have a traditional trailer vendor who makes – HBO puts a lot of money into their shows. And so in some cases you’ll have a really beautifully done piece. But we sort of hauled up the pieces we think are vital for understanding what’s coming.

**Craig:** And it seems like that’s something HBO has to do as one of the few places left that make you wait. Which, you know, as somebody that is doing something for HBO I personally like. I’m kind of old fashioned that way. I like the fact that I have to wait now a week, and a week, and a week to see your show. But it seems to me that the part that – well, at least from my point of view and I’m kind of curious what you guys think about this – and it sort of ties into the trailer—

**Christopher:** I would love for a “previously on”–

**John:** “Previously on” would save you so much time.

**Craig:** “Previously on” would be amazing for you guys. But it’s actually the coming up part at the end that I think is so important because when you’re binging you just go, great, I’ve finished, next, next, next. You can’t binge Westworld if you’re watching it during the season so it’s that little piece. How involved are you in that little hit of crack?

**Jonah:** We are sadly micromanaging lunatics and we’re involved in everything.

**Craig:** I love it.

**Jonah:** If there’s a fucking Westworld napkin under your beverage, we looked at the design.

**Craig:** Good.

**Jonah:** But the partnership at HBO is fantastically collaborative in that way. I’ve had it both ways, fighting tooth and nail to get your voice heard. With HBO it’s a seamless partnership on those pieces. You know, one of the reasons I got into movies is I love trailers. And that’s your little trailer at the end of every – you know, we had a lot of fun this year doing the trailers for our season. I shot the Super Bowl spot. I got to shoot that. And very hands on with all this material. It’s a lot of fun.

I’m also a big believer in – I think the binging thing is very cool, disrupt, etc., but there’s a lot of wisdom in the traditional broadcasting model. We come out for ten, I mean, in the movie business you would kill for ten consecutive weeks of watercooler conversation and articles. No matter how big your movie is, it’s kind of four weeks and it’s gone.

You know, if you get ten consecutive weeks it can be frustrating for some of the audience, but for everyone else it drives that conversation forward. And it gives you a chance to cut a little trailer for next week’s episode.

**Craig:** And there’s that beautiful anticipation that happens. You do feel as if the cliffhangers are cliffhangers. I have noticed that when I’m binging something the cliffhangers are – it’s just “Shut up, cliffhanger. Next episode. You know? I don’t believe in you.”

Which actually brings me to a question for you two, and it’s about death.

**Christopher:** Ah, death.

**Craig:** If you haven’t seen Avengers, fuck you. Come on. I mean, it’s the biggest movie in the world.

**Christopher:** It’s on in this building. Right now.

**John:** Literally walk across the hall.

**Craig:** In this structure, it’s on 20 screens. So, something happened I think, and I think it happened when Ned Stark’s head got chopped off. And in that moment, and it’s many years ago now, there was a kind of end of an era, in a weird way, where everyone always felt safe. The only time somebody would die is if, I don’t know, Jean Stapleton just didn’t want to do All in the Family anymore. And it was sort of like, well “OK, so you know she died.”

But when Ned Stark died I think it was kind of like a burning torch that said we are no longer going to let you be safe. And the ending of your movie is very television-like in that way I think. In that it sort of said you’re not safe anymore. Now I believe any of it. But I believe some of it. Like, I’m not sure. I feel like you guys are fucking with me, but I also feel like you’re not fucking with me, and I think that – so yeah, no.

**John:** They’re negging you is basically what they’re doing.

**Craig:** They are. Black Panther is not dead. That aside, money is money.

**Christopher:** Certainly dead at the moment.

**Craig:** But some of those people I think are dead. And I actually kind of love that. And I’m wondering if television was an influence on that in any way. The notion of lack of safety.

**Christopher:** I mean, yes, in that we’ve all gotten used to it between Game of Thrones and Walking Dead where death has become real. Has become a tool you can use. And I think when they chopped off Ned Stark’s head you went, “Oh, this is about the show. I’m watching a show. I’m not just watching these characters. Like this is a story they’re telling and they’ll kill people.”

And it made me take a wider view of the whole thing. And each time they lopped off the lead character’s head you go – people are thinking. Just like you said. They thought about this and they went, “They thought it through. We can do without that and move on.” It’s not just what are we going to make handsome man do next week.

**Stephen:** But that’s what movies had been for a long time, right? You got a handsome man and everybody went to go see handsome man. We’re going to see Handsome Man 2. We’re going to see Handsome Man 3.

**Craig:** Right. And handsome man could never, ever die.

**Stephen:** Oh my god no. Right.

**Craig:** He might get less handsome eventually.

**Stephen:** Eventually Handsome Man 4 will make less money and Handsome Man 5 won’t make any money. And then he’s done.

And Marvel understands, I feel like a huge shill here, but the success is ridiculous. They’re at 19 movies and god knows how many billions of dollars. So they understand that good storytelling needs endings. I mean, if you just keep giving them Handsome Man 6 you’re going to stop coming. And they also have this confidence that they know what they’re doing now and they’ve got a bench of 5,000 characters. So that you didn’t know you wanted Guardians of Galaxy. They got a ton of Guardians of the Galaxies. They’ll figure it out.

So, I mean, a part of it comes from this ridiculous confidence that they have now.

**Craig:** They really do. And I think it’s – you’d think that other people would learn the lesson. It’s remarkable how no one seemed to learn any lessons. They just learned – how did they not see it? You know what I mean?

**John:** I would also say that in defense of some of the other studios who are working with some of these characters–

**Craig:** Ugh. Talk about a shill.

**John:** So often these studios were like backed up against a wall. If we don’t make this movie within the next year we’re going to lose the rights to things. So they were making things for the wrong reason without a greater plan for how stuff was going to fit together.

**Craig:** That is true. But I do think that there’s a certain bravery that television just naturally has. Like you guys I feel on your show at any point you could kill anybody.

**Jonah:** Yeah.

**Craig:** For instance, Anthony Hopkins happened to make it through season one. But I didn’t know he was going to make it through season one, which is almost as good as him not making it through season one.

**Lisa:** Have you seen the finale, my friend?

**Jonah:** I hate to break your heart, but he didn’t make it through–

**Craig:** No, no, I’m saying, I’ve seen it. He didn’t. But I’m saying he didn’t know that he wasn’t. I thought maybe he would. But I wasn’t sure. And so that’s the best situation is I can’t predict. Television is very good at that. But Handsome Man 3 at a lot of places, I think, they’re petrified to kill Handsome Man because they think that’s why people are coming. And it’s interesting because I personally think that people generally now are coming for the promise of something that is unsafe narratively.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Lisa:** I think – I mean, just to interject, I think you’re right. And I think it’s so great. And as writers we always want to just go for it. And you need stakes. And one of the evolutions that’s happened in the superhero genre, and we deal with robots who are essentially superheroes, you know, is that after a while if they are just completely immune to death you start – it starts becoming really formulaic. And so you need to have stakes.

But just to give credit where credit is due, it’s also we all want stakes because we are adults and writers who are somewhat cynical and have been through and watched this and studied it for craft. A lot of these movies they attract children and families who haven’t gone through that whole experience yet. And so it really is still like a real risk to take in anything, in a feature or in TV, where you create these characters and you love these characters. As writers you love those characters. And to kill them is painful for you, too. You know, it’s not – you don’t do it blithely. Like, “Oh, I love this actor. I love this performance. And now that we have reached the pinnacle of our affinity for this character I’m going to lop off their head.” It’s tough.

**Craig:** I do like it though. It’s exciting.

**Lisa:** Yeah, I mean, it’s rewarding creatively. Because you get to write this swan song and everything. But there’s a lot that goes into that I think. It’s art but it’s also empathy for your audience. And it makes it tough to make the call.

**Christopher:** But also leaving them alive, when you have death leaving them alive has more weight now.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**Christopher:** And now they’ve got mileage on them. You know, it used to be about they have to look just as pretty next season. They can’t age. Now, you know, every time Chris Evans comes up I think about, well, we put him through that and we put him through that, and we put him through that and he must be pretty unhappy by now.

**Craig:** Still incredibly good-looking.

**Christopher:** Yeah, he’s doing fine.

**Craig:** Yeah. All that trauma and just a brew grew.

**Christopher:** I don’t know.

**John:** So when we are talking about characters who live or characters who die, naturally spoilers come up. And you guys as people who are making these shows have to be mindful of you don’t want the world to know about what’s going to happen in your piece of product before they are actually watching the thing. So you guys have to be very mindful of how you’re going to protect those secrets.

So this last season on Westworld, between seasons you put out this special spoiler video that spoiled the whole second season as an acknowledgment of the strange relationship fans have with the thing that they love that they want to explore and investigate but also kind of end up destroying in the process of loving so much. Talk about the decision to do that. And also, you know, your relationship to fans and secrecy. Because you guys had the biggest script controls of anything I’ve ever seen. I remember talking with you guys about what you were doing even before the first season had shot about like how you guys locked down scripts. So, can you talk through us like secrecy and fan engagement?

**Jonah:** I just came up with It Runs in the Family. And Chris was psychopathic about script security before anyone gave a shit. I’d be like who’s trying to steal this script for painting houses and shit. I was like no one cares. But then eventually they kind of did. And I remember wandering around with a script for The Dark Knight on my laptop and thinking, “Fuck, like a state secret.”

And I had this insane 264-bit encryption thing, like a secret invisible drive. I’m like we’re doing all this shit ourselves from the beginning.

So we just came up with it that way. I don’t know any other way to do it. I mean, the way that the scripts for those movies work is the head of the studio goes to my brother’s house and reads it there. The script does not exist. Does not exist digitally ever outside of our little computer. And it’s on red paper for everyone else.

In TV it’s a little harder because you have bigger departments. You have – you’re moving faster. There’s a far greater volume of material. I mean, so many stories over the years in terms of every time you let your guard down, right. I’ve emailed one script my entire fucking career. One. And it’s online. And it was the original script for Interstellar. And everyone was like, “Ow.” And that wasn’t even a fucking draft. That was like a half draft somewhere very, very early, and I was in England and the producers were in LA and they were like “We need it now, now, now, now, now.” And I was like, it was literally like Christmas Eve or something. I was like, “Send.”

**Craig:** What a terrible feeling.

**Jonah:** That’s the one script that’s up. And it’s not a draft. It’s filled with mistakes.

**Craig:** Now there are reviews of your half draft.

**Jonah:** 100%. So I was like, well, that story comes up anytime anyone is like, “Just email it to me.” No.

**Craig:** Nah.

**John:** So, Chris and Stephen, I imagine you just print up copies and send them around.

**Christopher:** Yeah. We just hand them out.

**Stephen:** I took this out of my car today because I didn’t want to leave it in the parking lot.

**John:** So what is that you’re holding in your hand?

**Stephen:** Just a thumb drive that’s got stuff on it. All right? You know.

**John:** Just in case.

**Craig:** There’s so many more of us than there are of you. We could kill you right now. We want to know what it is.

**Stephen:** There’s nothing in my car.

**John:** So, I mean, obviously as much as you’re comfortable talking about it, like what is your process of making sure that the stuff that you’re writing is safe for you, but you obviously have to share it at a certain point. And is there a whole internal procedure for how that goes?

**Christopher:** There was. Sometimes it broke down. You know, sometimes you really would wind up going like “Just come here.” Were anyone to drop that thing, you know, at the waffle house, there’d be trouble.

**Stephen:** We’ll get the waffle house later.

**Christopher:** Once they were printing it and giving parts of it to different people, it got really sort of arcane and there were fake scripts and there were portions of scripts. And people didn’t know how things ended. So it was a very confused crew.

**John:** So when you say there are fake scripts, so these would be in the script there’d be scenes that you knew that you were never going to shoot.

**Christopher:** Or there’d be versions. So in the real version Thanos comes in, picks up an infinity stone, and in the script he’d come and pick up a donut.

**craig:**: That you thought that was going to work.

**Christopher:** You know, the equivalent to bats.

**Craig:** You thought that would throw these nerds off the trail?

**Christopher:** Exactly.

**John:** He’s Homer Simpson.

**Christopher:** They’re making a donut movie.

**Craig:** So Thanos is looking for the five donuts that power the universe. And no one is going to make the connection.

**Christopher:** There was at least one incident where the wrong version went to set deck, or something, and it wasn’t donut, it was the equivalent of a donut, but it was like where are the things. My script says donuts.

**Craig:** It was on the page and you said.

**Christopher:** It’s a fake one.

**Stephen:** You know the last thing you want to do when you’re trying to wrangle these things is write more—

**Christopher:** Oh my god, write extra.

**Craig:** Why don’t you hire one of these good people to do that? They could write fake scripts for you.

**John:** Absolutely.

Male Voice: Our assistant Joey eventually did it.

**Craig:** Oh, you gave it to Joey to do?

Male Voice: Yeah. Joey crushed it.

**Craig:** Yeah, Joey.

**Christopher:** He’s trustworthy.

**Craig:** Joey’s selling your shit right now on the Internet.

**Christopher:** Joey’s dead now.

Male Voice: Fucking Joey.

**John:** So, Lisa, as you’re going into your second season is there more – I mean, obviously you have a crew that you’re familiar with. There’s a little more comfort. Do you relax a little bit more going into it where you’re not so paranoid about every little thing? Or is just the same?

**Lisa:** I was like writers never relax. We’re always just neurotic messes. Actually that also pertains to security, so now, it’s the same level of paranoia.

**Craig:** I would think it should be higher, not to upset you, but when you’re making a show and no one has seen it yet and maybe there’s just an article that says Westworld, people are like, what, like “The Yul Brynner? OK.” Then maybe no one is trying to break into your shit. You know? And now they would be. So, think about that.

Tonight. When you’re trying to sleep.

**Lisa:** We could come up with a scheme where I’ll steal yours, you steal mine, and we sell them back to each other. There could be a real get rich thing here.

**John:** It’s like Ocean’s 4.

**Christopher:** I don’t have a problem with that.

**Craig:** Well how do I get into that? I want a taste.

Male Voice: You’re not required.

**Craig:** Shit.

**Christopher:** How does Chernobyl end? Oh shit.

**Craig:** That’s actually how it begins, to be honest with you. Well, I’m just giving something away, but I just thought like oh my god what torture if you were to watch a miniseries called Chernobyl and you had to wait five episodes for it to blow up. So, it blows up on page three.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Why wait?

**John:** Lisa and Jonah, you both also direct your show. And that has got to be an incredible – there’s a giant train moving and you’re stepping off the train to direct part of it and do the rest of it. So how is that possible? I mean, how does it not go off the rails when you are stepping outside of the writing and producing of the show to direct an episode? What was it like for you, Lisa?

**Lisa:** I mean, I delegated to Jonah. You know, everything from – it was actually a terrible time for me to direct, and if you think about it because I think I had just had a baby a couple weeks before I started prep.

**Craig:** What?

**Jonah:** Another baby.

**Lisa:** Yeah, a different baby.

**Jonah:** They just keep coming.

**Craig:** Different baby.

**Lisa:** It wasn’t like the longest gestation period, like a two season—

Male Voice: That would be one hell of a baby.

**Craig:** Wait, so you had a baby and then two weeks later—

**Lisa:** We have one per season just to really fuck ourselves.

**Craig:** Right. And then two weeks later you’re like, I know what I should do. The thing that kills people that haven’t just had a baby.

**Lisa:** Yeah. Yeah. And we were kind of still writing some of the scripts, so it was truly masochistic. And I actually was going to back out of it, but Jonah, you know, in a moment – actually in this moment in Hollywood it was especially lovely to have this level of support, not just from him, but from my whole crew, cast, from HBO. You know, I’m like, “OK, I’m going to get out of the hospital, I’m going to pump in the scout van. I’m going to write pages at 2am, and in the meantime I’m going to direct this episode. It’s going to be great guys. Don’t worry.”

And they didn’t. You know, and Jonah, there was one point where I was like am I mad because if I mess this up it’s going to be really bad. It’s going to be quite embarrassing. And he was like “You’re not going to mess it up.” And he pointed out that he was going to give me the same opportunity that I gave him for first season when he directed the pilot and the finale, which is I helped with the room, I helped with the kids. And he was like now I’ve got your back. And he did.

**John:** Aw.

**Craig:** You two! Wow.

**John:** That’s good.

**Craig:** You guys never do anything like that.

**Christopher:** No, we never do that.

**John:** You guys don’t help each other out like that at all.

Male Voice: I did pump in the van though.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s a huge fucking problem, and we’ve got to – we can’t even have a podcast anymore.

**Christopher:** We don’t use a van anymore.

**Craig:** That’s bad.

**John:** One of the things that I like and admire so much about writing teams and partners is that they get to know each other so well. And they can see the same problem and come up with the same solution. Sometimes you can separate them apart and either one of them can do the job.

**Craig:** Like the Newlywed Game.

**John:** Kind of like the Newlywed Game. They know each other so super well. And so I thought we might actually do a version of that.

**Craig:** Oh good.

**John:** And see how well we know each other.

**Christopher:** Weirdest place you’ve ever made whoopee.

**Craig:** That would be in the van.

**Christopher:** In the van.

**John:** So here is what we’re going to do. I emailed each of you separately the start of a little scene or the moment from a scene and asked tell me what happens next. And so I emailed these to you separately and I asked you to sort of email back what you guys thought happened.

**Christopher:** We were supposed to email it back?

**John:** That’s OK. You can just read it. It’s fine. You didn’t actually follow the instructions. That’s fine. So let’s start there at the end of the list here. Here’s the prompt that I sent to Stephen and Christopher. This is somewhere in the middle of a script somewhere:

“Carson ducks for cover behind a parked car. Windows blow out, glass raining down. She’s got to get out of there, but where? Suddenly…”

That is the prompt I gave. Let us here how Stephen McFeely answered this call. No, no, you’re going to read it to us.

**Stephen:** But you said everyone else emailed it.

**Craig:** I don’t understand the rules of this game either.

**Christopher:** I don’t have mine.

**Stephen:** Then I got to take credit for this. This is a terrible thing, by the way. Every one of us thinks this is—

**Lisa:** We are so horrified by the stress–

**Craig:** He does this every year.

**John:** Absolutely. So, with that scene, I’m curious what your scene reads like.

**Christopher:** Oh dear.

Male Voice: Carson ducks for cover behind a car. Windows blow out, glass raining down. She’s got to get out of there. But where? Suddenly…something glints in the side mirror. She leans in, dumbfounded, staring at the reflection of something we don’t see. Over the gun fire we can just make out the sounds of Turkey in the Straw. You have got to be shitting me. She turns as Bethany approaches in the stolen ice cream truck, a string of Christmas lights dragging behind her.

**Christopher:** This is so much longer.

**John:** That was nice.

**Christopher:** You said two lines.

**Craig:** I feel like you were sabotaging yourself.

**John:** That was a good little moment. The Turkey in the Straw. Some good scene work there. I like that.

**Lisa:** They’re critiquing your writing. This is the most high stress thing ever.

Male Voice: He wrote Dark Knight. I had to do something.

**Lisa:** All right.

**Craig:** But you wrote Avengers: Infinity Box Office. I don’t understand.

**John:** Yeah, come on.

Male Voice: It writes itself.

**Craig:** It writes itself. You mean your partner. You described your partner as itself.

**Christopher:** I can’t wait for it to write itself next time.

**Craig:** He’s like I wish I had something to write itself for me.

**Christopher:** Because I’m going home.

**Craig:** All right, this is going well so far.

**John:** Christopher, do you have yours there, or do want to read off of mine?

**Christopher:** Please read it off of yours.

**John:** All right, I’ll read Christopher’s.

“Carson ducks for cover behind a parked car. Windows blow out. Glass raining down. She’s got to get out of there, but where? Suddenly…her phone rings. She answers. Carson: Hello. Hi Honey, it’s mom. Kind of a bad time, mom. I’m at work. Well, look then, call the guy and call me back. We never talk anymore. I miss you.”

**Craig:** Very sweet.

**John:** Sweet.

**Craig:** Very sweet.

**John:** They’re is the heart and the violence.

**Christopher:** Well, you know, I feel guilty about my mom.

**John:** In your actual writing life can you tell who writes what stuff? If you go back to something a year later, do you kind of remember “Oh yeah I did that, or he did that”?

**Christopher:** Some specific lines sometimes. But we’ve grounded down for so many mutual drafts that it’s hard to ID.

**John:** Are you guys both at the computer together or you’re writing separate things and pasting together?

**Christopher:** We’re writing separately, pasting together, then sitting down and rewriting this really shitty script written by this third guy.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** So much self-sabotage. You have the biggest movie in the world.

**Christopher:** What do you want me to take credit for it?

**Craig:** Yes!

**John:** Yeah!

**Craig:** Yes! Because you did it. See, this is the problem with guys. Nothing ever is good enough.

**Christopher:** No.

**Craig:** Nothing. Nothing. What’s your dream? To write the biggest movie in the world.

**John:** Duh-duh-duh.

**Craig:** Yeah, doesn’t work.

**John:** All right, Lisa and Jonah, I sent you a different prompt. So this is the prompt that I sent you guys:

“Dave smiles at yoga mom. Just then the bottom of the wet grocery bag rips. He frantically tries to keep everything from spilling out, but one item escapes his grasp.”

Jonah Nolan do you want to take it first?

**Jonah:** This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I want you to know this.

**Lisa:** This is so bad.

**Jonah:** Not fun at all.

“Dave smiles at the yoga mom. Just then the bottom of the wet grocery bag rips. He frantically tries to keep everything from spilling out, but one item escapes his grasp. His spleen. He had taken out only the pieces of himself he thought he really didn’t need. Just enough to achieve that perfect Kundalini posture. But as he bent double trying to slide it back into the bag, hoping against hope that his homemade stitches wouldn’t give out he caught the glimmer of admiration in her eye. It had all been worth it.”

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Nice.

**Craig:** Nice. That’s good. He did write Dark Knight.

**Lisa:** Oh man.

**Craig:** He did write Dark Knight.

**Christopher:** This is a very expensive little gag, John.

**John:** It is actually. I mean, how would you charge here? It’s a day rate here.

**Craig:** Millions and millions of dollars for that.

**John:** All right. Lisa Joy.

**Lisa:** Can I say it’s exactly the same? OK.

“Dave smiles at the yoga mom. Just then the bottom of the wet grocery bag rips. He frantically tries to keep everything from spilling out, but one item escapes his grasp. His precious corrective lenses. A complex prescription to treat not only his myopia and a light astigmatism, but also a recently diagnosed and pernicious case of hyper-masculopia, commonly known as the male gaze.

“Yoga mom bends her live form. Her breasts skimming the top of her low neck line. Her stomach taught. She gives him a come hither look as she hands him the specks, which he gracefully places on his nose. And is gob-smacked to see Yoga Mom suddenly transforms into Leslie from accounting. She balances a screaming toddler on her hip with the same ease she regularly balances the messy P&Ls of his company’s financing. He stammers, “Leslie, I almost didn’t recognize you.” She shrugs, “You’d be surprised how much that happens.” Then she turns and walks away, disappearing down the frozen food aisle without so much as an undulation of her hips.”

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Yeah!

**Craig:** You definitely went over. You went over. But it was pretty good.

**Lisa:** I’m sorry. And I didn’t have the–

**Jonah:** Have you seen our show?

**John:** Both of you guys sort of wrote like a New Yorker little short story, like a one-pager New Yorker thing, which I think is kind of great.

**Lisa:** We normally tell ourselves when we’re carrying on too long, but we didn’t have each other to do that. So, you know, mortifying.

**Craig:** I loved all of it.

**John:** I loved every little bit of it. So, Craig and I are going to participate in this, too, because we’re not a writing team, but we’ve spent 352 episodes – we’re 352 episodes into this.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So the prompt I gave to the two of us is:

“Katherine awakens in a seedy motel room. Wood paneling. Stained carpet. Dead flies in the overhead light. She sits up in bed, putting her hand to her neck where she discovers…”

Do you want to do yours first?

**Craig:** Sure. Oh god, I got to read that whole thing again, don’t I? Shit.

“Katherine awakens in a seedy motel room. Wood paneling. Stained carpet. Dead flies in the overhead light. She sits up in bed, putting her hand to her neck where she discovers…a Post-It note starting to curl away from her skin. She pulls it free and stares at her boss’s handwriting through bleary eyes. Strike two. Ah, shit. Katherine staggers up on unsteady legs, walks to her cleaning cart, grabs some mini soaps and toilet cleaner, and gets back to work.”

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Poignant that is.

**Craig:** I’ve been writing dramas lately.

**John:** You have been, you. Katherine awakens in a seedy motel room. Wood paneling. Stained carpet. Dead flies in the overhead light. She sits up in bed, putting her hand to her neck where she discovers…a large bandage. She stumbles to the bathroom, squints in the harsh light, carefully peels back the bandage revealing a fresh tattoo. No. No. No, no, no. We reveal the tattoo. It’s Strawberry Shortcake. Not bad, really. Kind of cute. Fuck me. The camera reveals the rest of her tattoos. A flaming skull on her shoulder. A swastika along her bra strap. Finally a grinning Pepe the Frog along the small of her back.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Reversed a little.

**Craig:** Alt-right lady. Got Strawberry Shortcake. I feel like ours could be combined.

**John:** They’re really very close.

**Craig:** She also could be the maid.

**Christopher:** I’d like to say the email said specifically a line or two.

**John:** Yeah, I know.

**Christopher:** A line or two. I’m the only one who followed the rules.

**Craig:** I like to stay within the general boundary of–

**John:** You had a blank, you want to fill the blank.

**Craig:** You want to fill the blank. Hey, John, great game.

**John:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** Everyone loved it.

**John:** All right. Everyone out there–

**Craig:** Everyone out there.

**John:** Everyone here is like you’re making us do work. The last bit of work I want to make everyone do is a One Cool Thing which I was meant to remind you about in the green room. Did you guys remember it? You forgot. Jonah, did you remember? No one read the email. So I think instead of One Cool Things we should skip to–

**Craig:** Thank god.

**John:** The questions.

**Craig:** Oh yes.

**John:** So this is where Craig tells you what a question is.

**Craig:** Hi everyone. If you’ve been to one of our live shows before you’ve heard me say this. You get a chance to ask questions of us, any one of us here on stage, but we do have two rules.

One is your question must be a question. It can’t be a statement and then like “you know” at the end. Has to be an actual question.

Two, do not pitch anything, or even come close to pitching anything. Don’t be that guy. Don’t be that guy. And that’s it.

**John:** All right. And so what we’re going to do is we’re going to position John Gatins and Megan McDonnell, our–

**Craig:** You guys know John Gatins is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter. I just want to be clear about this.

**John:** And Scriptnotes producer Megan McDonnell in this corner. If you have a question come to the end of the steps and they will offer you the microphone and you will ask a question.

**John Gatins:** And Craig, you said that I can beat people, right?

**John:** Yes. If you ask something that’s not a question–

**Craig:** If they violate my rules, hit them hard with the mic.

**John:** Go down and talk to John Gatins, sir.

**Audience Member:** OK, I have a world-building follow up question, for all of you. How much more than what you’re going to write on the page do you have to know about your world. Like ten times more? A hundred times more? How much more do you have to know to not have a total anxiety attack about what you’re offering the audience?

**Craig:** 53 times more.

**John:** There can be a paralysis where all you do is world build and you don’t actually write the real script. So, do you guys have any suggestions for where you stop?

**Christopher:** I don’t know, at the moment we’re having a problem of we’ve got way too much world. And the story is actually much simpler. And we’ve got so much iceberg under the water that it’s fucking up the simple story. So, it can really help having all of this knowledge. This is not Avengers 4. Which is already done.

**Craig:** And perfect.

**Christopher:** Having a ton can really help, but it can also kind of cripple you in that you feel obligated – you become confused as to how much of this shit the audience actually has to know. And you can overshare.

**Craig:** It’s also a little bit of a potential form of procrastinating. I know some writers love to use research – it’s just basically jerking off. I mean, that’s what it is. And at some point, right, it is important. But you know when the research that you’re doing is valuable, and if it’s pure fiction you know when the backstory thinking that you’re doing is valuable. But more often than not I think what happens is you may get to a point in your script where you realize, “Oh, the ice here is a little thin. Let me stop and think a little bit about what I need.“

I would kind of think about it as world-building on demand. Don’t get into the trap of world-building to avoid, you know, type, type, type. Whereas John Gatins calls it click, click, click.

**John:** One thing to add on world-building, so I’m doing the Arlo Finch books. And so there are three books in the series. And I got to a place in the second book and my editor is like, “Great, you need to stop world-building because there can be a situation where all you’re doing is building the world out bigger” and I’ve only got one more book. And I’m not going to be able to pay off all those things. And you’re setting an expectation for the audience if you show these things that they’re going to be meaningful. And I think you guys have similar things.

Like if you’re setting something up it feels like that’s a Chekhov’s gun on the wall. That gun is going to have to shoot. And there’s not going to be a space for that thing to shoot. And so the editing process of this has been, “OK, I need to make sure that I’m only building the stuff I can actually really use in the upcoming book because if it’s more than that it’s not just wasted time, it will diminish the actual read of the second and third books,” which I thought was a smart point.

**Lisa:** I totally agree. I have one little trick that I’ve been using lately, because we’ve been doing a lot of world-building for this and some of the feature work that I’m doing. And you really can get lost in the weeds. And it’s also fun. You’re imagining these wonderful places. But the thing that I’ve done to kind of get myself out of that and make sure it’s not a crutch, but I think it’s also just important for the story anyway is I’ll put it aside once I get really mired into it and say now approach this entire thing from just the character’s perspective.

Like look at what your protagonist and your villain is doing, because a lot of the time the thing that’s most relatable and most wonderful about a film I think is feeling really tied into that person, regardless of what world they’re in. And sometimes the most powerful moments I think are incredibly simple in that way. It could just be one person in a room staring at themselves in a mirror, but you understand what they’re thinking. And so that’s a little exercise I’ve been doing lately.

**Audience Member:** I’d like to ask a question about jeopardy. I wrote a screenplay. And one of the things that a couple readers didn’t like was, well, several things. But one of the things was that my protagonists were in Los Angeles and my antagonist was all the way across in New York. And they kept saying “He’s so far away. He’s so far away.” But my defense was he’s such a bastard and he’s very, very powerful.

My question is do you ever think about the different degrees of jeopardy? Do you ever think about as far as proximity to danger when you’re looking at a character and the situation they’re in? I’m not talking about immediacy. I’m talking about – in other words should I move him to like Covina or something?

**Craig:** Well, it’s certainly an evil place. You guys, sometimes your villains aren’t even on the planet.

Male Voice: Yeah, we certainly had a similar problem where Thanos had six things he had to do and he couldn’t be everywhere at once, even though he had the space stone. He could teleport everywhere.

**Craig:** Yeah. I was going to bring that up. But, OK.

Male Voice: Best we don’t dwell on that.

**Craig:** He had a rock that literally allowed him to break your movie, but go ahead.

Male Voice: Understood. But so in that case he had minions. And so we were able to have a few different scenes that were accomplishing the same thing. But I would also say that jeopardy doesn’t necessarily mean physical violence. It’s a super crutch of ours, but end of act two is always what’s the worst thing that could happen to our main character? And that does not have to be a punch in the face. That could be the loss of anything. That could be failure in any way. There’s lots of things that could be. And that could be a phone call.

And so I would just say that jeopardy is pandimensional.

**Christopher:** And also, I mean, distance can make people more frightening. There are a lot of people right now who are really terrifying who are just people, you know, and they’re in offices. They just happen to be in the right offices to scare us.

I mean, James Bond’s bad guys are inevitably guys he could just punch in the mouth and they’d fall over. They’re big fat guys, or, you know, titans of industry. It’s the power they wield from their chair. So I don’t know. Depends on the villain, but I don’t have a problem with them being across the country.

**John:** One thing I’d point out is in No Country for Old Man, Anton Chigurh from that movie is so terrifying in part because he’s headed towards you. And so you establish how scary he is, and he’s headed in your direction, and that is part of his threat is he’s coming towards you and you don’t know how the hero could possibly survive that threat. So not being right next door is fine. And most horror movies the villain is coming towards you and that is the thing.

But if people are consistently saying it feels just too distant and too remote, then you need to either bring him closer or proximity of emotion needs to be closer. Needs to feel like it’s a bigger threat to this person’s life.

**Craig:** Feeling is such a good way of thinking about these things, because you can get caught sometimes in the trap of trying to out-logic someone. They say “I don’t feel like your villain is close enough.”

“Well, I mean, there are scarier people that are even further away.” That’s a rational argument, but has nothing to do with how they feel. And ultimately we’re trying to make people feel things. So sometimes when someone says I feel like blank, blank, blank, I say OK, let’s talk about your feeling. You become a little bit like a therapist.

It helps if you have this kind of beard. This is very therapist-y. It’s amazing how often as writers we have to kind of, oh, I wish it weren’t so. It would be nice if everybody else had to be our therapist. But I feel like a lot of times we have to be therapists to the people that are reading to kind of help pull out of them what they’re saying. And then we can choose to agree or disagree, but then we’re agreeing or disagreeing about feelings which is different than agreeing or disagreeing about facts, which ultimately at some point fall apart because there are no robots that do that. And there is no Thanos in space. And so on and so forth.

**Craig:** Yes, I’m sorry. He’s not real.

**John:** Let’s go back over to Megan here.

**Audience Member:** This is specifically for Lisa and Jonah. I love the way you guys use music in Westworld. And I specifically love that this season, five episodes in, and there’s been so much hip hop. Very excited about that. But my question is first of all do we have any more hip hop to look forward to? And secondly how does influence your story or how do you choose the right music to use with the story that you’ve created?

**Jonah:** We have a psuedonoymous music supervisor on the show, which represents me. You know, one of the pent up frustrations for me, the wonderful experience of working with my brother for 15 years making movies was that he wasn’t a huge fan of using contemporary music, in the films or the trailers. You know, when you’re working with Hans Zimmer, you know, it’s an understandable impulse. You love the music that they crafted for each film.

And I kept trying to get him to do a Batman trailer with Paint it Black. I’m like “Just once. Let’s do it. People would lose their fucking minds.” And so then when we made the pilot for Westworld I was like I know which song I’m going to use. So this pent up 15 years of – because I love music. Lisa does as well, and Lisa picked the music for her episode which was magnificent. Boxy music and Rolling Stones. And there was this delightful idea very early on in the development of Westworld, we were looking for an icon for the show. Along the lines, if anyone here is a Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner fan?

**Craig:** Yes.

**Jonah:** So the penny-farthing bicycle, right? I don’t know what the fuck it means. I have no idea. There’s no penny-farthing bicycle in the show. I keep waiting for him to get on the penny-farthing bicycle and escape and he doesn’t. But we like the iconography of it.

And so we were casting around looking for an icon. And I’ve been a Vonnegut fan as a kid. And we just though every western town had a robot in it and it was the player piano. It was typically operated almost tragicomically because there’s no electricity in the Wild West. Most player pianos had a set foot pedals on the side and some poor asshole had to sit there pedaling the thing so it would play. We left that detail out.

I think originally you were introduced to Ford’s character in the pilot playing Deep Tracks. We just love this idea – I’ve worked now with Ramin Djawadi for, well, on and off – we collaborated at a distance, at a spooky distance, on Batman Begins, which I was a ghostwriter on and he was working with Hans Zimmer, kind of doing instrumentation. And then we started working together again 2011 on my first show. And we’ve worked together ever since. He’s one of the truly fucking gems. Like one of the greatest people in the world.

And so he loved this idea of “Let’s take contemporary music.” It was a way to fuck around with human programming. This is how payola works. Even if you don’t like a song, if I play it enough times it embeds. So we knew we could take popular music, which is why most of the songs are fairly well known, and we program the audience to make them feel something in it.

**Craig:** And you guys used, correct me if I’m wrong, Nirvana in your big sort of season trailer, right?

**Jonah:** We did.

**Craig:** Which was awesome. And part of the fun of watching your show is sometimes it’s pretty – like Paint It Black, something about the melody where it doesn’t matter how you play it. It’s Paint It Black.

**John:** And this last time you played it in Japanese instrumentation to remind us–

**Craig:** That’s the thing. But then there are some songs we’re like, “Wait, what the fuck is? And then like, oh, this is Black Hole Sun.” It took me like a minute or two, but this is Black Hole Sun. And I love that kind of–

**Jonah:** But you feel it moving around in your own programming.

**Craig:** It’s happening, you’re right, before you’re conscious of it it’s happening.

**Jonah:** The Wu-Tang one I think is our supreme fucking victory. Cleared that a year ago. I had a back and forth. I went to college with four roommates all from Brooklyn and Manhattan and I had to listen to the Wu-Tang Clan for five straight years.

**Craig:** Had to? Got to.

**Jonah:** Yeah. Got to.

**Craig:** I’m from Staten Island. I’m from Shaolin, my friend. That’s where the Wu-Tang – Brooklyn and Manhattan, psh.

**Jonah:** I was a grunge rock fan when I started. Everyone is like this show is set in the ‘90s. Clearly the fucking park is in the ‘90s. No, I just went to high school in the ‘90s. That’s where all the music comes from Wu-Tang, we cleared it a year before hand. Ramin did the instrumentation. And we had a choreographer. I’ve never been prouder. It was fucking glorious.

**John:** All right, question from John Gatins’ side.

**Audience Member:** Hi. This question is mainly for Westworld people.

**Craig:** They have names. We’ve said them over and over.

**John:** Lisa and Jonah.

**Jonah:** We’re OK. Westworld people works.

**Audience Member:** Of course, but it also kind of applies to the Marvel universe as well. And my question is about developing characters and creating characters and the process of making rules for these characters that are so close to human, like the hosts are, but they also have to have these elements of AI and robotic-ness to them. And how do the conversations when making rules for them and making these characters go when you’re trying to balance something that’s so close to the uncanny valley?

**Lisa:** You know, it was something we were very aware of, especially because in one of the drafts – we showed it to a producer who will remain nameless. And Delores gets attacked and murdered. And then they wipe her and put her underneath and they kind of repair and put her back out. And his note was, “Well why does it matter? Why do I care? Because she just forgets anyway.”

And I’m like that’s an argument for people who dose people with roofies. Like that’s really dark and terrible. Like it matters because it was evil and she suffered. And I don’t know that it matters if she remembers it or not.

**Craig:** I love that you were trying to explain that to a producer and they’re like “I don’t get it.”

**Lisa:** And I got really into this debate–

**Christopher:** Still not getting it.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, wait, the roofies is also bad?

**Lisa:** I was trying to – yeah, I was trying to liken the experience, and I really went deep into this debate with him, and I love the guy by the way. He’s a nice guy. It was just he could not get over this thing. But what I did realize then was if I’m having this debate it means that something has to change at least in the alchemy of when it goes to screen. Because god forbid people are having that debate. That’s not the feeling they should have from this. It’s not the feeling I intended as a writer, that we intended as writers. And honestly this is something that goes a little bit beyond script. It’s one of those places where direction, and Jonah directed it, and performance are incredibly, incredibly important.

And so the one thing we did in script to safeguard us on this count was we rooted our perspective as an audience with Delores’s perspective. She did not know she was a host. She did not know who among her were humans or hosts. And neither did we as the audience. So when it was revealed that her lover, the guy we thought was a guest was actually a host and the man in black was the villain, we too as the audience were meant to feel that betrayal. And it was supposed to bridge the empathy that we had with these hosts to make their pain more real and valid.

And then, of course, there’s the performance aspects of it and the direction, which it changes. It changes stuff, don’t you agree, to see it brought to life, where it’s no longer an intellectual debate about, “Oh, does it matter if she forgets?” because you see this heart-wrenching performance of a woman suffering. And you just think this kind of cruelty should not go on.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s amazing how acting eliminates 80% of the – it’s very frustrating as writers when we have to talk about those things, because what we want to say is a little bit like what you guys were saying. “Just trust us. We know what we’re doing. We’ve done it before. We’re not going to overwrite this. We need space for an actor to make it real and human.”

But you guys also, I think, very cleverly built in situations that allowed you to address the uncanny valley thing straight on and exploit it, particularly the interviews. I think the interview sequences are so important in the beginning because you realize how many levels there are. “Lose the accent. OK. Now also – no, stop with the emotion. Stop. Analysis. Why did you say that?” That’s brilliant and it allows the hosts to, A, be robots, and B, be very human actually in the strangest way. So you came up with I think a brilliant mechanism there to do that. So well done. Well done, you two.

**John:** Smart people. That wasn’t a question–

**Craig:** Those rules don’t apply to me. I can do whatever the fuck I want.

**John:** It is time for our actual last question, which I’m so sorry, over on Megan’s side.

**Audience Member:** This is for Christopher and Stephen. I just wanted to ask simply what was it like creating the character of Thanos on the page, because one of the things I really enjoyed about the film is that he had such an impersonal goal to balance the universe, yet you guys on the page made it very human and very emotionally resonant to us as an audience member. And having read Joseph Campbell, you can see that being paid homage to through the character of Thanos. Yet you guys seem like to really throw a monkey wrench into a lot of Campbell’s ideas. So I just wanted to ask what was it like crafting that character?

**Christopher:** It was a lot of fun. He was from very early on the protagonist, the main character of that movie. And that gave us the leeway to touch the emotions of a villain that you wouldn’t ordinarily go to. And he became more and more “human” the more we figured out the cost that he was going to have to pay to get what he needed. It’s not just he’s going to make the world pay. He’s going to pay a cost and it’s going to hurt. And that made him extremely compelling and lovable.

Male Voice: Sort of the secret writing trick we use is – I sort of alluded to it earlier, you know, what’s the end of act two? It’s the worst thing that could possibly happen. And I think a lot of people sort of just if you look at it casually think, oh, we lost Gamora at the end of act two and that’s terrible for our heroes. Not who it’s for. It’s terrible for him. And that idea when we hit upon that, that he would have to sacrifice the person he loved the most to get what he thinks he wants, everything sort of slid into place after that.

You knew what was coming. You knew he was going to collect six stones, or that’s at least what he was trying to do. But if there’s an emotional cost to collecting those things, if it’s not attached to Dr. Strange or isn’t sitting in Vision’s head, or isn’t an exchange required that you’re going to have sacrifice Gamora, then you’re just chopping. And we didn’t want to do that. We wanted it to cost.

**Craig:** It might as well be donuts at that point.

Male Voice: Exactly.

**John:** It could be donuts. That is our show for tonight. I want to thank Stephen and Christopher and Jonah and Lisa, our amazing guests. I want to thank our host, John Gatins, Denise Seider, Hollywood Heart. Thank you very much for having us here. They put together all this event.

**Craig:** Thank all these wonderful people.

**John:** We want to thank our fantastic audience.

**Craig:** You guys did a good thing tonight. You helped children. We think.

**John:** You would think.

**Craig:** We think.

**John:** We think there’s children involved in this. We need to thank Megan McDonnell, our producer. Yay, Megan McDonnell. And Matthew Chilelli who will edit this. And thank you to ArcLight for hosting us here. This was really fun.

**Craig:** Thanks guys.

**John:** This was nice. Thank you all for very much. Good night.

**Craig:** Thanks for coming out. Good night.

Links:

* Thanks to the ArcLight, [Hollywood HEART](http://www.hollywoodheart.org), and everyone who came out for this Live Show!
* [Lisa Joy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Joy) and [Jonah Nolan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Nolan) are on the second season of [Westworld](https://www.hbo.com/westworld) on HBO.
* [Stephen McFeely & Christopher Markus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Markus_and_Stephen_McFeely)’s [Avengers: Infinity War](http://marvel.com/avengers) is in theaters now.
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](http://johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* Intro by Jon Spurney and [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilleli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_352.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2018/limerence).

**John August:** Today’s episode of Scriptnotes has some strong language, so if you’re in the car with your kids this is your warning.

Hey, so this is John. Today’s episode of Scriptnotes was originally going to be a Best Of episode because Craig is traveling back from Europe and we could not find a time to record a new episode. But also this past week I sat down with Aline Brosh McKenna, Rachel Bloom, and John Gatins to talk about the third season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. This was an event that I had promoted on the show earlier. People wrote lyrics to win tickets to come to see this. And I met those guys. They were fantastic. But more importantly I had a great discussion with Aline and Rachel and John about making a TV show. Making a third season of a TV show and figuring out what you want to do going into it and what changes along the way.

So, we showed some clips. We took some audience questions. What you’re hearing is a little bit condensed because it doesn’t really make sense to play full clips because you’re not seeing stuff. This is all recorded at UTA, so thank you for letting us use the audio from the event. I think you’ll really dig it. It’s a really good discussion between some really smart folks.

If you want to see another smart discussion between smart folks – Segue Man – you can come to our live show, May 22 at the ArcLight, 8pm. We’re sitting down with Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan from Westworld and also Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely from The Avengers movie and Captain America. It should be great.

So, as I’m recording this I know all the VIP tickets are sold out, but I think there are still some general tickets left. So, if you want to come, you should come. It’s going to be great.

There will be another normal Scriptnotes that same day. So Craig will be back and we’ll record a normal episode. But today it’s a special live one. Next week is normal. And the week after that we’ll have some audio from the special live show. So a whole mix up of things.

But today enjoy. This is Aline Brosh McKenna, Rachel Bloom, and John Gatins.

We’re here to talk about the third season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. And so I remember about this time last year, I follow you on Instagram, and you had taped over the windows because you were getting started to figure out this season. So my question now is what were you guys talking about in that room with the papered-over windows? What was the plan?

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** What were the things that really stuck through?

**Rachel Bloom:** The thinking was how quickly do we get to the full revenge episode. We knew very quickly we wanted to do – in the pitch five years ago at this point it was always inherent that she was – we were going to play the promise of the premise somehow. She was going to become full fatal attraction crazy ex-girlfriend. The question was how long did that last and how long did we take before we got to that point. And I think that was the thing that we were talking about.

**Aline:** That was the main. And then balancing – you know, the thing about revenge, and I don’t know if you guys have ever tried to write a revenge movie, or if anyone has tried to write, revenge makes no sense. It just doesn’t make any sense. And then what?

**John Gatins:** It felt so good though.

**Aline:** But then it’s like Wah-Wah. So we were building towards that but we knew that there needed to be something else going on in the season beyond that. And also we knew we had owed for a long time figuring out what was really her issue and the diagnosis. So that was something that we were also talking about then and starting to do research. And our writer’s assistant at the time, who is now going to be a writer on the show, Alana is here, she was with us – and there’s usually a few songs that are like born in that first breaking room and there’s some that change a lot from there. But there’s usually a few things that are like “Oh that’s done. We’re going to do that.”

But I would say every year we’ve had like a midseason thing where some of the things were set and then some of the things needed to be re-broken. And we usually do a little bit of re-break, like a little bit of a retreat halfway through to kind of calibrate, recalibrate.

**Rachel:** Yeah, and the big thing, and usually there’s a point in every season, midseason, where Aline and I will go to her house and get naked and get in her hot tub together. This is 100% true. And we’re usually drunk or—

**Aline:** Something.

**Rachel:** On something. And we’ll come up with like, “Oh no, this is the kind of shot in the arm the season needed.” And so in season two that was she and Josh full on – spoiler alert – I may not, if you’re here, sorry, but the shot in the arm was, “OK, Josh is going to leave her at the altar.” Because there was a world in which – the way we always pitched season two—

**Aline:** Was that Josh was about to marry Valencia.

**Rachel:** And she was going to then – oh god, was this two or three? The original pitch was that he was about to marry Valencia. She didn’t stop him from proposing and then she was going to do some big grand gesture, like Say Anything gesture to win him back, but it was going to backfire and it was going to hurt – at the time we didn’t know his girlfriend’s name was Valencia. It was just his girlfriend and she’d break her uterus. That was in the pitch. It was like season three Rebecca breaks Josh’s girlfriend’s uterus.

**John G:** I’m trying to picture that in the hot tub naked.

**Rachel:** So we re-broke it. And then last season I remember being in the hot tub with you, naked—

**John G:** We’ve got to do this.

**John A:** Our writing process has been wrong this whole time.

**Rachel:** It’s great. Our bodies are so different, so we’re also both very fascinated.

**Aline:** I need parts that I waited for and never got.

**Rachel:** Oh yeah, but what I was going to say – sorry, I was thinking about Aline’s nakedness – the thing that we re-broke in your hot tub after – usually it’s hot tub after pasta, so we’re really not judging each other. It was last year was – we knew something was going to happen with – we had to get her – she was going to get in trouble with—

**Aline:** She was going to get in trouble and get in prison. She was going to be obsessed with Josh and Josh’s new girlfriend and that somehow was going to lead to her being in prison. But then in the middle of the season once the Josh thing had sort of burned brightly it seemed like it was over and we switched to Nathaniel. And then this idea of Trent as her id coming back and that that was the thing that really symbolized that she had, you know, burned through her revenge scheme, she was on her road to redemption, and then her mistakes come back to haunt her even though she’s actually doing the right thing. And there was an irony in that.

And one of the things that you guys as feature writers will relate to is we pitched it in four parts, the series. The first season really is act one. The second season really is the first half of the second half. And last year as you guys know, we’ve talked about this on Scriptnotes, the second half of the second act is the rocky shoals. It is the hardest thing to right. It’s the cumulative thing to write. It has the most plot in it. So that gives you a sense of what season three is going to be, or season four is going to be which is the third act. So we have a lot of plot in last year, like more than we ever had.

And there were times where Rachel came into the room and looked at the board and was like, “What’s happening?”

**Rachel:** Well because there’s always a point—

**John G:** The lowest point.

**Aline:** Yes. Bringing your character to its lowest point.

**Rachel:** But it wasn’t in those as much, I mean, that’s also a separate issue with me, the work schedule, which is I am in the writer’s room for the first two months and then we start filming and Aline is still running the writer’s room. And so then I’m reading outlines but also it’s on me to – I’m one of the three songwriters and it’s one me to – I’m the main person who supervises the edit of the music videos. I script out the music videos. So, around episodes let’s say six through 10 are when stuff is changing in the room rapidly. And so I’ll walk in and be like, “Whoa, Josh is a DJ? Oh, cool. Good for him. That sounds really cool.”

**Aline:** And it was hard because there was so much plot stuff that was happening as you said to bring her to her lowest point and how do you construct that. But there’s a very hectic part in the middle of the season around seven, eight, nine where we’re really tired and confused. And then it starts to – as the last few scripts are written we start to come up for air a little bit and there’s a song in the very last episode that Rachel and I wrote very calmly that first draft of, I mean, when I say wrote she wrote and I said half sentences, that ended up being one of the last songs in the last episode.

So, that was a very long answer.

**John A:** So really broad strokes, and these are sort of like the fat marker on the whiteboard, the overall map. Now, you knew you were going to get to a revenge plot and eventually she was going to go full Glenn Close in it. But her first instinct after the wedding gets broken off she’s at a very low place, then she decides like, “Oh, I’m going to use my super power. I’m going to sue him.” And so there’s this idea at the start of the season like, “Oh, there’s going to be a lawsuit.”

**Rachel:** That was the hardest thing actually. I remember, I mean, I think what’s interesting in looking back at what we were doing exactly a year ago was the lawsuit was a great idea that we knew we were going to do that you had early on but the question was right after the wedding what is she doing.

**Aline:** Right.

**Rachel:** And can we share what originally happened?

**Aline:** They went to a diner?

**Rachel:** No, but then.

**Aline:** Oh yeah.

**Rachel:** So originally she goes to this diner with her friends and she’s like mad and they’re like, “Oh my god, what is she thinking?” And she’s like, “Will you just excuse me for one second?” And then she knocks on Nathaniel’s door and they fuck. Like literally the first second of the season. And then that’s part of the reason he’s been on the hook is like she came and fucked him and then left. And then there was this whole runner of like she got really freaky and she comes back to his apartment. She’s like “Take a shower. I need a clean work space.” And it was really dirty.

**Aline:** So that was in there for a long time and that was behind that newspaper. And I got to say the writers really hated that because they felt like it cut off all the opportunity for like the first time they slept together building to that. And there was a lot of resistance to that in the writer’s room. And I clung to it for a while. But there were so many other things going on in the beginning of that episode that we let go of that.

She does a lot of awful things in the first third of the season. And then when they start to come out, she also has this giant dip so that the characters later will forgive her for that.

**John G:** So you guys create a show called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. When do you have this idea to explore BPD as a thing that’s going to arc itself out? And what was that conversation like?

**Rachel:** BPD didn’t come – BPD started to come kind of organically. I remember we started talking about it really in the second season. I definitely – I remember thinking it a lot in it was the third episode of the second season where she thinks she’s pregnant for a scene and goes in between these extremes. And BPD is very difficult to diagnose and it’s a very interesting disorder. And so we kind of knew that that’s where it was going. I mean, a lot of the things that we had the character do were kind of emotionally heightened versions of things that both Aline and I had gone through in our lives but very, very, very heightened and just kind of yes-anded.

And the interesting thing about BPD is that’s what it is. It’s emotions that we all feel, it’s thoughts that we all have, just multiplied by a million. I mean, they say that if you have BPD it feels like you have emotional third degree burns all over your body. You literally have no emotional skin because your sense of self is not present, so you rely on the outside world to define who you are which is inherent in the premise of the show of someone who imagines themselves in different musical numbers to define who she is.

**Aline:** So what’s interesting though is we didn’t know that that’s what she had. We wrote it by feel. And the same thing happened with figuring out that Greg was an alcoholic. We just were writing that character, it was a thing that we had a pattern that seemed like it adhered to that character. And then we realized, oh, when we go back and do the checklist for alcoholic, Greg’s him. And when we went to do the BPD checklist it was stunning how much we had done that, but we hadn’t done that intentionally.

And I didn’t know anything about BPD until – Rachel knew stuff about it and had been talking to me about it sort of lightly for a while, but we didn’t really—

**Rachel:** I know people who have it.

**Aline:** And then we kind of delved into it and that’s what we had written. And I actually think it’s interesting because I think if we had written it knowing that that’s what we were going to do it might have been more forced and programmatic. But BPD people are the people who like – you know the friend that you have that does “crazy shit” and you call your other friends and you’re like, “You are not going to believe what this person has done.”

If you – the people that you know who tend to be – people call them crazy because they’re always stirring up stuff and they end up in weird – that’s her thing. She ends up in very weird situations because she’s lying and she’s freaking out and she’s over-dramatizing things, but not realizing these are all connected to one place.

**John G:** Was it scary or kind of exciting to be able to kind of push the tone really hard? You know, because it’s a show that like when you see the first season it’s so funny and so full of life and the music is amazing, the performances. It’s like you’re constantly laughing. And then as she devolves into this spiral it’s intense. Some of those–

**Aline:** Season three is—

**Rachel:** The show was always really dark to us, though. I mean, and I have spent a little bit of time rewatching some episodes of the first season, which is very weird to rewatch a show that you worked on but it seems like a new show because it’s been a couple years since I’ve seen it. And she’s quite ill. I mean, in that first season, in ways that I think at the time I didn’t even realize, but she’s really, really, really sick. And then the fact that Greg wants to fuck her and that’s like the only thing he can think about is like fucking this sick person. It’s really dark and disturbing.

And so I never thought of – the darkness of the show has always been inherent for both of us.

**Aline:** Yeah. I mean, I think because it’s a deconstruction of romantic comedies and you look at how people behave in romantic comedies, it’s psychotic. No, that’s a thing that we connected on which is the guy is outside in your yard and he’s got the boom box on. Like this is not OK. Stop fucking running to the airport. If you love somebody, you know, don’t lie about – and I had written obviously a lot of stuff where people are lying and scheming and it’s supposed to all be OK if you end up kissing. And in our very, very first conversations about the show that’s what we talked about which is like – and for me it’s rom-coms and for Rachel it’s also Disney princess stuff where what we sell to girls and women as appropriate behavior if it ends up with Prince Charming or in a kiss is like we excuse very crazy behavior.

So what’s interesting is because the first season is the first act it’s that rom-com cute stuff. And we always – you know how you guys when you write something they’re always like, “Make her likeable.” We always had it be someone else’s fault. And basically what happened over the course of the three seasons it’s like, “No, no, it’s her. She’s driving it.”

And I will say when we wrote episode four of this year which is the full-on revenge episode we laughed and laughed. It was such a release.

**Rachel:** Ah.

**Aline:** It was such a relief. We wrote that.

**Rachel:** It was the episode we wanted to write.

**Aline:** Yeah. We wrote that over the weekend at my house and it was such a release to actually have her be stalking him and really go for it, because we had sort of been putting kid gloves on it, you know. And there is something – but a lot of the stuff people do, you know, if you go to people’s weddings now and you hear the toasts of how they met it’s like, “Well that’s not OK. He slept outside her house for – I think that might not be legal.“

**Rachel:** If you didn’t think he was hot you would have called the police. Because you were attracted you’re like, “That’s fine. That’s cute.”

**John A:** Talking about premise of the show, so it’s a woman who wants something so desperately she’s willing to uproot her life and move across the country. And the first two seasons we see her pursuing her wants. What’s so interesting about this season is she’s kind of stopped wanting and she just goes on defense. She’s so terrified, and so what we just saw with Paula is she’s lashing out at Paula and she’s using her special skills kind of for evil and for vengeance.

**Rachel:** She’s very smart. Yeah.

**Aline:** But she’s bouncing off the mound. It is late act two stuff. She’s grabbing at vines.

**Rachel:** Even in moments of being a villain she doesn’t know how to be a villain. She’s just trying to get her pain out. And I think that that’s been something very interesting to write for all these characters that even at their worst Aline and I we come at it from a place of empathy and compassion. And so it’s the reason people calling the show My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend really bothers us because it other-izes her. And unlike in Fatal Attraction where you know “the bitch must be killed,” that’s an example of someone with borderline, you know, the original ending of Fatal Attraction was her killing herself. And the audience felt unfulfilled because it made you feel sorry for her and you want the world to be black and white. But when people are acting villainous they’re terrified. They’re insecure and they’re upset.

**John A:** So reaching all the way back to, I think it was season one, I’m the villain of my own story, which was sort of the fairy tale version. And she imagines herself as that sort of dark villain. So she has some insight. She’s able at times to realize that this is a thing that I’m doing that is the wrong thing. How much does that factor into your decisions on a scene like this, her to understand what’s really happening in the world and this is her own feelings?

**Aline:** You know, I think it’s the special pain of her character, but it’s also the thing that makes you like her is that she knows she’s messing up. She always knows. No one is harder on herself that she is. And so when she’s doing awful things she is aware always. And if you know anyone who has a disorder, not even just BPD or something like this, when they are aware that they’re acting out and they can’t help it there’s just a special pain and empathy that you feel for that character because she does know that she – and that’s why I think in some ways one of the signature songs of the whole series is You Stupid Bitch, where she sings this very lacerating song about herself because she knows what she’s capable of.

**John G:** How many episodes? 44.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John G:** And how many writers from the beginning?

**Aline:** All from the beginning. We’ve had the same writers since day one. We promoted two people. We have a very cohesive group. And one of the things that’s amazing about it is we have such institutional memory on our show. It’s incredible. It’s like this is a room that remembers every – they know and remember things that I don’t, that we don’t. They just know it so well. And when you have shows where people come and go you can’t create that as coherent a story. And they’ve just been steeped in it from day one. And everyone there will bring in bits and pieces of stuff or point out, “Hey, we can’t do that because we’ve done this already.”

And we work alone. You know, screenwriters work alone. We’re hermits. And John and I are friends because we hated being hermits and we created our own little writer’s room on the telephone when people used to talk on the telephone. We still do. But having that community of writers that understands this show and is helping us to guide us and give us feedback and say that’s crazy. And this suicide episode that Jack wrote, I mean, Jack brought such tremendous humanity and depth to the draft that he wrote. And we wept in the room, many of us, very frequently. You know, for me – Rachel is like a daughter to me, but Rebecca is, too. And the thing that always gets me about her is that she has hope. She’s a very hopeful character. It’s like, you know, she has a spirit of wanting to live and wanting to survive that like really, really moves me. So we wept a lot in the writer’s room.

**John G:** I’ve been to see you both in your room a few times. And I’m only now remembering that, yeah, it was exactly the same people every time I went. And I’m just thinking like that’s a really long season. No, it’s been many seasons. I just keep thinking like, “Oh, it’s Wednesday,” but you’re on another season. It’s this continuous thing. And the feeling in the room was very open. Like I didn’t know who was the boss. I didn’t know anything.

**Aline:** Well, it’s funny, I didn’t know. I think because I never ran a room before, so there are things that I learn. Like I don’t care who has the idea. And I didn’t obey any hierarchy. I didn’t think like, “Oh, if you had this title you should speak more or less.” That doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would you – so there were a lot of things about the way shows are run I didn’t know because I’ve never been on staff. And the staff taught us how – Rachel actually had more experience than I did. And the staff taught us really how to run the room. And some of the senior writers really helped inform that. But it’s just a glorious lucky thing to have a group of people that is so – you know, just to be in a room with ten intelligent, hilarious people while you’re creating something is – it’s so hard to go back to writing solo. It’s crazy.

**John G:** But I think it’s really unique that you have this writer’s room, as a guy who has been there, and you guys are there, and then you’re shooting the show on the other side of a wall. And you’re the star of the show. You’re in the writer’s room. You’re there. The writers go there. You’ve directed three episodes, right? It’s a pretty rare–

**Aline:** Also we really give the writers custody of their episode, like during the breaking and the writing of the draft obviously, the rewrite, the going onset, it always goes back to them. It’s their episode. And they guide it and they’re responsible for really keeping track of it. I mean, I’m thinking of the writers that are in the room, like Alana did episode six for us. It was her first episode. She was our writer’s assistant. The one right after this which deals with her diagnosis. And, I mean, she is like a Ph.D. level expert in Borderline because she read absolutely everything.

And so when a writer is entrusted with an episode we take that very seriously. That is their episode to curate and they’re there for every second of it.

**John A:** You know, I think that merlot joke was so crucial because it’s a reminder that like the rest of the universe is still functioning, even though she’s pulled herself out of it the rest of the universe is still functioning. And in the next episode or the episode after we sort of see what the office is like without her there and how they’re all sort of desperate to reinsert her. But they’re just being crazy madcap the way they always would be and the universe is cycling on, which is also a factor for someone considering suicide is like either they want the universe to stop because they’re not going to be there or “No one is going to miss me if I’m gone.” And you’re able to sort of answer that question by seeing what the office is like without her there.

**Rachel:** Yeah, and I have to say in talking about the writing of this I – there are certain things that if I – if we’re talking about a certain idea and I don’t know about it, Aline will get a conviction in her eye and I know that her gut is right on a certain thing. And I have to say like it was her idea, the idea of that help sign turning into hope, and I couldn’t – on its face I was like I hope this isn’t schmaltzy. And then she was fucking right. It’s what you needed in that moment. And so things like that, things like tone, yeah, you can talk about them intellectually but I feel like the tone of the show in many ways is an emotional thing for us and is an instinctual thing for us.

And we wrote the pilot, we set the tone. The way we wrote that was basically kind of just line by line together in a room. I mean, we had an outline and we had songs. And so I think that it’s the reason we try to maintain the idea of humanely going beneath stereotypes is because this show is, yes, it’s intellectual but it’s very emotional. Sometimes it comes from our gut. And I want to point out a moment where Aline’s gut was just spot on and it really was a wonderful tonal thing for that episode.

**Aline:** And one thing I would say if you’re going to write with somebody, it’s great to have somebody who has – we have a lot of overlap in many things, but the skills we bring to the table are different. You know, I’ve been doing long form storytelling of a certain type for a very long time and Rachel’s background is different. The funny things is we both have – like I have an allergy to expected things on a story level because that’s what I’ve been practicing for a long time. And Rachel has an allergy to expected things because she’s a comedian and a sketch comedian and a songwriter and comes from animation. And she doesn’t like any stale or expected thing. And I would say if there’s one thing that we overlap on that is our most shared thing is the zigging.

You know, we really try to – and sometimes it’s hard to either get other people onboard or even to get each other onboard, but we both have a very strong – and in here the zig I felt strongly about taking was towards some celestial feeling of like this can be OK and that’s why we have the clouds and that’s why we have the blurry hope. But, you know, being partners and having a writer’s room is like listening to the conviction and sort of hearing like well that’s important but we’re going to continue to zig there.

**Rachel:** I also think it’s a testament to what technique is and what understanding – you have to understand structure and tropes and technique before you can break them. I mean, Aline comes from oftentimes writing these romantic comedies and she knows the structure so well. I come from musical theater knowing all of those tropes. And sketch comedy, when you learn sketch comedy, the way I learned it it was almost mathematical where it’s like, OK, well then there’s this beat and there’s this beat. There’s a weird – [cell phone rings] you should get that. I’m joking but I’m not. There’s a weird like rigidness sometimes, especially when you first start to learn sketch comedy. And so I think that knowing those structures and what’s expected and what’s trite and what you’ve seen and what’s stock has given us a real allergy to anything that feels like stock.

But even then that’s a – because that’s why I thought maybe the help turning into hope might have been and it 100% wasn’t. And so it’s always this back and forth and this debate.

**John A:** So coming out of this suicide attempt she’s trying to sort of reconstruct her life and she’s trying to figure out who she is and deal with stuff and she’s running away from the work for a while but she’s trying to get stuff back together. Can you talk about the Nathaniel relationship because that’s going to be the next stuff we see? What was the charting on Nathaniel through the season? What was in your head as you were going into the season and what you wanted to see from him?

**Aline:** It kind of connects to what Rachel was saying which is a lot of what we do is sort of take tropes and try to take the piss out of them, but also to try and understand why someone is that way. So like Paula is the sidekicky Rosie O’Donnell best friend. But that’s a person. That’s not just a plot function, that’s a person. And Greg was this trope of the friend-zoney loser who can’t get his life together but thinks he’s entitled to the pretty girl because he’s better than the handsome guy. And then Nathaniel was really the rich preppy asshole. And we show him as broken right from the beginning — that he’s got huge daddy issues and he is enormously fun to write because he’s very Darwinian and kind of disconnected.

And it’s interesting. There’s certain people in the writer’s room who will really connect with him in certain moments. We’ve always said like he’s really screwed up. So it’s like that Less Than Zero. And you have to be able to boil it down actually to something kind of reductive to make it work in a way. You know, in story terms there is an element of taking that trope and kind of doing it and not doing it. So he gives us that. And it really works very well with her character because she’s very good at seeing what’s wrong with that guy.

**Rachel:** His background was somewhat inspired by some of the people in the industry we know and especially some of the agents we know. And that office is very high powered agency and sometimes I’ll walk in and Scott will fuck with me and be like, “Bloom, we’ve got some great projects coming down the pike for you,” and I have to leave. I have to leave the room. I don’t like this at all. I don’t like this bit. It’s too fucking real. “Oh, we’ve got some great – we got a call.” They’re also both very narcissistic, so I think that they see – I mean, it’s been very interesting to write who brings what out in Rebecca because which part of her – because each of the three guys, the main love interests, Josh, Greg, Nathaniel, they bring out a slightly different part of her because there’s a part of her that’s very – she loves the part of them that is a different part of her.

So with Josh they’re very kind of childlike. They’re like kids playing in the sand. And with Nathaniel it’s this kind of very – it’s very raw and judgmental but also then the flip side very sweet. It’s almost very schizophrenic. And then Greg is like the sarcastic kind of above all of this.

**Aline:** It’s also something that I was familiar with which is sort of the Jew melting the heart of the stony goy.

**John G:** Oh, that old trope.

**Aline:** Talking about emotions and being free about her emotions and sort of like frank about who she is and sort of not afraid to – there’s a scene where she rubs her boobs on a glass in anger. She’s just very free with her emotions and he’s not able to do that. And so that’s another—

**Rachel:** We had a line that we had taken out where he – in an earlier episode he confronts his parents about something because she’s opening him up. And we had written like his dad I think saying like, “What are you doing airing your true feelings like some sort of Jew.”

**Aline:** So many jokes about being a Jew.

**Rachel:** We were like that’s a lot. It’s a lot. But that’s the subtext of everything his father says all the time.

Sometimes, I mean, I think for a lot of comedians going into comedy was also my way of – you know, I’m laughing at myself before you can laugh at me. I’m being ridiculous and knowing that I’m ridiculous. So when you call me ridiculous I can, “Ha-ha, I meant to be ridiculous.” And so the moments like that or the song, A Diagnosis, earlier in the season which were emotionally raw, those are scary when you come from doing musical comedy songs because you can in some ways excuse the emotion under a structure or under a genre. And when you don’t have the pastiche or the satire to rely upon. You’re like this is just me. It’s very scary. And they end up being some of our favorite moments of the show but it still feels kind of like stepping off a cliff a little bit.

**John A:** Absolutely. Most of the songs you end up seeing are sort of projecting out your inner feeling. And you’re actually singing to yourself, which A Diagnosis is another situation where you’re trying to sing the song to encourage yourself to really get yourself to push forward. And it’s a very different feel from the other kinds of songs they did.

**Aline:** Yeah. And obviously season three has more dramatic moments and it has more earnest moments. And we all had to like hold hands and jump into that pool because that was the last pool for us to get into was like, you know, Diagnosis is really not a joke song. It’s a sincere song that could be in a musical comedy. And that felt a little like new territory.

But I think we had to go there. And as we were saying second half of the second act, like you have to delve in and get under there. And, again, is it harder to watch someone try to deal with their shit or is it harder to watch season one where you’re going, “Oh wow, you’re a mess?” You know? But what’s interesting is there is this protagonist bias where you forgive people a lot in the first act. You know, you forgive Tootsie a lot in the first act. And then the accumulation of this is wrong and you’re hurting people, we had to go there.

So that’s why it’s interesting that the series really is structured with a big overarching story because that was the thing we wanted to do most at the beginning was to really have it have progression, which is something that obviously TV is doing now but it didn’t always.

I mean, I love The Love Boat but–

**John A:** Yeah.

**Aline:** It doesn’t really go anywhere.

**John G:** Who doesn’t love The Love Boat?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John A:** So coming through towards the end, you know, Nathaniel shows up with one last like we can get out of this. The song I love is Nothing is Ever Anyone’s Fault. Like a rip cord.

**Rachel:** Well, and just to say, so the inspiration, every love interest on the show is picking at a different trope of a rom-com and then poking a hole in it, right? So there’s the best friend who you should settle for. Well, he’s actually a fuck up. And there’s the guy who is perfect, well he’s actually a fuck up. You see the running pattern.

And then Nathaniel is the trope of the reformed asshole, because you have this asshole and then eventually he says love has reformed me. And what we loved when we were writing the final episode and getting into the lyrics for Nothing is Ever Anyone’s Fault is that he almost learns a lesson. It’s almost the reformed asshole going love has set me free. But love has actually only kind of reinforced his Darwinian nature. He’s just used love as another excuse for being a piece of shit. So it’s kind of everything we had wanted to do with the character of Nathaniel.

**Aline:** Right. One of the hot tub notions was the idea that he would actually say to her “You are crazy. A doctor has said you’re crazy. Use crazy as your get out of jail card.” And it was like he could actually ask her to plead insanity and for her to actually be confronted with am I crazy, what does it mean to be crazy. All her life people have said that about her. How is she going to own that? But she has a diagnosis. It’s not a medically significant word, but insanity is a legally applicable concept. So it all kind of dovetailed into that. And somebody who is saying “catch the nearest way,” which is what he is, versus somebody who is trying to wake up to taking responsibility in the world. And that’s what the second half of the season is.

That’s a terrible decision. She’s not legally responsible for what happened.

**John A:** Yeah, I want to ask about that.

**Aline:** She’s not legally responsible for what happened. And on some level she knows that, but she’s trying to take responsibility. She’s reaching for whatever she can. That’s the bill that came due. And that’s the one she’s going to try to pay. And, you know, also it’s funny because sometimes people will point out that she and Paula do – or all the characters on the show do things that are irrational, don’t make any sense, or dysfunctional, whatever. Like welcome to humans, you know. They’re not avatars of anything. And they make mistakes and they do the wrong thing. And Paula’s looking at her saying I love that you take responsibility and we’ll move on from here. And I love that you did that.

But I think it’s wonderful that she takes responsibility for the wrong thing because that’s the kind of thing that she does. And so I – and I love that we know that Paula is going to try and get her out of that mess, but that Paula has seen her for the first time try to own up.

**John A:** So, a similar crowd there, we forgot to mention the jump forward in time, which came as such as shock. So for people who don’t remember like literally we’re just following a character as she walks behind a wall, when she comes back she’s now fully pregnant. And so we jumped ahead eight months at least. When did that come into play?

**Aline:** Well, when we were doing the pregnancy, obviously that was one of the reasons we wanted to fast forward, but also we wanted to sort of really – to go back to the hot tub – that idea came from the idea that she and Nathaniel are having an affair basically.

**Rachel:** Yeah. We had to kind of reverse engineer the math, because the math of it was like, “OK, so she’s going to try to do the healthy thing.”

**Aline:** Right.

**Rachel:** But – and so he’ll get another girlfriend. But that’s like shock bait. Everyone knows – there is no amount of putting him with another person that’s going to convince the viewer that they shouldn’t be together. We know what story we’re telling. You’re going to see it coming, and so how can you acknowledge that, but still make it not the right decision? Oh, he’s just cheating on a girl with her for eight months.

**Aline:** And one of the things we thought was funny is I’m a – Rachel and I have seen a lot of marriages implode with affairs, etC. And how people can have – that affair goes on – it’s not a week. It’s not a month. It’s just months. So she makes the mistake and eight months later they’re still sleeping together. Not a thing you’ve seen a lot in these stories, but like that’s what happens. So the idea was, the joke of that jump ahead is that everyone has moved forward over those eight months. Everyone has had huge things happen to them. Valencia has started a new relationship, you know, while Josh has been to Mexico. And everybody has had huge things happen to them. And she’s just still like racing off to the closet.

Because I do think there’s something about infidelity that feels to people like something is happening. Like they’re in some great drama. I think that’s part of the huge appeal of it. So we loved that idea that she was in stasis there.

**Rachel:** Well, and for both of them really what it is is two people having their cake and eating it, too. Is that he would – if she said I want to be with you and I love he would at any second drop that girl. Even though he also knows that she’s the sensible, healthy choice. And likewise Rebecca is too scared. She equates love with death at this point. We say it as part of the episode.

**Aline:** Well I remember when Rachel came in, we were breaking the sort of like why this. We were talking about why this would be such a good refuge for her infidelity. And I remember where Rachel was sitting. She came into the writer’s room and sat down and we were talking about it. And she said if she loves somebody she could die. Like love for her is her – like I had a friend who was, my neighbor who lived downstairs was an alcoholic. And he said if I take a drink on Friday I’ll be dead by Monday. And that was one of the things that made me understand the pull of an addiction. And for her it’s like she’s afraid that if she falls in love with somebody that that will lead her to spiral down a drain.

**Rachel:** It’s PTSD also by association. That now she associates kind of – and I’ve had not thoughts exactly like this, but she associates the trauma of being in the place of wanting to kill herself with obsessive love. And so when she thinks about obsessive love again it’s not a happy thing anymore. It’s this feeling of I cannot be in that place.

**Aline:** Right. And she can’t separate love from obsessive love. She can’t eat one cupcake. She’s going to eat, you know, she doesn’t trust herself not to eat 20 cupcakes.

**Rachel:** Well, and Aline and I talk about this all the time. I mean, we both for a long time have known about this term “limerence,” which is a term coined by not scientists but–

**Aline:** Social scientists.

**Rachel:** Social scientists. Which is the term for obsessive love. And it’s different than other types of love. And limerence is that really when you’re so in love it’s painful.

**Aline:** You’re sick.

**Rachel:** You’re sick. And they’ve done brain scans on people who are in the state of limerence and it’s akin to being on cocaine or having obsessive compulsive disorder. Basically your dopamine, which is that pleasure chemical, spikes, but your serotonin which is what regulates your overall emotional well-being dips. And so you need those dopamine spikes in order to compensate for the fact that you’re actually at a lower point emotionally. And for some–

**Aline:** Watch Helen Fisher’s Ted Talk.

**Rachel:** Yeah. It’s very good.

**Aline:** And she has a book. And there’s a book about limerence. And you know obsessive romantic love is an incredible drug that forces you to take your genitals, which in the caveman days were not in great shape, and mush them together.

**Rachel:** Sex is a gross, horrible thing. No matter who you’re doing it with. It’s gross and terrible.

**Aline:** Love gets you to do that.

**Rachel:** There’s a reason why our dog leaves the room. She’s like this is terrible what’s happening. And only the strong emotions of love will get you over someone else’s stanky ass junk.

**John G:** What if you have limerence and you do cocaine?

**Aline:** It keeps you in that state.

**John G:** But speaking of genitals, and before we make my genitals famous.

**Rachel:** What?

**John G:** We have a clip.

**John A:** A clip about genitals.

**John G:** Hi Rachel.

**Aline:** Do we have one more clip?

**John G:** We have one more clip. I kind of want to give my 20-second creation myth of – no, not this, of you guys. Because I feel like you and I, we’re screenwriters, and you were killing it. Devil Wears Prada. 27 Dresses. All these. And you called me one day and said, “I’ve found this incredible young woman on the Internet. You’ve got to see.” I’m like, yeah, that’s amazing. Crazy. “I’m going to meet with her.” OK. “I’m going to do a TV show with her.” I was like OK. “We’re going to do it on Showtime.” I was like OK.

And then you made this thing and I was like, OK. And then they didn’t make it again. That was it. You’re like, “We’re going to go sell it to this other place.” I was like, oh, OK. That always works out.

**Aline:** I think I called you and I said this poor young woman thinks we’re going to sell it somewhere else and she doesn’t know how Hollywood works. How am I going to let her down? This is awful.

**John G:** Oh my god. Does she not know that never works? And then you did. And then it’s this. And the incredible thing about what you guys have done is that television – I mean, a lot of television I should say, is, look, it’s a tool of business. It’s this thing that gets smashed together. It’s the network creation kind of thing. This is so not that. This is like an undeniable talent and brainchild of the two of you smashing into each other and being like I’m this person and I’m that person and together we’re going to – I didn’t know there was a hot tub, but now I know this. There’s a hot tub. You’re in a hot bowl of soup. And then you do this. It’s like you can’t do that.

It’s like think about it this way–

**Aline:** It’s funny because it’s so much work. It’s so much more work than being a screenwriter. And something that Gatins says all the time, which makes me laugh, is he’ll call me and be like, “Oh, I’m thinking about doing this project, but I don’t know man, it’s a lot of phone calls. Sounds like a lot of phone calls.” And it’s basically like is this worth the phone calls? And this is so many phone calls to make this show.

**John G:** It’s amazing.

**Aline:** And it’s worth it.

**John G:** It’s incredible. Because think about this. Imagine if this was a network kind of creation thing and you had to cast that. Can you imagine trying to find that? You can’t find that. There’s nobody that can do that.

**Rachel:** Also, I mean, there was a world in which because we originally we’re going to develop it for network that I would have had to audition for this part. You can’t, no.

**John G:** That’s what I’m saying. Can you imagine trying to hold auditions and be like, “OK, this woman has to come in – she has to be able to act, sing like that though, sing like that.”

**Aline:** Be world class funny.

**John G:** Be world class funny. And write. And help create and write the show.

**Aline:** And write 100 and some songs with two other people. It doesn’t make sense.

**John A:** I want to talk a moment about the song and getting into the reality of it’s the first penis she’s ever seen and the rubbing across the pants. It’s so specific and you’ve got to be – like were you noted a lot of this? There’s no bad words in it, but–

**Aline:** I just saw that Patty is right there.

**Rachel:** Oh my god. Please, for those of you who read articles about our show or heard interviews with me you’ve heard me talk about the great Patricia Dennis from CW Standards and practices.

**Aline:** We sent her a video of the dance, which was really way more suggestive–

**Rachel:** Which we got to do on tour. Because I was one of those backup dancers when we just did our live tour and it was basically, you know, giving him a hand job..

**Aline:** Patricia gave us very specific guidelines and we sent her back videos. And she reads all the lyrics and clears it. But Rachel and I and Jack have become the masters of the double entendre.

**John A:** We should answer two questions from the audience. Questions for our writers and our guests. We’d love to hear them, if anyone has a question.

**Rachel:** A lot of whom are writers.

**Female Audience Member:** I have a question. First of all, love both of you. Love, love, love the show. So songs and Nathaniel, I guess maybe I am one of those people that does like to look at him. And his hair never moves. That’s one thing that I have noticed.

OK, so two of my favorite songs are Thin Hot Guys Have Problems, Too, which was amazing. And I Go To the Zoo. Like I love I Go To the Zoo. And I would love to hear how you guys got on that one, because that was great.

**Rachel:** Well that idea actually was – the original idea for that was thought of when we were in that paper room. And it’s like we need a hip hop song. What does Nathaniel do when he’s feeling bad? Something that’s unexpected. And Aline–

**Aline:** And I said I go to the zoo. And it’s the only time, because I mean I contribute lyrics to the songs occasionally, but it’s the only time I actually said [sings] I Go To the Zoo. That’s the extent of my contribution.

**Rachel:** And it stuck. And then I sat with Adam and Jack and I have a video of us writing the song. And for me I would say hip hop lyrics are not my strength. So if I’m kind of pitching hip hop jokes it’s just like, “Tomorrow night I’m in a car with a girl.” And I remember Jack was like, no, “I got this bitch up in my ‘rari.” Jack really gets to a very deep place. Same thing with [unintelligible] with Nipsey Russell rap lyrics. It was originally like – it was my impression of what how a rapper looks at women. And it was just like, “Girl, you know I like it when you wear that dress.”

And Jack was like, “Hey, I have some thoughts.” And then Jack just busted out, “Hop on my dick…” and it was great. It was so funny. But I Go To the Zoo, aside from the hip hop lyrics, the bent of that song is just about his – a lot of the problem I have with a lot of musical theater comedy is it’s rhymes and it’s clever but you know what’s coming and you know what the specifics are and so you don’t laugh. And especially with a song like that you want to have consistent jokes. And the only way to have consistent laugh-out-loud jokes is to surprise the audience. And so like, you know, when – I mean, I remember the moment when one of us went like, “I go to the San Diego Zoo.” And it was just like, “Oh, what a great way to like keep the chorus but surprise the audience.” And so that song, a lot of the funniest songs on the show are Jack, Adam, and I just try to make each other laugh. And when we do that we know we’ve hit on a good specific for a turn in the song that will then surprise the audience and make them laugh.

And I love – yeah, yeah, so that song has a tiny bridge. “When’s it gonna stop? When’s it gonna end?” And unlike a lot of songs we write that’s actually kind of a dramatic song – that’s a dramatic bridge because it sets up I Go To the Aquarium. But a lot of times the bridges in songs we write are the funniest parts because you can – the sky is the limit with the bridge because the bridge in a song is a departure, not a departure from the premise, but you can go to another lens, like another angle of the premise you haven’t explored.

And so coming up with ways to surprise each other when we’re thinking of those bridges is also really, really fun.

**Aline:** I mean, one of the great, great joys of the show is we’re in the writer’s room and hacking away at something and the door bursts open and Rachel, Adam, and Jack, some combination of the three, one, two or three of them comes in and sings us a song, it’s amazing. And also like I just am such a controlling writer. I’ve never in my life copied and pasted anything that anyone has ever sent me and just put in the script. On the pilot Rachel wrote Sexy Getting Ready and West Covina and I read them and I was like select all, copy, paste. And that’s it. And she scripts them all.

But just the joy of them bursting into the room and singing a song to us is just indescribable. Jack wrote a song called The Buzzing from the Bathroom. And, I mean, they all work on all the songs, but that one was mainly Jack. And I laughed so hard, like physically my stomach hurt. I understand what that is now because I laughed so hard my stomach hurt.

**John A:** All right, time for one more question. Right here.

**Male Audience Member:** I feel like there’s such an infinite amount of inspiration that you guys can pull from for songs and for each episode. Is there a process that you guys go through eliminating inspiration? Or do you just…

**Rachel:** Nailing the song premise and genre and hook line, whether or not it’s the chorus, the tag line is the hardest part. Like once we have that it’s a downhill slope. Am I right Jack?

**Jack:** Yeah. I mean, hi everyone.

**John A:** Hi Jack.

**Rachel:** That’s the hardest part. I mean, I think that it’s whatever genre we haven’t done and then whatever genre in a way is juxtaposed best with the idea, because especially when we’re writing songs that have – we’re coming at it from a comedic standpoint. You want those contrasts.

**Aline:** And then in terms of writing the show, we have an embarrassment of riches now because we have so many characters that we love and we only have 13 episodes. And so we have limited amounts of real estate. So it is actually there’s stuff that ends up, storylines we wanted to do or things we wanted to explore. And the door is closing because we only have 13 left. So there’s stuff that will never see the light of day that we thought we were going to do.

There’s never a shortage of ideas, but finding the right idea is always a challenge.

**John A:** So bringing this back around to the taped up window, so you’ve been in your taped up window process already. How much of what’s going to come in this fourth and final season is figuring out how much is going to be figured out as the game is played?

**Rachel:** We’ve done like three days of work, plus a hot tub session. And we have – look, everything is open to changing, but we have almost every episode we have what the episode is going to be about on the board right now.

**Aline:** Yeah. And it’s actually just for, you know, the first season was very thematic. Every episode was like I’m a good person. It was very thematic. And then it got increasingly plotty. And by last season those are more plot-driven, especially towards the end. And this season moves back to towards being more thematic. More thematic pieces. Because it is that–

**John G:** It is the rise.

**Aline:** It is the rise. It is the rise. It is the third act rise. So it’s more thoughtful stuff. And we’ve really had a great time. I mean, it’s like, as you said, it’s so weird. We have a lot of weird metaphysical moments that we just can’t believe that we’re here. You know, when I met Rachel she was 26 and I really look forward to her – I feel like 30 and 50 is better than 26 and 46. I feel like we seem like we’re closer in age now. You know?

But, you know, it’s just been incredible.

**Rachel:** We also know each other better.

**Aline:** Yeah. We know each other better and we know our habits better. And it’s funny, when I was watching that Paula and Rebecca thing I’m thinking they’re both right and they’re both wrong. That scene in the courtroom. You know, they’re both right about what she’s doing and they’re both wrong. And often in their interactions they’re both right and they’re both wrong. And that’s a lesson that we learn and relearn all the time is how to listen to each other and how to work together and how to get the best out of each other.

I had really gotten to a point in my movie career where it felt stuck and it felt like the stories that were being told were just not the stories that I had grown up on or wanted to hear. And this young lady came along and gave me an opportunity to do this and that’s why sometimes when someone says, “Oh, you discovered Rachel,” I feel like it’s the line in Pretty Woman. She discovered me right back.

**John A:** Aw.

**Rachel:** And I will say that as of now we are working out the season, it is still looking like it’s going to end the way that we always pitched it five years ago. I’m going to leave that vague, but we’ve stuck to the broad plan in a really, really cool way.

**Aline:** Although I will say Rachel came up with a – it’s generally the same, but Rachel came up with a joke on the end that was, I thought, sublime. And so I hope it ends up working out.

**Rachel:** And Aline is being very vague. You came up with a story the other day that was a great example, I’m really excited to talk about when they see it, of zagging. And we have another thing coming up for another character that I’m so excited about.

**Aline:** Don’t ask for – she might tell you.

**Rachel:** There are like five main things right now that I’m itching to tell people and I can’t.

**Aline:** Well, before we – I want to thank John and John for this.

**Rachel:** Yes, thanks Johns.

**Aline:** And I want to thank the assistants who helped put this together, especially Alden and Alana. There was a lot of work that went into this so thank you guys.

**Rachel:** Thank you.

**John A:** Aline and Rachel, thank you very much for a very fun season. Good luck on season four. I’m so excited to see it.

**Aline:** Thank you.

Links:

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