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

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

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

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

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Nice.

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

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

**John:** Nope.

**Craig:** Still shooting.

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

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

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

**Craig:** Shall we?

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

**Craig:** What?

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

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

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

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

**John:** Nailing it.

**Craig:** But we have more.

**John:** We have more.

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

And also its untitled sequel: Infinity Plus One War.

**John:** More than Infinity.

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

It’s an impressive group.

**John:** It’s a really good group.

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

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We’re saving lives. Right?

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

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

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

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

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

**Jonah Nolan:** The Raj.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Got it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Stephen:** It rewards investment.

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

**Jonah:** That’s a good idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** It was really good.

**Craig:** You can imagine it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Jonah:** Oh dear.

**Craig:** Because I got so excited–

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

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

**Jonah:** Julian Jaynes?

**Craig:** Julian Jaynes.

**Jonah:** Come on, really?

**Craig:** Julian Jaynes.

**Jonah:** Is he cool?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Exactly.

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

**Craig:** Oh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** I love it.

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

**Craig:** Good.

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

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

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

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

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

**Christopher:** Ah, death.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Jonah:** Yeah.

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

**Christopher:** I don’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** What a terrible feeling.

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

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

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

**Craig:** Nah.

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Just in case.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Christopher:** Exactly.

**John:** He’s Homer Simpson.

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

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

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

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

**Christopher:** It’s a fake one.

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

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

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

**John:** Absolutely.

Male Voice: Our assistant Joey eventually did it.

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

Male Voice: Yeah. Joey crushed it.

**Craig:** Yeah, Joey.

**Christopher:** He’s trustworthy.

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

**Christopher:** Joey’s dead now.

Male Voice: Fucking Joey.

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

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

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

Tonight. When you’re trying to sleep.

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

**John:** It’s like Ocean’s 4.

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

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

Male Voice: You’re not required.

**Craig:** Shit.

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

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

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Why wait?

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

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

**Craig:** What?

**Jonah:** Another baby.

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

**Jonah:** They just keep coming.

**Craig:** Different baby.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Aw.

**Craig:** You two! Wow.

**John:** That’s good.

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

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

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

Male Voice: I did pump in the van though.

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

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

**Craig:** That’s bad.

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

**Craig:** Like the Newlywed Game.

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

**Craig:** Oh good.

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

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

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

**Christopher:** In the van.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Christopher:** I don’t have mine.

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

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

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

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

**Christopher:** Oh dear.

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

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

**John:** That was nice.

**Christopher:** You said two lines.

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

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

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

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

**Lisa:** All right.

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

**John:** Yeah, come on.

Male Voice: It writes itself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Very sweet.

**John:** Sweet.

**Craig:** Very sweet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Nice.

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

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

**Craig:** Yes!

**John:** Yeah!

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

**Christopher:** No.

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

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

**Craig:** Yeah, doesn’t work.

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

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

Jonah Nolan do you want to take it first?

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

**Lisa:** This is so bad.

**Jonah:** Not fun at all.

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

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Nice.

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

**Lisa:** Oh man.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Yeah!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Yeah.

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

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

Do you want to do yours first?

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

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

**John:** Oh.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Poignant that is.

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

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

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Reversed a little.

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

**John:** They’re really very close.

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

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

**John:** Yeah, I know.

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

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

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

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

**John:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** Everyone loved it.

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

**Craig:** Everyone out there.

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

**Craig:** Thank god.

**John:** The questions.

**Craig:** Oh yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** 53 times more.

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

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

**Craig:** And perfect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so I would just say that jeopardy is pandimensional.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Craig:** Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

**Jonah:** We did.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Jonah:** Yeah. Got to.

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

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

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

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

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

**John:** Lisa and Jonah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

**Christopher:** Still not getting it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Male Voice: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

**John:** You would think.

**Craig:** We think.

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

**Craig:** Thanks guys.

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

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

Links:

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

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

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

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

**John August:** So, language warning. There are some bad words in this episode, so if you’re driving in the car with your kids you might want to put on some headphones. Well, don’t well headphones in the car. But you might not want your kids in the car while you’re listening to this. Or put on headphones and listen to it somewhere else.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is Scriptnotes, Episode 346. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig just started shooting Chernobyl, so he is off in Lithuania. But I am lucky to be joined by Christina Hodson, a screenwriter whose credits include the upcoming Transformers spinoff Bumblebee. It was also just announced that she will be writing the upcoming Batgirl for Warner Bros. Welcome Christina.

**Christina Hodson:** Hello. Thank you for having me.

**John:** So mostly I don’t want to talk about big comic book movies or big Transformer movies–

**Christina:** Why not?

**John:** I want to talk about your experience on things like the Black List. I want to talk about inclusion riders. Characters’ races. Windows and mirrors. Who gets to write blank? The male/female splits in movies. Basically I want to solve the systemic issues of inclusion and representation in Hollywood in the next 59 minutes. Is that OK?

**Christina:** Great. I think that’s very achievable. And between the two of us I think we’re probably going to get it all done.

**John:** We’re smart people.

**Christina:** Yeah. I feel confident. Strangely confident.

**John:** We’re feature writers. So as feature writers, maybe we’ll only solve it for features. But I feel like that will be a good template for extending through to the rest of the industry.

**Christina:** Maybe the rest of the world.

**John:** Maybe so.

**Christina:** Maybe.

**John:** You know what? Because Hollywood is the world.

**Christina:** It’s true.

**John:** If it happens here, it can happen anywhere.

**Christina:** I mean, this is the most important place in the world.

**John:** It is the most important place in the world. I have a little news before we get to that, though. First off, I’m going to be at the LA Times Festival of Books. That’s the big event that’s at USC. That is Saturday April 21 at 4:30pm. I’m on a panel talking about Launch and Arlo Finch. I’ll be signing Arlo Finch copies. So if you want to come and see me and producer Megan McDonnell and producer Ben Adair, we’ll be there. April 21 at 4:30pm. Come to that.

Also, LA Times Festival of Books is great. Christina have you ever been to that?

**Christina:** I have not.

**John:** So they basically take over the USC campus and it’s all book stuff and it’s great. And there’s lots of stuff for kids, but also panels for grownups, so it’s cool for that.

Second off, I made a game. It’s called AlphaBirds. Christina has it in her hands right now.

**Christina:** It is very adorable.

**John:** It is a small red box. It is a word game, so if you are a fan of Scrabble or Boggle or things where you make words it’s like that, but it’s a card game. It’s really good for like two to five people. We usually play on Friday afternoons as we are drinking beers. And it’s good because most of these word games require such intense focus. This requires intense focus while it is your turn, and then you can just chat and drink your beer other times.

So, if you would like to see AlphaBirds it is at alphabirdsgame.com.

Christina, you are mostly a feature writer. Are you only a feature writer? Have you done TV?

**Christina:** I’ve developed one TV show for about five years. And the rights just lapsed. So mostly features, yeah. Features is where my heart is and I only did the TV show because the book that I was adapting was too good to do in two hours.

**John:** So talk me through where you started, because I think you came through development?

**Christina:** Yeah. So I started in London. I’m obviously British. Or I’m just putting on this accent for show.

**John:** It’s a really impressive accent. So nicely done.

**Christina:** Thank you. I’ve been working hard on it. I’m actually from Texas.

So I started in London. I was at Focus Features. I kind of worked my way up from the very bottom. I was a runner at Working Title first and then an intern at Focus. Worked my way up to a junior-junior executive there. Was in development. And then moved to New York where I ran development for a small strange company, mostly features but some TV.

**John:** A Small Strange Company is a really good name for a company.

**Christina:** By the way, it is. Now I’m going to take that and use it for my own company. Small Strange Company.

**John:** For your loan out.

**Christina:** Just to be creepy and mysterious. But I did not love it. I loved working with writers. I loved story. I did not love my job. So I started writing, weirdly actually I also wrote kids’ books. Dark, weird, twisted kids’ books. It was a cautionary tales book written in rhyming iambic tetrameter. I mean, it was–

**John:** It was poetic.

**Christina:** It was poetic. But very cruel and dark and sinister. It was Roald Dahl meets Edward Gorey. And I gave it to one friend. They passed it around. And I got a call from a book agent at ICM saying, “Hey, thank you for your submission. I want to rep you.” And I was like I don’t know who you are, but great.

And then very shortly after that my now husband and I got engaged, married, moved, quit our jobs. Everything within four weeks. Moved to LA. And I had 90 days while my green card was pending. And I was like, well, I’ve got a book agent. Maybe I can write. Maybe I’ll just take 90 days and I tried to write a screenplay. And I got very, very lucky. And my first screenplay was Shut In, which ended up selling and then getting made into a movie that for a while was zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

**John:** Oh congratulations.

**Christina:** Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s a rare honor.

**John:** So what bumped you out of the zero percent? Someone liked it?

**Christina:** I guess. You know what? I stopped looking because they’re not as fun when they’re – the damning ones were really fun. The good ones were – I mean, few and far between, but not as fun.

**John:** So I want to back up here because this thing where you wrote this book and it got passed along and suddenly an agent at ICM was calling you, so often on the podcast this kind of thing happens where it’s a thing that you wrote that gets attention that you didn’t really mean for it. So you weren’t actively out there stumping for it. Just like people liked it.

**Christina:** Yes. I just got lucky. And that’s honestly a little bit what happened with Shut In as well. That script. I didn’t really mean for it to go out necessarily. I sat on it after I finished it for a month because I was too embarrassed to let anyone read it. I finally let my husband read it. He gave it to a friend who – and he gave it to one friend and one agent. And while the agent was reading it the friend slipped it to other people. So the agent then had to go out with it.

So my very first draft of my very first screenplay ended up being the one that went to the town, which was, you know, a weird experience. But yeah, with the book I had no intention of that at all.

**John:** So this script Shut In, that ultimately landed on the Black List. To what degree was it being out on the town was helpful or being on the list was helpful. This was 2013 Black List.

**Christina:** 2012.

**John:** 2012 Black List. So it’s still relatively – the Black List had been going for a couple of years, but it was still relatively new for that. What was the experience of that for you?

**Christina:** Honestly, I mean, I’m a huge fan of the Black List and what Franklin is doing. In my case it didn’t actually make a huge difference just because my script went out to the town I think in February. And we had optioned it by I think March. And I’d already gotten my first – I then got my first studio job in I think May or June. And the Black List doesn’t come out until December. So by the time the Black List came out I was already working and I had already done the water bottle tour.

I was very lucky to be on the Black List the next two years, and that then became a thing that was nice for my agents to be able to say like, “She’s been on the Black List three times.” It was helpful. For the first one it kind of came too late almost.

**John:** Talk me through the 30 days left on your green card, because that’s a thing that I hear from a lot of international writers who are here and they start to sort of panic, like am I going to be able to stay in the country. Like how do I sort of keep this all going?

**Christina:** It’s awful. It’s awful. So it wasn’t 30 days left on my green card. It was 90 days where I was waiting for my green card to come through, where you’re not allowed to be earning money. You’re not really allowed to be seeking employment. Honestly, like a lot of people would have worked through that or would have done cheeky things. I am just so scared of breaking any of the rules. And I’m trying to become a citizen right now. I’m in the middle of the process. I was just always so nervous of that. And my main advice to people that are international people that are coming here: don’t break any of the rules. Once you do it, you can’t go back. And it impacts. So I’ve been through a lot of visas. I started on a student visa. That’s how I came to America. I had all the right intentions. And I started an MA at NYU and just hated it. Mainly because I’d been working in the industry already.

**John:** An MA in English or writing?

**Christina:** In film and TV. It was at Gallatin so it was a very specialized MA. And it was great, and it’s a wonderful school. But I’d come from being a grownup in London and earning money and having a job. And then suddenly being in classes with undergrads, because it was mixed, it was Gallatin so it was MAs and undergrads at the same time. It was too much.

So I started working almost straight away. I think I got a trainee visa. And then I was a consultant for a while. And then I got an H-1B. I went through the whole shebang.

**John:** So you have these 90 days and you’ve written the script during this time. When you sell this script Shut In and then you get hired for your first WGA job, does anything flip? How do you go from there to being able to stay in the country longer? What was the next visa?

**Christina:** My green card just came through because of getting married. It was good timing. That’s why it was lucky that I did everything in those 90 days so I didn’t have to worry about that. It is much harder if you are dependent on screenwriting for your visa. You kind of have to be fairly established in your own country and then come over. It’s tricky.

**John:** So international listeners should know that there are special visas for like if you are a fancy British screenwriter who is already established and you’re coming over on a special talents and–

**Christina:** Yeah, I think it’s a 01 Artist Visa.

**John:** And there are special attorneys here and there who will help you make that all work. But since you already had your green card you’ve just been working on your green card this whole time through?

**Christina:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s lucky.

**Christina:** Yes. All good.

**John:** So marry well.

**Christina:** Marry well.

**John:** That’s a good thing. Going back to the Black List, news came out this last week that Franklin actually secured funding to make movies himself.

**Christina:** Oh. That’s exciting.

**John:** I’ll be curious to see what that next step is. So we’ll have Franklin on the show at some point to talk through what that next thing is.

**Christina:** He is a good person to give money to.

**John:** I agree. So it’s money that comes out of China and James Schamus is also involved with it.

**Christina:** My first boss.

**John:** Absolutely. So, we’ll see what kind of movies they’re able to make. But apparently three to five movies per year they’re trying to either make or invest in.

**Christina:** Very cool.

**John:** That’ll be a new thing. When we first started emailing one of the things you wanted to talk about was race and representation. So, I’m curious, how do you identify yourself racially?

**Christina:** Somewhere in the middle. I’m half-Taiwanese and half-Caucasian. In England I call myself a Halfie. And me and my sisters, we call ourselves Halfies. Here I think half-Asian people tend to call themselves Hapas.

**John:** To what degree has that influenced you think your career in Hollywood? Do you think you are thought about for certain jobs because of that? Do you think it has any impact on sort of the things you’ve been approached about writing or how meetings have gone?

**Christina:** Definitely not in the past. And I would say it’s only shifting in the last six months, probably around Black Panther honestly where I think people are wanting to do things that are more culturally specific. It’s obviously kind of strange because some of the things I’m being sent are about Korean-Americans and I’m neither Korean nor American so I honestly don’t – I know probably as much as you do. You live fairly near to Koreatown. But it’s also like a tricky one because if I could only write the things that I know I would only be writing about British half-Asian girls. So, yeah. I’m somewhere between.

**John:** It’s interesting with writers because to some degree you end up kind of casting a writer for a project. You sort of think, well, who do you want to write this thing. And I always think about actual real casting and sort of what roles do actors decide to put themselves up for. And to what degree do you feel like you are an appropriate person for writing this kind of story or for participating in this kind of role.

And it’s challenging to figure out sort of like what do you feel confident being able to write those things for. And so do you get sent stuff ever that you feel like they just wanted an Asian person to take a look at or take a pass on? Or that doesn’t happen in your career yet?

**Christina:** That has not happened in my career yet, but mostly because I don’t think a lot of people are doing Asian-focused stuff. I really hope that starts to shift and I would love to start being sent more of those things, not necessarily because I’m going to write them but because it means that there’s more of them out there in the world.

I have a few African American screenwriting friends who definitely get sent things because they’re African American. And they’re like nothing in my resume suggests that I would want to write this other than the color of my skin. That can get a bit weird but I understand why it happens.

But, no, so far I’m not getting stuff because I’m half-Asian. I am getting sent stuff definitely all the time because I’m a woman.

**John:** Great. Well let’s talk about that. So you just signed on for Batgirl and other movies you’ve done have had female leads in them.

**Christina:** So far I’ve only written female leads.

**John:** All right. So let’s talk about sort of coming to this last year. There has been increased focus on moving beyond the Bechdel test to really looking at sort of like what are the roles for women in these films, but also what are the roles behind the scenes. And so you’ve been involved in some of these discussions. What is the shape of these discussions and where do you think we are headed overall in the next five years? Where do you think the natural trajectory is and where would you like to see the trajectory go?

**Christina:** Well one of the big focuses of Time’s Up is the 50/50 by 2020 which is just trying to shift in front of the screen, behind the camera, in executive offices. There is a massive imbalance right now. I think one of the pieces of information that came up through a Time’s Up meeting that most struck me was a visual essay that The Pudding did that was a breakdown of film dialogue by gender which was so shocking. And I watched the Stacy Smith Ted Talk that was very famous where she breaks down the number of female speaking characters versus male speaking characters, which shocked me and whatever. But honestly seeing the amount of dialogue spoken in percentages and that breakdown shocked me so much more I think because even movies that you assume are pretty female heavy when you look at them they’re not. It’s really shocking how silent a lot of the female characters are onscreen. Even I think Frozen doesn’t break – I could be wrong – but I think it approaches 50% female dialogue, but I don’t think it breaks it.

Finding Dory was the only movie in the Top Ten in 2016 that was just over 50%. I think it was 52% or something. But it’s kind of nutty.

**John:** It is nutty. That’s the one of the things that writers can actually do. So let’s talk about sort of where you think the writer’s responsibility is in trying to find parity and try to find an appropriate level of female voices in these things. What advice do you have to screenwriters as they’re looking at their scripts, plotting out their scripts in a big way but also looking at the scripts that they’ve written? How do we improve this?

**Christina:** Am I allowed to talk about–?

**John:** You’re absolutely allowed to talk about things you want to talk about.

**Christina:** OK. Well, the reason that I reached out to you in the first place is that I wanted to talk about this issue particularly, and I wanted to talk about Highland because I think that we can be self-policing. And we can be looking at our own unconscious biases, and I think it will really help. I think there’s a lot that needs to be done later down the line with casting directors and executives and making sure that the background characters are all kind of appropriately diverse.

But I think we can be doing a lot of that stuff as well kind of before it even leaves our desk. Geena Davis who obviously has been doing amazing work for gender balance onscreen, one of the things that she said that really struck me is that one of the most effective tactics she’s had is not kind of publicly shaming people for their statistics in looking at their work but going into companies, showing them kind of, look, this is what’s going onscreen from your company. Did you know that it was this imbalanced? And that people want to be better. And self-policing is a good thing.

So I was thinking it would be great if scriptwriting software like Highland, like Final Draft, could shift and have a way of looking at your own work so that you can do that gender breakdown so that it’s not always done after the fact in some depressing study. And you were very magical and did things incredibly quickly. And I’ve been playing with it. And it’s a really fascinating tool to be able to – I mean, you can explain how it works. But I went back and I looked at all of my scripts and I was really shocked by some.

I mean, I write really female-heavy things, but some of the results were really surprising. And it made me think how important it is that we all do this.

**John:** Yeah. So what you’re referring to is based on our emails we went back and looked at Highland 2 which is about to release and we added a gender analysis tool to Highland. And so based on your script while you’re writing it, or when you’re finished with it, or you can even drag in a finished PDF, we can go through and look at what is the split of male and female characters in the story and what percentage of dialogue and what percentage of words, down to–

**Christina:** The words is weirdly the most important thing I think. And that’s why you’ve got to be careful with some of these statistics because number of female speaking characters will include a waitress who says, “Here are you pancakes, honey.” And that doesn’t really count. But it does affect statistics. So looking at number of words spoken was important.

**John:** Absolutely. It was also important to us that you had the fine tune control. That you could take out certain characters who really are not characters. Or if you have robots that are neither male nor female you can sort of account for those as well.

**Christina:** Yeah, unspecified.

**John:** Yeah. So that’s a tool that’s coming out in the next version of Highland. And I would hope to see other software being able to use it, but also just it’s a tool for the industry to take a finished script and just say what is this. Because you look at the analysis that other companies have done sort of after the fact and it’s really hard. If you’re just going through a PDF–

**Christina:** Incredibly hard.

**John:** — with a highlighter and so this is a thing that software can do.

**Christina:** They’re also having to retrofit things through IMDb and character names have changed and the scripts that they have that are often old scripts, not the shooting script. Or even if they are the shooting script the final film is so different than the shooting script. So this I think is an amazing tool to be able to look at your own stuff before it leaves your desk. Or for as you say executives to be looking before it goes to the casting directors.

Like the thing that struck me is how many of my minor characters who I really didn’t care about I was just kind of going Cop, but I was using male – I would check, because I couldn’t remember if I’d done female cop or male cop, and I’d have to go back and check. And often I would just default into like he, his. I was just making them men because they were forgettable. [laughs]

**John:** Exactly. And so it’s being specific in ways that’s helpful. So let’s stick with gender for right now, but I want to get race next which is a more challenging topic. But when you proactively make female cop, when you proactively give a gender to some of those roles, it lets the movie fit into our world a little bit more – not cleanly, but a distinctive choice. It’s showing a female police officer–

**Christina:** It’s more accurate.

**John:** It’s more accurate. It’s also showing a female police officer, it’s showing people in these roles that is important.

**Christina:** It’s so important. Especially with STEM jobs. I think, you know, there’s that saying “If you can see it you can be it.” And I think particularly for young girls, like as a girl growing up I was watching TV and not that I wanted to be Indiana Jones, but I wanted the option of having a hero like an Indiana Jones. And they were all 40-something year-old strapping white men. And I think it’s really important that we see even with tertiary characters where it doesn’t really matter. There was this other statistic that came up that really shocked me which is that you can watch 85 hours of popular TV or movies right now and you would only see a single instance of a black or Hispanic woman doing anything to do with computer science.

Which given how many TV shows we have where it’s a bunch of nerds sitting around tapping away on computers, that’s kind of shocking.

**John:** That is.

**Christina:** And with STEM jobs, particularly like why can’t we make those background doctors and scientists and researchers and computer analysts? It’s so easy to shift that. And, yes, a lot of that onus is on casting. But we can do it often in our scripts by just giving them a name or kind of, I don’t know, we can shift that ourselves I think.

**John:** One of the things I’ve discovered as I’ve been playing around with the tool in Highland is that bumping up those minor characters can sort of give a little bit more parity, but it tends to be more major characters who have more lines that is ultimately going to make a huge difference. And so it gets me thinking about sort of like, “Well what if that character were female. How do those changes ripple through if that character is female?”

And I think so often in our movies we expect that if there’s a man and a woman onscreen that there’s a romance, either they are mom and son or there’s a romantic thing happening. And to be able to say like, “OK, these are just coworkers. These are just people who are on the same team rowing in the same direction” is an important aspect of representation, too. Because we work in workplaces where men and women are not romantically–

**Christina:** Most of the relationships in our lives, hopefully, are not romantic relationships.

**John:** Yeah. So finding ways for that to be possible as well.

The natural segue though then is race–

**Christina:** Segue Man!

**John:** Segue Man. Race and representation. And where I find it very easy, usually, to take a role and say like that’s male or female, sometimes it’s harder to say like, well, this role is Thai. Or this role is Sub-Saharan African. Like trying to figure out where the natural place is to be specific but not so specific that you’re precluding a bunch of other options.

**Christina:** That’s the problem. And you guys talk about this very rightly on the show, a lot of specificity is key. Specificity is wonderful. You want to write characters that don’t just feel like generically Asian but like my Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. That’s a really specific good character that is written as part of that culture, not just generic Asian guy.

But, if we are too specific in our first drafts, are we then limiting roles to a very, very tiny pool of actors when really what we want is just to make the whole movie more diverse? So it becomes really tricky, particularly I think in the kind of movies that we write, you know, bigger studio movies that the story won’t necessarily need to be about the fact that the dad in the movie is John Cho, and is Asian, but it would be great if he were.

So, it’s hard knowing when and where to specify. And one of the questions that I reached out to you with because I was thinking about it is should we – because I know Craig and you have said on the show in the past like you can’t put race just in parenthesis next to age because that’s not a character, as your only character description, which is completely true and fair. That’s not what defines you. But there’s also characters often where you don’t want to waste the lines or the extra words on a bigger character description, but you would like that person to be other.

It becomes tricky because you have to kind of find a standard. If you only name the people who are other than are you suggesting that everyone you don’t name is Caucasian? The answer is no, it shouldn’t be. But honestly there is a problem with the default white read.

**John:** There is. Absolutely. So let’s go back through and talk through some of these issues here. So, one of the ways which a screenwriter can signal that a character is a specific race is to give that character a name that’s just what race he’s from. And so Gutierrez or Chu or Chow or something like that.

Your Crazy Ex-Girlfriend reference is – and people can listen to the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend episode I did with, I think it was a bonus episode I did with Aline–

**Christina:** Yeah. It was great. I listened to it.

**John:** Where they talked about originally it was I think Josh Cho, originally Josh was supposed to be Chinese. And they ended up finding an actor who is Filipino and they said like, well, that’s awesome. We’ll make your last name Chan. And they built out his whole universe as Filipino and they were able to find a great Filipino writer who was going to help them out with all of that. And it worked out fantastic. It was a very specific thing.

And yet if they felt themselves limited by their initial instinct to cast him as Chinese they wouldn’t have gotten to that guy. So finding that flexibility.

**Christina:** Yeah. And what if – I mean, it’s slightly different with TV because Aline is in there and can make changes as she’s doing it and she’s very much in control. With features, imagine if that was a feature and she’d written it just Josh and didn’t specify any race, would people have been able to make the mental leap when they were casting him to be like, “Oh my gosh can he be Filipino?” You know, to go from nothing to a specific race – if she started with Josh as Chinese, would it have then been fairly easy for them to cast him as Filipino and kind of then tweak the script versus if she just left it open, everyone assumed he was white, and then you have to go to Asian. It’s a tricky thing.

**John:** I want to get back to a point you made about specifying a character’s race might make it seem like it’s important that he be that race. That there’s going to be a story reason why that character has to be that thing. And it’s a natural thing we see in features is that every choice seems deliberate, and so therefore if you’re making the choice there must be a reason why you’re making that choice. And sometimes the reason is just because you want the movie to be more diverse.

**Christina:** Yeah.

**John:** So we can flag that by names. I still feel a little hinky when I see the “Chinese, 40” after a character’s description.

**Christina:** Of course, yeah.

**John:** But maybe we need to get past that hinky feeling or find another way to show in scripts like, “These are opportunities for inclusive casting.”

**Christina:** I know. The question is do you have some kind – do you say “open ethnicity?” Do you have some shorthand for it? Some standardized thing that everyone is using? Because I’ve been talking to people kind of since I’ve been looking into this and a couple of studio heads have said, “Yeah, when we send things to casting if it doesn’t specify race, 100% the casting list comes back and it says Caucasian now suddenly next to their name.

And obviously we can’t fix all of that. But maybe there is something that we can do to fix some of it. I just feel like because we are completely in control until we give the script in, it feels like there’s got to be something we can do. And at least having the conversation I think is important because it’s a scary weird messy conversation. And when you first asked me to be on the show I was like, “I don’t think I should.” But I also think it’s time for us to have the messy, tricky conversations. And there aren’t any easy answers. But it doesn’t mean we should stop looking.

**John:** Yeah. Often when I send in a script I’ll have an after page that will give additional notes about things. Like if I’m using songs in a script I’ll add a page that says these are the songs and these are the people who wrote the songs, just so I feel like I’m not just poaching people’s stuff. Or make it clear what was the original song versus what I added and so people know where stuff came through.

And so I can imagine we could come up with some sort of standard thing that doesn’t feel too scary that says like opportunities for inclusion or things like that, because you don’t want to list only the roles that could be non-white, but you want to make sure that you’re flagging–

**Christina:** That it’s clear that things are open. Craig also suggested when we were emailing – his suggestion was he’s always wanted a character breakdown at the front of scripts. I think doing them at the front of scripts in the ways that plays do is probably too much of an ask. It’s like a big change in this industry. I also think it kind of kills some of the mystery and romance of like, “Oh, who are we going to meet later in this script?” But I do think there’s a world where that’s a standard thing that you deliver with a script at the back, or as a separate addendum, which maybe could help there where you could literally have a slot where you’re listing the age range, where you’re listing is race important in this particular – is a specific race important in this role or is it open? And if you say open then it should be open and shouldn’t be white specific.

**John:** The conversation we’re having is really between what we do as a writer and what a director will do and what a casting director does, and obviously producers and studio heads have influence over this, too. But it’s how do we sort of get from this idea of what we have on the page to the actual breakdown. And that literally is the casting breakdown.

This last week someone on Twitter had posted – I think it was a Deadline article that I tweeted about a casting breakdown for a new show. And they were describing the different characters in this – it sort of felt like a Friends kind of show. And the female lead of the show, it was painful sort of how she was described where she’s like, “She’s a girly-girl who can hang with the guys. And she has a tattoo behind her ear.” And it didn’t talk anything about what she wanted or what her goals in life were. It was just like she’s the hot girl next door.

And I do wonder if there’s something that we as screenwriters can do to sort of help get past those casting breakdowns. Because I guarantee you those writers didn’t write that description. It was written by the casting breakdown person. But we need a little intervention there with them about how we’re describing these characters because it’s so frustrating for us, the writers, but also it’s got to be frustrating for every actor going in for that part.

**Christina:** But also kind of humiliating. Just depressing. Yeah, we do need to fix that. I also think that – and you and Craig again talk about this often and it’s so important is good character descriptions in the script when you first introduce a character. That aren’t all about how cute, effortless. Ugh. We need to work on that and we need to make sure that our character descriptions on the page – because by the way the casting breakdowns would love to just copy and paste something from our own scripts if we had great pieces of intro there.

The problem is how many lines you use up. And sometimes you try to pack a lot in and you can’t afford to do that. But also describing someone in a way that does leave it open racially. I wrote one of my spec scripts, where because I’m mixed race I generally am not assuming anyone is white. I’m kind of assuming anyone is anything. But I kept hearing that people assumed that the lead role was white and I couldn’t understand why. And I went through the whole script and I found there was a couple of places where I said that she pales. And they were like, “Oh, she must be pale. She must be white.” And I was like people of other colors can pale as well.

**John:** Yeah.

**Christina:** But little things like that, or comments on color of eyes can subconsciously be really rooting you in a certain race without you meaning to.

**John:** Yeah. A script I wrote recently that I may direct at some point, I wrote one of the main roles in it. And in my head it’s like, well, you know Octavia Spencer who was in The Nines would be fantastic for this. But I didn’t put anything in there specifically that said she was African American. And so it was interesting as I sent it out for – because we were doing budgeting – and I started talking with producers about this is who I was thinking about. They’re like, “Oh, I didn’t realize she was black.” And because I didn’t insist that she be black it did go to a default white.

**Christina:** The default white is crazy. I was in a studio meeting a year or so ago where someone said, “Oh, I’m really worried this script is too white.” I mean, I’m pleased by the way they were worrying about it, but I said, “Why? There’s only two people that are specified where it was important and one was Hispanic and one was African American.” And they were like, “Well, everyone is white.” And I was like, “No they’re not. They’re just not specified as being anything,” because again I don’t want to say that someone is Indian and then block someone that’s Thai getting the part. You don’t – they could be anything, but everyone just kind of – unless you point it out or unless it’s part of the story does kind of default white read most of your characters unfortunately.

**John:** Yeah. We only have about 20 minutes left, so I don’t know if we’re going to be able to solve default white reads.

**Christina:** Dammit.

**John:** I mean, come one, we promised people–

**Christina:** I know. I thought we would be so much further ahead than this.

**John:** I think part of the solving it though is the real discussion of it and sort of recognition of that if you don’t specify people are going to fall into that. Or maybe we can train readers to not slip into that thing so quickly. But it is frustrating.

Have you heard the term “windows and mirrors” used in terms of inclusion in writing?

**Christina:** Only from you.

**John:** OK. So this is a thing I heard a lot when I was doing Arlo Finch because in kids’ books they talk about it all the time, especially for middle grade. And so the idea is that books can serve as windows and mirrors for kids as they’re looking at those characters and trying to fit them into the bigger world.

And so a window is if you have a character who has a certain background or experience and so a kid who doesn’t have that can look through their eyes and see what it was like in their point of view.

A mirror is a person – if a kid who can see themselves as that character. Basically – especially like races or situations that have been underrepresented, they get to see themselves reflected back and they feel like, oh, I am part of that culture. And so often you’ll see African American writers who say, “I loved Chronicles of Narnia and all these fantasy books but there were never black people in any of these stories.”

And so to provide that character in there is a mirror back to their own experience or a specific life experience that they never see reflected back to them. So like Arlo Finch mirrors back that sort of mountain life that I grew up with that I just never see in books. But it is an interesting idea that I think is really popular in kids’ lit right now, but I think we need to start looking at in terms of what we’re doing in movies.

With Black Panther, I think part of its huge success was that it mirrored back something that the African American audience desperately wanted to see.

**Christina:** Super powerful, amazing, exciting way.

**John:** I remember before the movie opened and just people on Twitter or on Instagram people were with the standees and they were just cheering the standees. Just the fact that it existed was a huge thing.

**Christina:** I have to admit, and it’s weird, I cried in the casino scene in Black Panther because it was so refreshing to see this woman be so badass, and she was in a stunning, elegant dress, but she wasn’t like sexy for the sake of being sexy. She seemed powerful and strong and she was kicking all the ass. And it was so exciting to see. And I know a lot of women who had the same reaction in Wonder Woman in No Man’s Land. Just like so happy and overwhelmed.

**John:** I wept openly in No Man’s Land. Yeah.

**Christina:** You can’t believe it. And it’s so strange that we can’t believe it, but we really have grown up not seeing that. We’ve seen kind of the over-sexy, leather pants, skinny hot sidekick girl kick ass. But it never felt real, or true, or powerful in the same way.

**John:** The other thing which really struck me about the casino scene in Black Panther is that when we leave Wakanda we don’t go to Europe or America, we go to Asia. And it’s like we’re not going to the place where all the white people are. We’re going to Asia. And it’s a completely specific place that we’re going to. And I guess Martin Freeman is the one white person who is sort of wandering around in there. But it’s not about “We have to go to the ‘real world,’ the ‘real world’ being white. We’re going to a very specific Asian place.” And that was a really cool moment.

I haven’t seen a lot written about Martin Freeman’s role in Black Panther, but it is fascinating that the white people in the movie, they’re there to see some stuff but not to sort of make anything happen.

**Christina:** They don’t save the day.

**John:** They don’t save the day at all.

**Christina:** Thank god. We’ve seen enough of those movies.

**John:** No white saviors in this.

**Christina:** No white saviors for sure.

**John:** So, going back to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and other shows where in having Josh Chan be Filipino they were able to bring in a Filipino writer who could bring a very specific perspective to that. So often in features we’re the one writer, so we’ve got to write everything. They have a room for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but we are just the one person. Have you ever worked in any room situations in features? Can you talk about that?

**Christina:** So, the Transformers writers’ room was obviously a famous features experiment where we did three weeks in a room together and it was 12 writers, three of them were partnerships. But 12 writers in a room. It was not dissimilar to the TV thing in terms of we learned about the thing that we were doing, we talked about it as one big picture and then we each kind of picked an episode as it were. We kind of naturally gravitated towards different things. It was amazing how naturally we all went to different areas. There was no overlap. And then we each developed our own stories and helped each other brainstorm and it was a very collaborative thing where we would pitch a loose outline and then people would give suggestions or notes or thoughts. But we really kind of had our own pieces.

And then obviously I do, as I’m sure you do, like a ton of roundtables of things. I recently did with Paramount another writers’ room like that for three weeks.

**John:** So part of that seems so exciting because it gets more people and more brains involved on something on topics of inclusion and making sure that the world is fully representative. It gives you a chance because it’s more than one person looking at stuff.

Part of me also is just terrified of the sense of like it’s hard to figure out then who deserves credit for story. Because we’re not really set up to do that kind of stuff in features.

**Christina:** And I think it can get very tricky when – the situation that I have not done on purpose because I don’t like it is when it’s a ton of writers going in and you don’t know who is going to come out writing the job. And it’s one job. That I think can get super murky. And I know writers who have given very fundamental core ideas that have made the movie and that haven’t gotten credit.

So the ones that I have gravitated towards have been the ones where it’s more about collaboration and helping each other, which I think is a wonderful thing because we are such hermits as feature writers, we’re also good together and we like helping each other and we’re good at helping each other.

And as long as you don’t go in with too much of an ego and you’re open to that experience I think it can be a wonderful thing. The competitive bakeoff thing not so good.

**John:** Yeah. I had a friend describing situation where it was this four or five day room and then like whoever sort of did the best in the room was going to get the job.

**Christina:** It’s gross.

**John:** It feels gross. And usually what it is is they have some more powerful high-priced writers and then some inexpensive writers–

**Christina:** Who they milk.

**John:** Yeah, who they milk. But a lot of times it is one of the inexpensive people that they kind of want to give it to because they don’t have that much money. It feels weird. If I were starting in the business now, of course I would go to one of those things. And in some ways it’s no different than to have 12 writers going in to pitch on a project. But rather than doing it serially you’re doing it parallel.

**Christina:** Yes, except that you shouldn’t go in and pitch on things and then they just steal all your ideas. Like that’s also not nice.

**John:** At least you’re getting paid for it.

**Christina:** And, by the way, it’s OK to – like I’ve had an experience with a studio where I went very deep in the, I mean, I got beyond pitching. I was kind of meeting with the director and some of the producers for long periods of time. And they did the honorable thing. At the end I didn’t get the job but they wanted to use a couple of ideas so they gave me a contract and paid me as a consultant.

**John:** Yep.

**Christina:** Like it can be done not that expensively. So the getting people in to pitch knowing that you’re just doing it to steal their ideas, or doing those roundtables knowing that you’re just doing it to milk – ugh – milk writers and then pay someone cheaper. It is gross.

**John:** It is gross. So, hopefully it’s a thing we can move past. But I would say overall as the WGA we’re not well set up to figure out how to handle and treat these feature writers who are in these roundtables. Because during that roundtable you were probably paid like a producer – you’re paid like a minimum?

**Christina:** No. Transformers writers’ room, Akiva Goldsman ran that and was very adamant that we all be paid really well so that we wouldn’t hold back and say that it wouldn’t be kind of using and abusing writers. We all did that room for three weeks and then we all wrote our own treatments. And then if we then were sent to script, which I was and that’s how Bumblebee came about, then we get paid for that script separately. But we were paid for our participation in the room and for a treatment. So it was very fair and good and they did right by us on that one.

**John:** That’s great. I want to listen to a clip – so during the Oscars Frances McDormand said very early in her speech like, “Two words, inclusion riders.” So after she said that in the Q&A room she had a little explanation about what that was. So I want to listen to her explanation and then talk through what we think might be the possibilities and realities there.

**Reporter:** Can you please explain your comment at the end, the two words, inclusion rider?

**Frances McDormand:** Right? I just found out about this last week. There is – has always been available to all – everybody that does a negotiation on a film, an inclusion rider which means that you can ask for and/or demand at least 50% diversity in not only the casting but also the crew. And so the fact that I just learned that, after 35 years of being in the film business, we’re not going back.

So, the whole idea of women trending, no. No trending. African Americans trending? No. No trending. It changes now. And I think the inclusion rider will have something to do with that.

**Christina:** Women aren’t trending.

**John:** Women aren’t trending. Women have always been here. So this idea of an inclusion rider, I can’t envision any screenwriter getting anything like this.

**Christina:** I feel like you could, John. You could do anything you want, dammit.

**John:** Demand it. In some ways we are our own inclusion rider. We can shape the degree–

**Christina:** On the page.

**John:** On the page. And we’ll see sort of what happens. Do you see it working/happening? Do you think this is a thing that we’ll talk about?

**Christina:** Even if it doesn’t fully work we’ve got to try. You know, this is something that Stacey Smith came up with I think in 2014 and they’ve been working really hard on figuring out the legals of it and how to implement it and how to make it work.

And I could be misspeaking, but I think the idea is not that you have to have 50% diversity behind the camera, but that you have to aim to have 50% diversity behind the camera. I think there is such a natural kind of backlash and people freak out that like “under-qualified people are going to steal our jobs,” which there always has been with things like this. And people need to just chill the fuck out.

But I think, yeah, it’s about kind of implementing things like the Rooney Rule. It’s about aiming for that. Interviewing a lot of diverse candidates for the jobs. And trying to get that behind the scenes.

**John:** What is the Rooney Rule? I’ve heard it, but I don’t remember what it is.

**Christina:** I can’t tell if you’re pretending you don’t know or if you really don’t know.

**John:** I genuinely don’t know what it is.

**Christina:** So the Rooney Rule comes from NFL and the idea is that when you’re hiring – in the NFL it was when you’re hiring a coach or someone outside of the – not institution, well, institution – that you have to interview at least one candidate who is diverse. And it’s something that the WGA has talked about a bunch. They were talking about it for this recent round last year. It didn’t end up kind of kicking in. But it’s something that a lot of people are supporting and want. I think it’s hugely important and I would love to see it implemented. I would love to see it be obligatory. Because I think a lot of the time writers aren’t even getting in the room. You know, you’re not getting enough women in the room. You’re not getting enough people of color in the room. Get them in the room. Give them a shot.

Like on Transformers, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Lindsey Beer, and I were probably the diversity aspect. We were the only three women in the room. When they first announced the first four writers in the room they were all white males and there was a huge kind of backlash, like “How can you just have a bunch of white guys?” Thank god there was a backlash. They then hired the three of us, I’d like to hope not just because we’re women but also because we’re talented. But we were kind of probably the less experienced writers in the room. And we all did really well.

Like look at what they’re doing now. Geneva Robertson-Dworet wrote Captain Marvel. She just wrote Tomb Raider. Lindsey Beer is writing King Killer Chronicles for Lionsgate. She’s crushing it. She just spent three days in a room with Quentin Tarantino for Star Trek. Because we had that opportunity we got to prove ourselves. So I think getting people in the door and letting them fight for the job is so important and so worth doing. And it’s a big part of what the inclusion rider will do is give people the chance to get those jobs that they may otherwise not have gotten.

**John:** Absolutely. So in terms of in front of the camera, those changes can be challenging based on the nature of the movie. There are going to be movies where it’s going to be hard to find – if it’s a period piece, it’s a period WWII piece, it’s going to be hard to do that. So you’re going to have to be realistic about those. But behind the camera–

**Christina:** There’s no reason why we can’t.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Christina:** And in front of the camera we also have to remember, I mean, you mentioned Chronicles of Narnia. That’s fantasy. There’s no reason why there should be no black people. Like, if there are leprechauns, I mean, it’s not leprechauns. There are people with goat legs. They can have black people there.

**John:** I 100% agree. And I always get so frustrated when people like will poke at Cinderella for having a black character in Cinderella.

**Christina:** It’s Cinderella World!

**John:** Absolutely. It’s like it’s kind of Europe but it’s not really Europe.

**Christina:** It’s so crazy.

**John:** It’s frustrating. Even on Big Fish, I remember there was one time where we had a circus scene. And this is a fantastical world. And this extra came up and was saying like, “Oh, just so you know there shouldn’t be black people here.” And it’s like, “Yeah, OK, I can understand in an historical context, but remember we are in a fantasy. This is the idealized version of sort of what this world should be.”

**Christina:** It’s not the real world anyway so why can’t we do what we want with it?

**John:** Yeah.

**Christina:** It’s maddening.

**John:** It’s maddening.

**Christina:** Maddening.

**John:** A challenge with inclusion riders behind the scenes, and so I think there’s ways to say this that’s not sort of implying that you’re going to hire less qualified people. Sometimes it’s hard to find enough people, people who have training and stuff. So it feels like it’s also a mandate to make sure that you are giving people the experience–

**Christina:** It’s not going to happen overnight. We’ve got to train the people up.

**John:** Absolutely. So you talked about STEM and representation of STEM people. It’s like, you know, well if we want to hire more black female engineers we need to make sure that they’re–

**Christina:** That they’re going to university for it. Yeah.

**John:** That they recognize that it’s a thing they can do and make sure that they identify it early enough. And support them while they’re going through that.

**Christina:** I also think that’s really important once you’ve hired the person that you keep that support. I have a friend who is a producer who tried to hire an incredibly diverse team for the movie behind the camera. Hired someone in a very key position who was less experienced, but because she was a woman and she was a woman of color and they really believed in giving her a shot. But because she didn’t have that much experience she really struggled.

And I think what’s important is that person who made that decision to hire that person isn’t punished for that decision and that there is some sort of network or system or safety net so that that person doesn’t lose their job but they can be supported and helped and then get the next job, and the next job, and continue their career and continue to become more experienced.

**John:** Absolutely. You don’t want to put people in positions where they’re going to fail.

**Christina:** You want people to win.

**John:** Yes.

**Christina:** So mentorship programs I think are hugely important. But also just like starting on all levels. You can’t just suddenly change the top levels without working on the lower levels.

**John:** The DGA training program seems like it’s working well in trying to get more diverse directors out there, both literally directors and also assistant directors and those crucial roles of actually making the trains run on time.

**Christina:** Yeah. And I think TV can do a lot of help. They can really help out with features as well because you can take more of a risk on one episode of TV. You know, Ava DuVernay has done amazing things with her shows in terms of hiring very female-heavy crews and female directors. More people need to be doing that.

**John:** And the training equivalent for writing in some ways is TV. It is our writers’ rooms. And so that’s why you see an emphasis on trying to make sure that you are getting those diverse candidates in those rooms, both because it’s helping those candidates grow, but also because it’s making those rooms better. It’s bringing in new voices.

A frustration which I’ve heard about through the WGA is that a lot of times candidates who come in, or people who are brought into a show on the lowest level as the diversity hire have a very hard time getting the second job and the third job.

**Christina:** Well, often because they were the diversity hire their job was subsidized. And so then getting paid an actual salary is like, “Oh, but we can’t actually pay her real money.” I mean, it’s mental.

**John:** That has to be fixed.

**Christina:** That’s got to be fixed. It’s craziness. Craziness.

**John:** There’s a question we have from Kate and so let’s wrap it up by talking about her question. She writes, “I’m pondering why some movies feel timeless while others don’t. Why do some things have such staying power like The Princess Bride or Indiana Jones or Singing in the Rain, while other movies feel dated almost as soon as they come out?”

Christina, what thoughts do you have about movies that stay timeless versus ones that feel like, wow, they were of that moment and don’t last?

**Christina:** Interesting. I mean, this is a silly thing to say but one of the things I’m always careful of when I’m writing is not including too much technology if I don’t have to because that–

**John:** 100%.

**Christina:** The person doing whatever doing on their smartphone, that smartphone is going to look ridiculous in five years’ time. And I think that can often really date things.

But I think it’s also just about universal character arcs. Really relatable characters. Stories that feel like they aren’t – they don’t just belong to that one person but they are captivating in a bigger way rather than just kind of this specific girl growing up in very much the ‘90s or the 2000s or, you know.

**John:** A lot of things she references having staying power are fantasies. So, they have some grounding in the real world but they’re mostly sort of taking place out in another space and time and so therefore they don’t feel as anchored into our time.

You mentioned technology or cellphones, which are of course really a killer.

**Christina:** They’re also just a bummer, honestly. Who wants to see anyone texting?

**John:** They destroy us.

**Christina:** They ruin thrillers. They really do.

**John:** They do. But any reference to technology tends to be really time stamping. You know, Sandra Bullock in The Net. It’s like, oh no, you recognize that–

**Christina:** It was so cutting edge…for a minute.

**John:** Yes. But in some ways it’s the movies that ask kind of timeless questions or that have great heroes who feel like they’re out of time. Those are the ones that sort of tend to stay. And the ones that are asking very contemporary questions, in some ways that feels more like TV where it’s like you’re right of the moment. And also just think about the lead time to make a movie. It’s two or three years to make a movie. And by the time they come out it really might be a thing that has passed for us a bit.

So we’re going to hear Craig’s voice for a second because it’s time for a special feature.

**Christina:** Yay.

Craig: John’s WGA Corner.

**John:** So a couple listeners wrote in to ask, “Hey, will you and Craig talk about the thing that’s happening with the agency agreement being renegotiated?” And, yes, we will be probably next episode. But I’m curious, Christina, have you heard anything about the agency agreement or do you know anything about what’s going on?

**Christina:** I know a little bit about what’s going on, but I missed both meetings because I was out of town. And I would like to hear your episode on it because I want the breakdown.

**John:** Absolutely. So we will break that down and talk about what’s happening and sort of what’s not happening and it’s a very different thing than sort of when we negotiated our deal with the studios. So it’s going to probably be a very slow train. But we’ll talk through what that is and sort of why it matters.

And it’s interesting you brought up the Rooney Rule because there’s another sports connection between this is that writers are much more in some ways like NBA players.

**Christina:** I feel very much like an NBA player.

**John:** Yeah. Our relationship with the people who employ us is kind of more like our dealing with teams than it is dealing with the big factory. And so some interesting things happen because of that and because we have agents that represent us there’s actually some good parallels there, so we’ll talk about that.

**Christina:** And who’s working for who.

**John:** Exactly. And making sure that our agents are working for us and we’re not working for our agents. Have you been in any situations where an agency is employing you or some–?

**Christina:** No.

**John:** It’s happening.

**Christina:** It is?

**John:** Yeah.

**Christina:** Oh, of course, because they’re financing movies now.

**John:** Yeah they are.

**Christina:** Which is very tricky.

**John:** It’s very tricky. So we’ll get into a bit of that.

**Christina:** I don’t like that.

**John:** Other little bit is from Stuart Friedel, who is our former Scriptnotes producer, he’s also a new WGA member. Congratulations Stuart.

**Christina:** Ooh, congratulations.

**John:** He had these questions about dues and then he ended up finding a really useful PDF that talks through the process of sending in your dues. Because you’ve dealt with WGA dues.

**Christina:** It’s so old-fashioned. It’s crazy. The system is so hinky and weird and you can just put in whatever you want and make up. It’s crazy.

**John:** It’s crazy.

**Christina:** It’s getting updated though, right?

**John:** It’s getting updated. So, what’s weird about WGA dues, and so for people who don’t know, as a member of the Writers Guild you end up paying 1.5% of your earnings into the guild. And you would think like, “Oh, well that must get taken out of your checks.” It doesn’t. Like you are responsible for filling in a form every quarter saying this is what I earned on this project.

**Christina:** And you better type in all the numbers correctly or you pay the wrong amount and get in trouble.

**John:** And then you send them money. And so they don’t dock money. It’s a really strange system.

**Christina:** Really strange.

**John:** And so people as they do it for the first time have questions, so this little PDF I’ll put a link to helps answer some of those questions. But we might do an episode more about dues down the road because both dues collection has been updated throughout the guild and there are probably ways we could do even better down the road.

**Christina:** Yeah.

**John:** Cool. End of WGA segment. It’s time for our One Cool Things.

**Christina:** Oh shit!

**John:** Did you forget your One Cool Thing?

**Christina:** I completely forgot my One Cool Thing.

**John:** How about this? I will do my One Cool Thing first. And then while I’m talking you can think about something that you like a lot that you want people to see. It could be a TV show, it could be a book. It could be something great out there in the world.

My One Cool Thing is a book. It is a book called Mothers of Sparta by Dawn Davies. I actually met Dawn because she has the same publisher and we were at this dinner together. And so she stood up and she talked about her book and I’m like “That sounds really cool.” So I bought it and I read it. And it is really cool. To describe it, I would say if you’ve read any of David Sedaris’s books, like they’re kind of memoirs and they’re funny, this is like David Sedaris but if you grow up poor in South Florida. And there’s a little bit more sort of holy shit.

What I like about it is, you know, a bunch of stuff happens in her life. It sort of goes from her childhood up through where she is now. And a bunch of stuff happens that would sort of break other people. And it reminds you that so much of who you are is sort of the ways you got broken and healed. And it’s just really great and really funny and really terrific writing. It’s her first book. So I was just super impressed. Mothers of Sparta by Dawn Davies.

**Christina:** I would love to pretend that I have just suddenly come up with a great One Cool Thing. So I’m going to come up with a One Cool Thing that is a general idea.

**John:** Sure.

**Christina:** Which is – and it’s a piece of advice I think for all aspiring writers – which is my One Cool Thing is my female writer friends.

**John:** Oh, tell me about this.

**Christina:** I think it is really important that you find your – people are so worried I think in this industry about networking and about networking up. And I think honestly it’s the wrong way of approaching it. I think you’ve got to focus – sure, network if you want. I find it gross. But find your peers. Find your people that will stay with you through this industry. You know, I mentioned Geneva and Lindsey earlier. We support each other. We take care of each other. We text each other when we have painful experiences in pitches or whatever. Julia Hart who is a female writer-director. You know, there are days when we have horrible experiences, where we’re really struggling, where the system is misogynistic and painful and awful. And if I didn’t have my girls supporting me and like by my side I would have a hard time just emotionally.

I think it is really important – boys, find your boys, or your girls, or whatever. But I think women in this industry, find each other, support each other. There is this myth that we’re all competing with each other and we want to push each other down. It’s the opposite. And I think it’s really wonderful to – particularly in this moment – women represent only 25% of the Writers Guild. That’s so sad. There need to be more of us. Find young female writers you can mentor if you’re an established female writer. Make there be more of us.

**John:** Absolutely. Screenwriting was invented by women. And it’s crazy that–

**Christina:** I did not know that.

**John:** I’ll have to Google to find out her name, but sort of the first established and known screenwriter was a woman.

**Christina:** Of course she was.

**John:** Because as the screenplay format sort of came into being, because of course originally it was just like they were pointing cameras at things and shooting. But eventually you had to have a plan for what that is. So one of the first sort of credited screenwriters is a woman.

**Christina:** I love that.

**John:** And as the screenplay format evolved, she evolved with it. So, it is–

**Christina:** I bet she had good girlfriends.

**John:** I hope she had good peers. I hope she had a good group there. Yeah, thank you. That’s a very good One Cool Thing.

That is our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Hunter Christensen. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place you can send longer questions. For short questions, on Twitter Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Christina, are you on Twitter?

**Christina:** I am not on anything.

**John:** Congratulations.

**Christina:** I literally have no social media.

**John:** That’s very nice. You can find us on Apple Podcasts at Scriptnotes. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there, leave us a comment.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts. We get them up about four days after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. We also have a few of the USB drives that have the first 300 episodes available if you want those for your bunker. As the world falls apart and you just need to listen to Scriptnotes, you can listen to those.

**Christina:** Wear your USB around your neck.

**John:** Absolutely. Just plug it in whenever you need to. It’s very, very nice. Christina, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a pleasure talking to you.

**Christina:** Thank you so much for having me. I really didn’t swear as much as I thought I was going to.

**John:** Congratulations.

**Christina:** Thank you. I’m very proud of myself.

Links:

* Thanks for joining us, [Christina Hodson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Hodson). Her upcoming movies include [Bumblebee](http://deadline.com/2016/11/transformers-bumblebee-christina-hodson-script-paramount-pictures-spinoff-script-1201852869/) of the Transformers franchise and [Batgirl](http://deadline.com/2018/04/batgirl-movie-christina-hodson-writing-bumblebee-1202361134/).
* The Pudding’s [Film Dialogue from 2,000 screenplays, Broken Down by Gender and Age](https://pudding.cool/2017/03/film-dialogue/)
* Premium subscribers can listen to the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend bonus episode with Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom [here](http://scriptnotes.net/bonus-aline-brosh-mckenna-rachel-bloom-crazy-ex-girlfriend-qa).
* A [pilot announcement](http://deadline.com/2018/03/bright-futures-emily-ratajkowski-shameik-moore-lilly-singh-calum-worthy-jimmy-tatro-cast-lisa-kudrow-narrates-nbc-comedy-pilot-kenya-barris-1202355863/) that includes this character description: “a girl-next-door type but also with a behind-the-ear tattoo. She can just as easily bro out with the guys as she can be the girliest girl.”
* A [guide to WGA dues,](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/DUES_FAQ.pdf) courtesy of Stuart!
* [Mothers of Sparta](http://www.amazon.com/dp/125013370X/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Dawn Davies
* Female writer friends, like [Frances Marion](http://time.com/4186886/frances-marion/)
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](http://johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Hunter Christensen ([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_346.mp3).

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

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 339 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program it’s one of our favorite features, How Would This Be a Movie, where we take complicated real life situations and boil them down to two hours of filmed big screen entertainment. The only way we know how to process life.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. Can I just stop for a second and say Episode 339 – we almost have a year of podcasts.

**John:** Very true. You could listen to a podcast a day, which would be a way to spend your life. I don’t think it’s necessarily the best way to spend your life. But an hour with John and Craig every day. And actually if you counted all the bonus episodes I bet we’re super, super close to a full year.

**Craig:** We are. We’re probably super close. I’m just quickly doing the math in my head. This means we’ve been doing the podcast for roughly seven years, or 52 years.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** It’s one of those, right?

**John:** One of those two. Math is hard for us. But it’s one of those two choices. It’s been a good, long time. But it’s a been a good, fun time. A few weeks ago we aired an old episode because you and I were both traveling and people said like, “Huh, the sound quality wasn’t so good.” And you know what? You’re right. The sound quality wasn’t so good. Expectations have increased.

**Craig:** Well, you know, technology and all the rest of it. We’ve gotten better at those little bits and bobs. But even so, I’ve got to say – you know what it is? I’ll tell you, John. You and I, we’re the marrying type. So, when we started this podcast it’s like we got married.

**John:** Yeah. Absolutely true.

**Craig:** We don’t get – our heads don’t get turned.

**John:** Not a bit. So I’ll say that on an early episode I said like, “You and I, Craig, we’re not really friends. We’re not talking outside of this podcast.” And I could sense that you were really crushed by that. And, fair. And then I think we’ve become much better friends. We weren’t even playing D&D together when we started this podcast. That’s how long it’s been.

**Craig:** Which seems impossible. I’m crushed when anyone says that we’re – well, you know, we’re not really friends. And I think to myself, but why?

**John:** But why aren’t we friends?

**Craig:** I’m delightful. [laughs] I don’t understand what the problem is. No, I think we are friends. It’s true. I mean, it takes roughly 339 hour-long recorded conversations to really get to know you. But approximately one or two to get to know me.

**John:** And I always feel gross when I drop the word friend with somebody who is not really a friend. So I was on Chris Hardwick’s show a few weeks ago. It was a delightful conversation. You should listen to it because it was a really good time. And he’s on episode like 900 of his show.

**Craig:** Oh god.

**John:** But when they first proposed this, I was like, “Oh yeah Chris and I have been friends for years.” And then I realized like are we actually friends? No, we’re people who know each other well and when we recognize each other we’ll say hi and catch up. But it’s not like we’re hanging out every weekend. And so it was weird that I would ascribe Chris Hardwick as being a friend and not you back then.

So, I apologize.

**Craig:** Yeah, well no apology necessary. I think the word friend has been absolutely shredded to bits by the modern age, and particularly Facebook, which as it turns out is not this vaguely annoying thing. It turns out to be a bit of a melanoma on the skin of society.

I used to think like, ugh, Facebook is just annoying because it has distorted what it means to be a friend or to have a friend. And everybody is now engaging in this strange narcissistic display. No, it turns out Facebook is much, much worse.

**John:** But, Craig, they’re going to fix it all because they’re tweaking the algorithms.

**Craig:** Oh yes. Of course.

**John:** So all those problems of the past, they’re going to go away.

**Craig:** Is there a more annoying Facebook post than the, “Dear friends, they’re fixing the algorithm. If you wish to keep hearing…” No. No. Don’t talk to me.

**John:** Do not do that.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Facebook should only be about cute photos of babies and dogs. That’s all I want to see.

**Craig:** Pretty much. Anytime someone is like just respond so I know that you’re still listening to me. Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

**John:** Don’t do it. But on the topic of responding so that people know that you’re listening, Sundance Episodic Filmmakers Lab, which is actually like TV lab. We’ve talked about this before. It’s a really good program and they asked us to hype it up again so that they can get more great entries. The Episodic Story Lab is really, really great. And so it’s people who are doing television series, but also things that are kind of like television series. They put together showrunners and TV staff writers and people who are aiming for that kind of job together in a room up at the top of the mountains and they make great TV the same way they’ve been able to make great indie films.

So there’s going to be a link in the show notes to the application process for the Episodic Story Lab. Definitely consider if you’re considering writing TV. And if you are a writer headed towards this industry why aren’t you considering TV? So it feels like a good thing to consider applying for. I think the technical deadline for applying has passed, but they are still reading stuff realistically. So, get your stuff in there. Get into the Episodic Story Lab.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just a fine organization and we keep seeing great people graduating from that program and doing great, great things. So, seems like a no-brainer to me. Yeah.

**John:** All right. Let’s get to some follow up. Craig, will you take the first one here?

**Craig:** Yeah. We’ve got Steve in Los Angeles who writes in, “I’m a regular Scriptnotes listener and years ago I attended a Q&A with you at USC. Someone asked,” is he talking to both of us or just you?

**John:** I think it’s probably just me. We’ll see.

**Craig:** Just you. Because who is you? I mean, I’ve done Q&As at USC, but you’ve probably done more.

**John:** I’ve done more.

**Craig:** Your name is on a room there.

**John:** I got a name on a room.

**Craig:** Yep. “Someone asked you the proverbial question how do I break in as a writer.” That is not a proverbial question.

**John:** Yeah. What is a proverbial question? Let’s discuss proverbial questions. Is it an unanswerable fundamental question?

**Craig:** I don’t even know if there are proverbial questions as opposed to proverbial examples or the proverbial complaint or the proverbial – but a typical question, or the often asked question, but proverbial, I don’t know. Because proverbs aren’t in the form of questions.

**John:** No they’re not. They’re just sort of statements. [Unintelligible].

**Craig:** Yeah, I would say someone asked you the hackneyed question, “How do I break in as a writer? You answered that selling a spec screenplay is like winning the lottery. The best way to win is to buy as many tickets as possible. I took your advice to heart and my writing partner and I worked hard to stack the odds in our favor. There have been countless rejections over the years, but last week after writing 17 spec scripts we won.

“Our sci-fi spec, Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers, sold to Warner Bros. I wanted to reach out and say thank you. Your advice motivated me to keep buying lottery tickets.”

Wow.

**John:** Wow. Well congratulations, Steve, and to your writing partner. It’s awesome that you sold your spec. It’s awesome that you wrote 17 scripts. And I think it’s good for people to hear that it’s not about writing a script, or writing two scripts. It’s often about writing a whole bunch of scripts.

You know, Jonathan Stokes, who has become a friend, he is a middle grade fiction writer but he’s also a screenwriter. He works a lot in both. And it took him a long time to get his first purchase or his first spec sale, but then he ended up selling a bunch and he basically had this big old trunk full of scripts and he kind of sold them off one by one. So I’m curious whether that’s going to happen for Steve.

**Craig:** It’s a very common thing when people are interested in your work and hiring you for them to say what do you have in your drawer. So, Steve and his writing partner have another I guess 16 scripts in their drawer. But another thing to point out here, if we extend the analogy of the lottery ticket, unlike normal lottery tickets in which your odds remain the same, i.e. horrendous, in spec screenwriting with every script you write I think your odds get just a little bit better, because you theoretically at least are getting a little bit better each time.

**John:** Yeah. In the next episode of Launch, which I guess came out the same day as this episode of Scriptnotes, which is crazy, the final episode of Launch actually we talked to Tomi Adeyemi who has a book that comes out next week and her book is going to be huge. And sort of like Steve’s situation though, it wasn’t her first book. It wasn’t even really her second book. It was a bunch of stuff before this. And so she’ll seem like an overnight success, but there was a lot of work behind that overnight success-ness. So I would definitely tune in for her story in the next episode of Launch as well.

**Craig:** Yeah, there is the proverbial overnight success – proverbial used correctly there. And typically people will say, “Yes, my overnight success came over the course of 4,000 nights.” We just don’t see all that other stuff. What we see is the result. We see the outcome. So don’t get fooled by outcomes, folks.

Take a lot at the process. Steve has shun a light upon it.

**John:** Indeed. Winston in Los Angeles writes, “I recently wrote to you about my creative paralysis and I want to thank you for the advice you gave me on the podcast. It was affirming and encouraging. And now I’m happy to report that a production company has since agreed to produce my passion project. Of course, this is very exciting and I’m now in the process of attaching a showrunner before we take the project to the market. I’ll be having my first meeting with a potential showrunner very soon. And this writer on paper seems to be a great fit for me and my project.

“My question to you, John and Craig, is how should I approach and handle this meeting?”

So Winston is talking about a situation where he has written something and they’re going to partner him up with an experienced showrunner to go out to market. Like this is a person who would sort of godfather the project and sort of be the backstop to guarantee to the studio and to the network that this is really a show that can happen. And Winston who doesn’t have experience running a show will have somebody who does have experience running the show.

So, Craig, if you are meeting up with a potential creative partner for the first time what do you recommend you do?

**Craig:** Well this one is a tricky dance. I’ve never had this meeting, but I’ve definitely talked to people who have, from both sides. And so I think if you are aware of the potential pitfalls from both sides you’ll probably be well served.

So the showrunner is someone who has experience doing a lot of the things that Winston you may not have experience doing. Some of those are very managerial tasks. Managing human resources, as the corporates say. We are going to be hiring writers. We are going to be assigning writers things. We’re going to be figuring out our budgets. We’re going to be firing writers. We’re going to be hiring writing assistants. We’re going to be promoting writing assistants. We’re going to be dealing with notes from the studio. We’re going to be dealing with notes from the network. We have postproduction schedules to hit. We have staff to hire. We have staff to fire. We have crew to hire. Crew to fire.

We have directors to deal with. On and on and on. Oh, and let’s not forget the actors who occasionally will tromp into a trailer and complain about their characters or ask for more money or ask for more lines. All of this stuff is business-y stuff. So, I think Winston you should just be aware that when you’re speaking with the showrunner that there is a certain amount of experience they have that’s valuable to you, as opposed to going into that meeting and thinking, “So, nobody trust me because I’m new but they should trust me because I’m great. And so they’re just sticking somebody on here to be my babysitter.” That is not at all the case.

However, also then from the other side of things, for the showrunner, I think it’s important for a good showrunner to realize that somebody new to the business has created something that is unique and worthy of attention and thus has created a job for the showrunner.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** And that’s really valuable. So, the more the two of you can learn to trust and love each other, and the more the two of you can recognize what the other brings to the relationship that is irreplaceable, the better off it will be. If you feel like the showrunner is dismissive or disinterested or imperious then I think it’s fair for you to say I don’t want them.

**John:** Yeah. You got to trust your gut instinct there. And if the first meeting does not go well, I doubt that the third meeting and the 17th meeting will go well. In many ways I would recommend that this not be a meeting. If there’s a way you can have this first encounter not be in someone’s office talking over stuff, I think you’re going to be better off. Because so much of this relationship is going to be kind of a relationship, a mutual trust in that we’re trying to make the same thing. So if you can find some neutral happy spot to have some coffee in and chat that could be great. Where it doesn’t feel like you’re in an office environment necessarily, where you can just talk about overall visions, overall strategies. Where challenges could come up. What some of the opportunities are. Talk about your vision for what is going to happen over the course of the season.

You know, you are the person who wrote this thing that got this all started. And they are going to be the person hopefully who is going to help you carry this all the way through to the end. So, if you can find a neutral place to talk through the story that way that will be great.

A dynamic I don’t think you want to see is where they are suddenly kind of in charge of everything and you are their employee. That’s not going to be healthy either. So, you got to find some place where there’s a good balance that you’re trying to work together to make something rather than you are working for them.

**Craig:** 100%. And it’s good to be able to point to examples of the kinds of working relationships you admire and desire so that there isn’t any of those weird fussy moments where – you know, I was just talking to somebody today, a journalist, and she’s doing an article about our casting director on Chernobyl who is also the casting director of Game of Thrones, Nina Gold, and the journalist asked me this interesting question about how it works with hierarchies where everyone is sort of together in a room. You’ve got your executive producers. You’ve got your director. You’ve got your casting directors. And there’s a difference of opinion. How does hierarchy come into play?

And I had never really thought about the question before, but it did seem to me that in cases where things are working well, like for instance on our show now happily, it doesn’t. That hierarchy is irrelevant. What matters is general trust and faith and another person’s instincts, respect for another person’s feelings and opinions. Respect and belief in your own feelings and opinions. And a general appreciation for passion. Both strong negative and strong positive. And then things get hashed out.

Rather than situations where rank suddenly becomes very important. I find those to be diminishing and dispiriting and I think sometimes what happens is showrunners can take over a show and then you realize, “Oh, they’re a general and I’m some sort of weird lieutenant colonel that no one is saluting or carrying about because they don’t have to because the showrunner is ranked higher.” That’s a bummer.

**John:** Yeah. You’re sort of the founder, but they’re the CEO who got installed above the founder. That sort of thing does happen. I haven’t had a lot of like long term creative partnerships, but the longest I’ve had has been with Andrew Lippa on Big Fish. And a thing that Andrew and I figured out very quickly is that we’re not always going to agree on everything. But publically, when we’re in front of other people, we are in 100% agreement. And we will never disagree with each other in front of other people. And that may be a dynamic you find with this showrunner is that you can close a door and work through all the stuff you need to work through, but when you’re in the room with a network, when you’re in the room with the studio you are one united front.

And if you’re not one united front, they will find ways to pit you against each other, not because they’re trying to bring the show down, but they’re just trying to get their views heard and understood. So, the degree to which you can talk about how to be united in your vision publically, even when you are still figuring out privately what that vision should be. That’s got to be a goal.

**Craig:** And I would even carry that through to writing rooms.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** And to casts. Basically, you guys form your own little mafia and you don’t take sides against the family in public. Because you need to be a little mafia. You need to protect each other. Making television shows and movies is a process that is both necessary to make creative dreams realized and also it is a process that is corrosive to creative dreams. And the only thing that will protect you from the corrosive aspect is a mafia-like you and me. You and me, buddy, no matter what, back to back.

And if we have a fight, let’s fight behind closed doors. But when we come out, our ranks our closed. And it’s us against the world. And then everybody will follow along.

**John:** Yeah. That’s the goal.

All right, our last bit of follow up is a slightly different piece of follow up. So we’ve talked about MoviePass several times on the show. So MoviePass is a service. You subscribe for a monthly fee. I think it’s now $10 a month. And with that you can see unlimited movies basically. Or a movie a day.

We originally questioned well how is this possible. This is a way to lose a lot of money for a company called MoviePass.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And then people wrote and said, “Oh, you know, I think there actually is maybe a viable business plan here.” And then when we were doing our live show in Hollywood, a guy came up afterwards named John who said, “Oh, you were talking about MoviePass. I’m a MoviePass user. I’ve seen a movie every day on MoviePass.” And like well that’s crazy and great. And would you please write in and tell us about your experience. So, he did. And so here is his testimony of his experience using MoviePass.

And I thought I would just play it in total because if we were to get him on the phone and talk to him about it he’d be answering exactly the same stuff. So, here is John Parker talking about his experience with MoviePass.

**John Parker:** Hey John and Crag. John Paul Parker here. I’m a MoviePass subscriber and I just want to let you know that the service is not a scam. It actually works as advertised. I received my MoviePass card on January 5, 2017. And since receiving my card I have seen a new film in the theater every day. I’ve literally not missed a single day at the theater since getting my card.

Living in Santa Monica there are major multiplex chains like AMC, and also smaller art house shops like the Laemmle Theaters all around me, so I have yet to run out of a new film to watch each day.

The greatest thing about MoviePass is not how many films you get to see, it’s how many really good smaller budget independent films you will see and support. Films like Maude, Tragedy Girls, Ingrid Goes West, Good Time, and Landline are all films I went into completely blind and absolutely loved them. If it wasn’t for this service it is very unlikely I would have dished out the cash to see these films in the theaters unless someone strongly recommended one of them to me.

While the service is not perfect due to its nearly impossible to reach customer service when there are issues, or the inability to get seats early, for what you’re paying for it’s really hard to complain. When I got my card in early 2017 the plan was $500 for the year. It’s now dropped down to $120 per year. Seeing the amount of movies that I have has added up to roughly $5,000 for this year. So I’m definitely getting my money’s worth.

Originally it seemed like MoviePass’s business model was to hope that people wouldn’t use the service as much as the monthly plan is actually worth. Kind of like a gym. But now that the price has dropped down to $10 a month my guess is that what they’re trying to do is just acquire enough customers so that they can use their members to leverage them against the studios and theaters.

The App Store says that they have over 500,000 downloadable users. If that number rises to say 5 million users and each one of their customers sees at least one film a month at an average of $10 a ticket, then you’re looking at $50 million of US box office sales a month that they control.

I hope this information helped you out. All the best to you.

**John:** John Parker that was amazing. Thank you very much for writing in with that. And I should say that Megan McDonnell, our producer, she also uses MoviePass and she’s had a pretty good experience with it. So, I guess I’m wrong. Or I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how long MoviePass is going to last. I don’t know what it’s going to become. But for me to have dismissed it out of hand was incorrect I think.

**Craig:** Yeah. So certainly someone like John is rare. I don’t think a lot of people can – even have the time or the freedom – to see a movie a day like he does. But the deal, just to refresh my memory, is MoviePass is reimbursing the theater and therefore the studio for the cost of the ticket?

**John:** Essentially what happens is through the app you go in, you say I’m going to see this movie at this theater. And basically it’s GPS bound so that you’re literally at the theater. You’re clicking the button. It’s activating. It’s putting that money on your special MoviePass credit card. You’re using that MoviePass credit card to buy the ticket. So that is the transaction that’s happening.

So from the theater’s perspective, it’s essentially invisible.

**Craig:** It’s the same. It’s the same thing. Right. So, listen, we kind of went through this last time where it seemed like maybe what MoviePass was doing, and John is getting to this as well in his comment, they’re building a database of information and customers that could theoretically then be leveraged. Which is frightening, a little bit. I get frightened by – what’s the thing? If you’re not paying for something, then you are the product?

That worries me somewhat. But for now I guess, you know, go John Parker, go.

**John:** Yeah. I like that it has challenged himself to see a movie every day. He’s seeing a lot of movies he wouldn’t have otherwise seen. So that’s great and that’s fantastic.

I know there’s also been some challenges where certain theaters in Los Angeles and other markets are no longer on MoviePass and that was an unpleasant surprise to some folks. But I’m curious about new models. I would love for it to actually help the theatrical experience to get more people into theaters on a regular basis, because I think big screen entertainment is something worth fighting for.

So, I want it to help big screens and not hurt big screens. I’m not quite sure how it’s going to end up three or five years from now. But we’ll see. Because after all this podcast is going to go on for the next 20 years. So we’ll go through all of these cycles and see what it is. And we won’t believe what we were saying way back in 2018 about MoviePass.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, look at what we were saying in 2016 before things changed.

**John:** Indeed.

**Craig:** Long sigh. Long sigh.

**John:** Imagine that different world we lived in way back when.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** All right. It’s time for one of our favorite features. This is How Would This Be a Movie. Listeners send in articles from the news on Twitter to us, @johnaugust and @clmazin. They say, “Hey, this is like a How Would This Be a Movie.” And usually they’re correct. And so I hit the little fave button. Or if I really like it I save it to my pin board and we gather them all up. And occasionally we go through and take a look at these stories and ask, well, how would they be a movie?

So, we have five different articles that were suggested in. Many of these were by multiple listeners. So we will tackle them and see which of these stories might really be well-suited for the big screen.

**Craig:** Right. Or maybe amend that slightly to big screen or Netflix screen, you know, like perhaps an Amazon movie or a Netflix movie, but a feature film.

**John:** A feature. And sometimes we should say we’ll go through a story and say, you know what, it’s really a TV idea. It’s really a TV series idea.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with television.

**Craig:** Not at all, says the guy who’s writing television right now. So, I agree.

**John:** We are not big screen chauvinists. We just know more about big screen stuff.

The first article is by Zeke Faux for Bloomberg, which is just what an amazing name.

**Craig:** Right? Like Zeke Faux? Faux. That can’t be real. That has to be faux. It’s just crazy. That’s crazy. I mean, it would be like meeting somebody whose last name was “False.”

**John:** Yes. The headline of the article is Millions Are Hounded For Debts They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back With a Vengeance. One of our listeners said, “There’s an intriguing criminal network and a great, great persistent protagonist, but also a lot of dramatic action based around spreadsheets and phone calls. Shruggy face.”

I love shruggy guy built out of punctuation.

**Craig:** Shruggy guy is the best. You know who introduced me to shruggy guy?

**John:** Who?

**Craig:** Stuart Friedel.

**John:** That feels completely Stuart Friedel. Stuart Friedel, our former producer.

**Craig:** Yeah. He actually is the human shruggy face guy. Occasionally you can just imagine Stuart going, “What? What are you going to do?”

**John:** Our story follows Andrew Therrien. I guess I’m pronouncing his name right. He is a normal person with a normal job. Gets a phone call from a bill collector about a bill he does not owe. And a second phone call. And a threat to rape his wife. And other violence from these bill collectors. And most people would be frightened, annoyed. Andrew, it almost feels like one of those death wish things where you cross the wrong person.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And he goes on a mission to track down who this person was who is harassing him. But really what the whole industry was like of these people who are trying to collect debts, especially these really basically fake debts. And so this is a long dark slide I would say I would describe this article. Craig, did you feel a sense of a movie in here?

**Craig:** I did. I did. I don’t think it’s necessarily something that’s going to park in cinemas, as they say, but it could be an excellent feature on a Netflix or an Amazon or something like that. And here’s why. There is some general kind of interest in a new sort of villain and a new sort of scam. There’s a great tradition in movies of the little guy fighting back against a shadowy network of bad, bad people. I remember seeing that George C. Scott movie Hardcore, which was really gut-wrenching. But you could feel it. It was like there was a decent person trying to fight this thing that was so much bigger and just so much dirtier than he was. And how was he ever going to possibly win?

And so I like that. That’s good old traditional stuff. And there is an interesting onion-like method to this where you keep peeling layers and finding more and more stuff underneath. And finding people that are oddly sympathetic. And in fact in one point one of the middle men that was handling some of these fake phantom loans ends up killing himself because he’s so miserable about what’s happened and his life has fallen apart because of it.

But the reason that I think this actually could be really interesting to watch and unique is that there’s this fascinating notion of extreme people colliding. So you’ve got – and in the center of this onion there is a bad guy. The bad guy is named Joel Tucker, I believe. Joel Tucker kind of sits on top of this empire of awfulness. And he’s the one that has put all this in motion and he’s the one that has to be stopped.

And Joel Tucker, his scheme impacted millions of people. And if you impact millions of people the odds are you’re going to run into that one-in-a-million guy. And to me that’s sort of already the movie poster. You know? If you hurt a million people, you’re eventually going to hurt that one-in-a-million guy. And the one-in-a-million guy is our hero.

And our hero simply doesn’t care. It’s like, “Oh my god, I found the man who will not stop. His life is designed to find someone like me at any cost.” And he does. I love that.

**John:** In many cases that type of character is the villain. It is the unstoppable killer. It is the Terminator. It is the Freddy or the Jason who just keeps popping back up and is just relentless. And so it’s nice to see the relentless hero for a change, because looking through this guy’s basic makeup it’s not that he classically has the great story or the arc where he was this mild-mannered thing and then someone killed his wife. It’s not that.

It’s just like something was going to piss him off and this was the thing that pissed him off. And once he got pissed off you just don’t stop.

When I first started reading this I thought like, “Oh, there’s an interesting story to be made overall about this predatory bill collecting, about payday loans, about this whole industry that preys upon people who are just between checks on things.” And so you could do the Adam McKay version, The Big Short version, where you’re really looking at it as an overall industry. But in some ways I don’t think it’s as rewarding as the one that focuses on a single person.

We often cite Erin Brockovich as that story of the one person who stands up against a system. And this guy feels like that person standing up against the system.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is a little bit like an Average Joe version of John Wick. Now, movies like John Wick are fun and they’re very similar to Taken and Taken is very similar to other movies before it where there is somebody who is an established dangerous person that other people in the world of danger know about and respect. And then somebody mistakenly comes along and screws with them. And then we just have the visceral fun of watching a guy on God mode, basically playing a videogame level, you know. I mean, Old Boy and all that stuff. It’s basically just videogames on God mode.

But this is different because nobody knows who this guy is. And, in fact, it’s almost like this man was waiting for this moment. That his life had been just about being on pause until such a moment that his super power could be required. And his super power is to never stop until he gets the right guy on the phone, and gets that right guy to admit what he’s done, and bring him to justice.

It is the strangest story. And it’s fascinating.

**John:** Well, because usually he would have some sort of structure backing him. So either he’s a journalist who is doing this for a newspaper article. Erin Brockovich, she is working for a law firm who is investigating this. But this was just – he was personally offended. And personally wronged. And that is what starts him on his quest, which is very relatable but also just unusual for this kind of story because he doesn’t have the backing of a greater thing behind him.

**Craig:** Right. That’s why I love it. In fact, there’s no evidence in his life as far as this article indicates that he would have even had the capacity for this. This man’s job – Andrew Therrien, his job was salesman for a promotions company. And then later in the article they talk about what he specifically did as salesman for a promotion company. He was promoting ice cream brands and hiring models for liquor store tastings. That is not a dangerous man. That’s also not a man who becomes obsessive about avenging this harassing phone call for $700.

Just to be clear, it started with a request for $700. And this guy went bananas. And I love that. I just think that’s so cool. And this is the kind of movie where if you got somebody like let’s say Leonardo DiCaprio to just become sort of bizarrely fascinated by this nut as I am, and he’s like a good nut, then you actually would get that in the movie theater. Because it’s like, “Oh my god, he will not stop. This is awesome.” I love that.

**John:** Here’s also why I think you might make the movie version of this is the situation he finds himself in general is relatable. So, I’m not behind on debts but maybe once a year I’ll get that call from a bill collector who is after somebody who used to work for me, or like they’re trying to collect the debt on the sister-in-law of someone who used to work for me. Basically they’re casting out the widest net possible to see if they can put pressure on somebody for some bogus debt. And it is horrible and I hate these people when they call and I let them know how much I hate them when they call.

And so we all have that experience either directly or by one step away and so I think we can relate emotionally to what that experience is like. It’s just like we are the people who wouldn’t snap, and he is the person who snaps.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, this guy bucks the trend. If the world feels like all of the chips are stacked against you, and here is a guy who just walks into a poker game with no chips. And just doesn’t stop until he wins. It’s fascinating. That part of it to me is remarkable. And I think it’s one great actor away from being a thing. But you need that great actor.

**John:** Well, and a script, too.

**Craig:** Oh, yes, of course.

**John:** We always forget somebody has to write the script. Another potentially great role is in Worst Roommate Ever. Do you want to set us up for that?

**Craig:** Sure. Worst Roommate Ever. This has been going around and around. And I got sent this because a lot of people were like, “See, you didn’t have the worst roommate ever.” I don’t know. I think I still did. I think Ted Cruz was worse than this guy, even though this guy turns out to be a murderer. But in his own way, Ted, I believe – you can make an argument he’s complicit in murder. Side thing. We have to get to our – we owe people the – you know, every now and then we do the Scriptnotes side show. And I think gun control. We may need to do the gun control one. We had promised at some point.

**John:** I think we need to. I think we had promised that, so we should dig into that.

**Craig:** We’ll get to it. OK. So, this story is about a man who, again, a bit of a one-in-a-million kind of guy. And here’s what he would do. He would look for people who were advertising sublets, like I need somebody to help split the rent with me. I’ve got a spare room so you’ll pay a little rent and you can move in. And he would move in. And he was a 60ish kind of guy. And for a few months he would be just the best. He would be the best roommate. A gentleman. A kind man. He would pay on time. And then things would start to get bad.

And he would become sort of a nightmare tenant. And what he was doing as it turned out was trying to get people to sue him. This is where this one goes so weird. His whole thing was essentially to create conflict for conflict’s sake. He wasn’t really trying to steal people’s homes from them. He wasn’t trying to extort money from them really. He just liked getting into fights. A little bit like the Joker. Just chaos for chaos sake. So he’s like Roommate Joker.

But eventually it gets much, much worse. I mean, he clearly had serious mental problems and eventually he does end up killing his own brother and goes to prison. And when he is in prison he commits suicide. So he’s not around to torment people anymore. But it is a remarkable story of somebody that would go from rent share to rent share with only one motivation: to enter into a chaotic relationship.

**John:** The article we’re talking about is written by William Brennan. It is in New York Magazine. And what I found so fascinating about him as a villain, it reminded me a lot of the villain in Dirty John. So if you listened to that podcast or read the newspaper series, where superficially charming or charming enough, and sympathetic to the degree that he’d moved to town because of a sick family member and he needed to be closer to the hospital or he’d just been displaced by some natural storm. He showed up with a cat and a dog who he seemed to care for a lot.

So, you felt sympathy for him. And it’s a very classic technique where when you do a favor for somebody you feel extra indebted to them. And so he was doing a favor by moving into the apartment and helping to pay your rent. But, you know, in you doing a favor for him by taking him in you felt this bond. And then he clearly is – Craig, I mean, you’re the psychologist, but like a psychopath? Sociopath?

**Craig:** I don’t know.

**John:** To some basic degree he did not seem to – maybe he understood people’s misery and trauma but he liked to inflict it. He seemed to just really get off on just twisting the knife in there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And he went to law school and was apparently a brilliant law student. Failed the bar and never took it again. So, he had this legal background that he could use. But not necessarily use particularly well. He may have perceived himself as the victim in all of these stories. It’s not quite clear. But he’s not a person you should ever let into your home.

**Craig:** No. He’s not. And so there’s a – you probably saw that movie Pacific Heights. It’s a couple decades old now at least. Michael Keaton is essentially in a similar situation. A couple is looking to rent out some space in their home and Michael Keaton shows up and he seems perfect. And then he never wants to leave. And then he becomes a nightmare. And then it becomes a thriller and stabby and so forth.

The reason why I think this is not a movie is actually because the nature of this bad guy is puzzling. I don’t mind watching puzzling heroes because I’m meant to empathize with them, so I will learn about how they are and maybe even aspire to be a bit like them. But this guy’s problem is so strange. His reasons are so strange that they feel a bit arbitrary. And in real life that happens all the time and it’s a very, very scary thing. In movies, it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating if we feel that our villain is purely arbitrary.

And even in a movie like Dark Knight where we are meant to think, at least for a while, that the Joker is arbitrary and loves chaos, he has a point he’s trying to make about the nature of humanity to Batman. This guy has no point. He just likes getting into fights. And that strikes me as just a profound personality disorder. It is bizarre. And there is no explanation for it, nor do I find it particularly satisfying. I don’t want to hate him because I don’t understand him. I feel bad for everybody involved. And then he dies in the end and there’s no real sense of tragedy. The person that he kills, his own brother, there’s not much of a narrative story between those two either. I just don’t think this is a movie.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t think it’s necessarily a movie either. But I think it’s an interesting example of the Blank from Hell genre, which we went through a whole bunch of those. It’s the Nanny from Hell. It’s the Roommate from Hell. It is–

**Craig:** The Adopted Daughter from Hell.

**John:** The Assistant from Hell. That sense of like you’ve invited this person into your life and then this person becomes someone incredibly dangerous to you and to your sense of normalcy. And that happens in real life. We all have experiences where somebody who you thought would be cool ends up not being cool and being kind of a nightmare. And so to take it to the nth degree is really interesting.

But I think you hit a crucial distinction is that when a hero is complicated and it’s sometimes hard to understand exactly how their head is working we kind of lean into it because, all right, I’m going to try to sort this out. When a villain is doing that, particularly a villain who wouldn’t necessarily have full storytelling power, we’re like, yeah, I don’t get it. That doesn’t make sense to me.

Even movies that are, I think, have really great things to them can be frustrating because of that opacity. I really liked I, Tonya, but at the end of the day I have a hard time saying what I believe about Tonya Harding or Jeff Gillooly or actually a lot of the people involved in that story because I don’t think we can really even know. And I don’t think the filmmakers can definitively tell us what was going on inside their heads. And that is frustrating on a narrative level.

**Craig:** Yeah. There is a difference between moral ambiguity and I’ll call it motivational ambiguity. I don’t mind wondering at the end of a film if someone is good or bad, because the truth is usually we are both. It’s a very human thing to be morally complicated. And those are interesting endings to movies when you are left discussing with your friends and loved ones afterward what do you think about that character and can you understand why they did what they did. I think we see the villain in Black Panther, Killmonger, is a great example of someone who is morally complicated. And at the end of the movie you can have great discussions about where he came from and why he did what he did.

But motivational ambiguity is frustrating. Why he did what he did, crystal clear. Whether it was wrong or not, that’s a different story. But actually motivated him, no question. He tells you. And when we don’t quite know why people are doing things from a simple motivational point of view it does get frustrating.

**John:** Yeah. So a writer who chose to adapt this story would have to make some fundamental choices like he’s doing this because of X. You’re going to have to pin something down which may not be really true or based on reality, but you’re going to have to give the audience some clear framework for why he’s doing this, or I think you’re going to end up with a very frustrating movie. Or more likely a movie that doesn’t get made because the notes are like, “I don’t get why he does this. It’s a pass from us.”

**Craig:** Yeah. And also pretty good litmus test for whether you should adapt something or not. If you have to invent the beating heart of the thing, what are you adapting it for? I mean, the whole point of these things is that you find something that gets you excited in it. That is inherent to it and honest to it. You can then, you know, paint outside the lines and invent, but there is a connection to something true. If the thing that you are ultimately connected to in a story like this is your invented reason for why this guy does stuff, then what do you need this for?

**John:** Yep. All right, let’s go to another story with a complicated hero, or villain. A character at the very center of the story who we’re not quite sure why she’s doing what she’s doing. So this story is Teen Girl Posed For 8 Years As Married Man To Write About Baseball And Harass Women. This story we’re reading is from Lindsey Adler who is writing for Deadspin.

So it tells the story of baseball fan turned writer Becca Schultz who for eight years was pretending to be a man writing about baseball. She started this persona when she was 13 years old and it was revealed much later that she was in fact a woman ,but she wasn’t just writing about baseball. She was harassing women online and doing some things which are kind of despicable. And it’s very hard to say exactly why.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, well, she tries to explain it. And the explanation starts, well, the way you would expect which is “I wanted to be a valid heard voice in a man’s world. And I was not a man, nor was I even an adult. And so I took upon the mantel of an adult man to be heard.” And that’s a fascinating thing and it’s an interesting commentary on our society.

It’s also – you could look at her performance as an adult man as a horrendous critique of adult men, because she went ahead and did the things that adult men so often do, which is harass women, make them feel bad, pressure them sexually, get them to do things they didn’t want to do sexually, berate them. Except as she says, you know, at some point it wasn’t intentional like an act. She says it slowly led her down a path to some things that she was very uncomfortable doing but didn’t even realize were happening. And then she was in too deep. And I think what ends up going on is people like this create relationships that matter to them.

Everybody, myself, everybody has had a relationship with somebody – even if it’s brief – on the Internet. It doesn’t have to be sexual. It could be a combative relationship. It could be anything. Where you realize I’m in a relationship with this person, for better or for worse. And it’s doing something for me, because I keep coming back to it. And it is a fascinating sort of example of how human relations can become quicksand when you remove accountability. But that in and of itself doesn’t feel like a particularly new or fresh observation to make cinematically.

**John:** Yeah. So at the heart of this is the concept of catfishing. And so this is catfishing where you’re not going into this proposing a relationship where you’re like presenting yourself in a relationship as a person you’re not. We’ve seen tons of stories of that. And I don’t know if there’s been a great movie version of that, or at least a great sort of big screen movie version of that. This one is weird because of the addition of baseball. And the sense that she was just a teenager when she was starting to do this.

But, I mean, teenager-hood is the time when you are trying on personalities anyway. So to try on an adult male personality online, and then carry it through to making up a fake wife and fake kids and then have these online relationships with these women who believe that you are a man – yeah, you can see sort of how it happens. I have a hard time understanding or envisioning how you would make this a movie in the sense of like whose perspective are we in.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because if we’re just seeing her go through all these steps it’s hard to really picture what are we seeing onscreen. This is the kind of thing where I feel like you need the internal voice of the main character who is doing this. And so it feels like a book rather than a movie. I just don’t know how you make sense of this character without having real introspection.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah. I understand her. And it is a very juvenile kind of thing that she did. And it was a – I can empathize with the desire for intimacy, even when intimacy goes wrong and turns abusive. I understand essentially what was going on. It doesn’t puzzle me. I just don’t think that there’s anything larger to learn. So it doesn’t need to be represented as a movie, I don’t think. I hope she gets help.

**John:** Yeah. I hope she gets help, too. And I think if there’s a story to be told out of this, or something that’s not quite this story but this general area of a story, it feels to me like a book. It can weirdly be like a stage musical where you can have the ability to sing the song of who you are inside. Or do double casting where you are the same people. She is both herself and the person she is presenting herself. Those are compelling ways to do this. I just have a harder time seeing this as a piece of visual entertainment up on a screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think actually a musical is a pretty good idea.

**John:** Yeah. I will always fall back on a musical. But yes.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, isn’t Dear Evan Hansen is kind of in this world, right, of a kid who tells a lie and can’t get out of it.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** So, yeah, anytime you are dealing with a very internal, complicated, ugly, greasy, yet beautiful and sad and lovely mush of human emotions, I hear a song.

**John:** I hear a song.

All right. Our next story is from The New Yorker. It is a piece by Rachel Aviv entitled What Does It Mean? “When Jahi McMath was declared brain-dead by the hospital, her family disagreed. Her case challenges the very nature of existence.”

So, Craig, you are our resident almost-doctor. What did you make of this story? And do you want to talk us through the framework here? So essentially a young woman goes in for a tonsillectomy. Something goes wrong. She ends up in a coma. And beyond a coma she ends up brain-dead. The family does not believe that. And essentially keeps her or her corpse, you’ve got to decide where you stand with whether she is alive or not, for years it seems now. And she’s still in this state in their apartment. And I guess it makes you question are they right, are they wrong. Who are the heroes and who are the villains in the story?

**Craig:** This is a classic bioethical conundrum tale here. This girl had – at least it’s suggested – may have had a physical condition where her corroded artery was really close to her pharynx and when that happens that can raise, as the article points out, potentially raise the risk of hemorrhaging. It does appear, in fact, that she was hemorrhaging. And ultimately that led to her heart stopping, a loss of oxygen to the brain. The heart eventually restarts but the brain appears to be dead.

So, you have these situations where Patti [sic] Schiavo was sort of the one everybody knew about. Someone whose brain shows no provable activity on an electroencephalograph. But the rest of the body can be kept alive with a ventilator and all the rest of that. And so the heart keeps beating and so on and so forth. And you’re on a feeding tube, etc.

So, what do we have here? And this is where it gets mushy because this article kind of paints everybody out weirdly to be a villain. That’s how I felt. Like the doctors all felt a little too callous about it and a little too dismissive and a little too, “Ugh, whatever, it’s a vegetable, she’s dead.” And there’s implications that race was a factor.

The family seems to be reading a bit much into some of the body movements that occur with their daughter. Which, you know, sometimes it could be a real thing. I mean, there’s locked-in syndrome and all the rest of it. But it still doesn’t look like she’s alive. I mean, they do bring a doctor in from Cuba who insists that she’s alive. But it’s a little upsetting. And there’s this other strange thing that’s happened. So they talk about the Jahi McMath shadow effect. A rise in the number of families, many of them ethnic or racial minorities, going to court to prevent hospitals from unplugging their loved ones from ventilators. The notion there being white doctors are telling us our kids are dead when they’re not really dead, because they’re racist and don’t care, or care less. And we’re going to fight back.

I don’t believe that that is the case. I don’t.

**John:** I don’t believe that is the case either. Here’s my real worry about this as a movie is I could see this being made as a movie and in the movie version of this the family are heroes and the doctors are bad guys and she clearly is still alive and this is Lorenzo’s Oil and she probably wakes up at the end. You bend it just enough to see like, “Look, they persevered. They believed when no one else believed and look at where we are right now.” And that version of the story doesn’t tell about all the loss and of the costs that happened because of the decision to keep believing that she’s alive when everyone says she’s dead. The costs to the rest of the family. The costs to the medical system. The costs to other people who didn’t get help because this money and time and resources were being spent on this situation.

So, I get so nervous about this because I can’t envision a movie version of this story that doesn’t have this family as the heroes in it.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’re right. I mean, you don’t want to do a story where the point is these people are delusional and need to let their kid go. I mean, you could, and generally speaking the way you would do that is by having a disagreement between family members so it didn’t feel like there was some outsider coming in just yelling at them until they finally said, “Oh you’re right. What are we doing?” And then they bury their kid.

But this is not something that really is part of the common human experience.

**John:** Well, I say it is part of the common human experience in like that faith in miracles. That faith in like, no, no, we just have to keep believing longer and then we will – all our faith will pay off. I mean, that’s ultimately what this is is that if we believe hard enough and long enough we will be proven correct. And that is a common experience, whether it has to do with death or not death. And every one of us is also going to face end of life decisions. We’re going to face those choices of like do we start hospice or do we do some other great intervention on behalf of an elderly parent. Like we all do face this. This is just the more extreme version of it.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s tough when it’s a kid because the whole point of a child is that they’re supposed to live. You know, if there’s someone who is 85 and then the doctors are like “Brain-dead,” you’re like, “No, grandma is still alive.” Well, it’s grandma. What are you going to do? So, I understand the misery of it. And my heart goes out to anybody that has to suffer from this. But I think that we have yet to really come to grips with accepting the notion that we die and that people die. And there is also, look, if you believe religiously then you’re just going to keep these people alive because you believe in a soul and neuroscience doesn’t. Neuroscience believes in electricity.

**John:** Yeah. But you’re going to keep these people alive even though they’re being kept alive by artificial means that were not sort of part of your cultural tradition before this moment. So, that’s the weird thing, too. It’s only going to, in many ways these kind of decisions are only going to get harder as we get better and better at keeping more and more people, their bodies functioning even after what we had decided was death has occurred. That’s an interesting thing, too.

Also I should have said the other big cost of this is, of course, organ donation which is the one thing that can actually save people’s lives.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s the part that’s so rough because it’s impossible to say how you would handle something like this, but I’d like to think the way I would handle it would be to let my loved one go and then save as many lives with their organs as I could. And certainly, oh my god, if it’s me – I mean, if I get a bad headache, go ahead and harvest my organs. [laughs]

**John:** There’s a story this past week, I’ll try to find a link to it, about the actor Jon-Erik Hexum. So he was–

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** He was a star who was on this show called Cover Up. He was like a big hunky model guy. And he was messing around with a prop gun and fired a blank that lodged a piece of paper into his head and he died. What I hadn’t heard about the rest of that story is like they donated all of his organs, because it was the perfect death because everything was in ideal condition. And so parts of him are still alive in so many different people, which I think is just an amazing legacy to carry on.

**Craig:** I knew him from Voyagers. He traveled through time. No question. That was a joke that did not work and he died. But, yeah, you save all these lives. And I think that’s wonderful. I would love to do that. But, you know, is this a movie? No.

**John:** No. It is not a movie. It is an interesting story to talk about at a dinner party when you want to depress some people, but it is not a movie. What will not depress them is our final opportunity. A Carnival Cruise Descends into Anarchy. There’s many stories about this one, but it’s Avi Selk writing for the Washington Post is the one we’ll link to.

Essentially on a Carnival Cruise ship, apparently one family that had like 12 or 24 people just created this tremendous chaos. And there’s video of just these brawls happening. Passengers were scared for their safety on the boat. They were like locking themselves through the cabin. We laugh because it’s absurd. I’m sure it was terrible for the people involved. I feel like there’s a movie space here, or at least there’s an episode of a TV show here, because that is sort of like one of my fears. Because it’s awful when you have people on a flight who are misbehaving. Like that’s terrible. But on a boat where you’re there for a week and these people are always around. It’s that sense of like a small village in the middle of the ocean. There’s something really interesting and fun to do there.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s some broad comedy to be done about a cruise. I mean, they’re Australians. They’re like a family of Bogans basically. That’s a word that we learned from Rebel. Yeah, there’s something. I mean, I don’t know. What bums me out is this is the one that probably most studio executives would be like, “Get me that Carnival Cruise thing. Get me the rights to that.” Because it just feels like, you know, it will be that movie. So I don’t even want to help them. I don’t want to help them.

**John:** It’s like Murder on the Orient Express but like funny and on a boat.

**Craig:** Exactly. Yeah. That’s what they’ll say.

**John:** And could we make it less snowy, and funnier, and could some people be in bikinis. And could we put Seth Rogan in it?

**Craig:** You’re helping them. Stop helping them.

**John:** That’s a movie.

**Craig:** Stop it.

**John:** [laughs] Yep.

**Craig:** No help.

**John:** All right. So, of the How Would This Be a Movies that we talked through, I think it’s clear that the debt collector one is probably the most compelling movie of this batch.

**Craig:** Yes. For me. But the most likely to be made is the Carnival Cruise descends into anarchy.

**John:** I think you’re probably right. Here’s what I’ll say. The Carnival Cruise, you do not have to buy the rights to that Carnival Cruise. There’s really nothing especially great or remarkable about the scenario there. The general sense of like what if you had Animal House but on a cruise ship. That’s a free idea. Free idea for anyone in Hollywood to run off with.

**Craig:** And begin…type…type…type.

**John:** It’s time for our One Cool Things. I have two One Cool Things. My first is Portal Bridge Connector. So, Craig, you’ve played Portal. You’ve played the amazing videogame Portal.

**Craig:** The cake is alive.

**John:** The cake is alive. The cake is delicious. Portal Bridge Connector combines all the fun of Portal along with the Bridge Connector games where you’re trying to move a vehicle from one side of the screen to the other side of the screen by building a physics enabled bridge. It’s really ingenious. I’m playing the version for the Mac and I’m sure there’s other versions, too. But it does all the fun stuff about bridge things with all the warped sense of humor of Portal. It’s very, very clever so I recommend you waste a lot of your time on Portal Bridge Connector.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** My second one is a great podcast by The Onion called A Very Fatal Murder. It is a parody of true crime podcasts. It is ingenious. It is so, so good. So I don’t want to say too much and spoil it for you, but the episodes are really short. So, download the whole season. You can burn through it in a little over an hour. But it just so nails all the tropes to the degree to which you won’t be able to listen to other true crime podcasts because you’ll recognize, oh yeah, that’s a trope. It’s just ingenious.

**Craig:** See, now I’ll listen. And you don’t have to worry about me not listening to other true crime podcasts, because that wasn’t going to happen anyway. But I do find that whole thing pretty up its own butt. And so I love the idea that they’re taking the piss, as the Brits say. Because it is all very kind of formalized.

You know, this is my problem with podcasts.

**John:** Now that you’ve listened to three podcasts–

**Craig:** These things keep popping up, even in the three I listen to. There’s like – have you ever seen the video that someone did about YouTube voice?

**John:** I haven’t seen that. I should find it.

**Craig:** So, YouTube voice is this thing. People who do YouTube videos where they’re talking about whatever the hell interests them, they all speak somewhat similarly. And they also edit their sentences so that there’s never any breaths. And in fact a lot of times purposefully clip off the ends of words. It’s so strange.

**John:** Yeah. That editing style is really annoying. It’s really clear when you see it.

**Craig:** There’s also podcast voice. And I don’t like it. [laughs] I don’t like podcast voice. And you know what? Neither one of us have podcast voice. Although I will say that in Launch you kind of have podcast voice. You have podcast voice in Launch.

**John:** I do have more podcast voice. And so in the later episodes where it is just more just chatting because I’m literally just in a hotel room and I’m exhausted, I’m a little less podcast voice-y later on. But finding my right voice was hard. And we threw out the entire first episode and rerecorded it because I was too podcast voice-y. It really felt weird and forced.

But it’s the difference between me spontaneously talking like I’m doing right now and reading off a script. And I have to read off a script because I have to be able to make these points and connect these dots in ways.

**Craig:** Well sure.

**John:** That I wouldn’t have to just speaking.

**Craig:** There’s this cadence that we are familiar with for instance on news broadcasts. The local reporter, “I’m standing here where just minutes ago,” and then in England it’s very much – there’s a wonderful, again, a person did a video where someone is just saying garbage but in the intonation of a British news reporter. And you realize how formalized that is. And it’s becoming formalized for podcasts, too. But you know who does a great job of not doing podcast voice, even though it’s an incredibly scripted show? Karina Longworth.

**John:** Yeah. I would agree. I would say part of it is that when you actually just talk to Karina in a normal setting that’s her real voice.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** But it fits really naturally. Her normal speaking voice is a little bit not like how other people would speak.

**Craig:** Her voice is authentic there. You don’t get a sense that she’s doing the podcast voice. Like for instance Leon Neyfakh, and I really, really enjoyed the Slow Burn podcast, so I hope he doesn’t take this as some sort of terrible insult, but he’s got massive podcast voice. And I actually want to say to him, you know what, you don’t need the podcast voice.

**John:** Well as the expert in podcasts, I feel like you should step in there. Having listened to so many podcasts, you are the person to–

**Craig:** I’ve listened to ones of them. Ones and ones of podcasts.

**John:** Tell us about your One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** Super-duper late to the party here, but I went on a binge and watched The Good Place. And I love that show so freaking much, written in part by my cousin, Megan Amram. So sorry that I’m so late to the show. But I hope you guys are watching it. If you’re not, watch it. There have been two seasons so far. Each season has I think ten episodes. So, very manageable. The cast is so, so good. I mean, the writing is amazing and the cast is great. Jameela Jamil – do you watch the show? Or have you watched the show?

**John:** So I’ve watched every episode and I watched the first season twice because I went back and watched it to sort of see what really happened. And I watched it with my daughter who is 12 and she loves it as well.

**Craig:** Yeah. Jessie, my 13-year-old, thrilled. Jameela Jamil may be the prettiest person in the world. Just like – I’m doing the thing where I’m fanning my face because she’s the hottest person alive. And hysterically funny on that show. William Jackson Harper plays Chidi and I want to be his friend so much because he’s basically like every nerd friend I ever had in college where we would sit and talk about Nietzsche and nonsense like that. And just loved it. And even like earlier in the episode I said Leap of Faith and in my mind I hear Chidi saying, “Well actually you know Kierkegaard, really it was better translated as a leap into faith.” It’s just so great.

Kristen Bell, the greatest, has always been the greatest. She’s first ballot Hall of Famer. And then Manny Jacinto is the latest in this wonderful television tradition of impossibly stupid people. I want to do a history of the impossibly stupid person on TV. You know, like Woody Harrelson on Cheers was one of the early ones I remember seeing. Like that’s not possible to be that stupid. And then Homer, of course, one of the great impossible. And then Manny Jacinto is even dumber than all of them.

And then lastly I just want to point out that on The Good Place they do diversity properly. You don’t get a sense that the show is diverse because a social justice warrior was whacking them on the knuckles with a ruler saying, “Come on. Fulfill the quotas.” It’s diverse because the show is about humans who are dying and going to the afterlife. And if you just go by the odds, I looked this up. If you by the odds, and you’re just going to randomly scoop up ten people that just died on our planet, the odds are that out of those ten people two of them will be Chinese. Not Asian. Chinese. Two of them. Two of them will be Indian. Two of them will be of predominately African descent. So we’re now up to six people. We’ve got two Chinese people, two Indian people, two people of predominately African descent.

There’s probably going to be one more non-Chinese, non-subcontinental Asian, so we’re talking about Indonesian or Filipino or Thai or Vietnamese, or Japanese, or Korean. So now that’s seven people.

We’ve got three people left. Divide them roughly up between Hispanic and non-Hispanic white people. That’s basically the world. If anything, they’re a little skimpy on the Chinese people. Other than that, they’re really good about being appropriately representational of the world.

And also there’s one person from America, which I loved. You know, it’s great. Because there’s not that many Americans.

**John:** You left off one person who is fantastic in the show who is Ted Danson who anchors it in way that is just so remarkable. And is clearly having a fantastic time doing it, but also has a weirdly difficult role that he just nails. It is just an incredibly ingenious show. Megan Amram’s puns are worth it. It’s the show where you actually do pause to look at all the signs that they’re constantly changing out. Drew Goddard directed the pilot and it’s hard to imagine that he had such a vision for what that show is going to be so early on. The writing across the board is fantastic. So, hooray.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s just so good and so smart. And it’s legitimately laugh out loud. I cannot wait for the next season.

**John:** Cool. That is our show for this week. As always, our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Rajesh Naroth. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you send questions and follow up and feedback-y things.

If you have a short thing, on Twitter I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. That’s where you can send us articles for us to consider for How Would This Be a Movie.

We’re on Facebook. Search for Scriptnotes Podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts. Just search for Scriptnotes. Leave us a review while you’re there. That is lovely if you do that.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. It’s also where you’ll find transcripts for this and all the back episodes. You can find the most recent 20 episodes or so are on iTunes, but the whole back catalog is at Scriptnotes.net. It is $2 a month for all the back episodes. There’s also some USB drives with the first 300 episodes available at store.johnaugust.com.

Craig, thanks for a fun exploration of How Would These Be Movies.

**Craig:** John, it was a great show. And 339, ooh, 340. We’re coming up on 340. So excited.

**John:** Oh, it’s going to be good. All right, have a great week.

**Craig:** See you next time.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* Applications are being accepted for the [Sundance Episodic Lab](http://www.sundance.org/programs/episodic-storytelling#/)
* [Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back, With a Vengeance](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-06/millions-are-hounded-for-debt-they-don-t-owe-one-victim-fought-back-with-a-vengeance) by Zeke Faux for Bloomberg
* [Worst Roommate Ever](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/jamison-bachman-worst-roommate-ever.html) by William Brennan for New York Magazine
* [What Does It Mean to Die?](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/what-does-it-mean-to-die) by Rachel Aviv for the New Yorker. John also mentioned [this story](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5381943/How-actor-accidentally-shot-dead.html) about Jon-Erik Hexum by Gareth Davies for the Daily Mail.
* [Teen Girl Posed For 8 Years As Married Man To Write About Baseball And Harass Women](https://deadspin.com/teen-girl-posed-for-8-years-as-married-man-to-write-abo-1820305588?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark) by Lindsey Adler for Deadspin
* [A Carnival cruise in the South Pacific descended into violent anarchy](https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2018/02/17/a-10-day-carnival-cruise-in-the-south-pacific-descended-into-violent-anarchy/?__twitter_impression=true) by Avi Selk for The Washington Post
* [Bridge Constructor Portal](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bridge-constructor-portal/id1311353234?mt=8)
* [A Very Fatal Murder](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/a-very-fatal-murder/id1333714430?mt=2)
* [The Good Place](https://www.nbc.com/the-good-place?nbc=1) on NBC.
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](http://johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [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_339.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2018/call-me-by-your-name).

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

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** My name is Aline Brosh McKenna.

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

A couple of years ago we sat down with the writer and director of Frozen, Jennifer Lee, because you and I were genuinely obsessed with that movie. And luckily this year we are obsessed with a new movie.

**Aline:** Obsessed!

**John:** It is called Call Me by Your Name.

**Aline:** It’s not at all like Frozen. Or is it?

**John:** In some ways maybe it is. Like who is the Hans of this? Who is the Anna? And who is the Elsa?

**Aline:** Yeah, well there’s no bad guys in this movie. It’s one of the things I love about it.

**John:** Yeah, it’s very good. So, is obsessed fair to characterize us? Because I’ve seen the movie, I’ve read the book, I’ve answered questions in forums about like what I think certain things mean, or–

**Aline:** I’ve seen it twice. I’ve read the book. I’ve listened to the audio book. And I read the screenplay. Did you read the screenplay?

**John:** I didn’t read the screenplay?

**Aline:** The screenplay is wonderful.

**John:** So we’re going to talk about all that stuff and we have with us Peter Spears who is a producer on Call Me by Your Name. Peter Spears, welcome to the program.

**Peter Spears:** Thank you. Glad to be here.

**John:** Peter Spears, I’ve known you for 20 plus years.

**Peter:** I love that it’s my name, my whole name together. Peter Spears.

**John:** Yeah. I’m John August. That’s Aline Brosh McKenna.

**Peter:** And Cher.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Peter, I’ve known you for a super long time and I didn’t know you were making this movie until Sundance, I think, that it came out that you had made this movie. I was immediately so excited for you and for this movie because it seems fantastic. What is the backstory of how you first came upon this project?

**Peter:** Well, about ten years ago, the book came out in 2007 and I had read an advanced copy of it. I forget how I got that copy. Somebody thought I would like it. And did indeed – sort of was blown away by the book and so much of it spoke sort of specifically to me and having been, you know, about that age at that time and being Jewish and gay and all of that was – and a Europhile and just all those sorts of things.

Another producer on this project, Howard Rosenman, had also read it and Howard and I went out to the book agent and threw our hat in the ring to want to make the movie.

**Aline:** Were a lot of people vying for it?

**Peter:** Well, yeah, as I said that, too, it’s like I threw our hat in the ring and there weren’t a lot of other hats, truth be told. There was one other hat and it’s an interesting part of the story and I’ll tell you about that. They were already sort of down the road talking with someone else about it. But I think most people didn’t think this was a movie. You know, they loved the book and almost immediately when the book came out it was heralded as sort of an important work of gay literature and compared with Thomas Mann and–

**John:** And Maurice.

**Peter:** And Maurice. And…oh, I’m spacing on…A Boy’s Life, Edmund White, I think. And several other people. So that was great. But also from the New York Times Book Review and lots of other reviews, the book also seemed to almost immediately resonate with audiences beyond just a gay audience.

So, we were ultimately successful in prevailing to get the rights for that.

**John:** I’m going to stop you there. So, let’s go back to you read an early copy. Were you reading a manuscript? Were you reading a galley?

**Peter:** No, I think it was one of those kind of half-published but sort of not really a full on book version. So it wasn’t that.

**Aline:** Galley.

**Peter:** It was a galley I guess. But then – or advanced reader copy?

**Aline:** But it was bound. I know what it looks like.

**John:** So you read this book and you say well this is fantastic. At what point did you make the decision like, OK, I’m going to try to pursue the rights on this book?

**Peter:** Just like immediately. Like immediately. I never had – you knew me for many years as an actor and then I was a writer and had also directed both a short and an independent feature. So, and in those capacities you do produce a bit. But I never sort of said “I’m going to produce a movie and see this from start to finish and do this.” And I just knew that I was going to want to do this.

**Aline:** Now let me ask you. If I had stopped you and Howard right when you got the rights to the book and said what’s the movie you imagine – so this is ten years ago. Who were you picturing being in it or starring in it? What was your comp? What did you point to people to say, “Yes, it’s a very internal book,” because it’s almost like an extended monologue in a way?

**Peter:** Well, you know, I think truth be told we almost immediately knew that the movie was going to probably be in the tradition of a Merchant Ivory film, of something like that. I mean–

**Aline:** But it’s not period. So that’s interesting.

**John:** But it is period.

**Aline:** I mean, it is period. But it’s not–

**Peter:** It’s the 1980s.

**Aline:** But it’s not corsets.

**Peter:** Right. That’s true. But I think we’ve come to understand that when you say something is like a Merchant Ivory-style piece, there’s an idea that it’s a beautiful adaptation of a book that has the best of production values and actors and writing. And in the case of Merchant Ivory movies, they always seem to deal with a sort of sexuality, but a buttoned up sexuality. You know, a Henry Jamesian sort of way. Maurice, less so. And, in fact, I don’t know if you’ve seen Maurice recently, but it’s kind of remarkably–

**John:** It’s really sexy.

**Peter:** Sexy and current in ways. I kind of remembered it more as being more – a little stuffy. And it’s not at all, which is interesting because I believe Jim Ivory had a much bigger hand in that script, in that screenplay, as opposed to Ruth who did a lot more of the other screenplays that he worked on.

So, with that in mind, almost immediately reached out to Jim Ivory who lives near me in Upstate, New York. And we had gotten to know, became friendly with, Ismail had already passed away. And Jim had already read the book and loved the book.

And so we had gone to Jim and asked if he would come on board as an executive producer, lend his name, and that sort of hallmark to the project as we started to put the pieces together.

**Aline:** And at this point he was a very young man of 70, correct?

**Peter:** Yes. Well, truth, right, I think this next month he turns 90.

**Aline:** Oh, so he was 80?

**Peter:** He was 80, yeah. And loved the book.

**John:** Let’s back up here for a sec. So you’ve read the book. Howard Rosenman has also read the book and loved it. And so you say let’s team up, let’s go in and try to get the rights to this book?

**Peter:** Yes. And he had known the book agent for a while. As younger people they had kind of come of age during that time. So, we then went back to her, Lynn Nesbit is the book agent, André’s book agent. And had that conversation with her and prevailed ultimately by putting together how we might make the movie and what we might do.

**John:** So, this how you might make the movie, is this a written thing you’re sending in? Are you getting on the phone with André?

**Peter:** There was a conversation with André, but mostly it was through the agent. And I think just a – the other person who they were in conversation with who was just someone that I think would have certainly, probably, who knows, make a great movie or whatever, but it’s like you give your resume or something. It’s the idea of how we were pitching. How we wanted to make the movie and what we wanted to do ultimately prevailed.

**Aline:** Were you saying we’re going to take it to this studio, or this actor? Like what was in your mind the first step once you had the rights?

**Peter:** Yeah, I don’t think, you know, I mean, at the time back then there were other actors who sort of came to mind. There was a different, you know, we had an idea of a person who we’d already spoken with who, again, I don’t need to talk about whatever, but there was a – in the pitch of that there was the name of a screenwriter who was attached at the time. That screenwriter ultimately got another job after we got the rights and wasn’t able to continue with the project. But we then went out to – and by that point we then had the rights. But we had the rights in a stepped way where you have option periods. So we had however many options that we could pick up. And then when you were done with your options you needed to go back to them and sort of show if you wanted to extend it what have you done. Do we like the energy of what we’ve been doing?

And then there was finally at a certain amount of time there was a moment where you’re now out of options and you have to literally buy the book rights forever, or are you going to just let it go. And so the problem for our project was that it was a movie that certainly had to come together in the development process, so we had a writer-director who we went to and said, “Would you come on board and do this?”

The interesting part of this story is that that writer-director had unbeknownst to us been one of the people who had also originally been looking to do that. So the symbiosis of like, “Oh my gosh, this makes such good sense.” So we hadn’t known that at the time that had been who the other person was.

So we tried to make the movie that way. And that writer-director–

**John:** How many years ago was that?

**Peter:** So that would be for the first several years. So, if we’ve been doing this for ten years that was the first few years. And wrote a beautiful version of the script. And, you know, as the vagaries of this happened we were able to – we just ultimately didn’t prevail in trying to get all the pieces together, the Rubik’s Cube of how you do this movie. You know, a talent had to be attached to get a certain amount of money. But we went on location scouting to Italy, knew what our budget was.

But the problem also was that we could only make the movie one time a year. You could only make it in the summer in Italy. So we had for many a time we had the pieces together in sort of this Jenga tower, but then you pull one of the pieces out because an actor all of the sudden says, “Hey, I got a bigger paying job. I have to go do this or whatever.” And with most movies you can push and say, “OK, well we’ll do it in the fall, we’ll do it in the winter.” But our whole house of cards collapsed.

**Aline:** And did you have that – because when you’re involved with indie movies there’s this strange thing that happens where it’s like the foreign sales people say, “If you have this actor you’ll get this exact dollar amount, but if you have this actor you get this exact dollar amount.”

**Peter:** It’s crazy the math.

**Aline:** And you’re like it’s not based on any real thing. It’s based on some numbers and calculus—

**Peter:** It’s something, an algorithm they’ve got of some sort.

**Aline:** It changes – it’s so changeable.

**Peter:** Daily.

**Aline:** It changes daily. What people don’t quite understand is you think the studio system is star-driven, the independent film business is star-driven.

**Peter:** Completely.

**Aline:** It’s just different stars. And so you end up sort of contorting yourself in strange ways because you’re like I guess this 42-year-old guy can play a 17-year-old. We’ll just do a little tweak to the rewrite. And it’s really hard to stick to your guns when they’re saying, “This person will get you an extra million dollars,” or whatever it is, to say, “No, it needs to be made this certain way with this right person.” It’s harder than people think.

**Peter:** Well, it’s that. So you have the math of the actors involved. And then you have the financiers themselves who are saying things like, “Yes, it’s a beautiful script, but the stakes don’t seem to be high enough. Could the stakes be higher?” This classic sort of like 101 script development from a book, but you know – and of course our answer was the stakes are the stakes of the heart. I don’t know how much higher they could be. And they’re like, “Well, but could there be more jeopardy? Or could the mother be more evil? Can we make the mother more evil? There don’t seem to be any obstacles really for them.” And so we’re sort of like well that’s kind of the point.

So, we just then had to come to the difficult decision often when that money might have been there that maybe these aren’t the right people to go forward.

**Aline:** Got it. So you had a certain script for a while, and then when did you switch to Jim’s script?

**Peter:** So, a few years in, about three years of trying to put that version together, we were unsuccessful and needed to make a change of some sort because we had sort of explored all the options that we could, and that’s a heartbreaking moment to have to sort of change directions and have that difficult conversation with your collaborator who is also a good friend and besides just being a professional relationship. But very graciously and was given the blessing to say understood and do what you need to do.

So, about that point – there were a couple other directors that we spoke with and were kind of quasi attached for a little while and for different periods who both went on to go do bigger studio films. So by that point then, five years ago or so, we then said to – had the idea that Jim Ivory and Luca together might come together to kind of co-direct.

**Aline:** Jim had the maturity. Was now 85. So he’d grown up a bit.

**Peter:** Yes, exactly. And so said – thought wouldn’t that be interesting. Certainly Luca being a student of so many different important directors whose work inform so many wonderful auteurs, you know, was a student of his and knew him somewhat socially. But the idea was then that Jim and Luca together would do this, sort of a co-directing paradigm if you will.

And Jim was game for that and thought that sounded interesting and great. But Jim said, “You know, if I’m going to do that I really need to work from my own script.” And so Jim sat down then and began to write longhand a version of the script. And Luca would travel to New York and Jim would travel to Italy. And they would collaborate and work in that way that like how – you know, they both what they envision for the script and what they wanted for a movie.

That came together and was done and finished in somewhat short order. And then we began the process of trying to put that movie together now and going out to new financiers and new talent. And about that time we met Timothy and–

**Aline:** Can we just back up a second? So, Luca said that he was producing it for a while. He wasn’t going to direct it.

**Peter:** That’s right.

**Aline:** And the thing that really touched me was he said, “I wanted to do it,” it turned out at some point that he needed to be the director to get it made. And he said “I wanted to do this for Peter and Howard.”

**Peter:** Oh, that’s sweet.

**Aline:** And I thought that was very sweet.

**Peter:** Yes. Well he had come onboard. We had known Luca socially through his relationship with my husband Brian Swardstrom who is Tilda Swinton’s agent, besides also Timothy’s agent. So we knew Luca. And Luca was interested in – had read the book in its Italian translation. Loved the book. So very early on we had gone to Luca because he has a production company in Italy and said would you come onboard. Would you help us figure out how you make this movie in Italy?

So he came onboard really at first as an adviser, then executive producer, and then was really a producer with us almost – even from those early recces, location scoutings we did in Italy, you know, it was with Luca and through Luca’s company that we did all of that. So, Luca was one of the early parts of this in the DNA of this as well, which is interesting then how – you know, so I think there’s a lot of organic-ness to that.

**John:** So I think you’re referring to there’s an episode of The Business where Luca talks through the whole backstory on sort of how he came onboard and sort of the ageism that kicks in with people being nervous about James Ivory.

**Peter:** Well, that’s right. Exactly. So at this moment, at this juncture, after we have this sort of new version of the script and trying to put this together, it’s the difficulty of going back to financiers and people like that and stuff who just didn’t quite – I don’t know if it’s like when directors are brothers or family members or something, co-directors are, people understand it better. But we couldn’t get traction in that way that we had hoped we would from people to make that version of the movie. And so at the same time we – Luca had also been – A Bigger Splash had opened and was done now, or whatever. So kind of concurrently with that, at the same time people were saying, well, we like the project, we don’t know about this co-directing thing, whatever. We would make the movie though if Luca was directing this movie.

Then we had, again, the conversation with Jim and to explain where we were with this. And Jim, got his blessing to say go and make the movie and do that. So that we did, and then timing wise Luca’s schedule also opened in a way that he could do this. And I think, if I’m not mistaken, he was going to do Suspiria first, and then potentially this one, but then Suspiria had to push for reasons unknown to me or unremembered. And he then was able – had this window to do this.

**Aline:** And who stepped up with the money?

**Peter:** So we ended up finding the money through very interesting, kind of with the help from a global world effort. Memento, Emilie Georges’ company out of France, and that became then a European coproduction between Italy and France, which allowed us to access a lot of soft monies in Europe and she famously works with – who is the Iranian director, the Persian director who is A Separation and – and she works with a lot of auteur directors where she’s very auteur-driven. And that’s really kind of the theme of her company and her involvement with the movie. So she wanted to be involved with Luca.

**John:** Was the French money at all behind the extra French that got put into the movie? I mean, the French doesn’t exist in the book, and there’s a lot of French in the movie. Is that related?

**Peter:** It is related. It is related in ways that we, as part of that coproduction deal, the French – we had French crew members. We had French casting. And Timmy is actually part French. And also just – which worked so well for us because it helped, even though in the book it’s just an Italian-American, the fact that like Timmy had grown up with this idea of a bicultural identity, and going in and out of languages and everything so easily.

**Aline:** So when did the French come into the script?

**Peter:** That time that Memento came onboard, I think we just – yes. I mean, there wasn’t much more other than just they’re going to speak French in some places, but there wasn’t like a French storyline or anything like that that happens. It’s just a fact that he is now instead of being an Italian-American family, they’re a French-Italian-American family, which is very organic to–

**John:** Yeah. It fits really well with the rest of the movie.

**Aline:** It’s hard to imagine it without it now.

**Peter:** Yes. Exactly. And I love the way they kind of go in and out – you know, in German, too, these languages, and stuff like that. So they came onboard as well as RT Features from Brazil. And they’ve been involved in a lot of great movies as well. And so these were really producing partners. Financiers and producing partners who were interested – there just weren’t those sorts of – we didn’t get these notes from them. This is the movie they wanted to make. This is the story they wanted to tell. And with Luca at the helm, this is the film they wanted to help be a part of.

And when you get those right partners ultimately after years of struggling with trying to put the round peg in square holes and all the different ways, and you feel so tempted to make those Faustian deals, it just all of a sudden – it just came together.

**John:** Also, my guess is that with Luca at the helm they could see, even as talent was being assembled, they knew he could get a cast. They knew he could pull in actors of a certain caliber and size. They could envision the movie they were going to get out of him in a way they couldn’t otherwise.

**Peter:** Yes. That is absolutely true. Especially right on the heels of A Bigger Splash, which had been to such acclaim, and had been a little bit of time since I Am Love, but certainly the memory of I Am Love for the whole film community was so intense. They were able to connect dots in ways that had been difficult before. And especially with a movie that was not readily understandable, even if the book was beloved, so many people still thought I don’t know that I understand how this is a movie. It’s so interior. There’s so much narration. How do we get out of that?

And, in fact, in a draft of the film we still kept always wondering and tinkering with the idea like does there need to be narration.

**Aline:** Voiceover.

**Peter:** Should there be voiceover? It’s so often, I know there’s so many schools of thought about narration and whether it’s good or not, and certainly like when it’s good it’s great like in movies like Notes on a Scandal or something. And I’m sure on this podcast you guys must talk about narration a lot and all that stuff. But I think for Luca ultimately there was the ability in post if you needed to. See what you needed and do it. But once the film was all cut, you know, and Luca very strongly, he just wanted it to be – narration made somehow the story wasn’t in the present and he wanted the immediacy of feeling like it was happening right then.

And then he always had this sense that the music would be a sort of narration. And, in fact, when he reaches out to Sufjan Stevens to contribute, A, can we use Futile Devices which was his introduction to Sufjan’s music, and would you write a new song for us. And Sufjan had never wanted to be a part of movies and had been asked many times to be in movies. And Luca and he chatted about the script and the book and Sufjan read all that and Sufjan then said, “Yes, I’ll write you a song.” And in fact sent two songs and both ended up being used.

So, I think once that music was laid in and was there, it acts as a sort of narration. It is a sort of–

**Aline:** Well I’m curious. This is my main kind of craft question about it. I feel a first-personness in the movie. I feel a first person in the movie that’s different from the first person of the book.

**John:** I agree.

**Aline:** And the book is this very sexually outspoken, frank kid whose desires are palpable to him from pretty much the first second. And so you’re with him in kind of a different way. And I feel like with the movie he’s a lot more opaque, right? You’re not inside his mind in exactly the same way, because he doesn’t have a confidante. He doesn’t have—

**Peter:** Right, he’s not writing in a journal every day.

**Aline:** But I felt a very strong other first person experience, even though it was different from the book if that makes sense. I felt a very palpable sense that someone had lived these experiences and so that was what drove me to read the book because the movie felt so first person and then when you read the book there is another strong sense of first person, but they’re slightly different kids in a way. And I’m curious where is that located? Is it partly in the specificity of the movie or in Timothy’s performance? And then that’s also why I read the screenplay. And obviously the kid in the movie is more like the kid in the screenplay. But even in the screenplay there’s a little bit more of a sense of the character from the book.

They’re all a little bit different in a way.

**Peter:** Right. Well, I think you have to factor in the variable of the artist responsible at each of those moments. You know, in the book it’s just André. And in so many ways, if you know André there’s lots of, you know, so much of André is Elio. So much of André is Oliver. So much of André is the father. But it’s always going – it’s just André.

And so – and I guess what we bring to it ourselves as the reader, right? That’s the other part of that equation. But then when we see the movie now you’ve got the mercurial sort of alchemy of what the actor and director bring to it. You know, for a moment, just like we met Timothy about four years ago, almost immediately about the time that Luca and Jim started working together, and knew immediately – we met no one else. Like that was it. It was him. He’d really done not much of anything. But he was so Elio. You know, my husband had met him – he represents Damien Lewis and he went to visit Homeland on the set where Timmy was working. And he called me from the set and said, “I think I met Elio today.”

So, he’s going to bring that to the equation. And then combined with his director, with what Luca. And the two of them working in tandem just created this movie Elio which is like – you know, you just couldn’t – so you see the screenplay, so you get the idea of the screenplay and what’s there in the screenplay, and you still don’t see it yet until all of a sudden you’re seeing the movie and now you’ve got the movie Elio. And that’s sort of the amazingness of, well, you guys know, of the collaborative nature of moviemaking of just how much more is going to be created by the right combination of the artists coming together I think.

**John:** We always talk about externalizing internal things. So we’ve talked about adaptations a lot and Aline and both have written a lot of adaptations. And in a book characters can do anything. You can get inside a character’s head. In looking back to Call Me by Your Name, in the book we are in Elio’s point of view, but it’s an older Elio. So he’s thinking back to this time. He’s thinking back to what it was like to be in this sort of fever dream where he was in lust with this guy but wasn’t sure whether to approach him or not to approach him. And he was sort of like hanging in this beautiful agony.

And that works so well in the book because we’re sort of used to books being told in the past. And it sounds like Luca wanted the story to only exist in the present. So this was not a nostalgic look back to an earlier time. This is what it was like to be really in that moment and for him not to know what was going to happen next.

**Aline:** But I don’t want to skip over Jim in between the book and Luca because when I read that screenplay that is a master storyteller who understands concision. And when you read the book there’s like I don’t know how you resist the little girl. That is catnip for 99% of writers because she’s such a convenient device for the sadness, the longing, the sick little girl. She’s just dangling out there to be used. And I thought that that adaptation is – that screenplay is one of the masterpieces of going into the overstuffed closet that all books are, no matter how slender they are.

**Peter:** Editing. Editing. Editing.

**Aline:** You know, there’s that whole section, the dinner in Rome. It’s a huge section of the book. Because the movie is a pas de deux, right, the movie is the two of them really. And I think if you had included all of those other perspectives you would have lost–

**John:** Completely.

**Aline:** That specialness of these two individuals. And it would have gotten diluted.

**Peter:** Well keep in mind the script is written not just by a screenwriter, which is not to minimize–

**Aline:** In conversation with Luca.

**Peter:** But my point being, even that screenwriter is a director. So, you know, and a world renowned famous director. So they know already – they’re already thinking. Obviously in conversation together–

**Aline:** He’s ten steps ahead. And that’s why if anybody – is the screenplay available online somewhere?

**Peter:** I think it is to the WGA.

**Aline:** Can you please post it?

**John:** It’s not as available as it should be. So after this we’re going to try to get it.

**Aline:** Please. Because it’s only about 88 pages or something like that. And it is exactly – I think it’s such a great, great screenplay for aspiring screenwriters to read because it is a document for production. It is a movie in a screenplay format. It is not riddled with “look at my writing, look at this moment.”

**Peter:** No. It’s a blueprint of how are we going to put this movie together. And it is taking everything that the master James Ivory has learned in 80+ years. And knowing at the time he was writing, thinking he would also be directing and ultimately editing and stuff. So he already, like you said is ten steps ahead or whatever. In conversation with this other amazing director who is sort of famous for all the sorts of – the visceralness of life’s experience, you know. So the attention to the tiniest moments of things.

**Aline:** I mean, everyone needs to stop and go watch Luca’s movies, because they’re – I mean, they’re beyond exquisite. They’re just exquisite.

**John:** Let’s talk about some of the things that got left out, but also some things that are in the movie that are not part of the book which surprised me as well. So, Aline just referred to there is a sick girl who lives next door who is going to die—

**Peter:** In the book.

**Aline:** Vimini.

**John:** Oliver befriends her and that becomes a recurring thing. It’s not a huge part of it, but it sort of rhymes throughout the rest of the book. And it pays off at the end. Gone from the movie. Does not exist in the movie at all. There’s also an author who has a book who comes to this little small town to visit and then later on we meet up with him in Rome.

So in the movie version of the story the two guys go to another Italian town.

**Peter:** Bergamo.

**John:** Bergamo. And they do some hiking and stuff like that. In the book version they go to Rome. And they go to this big book party and it’s a huge chunk of the last third of the book is this book party and it’s all about Elio having a vision for sort of what his life is going to be and sort of the excitement of cosmopolitan. And it’s fantastic. It would not have worked in the movie at all because suddenly this other character who you don’t really care about becomes an important third part. There’s all these new women involved.

**Aline:** It loses the intimacy.

**Peter:** So, I can speak specifically to – obviously we changed the location of the movie from the book is to Northern Italy. So going into Rome became–

**Aline:** Not an option.

**Peter:** Not an option. And also just a production nightmare for as little a movie we were making. So they’re going to Bergamo. But that scene with that guy talking around that table is something a book does really well. But it is so not cinematic. It just isn’t to have this character arrive at this point and to take up that much time or whatever. And though – and you’re absolutely right in saying well what is indicative in the book is that experience of how much they love each other and how deep their feelings are for each other.

So, Luca decides well what is a way visually I can show that. So Luca’s idea was, it’s referenced earlier in the movie, oh that spring that they’re in, the source of which is up in the mountains up there. So he’s like I want to take you to the source of that spring and show you this water fall, this massive waterfall.

**Aline:** But now you’re in a brilliant metaphor ultimately.

**Peter:** And now this waterfall, when they stop and look, this is the depth of my feeling for you. This is how much I feel for you. So that’s just visual. That’s visual storytelling versus–

**Aline:** But you know, so few people would have been like, well, Millie Robert Brown, or what’s her name, Millie Bobby Brown is going to play the little girl. Can she do an Italian accent? And Anthony Hopkins will play the author. And there would just be such a tendency to stuff it.

**Peter:** I just also think the little girl who is sick and dying again adds this level of – you know, he didn’t want to tell that story. I mean, I think the idea is to remove those sorts of moments. You know, someone just interestingly told me they had seen it a second time and how much – as much as they loved it the first time they really loved it even more the second time, because the first time they felt this sort of sense of – almost of dread or suspense in their stomach the whole time. Just waiting for when is this bad thing going to happen that we’re sort of used to in these sorts of queer romances.

And so he has the bloody nose moment, or the bruise moment, or when they’re dancing in public. And they were – and those moments don’t come. It doesn’t happen. So, I think, too, the sense that like there’s the little girl who is sick and dying or something, too, I think there was just like let’s just be for once in a romance between these two characters.

**Aline:** I have two questions based on that. One is, and I’ve been dying to ask somebody this, and I think I know the answer, but when the dad is saying I had things like that–

**John:** Does mom know?

**Aline:** Well, does mom know I kind of get?

**John:** I want to ask you about–

**Aline:** Does mom know. I felt like he’s saying she may not know the specifics, but she kind of does know. And then later in the movie it’s clear that she does. And also, anyway, my point being is dad’s saying “I almost was with men,” or “I almost had a great love and I didn’t have the nerve to go for it.” Or is it either, or is it both, or is it up to the viewer? What’s he saying?

**Peter:** Well, it’s always up to the viewer, right? So that’s the answer to that. I can only tell you what I think and then we can debate it here.

**Aline:** Yeah. Tell me what you think.

**Peter:** And I just had this conversation with David Ansen a few days ago about this very thing. And he enlightened me in a way that having seen it now as many times as I’ve seen it, and read it a billion times, and everything, he had a new take on it which might be what you’re thinking, I’m sensing John.

So I think he’s saying, to me I think he’s saying “I almost had specifically the kind of relationship you almost had. I didn’t do it.” And I don’t think it’s like, it doesn’t become an indictment of his marriage or his wife.

**Aline:** Meaning with a man. Meaning with an older man. Or just a man.

**Peter:** With a man. Yeah. And so I think that, yes—

**Aline:** I think the book thinks that. The book kind of says that. That it was a man.

**Peter:** Right. So I think the idea is that yes, but some people say well does that mean his marriage is a sham or whatever. It’s like, no, I think there’s much more of a fluidity to sexuality to use a term that’s used a lot.

David Ansen went on to ask did I think that the end of that scene was that comment about, “Does mom know?” meaning does mom know about me Elio is asking, when in fact David felt it meant Elio is asking does mom know about you. And so he’s saying, “No, I don’t think so.” And in all the years it never occurred to me that that might also be what’s happening.

**John:** That was exactly my question for you. So, there’s the question does mom know. And in the book it’s really clear that Elio is asking about himself. In the movie it makes more sense for the question to be about the dad. I want to talk about the mom.

**Peter:** We see so much more of the mom.

**John:** We see so much more of the mom. She’s so much more of a character. Also the girlfriend is a much better character, a bigger character.

**Peter:** Yeah. André is so happy about the way the movie depicts women in a more fleshed out way and finds them more sort of present. And so, yes, Amira who plays the mother, I mean, it’s a really unheralded–

**Aline:** Yeah. OK. So let’s finish talking about this part. Because I almost thought in a way because he’s a professor, he’s talking about these sculptures and they’re sort of like this Hellenistic thing happening, I kind of felt like he was saying I almost had a relationship like the Greek ideal of men who – there’s something about the classical sculpture of it in a way that he was talking about this sort of like elevated connection that you can have with someone who is in some fundamental way the same as you.

**Peter:** Yeah.

**Aline:** And I think that’s what’s really very much in the book which is they’re the same person. There’s this intimacy and sameness that you can get from a same sex relationship that is different and he’s saying it’s almost like that platonic ideal of that–

**Peter:** Well, which is where we get the title of the book from. It’s such a sameness that like Call Me by Your Name—

**Aline:** Right. They’re fusing.

**Peter:** They’re fusing. Right.

**Aline:** But I read it, as a straight girl I read it as a love so wonderful, you had something great and I could have had that I didn’t. I think the fact that you can also read it the other way—

**Peter:** I think it’s super important though, you’re absolutely right, but I think it’s super important to know that in no way is the father saying that what he has with his wife is less than. I think it’s also. I think it’s great. I think their relationship is amazing. I think the mother probably – frankly, the mother when you look at the David Ansen/John August way of looking at it, like that comment does mom know and he says, “I don’t know.” I think the answer to that is he’s probably just like – they’ve just talked about it a lot. It’s a lot that they’ve talked about and in lots of ways I think he’s giving both of them a bit of a break to not sort of say mom knows all this too and you’ve got to process all that know. I think that the answer probably is – I mean, especially the way Amira plays it. The mother knows it. The mother gets it. She’s been married to this guy. She knows the life that they have.

**Aline:** And she says why don’t they go on vacation together.

**John:** Yes.

**Peter:** I mean, yes, some people thought like well she has no idea the extent to what they might be doing on vacation, but maybe she does.

**Aline:** And that brings me to the other question. Something that I just want to talk about because I think it’s so important. So, I was talking to some people about it, some younger people who felt that the movie contains a certain amount of privilege. And I thought they meant because they’re rich people, and they’re fabulous, and they’re whatever. But what they were talking about was the fact that this child happens to have accepting parents and gee isn’t that a fantasy that in 1983 you would have these parents that are so accepting.

And I have to say it makes my blood boil that, you know, he’s not rich. He doesn’t have these parents because he’s rich or because he’s privileged, but because he’s lucky. And the fact that if you depict any sort “minority community” that they have to suffer and that there has to be a price enacted. And the boldness from a narrative standpoint of this movie is that no one opposes them but themselves. And that is, to me, the political act of that movie is to say our love stories matter because of what they say about my relationship with another person and not because I have to confront these obstacles that you are requiring me to have because I speak to this group. And I feel like it’s very unfair to expect movies like this to always have the tragedy and the obstacles and people dying and being ripped apart and evil parents.

And John and I have talked about this before. I want those fairy tales for people who live other kinds of lives. And I don’t think the movie plays it for fantasy. He just has kind parents. Some gay people have kind parents, and it’s not because they’re rich. They could be poor. He just has an understanding set of parents. And I feel like there is an arrogance in saying that that community needs to have these kind of clichéd obstacles in front of it.

**Peter:** Right. Well, it’s all we’ve had. I mean, it’s the only kind of movies that have broken through really. You know, I mean, Brokeback Mountain. Even Moonlight to some degree, right?

**John:** Philadelphia.

**Peter:** Philadelphia. These are the movies. And this is what we were schooled.

**Aline:** And they’re wonderful. And that’s great.

**Peter:** And they’re wonderful. So how lovely now maybe to be at this new threshold where this story can also be told. And this year, golly, this year was sort of a golden year for “queer cinema,” but like there was lots of great movies from Beats per Minute and God’s Own Country. And so like one movie now doesn’t have to carry this load of everything.

**Aline:** But please don’t tell people what stories they are allowed to tell.

**Peter:** Well, yes. We all must tell – there’s room for us all to tell our stories. And we all should tell our stories. And the truth of the matter is, getting back to the book, and getting back to André and stuff like that, like people may think this is a fantasy or whatever, but like I said from the very beginning, these characters are drawn in many ways from a real life experience. André writes a lot about his father. And in his newest book his father is very present in the new book also. And as well as in his nonfiction writing. You know, he famously wrote a book Out of Egypt about being Jewish refugees expelled from Alexandria, Egypt when he was a young man.

And so you get a sense the more you know André and the more you read his work and whatever, these people aren’t completely borne out of thin air. I think he had parents that were very much like this. And I think he is a parent who is very much like this.

So, it’s not completely fiction.

**John:** We talked about sort of platonic ideal and the degree to which the movie is looking at this idea of two people can be sort of the same thing, that actually sort of gets back to the issue of there’s no villain in the story. It’s actually kind of a classic protagonist/antagonist thing. Elio changes because Oliver shows up. And Oliver changes because Elio is there. And sort of going back and forth on this dance.

And I can imagine during the whole development process and trying to set stuff up people kept looking for the villain, the one who would come in. Because we’re so used to that antagonist being the bad guy. And when I first started watching the movie I was surprised at what a jerk Oliver was, because I had a really hard time understanding what his motivations were.

**Peter:** And you hadn’t read the book yet?

**John:** I hadn’t read the book yet. And then as the movie goes along it reveals itself. You see like, oh, I can understand why he’s being the jerk he’s being. It’s a self-protection mechanism that’s there. Defense things. And I was about to understand Elio’s point of view, because we’re sort of grounded with him pretty much the whole thing. Are there any scenes in which Elio is not part of the scene? I think it’s almost entirely his POV.

**Aline:** Well, there’s the scene where the mom comes in and looks at the ravioli and she talks to Mafalda.

**Peter:** And he’s gone upstairs with a peach.

**Aline:** It’s not a lot.

**John:** So basically we’re almost locked on POV for him. So he’s classically our protagonist. But you really do see him change over the course of it. And even without a voiceover you can see the internal machinations happening.

**Aline:** But there isn’t zero, right, because Oliver is like let’s stop now before we do something that we’re ashamed of. They’re not in a fantasy land, and especially in the book. I mean, they’re not in a fantasy land where it’s like—

**Peter:** No, he’s careful when he wants to kiss. He says if I could kiss you I would when they’re in the alleyway of the street and stuff.

**Aline:** So that was another thing I want to ask you, because another thing that people have said to me about the movie is like, “Well, he’s 17. Can he really consent? He’s so young.” He does look very young. It’s not like you went the other – you didn’t cast an Elio who looked older and an Oliver who looked younger. He very much looks 17 and Armie very much looks older than him.

When that comes up, what I would say is one of the reasons I love this movie is that there are so few movies about how horny you are when you’re a teenager. I can’t stand how chaste teen movies are. I mean, he’s so sexually and romantically obsessed, but there’s no time in your life when you take crazy risks because you’re so horny. And I find that movies about teen sexually are so unrealistically like people are just kissing and – you know, you’ve done crazy things in library parking lots because you – and so I love that about it.

But there are definitely people who are saying he’s awfully young. The guy is older. Especially in the climate that we’re in. How have you–?

**Peter:** I mean, I think the movie is the answer to that. I think Anthony Lane said it best in his review of the book which was just like how wonderful in this challenging time we are to see a movie that celebrates the joy of consensual love. And the whole movie is about – I mean, there’s 17,000 moments where each person is checking in with the other person to make sure they’re OK and fine. And the parents are consenting. I mean, literally all this conversation we’re having about everything else is important, important, important conversation to be having, but also good to remember the joy of our love and some fun in something like that.

**Aline:** There is a moment in the book that I was surprised by where he – the first time after they sleep together he’s very ashamed and almost repulsed by him.

**Peter:** Well that happens in the movie, too. When he gets up at the thing and he gets up–

**Aline:** It’s a little light. It’s light. It’s a little bit less—

**Peter:** Yeah, but he says are we just not going to talk about this anymore. They go out in the thing and he’s like are we going to do this thing now where this is awkward. He’s like, “No, no, I’m fine, I’m fine.” But, yes, there’s the thing in the book is the ghost of the grandfather sitting in the room and sort of watching this moment and everything. So, yes, I think there’s a little more shame, internalized shame in the book that Elio might struggle with than you find in the movie.

**Aline:** But to me it was like when you’re a teenager and you first start to express yourself that way, you know, the animalness of it is weird. It doesn’t matter what kind of sex you’re having. It’s like, “Oh my god, I took my clothes off and I did these things. How am I capable of that?” I don’t think it was necessarily – I didn’t take it in the book as necessarily related to the gayness of it.

**Peter:** Yeah, I think everyone talks obviously about the peach scene and it’s sort of famous or whatever you know now. And it was anyway in the book, too. And you’ve probably all heard Luca talk about, you know, making sure it actually worked. And Timmy did as well. And that is even possible. And everyone is excited. It’s probably happening all over the world right now that everybody is like, “Hey, that actually does work.”

**Aline:** Peaches are being – are not giving their consent.

**Peter:** Right. Exactly. So, I think for me and even sort of more, every time I see the movie, a scene that sort of rings even more sensual and remarkable in that “Oh my gosh the things – like you said, the things we have done in our lives,” is the scene where he has the swimsuit over his head. And it’s just–

**John:** It’s so potentially embarrassing, yet in the staging and in the performance it feels completely authentic.

**Aline:** Yeah, but we’re animals. When you’re sexually obsessed with someone—

**John:** So you’re cringing for him, and yet you totally understand his–

**Aline:** You’re going to smell their—

**Peter:** The essence of them, right?

**Aline:** It’s so relatable.

**Peter:** And you don’t even realize you’re doing it and all of a sudden the noise startles you of somebody coming in. And you’re like, oh my god, how did that moment just happen. And then it just kind of keeps progressing.

**Aline:** Well, I wanted to say the thing that I found so moving and that locked me into the movie in the beginning is how challenging it is that – so my best friend growing up was a gay man. And I remember how hard it was a teenager to just try and figure out if a boy liked me. And do you like me at all? Are you thinking about this with me at all? How challenging it is.

But to have the overlay of that be not just like do you like me, but like are you open to this. That’s the thing that I found so moving was that there’s just a further step you have to decode, which is like not just “Are you interested in me, but is—“

**Peter:** So, look, I absolutely agree with you. I think I love that the movie has been embraced and I love the universality of the fact that people are realizing love is love. And first love is this sort of thing that we all share. And that’s been fantastic. But I am also very proud of the fact of the specificity of the queer love aspect of this. And I do believe that this is in lots of ways a love letter to and for my/our brothers and sisters for whom the closet stole – for the magic of first love and the beauty of first love.

Because we did not – because it’s all those things you said. And we did not have this. And we’ll never have it. And we’ve had – I mean, we’ve had our own firsts. We’ve fallen in love for the first time, but it wasn’t like the way it seems to be for the rest of the world.

**Aline:** Yes. And my friend who I grew up with, that’s what he was robbed – he was robbed of that. And the fact that it took place in ’83 when he and I were that age, it was such a moving idea of what he could have had that was taken away from him. And the fact that they’re able to say I am like you in so many important ways, in the ways that you do when you’re falling in love that first way. Look at all the ways in which we are similar. And you find that first profound connection to someone. It’s so amazing to have that out there.

**Peter:** And so many straight people have come to me and said, “I’m progressive. My politics are right and everything. I did – I still did not understand that the way my gay friends’ relationship, and love, and connection and first love was was the exact same as mine. I believed in their rights. I believed in the fact that everyone is equal and everyone should have the same rights, but I still thought it was other. And I can see now that – this movie showed me that it’s not other. I got it in a way I just never understood it before.”

**Aline:** Yeah. And to me it’s not only – I feel like I’d already gotten that, but the movingness of how much courage it takes to say to someone, “Are we the same,” you know, “Is this the kind of love that you also want?” It takes so much courage when you’re a kid to do that. And that’s what I think is so moving about their connection with each other makes them brave enough to go past these things. And it just takes a lot of courage to love somebody and to say the things they want to say. And the fact that it took place in an era where so many people didn’t get to have that experience to me made it extra moving.

**Peter:** Yeah. And you know what’s on the horizon, too. I mean, you know what’s about to come. And a friend of mine, Ira Sachs, a filmmaker, said, “I just kept thinking through the whole movie that, oh my god, these guys have no idea what’s about to come.” Meaning obviously the AIDS epidemic and stuff like that.

So, you know, that there’s just a lot – the deck is really stacked against them in so many ways. And for this one idyllic Greek – the Greek idea of ideal moment, they experience this thing. That when you read the book you realize will haunt them, be a part of them for the rest of their lives. Even despite the paths of both, you know, because in the book we might say the end of the book jumps forward many years.

**Aline:** Yes. Several, several times.

**Peter:** Several times. And their paths cross again a few times. And you see how this summer informed for both of them many more years of their life going forward and stuff. So, and again, that’s what a book can do so well as well.

**John:** So let’s wrap this up by time traveling back ten years to you’ve just read this book and you have this like well I’m going to get the rights to this book. I’m going to make this into a movie. The movie you had in your head at that point, in what ways does it resemble the movie you have and in what ways is it different? Did you think you were probably stopping at the place where the movie stopped? What was the shape of that movie and how does it resemble this movie, or how is it different?

**Peter:** Well, the movie is much more cinematic, much more visual than I thought. All I had was the book then and I’m not a director of the caliber of Luca and Jim, people who would have known that a book is a book but a movie is something very different. So I think it was much more literary, the idea in my head.

But also because I had made a promise to André that in giving us the rights to the book that he’d be proud of that. And I felt that responsibility. And the responsibility to people who already loved – I mean, so many more people love it now. And for the first time it just was on the New York Times Bestseller List, the paperback version. André’s first time ever, even though the book has been out for ten years.

So, you know, but there still was a sense that people loved the book. And so I had this sort of pressure to kind of deliver that. But in my mind I thought maybe the way you delivered it was by being so very true to the book and be much more literary in that way. So the fact that it isn’t ultimately, that it found its own right way and its own path in a way, but also that André loves and that people love and people still feel is of spirit of the book, but in its own way as its own thing.

You know, David Ansen was just also saying, he’s like, “Gosh, so often, always almost it just feels like adaptations are less than and not something more than.”

**Aline:** Right. But I think that question, what that points to is like a great producer doesn’t need to know sort of what visually it’s going to look like, or what every exact moment is. What a great producer is is the loamy soil and the support for a filmmaker to put their vision, to grow their vision in. And I think that a lot of producers are anxious or insecure and they want to – they have opinions about things which they don’t need to.

You had the spirit of the story and what was important about the story. And you fought to protect that. And in the end of the day that’s really what matters. Not you picking the DP. You know, it’s this understanding this is what matters in this book and this is what I will fight to the death to change, and if it’s not Rome it’s another small city. And if they’re speaking French, that’s OK.

It’s understanding what are the OK things to change and what are the things that are stalwart, “No, mom is not going to be a villain. No, dad is not going to” – you know, those are never going to change.

**John:** Those are the essential DNA of the story.

**Aline:** That’s what a good producer does.

**Peter:** Well, thank you for saying that. I think that that’s probably very right. I think, you know, you look at a movie like Dunkirk which is great and wonderful but a very different kind of movie and I can only imagine what those producers had to deal with with that. And the director in making a movie like that. But, you know, by comparison Call Me by Your Name is like, you know, it can be just as difficult to make a little soufflé. And to balance all that and to do all that. And to also get out of the way of the chef who is doing that.

And I think since the time the book came out, almost there’s been something blessed about the spirit of the book, of the story, of Elio and Oliver’s connection. And everybody who read the book, who read the script, who came to the movie from around the world. Like our producers were a global team of people and our DP was Thai and the actors from all these countries. All came because they were moved by the story. And everyone really brought their best and then some to the collaborative nature of making this movie.

**John:** Great. Peter Spears, congratulations on Call Me by Your Name. Thank you very much for coming in and talking to us about it and answering our questions.

**Peter:** Thanks guys. This was super fun. I’ll make another movie so I can come back and talk to you guys.

**Aline:** Oh, I’m thrilled. I’m thrilled.

**John:** Awesome. Thanks.

**Aline:** That’s a good reason.

**John:** Hey, this is John. So, last week we had a preview for Launch, my new series about making a book. As you’re listening to this, Episode 3 should be out. In it we talk about the edit process, the cover, the audiobook. If you’re a grammar nerd or a font nerd you’ll especially enjoy this one.

So, next week my book Arlo Finch comes out, which is crazy. It’s available anywhere books are sold in North America. So if you’d like to check it out, if you’d like to buy it, that would be awesome.

If you’d like to meet me, I will be out on tour as well. You can find out where I’ll be by going to johnaugust.com/arlofinch. I’ll have special guests in a lot of cities. It should be really fun. I look forward to seeing you.

This show, Scriptnotes, is produced by Megan McDonnell and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Hunter Christensen. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place to send questions like the ones we answer on the show, or questions about Launch, or the book. There will be a special episode of Launch where we’ll just do Q&A. So, send in those questions.

If you want to reach us on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust. Aline is @alinebmckenna. And Peter Spears is @pjspears.

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Links:

* Thanks to [Peter Spears](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0817379/) for joining us!
* Read the Call Me by Your Name [script](http://sonyclassics.com/awards-information/screenplays/callmebyyourname_screenplay-20171206.pdf), watch the [movie](http://sonyclassics.com/callmebyyourname/) and read the [book](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1250169445/?tag=johnaugustcom-20).
* Subscribe to Launch at [http://wondery.fm/launch](http://wondery.fm/launch) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
* You can preorder Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire and read an excerpt [here](http://read.macmillan.com/mcpg/arlo-finch/). Also, John’s book tour dates are [available](http://johnaugust.com/arlo-finch), if you want to say hi!
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