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

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 327 of Scriptnotes, of podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’ll be discussing mergers, such as the proposed union of Fox and Disney. Then we’ll transition to breakups. It’s a new installment of This Kind of Scene, this time looking at how characters say goodbye for the last time.

**Craig:** Oh. This isn’t like a weird way for you to be breaking up with me, is it?

**John:** We’ll see if we get to the end of the episode.

**Craig:** Huh.

**John:** Yeah. But we should warn our listeners that there will be some bad words in this episode because some of the clips have some foul language. So if you are driving in the car with your kids, this is the standard warning about that.

**Craig:** Earmuffs.

**John:** Earmuffs. We have some follow up and news, exciting stuff. So, our live show, which we talked about last week on the episode, it is December 7, here in Hollywood. It is another event proposed and thrown by the Writers Guild Foundation. But we have guests now. It’s not just me and Craig. We have a bunch of showrunners joining us up on stage. So excited to announce that Julie Plec from Vampire Diaries and The Originals will be with us, along with Michael Green. He did American Gods and The Ripper. He also wrote some movies, Murder on the Orient Express, Blade Runner 2049, Logan.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Yeah, busy guy.

**Craig:** Heard of a few of them. You know what? He’s not lazy. That’s as far as I’ll go.

**John:** Absolutely. I think maybe his not laziness is one of the reasons why he’s somewhat successful.

**Craig:** Possibly.

**John:** Finally, Justin Marks. Justin Marks has a new show coming out called Counterpart. The trailer is great. I’m so excited to see his show. He also wrote this little movie called Jungle Book. And so the last time he was on the show we talked about Jungle Book, so now we will be talking about his television program which he filmed in Germany.

**Craig:** We get the best guests.

**John:** We do consistently get the best guests.

**Craig:** And the tickets are available now.

**John:** They are.

**Craig:** And I assume we’re going to be selling out, as we usually do, because we are the Jon Bon Jovi of podcasts.

**John:** I would hope we would sell out. But if you want to make sure you can get your ticket right now, don’t even look for the link in the show notes. You could look for that, but you could also just go to wgafoundation.org. Go to events and we are there for you to buy your tickets.

**Craig:** Yeah. And the Christmas show – I like to call it a Christmas show.

**John:** Yeah. No war on Christmas show.

**Craig:** Yeah. We don’t do that. Because you know, as a Jew, I have the privileged position of being able to declare that Chanukah is silly. It’s a silly holiday and it’s not an important holiday religiously. So, I appreciate Christmas. I think a lot of American Jews secretly appreciate Christmas because it’s so much better than Chanukah. And I don’t mind getting in trouble for this, by the way, not even in the slightest. Go ahead. Go ahead. Send emails about how great Chanukah is. I prefer Christmas as a secular Jew.

So our Christmas shows generally are a lot of fun. Everybody is in – you know what everyone is in? The holiday spirit.

**John:** The holiday spirit is a mighty good place to start any podcast and hopefully spirits are even more raised by the end of this show.

**Craig:** When you dump me? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] On our last show, we had Scott Frank on to talk about his show Godless. Godless is now available to the whole world on Netflix.

**Craig:** That’s right. Have you started yet?

**John:** I have not. So I have only seen trailers. And so this is a thing which will make Scott sad, but he should also be happy. So I’m going to put it all on my iPad to take with me on my Christmas holiday travels because Mike will not watch it with me. I want to watch it. I will have ample time on planes over the holidays. So I’ll watch it with my good Bose headphones and I will enjoy it so much.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s what Scott was hoping that you would watch it on your iPad. That’s his greatest – hey, by the way, how do you watch Netflix things on your iPad? Is there an app? A Netflix app?

**John:** There’s a Netflix app and you just click and download them. And it’s fantastic.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** This past week I was traveling. I went to San Francisco, Chicago, and New York to do Arlo Finch book events, and so I had Stranger Things on my iPad saved. And so I could watch it on my iPad. It was delicious.

**Craig:** So you finished Stranger Things season two?

**John:** I have finished Stranger Things season two.

**Craig:** As have I. That was my London show. Pretty good, except that one episode. I just didn’t understand. And I don’t like saying bad things about shows, so I really enjoyed the series. I loved season one and I really enjoyed season two.

**John:** I really enjoyed season two also.

**Craig:** I was puzzled by Episode Seven. Just puzzled.

**John:** I was puzzled as well. And I thought you were subtweeting me when you said like I don’t say negative things about shows, because someone asked me about Episode Seven.

**Craig:** Oh, no. No, no. I think it’s fair to say that Episode Seven is – because look, if you like a show and the Duffer Brothers have done a tremendous job and once again the cast for Stranger Things is fantastic. And I watched all the way through, Episodes One through Nine. So they had me.

I like their show. But I feel then you’re allowed to say, “But, I’m also just puzzled by this one piece of it.” I think they are aware that it’s a polarizing episode.

**John:** For sure. Absolutely. I feel the same way as you do. I in many ways respected the effort and the attempt. It was like, oh, that was probably a fascinating idea on the whiteboard. I just didn’t think it actually became as good an hour as the rest of the hours.

**Craig:** We should get these guys on the show. This is a question I have. Because I’m really curious about it. And for those of you who have watched this show, you’ll understand. And if you haven’t, no spoilers here.

**John:** None.

**Craig:** Whatsoever. Do you think that part of the deal with Episode Seven was that they were essentially intentionally mimicking those kinds of movies from the ‘80s, in other words the tone of the characters, and that place, and the setting and all that stuff was essentially designed to be that way? Or were they just not hitting the mark of reality?

**John:** That is an absolutely fair and valid question. I feel like the overall style of those characters, I can see that as being you’re trying to pull from those other movie references. Great. I love that. But I didn’t believe them within the context of the world.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because once you bring in a character that you’re meant to believe is real, like Eleven, then it doesn’t quite connect up does it?

**John:** It does not quite connect up.

**Craig:** Doesn’t quite connect up. All right.

**John:** But I would love to ask the Duffer Brothers that question, because I think they made a remarkable run of terrific shows.

**Craig:** As do I. Yeah, come on the show guys.

**John:** That would be great. Lastly, I will say that if you would like to read the first five chapters of Arlo Finch, they are now up. That happened over the Thanksgiving holiday.

**Craig:** For free?

**John:** For free. So, just go to arlofinchbooks.com and you can look at the first five chapters there. There’s preorder links for the North American copy. But if you just want to read it, read it. And if you do take a look at it, it may be helpful to know essentially what you’re reading is kind of what I sold. Like that was what sold the book to Macmillan. Plus one additional chapter which is not included which is from later on in the book. But just a glimpse in to sort of what the book looked like before the whole book was written.

**Craig:** All right. Well, good luck with the sales. I expect this thing to be number one.

**John:** Well I hope to be somewhere on some list at some point and not of like the Most Disappointing Books of 2018.

**Craig:** Or Best Books You’ve Never Heard Of.

**John:** Yeah. Your daughter actually read it. Your daughter read an early–

**Craig:** Yep. She was a big fan. Big fan. She’ll show up for Arlo Finch 2.

**John:** Fantastic. So down the road I will be doing a book tour, so on future podcasts I’ll let you know. If you want to see me in some city near you, you can come out and see me as I sign books and talk to folks.

**Craig:** Yeah. Although anybody that comes out to see you will no doubt miss me.

**John:** That’s pretty much what it is. I’m going to travel around with a cardboard standee of Craig and maybe we’ll just record little bits of select umbrage. So people walk up and you just say something to them about them. That might be it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just so they can get their fix.

**John:** Yeah. You just say “specificity” a lot.

**Craig:** And “intentionality.”

**John:** Intentionality is very good. There was a moment of intentionality–

**Craig:** Segue Man.

**John:** — the past two weeks. We sort of missed it on this last episode because it was a rerun, but Disney was in talks to buy 20th Century Fox.

**Craig:** And still are, right?

**John:** And still are. And also Comcast/Universal is apparently kicking the tires of Fox as well. So, I thought we’d start by talking about what this is and what it means. Because on previous episodes we’ve talked about integrations. We’ve talked about vertical integrations where because of consent decrees, like studios are not allowed to own exhibitors. They’re not allowed to own national movie houses. But this is an example of horizontal integration, where two competitors are merging and becoming like one bigger thing. And while there’s some fascinating things that could happen in terms of fandom unification and cinematic universes being combined, I don’t think it would be a great outcome for writers. I’m curious what you think.

**Craig:** Well, jury is out on that, I think. What they’re talking about buying is Fox’s movie production studio, 20th Century Fox films, or I guess 21st Century Fox films. And they’re also talking about buying Fox’s television production arm, which is Fox Television, but not Fox the network, not Fox News, not Fox Sports, and for reasons we’ll get into.

The question is what happens if one of the major movie studios seemingly disappears. And so two of this dwindling number of movie studios becomes one movie studio. One way of looking at it is, well, that’s that many fewer jobs for screenwriters. Another way of looking at is probably – I mean, unless a studio is considering buying Fox just for the library, the odds are that they’re still going to continue to put movies out and that in fact it’s not writers, producers, directors, and actors who will lose jobs, it’s studio employees who will ultimately be laid off. Because you don’t need – there is a certain economy of scale. You don’t need two full marketing departments to run Disney Fox. You need one slightly larger marketing department to run Disney Fox.

So, that’s where I think jobs will be lost. Now, it’s possible that they’re just buying it for the library sake and for certain rights, in which case then that’s a problem.

**John:** So when the news first broke I went back and looked at the 2016 box office. And if you add Fox and Disney together they control 39% of the US box office. That’s a huge figure. And so I think we have to be approaching this thinking like not only will this change the nature of Marvel things all coming together, or Disney would control The Simpsons which is a huge thing, too. It would really be a huge game changer just in terms of the overall industry.

If you are Paramount, or Sony, or Warners, suddenly you’re competing against this thing which is three times your size.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you’re absolutely right about that. Now, one thing that may come into play to sort of help out a little bit is that Disney has a certain brand contract with its customers that no other studio has. Everyone understands that Disney puts out a certain kind of movie. Now, back when we started in the business Disney had an arm that could put out Rated R films, and they did.

**John:** Hollywood Pictures.

**Craig:** Hollywood Pictures. If it’s the sphinx it stinks. And Touchstone also was able to put out Rated R movies. And some of them were really Rated R. And at that time Disney didn’t quite have the same sort of all row in one direction philosophy. They don’t make Rated R movies at all. They don’t make films for grownups per se. They make all-audiences movies.

So, one thing that may happen is they may say, look, we don’t want this company to be called Disney Fox. We’ll be Disney, you’ll be Fox, obviously everybody is owned by the same parent corporation, but Fox can still make Fox movies, because that is a different brand. And that the purchase here, aside from the library, is about pulling in some of the properties that they wish they had that Fox has the rights to like X-Men, and so on and so forth. And also I would say probably limiting competition in the animation space, which is disconcerting for animation writers.

But I could see a version of this where actually the individual control on a day to day basis maybe is kind of separate. And so the person that runs the Walt Disney Pictures slate is not also overseeing the Fox slate. But, I’ll tell you one area where this is very disturbing and disconcerting, and that’s when it comes time every three years for the companies to negotiate with the unions. Because if you have one company that is responsible for as you say essentially 40% of the box office, they become the biggest voice in the room. And that can be a real issue.

**John:** Definitely. I think my concern even if you do keep Fox as a whole separate label and a whole separate brand, that only goes to a certain distance. I know from times where we’ve been trying to sell a spec script for a feature screenplay or to sell a TV series, ultimately they may say they’re separate buyers. They talk about things individually. But if you have a feature project going into Fox it may be going to big Fox, it might be going to Fox 2000 or Fox Animation. But they’re not going to compete against each other for a property. And I think the same thing would happen between Disney and Fox. If they both want something, ultimately some big person at Disney will decide, OK, this is where it’s going to go. They’re not going to get into a bidding war with each other.

**Craig:** Yeah. In all likelihood that is correct. There are provisions for those things and they do occasionally happen. Actually happened weirdly in a way with our sheep movie. But generally speaking you’re right. And Disney I think is probably less inclined to do that than any other studio would be. So, generally speaking this is going to be a terrific deal for Disney. I guess for the larger Fox Corporation this is about getting a premium on their library and so forth and just retreating to their core businesses which is “news” and actual sports.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t fully understand it from Fox’s point of view. I can understand if Fox decided like, you know what, we’re going to sell off all this stuff. Disney is the best buyer for it because you know Disney will pay a premium because Disney can get the most value out of it. I guess I just don’t see the benefit for the Murdoch Company to get rid of Fox. I think Fox feels profitable. It feels like a business you want to be in because people are still going to need these things.

I’ve heard it said that they are concerned that they’re not going to have the power to be able to stand up against a Netflix, against Amazon, as streaming becomes more dominant as we sort of move to a post-cable universe. But I just don’t fully get it. I don’t fully see that it’s a better idea just to sell off what I perceive to be a tremendous amount of value in these titles and in the things you’re going to be making down the road.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a little bit of a sign that they know something we don’t. You know what I mean? Because we can’t quite tell why they’re steering their boat to the shore. Perhaps we can’t see the waterfall ahead that they can. It may be that everyone at the corporate level has looked ahead and decided that if they can’t compete with Netflix, Amazon, Apple, etc. as their own streaming entity controlling their own material that they will suffer. And then that ultimately reduces their value and reduces their leverage. So, maybe Fox is saying, look, we can’t get there on our own. But we can get top dollar right now if we sell to Disney. Disney can get there on their own. And it will be even easier for them to get there this way. Because Disney is essentially going to create a competitor with Netflix.

**John:** Let’s take a look at the roadblocks in the way to making this kind of deal happen. So, theoretically the government could step in and say no-no that’s a monopoly situation or near monopoly situation. You already have sort of an oligopoly situation in terms of the limited number of buyers for certain kinds of properties.

The US government hasn’t seemed to be very interested in enforcing anti-trust rules or sort of going into new territory. They seem to perceive anti-trust as being anything that would hurt consumers. And it’s not clear that this deal would necessarily hurt consumers. There’s no evidence here that there’s any reason why prices would go up for consumers which seems to be the litmus test for a lot of anti-trust decisions.

Do you see any reason why the government would get involved?

**Craig:** I don’t. I mean, they’ll get involved to the extent that they have to vet the deal. But Disney apparently has removed the roadblocks prospectively. There was never going to be a chance where they could own two studios like Fox and ABC, for instance. There was never going to be a situation where they could control two major news sources like ABC News and Fox News. Nor would I think would Disney want to go anywhere near Fox News right now.

And then sports-wise, the biggest monopolistic or market control concern would be if ESPN and Fox Sports were the same company. Those are the two largest sports broadcasters, I believe.

So, no, I don’t think that there is anything in the way in terms of monopolies. Even monopolies technically can survive if they don’t appear to be harming consumers. There doesn’t appear to be any ability to squash competition here. There is still plenty of vibrant competition. No, I don’t see any reason that this wouldn’t go through.

**John:** So the other obstacles along the way would be someone else coming in and saying, “You know what? If you’re going to sell, we’re going to buy and we’re going to pay a premium that Disney isn’t willing to pay.” And it would have to be probably a huge company and a huge amount of money. But Apple could pay for it. Netflix maybe could pay for it. Amazon might be able to pay for it. Because especially Netflix and Amazon, they have a really good interest in sort of making sure that Disney doesn’t get too huge and keep them from getting access to some of the content that they want.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s absolutely possible. Maybe the problem with Amazon and Netflix or Apple purchasing Fox is they wouldn’t really know what to do with it. They don’t want it. In other words the only reason to buy it would be to keep Disney from having it.

So, I don’t know. It’s a fascinating thing to watch. If I’m going to be pessimistic, my big concern isn’t that these two companies might be combining. My concern is that this is the beginning of the great combine of 2020 where suddenly we end up with three movie studios.

**John:** Do you ever play those simulations where you have little planets and you have other little planets circling and eventually they get too close and they glob together and gravity kicks in? That is also the vision I sort of see here. These two things combined become so big that the gravity sucks in Paramount. It sucks in maybe Warners, certainly Sony. I feel like lots of those little things could just become – you know, just three giant companies.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You know, in talking with booksellers this last week it’s fascinating to look at sort of the consolidation that is happening in publishing. And so you have to say Penguin Random House which just seems like too long of a name for something. But these giant entities are merged. And that’s challenging for everybody involved.

**Craig:** And generally speaking when two big companies merge, everybody that is remaining starts to look at each other saying, ‘Oh, apparently we’re pairing up for a big dance here so you/me, how about you and me?” Because you don’t want to become an also ran. And there’s a long history of studios that were once powerful and then sort of disappeared. MGM was once a real studio.

**John:** Oh yeah. RKO. Yeah.

**Craig:** RKO was once a real studio. United Artists. Orion. They existed. And then they stopped existing in part because it wasn’t that they maybe failed or got super small relative to where they began. It’s that they got super small relative to the size that everybody else was growing at. And so I could see where this leads to Warners/Universal, which would be really complicated. I’m not sure how any of that works.

**John:** Yeah. It would be very, very complicated. They would have a lot of land but what would their future be?

**Craig:** I was wondering how this would work out with the Fox lot in Century City, whether Disney would also be purchasing that lot or if the lot would be owned – I would imagine it would still be owned by Fox but then they would be renting space back to – or does Disney not even care about that lot?

**John:** Yeah. The real estate history of Hollywood and the film industry is fascinating. So I’ll try to find a good article we can put in the show notes for basically Los Angeles was in some ways shaped by where these studios set up their different home bases. And so Century City is called Century City because it was 20th Century Fox. And after I think it was Cleopatra, 20th Century Fox had to sell off a lot of their land because of their losses and that became Century City. Disney still has a big footprint. Paramount used to have a bigger footprint in Hollywood. It’s fascinating the degree to which these big sections of Los Angeles were all just film studios.

**Craig:** And at some point the land starts to become more valuable than the studio. I mean, Paramount for instance right now, I would imagine their greatest asset is their land.

**John:** It’s got to be. And I was reading an article recently, I’ll put a link in the show notes to this as well, that CBS Television Studios on Fairfax is looking at selling because that land now is incredibly valuable.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** So, right now they film soap operas out of there and they film soap operas out of there and they film The Survivor finale – hi Jeff Probst, if you’re listening.

**Craig:** Hey Jeff.

**John:** You know, that land is worth so much right now. It’s right next to the Grove. That’s prime LA real estate. And so–

**Craig:** And they can shoot those things anywhere. They can shoot The Price is Right in Pacoima. They don’t need to be right there at the corner, you know, right next to Fairfax High and the Grove. So you’re right. And similarly when you look at – in particular you look at Fox. I mean, that real estate, even though it’s smaller than the Paramount Lot, I believe–

**John:** Yeah, still great real estate.

**Craig:** The location, I would assume that real estate is on an aggregate basis worth even more than Paramount. So, I don’t know what’s going to – this is all fascinating.

But you know what, John? This is what the money people do and think about. We – we don’t have to think about this.

**John:** No. Because we think of the creative decisions. We think about what’s happening in the movies. And so let’s make our big transition the feature topic for today which is Breakups. So, last time we did a segment on This Kind of Scene, people afterwards suggested other things. And I think it was Alex Blagg in my Twitter feed who suggested, oh, you should do one on breakups, which is a great idea. Because so many movies have breakups. They’re kind of a crucial way of either putting a character out on a path or forcing a character to confront sort of a worst of a worst at the end of the second act as they go into the next phase of their life.

There’s a tremendous way of just revealing what’s going on inside a character and the choices the character has to make going forward.

**Craig:** Yeah. And it is an interesting kind of scene because unlike a lot of them it really can serve two wildly different purposes. And you’ve basically put your finger on it, right? If you have a movie about somebody that is recovering from a wound you want to start them with the breakup. And if it’s a movie where somebody is outgrowing a relationship or the relationship needs to be tested and either succeed or fail, or somebody is moving past something to go onto something bigger then the breakup can come later on in the movie. But they’re two completely different purposes. And also tonally breakups are incredibly flexible. You can do a really funny one. You can do a really sad one. You can do one that’s quiet. You could do one that’s screaming.

Think of a breakup really as a set piece. I mean, it’s as flexible as the notion of stopping your movie to do an event. Like a car chase or physical comedy scene or a fist fight or a montage.

**John:** Absolutely. And once that moment happens, the rest of the movie is different. By definition, you’ve changed the trajectory of the movie greatly once that breakup has occurred.

So on Twitter I asked people for their suggestions for breakup scenes. Once again, we have the best listeners in the entire universe. People suggested six or seven movies we’re going to take a listen to today. But let’s start with our first clip. Any discussion of film I think it’s required to include Casablanca at some point and we’ve never done that. So this–

**Craig:** That’s crazy.

**John:** This is from Casablanca, screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, Directed by Michael Curtis. Let’s take a listen.

[Casablanca clip plays]

And scene. Craig Mazin, not only classic lines in this little piece, but also a character is speaking his truth. Tell me about the scene.

**Craig:** Well, first of all just aside from the writing and the story, it always makes me wistful when I see this because there is something that we have lost. There’s just a look of these people, you know, just Bergman and Bogie and just their faces and the way the black and white works. It’s just remarkable.

This is a breakup scene you can’t do anymore. It’s very much a scene where someone is dumping somebody else but for noble reasons, even when he says it’s not noble. But then he explains why it is noble and we understand it. And really what it comes down to is one person is telling another one why he has figured out what is best for the two of them.

From a story point of view, there are times when you need two people to break up, and you don’t want to feel bad about it. You want the audience to feel wistful, but you want them to feel like, you know what, this is what needs to happen here. Let’s be sad about it but accept it. It’s a tricky thing to do because of course in reality that’s nearly impossible to break up with somebody so cleanly, so romantically.

I mean, the thing about this scene is somehow my feminine side is even more in love with Bogie after he’s dumped me. [laughs] Which is remarkable. But, you know, look, there’s an enormous amount of old school patriarchy here. “I did the thinking for both of us.” And even the line, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” I mean, it’s so infantilizing. But he really is just laying it out for her.

You know, she is an international person who has been involved in politics and intrigue and now he’s explaining to her why their love story doesn’t matter because there’s more important things in the world. You know, “the problems of three people don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

Look, in a modern analysis it’s incredibly patronizing. But, inside of it it is a little bit of a masterclass on how to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, because you do end up understanding on an emotional level, putting all the politics aside, when Ilsa looks at him at the end there you know that she loves him for what is happening right there in the moment. And that’s an achievement.

**John:** Yeah. It struck me listening to this scene and then going through some of the ones we’re about to approach that breakups tend to be monologues, or essentially sort of slightly interrupted monologues, where one person basically lays out the case for why this breakup is happening. And the other person just has to respond. And there are a couple of cases we’re going to get to where it’s a little bit more even split between the two of them, but a lot of times it’s one character is driving the decision for why this has to end. Why this is the best choice or the only choice going forward.

And this is a very classic – this is – often you’ll see the breakup in the first act, really more the first ten pages, or going into the third act. But this is we’re walking off into the sunset. This is it’s all going to be over. This is the final parting. So it has a very different feeling. And I think you’re right, you’ve made this contract with your audience about what’s going to happen, and so part of that contract has to be respecting the investment they’ve made into this relationship and that you’re ending it in a way that leaves them hopeful for the characters. I think a crueler breakup, a crueler just like get out of here would not satisfy that contract you’ve made with the audience.

**Craig:** Yeah. Especially in the time. I mean, look, happy endings were the name of the game. And we’ll see an older film soon enough in our list here where it is the typical happy ending. So you can almost imagine the discussions that were happening when they were talking to the Epsteins. “OK, well, guys, we get that you don’t want them to have the happy ending, but you have to make us feel happy about it.” And they were like, “well, what if he sort of underlines how they have more important things to do?” And they’re like, “OK, yeah, but it’s not very romantic.”

“Well, what if he says to her that they once had a great love and that has now been rekindled in a way that they can carry with them in their own hearts separately?” “OK, that’s better.” Right? So this whole bit, “We’ll always have Paris,” we had it once and then we lost it, but now we have it again.

Look, there is a way to read this scene where it’s just a masterful sociopath manipulating this woman. I mean, because, look what is screenwriting after all but the manipulation of people. We’re using our left brain in combination with our right brain to create emotional feelings in the audience that we’re designing. It is definitionally manipulative. But we have to believe it and then believe that it feels OK. And certainly for the time I think they did a masterful job in making us feel OK about it.

**John:** Agreed. Let’s take a listen to another clip, this one almost completely the opposite in every way from Casablanca. This is from Forgetting Sarah Marshall by Jason Segel. Directed by Nick Stoller. And this one, it’s a little bit strange of a clip for us to be playing in a podcast because it’s really quiet. But I should give you some context if you haven’t seen the scene or don’t remember the movie.

As Kristen Bell enters the scene, Jason Segel is walking out of the bathroom just wearing a towel. He then drops a towel and flings his penis side to side, so that is the flapping you hear is his penis hitting on his–

**Craig:** Thighs.

**John:** His thighs basically. Let’s take a listen.

[Forgetting Sarah Marshall clip plays]

What I love so much about this clip is that it is so quiet. That it’s not – there’s no big talking. There’s no big explanation. He catches on just as we sort of catch on just by the vibe of the room. Like, oh no, this is terrible, this is going to end. And the notion of “if I put some clothes on then this is really over,” he wants to hang out in this really uncomfortable moment because at least he’s in this uncomfortable moment with her. And whenever this transition comes where he’s not in this horrible moment with her, he’s not with her at all.

So, it’s such a great notion that this is awful, but I’d rather stay in this awful than get on to the next thing.

**Craig:** Did I ever talk about David Zucker’s comedy term “driving instructor?”

**John:** No, tell me about that.

**Craig:** So, they were making Naked Gun and at one point they needed a car chase. And they wanted it to be funny, but they were struggling because they were just putting funny things that he was doing into the car chase. Like he would mistakenly hit something that he shouldn’t hit, or you know, stop at a light when he shouldn’t be stopping. Whatever it was. And it was just not working.

And then they landed on this idea that he was going to take over somebody else’s car. And that that car was in fact – there was a driving instructor – John Houseman, the great John Houseman – sitting in the passenger seat. And then a typical teenage girl sitting behind the wheel petrified because she’s never driven before. And he gets in the back and says, “Follow that car.”

So, John Houseman says, “All right.” He never changes his tone. He goes, “Put the car in drive. Proceed forward.” And so the driving instructor was the comic engine that allowed them to be funny throughout. It was the thing that gave a spine to this piece and gave them the ability to do multiple jokes.

And here it’s so smart that the driving instructor here is “I am hanging on, I don’t want you to leave me. I don’t want to break up. And I feel,” as you said, “if I put my pants on then our typical boyfriend/girlfriend intimacy is gone and it will be gone permanently. So, I have to keep doing stuff while I have not pants on.”

**John:** Yeah, John Houseman is basically Jason Segel’s penis.

**Craig:** That’s right. Which, you know, listen, that’s not an original observation. It’s been said many times. But that’s absolutely correct.

But this breakup scene is a fantastic example of a breakup scene that is designed to draw us to a character and make us love them. This scene is designed to evoke terrible empathy/pity. We now have an immediate rooting interest in this character getting happy again.

**John:** Absolutely. And I think what’s also crucial is we don’t hate Sarah Marshall. There’s a thousand versions where she’s the worst person on earth and we do not want him to pursue her at all, because we hate her. But because she still remains sympathetic through the scene, we are invested in like “maybe he has a shot. Maybe it’s not complete folly for him to go after her again.” And that’s what you need. That’s the driving engine of this whole plot. This is the premise scene of because of the nature of this scene he’s going to go on this journey to try to get her back.

**Craig:** Yeah. It would actually ruin the moment and drive us away from Jason’s character if she were somehow antagonistic. Because then we would think you’re better off without her, so I guess we’re just waiting around for you to figure that out. That’s unsatisfying. We don’t like to be ahead of our characters. I think probably every human has felt this at some point or another unfortunately. And it’s the feeling of rejection.

And we don’t feel that feeling when somebody we don’t like rejects us. We feel it when somebody we really, really love rejects us. And I think for us to identify with Jason’s character we need to also be able to look at Sarah Marshall, at Kristen’s character, and say “yeah I could see why he’s so in love with you.”

**John:** Yeah. Completely. All right, let’s take a listen to our next movie which is 500 Days of Summer by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, directed by Marc Webb. So, in the clip you’re about to hear we hear both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in sort of real time having a conversation, but we also hear Joseph Gordon-Levitt recapping what happened in the scene to I think it’s his sister, Chloe Grace Moretz. So that’s the cross-cutting you hear.

[500 Days of Summer clip plays]

All right, Craig, so this scene is sort of doing both things. It’s talking about the end of a relationship but it’s structurally at the start of the movie because things are happening out of sequence in the film.

**Craig:** Yeah. So it’s a real shot across the bow. I mean, we just said you can open your movie with this breakup scene the way that Sarah Marshall does and we understand the movie is about you somehow healing that wound. You can end a movie like they did in Casablanca with a break, which is about two characters ascending to some higher plane separately without each other.

Here, right off the bat, Scott and Michael and Marc say to us, hey, we’re not doing the normal story. We are going to be telling a romance story. These people are going to meet. They’re going to fall in love. We’re going to show you that they broke up right off the bat. You’re never going to have to worry that you’re ahead of us. We’re just going to lay it all out there because that’s not what this movie is about. This movie is about the spaces in between. It’s not about the story, or the what. It’s about the why.

That said, it’s a terrific breakup scene. Even if it had been in sequence. Because it’s so cruel.

**John:** Yeah. It’s cruel with a smile in a way that’s really sort of important. And what I find so fascinating is because it’s recognizing that the audience is catching up with these characters, it has to be very methodical and very clever in how it’s letting you know who these characters are at different points in the relationship. It needs to know what you are thinking, what the characters are thinking.

I have to imagine even on the set as they were shooting these scenes they had to be just really careful with not only where the characters were at, but where the audience was at based on what the audience already knew about the characters.

**Craig:** Yeah. But it’s very brave. They are not really holding your hand too much. They are right on the edge of confusion. And the important thing for us watching it is we may not quite understand how he so quickly gets that she’s dumping him because we haven’t seen the relationship yet.

Once you get through the movie, you go back and watch it again, you’re like, “oh yeah, I completely get it now. I, too, would also know what she’s doing here.” But it was enough for us to know that he knew.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And when he walks out, Scott and Michael give us a little gift. So, congratulations, you’re not puzzled. She’s going to say, “But we can still be friends.” Yes, we knew what was going on. We got it right.

**John:** Yeah. For sure. All right, next let’s take a listen to Love & Basketball. It’s written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood. This is a scene between Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps. And in the longer clip you’ll see that she actually is talking about how busy she is before it gets into the section that we’re going to listen to. But let’s take a listen to their breakup scene. This is happening in the second act.

[Love & Basketball clip plays]

Craig, Omar Epps would still like to be friends.

**Craig:** So, we can still be friends is the universal oh-god-no statement. And, again, I believe everyone at some point or another has heard another person say that to them, completely sincerely, or insincerely, but unironically. I love this scene. This is my kind of breakup scene.

So, this is traditional. I think of this scene as a traditional breakup scene where two people who are in a relationship have a fight. So there’s a back and forth. There is a parrying and I think far truer to the way real breakups work where there is a back and forth and essentially a blame game. And both people are trying to kind of get the perspective advantage on the other person. I’m seeing this from a bigger point of view. No I am. No I am, no I am. Back and forth. Back and forth.

What I love about this scene is that there’s a shape to it. A lot of times fights will be flabby. They just sort of run along. As they do in real life. They go in circles and things are repeated and they run along. This is very well structured. And there’s a surprise. The breakup part is a surprise. And I think this is the challenge we have as writers when we’re doing traditional scenes. And Gina Prince-Bythewood does exactly what you need to do, which is figure out a way to be fresh. She decides what I’m going to do is I’m going to do a breakup scene but I’m going to make it seem like the point of the breakup scene is “how do we stay together.” And then at the end he reveals, “no-no-no, you think that’s what this argument is. What I’m building up to is I’m dumping you.” And that’s really smart.

**John:** Absolutely. So she’s trying like how do we save this relationship because he’s already pulling the rip cord.

Another crucial thing which I think we need to talk about is this scene is semi-public. And by semi-public means they are having a conversation just between the two of them, but at a certain point people cross through the scene. And so they have to stop arguing so that people can get past them. And it forms a very natural break in the scene. So it’s useful writing wise because it gives a chance to pivot. But it’s also a thing that happens in the real world. It makes it feel more grounded and real. Suddenly not everyone has left the college campus just so these two people can have this argument.

Like letting some other people drift through the argument gives these characters a little more ground and a little more reality and makes the scene feel appropriately real for this kind of movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I really liked the reactions that were going on because there isn’t tears. There isn’t sobbing. There isn’t screaming or yelling. It actually operates in a way that I think again most breakups do operate. They are spoken. The tears come after. The screaming, and the crying, and the sobbing comes after, unless you’re trying to be comedic like Forgetting Sarah Marshall where you should go over the top. That’s the point.

But here it’s really more of a sense of being stunned. That is what you’re kind of getting to is that shock of having the rug pulled out from under you. And that’s why it’s so important when you’re writing a scene like this to shock the audience as well as the character, otherwise when she’s shocked we’re not.

**John:** Yeah. So once again she’s the Jason Segel character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. This has come as a surprise to her. The difference is it’s not clear that Omar Epps walked into the scene knowing that he was going to say what he was going to say. It just sort of happened in the course of the scene. It’s a longer scene and as the fight began it got to this point, versus Sarah Marshall where she shows up with an agenda. I’m going to end this thing.

**Craig:** Right. And you can believe that he may have thought in the back of his mind, “All right. I’m going to give this one more shot here.” And it just quickly goes south.

When these things happen, when you tell somebody that you don’t want to be with them anymore, I think oftentimes they are the result of an emotional snap. It’s rarely planned out ahead of time. I think a lot of people are trying to kind of keep it going. And then finally you just go, “oh god, I have to listen to myself at last. The pain of this confrontation, of guilt, of having to absorb the burdens of the feelings I’m about to create in another person are no longer as burdensome to me as my need to stop this.”

So, I believed it.

**John:** Yeah. It’s also fascinating when you see quiet people having fights. Because this isn’t a big loud shouting fight. Last year when we were in Paris, we were waiting to pick my daughter up at school and we were crossing this bridge and there was this couple that was having the loudest fight I’ve ever seen. Screaming at the top of their lungs. And to the point where we kind of interceded because we were trying to make sure that the woman felt safe and stuff. And both these people fighting turned on us and said like, “Stay out of our business.” And then they proceeded to keep yelling at each other.

It was such a weird moment, but I realized that as a basically quiet person I could not even perceive that you could have a fight at that level. And this is a thing that could happen in the real world. I kept looking around for cameras, like who has this kind of fight.

**Craig:** This cartoon fight?

**John:** But they kept walking and shouting at each other until they finally faded in the distance. These characters in Love & Basketball are not those big loud shouters. And so they have the same feelings, but they’re quieter feelings. And when they come out this is what they sound like. So I was impressed by the reality of this.

**Craig:** I like that somewhere there is a French couple that talks about this nosy American.

**John:** Totally, yeah.

**Craig:** Who took it upon himself to solve their – they weren’t even having a real – it wasn’t like one of their real fights where they burn each other with cigarettes. It was just one of their average fights where they scream at the top of their lungs.

**John:** They were throwing trash at each other. Like they would go through trash cans and pull stuff out and throw it at each other.

**Craig:** Those two people actually sound amazing. Like I wish – Melissa and I have never loved each other enough to throw trash at each other, you know. We have a more subdued love.

**John:** You know who had a really subdued love?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** It’s those two guys in Brokeback Mountain. So that’s our next clip.

**Craig:** Very subdued.

**John:** So a screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. This movie is directed by Ang Lee. It is delightful but I’d not watched it since it came out and I had not listened to it. So let’s take a listen to this clip. This is the one that has the most bad language, so warning on that. Let’s take a listen.

[Brokeback Mountain clip plays]

Oh, Jack and Ennis. Craig Mazin, did you wince a little bit when they said Brokeback Mountain?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. It’s just one of those things where when you say the title of the film you’re like, oh no, no you didn’t just do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. They did it. They did it. But, you know, the thing is we all know the name now. I guess when I saw the movie it was still a term that hadn’t been said a billion times. Also, this is one of those lines like that we always misremember. So I always remembered it as, “I can’t quit you.” But it’s actually, “I wish I could quit you,” right?

**John:** “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

**Craig:** “I wish I knew how to quit you.” It’s such a great line. So, here’s an example where people are shouting at each other and it’s incredibly high drama. Like super high drama. Everything is pitched at a nine or a ten, including a full breakdown and everything. But, it is in fact the culmination of a very long, quiet, repressed, volcano of a romance. So it makes sense.

And really this breakup scene isn’t so much about them breaking up as it is about Ennis turning his back on himself and the man he loves.

**John:** Yeah. I think so many breakup scenes though are really about a character’s sense of their own identity. Do they see themselves as existing independently of this other person? Who do they want to be beyond this point?

And you have two characters here who want different things out of each other. And they cannot come to terms with that and that’s the nature of the conflict between them.

But, I mean, in many cases every relationship is about each person wants some different things. And in this case it’s just the most extreme version of that.

**Craig:** It is an example though of how you need to identify with one of the sparring partners. So when we look at Love & Basketball for instance, I’m identifying with Sanaa Lathan because she’s the one who is about to be surprised, so I get surprised with her. And also she’s trying to explain herself. It just feels more like her scene. And similarly here I identify with Heath Ledger because I feel like he’s the one who is going through this other thing. And in a weird way they’re having this argument and I think that Jack is right. You know, I mean, they’re screaming at each other but Jack is correct. Because Ennis is going to pull this baloney on him and basically say “if you’re sleeping around with other guys, if I were to know that I might kill you.”

And Jack basically reads him the riot act and he’s totally right. And this is where Ennis, Heath Ledger’s character, just cannot – ultimately can’t handle it. He just cannot let the lie go. And they both know at that point it’s over. That’s it. He’s made his choice.

So, there’s a perspective there that I think is really important to keep in mind when we write these scenes. It should be a good argument, but sometimes it’s OK if the argument is out of whack in the sense that we’re like, “no-no-no, that person is absolutely correct. They win the argument.” Because the person who loses the argument, there is information in why they lost that could be very valuable.

**John:** Well, always be mindful of the audience’s expectations and the audience’s hopes. And so I think the audience’s hope at this point is that Jack will convince Ennis that, you know what, we really do belong together. Let’s make this all work out. And that is sort of why we’re on Jack’s side. That’s why we’re rooting for Jack to succeed here.

But I think this is an interesting scene in that so often in breakups all of our energy is with one character. Like we can only really see one character’s perspective. And the other character is a monster. Here I am very sympathetic to Heath Ledger’s plight. And because we spent quite a bit of time with him as well.

So often in these stories you really have your protagonist and you have the love interest who is attached to the protagonist but you’re not seeing their point of view independently. And in this case we are seeing what their lives are like separately and we understand a lot more what’s going on with Heath Ledger. And so it’s a tragedy because we know why they’re not together, but we still are hoping somehow they will get together.

**Craig:** That’s right. And I think that this scene is a great guideline for the sort of character and story meat that needs to be there to warrant this level of drama.

**John:** For sure.

**Craig:** Which is bordering on melodrama. You basically have to have somebody not just breaking up with someone. They have to be torpedoing their entire life. Otherwise it just feels like soap opera. And soap operas get a bad rep in part because they just indulge in this sort of melodrama without these kind of enormous upheavals going on underneath. But when you’re writing a movie you can do it. You just need to earn it. And in this case they earn it because of what happens with Heath Ledger. If it didn’t end that way, then that scene would have been a bit ridiculous I think.

**John:** Yeah. We always say that movies are about stories that can only happen once. And this is a scene that can only happen once between these two characters. If it happened more than once then you’re annoyed with these people because you can only have this fight once.

**Craig:** [laughs] You’re just like, I was totally into you emotionally, and now I realize you’re just annoying, screamy me-mes who like to just yell at each other all the time. And you don’t have any real – like you’re just nuts. That’s the problem with you two. You guys are just crazy.

So, you’re right. You can only do this once.

**John:** Yeah. I won’t single out any one picture for it, but a lot of times in biopics I will see basically they go to the same scene like three times. It’s like, no I’m done. This scene, this happened once. We’re done. Let’s move on. But because they’re biopics, in real life people do kind of linger around each other, or they fight and they make up and they stay together. But in a movie I want it once. I don’t want it again and again.

**Craig:** No question. It just loses its impact if it happens more than once.

**John:** All right. For our final scene let’s take a listen to Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It is by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Truman Capote. This movie directed by Blake Edwards. I always forgot that Blake Edwards directed this movie. Let’s take a listen.

[Breakfast at Tiffany’s clip plays]

So, a thing you may not have caught from the audio clip is she has her cat and she puts her cat out in the rain. And then we see this single shot of this cat, just like drenched in rain, staring back at the car as it drives off. I have never been so angry as I’m seeing this cat just sitting there in the rain.

Craig, talk me off my ledge.

**Craig:** Someone left their cat out in the rain. That’s the most melodramatic song ever written. MacArthur Park. Not about a cat, but a cake.

Well, this is dated.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** You know, Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a movie that is beloved for all sorts of good reasons. It is also remarkably dated for so many reasons, most notably perhaps the single most racist performance in film history. And that’s saying something when film history includes Birth of a Nation. So it’s dated.

This is a very operatic sort of thing. And they’re making this point. We would do this so differently now, because I just think we’re more sophisticated now. The idea is that this is going to be a breakup that unbreaks-up. And it unbreaks-up because this man delivers a kind of stinging rebuke of this woman’s problem. He states her problem. He summarizes her problem. It’s all incredibly written. I mean, nobody talks like this. Nobody has the presence of mind to deliver this. We would say now that feels written.

But the whole point is you’re afraid of being in love, which is a very shopworn problem that movie characters have far more than real people. I’m still waiting to meet a real person that is afraid of being in love. Yes, she realizes that he’s right, of course, and then runs after him. But the cat becomes a symbol of their love, and she threw it out of the cab. And then about two minutes later she desperately wants it back. Finds it. Is super happy. And then they’re together and they kiss.

It’s very simplistic. And I think this is sort of an example of what to no longer do.

**John:** Yeah, it’s interesting that we’re bookending this with Casablanca and Breakfast at Tiffany’s because they’re both classic movies and loved for reasons they should be loved. But in both situations the female characters are not being well-served by their male screenwriters. Casablanca, you get sort of why it is this way. But to have the man explain to the woman what’s really going on and what she should want is a frustrating trope.

**Craig:** It is. And they’ve also stacked the deck. They’ve made it so that she has this glaring problem that he can just summarize before stepping away from a cab. This also, in general I think when characters do things like unceremoniously get rid of a symbol of their love, like the cat, we’d like a little bit more time to pass before they go looking for the cat again. I think in today’s world the cat would be gotten rid of. She would go home. He would go home. She would be alone. She would miss the cat. She would go out at night to try and find the cat. It would take some time, you know.

It’s all so compressed. And I think fake. And I don’t mean to beat up Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Again, there’s a classic romantic aspect to it. And we generally are able to put these films in their time period and emotionally adjust on the fly. But the ending never struck me as particularly compelling. I never felt it, you know? Whereas the ending of Casablanca I absolutely feel because Ingrid Bergman sells me 100% that she feels in that moment. And that’s the key, you know, is that she feels through that thing, even though the screenplay completely robs her of agency at the very end, which is a disaster. But at least emotionally she feels true.

And here I actually don’t feel that Audrey Hepburn is emotionally true. It seems like it’s all being acted.

**John:** Yeah. I would agree with you here. So what lessons can we take overall from these breakup scenes? I guess I would look for breakups are this opportunity to really have characters talk about their feelings or expose their feelings that would be hard to get out in normal scenes. We’ve used the term operatic a few times here. But operas have songs. They have the ability to give introspection and let people sing things they wouldn’t otherwise say. And I think sometimes these heightened moments let characters kind of speak their subtext more, where we’re comfortable with them saying things that would be weird to say in other scenes because they are pitched up a little bit.

Even this Love & Basketball scene, which was overall pretty quiet, they are talking more about their inner wants than characters would normally be able to do in a scene.

**Craig:** That’s a great observation. It is a chance for you to maybe not be so concerned about burying everything under layers of subtext. Although in the case of 500 Days of Summer they did a pretty good job there burying things, maybe as a function of where it was in the movie. But I agree with you. I think that it is an opportunity to have characters state these things in an on-the-nose way. And in that opportunity one finds tremendous potential for danger.

So, things to watch out for when you’re writing breakup scenes. If you’re going big and melodramatic, the result of that breakup has to be more than just a breakup. There needs to be something bigger happening. Some larger relevance so we understand that something is being permanently damaged.

We want to keep that as sort of the high point emotionally, not in terms of positivity but just intensity. That is the most intense scene you want I think in your movie if you’re going in that direction. And also when you’re structuring a breakup scene, particularly if it’s a traditional breakup scene, you want to maintain some sense of surprise. If it starts out like a breakup scene and then an argument ensues and then it ends with a breakup that is going to feel very weak. Whereas if it starts one way and then it reveals itself to be a breakup scene, then you have the potential for a character to experience shock and the audience to feel something with them.

**John:** All the scenes we looked at today were romantic partners who were breaking up, but I think the same general lessons about breakups could apply to any kind of two character – sometimes even three character – situations where you have this tight group, this tight bond, that is being split. And so it could be best friends. It could be people on a mission together. It could be – there are other kinds of relationships which can break apart and really function in much the same way as these breakups. So we picked sort of all romantic relationships here.

But I think the same general rules apply. And you should look at, you know, whenever you have your protagonist and another character who are this tight couple, is there a reason why you need to split them apart. There’s something that could come between them. And is that an interesting thing for your story?

You know, if you’re making a romantic tragedy or a romantic comedy that’s probably going to be more likely to happen, but I love to see breakups that are part of stories that aren’t all about romance.

**Craig:** I agree. And whether you’re looking at a non-romantic breakup, like for instance we just had our Thanksgiving here in the United States, so Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Classic non-romantic breakup. But whether you’re doing the non-romantic or the romantic breakup, one thing to be aware of is if the breakup happens in a moment because one character says this incredibly cutting thing to the other person, which is exactly what happens by the way at the end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, whether the audience knows it or not consciously, they will have an expectation that if that cutting truth is true, and if it weren’t why else would be so cutting, the person to whom it is said will come around to recognize the truth of it. And in recognizing the truth of it that relationship will be healed.

So just know when you fire that particular missile you are setting up an expectation that the breakup is not permanent.

**John:** Very good point. So, thank you again for suggesting all these movies for this breakup episode. If you would like to suggest another This Kind of Scene for a future episode, hit us on Twitter and let us know what you think we should do for a future installment of This Kind of Scene.

All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is the Merriam-Webster Time Traveler. And so it is a website you can go to and you can look at the year you were born, or any year that you care to look at, and see what words were new that year. So basically the first known occurrences of these words on that year.

And so for the year I was born, 1970, first appearances of dorky, micro-aggression, op-ed, survivalist, herstory, Tourette’s Syndrome, and viewshed, which I didn’t even know what viewshed was. I had to look it up.

**Craig:** What’s viewshed?

**John:** Viewshed is the area you can see from a place. And so it’s basically what’s visible from where you’re standing. I think it’s important for sight lines and for protecting one’s view from a building.

**Craig:** Hmm. Interesting. OK.

**John:** But I love this kind of stuff. I would have assumed that dorky was older than that. I would have assumed micro-aggression was much newer than that. Op-ed feels like it should have always been around.

**Craig:** Yeah. For sure. I’m looking at my year. 1971. Sexual assault and sexual harassment.

**John:** All right. So they started with you.

**Craig:** They started with me. Also sadly post-racial. Not yet, 1971. Not even close. Still haven’t gotten there as far as I can tell. But there are some nice ones like minibar. We all love a minibar. HMO, not so good. Homophobe, 1971.

**John:** Yeah. There wasn’t even such a thing.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, there were definitely homophobes but now they knew what to call themselves. [laughs]

**John:** And wiseass.

**Craig:** Wiseass. You’re right.

**John:** So this is the Merriam-Webster version of this. But I’ll say another really good thing to take a look at is Google’s n-gram viewer. I think this is a previous One Cool Thing for me, but I used this a lot with Arlo Finch to figure out whether certain words existed at a time, or like which of two variants of a word was more popular.

So, if you go to books.google.com/n-grams, basically all the books that Google has digitized, you can look through and figure out when the first occurrences of a word were in books overall in print. And that’s a fascinating time hole to be falling into.

**Craig:** One movie word that came into use in 1971, high-concept.

**John:** Oh, very nice.

**Craig:** Yeah, before that everything was high-concept.

**John:** Yes. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** I sure don’t.

**John:** You’ve got nothing?

**Craig:** Yeah, I’ve got nothing. You know what? It was Thanksgiving. A lot of confusion going on in my head. And I just thought, you know, is there One Cool Thing in the world right now? No. No Cool Things.

**John:** You just didn’t do your minimum amount of work required.

**Craig:** That is an alternative explanation for what I just said.

**John:** So while Megan and I were going through these clips and figuring out what movies we should be doing, you didn’t do any of this work whatsoever.

**Craig:** No, that’s right.

**John:** All right, so I understand that’s your prerogative. You want to do that, that’s fine. So you don’t want to do it, that’s fine.

**Craig:** So we’re breaking up? [laughs]

**John:** I mean, I hope we can still be friends.

**Craig:** This is, by the way, a bad way to end the breakup scene. Well, maybe it’s a good way for somebody to say, “Wait, are we breaking up? Is it happening? It’s happening right now.”

**John:** I’m sure there’s a scene that’s done this where like you as the audience are way ahead of the other character and you know they’re breaking up and the character has no idea that they’re being broken up with.

**Craig:** No question. There’s definitely a bunch of those. No, you can’t quit me.

**John:** I can’t quit you, at least not before the live show. So people should come to see that.

**Craig:** That doesn’t sound positive.

**John:** Live show tickets are available right now. They are December 7 here in Hollywood. It is at the LA Film School across from ArcLight. You should come see us, along with our terrific guests. If you would like to read the first five chapters of Arlo Finch, that is at arlofinchbooks.com.

Our outro this week is by Jukebox Experiment. It is a great one. It turns out we had more outros than I thought. They had just been put in a folder I did not expect them to be in. So, we have some great ones, but we would always love more great outros. So, just write in to ask@johnaugust.com with a link to your outro. Here’s a reminder. I’ve listened to a couple recently where it’s like that’s lovely music. It has nothing to do with our theme. So, all of our outros use the five notes of our theme. So, [hums]. Or, [hums]. Something like that. Minor is also OK. But I have to be able to hear that it actually has the Scriptnotes theme in it, otherwise it’s just lovely music.

**Craig:** Hmm. And John is rigorous about these things.

**John:** I’m very rigorous. I’m a rule follower. I’m a rule maker and a rule follower. But not as much as Megan McDonnell who is our producer. Thank you Megan for getting together our clips this week.

Our show is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Apologies to Matthew because we just messed up a ton this week. Probably a new record for how much we messed up this week.

**Craig:** I don’t know if I would say “we.”

**John:** Well, you had a few yourself.

**Craig:** I had a few. For me relatively speaking it was a bad week.

**John:** If you have a question for us, you can write in to ask@johnaugust.com. But on Twitter, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. So, tweet at us and tell us what you’d like for the next installment of This Kind of Scene.

You can find us on Facebook and on Apple Podcasts. Just search for Scriptnotes while you’re there. That’s always lovely.

The notes for this episode, including the PDFs for all the scenes we talked about, is at johnaugust.com. Just search for this episode. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts for the back episodes.

You can find all those back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. It’s $2 a month. And we have more of the USB drives which have the first 300 episodes, plus all the bonus episodes available at store.johnaugust.com. Delightful Christmas shopping if you’d like to stick on in your friend’s stocking. That sounds so disturbing.

**Craig:** [laughs] If you’d like to stick one in your friend’s stocking.

**John:** No, that’s never a good thing to do.

**Craig:** Go to store.johnaugust.com.

**John:** Yeah. That’s where we have them.

**Craig:** Stick it in.

**John:** I hope we can still be friends.

**Craig:** You know, I think Stick It In is a fantastic holiday motto for us, John.

**John:** Yeah. Stick It In.

**Craig:** Stick It In. Great show. And for all of you out there listening, please do get your tickets now because they’re going fast. Jon Bon Jovi of podcasts.

**John:** See you.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* Holiday Live Show [tickets](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-live-show-john-august-craig-mazin/) are available.
* [Godless](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godless_(TV_series)) on [Netflix](https://www.netflix.com/title/80097141)
* The first 5 chapters of [Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire](http://read.macmillan.com/mcpg/arlo-finch/) are online.
* Hollywood studio real estate-related articles about [Studio City](https://la.curbed.com/2017/8/9/15975172/studio-city-valley-cbs-studios-history), [Century City](https://la.curbed.com/2013/9/26/10193620/the-secret-cowboycleopatratin-foil-origins-of-century-city), the [history of the Disney Studio](https://www.mouseplanet.com/10903/Walt_Disneys_Hollywood_Studios) and CBS’ possible move to sell [Television City](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cbs-television-city-20170928-story.html).
* Casablanca [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEWaqUVac3M&feature=youtu.be) and [script](http://www.vincasa.com/casabla.pdf), with the scene starting on page 119.
* Forgetting Sarah Marshall [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOJd5U3FsQw), [pages](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Forgetting-Sarah-Marshall-Scene.pdf), and [script](http://www.joblo.com/scripts/forgetting-sarah-marshall.pdf).
* (500) Days of Summer [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUVgAwLr1GQ), [pages](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/500-Days-of-Summer-Scene.pdf), and [script](http://readwatchwrite.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/500DaysofSummer.pdf).
* Love and Basketball [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvv5qjmF2nM), [pages](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Love_and_Basketball_Scene.pdf), and [script](http://nldslab.soe.ucsc.edu/charactercreator/film_corpus/film_2012xxxx/imsdb.com/Love-and-Basketball.html).
* Brokeback Mountain [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVK6yLqY54w), [pages](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Brokeback-Mountain-Scene.pdf), and [script](http://screenplayexplorer.com/wp-content/scripts/brokeback_mountain.pdf).
* Breakfast at Tiffany’s [scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnOfomPgETs), [pages](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Breakfast-at-Tiffanys-Scene.pdf), and [script](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/BreakfastatTiffany’s.pdf).
* [Merriam-Webster Time Traveler](https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler/1969) will show you the words that were added in any given year.
* If you like that, you might like the [Google n-gram viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/) which graphs frequency of word use.
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Arbitrary Jukebox ([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_327.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/first-day-on-the-job).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. A small language warning. There are some big words, some bad words, in this episode. So this might be a good time to put in headphones if you’re in a place where it is not appropriate to hear the F-bombs.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** Craig Mazin named Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 317 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast, we are debuting a brand new segment where we look at how different movies handle the same kind of scene. We’ll also be tackling listener questions about “therapy pieces” and writing for the international market.

But first we have some follow up. Craig, start us off.

**Craig:** All right. So we have some follow up from Anonymous Animation Writer. It would be great if that was this person’s full name.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** And they didn’t actually work in animation, but I think they do. I don’t think it’s their name. Anonymous Animation Writer writes, “I just finished listening to episode 310 where you dove,” I think we dived, “into the recently passed WGA deal. I am a WGA member, but primarily I am a fairly successful animation writer.” Hats off to you.

“The reality is most animation isn’t WGA. We get no residuals. The pay rate is extremely low. And yet our material is played and replayed constantly. Kids, you know? And, our material is the primary driver for toy sales. Animation employs a huge swath of writers in Los Angeles, yet I feel as though we are the most neglected segment of the writing community. Can you address or have somebody from the guild address why all animation is not covered by the WGA?”

Yes. We. Can.

**John:** Yeah. It’s actually one of those rare cases where we can answer the question fairly definitively. So, animation is writing. It is completely the same kind of writing as writing for features or for television. Animation should be covered by the WGA, but it is not covered by the WGA because it never has been covered by the WGA.

Once upon a time when animated films were going to be made and when animated television programs were getting made, that writing was not covered by WGA. And it got covered by other unions, specifically a branch of IATSE covers it. So you, Anonymous Animation Writer, probably are working for a union. You’re represented by a union. It’s just not the WGA. And it sucks for you. And it’s going to be very difficult to get you covered by the WGA.

**Craig:** It will not be difficult. It will be impossible. So, here’s the deal with the law, Anonymous Animation Writer, and this bums us out as much as it bums you out. Well, I grant you you’re bummed out even more. You basically have two options for employment. You can either work non-union or you can work union. That’s just in general in life, right? It’s sort of binary. You’re working non-union, or you’re working union.

In closed shop states like California, if a union covers a work area, and there are companies that are signatory to that union, then you are covered by that union. Period. The end. There’s no other way for John or I to write a live action movie for, let’s say Warner Bros, unless it’s done under a WGA deal.

The union that has jurisdiction over animation is as John stated IATSE. And specifically it’s IATSE Local 839, the Animation Guild. Locals are subsidiaries of a larger parent union. But essentially it’s part of IATSE. Like most of the crew and stagecraft unions are.

The deal that 839 has with the companies is such that there are no residuals and, as you note, the pay rate is much lower than the WGA pay rate. The WGA can do nothing about this. Jurisdiction between unions is a matter of federal law. It’s like the jurisdiction police departments. You can’t have Philadelphia cops rolling on into New York and arresting people. It’s just the way the law works. You can’t overlap.

So, the choices in animation are if you’re working for a signatory company it has to be through Animation 839. Or, you may be working for a non-signatory company in which case it’s not union at all. Pixar, for instance, not union. I’m sure one of the other big ones is not union. And so really the choice that you face as you’re taking employment as an animation writer in Hollywood is whether you’re going to have a bad deal or a worse deal. And there is absolutely nothing the Writers Guild can do about it. Zero. Period. The end. And it is so frustrating for us, but it is just fact.

**John:** Yep. So, Craig, talk us through quickly there are certain primetime animated shows that are WGA. Why are they WGA?

**Craig:** Right. So, what we’ve been talking about is feature animation. Now, primetime animation was never clearly covered by any jurisdiction. So what happens is once a union makes a collective bargaining agreement with a bunch of employers to cover a work area, that’s theirs.

From what I understand, primetime animation was never seized, because there was never that much primetime animation. There was a ton of Saturday morning animation on television, of course, but primetime I don’t think there was particularly much. So when The Simpsons happened, then there was this opening. And for the first time in decades an animation football was up in the air. And The Simpsons writers very quickly organized to become a WGA shop. Because, specifically, there was no primetime deal for Fox. Fox, which made The Simpsons, had never signed, I believe, any collective bargaining agreement covering primetime animation.

So, open field. And they obviously — Fox I think, probably quite strongly, pushed them towards Animation 839. That was something that happened also with DreamWorks made a show called Father of the Pride, which they successfully got to push over to 839. But in this case, The Simpsons writers, probably because of the amount of leverage they had, were able to get a WGA deal. And once they did, all primetime animation made by Fox is a WGA deal. So Family guy, WGA deal. And what are the other ones? American Dad. And all those.

**John:** Bob’s Burgers.

**Craig:** There you go. So any primetime animated show made by Fox is WGA. Now, this does give a little bit of a glimmer of hope. For instance, I don’t think Pixar has ever signed any collective bargaining agreements. So, theoretically all of the writers that write Pixar movies could organize and demand to be covered by the WGA. And I wish they would. But easier said than done, because of the nature of feature films.

In television, you have to crank out episodes, particularly primetime network television. I mean, so that’s 26 right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If your writers stop working for 10 minutes, you’ve got a huge assembly line problem. Not the case in feature animation, where those movies take years and years and years and there’s one of them. So, if there’s a halt for six or eight months, or two years, well, they absorb it. Much, much trickier to do. So, hopefully that answers the question of why The Simpsons, for instance, is a WGA show and not say a primetime program that maybe Sony Television is making.

**John:** Absolutely. So basically the way to get all animation covered by the WGA is to build a time machine and go back and have the decisions made differently. But I think with that theoretical time machine we can also be looking forward. And we need to be looking forward to what are the things coming down the pike that are going to be sort of like this animation situation. And how do we make sure that the people who are writing for those screens are covered and that they are WGA writers who are making a WGA living down the road. I think that’s a thing we need to focus on. And take the lesson we’ve learned from animation to make sure that we’re not leaving stuff uncovered.

**Craig:** Yeah. The legend — I don’t know if this is accurate, but the legend that I have heard is that way, way back in the day feature animation writers went to the WGA, the nascent WGA in the ’40s and ’50s, and said, “Hey, we want you guys to cover us.” And the WGA said, “Oh, no, no, no, we’re real writers. You people are making cartoons. We don’t cover cartoons.”

I don’t know if that’s true, but man it sounds true.

**John:** It does sound true.

**Craig:** Sounds super-duper freaking true. So, if there’s anything to guard against moving forward, it’s any hint of snobbery or exclusion, because whatever you think — if you look down at, I don’t know, content that’s made for YouTube, well, that will be the thing that’s destroying you 40 years from now. We really can’t afford to turn up our noses at any kind of writing for any screen as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** I agree. Second piece of follow up comes from Tim in Asheville. He writes, “I wanted to let you know how thankful I am for your feedback on the Reconstruction of Huck Finn over Mark Twain’s Dead Body in Episode 263.” So that was a Three Page Challenge you and I did.

“That story has reached the quarter finals of Nicholl,” and I actually just checked, it made it to semi-finals. “And although you only gave feedback on the first three pages, your thoughts engendered a come-to-Jesus type rewrite. And let me tell you, Jesus was not having that draft. Thanks for your thoughts and your inspiration.”

**Craig:** I like catty Jesus here. I am not having this draft. Oh no. Oh no! That’s great to hear.

**John:** Yeah. So congrats to Tim in Asheville. And we’ll put a link in the show notes to all the people who were the finalists in Nicholls this year. It’s the only I think competition that Craig and I both feel good about saying, yes, if you do well in Nicholl that’s fantastic. That is a feather in your cap and people actually do pay attention.

**Craig:** They do.

**John:** Congratulations to those folks.

**Craig:** They’ve already released their finalists?

**John:** Yes. So the article I read showed like the 10 finalists, but out of those 10 apparently five get fellowships, so there’s still another culling that happens. I can’t say I honestly understand how it all works, except that I’m very happy for the people who get to be a part of those lists.

**Craig:** So do I. And I hope that at least one or two of them, I mean, this is how crazy our business is. You think, well, there’s thousands of scripts, I assume, sent to the Nicholl Fellowship each year, and then it comes down to 10 finalists. And then five of them get fellowships. And here I am saying I hope one of them becomes a professional screenwriter. But that’s kind of — that is kind of the mesh size of this filter. It’s tough.

**John:** It is tough. Indeed.

All right, let’s get to our brand new segment. So this was suggested by Megan McDonnell, she is our new producer. And her idea was to take a certain class of scenes, a certain kind of scene you see in a bunch of different movies, and take a look at how different movies play that kind of scene. And so we’re going to be comparing and contrasting scenes from four different movies that are all about the same thing.

And in this case it is about the first day on the job, which is sort of a stock scene. And actually very common, I think, in features because as we always talk about features are about characters going through a journey they can only go through once. And so the first day on a new job is a very classic moment that your characters are going to have in lots of different kinds of movies. Comedies. Dramas. Everything in between.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, for sure. It’s a fun scene to write. I mean, we look forward to scenes like this. Sometimes we know what we have to accomplish in a story. We know how people are going to get in, and we know what we need to have them thinking or doing on the way out. And then the nature of the scene itself seems a bit, well, foggy. And then you have to figure out how to make it work.

No one has to really get lost in a fog over this.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** The first day of work we’re throwing characters at you. We’re throwing responsibilities at you. I know everyone knows how that feels. We’ve all been there before. So really it’s just about what is your unique perspective on this shared experience of the first day at work.

**John:** Absolutely. Well, let’s jump right in. So I put out a call on Twitter for people to send me their suggestions for great movies with great scenes about the first day on the job. And, of course, our listeners are fantastic and threw back a lot of suggestions. Probably the number one suggestion was one I hadn’t thought of which is The Hudsucker Proxy. So this is a screenplay by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, and Sam Raimi.

In the show notes for this episode you’ll find links to the full PDF, but also the individual scenes we’re taking a look at. So, Craig, why don’t you read the setup to this scene? This is scene 14 in Hudsucker Proxy.

**Craig:** Sure.

“SWINGING STEEL DOORS that read, ”MAILROOM.” They burst open as Norville, who wears a mail clerk’s leather apron, imprinted: HUDSUCKER MAILROOM/The Future is Now. The hellish mailroom is criss-crossed by pipes that emit HISSING jets of STEAM.

As he wheels a piled-high mail cart down the aisle, Norville is accompanied by an orientation AGENT who bellows at him over the clamor and roar of many men laboring in the bowels of a great corporation.

**John:** And now let’s take a listen to the scene.

**Scene:**

AGENT
You punch in at 8:30 every morning except you punch in at 7:30 following a business holiday unless it’s a Monday and then you punch in at eight o’clock You punch in at 7:45 whenever we work extended day and you punch out at the regular time unless you’ve worked through lunch!

NORVILLE
What’s exte–

AGENT
Punch in late and they dock ya!

People on either side bellow at Norville and stuff envelopes and packages under his elbows, into his pockets, under his chin, between his clenched teeth , etc.

FIRST SCREAMER
This goes to seven! Mr. Mutuszak! Urgent!

AGENT
Incoming articles, get a voucher! Outgoing articles, provide a voucher! Move any article without a voucher and they dock ya!

SECOND SCREAMER
Take this up to the secretarial pool on three!Right away!Don’t break it!

AGENT
Letter size a green voucher! Folder size a yellow voucher! Parcel size a maroon voucher!

THIRD SCREAMER
This one’s for Morgatross! Chop chop!

AGENT
Wrong color voucher and they dock ya!Six-seven-eight-seven-zero-four-niner-alpha-slash-six! That is your employee number!It will not be repeated!Without your employee number you cannot cash your paycheck!

FOURTH SCREAMER
This goes up to twenty-seven! If there’s no one there bring it down to eighteen! Have ‘em sign the waiver!DON’T COME BACK DOWN HERE WITHOUT A SIGNED WAIVER!!

AGENT
Inter-office mail is code37! INTRA-office mail is 37-dash-3! Outside mail is 3-dash37! Code it wrong and they dock ya!

FIFTH SCREAMER
I was supposed to have this on twenty-eight ten minutes ago! Cover for me!

AGENT
This has been your orientation! Is there anything you do not understand? Is there anything you understand only partially? If you have not been fully- oriented–if there is something you do not understand in all of its particulars you must file a complaint with personnel! File a faulty complaint…and they dock ya!

**Craig:** That’s great.

**John:** It’s delightful. So this is a very classically kind of what we expect on that first day, where everything is being thrown at you. You are just barely trying to catch up with the action around you. And it’s important to set up the environment of this world they’re entering into. This is a sort of dystopian hellhole of corporate machinery. And from sound design to sort of the monologuing of the orientation agent, you get a feeling for all of it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Classic bit of filmic storytelling to take the normal emotions that we have in shared universal experiences and then externalize them in these very broad, caricatured ways. Even though nobody has ever experienced a first day at work like this, you can argue that this is how it feels to us. Everything is confusing. Everything is scary. Everyone around you seems to be perfectly meshed together and frantic in a way you are not because you don’t understand what’s going on. And you are laden down with rules that you do not understand and consequences you do understand. So, you don’t know what you need to do to succeed. You just know what happens when you fail. Very, very first day.

**John:** Yeah. They will dock you. So, this is a great example of like this orientation agent is not a major character, so he’s just going there and he’s just establishing the rules of the world. He is basically — he’s just part of the setting really. This is not a significant character.

But I want to contrast that with the first scene from Devil Wears Prada, or at least the first day scene from Devil Wears Prada. This is a script by Aline Brosh McKenna based on the book by Lauren Weisberger. Here we see the same kind of orientation where you have somebody starting to lead somebody through the office, and yet this case it’s Emily Blunt leading Anne Hathaway through. And Emily Blunt is a major character. Emily Blunt is a character who we’re going to come back to again and again. And so you can see the scene is actually taking some time to establish her as a more important significant character who has a depth to her that this orientation agent doesn’t have.

Let’s take a look at the scene on paper first, and then we’ll take a listen to it. It starts in reception. “Andy is trying to arrange herself on the uncomfortable sofa when suddenly a taller, thinner, and amazingly more groomed version of the women in the room walks in. This is Emily, who looks the part of the sleek fashionista, but is propelled by a core of barely tamped anxiety. Andrea Barnes? Emily looks up, their eyes meet, as Emily takes in how different Andy looks from everyone else. Andy springs up and follows her down the hallway.”

Let’s take a listen to the rest of the scene.

**Scene:**

INT. RUNWAY RECEPTION AREA — DAY

Sleek, elegant, hard-edged chic. Behind the reception desk is an elegant logo that says RUNWAY. ANDY walks over.

ANDY
Hi, I have an appointment with Emily Charlton–

EMILY (O.S.)
Andrea Sachs?

(EMILY (and MIRANDA, later) pronounce ANDREA Ahn-DRAY-a. ANDY refers to herself as AN-dree-a.)

ANDY turns and sees a taller, thinner and, amazingly, more groomed CLACKER. This is EMILY. She looks the part of the sleek fashionista, but is propelled by a core of barely tamped down anxiety. She examines ANDY.

EMILY (CONT’D)
Human Resources certainly has a bizarre sense of humor.
(sigh, annoyed)
Follow me.

INT. RUNWAY HALLWAY — DAY

EMILY briskly walks ANDY down the hall.

EMILY
Okay, so… I was Miranda’s second assistant, but her first assistant recently got promoted so now I’m the first…

ANDY glimpses an office in front of them, seductively bright.

ANDY
And you’re replacing yourself.

EMILY
I’m trying. Miranda sacked the last two girls after only a few weeks. We need to find someone who can survive here. Do you understand?

ANDY
Yes. Of course. Who’s Miranda?

EMILY
(eyes widening)
You didn’t just ask me that. She’s the editor in chief of Runway. Not to mention a legend. Work a year for her and you can get a job at any magazine you want. A million girls would kill for this job.

ANDY
Sounds great. I’d love to be considered.

She smiles. EMILY tries to think how to break it to her.

EMILY
Andrea, Runway is a fashion magazine. An interest in fashion is crucial.

ANDY
What makes you think I’m not interested in fashion?

EMILY gives her a look. ANDY smiles, like she has no idea what EMILY could mean.

Suddenly, EMILY’S Blackberry goes off. She gasps.

EMILY
Oh my God. No. No, no, no.

ANDY
What’s wrong?

EXT. ELIAS-CLARKE — DAY

A black sedan pulls to a sudden stop outside the building.

INT. RUNWAY – BULLPEN – DAY

EMILY begins rapid-fire dialing four digit extensions.

EMILY
(all but screaming)
She’s on her way — tell everyone!

Just then a dapper man of about 40 walks briskly by.

NIGEL
I thought she was coming in at 9.

EMILY
Her driver text-messaged. Her facialist ruptured a disk. God, these people!

NIGEL turns and sees ANDY. Looks at EMILY. Who is that?

EMILY (CONT’D)
I can’t even talk about it.

No time to discuss. NIGEL calls down the hallway.

NIGEL
All right, everyone. Man your battle stations!

**John:** First off, it’s great to have Aline on the show, even if she’s not literally on the show, we get to hear her words and see her work. I think it’s a delightful scene. And so here we’ve already established Anne Hathaway’s character in the movie, but this is our first time meeting Emily Blunt’s character. And it’s a sophisticated thing that we’re seeing here. So, you get to see that Emily Blunt is trying to do her job, but she’s also very skeptical that this girl could even possibly be working here. We’re establishing the stakes of the world and we’re establishing that everyone else who has been hired for this job has been fired very, very quickly.

And then we end this scene with this moment of like, “Oh no, the boss is coming.” And then we get into this sort of montage of Miranda Priestly arriving at the office and everyone panicking and scurrying around to sort of prepare for her. So you’re establishing this big character entrance for a character who has not yet shown up in the movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. In some ways, this is the opposite way of playing a first day moment than the one in Hudsucker Proxy. It doesn’t seem like it starts as the opposite, because in walks this young woman who seems to be perfect, as opposed to our protagonist. But then as they move through the building and begin to talk what starts to come out is that our hero, Anne Hathaway’s character, doesn’t even know who Miranda is. And is oddly sort of Zen. You know, “I’d like to be considered.” She just seems so much calmer and more centered than Emily Blunt’s character, who is already kind of twittery panicky.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And when they hear that Miranda is coming early, you see Emily kind of fall apart. So, what this first day is setting up in a sense probably the arc of these two characters and what is going to happen ultimately with Anne Hathaway’s character, I think.

**John:** What’s also great in this scene is we’re used to the sort of bulldozer coming in and our protagonist being sort of run over by the bulldozer. Anne Hathaway’s character does stand up to her. “Well what makes you think I don’t like fashion?” Basically, she’s taking some agency. She’s actually willing to sort of hit the ball back over the net. And that becomes important in the next scene where she actually is interviewing with Miranda Priestly to make it clear like, you know, you are going to say that I’m not qualified to be here, but I really am. And you should take a chance on me. She’s actually going to stick up for herself in ways that are incredibly important for the character.

What I’d like to do now is actually compare it to her first actual day on the job. So, this is clip from later on in the film where she’s trying to get through her first real day after she’s been hired. And there’s a moment, which I think has become sort of one of the iconic moments in the film, where she is dismissive of sort of what it is they’re doing in general. She makes the mistake of laughing about how absurd it is. And let’s take a listen to what happens in that scene.

**Scene:**

ANDY lets out a little giggle. And it’s like she set off a grenade. Slowly everyone turns to her.

MIRANDA
Is something funny?

ANDY
No, no, no. It’s just…

And MIRANDA says nothing. ANDY twists in the wind.

ANDY (CONT’D)
It’s just that both of those belts look the same to me. I’m still learning about this stuff, so–

And the silence is deafening. Everyone looks to see what MIRANDA will do.

MIRANDA
This… stuff? Okay. I understand. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and select, say, that lumpy blue sweater because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what’s on your body. What you don’t know is that your sweater is not blue. It’s not even sky blue. It’s cerulean. You also don’t know that in 2002, De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns, Yves St. Laurent showed a cerulean military jacket, Dolce did skirts with cerulean beads, and in our September issue we did the definitive layout on the color. Cerulean quickly appeared in eight other major collections, then the secondary and department store lines and then trickled down to some lovely Casual Corner, where you no doubt stumbled on it. That color is worth millions of dollars and many jobs. And here you are, thinking you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry. In truth, you are wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.

She smiles at ANDY. Who quakes.

**John:** What I love about this clip is that it shows a crucial aspect of first day on the job which is failure. And that sense of the protagonist comes in with a head of steam. They think they’re sort of figuring it out. And then they meet a huge obstacle and a huge setback. And that setback is generally the antagonist. In this case, it’s Miranda. And it makes it really clear that as plucky and as smart as Anne Hathaway’s character is, she is out of her depths in sort of this situation and specifically opposite Miranda.

**Craig:** Yeah. Most movies that are workplace movies will involve a hero who is new to the job pushing up against an antagonist or villain who is established on the job. It could be a boss, as it often is. Or it could be a rival for a promotion. But no matter what, that villain, that antagonist, needs to have some formidable weight. This is a very common note that studios will give, and for good reason. It’s a good note — make your villains formidable.

So, we could easily begin to see Miranda Priestly as a nut. Just a tyrannical nut who should be laughed at. And, of course, a lot of fashion does seem, on its face, absurd. And it makes perfect sense for us to be with Anne Hathaway and thinking I see through everything here. I can see the matrix. This is all baloney and this lady is nuts.

And it’s really important for the movie and for the character for Anne Hathaway to hear, “No, you don’t see anything at all.” And it has to be done in such a way that in the audience, in the theater where we’re sitting we go, “Oh you know what, that’s a really good point. You’re right. It’s not just that you’re mean about it, or strident, you’ve convinced me. Right? And by doing so I now understand that the character I was identifying with and feeling really proud to kind of be in the saddle with doesn’t maybe know what she’s talking about. And doesn’t see all the things she thinks she sees. And now I feel that way, too.” This is the bedrock of making people care about characters in a movie.

So, it’s a terrific way to use a first day on the job scene to not only set up what it is that people do, but also set up the basis of a rivalry. And to take your hero, and as we always should, push them down. Push them down, because there is no satisfaction in their rise if we do not push them down.

**John:** I’m thinking about the archetypes of this relationship and you see this all the time in military movies where you have the drill sergeant. But you also see it in teacher movies. You think of Whiplash. And this is very much the same kind of dynamic in Whiplash where you have the upstart who thinks he knows what’s going on and then meets this incredible asshole of a teacher who really can show him up and sort of prove that he knows nothing.

And that’s a crucial dynamic. I think so often we think of the antagonist as being the villain in the story. And villains don’t always wear capes and sort of try to destroy cities. A lot of times it’s how they are challenging our heroes. And that’s what you’re seeing in Devil Wears Prada.

**Craig:** Yeah. And it is really important for people to note, in a time when a lot of movies do seem to feature villains that only are interested in the most broad villainous desires like total power and total destruction, that the most satisfying cinematic villains are the ones who in some way at the end of a story are actually vaguely proud of the fact that the hero has risen up.

It took a long time, it took three movies for Darth Vader to get to that point. But he did. And we really liked it. It’ll take one movie for Miranda to get there at the end, but that’s exactly where it ends up with the two of them. You get the sense that Miranda is a combination of antagonist and mentor. And that’s a great combo.

**John:** That is a great combo. When it works, it’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly.

**John:** We always think of mentors as being like the kindly old wizard or the caring teacher, but oftentimes it is a confrontational role that is pushing them to the next place. So, it’s great to see it here.

Let’s take a look at another sort of mentor figure and sort of authority figure in Hidden Figures. So this is a screenplay by Allison Schroeder and Ted Melfi based on a book by Margo Shetterly.

So in this scene we see Taraji P. Henson. She’s going to work in the larger office with the engineers rather than just being the calculator off in the little back room. Let’s take a read through the scene and then what actually happens.

So we’re inside the Space Task Group office. “Katherine steps into a cyclone of activity and stress. ENGINEERS chalk equations on blackboards, slug coffee. AIDES and SUPPORT STAFF scurry, answer phones. This is the Space Task Group: the world’s most exclusive scientific club. At the back of the room, Harrison paces in his glass bubble, talking with Karl Zielinski. For the briefest moment, everyone seems to be looking at the black woman who just entered their world. But it’s just a passing moment, there’s far too much to do.”

And so we’re going to actually skip ahead a little bit in the scene to listen to when she first has her conversation with the character played by Kevin Costner.

**Scene:**

AL HARRISON
Ruth. What’s the status on my Computer?

RUTH
She’s right in front of you, Mr. Harrison.

Ruth motions to Katherine. Harrison gives her a once over. Not what he expected either.

AL HARRISON
Does she know how to handle Analytic Geometry?

RUTH
Absolutely. And she speaks.

KATHERINE
I do, sir.

AL HARRISON
Which one?

KATHERINE
Both, sir. Geometry and speaking.

Harrison waves a finger at Ruth.

AL HARRISON
Then give her the-

She knows exactly what he’s talking about. She always knows what he’s talking about. She snatches a bundle of worksheets off her desk, rushes them to Katherine.

AL HARRISON (CONT’D)
(to Katherine)
Do you think you can find me the Frenet frame for that data using the Gram- Schmidt–

Katherine glances at the data sheets.

KATHERINE
–Orthogonalization algorithm. Yes, sir. I prefer it over Euclidean coordinates.

That’s all Harrison needs to hear. She knows her stuff.

**Craig:** Right. So this is a fairly common way of doing these things. You have somebody that no one would expect to be really, really good at something because of their gender or their race or their age. And they are going to impress somebody. It’s not actually — I mean, it’s a really, really good movie. This is a fairly cliché way of doing these things.

But there is something pretty interesting in it, and that is — and you can pull out and sort of go, ah-ha. You know, sometimes when there are scenes that feel cliché, you realize that one thing isn’t. And it’s a little bit like those puzzles when we were kids, like find the things that are different, right? And those little differences are actually really illuminating. And I’m certain quite intentional. And the little difference here is Kevin Costner just says, “OK, all right. Do you do this? Do you do that?”

There’s no “I don’t think so, or is this some kind of joke?” That’s the difference. And you will see that little bit play out and grow in their relationship over the course of the movie. So there’s a little seed in what is a fairly stock kind of execution of something that is different and refreshing and kind of counter to the hyper formula of this kind of moment.

**John:** Absolutely. So this is a moment that happens midway through the story, I think, because we’ve actually established quite a bit of backstory with the women that we’re going to be following. And they’re sort of all going through first day experiences. They already worked at NASA. They worked as calculators in the sort of backroom doing the difficult calculations. And one by one they’re sort of being pulled into greater responsibilities, so Janelle Monáe’s character is going to work with the heat shield people. And Octavia Spencer is really managing these women and basically wants to be credited with being their manager and being paid as their manager.

So, Taraji P. Henson is of them the most lead character of them, and so she’s going to work in the biggest room with the biggest most important people. And I think we have a natural expectation that her relationship with Kevin Costner is going to be classically antagonistic where she has to impress him and change him.

He starts pretty far along the journey, and so it’s really more about his coming to see the world from her point of view. And basically recognize his own ignorance about sort of what was going on. So it wasn’t that he was this horrible racist. It’s that he had never even thought to question what she was allowed to do and what she wasn’t allowed to do and how frustrating that would be for her. And so it’s nothing like the Miranda Priestly sort of relationship. It’s not — he’s not even sort of teaching her how to grow into this bigger thing. It’s her just through her quiet competence pushing him and the rest of this group forward.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that is kind of the thing that jumps out of this exchange. Because it is, like I said, it’s a very — we’ve seen this before.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. So, that’s the thing that is the little payload. I think there’s a really good lesson there, actually, that when you are writing these scenes sometimes people are so panicked that they’re writing a stock scene. And I think it’s not something to panic over as long as you are putting some kind of twist or thing on it.

It’s when you don’t. It’s when you fail to surprise in any way whatsoever that the thing just starts to lie there and feel super derivative.

**John:** I think one of the other reasons why this didn’t pain me when I saw it in the theaters is that it’s part of a much longer scene. So we did some of the setup, but she’s just standing around this office for a long time while people are waiting and doing other things. She has this moment, and then the scene just keeps going on where she has to — where she’s finding her desk. And so it really places you into her perspective of what it’s like to be there.

One of the brilliant tricks that this movie does is that by fully grounding the experience in these women’s lives, you see everything from their point of view. And so when we go into these sort of white male enclaves, we are going into it as her. That is the foreign territory we’re heading into and we are completely identifying with her perspective on things.

And so letting her be sort of quietly competent in this moment and not have her big speech here, but save it for later on, you know, saves our powder and lets us sort of really stick in our perspective.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree completely.

**John:** Cool. Let’s take a look at one last first day, which was the second most highly recommended thing on Twitter when I put out the call for these scenes. This is Training Day by David Ayer.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** And this whole movie is a first day on the job essentially. So, let’s take a look at a scene that happens in a coffee shop. So, we’ll read through the setup here.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a good one. All right.

”INT. COFFEE SHOP – DAY

Old and tired, near Good Samaritan Hospital. Jake struts through the door, confidently looks around. JAKE’S POV: DETECTIVE SERGEANT ALONZO HARRIS, in black shirt, black leather jacket. And just enough platinum and diamonds to look like somebody. He reads the paper in a booth. The gun leather-tough LAPD vet is a hands-on, blue-collar cop who can kick your ass with a look. BACK TO SCENE Jake walks over. Slides in across. Alonzo’s eyes will never leave his newspaper.”

**John:** And let’s take a listen.

**Scene:**

JAKE
Good morning, sir.

A young waitress pours Jake coffee, offers a menu. Jake waves it away.

JAKE
I’m okay, ma’am. Thank you.

ALONZO
Have some chow before we hit the office. Go ahead. It’s my dollar.

JAKE
No, thank you, sir. I ate.

ALONZO
Fine. Don’t.

Alonzo turns the page. A long beat. Then:

JAKE
It’s nice here.

ALONZO
May I read my paper?

JAKE
I’m sorry, sir… I’ll get some food.

ALONZO
No. You won’t. You fucked that up. Please. I’m reading. Shut up.

Jake does — Jeeez, sorry. Pours a ton of sugar in his coffee.

TIME CUT TO:

INT. COFFEE SHOP – DAY

The waitress pours refills. Alonzo reads. Jake fidgets.

JAKE
Sure wouldn’t mind not roasting in a hot black and white all summer.

Alonzo sighs, carefully folds his paper. Glares at Jake.

ALONZO
Tell me a story, Hoyt.

JAKE
My story?

ALONZO
Not your story. A story. You can’t keep your mouth shut long enough to let me finish my paper. So tell me a story.

JAKE
I don’t think I know any stories.

Alonzo waves the paper in Jake’s face.

ALONZO
This is a newspaper. And I know it’s ninety percent bullshit but it’s entertaining. That’s why I read it. Because it entertains me. If you won’t let me read my paper, then entertain me with your bullshit. Tell me a story.

**John:** This is a fantastic scene. I remember loving the scene when I first saw the movie. This is establishing the dynamic between these two characters. This is like the Miranda/Anne Hathaway relationship in that the nature of their relationship is going to be the entire movie. And this establishes it so well.

**Craig:** It does. And the story he goes on to tell also helps quite a bit. Indeed. We, I think, have all had an experience where we’ve met somebody that puts us on our heels permanently. Because not only are they aggressive and preternaturally in control of themselves it seems, but they are bizarrely unpredictable. They feel dangerous to us. And you try and catch up to them. You try and get into their good graces. You try and match them and their tone. You try and figure out exactly what wave length you’re supposed to operate on with this person until eventually you find out you can’t. That’s never going to happen.

And what’s interesting to me about this first day scene is that Denzel Washington’s character puts Ethan Hawke back on his heels really, really hard. Really, really aggressively. And Jake, Ethan Hawke’s character, goes ahead and does as he’s ordered. He starts to tell a story. And this guy keeps interrupting him, and he’s doing it in a way that is, again, dangerous. Until Jake finally starts telling the story kind of the right way.

You can see Ethan Hawke trying to tell it in a way that would entertain Alonzo, because that’s what Alonzo has demanded. Entertainment. And he does and Alonzo gets entertained. And Jake feels really good about it, you know? Until Alonzo smashes him down again. Verbally, of course, in this instance. You get everything you need to know in this first day on the job scene. This is not a scene where you are trying to catch up with somebody who is going to teach you lessons. This is not a scene where a large business is overwhelming to you. This is a scene where you’re meeting a dangerous person, and you’re trying your best and using all of your skills to make it work and none of them are working at all.

**John:** Absolutely. So, in contrast to all these other scenes, we’re not going into the classic workplace, except that the workplace of these two characters is going to be just them together in a car, in a place. We’re not going to be in sort of the bullpens. It’s not that kind of movie. And so the workplace of this movie is going to be wherever the two of them are. And so it’s a really good way of establishing what the dynamics are going to be there and telegraphing what to watch out for.

I think what’s so great about how Denzel Washington’s character is playing through this moment is he’s not boxing, it’s more like a kind of Aikido or a Judo where he’s just continually knocking Ethan Hawke’s character off balance. And so that he can’t sort of figure out what he should say or do next. And it his desperation to figure out what to do next that can sort of compromise him.

It’s just ingeniously set up.

**Craig:** Yeah. And the rhythm that this establishes will repeat over and over and over. And you realize that the only way that this rhythm will ever break is if Jake breaks, essentially. And the movie itself, I mean, I love Training Day in part because, for a movie with a lot of action and a lot of plot, honestly — there’s a big kind of, well, you know, internal affairs-y sort of conspiracy going on and you’re meeting characters and people are getting double crossed and all the rest of it, but it is a movie about these conversations. It really is. And obviously those of us who have seen the movie, we all understand the metaphor here of what the training is exactly meant to be.

But this scene is a good example of when you and I talk about a little seed, you know, our first three pages. This is a great little seed. All of the stuff that is going to happen in this movie is essentially all packed into this one scene. So that’s another great way to make use of these first day on the job scenes is by giving them double duty. It’s first day on the job and it is the thematic and character DNA for the whole film.

**John:** Absolutely. Some other choices that were suggested for these scenes included Swimming with Sharks, The Sound of Music, Hot Fuzz, 9 to 5, Men in Black, Mr. Mom, Tootsie, Soapdish. There’s a whole wide range. And so in picking these four movies we didn’t necessarily pick the best scenes, but the ones that I thought could show us a good contrast between the kinds of things that happen in your first day on the job scenes.

So, this was fun. I enjoyed doing this as a new segment. If you have an idea for a future installment of This Kind of Scene, let us know and we’ll try to do this in the future.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know what? We can do whatever we want.

**John:** Yes. But we like your suggestions.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I mean, well, you do. I just like doing whatever I want. Here’s the sad truth: I say that, and then I just do whatever you want. So really that’s what it comes down to. Do you want their suggestions? You get them. I do what you want. And here we are.

**John:** And this is how it all happens.

**Craig:** This is how it all happens, folks.

**John:** We have two listener questions we’re going to try to hit. So, first off, we have John who wrote in a question regarding how to write for an increasingly international market. Let’s take a listen.

John Listener: Do you think that the international audience has become significantly more important to the studios than the domestic audience? And if so, when you guys are working on studio projects how do you keep in mind the international audience? Do you try to limit dialogue, for example? Add more action? Add more CGI? Or do you not really worry about that?

How do you make your projects, you know, feel like they’re not pandering? Lately it seems like a couple films have been pandering to Chinese audiences, for example, and it sort of backfired. And the Chinese audiences rejected them knowing that they were being pandered to. So, how do you avoid situations like that?

What do you think we can expect, basically, going forward in movies and how can we train ourselves to be thinking about international audiences? Does it start at the concept phase? Should we come up with stories that are less regionalistic, for example? Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

**John:** So, Craig, what John’s referring to is there have been some movies that definitely steered things in a certain way so they could either capitalize on Chinese dollars or avoid angering Chinese audiences or Chinese censors. Basically, it could be very hard to get your movie to play in China if China doesn’t want your movie to play there. So, there have been movies that have been nipped and tucked in order to play in China. And movies that have included a scene of characters drinking a Chinese product because it was important.

But, I will say that as a person who writes some big studio movies, it’s never come up for me that I needed to be writing something specifically different for China. Have you felt this?

**Craig:** No. I haven’t. But I suspect that it was probably couched in something else. Sort of the way you give your dog a pill by shoving it in a piece of cheese. We do hear things from studios: casting suggestions, and maybe, oh, we need another action set piece, or something like this or that. The truth is that we are in a strange dance right now with the rest of the world when it comes to our business and how important the international audience is.

For some movies it’s kind of important. For some movies, it’s really, really important. In general, the studios get a much lower percentage of the returns from international box office. But international box office at times dwarfs domestic box office on a movie by movie basis.

I’m thinking for instance of a movie like Warcraft. Warcraft was made by Universal. It starred people speaking English. So it seemingly was intended for a domestic audience. But I suspect it was really largely intended for an international audience, because Warcraft is just so much bigger in Asia than it is here. It used to be pretty big here, but it’s huge still in Asia, and, not surprisingly, Warcraft made a massive amount of money overseas. Far more than it made here. Far more. People think of that movie as a huge bomb. It’s not.

There are, of course, movies that then — and I think John is absolutely right when he points this out — they pander. And that’s horrendous. And hopefully we stop doing that because I don’t think it’s productive. One thing I know for sure is you’re going to be very hard pressed to have a hero in your movie from Tibet. You’re going to be extremely hard pressed to have the villains in your movie be Chinese people. That’s not going to happen. Nor North Koreans. It’s hard for that, too, because again China is incredibly protective of that sort of thing. And they have a strict government control over what gets released and how long it is in theaters.

So, it has been very disruptive to our business, I think. The emergence of this massive new market, and also a lot of capital, has been disruptive. But creatively speaking, I also feel like domestic audiences are moving closer to where international audiences used to be. They just seem mostly interested in spectacle. I think that’s why we are awash in superhero movies and will remain so for some time. They are massive spectacle. And they cross all cultures.

**John:** I would agree with you. I think we would be making those kind of movies regardless, because those movies are incredibly successful in the US. And so you look at how our movies have become sort of bigger and flashier and sometimes dumber when they’re trying to be the giant blockbusters. But we’re also still making really good movies that are intended for a domestic audience that do really well. And so you look at Girls Trip, which was made by Universal, and was incredibly successful. Nowhere in their calculations did they say like, oh, we have to be able to release this movie in China. That just wasn’t sort of on the table for it. And so it’s still very possible to make an incredibly successful movie that is mostly playing in the US. And that’s good. We want to have a range of things being made.

Also, to date, the television that we’re making, some of it goes overseas, but some of it doesn’t go overseas. We’re still able to make television that is appealing to a very American sensibility that’s about sort of America right now. And I think that’s only going to continue.

So, I’m not too pessimistic that we’re going to lose the ability to have a culture of filmmaking that is sort of uniquely looking at American culture because we have that, it’s just sometimes not on the big screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. From a practical point of view, I don’t think there’s much sense in tailoring your writing for some imagined studio executive’s desires. Look, if in your heart what you really want to write is Pacific Rim, well, congrats. Good news. That is the kind of thing that studios probably will look at and go, OK, that feels like it could play really well internationally. And, yeah, that will give you a leg up.

But you have to want to write that. You have to feel that. You can’t calculate these things. If you do, you just end up with a calculated piece of crap. And believe me, we’ve got enough of it. We’ve got enough calculated pieces of crap coming from highly trained professionals. So we don’t need amateur calculated crap. What we need is stuff that feels authentic and passionate.

So, the truth is you kind of have to play the hand you’re dealt by your own passion and your own desire as a writer. And just know that there are still avenues for everybody. There are — good news — far more avenues now than there were five years ago for, for instance, grown up dramas. Because now they don’t necessarily need to exist theatrically. They can exist in a very real way on Netflix or on HBO. So, you’ve got to write what you want to write. Don’t try and game the system. You will lose.

**John:** I agree.

All right, our last question comes from Arvin who writes, “I’ve received notes back on several of my short scripts. One person keeps giving comments back that I am writing a ‘therapy piece’ and I’m putting my own issues into the script and not dramatizing the conflict. What is a therapy piece and how do I avoid writing one?”

**Craig:** Oh, well, I can guess. I mean, it’s not really a common term, meaning I’ve never heard it before.

**John:** I never heard it before either. But I understand what the friend is saying. And to me what the friend is saying is that if feels like you’re writing this to work through some issue that is not necessarily interesting to a reader or potential viewer of this product.

**Craig:** Yeah. So we have all seen scripts that feel like they’re navel-gazing. Somebody is writing a script because the events in their mind and the insights that they are having about circumstances particular to them are occupying their every waking minute. And now they’re putting it into a screenplay. It is a terrible miscalculation to do that because by and by those specific details of your life are remarkably boring to everybody.

There is a reason you have to pay therapists. It’s not just for their expertise. It’s also because nobody else wants to listen to that shit week after week after week. It would be exhausting. Literally exhausting.

We all have our problems. We are all carrying our baggage. And it is fine to be informed by that, or inspired by that, to write something that would be universal for everybody, that would be exciting for everyone.

If you are writing a screenplay to exercise your own personal demons and you’re not doing it couched in a larger story that would play to somebody who has no interest in your personal demons, then yeah, you’re kind of not doing it right. That said, Arvin, one person is saying that. I don’t know what other people are saying. And, you know, there are smaller movies that kind of do this somewhat successfully. I mean, you could argue that a lot of Woody Allen’s films are — I guess you’d call them therapy pieces in a way. But they are done with such wit and intelligence that we are entertained.

**John:** When people make intensely personal movies, that can be a really good thing, as long as that intensely personal thing speaks to a larger universal truth. It gives you an insight to the human condition that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. And so some of our great filmmakers make things that are intensely personal to them and yet we’re able to see through their lens a much broader perspective around us.

Speaking to the sense that this one person has read your script and it feels like you’re just working through your own stuff, you know, you’re not doing the other things well. And so you’re probably having characters speak the kinds of things you wish you could say, and in doing so you’re basically writing yourself into it, but not in a way that is entertaining for everyone else.

You look at Aaron Sorkin, I mean, you could say that most of what Aaron Sorkin writes sort of feels like therapy pieces. It sort of feels like you’re going through a therapy session with him. And yet he has such tremendous mastery of craft that you’re sort of delighted to go through those therapy sessions with him. So, it may just be picking stories that let you examine things that are interesting to you — internally interesting to you — but finding a way to externalize them in a way that they’re interesting to other people as well.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s a term that has become very popularized. Mary Sue. Or Gary Sue. Depending on gender. And the idea there is a writer creates a character that is essentially a stand in for them. And this character is an idealized perfected them. So, whenever something goes wrong, it’s because this character is being unfairly wronged. And they are able to quickly fix the situation and come out on top. And it’s just basically sort of a teenage fantasy version of yourself. It’s an immature, childish expression of kind of an overpowered perfected you, which in and of itself implies a need for actual therapy, which I think is pretty universal and common to all human beings.

I’ll make a suggestion, Arvin. Check out, if you haven’t seen it already, 500 Days of Summer by Neustadter and Weber and directed by Marc Webb. Because it is a therapy piece I think. I think — I think it was based on a relationship that Scott Neustadter actually had. And it is very much that and yet manages to be extraordinarily entertaining and I think provides a kind of universal pep talk for us all.

So, we don’t feel like we’re watching one person getting back at someone or proving to themselves that they’re OK or that they were wronged. We watch someone go through something that we feel we’ve all felt. So, take a look at that and maybe you’ll get some good lessons from that.

**John:** I think that’s a great suggestion. And what’s crucial about 500 Days of Summer is that you see the suffering and you also see the mistakes that the protagonist is making. And so often in the Mary Sue stories or the Marty Stu stories, the character is flawless and therefore uninteresting.

**Craig:** Correct. That kind of is the hallmark — I like Marty Stu. I don’t know why Gary Sue. I saw Gary Sue and I did think like that’s weird, because Sue is still, like no one is named Gary Sue. So Marty Stu. I like that. That’s much better.

**John:** Our friend Julia Turner was talking about that on the Slate Culture Gabfest today and they were talking through fan fiction and the prevalence of the Mary Sue and the Marty Stu character in fan fiction.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s definitely out there.

**John:** It’s out there. All right, it is time for our One Cool Things. Craig, I am so fascinated by what you put on the outline that I want you to talk me through it.

**Craig:** Well, this is the most — it’s just bizarre. So, George Plimpton, you know, George Plimpton knows — I don’t even know why George Plimpton is famous. I’ve got to be honest with you. I never quite got it. He was — I think he wrote some books about sports and —

**John:** But he was mostly a talk show guest is what I think of him.

**Craig:** Yeah. He was famous for being famous and for having that incredibly patrician American accent. And then he was also famous, I think, for people of my generation because he was the guy that advertised I think in television or something like that. But anyway George Plimpton was also quite rich apparently. And he purchased a 3,700-year-old tablet from the ancient civilization of Babylon. You know, and they had this cuneiform, we all learned that in school, their manner of writing which was these little wedge shapes in clay. And then eventually the tablet was gifted to some academics.

So, a guy named Dr. Daniel Mansfield, along with his team at the University of New South Wales in Australia, took a close look at this tablet. Everybody knew that it was basically mathematical in nature. What they figured out, in fact, is that it was a tool — it was essentially like a times table, except it was a trigonometric table to calculate right triangles at different sizes.

And what’s fascinating about it is it is actually a more advanced trigonometric system than the one the Greeks figured out 1,500 years later which we are still using today. So, our system of trigonometry is limited to our number system, which is basically base 10, you know. 1, 10, 100, 1,000.

But the Babylonians were using base 60, like time. So they divided things up into time. Which meant that they could have many more perfect divisions of things as they calculated them and they wouldn’t end up in these weird repeating fractions. Like if you want to take a third of 60, it’s 20. No problem. It’s exact.

You want to take a third of 10, it’s 3.33333 forever. Not as exact. So, really fascinating stuff. And we’ll throw a link here in the show notes. It actually will make sense to you when you read it. It’s not a particularly — you don’t need a math degree to understand this. All you need to know is there is a clay tablet from 3,700 years ago that may change the way we do trigonometry today. And that is awesome.

**John:** That’s very cool. My thing will not change the world, but it was a great observation. So this is a piece by Hana Michels writing for The Cut called Sword Guys are a Thing and I’ve had Sex with All of Them. And she talks through Sword Guys.

And Sword Guys are guys who own swords. And she really finds this sort of subculture of men who buy swords. Asian swords or other swords. And prop swords. Some are cos players, but many of them aren’t. And there’s just a very unique kind of man she’s describing as the man who owns a sword.

And she likens it to cat ladies, in the sense of like we have an idea of what a cat lady is and all the stereotypes about them, and you can kind of do the same things with any man who owns a sword. And so her piece I just thought was delightful, so I would recommend them.

It very much feels like the kind of observation you could see in a movie and say like, oh, wow, I totally get it because that guy has a sword hanging above his fireplace. It’s just very true.

**Craig:** I read this and I thought it was terrific but I didn’t think it was real. It seems not real. This is real?

**John:** Oh, this is real.

**Craig:** Are you sure?

**John:** I am going to bet $5.

**Craig:** Ok, because here’s the thing. Sword guys are real. There’s no question about that. I have sex with all of the sword guys feels made up to me. That’s not a thing. I just don’t believe that.

**John:** Well, I think I have sex with all the sword guys is the exaggeration of what it is like to be in a part of that piece of culture. Basically she’s saying I am the kind of girl who ends up having sex with the sword guys.

**Craig:** OK. I can see that. I don’t know. At some point while I was reading it I thought this is a master work of comic fiction. But if it’s real than I just am a bit confused, to be honest with you. Then I’m confused because the article seems to be both acknowledging and embracing what is — it seems to be painting this as a sort of pathetic pursuit and then also really appreciating it. I’m confused.

**John:** Yeah. So, you know, I think it would be delightful if I was confused and took this piece of fiction as a real fact. But I’m pretty sure that this is more on the order of a Modern Love kind of column in the Times where it’s like this is kind of a real thing. And so it’s a well-told version of the real situation.

**Craig:** I mean, she is a comedian.

**John:** She’s a comedian. Yeah. So like all comedians, there’s going to be exaggeration and things twisted around to make the joke better. But it feels real to me.

**Craig:** You know, she also wrote something called My Imaginary Boyfriend, Josh. I don’t know man. This can’t be real. Well, we’ll find out.

**John:** We’ll find out.

All right, that is our show for this week. So, our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. Edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Rajesh Naroth. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For shorter questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

We are on Facebook. Just search for Scriptnotes. You can search for Scriptnotes on Apple Podcasts and add us and subscribe and leave us a review. That is so nice and helpful when you do that. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. Go there. You can download the PDFs of the full screenplays for all these things, but also the individual scenes that we talked through.

That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. So Megan gets them about four or five days after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. We also have a USB drive with the first 300 episodes available at store.johnaugust.com. Craig, thanks for a fun new segment.

**Craig:** John, thank you as always for being a podcast innovator.

**John:** Ah, we do our best. And I’ll see you next week.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [The Academy Nicholl Fellowships](http://www.oscars.org/nicholl)
* The Hudsucker Proxy [on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hudsucker_Proxy) and [the full script](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Hudsucker_Proxy.pdf).
* [Our scene in The Hudsucker Proxy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv33SsGHYHo), and [in the script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/HUDSUCKER_PROXY_Orientation.pdf)
* The Devil Wears Prada on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_Wears_Prada_(film)), and [the full script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/DEVIL_WEARS_PRADA_Full_Script.pdf).
* [Our first scene in The Devil Wears Prada](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=t4isatjZ0BM), and [in the script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/DEVIL_WEARS_Andy_Interview.pdf)
* [Our second scene in The Devil Wears Prada](https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_9506656686&feature=iv-UoUErzCSSctn&src_vid=b2f2Kqt_KcE&v=Ja2fgquYTCg), and [in the script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/DEVIL_WEARS_Miranda_Monologue.pdf)
* Hidden Figures on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures), and [the full script](https://s3.foxmovies.com/foxmovies/production/films/123/assets/hidden_figures_screenplay.pdf-5183735384.pdf).
* [Our scene from Hidden Figures](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syZeizyYNUs&app=desktop), and [in the script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/HIDDEN_FIGURES_New_Computer.pdf).
* Training Day on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training_Day), and [the full script](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Training_Day.pdf).
* [Our scene from Training Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3myRRZkErs), and [in the script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/TRAINING_DAY_Coffee_Shop.pdf).
* [Sword Guys Are a Thing and I’ve Had Sex With All of Them](https://www.thecut.com/2017/08/sword-guys-are-a-thing-and-ive-had-sex-with-all-of-them.html) by Hana Michels for The Cut
* [3,700-Year-Old Babylonian Stone Tablet Gets Translated, Changes History](http://www.distractify.com/omg/2017/08/28/13BnNP/babylonian-stone-tablet) by Collin Gosell for Distractify
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rajesh Naroth ([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_317.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/distracted-boyfriend-is-all-of-us).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 316 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast, it’s another round of How Would This Be a Movie. This time we’ll be looking at stories from Arkansas, to Copenhagen, to WWII Paris. Trying to figure out which ones might lend themselves to the big screen treatment.

**Craig:** Excellent, but first, before we get to any of that, little business, John.

**John:** All right. Do the business.

**Craig:** The business of democracy, my friend. Right now elections are going on for the Writers Guild of America West and presumably the Writers Guild of America East. Although as you know, I think there should just be one Writers Guild of America.

**John:** But that’s not a thing you can vote on in this election.

**Craig:** It’s not. But what you can vote on are the officers and board of directors for the Writers Guild of America West, if you are a member of said union. And one of the people running is my co-host today and always, John August. I personally have voted for you, John.

**John:** Oh, thank you very much.

**Craig:** I’ve already voted. I voted for you. And I think everyone should vote for you, personally. There are a couple different ways to vote. We have electronic voting and we have regular old paper ballot voting. Paper ballots should have arrived in your mailbox by now. Generally speaking, those of us who live up closer to Pasadena get them later, you know, maybe a day later than everybody else. So, they should be in everybody’s mailbox by now. And also you can vote online, which is super convenient.

A brief reminder. For those of you who are strategy-minded about how to vote. We elect eight candidates to the board in any given cycle. I believe in this cycle one of the current board members is also running for an officer position, which means that the ninth vote getter would then also be taken in and appointed to fill her seat for the remainder of her term. You don’t have to vote for eight people. So there’s, again, for those of you who are strategy-minded, there’s something called bulleting your vote. And the idea is basically let’s say I really want John August to be on the board, which is true. One thing I could do is I could vote for eight people and include him among them. Makes sense.

I could also just vote for him. And what bulleting does is it strengthens your vote for whom you want, because you are not voting for somebody that he is also running against. So, the downside for bulleting your vote is that, well, you’re choosing fewer people and you’re gaming the system a little bit.

So, I tend to vote for about four or five candidates. That’s usually my move. I feel like, OK, I’m doing a pretty decent job here. I’m being democratic. But, I’m also giving a little extra **oomph** to the people I really like. So, we’ve discussed who we like, don’t we?

**John:** I think we have. So, there are people who are running who are from various backgrounds. We are electing probably nine people of the 12 candidates running. In general, in past years, we’ve said we want a mix of different voices and different backgrounds to make sure we have feature writers and TV writers represented. There are certainly plenty of TV writers already on the board and folks who are running who are TV writers as well.

So, a mix would be great.

**Craig:** Yeah. For sure.

**John:** The other thing I’ll say is that you would have gotten a paper ballot in the mail by now, but you can also vote electronically. If you look through your spam filter, it sometimes gets caught in that, but it’s from Votenet.com is where the ballot for online voting would be found.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s exactly right. So please do vote, and vote for John August. He’s not allowed to say that, I don’t think. But I am allowed to say it over and over and over. Because I am protected.

**John:** All right. And voting concludes September 18, which is a Monday, but there’s no reason to wait till September 18.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** You should vote now.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Pause the podcast to vote now.

**Craig:** Just do it.

**John:** Do it. Other bit of news is my news. Big Fish in London is happening. And so it runs from November 1 through December 31. So, if you are in London or you will find yourself in London during that period, come see the show, because I think it will be really good. It’s a different version than we’ve done anywhere else. This version stars Kelsey Grammer. And there will be a link in the show notes to where you can buy tickets.

It’s selling really, really well, which is fantastic. So, if you’re thinking about getting tickets, maybe don’t think about it too long. Maybe just get some tickets because the page I’ll send you to shows the relative availability of different dates and many dates are not that available.

**Craig:** May I ask you a question, sir?

**John:** Please.

**Craig:** As an early viewer and fan of the first iteration, the Broadway iteration — well, not first iteration, but it’s the one that matters. In the version in London, does it include different or new songs?

**John:** It does include different and new songs. So, structurally it works a lot differently, but yes, it includes different songs, including a song that was in the Chicago version which was not in the Broadway version. It has one entirely new song. It has some songs that have been restructured. And actually I would say most songs have been restructured in some ways because things have moved because of the nature of what we’re doing in this version. And it’s spoiling nothing to say in this version the Edward character, who was played by Norbert Leo Butz fantastically on Broadway, that role is split between two people now, more like how the movie works.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So Kelsey Grammer is playing the real older Edward and a great actor named Jamie Muscato is playing the younger story version of Edward, more like the Ewan McGregor character. And so because of that, the songs work differently because different people are singing them. And it allows for some great possibilities.

**Craig:** That was the second question I was going to ask. And you have answered it in such a way as to satisfy my curiosity.

**John:** Fantastic. Let’s do some follow up. So, last week we talked about MoviePass and we were searching for explanations on how MoviePass actually works and we just couldn’t find them in time. But right after we recorded the episode I found out more information. So, I’m going to link to an article from Gizmodo by Rhett Jones that talks through more of the backstory behind. But a crucial thing which I did not understand as we recorded last week’s episode is that MoviePass actually functions as a MasterCard. And so the reason why they don’t have to have a specific relationship with a theater like AMC is it’s just a credit card. So you just buy it with that credit card and they can refund the whole amount to the user.

So, AMC still gets the full price that they paid on the credit card, but it’s the user who gets that money refunded to their account. So, that is how they get around having any specific relationship with an individual theater.

**Craig:** So, I go into AMC. A ticket costs let’s say $14. I hand them this card. They charge me $14. Then, because I have a $10 a month deal with the MoviePass people, MoviePass — and I’ve already spent my $10 — MoviePass just sends me back $14.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Then how does MoviePass make money? It seems like they’re losing money every time somebody goes to see a movie.

**John:** So that is more of what you can find out in this article. And other people who wrote in. So, specifically one of our listeners, Udhaya, wrote in saying, “There’s one reason the MoviePass idea might work. While it appears not to be a money-maker, the people funding this might work out some kind of special access leverage with buyers of the MoviePass which would allow them to target the market holders of the MoviePass by showing special products to them. Think about it. You have a millennial to Gen-X target audience who go to movies frequently.

“If these MoviePass guys could select custom products and services to them, it’s a fraction of their marketing budget to get out more MoviePass.”

So essentially she’s saying — I don’t know if Udhaya is a man or a woman — is saying that it’s the data that’s actually really helpful for MoviePass, because they get to target people who go to movies very frequently. And by collecting all this up, they can actually do something with it that might be useful.

So, and it turns out that the person who is now the CEO of MoviePass was a Netflix person, so it comes from that sort of data background. It made me a little more — a little bit less skeptical that there’s no way it could work.

**Craig:** I guess. I mean, I guess. Look, I don’t understand how they make money. $14 over and over and over — or $12, or $10 — whatever it is, if the average MoviePass person spends more than $10 in actual ticket prices per month, which I assume they do, and frankly the more they use it, the more expensive it becomes for the MoviePass people. That is the most extraordinary cost of data acquisition I can imagine. Especially because once you have their data, they’re just beating the crap out of you over and over, every time they go to see a movie.

So, I don’t know. I’m missing something clearly.

**John:** What I would say though is that same criticism could be leveled against the original Netflix model and the current Netflix model which is that the people who use it a lot are costing Netflix money. And so the people who were getting those discs, who are like watching one movie by mail every day, they were costing Netflix a lot of money. But it’s the people who, kind of like us, who would get the discs and sort of sit on them and not really get the maximum value out of it, those are the people they make money off of.

So I think they’re anticipating people will sign up for MoviePass, they’ll use it heavily for a while. It will taper down till they get back to sort of more normal movie-going habits. And it will sort itself out. I think that’s the hope.

**Craig:** Well, we’ll certainly find out.

**John:** We will certainly find out. So, it is filed away for a one-year follow up. We’ll see where MoviePass is one year from today.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** All right, it’s time for our feature, How Would This Be a Movie. It’s a periodic look at stories in the news or stories we find other places and we examine them to look at how they could be adapted into movies. Usually we’re talking about big screen movies. Sometimes they’re more like made-for-cable movies. Occasionally we’ll decide that, oh, it’s actually more of a TV series idea, or it’s just a bad idea that should never have been put on the outline for us discuss.

But this week we’re going to actually try to do a bunch of them. Usually we do three. This time we might cram though as many as five. But we’ll be a little bit faster going through them and seeing what are the possibilities, what are the downfalls of this kind of movie.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So the first one is something I put on the list. This is a New York Times story by Sabrina Tavernise. It is also a great episode of The Daily. So she came on to talk through it on the New York Times podcast The Daily. And the stories are very complementary. You know, her written version of the story versus the audio version of the story, they are structured differently, but they tell the same story, which is that one year ago 20-year-old Abraham Davis and some friends in Western Arkansas graffitied a mosque in their town with racial slurs and swastikas.

Abraham Davis was eventually caught because of radio surveillance on the mosque. So while in jail, he was unable to make bail. He wrote this letter apologizing to the leaders of the mosque, who then became kind of his allies. They tried to get his felony charge reduced to misdemeanor, not wanting his life ruined for this one stupid thing he did.

So ultimately the New York Times story sort of frames Davis as both a villain and a victim in this situation that’s really more about — as much about class as race and sort of the consequences of some really bad spontaneous decisions.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, what did you make of this story? As a story and as a potential movie?

**Craig:** Well, as a story it’s heartbreaking because you’re dealing with front line of failing America. There is a broken family with a deceased abusive father. And a mother who cannot make ends meet. They are living in poverty. And as is often the case, into that environment slips drinking and bad thinking. And blame. A search for blame.

And so on the one hand, this is a postmortem of let’s just call this almost a run of the mill kind of racist act. This isn’t the act of a coordinated group like those ding-a-lings in Charlottesville. This is more of the random guys get drunk on a Saturday night and go do something stupid. They act out. But they do so hatefully against the most vulnerable of people, namely outsiders. People that don’t fit into the status quo. And then we dissect why.

And underneath it we find that Abraham doesn’t really know why. And he comes off in his own way as sympathetic, because he feels terrible and he apologizes and he wants to make amends. And the people that he harmed, the members of this mosque, who seem like wonderful people, who have been trying very, very hard to live their lives in a place that is, well, inherently hostile to them, behave in, ironically enough, the most Christian way. And they forgive him and they try and help him.

All of that stuff feels very lovely. As a movie, the problem here is that this is too easy. There’s a wonderful moment in Mississippi Burning where Gene Hackman’s character is explaining how racism actually works to Willem Defoe’s character, because Willem Dafoe is a northern FBI guy. Gene Hackman is an FBI guy from the south.

And Gene Hackman’s own father, I believe, in the story does a terrible thing, a racist thing. And when Gene Hackman is done telling the story, the conclusion is he just couldn’t see — his father couldn’t see — that being poor was what was killing him. And that worked great as an object lesson inside of a movie that was about large historical events, people being murdered, and a courtroom drama. This does not have that, so it’s kind of operating on a simplistic Upworthy-like level.

**John:** Yeah. I can see that. And I think Upworthy is a good comparison to it, because I remember that site, and it would always have these sort of heartwarming stories of like, you know, you sort of won’t believe what happened next. And there’s a generosity of spirit that the leaders of the mosque show towards Abraham that is unexpected because it’s very easy to sympathize with their point of view is that they are sort of frightened to be in this town and suddenly have this spotlight on them because of this act that these guys took.

And the prosecutor in the small town decides to go after them for a felony, partly to make an example of them, to try to keep these things from happening again. And yet the leaders of the mosque really want to see this reduced down to a misdemeanor so this guy’s life isn’t destroyed.

I agree with you that I think what’s missing here is the bigger hook that sort of makes it a full story. This feels like a setup and right now it’s sort of like we’re kind of just floating in the second act. We don’t sort of see what his ultimate transformation is going to be. I’m assuming we’re looking at this from Abraham’s point of view, but we could look at it from other characters’ points of view. But what is the ultimate really outcome? What is the end of this journey? And I just feel like we’re still kind of in the middle of this journey right now.

The inciting incident was this decision to go graffiti this mosque. The surprise turn is that the mosque — not that it’s just that he’s caught, but that the mosque comes to his aid.

But we still don’t have anything to sort of push us towards that third act, much less a third act itself.

**Craig:** Yeah. Look, it is a wonderful story in that it does exemplify what is the best I think of human behavior. But when you tell a story like this, you are immediately in danger. You’re on somewhat thin ice because partly the whole thing feels a little bit like an apologia for a racist. And even if he is not as much a racist as a misguided, poor, impressionable young person, I don’t think too many people are that interested in investing their empathy and sympathy in him, because on the other side you have these poor people that are doing everything right, following all the rules, putting up with every day racism, and then somebody comes along and puts swastikas, oddly enough, on their mosque. It’s not exactly the most historically enlightened racists.

And so really they’re the ones who deserve all the empathy. There is an interesting dramatic debate there between the prosecutor and then the victims, the actual victims, in the mosque. But overall it’s not a movie.

**John:** Yeah. You look at other stories of southern racism and sort of like discovery. You look at To Kill a Mockingbird, and in To Kill a Mockingbird, you know, Harper Lee has made some very specific choices about whose eyes we’re going to see all of this through. And by putting it in Scout Finch’s eyes, we see the whole story. It allows for a kind of simplicity to sort of really take in the whole thing at once, which would be very difficult if we were just seeing it from her father’s point of view, or from any of the sort of damaged parties’ point of view.

So, I don’t think we have a Scout Finch in this story yet. And maybe that is actually the way in is to focus on Abraham’s brother or some other character that lets us sort of take a wider point of view on what’s really going on here.

**Craig:** Yeah. There is a character in here that appears briefly. And, of course, when we talk about these things we don’t mean to be insensitive. The whole point of this is to figure out how it’s a movie. This isn’t a character, it’s a human being, but, in the context of trying to figure out how it’s a movie, there is a character who is Abraham’s friend from high school who is Muslim. And his friend forgives him at the end, and that is certainly an interesting angle because, again, there is something a little sickly underneath all of this which is this weird desire to take the time to understand why this kid did this.

On the one hand, maybe that’s exactly what we need to do because that’s how we pull people away from this stuff. And on the other hand, is that the best use of our empathy right now? It’s a tough one?

**John:** So one last little bit that I want to make sure we didn’t elide from the story is the whole reason why Abraham Davis had to stay in jail is because he couldn’t make the bail. And so it does raise the real issue of sort of cash bail in the US legal system in that if he’d had any more money he wouldn’t have been in jail in the first place.

So, if you were to make this story or some version of this story, I think that’s an interesting detail to make sure you include in there. Because it speaks to the fundamental unfairness of the system as he’s seeing it.

**Craig:** Yeah. And just so people understand how poor Abraham and his family is, the bail was $1,580. And we presume that a bond would have cost a couple hundred bucks or something.

**John:** So in the audio version of the story you get into a little bit more of his family and his stepfather. And both of his parents are on disability. It’s really desperate times there. And so that I think is also part of the story if you’re trying to tell this story on some sort of screen.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Cool. Do you want to set up the next one?

**Craig:** Yeah. Sure. So the next one is sent to us — we were tipped off by Mark Harris. Mark Harris — he’s fancy.

**John:** Yeah. He’s a bona fide journalist there.

**Craig:** He’s a bona fide journalist. And husband of Tony Kushner. Is that right?

**John:** Yeah. That’s absolutely true.

**Craig:** Husband. Tony Kushner who I’m sure — by the way, Mark Harris is listening to this going, “Great, you know, I am my own person. You don’t have to mention the Tony Kushner thing. Do I always have to hear about the Tony Kushner thing?”

Yeah, you kind of do. He’s Tony Kushner. What are you going to do?

Anyway, fantastic story in the New York Times about a woman named Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens, who was a spy in WWII. And the article was spurred by her death at the age of 98. So Jeannie de Clarens was an amateur spy. She spoke fluent German, flawless German, no accent. And during the war, I believe after the Nazis had already occupied France, she became an interpreter in Paris for an association of French businessmen representing their interests as they negotiated with the German occupiers.

And while she was doing that she used all the things that were true about being a woman in the 1940s to get information out of the Germans. Essentially she played dumb. There’s a wonderful line. She said, when she was talking to these Germans, for instance when they spoke of this astounding new weapon that flew over vast distances she would say, “I kept saying what you are telling me cannot be true. I must have said that a hundred times.” And it totally worked.

So she heard all of this stuff and passed it along to the British. And then she was caught. She was actually caught a couple of times, different times, and ended up in a concentration camp. And would not talk about her experience in the concentration camp after. She did however meet her husband, who had also been imprisoned in Buchenwald and Auschwitz. And she didn’t speak much about her wartime exploits.

But it is a remarkable thing that these stories of heroism can just be invisible to us for so long. And then we uncover them, and we just marvel at how everyone, the most unexpected people, suddenly stepped up and put their own lives at risk to do what was right.

And I thought it was fantastic.

**John:** One of the things I liked about it was during the time where she was working, you know, translating for the Germans, she seemed to be complicit with them. She seemed to be sort of on their side. She was certainly helping them to be able to negotiate the occupation of France. And so anybody looking at her — a French person looking at her at the time would see her as an enemy, or see her as a collaborator with the Germans, not knowing that she’s actually working with the secret French intelligence network, the Druids, which is the best name ever.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** To provide information. And she’s providing incredibly detailed information, because she had a near photographic memory. So, she’s asking all these questions, but she’s ultimately convincing them to show her plans to, like, the VI and VIII rockets that could have leveled London. So ultimately it was the information that she passed along allowed for bombing raids that took out sort of key production factories along the way.

So, incredibly important intelligence she was providing, yet at the same time to anybody — any French person watching her would think that she was aiding the enemy, which is a crucial thing about spy life. You don’t know who you can trust and no one is trusting you, which is crucial and difficult.

There were also some really good cinematic moments. There was a moment where she’s just about to get out and she’s caught at the last minute. There were some good near escapes. And I could see it. There was a visual quality to it that I think is important.

**Craig:** And as a character she has all the things you want. Because she is not an ordinary person who just happens to overhear people and so in a sense becomes a hero by luck. She’s a genius. So as you already point out, she has a photographic memory. She performed, this is from the article, “brilliantly at the elite Sciences Po, graduating at the top of her class in 1939.”

This is a very, very smart woman. And yet what do they have her doing in the war? Well, translating for men. Right? And just being kind of secretarial in that regard. And she exploits that.

That is a huge Achilles heel. And in wartime when all of these men are doing everything they can at the highest, most cat and mouse levels, to steal information from each other, they’ve left this massive backdoor open because they don’t know that women are as smart, or smarter, than them.

So, she gathers, for instance, documents regarding the German rocket program into a report called the Wachtel Report. And when this report was looked at by intelligence — there’s an intelligence analyst in London named Reginald V. Jones, which is an incredibly British name. Reginald V. Jones. When Reginald V. Jones saw the Wachtel Report he called it a masterpiece in the history of intelligence gathering. And when he asked who sent the report he was told that the source as only known by the code name Amniarix and that she was one of the most remarkable young women of her generation.

And I think that that was absolutely true.

**John:** So let’s think about this as a movie. So one of the fundamental questions I come up to is what language do you shoot this in? You’re going to make this for an American audience, either French or German is going to be switched into English so that we don’t have to read subtitles the entire time. Would you agree?

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** So, French becomes English and German stays German?

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** All right. And so we’re doing that and so all of the French people are going to be speaking English. I basically get that. Who is our prototype for Jeannie herself? Who do we see in that role? Because it seems like a star role.

**Craig:** For sure. So, she was born in 1919. This is taking place around 1943. So we’re talking about a 24-year-old woman. And she was beautiful. That was part of the deal was that she was kind of notoriously beautiful. So, you know, here we are looking for a beautiful woman in her mid-20s who we also believe is brilliant. There’s that thing behind the eyes that some men and some women have, and some men and some women do not.

**John:** Yeah. That actress can be found. I’m not actually so worried about that, thinking about that age range. I mean, as you get older we have this generation of remarkable talents, the Cate Blanchetts, the Nicole Kidmans. But I think we have a new batch of those who are in their 20s who could do that. A Daisy Ridley. There’s some great British or American actress who I think could do that role brilliantly.

**Craig:** No question. I think that there are quite a few. And the other — you would want, I think, the thing that this article does not give you really is that key relationship. A relationship will emerge eventually. She does meet this man and they get married. But that’s after.

**John:** That’s the end.

**Craig:** Right. So you need that key relationship in the middle. It doesn’t have to be romantic, but it has to be valuable.

**John:** So the obvious choice for that would be her key handler. Whoever with the Druids she’s dealing with that she has to pass along the information to. That feels like a natural choice. But it could also be the main sort of German person she’s talking to who, you know, to the degree to which he’s an enemy but she has to continually manipulate him. And like how much does he know/how much does he not know? That’s always a great tension where like you’re not sure whether he’s on to her or not on to her. That’s always delightful.

**Craig:** I agree. You’d want to personify the enemy in a villain. You want one guy that represents that real threat. But you also need that other relationship to have significance that is beyond the details of the story. Even if it is her handler, there has to be something there between them that’s greasy.

And, again, I don’t think it’s romance. I think it’s guilt. I think it’s honor. I think it’s a question of what to do and what to not do. Cowardice and courage. But it’s got to be sticky. It’s got to be greasy. There has to be conflict between them to make that relationship mean something and in all likelihood when she ends up marrying this other guy, that other person, whoever it is, man or woman, has to be gone. It does seem like the war has to take things from you that matter, you know? And that means people.

**John:** Yeah. It’s delightful if that handler is married. And so every time that he’s off meeting with her it sort of seems like they’re having an affair. So even if there’s not a sexual relationship, there should still be the threat of a relationship there. There’s the possibility there that can never be explored because of the nature of how things are set up. That’s great. That’s the human drama behind the sort of spy drama we’re seeing.

**Craig:** Yeah. You would need to put that together. But I think that there is a possibility here. I think that — I would say if I were at a movie studio I would not do this as a straight biopic. I would —

**John:** No, no.

**Craig:** I would want to use it as inspiration for a fictional narrative.

**John:** Oh, I might use the real story but knowing that you’re going to be inventing some things because there’s just not documentation of certain things. But I think you could use the real story but just not market it as a biopic. Just market it as a great spy thriller that happens to be based on true story.

**Craig:** Yeah. I would go with inspired by. I would have some more license.

**John:** Sounds good. All right, our next one is a very different kind of thing. This is the Distracted Boyfriend meme. So, because we’re an audio podcast I will have to describe it, but once I describe it you’ll say like, oh, that thing I’ve been seeing all over Twitter and I’m really annoyed by.

So, the meme is an image. And the original image stars three people. There are two women and one young man. The young man is walking arm and arm with presumably his girlfriend, who looks over at him horrified because he’s looking back at an attractive woman who is slightly out of focus on the left side of the screen. So it has been dubbed the Distracted Boyfriend meme. And there are a bunch of articles I’ll put in the links of the show notes that talk about the meme and sort of where it came from and sort of how it was used.

Well, I should say that the original image is what I described. The meme became a thing once people started putting labels on the people, sort of identifying the people as ideas, or as types, or as goals. Basically you don’t want the thing that’s on your right arm. You want the thing that’s out of reach back over there. And so sometimes the faces get superimposed, but usually it’s labels.

And I think it was an effective meme that is now burning itself out quite quickly. But I put this on here because I’m curious what kinds of movies you could make out of this meme. So at first I was thinking this is straight ahead what happens when you are the stock photographer who has taken this shot in 2015 and now it has suddenly become a giant meme. Or you’re one of the actor/models in this thing who are suddenly identified with this worldwide phenomenon for something you did in an afternoon three years ago.

But there’s also I think the possibility of, like, what is it about the Distracted Boyfriend meme that feels kind of like all human drama? That you have the one thing, and you’re always looking for that next thing. I feel like so many of our stories that we try to tell on big screens, especially you know our two-hour sort of character dramas are about that guy or about one of those two women.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think there’s a movie, but I do think that there is a good lesson here for screenwriters. And if you were somehow doubting that a picture is worth a thousand words, this one has generated far more than a thousand. And it’s because it’s incredibly extensible. I mean, you look at this and there are a million possible different analogous things that you could put on it, and people are.

And it is because there is a relationship and a conflict. The key to the Distracted Boyfriend meme is the distracted boyfriend’s girlfriend. So the girl that the distracted boyfriend is looking at is unaware. She’s — they’re behind her and she’s walking away. So, to me it’s all about the girlfriend looking at him like, “Ehh, what are you doing?” And that relationship of you’re looking at her because you want something you don’t have, and I’m looking at you because I’ve just realized that you’re gross.

Because there’s this incredible realization on her face that I think is the birth of a revelation. That is a wonderful little bomb that you can set off to make an entire movie out of. But, yeah, no, it’s not an actual movie.

**John:** Yeah. It strikes me that we’ve probably made a hundred times movies from each of those characters’ points of view. So from the girl who has no sense that she is a wrecking ball as she’s walking down the street, where she has such an attraction that everything around her sort of crumbles and she’s blissfully unaware of it. That’s a delightful character sometimes to see.

We make a lot of movies about that guy, the cad. That guy who keeps screwing up but you still love him for some reason. But we’ve definitely made the girlfriend’s movie a bunch of times, who gets betrayed by the guy who thinks that she loves or thinks that she likes. And so sometimes that moment happens on page 10. Sometimes it happens on page 30. Sometimes it’s the strategy of a whole journey and discovery. Sometimes the movie is — realize she originally was the girl in soft focus at the left side of the screen and she’s become the girl on the right side of the screen.

So, those three characters are kind of — I think part of the reasons why this became such a good meme is those characters are really archetypal. It’s an experience we all have seen a hundred times and experienced in our own life.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But it’s not a movie in and of itself.

**Craig:** Nah.

**John:** It is worth clicking through — Martin Belam for The Guardian wrote up a piece about the original photographer. The picture was originally called “Disloyal Man Walking with his Girlfriend and Looking Amazed at Another Seductive Girl.”

**Craig:** That is accurate.

**John:** That’s fantastic. And so it was a stock photo image by a 45-year-old professional photographer, Antonio Guillem, from Barcelona. And he uses those same three models in a bunch of things, so it’s fun to see those same actors in just a bunch of different situations. So it’s fun to click through if you want to see more about that meme and its origins.

**Craig:** The craziest thing is these other things involving those stock photo actors and the craziest one is jealous girlfriend. There’s a sequence of four photos — jealous girlfriend and her husband — it doesn’t seem like the same guy — they’re happily looking at a pregnancy test. She’s pregnant. Then the next photo is she has a baby and she’s feeding it from a bottle. And then the next bottle is looking at a thermometer. The baby is not a baby anymore. She’s like two. And jealous girlfriend, now mother, is staring at a thermometer worried. The last photo is the jealous girlfriend sobbing as she stares at a toddler’s shoe. And it’s clear that the kid died. [laughs] It’s the craziest — I mean, actually this photographer has the ability to reduce narrative down in a way I’ve never experienced before.

I mean, it’s incredible.

**John:** Yep. The other four set of photos shows essentially the same — it’s a flipped version of the same couple looking at a girl who walks past. So, originally he sees the girl walking past, and then it’s like, oh hey, we know that girl. And so they’re friends. And then the two girls are having coffee. The guy is in the background. And then the two girls are kissing.

**Craig:** It’s getting better and better.

**John:** Yeah. So it can work many, many ways.

**Craig:** It can work many, many ways.

**John:** All right. Our next story comes from, there’s a bunch of different things I can send you to. I’ll link to a New York Post article about it. But ultimately a Daily Mail article which is sort of a more extensive follow up.

So what happens is Lisa Theris, she’s 25 years old, and she goes missing in the dense Alabama woods. Search parties with dogs go to look for her, but they never find her. Her family makes pleas for anyone with information.

Investigators then say that Lisa Theris was with two men who burglarized a hunting lodge in the woods. Eventually each man accuses the other one of killing her. Then a month later, almost 30 days later, Lisa Theris emerges from the woods, onto a highway, and is spotted by a motorist. She’s lost 50 pounds. She’s bedraggled. She says she was drinking water out of a brook and eating berries and mushrooms for all these weeks. She has bug bites and scratches. She looks horrible.

And originally the story is built like can you believe this woman somehow survived. It is a miracle. And then the story gets extra complicated. Do we want to jump to the spoiler right now, or do we want to talk about that initial part?

**Craig:** The spoiler is the only reason to do it, so we might as well talk about it, because otherwise it’s like whatever.

**John:** Right from the first time I saw this article and bookmarked it for like we’ve got to talk about this on a segment, there is something that doesn’t add up here. No young woman without any training is surviving for 30 days in the woods. And she wasn’t that far away from places either. So something else major was going on.

I initially suspected, OK, there’s some serious mental illness or something happening here. One of the initial stories said that she was legally blind. I didn’t see that in the follow up stories. But I thought like, you know what, there’s drugs here someplace. And it seems like there probably were some drugs here.

**Craig:** Yeah. Not just drugs. America’s favorite drug. Meth.

**John:** Meth.

**Craig:** Meth. I went into meth forest and I had meth mushrooms. So, Lisa Theris was hanging around with these two guys who were no good. She doesn’t seem to be any good either, to be honest with you. And when I say no good, I mean trouble.

They were talking about robbing a place. They were, it appears, to be completely out of their mind on meth. And she goes wandering off because she’s out of her mind on meth. Here’s the best part. The cops pick up these two guys. And they say what happened. And eventually they confess that they shot her in the head, which they believe they did because they were on meth.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** That’s where this story starts to go to the next level. I don’t think it’s a movie, but it could be an awesome episode of something. Or like even a plot device of something where two characters are absolutely convinced they’ve killed somebody and it turns out that, no, you were just on meth.

**John:** Yeah. So I really want Gillian Flynn to tackle this. Like Gillian Flynn who did Gone Girl. The same way that she was taking some real life events and sort of spinning them into her own fictional fantasy world for Gone Girl, I feel like this had the beginnings of an idea that needed to be further built out. And so you need some characters who actually had a little bit more agency here. Because one of the frustrations is like all three of the people involved here seem to just be idiots. And so you want somebody to be a little bit brighter and have a little bit more forethought.

But then it’s great when people do have some forethought and still get backed into a corner, which is what is so great about Gone Girl is that everyone ends up being sort of trapped by their own egos and their own devices. There’s something here that could be great, but it just needs a lot of extra stuff to sort of shape it and fill it out.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s kind of silly. Because in the end no one dies. No one is hurt. No one even gets burglarized. It’s just three knuckleheads losing their minds on meth. For those of you who might be thinking about trying meth, we don’t think you should. You shouldn’t do it.

**John:** I would think we can come down pretty strongly on that actually. Because we don’t want to tell you how to live your life, but I think we can say that meth is not good.

I don’t know a lot of tremendously successful people who are heavy meth users.

**Craig:** I actually don’t know any of them. We won’t tell you how to live your life, but we will tell you how not to not live your life. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] We can only offer, like, cautionary tales of things. And this would be a cautionary tale.

Ultimately what I think is appealing about this story is the sudden twists. So like a girl goes missing. That’s heartbreaking, but we’ve seen that before. Oh, these guys confess to killing her, but they don’t know where the body is. Oh, that’s a good twist. Oh, she stumbles out of the woods. Well that’s great. And so then like well what happens. And what we’re lacking right now is a “What happened?”

So we’re somewhere in the second act and there’s nothing — it’s not clear that there’s enough machinery built up to carry us through a second and a third act.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Agreed. Let’s go on to Copenhagen. Do you want to try to set this one up?

**Craig:** Copenhagen. Oh boy. This is a weird one. So, in Denmark they found a woman’s torso, without a head, arms, or legs. In the water. What happened here?

Well, [laughs] it’s just too weird to be true, but it’s true. A famous Danish inventor by the name of Peter Madsen had built a homemade submarine. And he took a journalist out on a little submarine ride because she was, I believe, writing a story about his submarine. Her name was Kim Wall. She ends up dead. Initially when she went missing he said that there had been an accident on board, which had caused her death, and that he had gone ahead and just buried her at sea.

And that already was not good. But when the body turned up missing a head and arms and legs, it does seem like maybe he didn’t just bury her at sea. That maybe she didn’t just have an accident. And so right now we’re kind of in the middle of this crazy case where this third rate Elon Musk has apparently pulled some Silence of the Lambs crap on his own submarine.

What? John, help.

**John:** So here’s what we have. We have a fantastic setting. It’s Denmark and it’s a homemade submarine. And you have this guy who aspires to be Elon Musk, or a Richard Branson. And he’s convinced this journalist, or maybe she sought out this interview, to go on this homemade submarine with him. And she’s an accomplished journalist herself. She’s Swedish. That’s all really interesting.

And then she dies. What’s tough, though, is to figure out where do you start the story. Do you start the story before this murder happens? Do you start the story with the body washing up? And who are the principal characters other than this guy? And are we following it all from his point of view? Because there’s definitely a dark, dark movie where you’re basically with him this entire time, sort of watching things go awry. But there’s also probably a Fargo-ish version where we have multiple point of views and particularly some law enforcement person who is pushing into the crazy here, to just help — he is thrown into this.

Again, we don’t have enough beats here yet. There’s not enough story here yet. So we have a really compelling world. A compelling central character. We’re not sure we’d follow him as a dark protagonist or as the Hannibal Lecter of the story. But we don’t have really an engine.

**Craig:** I agree. I think that there are quite a few, maybe one could argue too many at this point, television series that center around a single murder, an unexpected murder in a quiet place. A number of these series, in fact, are Danish and Swedish. And you could see this being episode one of an eight-episode series, trying to figure out how someone ended up armless and headless and legless after taking a submarine ride. So there’s certainly the potential for a good mystery here.

But I don’t think it’s at all a movie. It does sort of inspire, though, an idea for a movie.

**John:** Tell me.

**Craig:** A serial killer on a submarine. Like a real submarine.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** It’s like a locked-room mystery. So people just keep turning up dead on a submarine and you’re the guy in charge of figuring out who did it. That’s kind of cool.

**John:** Oh, OK, great. I was hearing that a completely different way. So you’re describing that it’s Murder on the Orient Express but you’re on a submarine?

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** But it keeps happening. Like Murder on the Orient Express, one person is murdered. So in this one — this is more like And Then There Were None on a submarine.

**John:** I originally thought you were describing a serial killer who like got into places on a submarine. Basically that’s why no one could ever detect him. Because he was coming in on a personal submarine.

**Craig:** That would be cool.

**John:** That would be kind of cool.

**Craig:** And weird.

**John:** And weird.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right. Let’s get to our final one. This is a much kind of looser idea for a story. I guarantee you there’s not a movie about specifically this, but I thought it was an interesting framework for sort of a thing that feels old fashioned yet still apparently exists.

So, this is a story in Fast Company written by John Paul Titlow. And he follows Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer who are starting an online business. And they’re able to do everything great. Things are set up and working well, but what they find, or at least what they suspect, is that sometimes their vendors or other people they’re dealing with are dismissing them, and they think it’s because they’re women.

So they create a fake male cofounder and start using his name on the emails going out. And they find a very different reaction when the email comes from a man’s name rather than a woman’s name. So it basically tracks what it’s like to create a fictitious guy in the company that’s actually run by two women.

**Craig:** I actually think that there is a movie in this.

**John:** Tell me about it.

**Craig:** Well, there is a long tradition in comedies, and I think it would be a comedy with an edge and purpose, of characters creating a lie, losing control of the lie, having to face the consequences of the lie. Usually the point of that is you shouldn’t have lied. And in this one the point can be, oh, you shouldn’t have had to have lied. And there is a possibility of two women creating this man and suddenly encountering all this success and having to farcically keep up the man and his presence and send him into meetings and all the rest of it. It’s a bit like Cyrano de Bergerac but for business. And instead of trying to win over the heart of a woman, you’re trying win over the heart of a VC guy. So you’re sending in some dopey guy who — essentially you hire a bro.

You hire a tech bro to be the face of your company and the entire thing is essentially a satire on sexist Silicon Valley. And then it all comes crumbling down. I think there’s potential for a funny movie there.

**John:** I agree. So, part of what they’re describing here is essentially the premise of Remington Steele. So that was a great detective drama that I loved, or detective comedy that I loved, in the ë80s, starring Stephanie Zimbalist and Pierce Brosnan.

And so Stephanie Zimbalist’s character was a private investigator and no one would take her seriously so she created Remington Steele who would be the man runs the agency, but he was always off on business. Pierce Brosnan shows up as somebody asking for Remington Steele, basically realizes that there’s no real person, and basically fills that spot. And so the tension is between them and this guy who shows up. So that’s certainly a possibility.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend also had a plot line where Rebecca had basically created a fake boyfriend based on this guy on Facebook. But that guy turned out to be her own stalker. And so he shows up and hilarity ensues.

So, there’s definitely a great tradition of that where you’ve started a lie and the lie just keeps spinning out of control. And you’ve lost the ability to sort of manipulate it, but that’s part of the fun of that.

So, I agree some person occupying the spot of that guy ultimately is what’s going to have to happen.

**Craig:** It does seem like that. Who, by the way, is in the great pantheon of culture — who is your favorite fake boyfriend?

**John:** Do I have a favorite fake boyfriend?

**Craig:** Because there is an answer.

**John:** What is the greatest fake boyfriend?

**Craig:** George Glass.

**John:** What is George Glass from? Is that from Not Another Teen Movie?

**Craig:** No. He is from The Brady Bunch.

**John:** Oh my god. The Brady Bunch. Of course.

**Craig:** Jan invented George Glass because Marcia was making fun of her for not having a boyfriend. George Glass.

**John:** George Glass is great.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So I think there could be some movie there and, again, the casting of these two women is so fundamental because their basic chemistry is going to have to be driving a lot of this. And then you add the third element of whoever this guy is who fills that spot. And some good stuff could happen. You could have the tension between the two women. You have the tension between the two women and this guy. The outsiders. It’s a good way of sort of framing the craziness of Silicon Valley or VC culture. So I can see all of that stuff happening.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think somebody should do this.

**John:** All right. Maybe someone will do this. So, I want to thank Andrew Ellard who pointed us towards this article. And we also had a bunch of readers who pointed us to other articles that we talked about today. Like nine people pointed me to the submarine thing, so thank you for that. Again, you guys continue to be the best people.

Craig, of all the movies we talked through today, you think this one could be a movie and probably the spy story could be a movie?

**Craig:** That’s right. That’s where I’m coming down, John.

**John:** All right. I think those are good choices. But I would say I wouldn’t be surprised if people keep digging around about the meth story and even this New York Times story, which got a lot of attention, there’s something appealing about the worlds in which they’re set. There’s just not enough story here quite yet for either of those other two stories.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Agreed. Craig, it is time for our One Cool Things. Do you have a One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** I do. I do. Today’s One Cool Thing is something that was a cool thing in my life years ago and is about to become a slightly larger cool thing again. The Lego Company is putting out a new Millennium Falcon model. So, the last time, and this is the big one, right. So there was a big one back in the day that I built. It was 5,000 plus pieces. 5,195 pieces. And I built it, John. I built it. It was enormous. And it took me a long time as you can imagine.

**John:** Well, when you say a long time, it was weeks or days?

**Craig:** Weeks. Weeks.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, it had to. 5,195 pieces is more than you think it is. It’s so many and a lot of them are tiny, tiny, and you’ve got to find — and the instruction booklet is like a phonebook. So, I built it. I built it. And then over time I actually gave it away to one of my son’s friends, so he has it now.

But they’re reissuing — not reissuing — they’ve created a new one. The new ultimate collector series Millennium Falcon. It’s going to have 7,541 pieces. And it looks so good. And I’m going to buy it. And I’m going to build it. Yeah. I’m going to do it, John.

**John:** So, where will you put the Millennium Falcon when you’re done with it?

**Craig:** That’s a great question. I’ve been thinking about that. I think I’m going to put it in my office. But I’ve got to find a real good spot for it. It’s heavy. I want to build it where I’m going to be, because transporting it is a huge pain in the ass.

**John:** Yeah. So and will you hang it some way, or will it be a pedestal? I suspect there will be a whole aftermarket for like custom pedestals for the Millennium Falcon.

**Craig:** I’m just going to put it on top of something. I’m not going to — hanging it would be very difficult. It is heavy. I can’t remember what the actual weight was of the first one. But it was probably 30 pounds, 40 pounds. I mean, it was really heavy.

And this one, one of the cool things about this one, just to get super dorky, is that they’re giving you a choice. As you build it, you can build it to be a replica of the original Millennium Falcon, or you can build it to include some little tweakies that have since come aboard the version that is in 7, 8, and 9.

**John:** Nice. Cool.

**Craig:** So I can build the Rian Falcon or the non-Rian Falcon.

**John:** That’s awesome. And so one kit will be able to build both, or you have to buy the special kit?

**Craig:** No, one kit will build both. There aren’t that many differences, so they’re able to do that.

**John:** Really nice. Cool. Maybe you could get Rian Johnson to sign your Millennium Falcon.

**Craig:** Ooh, I’m gonna. What a great idea.

**John:** I have good ideas every once and a while. My One Cool Thing is a website called the Living New Deal. And it’s basically a giant Google Map that shows little pins for all of the New Deal projects built across the United States. So, for people who don’t know US history, during the Great Depression there was an act called The New Deal which was to build a bunch of things across the country to basically put people back to work. So, there were major engineering projects, bridges, dams. But also a lot of artistic projects, so like a lot of artisans were put to work building murals and other sort of works around.

And you look at this map and it looks like some horrible outbreak has happened in the US, but it’s all like cool stuff that was built. So you can zoom in, or you can even type in your zip code and see what’s around you that was built as part of the New Deal. And I lost a lot of time just clicking through and seeing stuff because it’s really an impressive achievement of what an organized spending plan can do to create cool things in the world and keep people working.

So, particularly our national parks. That’s one of the great achievements of the New Deal was really building the infrastructure for our national parks system which is still amazing.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is a great map. I know that some people feel like government doesn’t do anything, but when you look at this it is astonishing.

**John:** Yeah. And over a period of — the New Deal lasted eight years I would say, max. I don’t really know. I don’t know the outer boundaries of the New Deal.

**Craig:** Roughly. Yeah.

**John:** But it was making stuff. And it’s cool when people make stuff. And it’s cool that so much of that stuff is still around because you get to see it. And even in Los Angeles, you know, you kind of can’t go too far without encountering a grade school that has a mural from the New Deal, or our public libraries. So, check it out.

**Craig:** Yeah. There was a time when this country actually functioned.

**John:** Remember that? All right, that is our show for this week. So, final reminders. You should vote in the WGA elections because it’s important to vote and set a course for the next two years of the WGA. And buy Big Fish tickets in London if you are going to be in London because it will be a fun show and I’d love to see you.

Our show is produced by Carlton Mittagakus. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Jonathan Mann.

**Craig:** Oh, I like Jonathan Mann.

**John:** And Craig will especially like this one, because Craig is all over this outro.

**Craig:** Well, you know. I’m pretty useful for outros.

**John:** If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you send longer questions, but short questions are great on Twitter. I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. On Facebook, look for us at Scriptnotes Podcast. And look for us on Apple Podcasts to subscribe. While you’re there, leave us a review. That’s always helpful. Thank you for people who do that.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts. Transcripts have been a little bit slower, so it’s about a week after the episode goes up that we have the full transcripts. But it’s nice. It’s searchable.

You can find the back episodes of this show at Scriptnotes.net or on the USB drive. Just go to store.johnaugust.com.

Craig, have a fun week.

**Craig:** You too. And I’ll see you soon.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Cast your ballot in the WGAw Officers and Board of Directors election](https://eballotuv.votenet.com/wgawest/login.cfm)
* [Get your tickets now](https://www.theotherpalace.co.uk/whats-on/big-fish-the-musical/booking) for this November and December’s London run of Big Fish: The Musical
* Gizmodo on [Why MoviePass’s Crazy Cheap Subscription Just Might Work](https://gizmodo.com/why-moviepasss-crazy-cheap-subscription-just-might-work-1798635276)
* Abraham Davis’s story on [The Daily](https://www.nytimes.com/podcasts/the-daily?mcubz=1) and in [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/26/us/fort-smith-arkansas-mosque-vandalism-and-forgiveness.html?mcubz=1&_r=0)
* William Grimes on [Jeannie Rousseau de Clarens](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/europe/jeannie-rousseau-de-clarens-dead-french-spy-in-world-war-ii.html?referer=https://t.co/79fyyCiWZo?amp=1)
* The Distracted Boyfriend Meme in [Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/distracted-boyfriend-meme-photographer-interview), [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/aug/30/the-team-that-made-the-distracted-boyfriend-meme-have-split-up), [Vox](https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/8/25/16200526/distracted-boyfriend-other-woman-stock-photo-meme), [Business Insider](http://www.businessinsider.com/distracted-boyfriend-meme-interview-with-couple-2017-8) and [the “movie trailer” from Vulture](http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/watch-the-trailer-for-distracted-boyfriend-meme-the-movie.html)
* The New York Post on [the woman lost in woods who survived on ‘berries and mushrooms’ for a month](http://nypost.com/2017/08/15/woman-lost-in-woods-survived-on-berries-and-mushrooms-for-a-month/amp/), and follow up from [The Sacramento Bee](http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article168855082.html) and [The Daily Mail](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4810060/Cops-Woman-month-woods-high-meth.html)
* [Famed Inventor Says He Buried Reporter ‘At Sea’ After His Homemade Sub Sank](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/21/545029872/famed-inventor-says-he-buried-reporter-at-sea-after-his-homemade-sub-sank?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews) on NPR
* Fast Company on [Witchsy’s two female founders and their fake male cofounder](https://www.fastcompany.com/40456604/these-women-entrepreneurs-created-a-fake-male-cofounder-to-dodge-startup-sexism)
* [The new 7,541-piece Lego Millennium Falcon is the biggest and most expensive set ever](https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/31/16234244/lego-star-wars-millennium-falcon-set-7541-pieces-800-dollars)
* [The Living New Deal map](https://livingnewdeal.org/map/)
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Jonathan Mann ([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_316.mp3).