Search Results for: residuals

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. So today’s episode of Scriptnotes was recorded live at the Austin Film Festival. There is some swearing, so keep that in mind if you’re listening in the car with your kids. There’s also a very special introduction by Beto O’Rourke. So, if you want to see the video of how that all went you can click on a link in the show notes. So, enjoy.

Beto O’Rourke: Good evening Austin and welcome to Scriptnotes Live. I’m just going to take a quick moment to remind you that you can vote any time between October 22 and November 2, early voting in your polling location of choice in the county that you’re registered. And then if you didn’t get a chance to vote early, vote the 6th of November, Election Day.

Craig Mazin told me to tell you so. And we’re all counting on you turning out and winning the victory of our lifetimes for Texas, and for the country.

And now on with the show.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is…this is Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are…?

Crowd: Interesting to screenwriters.

John: You guys are so good.

Craig: Well trained. Well trained.

John: This is the 19,000th year we’ve done a live show at Scriptnotes.

Craig: Yes indeed.

John: Here at the Austin Film Festival.

Craig: Correct. Although we’ve never quite had that amount of firepower to open it up.

John: That was a lot of firepower.

Craig: Concentrated firepower. I have to say I was a little concerned because there was a chance that maybe all these people would be Ted Cruz fans. [laughs] Just a small chance. And if you are, get out!

John: Done.

Craig: Not a Republican/Democrat thing, just a me thing. It’s just a me thing.

John: Yeah. Because you have a personal issue.

Craig: A little bit of a thing. Little bit of a thing. But we’re so happy to see you all here. What an incredible crowd. And this is our favorite, honestly, it’s my favorite show of the year because there’s just a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and we love seeing you all and we have great guests and we have so much cool stuff, although we’ve sort of piqued, so you know, lower the expectations now and everything will be great.

John: So, for people listening at home I always think of the listeners at home. And so it is 10pm at night. It is a Friday. I have lost all track of what day it is.

Craig: It’s a weekend night.

John: It’s Austin time. And we are in an incredibly crowded room with standing room only with amazing screenwriter people. They’re all wearing something around their necks. It’s like a blue band. Do you recognize what this–?

Craig: Yeah, I don’t have to do that shit.

John: Yeah. So they’re all wearing–

Craig: I’m too cool.

John: They’re all wearing these lanyards that say Highland 2 on them.

Craig: Wait, what?

John: Yeah. If you notice they all–

Craig: Oh my god, you did that?

John: I did that, yeah. And so I got this for you. I spent thousands of dollars so that Craig would have to use Highland 2 for a weekend.

Craig: I’m not going to use it, but that’s, I mean, no, that’s actually pretty amazing. I can’t believe you – god, I’m not paying for this, am I?

John: No, no, no.

Craig: Oh, you’re paying for this. OK, great.

John: You pay for nothing and I pay for everything.

Craig: Phew. Got a little freaked out there. That’s actually pretty impressive. And I will say that I have bumped into a bunch of people that do use Highland 2.

John: Yes.

Craig: And they love it. I’m not an anti-Highland guy in any way, shape, or form.

John: No, you just promote my competitor at every moment. And that’s OK. That’s absolutely fine.

Craig: I like his work. Yeah.

John: Absolutely. Let us sit down and we can do some follow up, because one of the first things we have to do in any normal episode of Scriptnotes is some follow up.

Craig: Follow up. Yep.

John: So in the last episode of Scriptnotes we talked about this WGA campaign for No Writing Left Behind. So that’s a thing which happened. So we got some great emails back from people and some representative stories. We got some, you know, well what about this situation. But we got this email that I was like oh yeah that’s exactly the right thing to talk about.

So this is an email from Eva. So I’m going to read aloud Eva’s letter because this is what a good live podcast is is reading aloud stuff.

Craig: We should, before you know Eva is going to be listening to this, we have to let her know just as a disclosure that we’re a little drunk. So, OK. Traditionally this is our drunk show. We’re not Austin drunk. This is like Austin breakfast level alcohol. But still for us, yeah.

John: For me especially. All right. So Eva writes about No Writing Left Behind. She says, “This just happened to me in a very brutal way. I was asked to read two novels a company had just bought rights to and they asked about what I thought about them and what was in my opinion the best way to adapt them. When we finished our meeting I was asked to put together a document that talked about all these things. So, I’m aware I’m a ‘new writer,’ so I will only do that if it’s clear that I will get the job. They say I am the frontrunner. That my credits are not an issue.

“Fast forward two weeks later, and they have a pitch booklet/look book, complete bible for a premium TV series adaptation with a breakdown for the entire 12 episodes of the first season. And then I am called into a meeting with all parties involved. I am praised for my work. Everyone is so impressed. They just need to send to the director and see what he thinks.”

Craig, what happens?

Craig: “A week later I receive a call. The director doesn’t feel comfortable having someone so new onboard. So they’ve decided to look somewhere else, meaning a more established writer.” You didn’t take that job, did you?

John: I did not.

Craig: That would have been brutal. “Before meeting with me they didn’t even know what they were going to do with the source material. Now they have everything they need to develop a TV show, and they have literally thrown me to the curb.”

She doesn’t mean literally there. “And what control—“

John: Figuratively.

Craig: “And what control do I have in how they use those documents moving forward? Zero. If you need a clear example to support your cause I am more than willing to share. This is a very big company we all know and the director and other producers are also very big. Thanks for giving a voice to us writers.”

John: “Thank you guys for making us feel less lonely.”

Craig: Yep. Just checking the grammar on that.

John: So, Eva’s situation is sort of a why we were talking about that last week because that is the thing that happens where you’ve gone in and you’ve done all this work for somebody and then it’s not your work because you didn’t own those books. You didn’t own the stuff underneath that.

So, we were talking this afternoon Craig and you and I had two different opinions about sort of what Ava’s situation was and what her best play was now. So the best play Ava could make would be to build a time machine, go back, and not give those pages. And not do all that free work for those people. Best scenario. Second best scenario in my mind would be to go to those people right now and say like, “Look, I wrote all this stuff. I clearly wrote all this stuff. You are in a weird place because all the stuff you’re basing this on is stuff I wrote. Make a deal with me now. It’s going to be a scale deal. It’s going to be some deal that sort of says that I am the first writer that wrote this stuff. Even if you go with the other fancy writer, I was in the chain of title. That’s my play. What’s your play?

Craig: And that is what a reasonable person would do.

John: All right. Let’s hear Craig’s version.

Craig: What I say is: lie in wait. Because one day they’re going to make that thing and then about, oh, I don’t know, three weeks before the first air date you call them up and say, “I’m suing you. Because you stole my shit.” And then they’re going to settle. And it’s happened. This happened before. It’s just maximizing your leverage via evil. And the service of an attorney. But it’s deserved. They asked for it. They are doing a bad thing.

And the reason I’m so glad that you made this our follow up here because for you guys out here there is a decent chance this is how it’s going to happen to you when it happens. Your first encounter very frequently when you have that first sale, that first good meeting, that first kind of yes/almost yes, there’s a decent chance you’re going to be dealing either with peripheral people who are maybe a touch on the shady side, or you’re going to be dealing with established people who are still on the shady side.

The cost of someone asking you to just do a little free work is zero. Zero. So they’re going to do it. And then you are put in this terrible spot. But we’re here to tell you it’s actually not that terrible. The answer is nah. And if you’ve done a good job and you’re impressive and the work you’ve done at least in describing what you want to do is impressive that should be enough.

If you have to write a bunch of stuff up the potential for abuse is enormous and the potential for wasted time is enormous. But I guess there is the one up side that you may be able to lie in wait and sue. But if you’re not particularly litigious, don’t leave anything behind.

John: Yeah. All right. The other categories of responses we got in Twitter would fall into sort of four basic general buckets. The first one is the question of like well what if it’s my own thing. What if I came up with this original idea, this original pitch, this original thing, and went in to describe to these people and they said like, “Oh, could you send me through that thing you wrote about?” You could theoretically do that. That is your own thing. That is not mostly what we’re talking about here. You own that idea. The only thing I will caution you is the moment your idea becomes four paragraphs you’re sending through, then it’s all about those four paragraphs and it’s not about you and you as a visionary writer with those ideas. It becomes about that thing. So while you can legally do that and maybe in some situations it makes sense to do that, the more you can keep it in the realm of talking before you get to a screenplay is usually a good thing.

Craig: Professional writers get paid to write. So if you want to be a professional writer, and I’m thinking a lot of you do, get paid to write. If you are writing something for free you must control it all the way, meaning it’s your own spec work. It’s your original work. If someone is saying to you I have a book, I have an idea, I have a piece of this, I have a song, I have a toy – anything – that you don’t control completely you start writing when they agree to pay you, in writing, period, the end.

John: The other thing which showed up in our Twitter feeds, Craig what would you call this category of like people objecting to this idea of not leaving stuff behind?

Craig: There were a certain category of people who said, “Don’t interfere with my right to take abuse in order to get a job.”

John: My process is to be abused.

Craig: Sort of like you fat cats are trying to keep us out of the business by taking away our ability to write for free.

John: How dare you, Craig.

Craig: Right. Your rhetoric has disqualified you from our business. I don’t know how else to say. It’s just a silly line of reasoning. If your way into the business is writing for free, big headline, you’re not in the business.

John: Yeah. A related category of criticism was “but what about…” It’s what about ism. It’s basically like this thing you just said, yeah, but this other thing is more interesting. OK, great. This thing we’re talking about is specifically leaving stuff behind in a room. There are many challenges facing feature writers. They all are worthy of attention. Most of them are worthy of attention. This is about the one thing. So, what about ism I’m always vigilant for.

Craig: “Tu quoque”, is that how you pronounce that?

John: I don’t know.

Craig: It’s the you too. It’s a fallacy. It’s Latin. Guys, it’s Latin.

John: Latin. Latin.

Craig: It’s Latin for what he just said.

John: The last thing which came up a lot in this thing was the sense of like “Well why did nobody tell me about this before?” And the somebody telling you about things from before that’s institutional knowledge. And I feel like that’s a thing maybe we haven’t done a great job on is like when Craig and I were starting in the business other screenwriters would say like, “Oh, no, whatever you do don’t leave stuff behind.” And I guess we didn’t communicate that message through to everybody else. And so part of the reason why we have these amazing guests with us here tonight is so we can pass along some of our institutional knowledge of what’s happened before and hopefully fix people in the future.

Craig: Yeah, you know, maybe whatever happens, maybe it’s a little late. Maybe we should have said this earlier. Acknowledge/stipulated. But that’s not a reason to suddenly question the validity of it now. It is valid now. And so we’re saying to all of you don’t do that. For yourselves. Honestly for yourselves. It doesn’t change our lives, but for yourselves. And also I guess for the people that are with you in the room tonight. There is a certain impact we have with each other. And every time we agree to a condition that is unprofessional and debasing we’re making it a little harder for the next writer, or the writer next to us, to be treated well.

So, consider that as you go through your lives, you wonderful people.

John: Let us bring up a panel of institutional knowledge we are so lucky to have. First off, Wendy Calhoun. She is a writer whose credits include – Wendy Calhoun – credits include Station 19, Empire. She’s on a development deal right now. Wendy Calhoun, welcome to the show.

Wendy Calhoun: Thank you. It’s such an honor.

John: Yay. Next up we have Phil Hay.

Craig: Phil Hay.

John: Phil Hay, oh my god. Phil Hay has done a ton. The Invitation, which was amazing. Destroyer, which is coming out soon. Crazy Beautiful. Ride Along. Clash of the Titans.

Phil Hay: Right on.

John: Phil Hay, welcome to our program.

Phil: Can I ask a quick question before we start?

John: Yes.

Craig: There’s another guest coming. You know that right?

John: Two more.

Phil: Yes, no, it’s addressed to Craig and it’s regarding the video. How the fuck did you get so relevant? I can’t believe it.

Craig: I was born relevant, yo. When I came out people were like this means something.

John: This guy is…

Craig: This is important.

Phil: In relation to something else, this guy…

Craig: Nurses who literally deliver nothing but babies all day long, day after day, were like, “Stop everyone. Something just happened.”

John: One day you will have a famous roommate. He’ll have a famous college roommate and everything will change.

Phil: That’s it.

John: Nicole Perlman.

Craig: Yeah!

John: Nicole Perlman. Her credits of course include Guardians of the Galaxy, the upcoming Captain Marvel, Detective Pikachu. Nicole Perlman, welcome to our program. Thank you very much.

Nicole Perlman: Thank you for having me.

John: Finally Jason Fuchs. Jason Fuchs.

Craig: Fuchs.

John: Writer whose credits include Wonder Woman, Ice Age: Continental Drift. Jason Fuchs, welcome to our show, a return guest from last year. Nicely done.

Jason Fuchs: Thanks for having me back.

John: Yeah. So you passed some test with Craig.

Craig: Did you guys hear the show last year? Do you remember the greatest story in the world that Jason Fuchs told us? He can’t top that this year, can he? No, not a chance. Try. That’s a challenge.

John: We’re not trying to top, we’re trying to educate. We’re trying to discuss.

Phil: And what about the year before, Craig? What about the year before that?

Craig: Phil killed it.

Phil: It was fantastic.

Craig: Phil killed it.

Phil: This is a very controversial item with John.

John: Craig wanted like 20 people on stage and I said like let’s limit it to four.

Craig: Oh, I’m sorry I wanted to give you guys more.

John: Always the buzz kill. I sent through a depressing article for everyone to look at. So if you’re following me on Twitter you see that we’re going to discuss this article. This is an article that came out by Nicole Laporte on Fast Company. It came out yesterday. And it’s titled The Death of the Middle Class, but it’s really about how streaming has effected writers’ lives and streaming not just for TV, because you think about TV being all the TV shows that are going to Netflix and other channels, but also increasingly for features. So, I want to–

Craig: Happy time is over.

John: Happy time is over.

Craig: Here we go guys.

John: So we have four writers up here who work in sort of various capacities. Now Craig now has a TV show for HBO. And I want to talk about the change that’s happening for writers right now because these are mostly people who are moving into this industry and while there are more TV programs on the air than ever, in some ways it’s harder to make a living, or at least a middle class living in this. In this article that she lays out the people at the very top, the people who are making the giant deals, they’re making a lot. But the people who are going show to show, it’s actually harder than ever.

So, Wendy, I want to start with you because you have the most TV experience of the people here. What have you seen changing over the last maybe five years? And as you talk to writers who are trying to make a living, what’s different now?

Wendy: Well, I mean, I can use a very personal example. How about that?

John: I like those.

Wendy: I was on a show called Nashville. I worked on the first two seasons of that show.

John: Heard of it.

Wendy: I don’t know if anyone has seen it. Thank you. It’s about country music. The show was the hardest show I’ve had to launch. I’ve been a part of seven new series and that was the hardest. So to break up a bit of the sadness and monotony that we had in the room I would come in and pitch the black version of the show. And very often those pitches landed, by the way.

So, when we were in season two and I got sent by a friend a pilot script that had not been shot yet but was to star Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard called Empire I read it and I said, holy crap, I’ve been pitching this for two years.

So, I had to quit my job at Nashville without having an offer yet for Empire. It was a real flyer. I had kind of built my entire career writing, sorry to say, but white men with guns. And I thought this would be a really kind of different thing. I’d like to write a show with black people. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?

I did get the offer, thank goodness. I went on as a co-executive producer of the show. I worked my ass off. The show came out of the box and it was a big hit. Now, we on Nashville were making 22 episodes a year. Fox ordered 11 episodes of Empire. That’s a half pay cut for me. Right?

Craig: Because just be clear, when you’re working in television you are paid per episode. Not by time, but by episode.

Wendy: By episode. Right. So do this math. So we got that going. And on top of that they added 12 weeks to the schedule before we actually shot. So, we had scripts written before we actually shot, which is different for broadcast television. So my money is not only half but it’s stretched out over three extra months.

Now, the show comes out, is a big hit. And I’m thinking, well, those residual checks will start rolling in. The green envelopes will start coming, right? No. The show goes directly to Hulu and I don’t get any–

Craig: I love the way you say Hulu.

John: I love that you say Hulu.

Wendy: Hulu.

Jason: I can tell you, Hulu actually pays way better.

John: Directly for Hulu, yeah.

Wendy: Not for broadcast repeats it does not.

John: But Hulu, the other one, it’s the wrong one. That’s the problem.

Wendy: Because it’s sponsored by Le Croix. Anyways, so you can kind of see how that is just one example of the economic impact that’s happened in the last five years. And that is to a broadcast television writer-producer. So you can only imagine when you start talking about cable where you’re making, what, $0.60 on the dollar? When you’re talking about digital where you are trying to – you have to rely on your management and agents and reps to try to get you some sort of back end participation so that you actually see some sort of money for all of your shows being shown again. And it becomes a real issue. A real issue in the middle when you’re in the middle.

Craig: So this is something that the Writers Guild had a big deal with the companies and we kind of went up to the edge of a strike with. So the old way of doing things, if you became a writer, a new writer, and you worked on staff at a show like Nashville, which was a classic network show, 22 episodes a year, you were paid per episode usually some sort of producing fee or consulting or something per episode. You got your episodes that you wrote. They had a rerun. Those generated a lot of extra money for you.

Now they cut that in half or even less. Sometimes it’s just eight episodes. That’s all you’re getting paid. But the amount of time you spend on it gets expanded so essentially what was a living at a certain number has been quartered in some senses by this evolution that we all kind of love as consumers. But as writers it’s become a real problem. It’s a real squeeze.

Wendy: Yeah. It’s an interesting conundrum because on the one hand side I love what digital has done in terms of democratizing our ability to distribute content. On the other hand side, this digital revolution is led by disruptors and they are disrupting the content creators so that they can have content for their technology.

John: Nicole, what are you seeing? So right now you are doing Captain Marvel, so it’s going to be a giant Disney/Marvel/Touchstone, or Guardians of the Galaxy. That is a big movie that gets a big theatrical release. It has a whole residual life to it.

Nicole: I mean, yeah, all the movies, the hope is that you’ll make a lot of money and the residuals and that will sort of make up for all the pain and suffering that goes into the writing process. But I haven’t written for television and frankly I’m so in the dark about all of it. I always assumed that my reps would warn me about it. And then just talking to you guys out in the hallway they’re like, oh, that company that you’re pitching for, yeah, that’s rough. And I was like, what? Wait, what?

And it’s not that I haven’t been paying attention, but I haven’t been paying attention.

John: And one of the challenges, so classically what Wendy is describing is a thing that’s been happening to TV writers over a period of time. But increasingly it’s happening to feature writers, too. So I went in to meet on a project at Fox, a big Fox movie. And my question was like but, wait, will there still be a Fox? Where does this movie go? And so you ask this question and they’re like, well, we’re not sure. I’m like, wait, is this going to go to the Disney streaming thing? They’re like “Maybe.”

And so I said like, OK, on one hand it’s going to be great if the thing got made. But then I’m thinking like, wait, then there are no residuals because then it never goes anywhere else. And so then it’s only showing up on Disney. It’s like, wait, then I don’t have a back end. Or that thing that I had in my deal with like box office bonuses if it crosses a certain threshold, well, there’s no box office, so it all goes away.

Phil, have you encountered that in any of your deals yet? Have you started looking at feature stuff where it’s like you don’t know where the feature is going to end up? Like you just did Destroyer. It was an indie movie. So you didn’t know who the distributor was going in.

Phil: Yeah, I mean, I think that if you make independent movies you’re comfortable with the idea that you don’t know what that end is. And that you don’t know if the movie that you’ve made and intended to be released in theaters is going to ever be released in theaters because for example Netflix has the power to take whatever they want. So, had we – we were fortunate that we’re with the distributor Annapurna that is committed to releasing movies in theaters. But we were well aware that Netflix could have at any time decided to take the movie because of the amount of money that they offered and there was not much you could do.

And many people are thrilled with that actually, but I think when I think about some of the stuff we’re talking about what strikes me is that there’s a real short-sidedness that is happening with the kind of business strategy that’s going on that I think is extremely inhumane and very brutal. And there’s sort of I think maybe a culture that certainly in Hollywood and in Silicon Valley that kind of values brutality. That there’s some truth to that. There’s some core Hobbesian thing that they’re chasing. When in fact I think that when we talk about the demise of the middle class of writers that the idea that it’s very short-sided to kill the ability of people to develop and to be able to create the things that are going to make you a lot of money. Because people have options, right? I mean, you know, I grew up wanting to be a screenwriter and people grew up wanting to be TV writers and people still want to do that because there is something truly magical and special about it.

But people can do other stuff, right? And the business as a whole has an interest in keeping people able to have a life and a family and develop their craft to then create stuff that makes money. And I’m afraid that now all the opportunities are at the very beginning level, which is great because you need those opportunities, and at the very, very top level. And if you’re at that level that’s great because you can do those things. But that part in the middle that we’ve talked about for several years and seems to be accelerating, I think it’s beyond a business problem. It’s a societal problem. It’s not valuing the ability to make a living at something, and to develop, and to work, and thus you’re going to drive talented people into other businesses. And that’s my biggest worry for us as a business.

Craig: Yep. And my guess is they won’t stop until they start feeling the impact of it, of their loss of talent. I mean, for you guys the thing to understand about the way a career in television – because television is just statistically where you will get your start. They just make a thousand television shows now. Netflix will have 700 titles. 700 original Netflix titles. It’s insane.

So, they’re making thousands of these TV shows across these new platforms. But traditionally television writers, the people that ran the show, these were the big guys, the big guns, and they were the new writers. But the bulk of people kind of – what they would do is they would get a job working on a show. And maybe if the money they paid you to write a script or two or work on that show wasn’t quite enough to afford to live in a place like Los Angeles, which is expensive, there were these residuals. That was the reuse money. When they would do reruns you would get this extra money and it would keep you going and you could raise a family and support a family and send your kids to college. The American dream.

And what they’ve done – and I think part of it is what Phil is saying, it’s a Silicon Valley, well, humans are just meat and computers are computing. Like we don’t care. They’ve eliminated a lot of that rolling support. So you now are hand to mouth. And when you are hand to mouth you tend to, I think, emphasize younger workers, newer workers who are willing to deal with it. And then when they get to a certain point if they don’t have their own show they look around and go I can’t make a living at this.

John: I think what you’re describing is that in some ways the proliferation of all these services and all the shows mean there are more jobs, total number of jobs, for writers. And so in many ways people entering the business like there’s more spots open, there’s more chairs. The thing is you’re not advancing because the shows don’t go on, or they’re only half a season so you’re jumping from show to show. It’s very hard to build up from one to the next. Agents aren’t pushing to advance your quote so your quote is how much you got paid on your last job, how much you’re getting paid on your next job. There’s not an incentive to sort of keep pushing your quote up. And so it makes it harder and harder to grow up the ranks of a business.

Wendy: I thought it was really interesting the fact that linking, I mean, maybe it’s obvious, but linking back that Netflix doesn’t release data on how well your show is doing, it takes away a leverage that you might have to say this is a top three rated show that you have. We deserve to be getting paid more. You can’t say that if there’s no data to point to.

Jason: I think everything everyone is saying is spot on.

Craig: Thank you. Thank you, Jason.

Jason: It’s probably something that the guild – particularly you Craig.

Craig: Thank you. I agree.

Jason: But isn’t there a certain component of this that’s organically also going to tilt a little bit in our favor? What you said, John, or Craig, you said 700 Netflix shows, so it feels like there’s this proliferation of material, but really it’s not competitive because you can’t very well tell Netflix you’re going to go off and do this other Netflix show. It’s still them.

As the studios all develop their own streaming platforms, right, Disney over the top has won. But at a certain point Time Warner has already announced it. It’s going to make sense for all of these studios to develop streaming platforms. There’s also going to be a proliferation of competition. I’m not saying that’s going to be enough to create a playing field where we can negotiate fair deals, but I also think it will help level the playing field a little bit.

John: I have a very specific question for you, because on a previous panel you were saying how you developed this new project with a director, you were very excited to do it, like it was a shared interest, a piece of property that you guys did together. As you have developed that property did you say like oh we want to go to a studio, or were you open to the idea of going to a Netflix, of going to an Amazon, or going to an Apple rather than going to a studio? Because it changes the equation of what that is.

John: The project he’s referring to is Robotech, which I’m writing for Sony and Andy Muschietti is directing. No, it wasn’t a conversation on that because Sony controlled the rights. It was something we knew Sony had and had been developing. So it wasn’t–

John: But if Sony wanted to do it for a Sony streaming platform would it have been as interesting to you?

Jason: For me it would have. I can’t speak for Andy. For me, I’m still in shock at the opportunities that I have. Robotech is a property that I loved. I loved the series growing up. So, yeah, for me the creative would have driven me to do that regardless of whether maybe it was a less financially rewarding situation. But I think it’s something we’re all going to face. I mean, as I’m developing more original stuff, it’s a big conversation with filmmakers. Do you want theatrical or not? Does it matter? Does it have to be a theatrical experience? And every writer is going to have to make their own choice.

Craig: I’m kind of curious what you guys think. I hate to do the Applause-o-meter but if you think that something means more because it’s in a theater as opposed to being on a streaming platform please applaud if it means more. OK. Now, if you don’t really care one way or the other whether it comes through a streaming platform in television or if it’s in theater, please applaud.

Interesting. Now. You do that six years ago, that’s everybody in the first applause, no one in the second applause.

John: So I’m here at the Austin Film Festival, but I’m also here at the Texas Book Festival which happens to be the same weekend. And so for Arlo Finch I’m doing all the book events for that. And so this morning at 7:20 in the morning a van picked me up and I went to a grade school and I talked to 300 kids about Arlo Finch and did my little slideshow. It was great. I’m really tired now.

But, I asked the same question. And so there’s been a lot of talk about will you do Arlo Finch as a movie or as a TV series, and so I polled the audience. I did the same thing. You don’t let kids clap. They had to raise their hand quietly. And so I asked them “Should Arlo Finch be a movie or like a Netflix show?” And it was pretty evenly split.

Craig: And so I’m glad that some of the kids knew what a movie was. That’s very good.

John: Yeah, exactly. What’s a movie?

Craig: A theater?

John: A recurring topic that will be a topic on Scriptnotes for the next however long we do the show is what is a movie? We talk about like is a movie a piece of entertainment that’s about two hours long that is a one-time story? Probably, because right now we have these definitions of what a movie is versus what a TV movie is for Netflix, which are just ridiculous. They don’t match reality at all.

Phil: But I think it’s a cultural. It’s not just the responsibility of the people making the stuff, or the people distributing the stuff, because you know what I would say as a person who is a diehard believer in the theatrical experience. It’s just what I love. But to look at it and say that it’s really the responsibility of people who write about movies, people that talk about movies. For example, right now I would say – and this may be changing really fast – but I’d say right now a TV show on Netflix, there’s no difference in the culture between a TV show on Netflix and a TV show anywhere else. It is not less than, it is not different than. It just is.

For some reason, and I think it’s because maybe the critical establishment or maybe the press doesn’t treat them the same, a movie that’s on Netflix is not quite the same. And that can change. That just takes the culture changing to kind of embrace and treat them the same way. So that’s the thing that I’m interested in seeing is if the people that kind of keep the culture alive decide that there’s no difference between a movie that is streaming only versus a movie that appears in theaters for however long it does. That will be different. There’s power in that in itself.

Jason: Is that also just a qualitative distinction? Like the reason that there’s no difference between a Netflix show and a broadcast show or cable show, I think, is because it’s just so good. Right? There’s started to become content on streaming and Netflix–?

Craig: Wendy hates what you just said.

Jason: No, no, no, but there were so many shows–

Wendy: That’s a relative opinion though, isn’t it?

Craig: Finally a fight.

Jason: It’s all a relative opinion. But didn’t – there started to become content on streaming that people were really excited about and so people started to take it seriously because they loved it. And I think that it’s not to say there aren’t films particularly in the last year like Roma that have come out in streaming, but I suspect that as there are more great films on streaming platforms, perhaps that will change people’s opinions just a little bit of what a streaming two-hour film could be.

Craig: In rebuttal–

Wendy: Having developed for both Netflix and broadcast television–

John: The expert in the room.

Craig: Here we go.

Wendy: They’re very, very different. They’re completely different. They have totally different models about how they approach content and about the kind of content they want to create. Typically what I find is when I’m developing with a streamer or with a cable, they want to do something that is absolutely the opposite of what’s happening on broadcast. And when I’m developing with broadcast, which by the way I’m developing two at this very moment, they are still playing by an old rule book.

So, I’m not going to say necessarily that what you’re saying like all of Netflix’s content is great, because I think some people here beg to differ.

Jason: No, I don’t think it is.

Wendy: You can’t have that volume and have that much greatness. But there is still something to really be said for broadcast. I mean, I love developing in broadcast and I’ll tell you why. I do believe that the Netflix, let’s call it a revolution, is changing the landscape of what kind of stories can be told and how much an audience can absorb and how smart audiences can be. And that is something that the broadcasters are catching up to fast.

There’s a reason that Fox gave us 12 extra weeks in the room, because they know how impossible it is to write a series in the short amount of window that was that traditional broadcast model. Right? A lot of times if you were on a broadcast show you would start writing in May and you had to start shooting by July. So they realize that that time crunch was an issue.

And, you know, people that are working on Netflix shows, they may be developing for a year before that show is even shot. I mean, it could go on forever.

John: Yeah. But in developing for a year, the extra time in Empire, the extra year for Netflix, that’s costing you as a writer money.

Wendy: It’s costing us money. Absolutely.

Craig: They’re penalizing you for the care you put into your own show.

Wendy: That’s right. And people say this all the time. I’m not the first person to say this. They say well the quality of shows, these shows are winning all these Emmys. OK, I got an opinion about that, too. But, winning all these Emmys versus broadcast and it is true. And broadcast is a completely different monster that you’re playing with. You are on a train that you’ve got to deliver every week a certain amount of content that is not equal to what’s happening on Netflix or even FX or anything.

Craig: And Nicole you were ready to jump in there as well.

Nicole: I was just going to say exactly what Wendy said. Not at all.

Wendy: Now that you got me fired up. Now that my Coca Cola has kicked in. Coca Cola.

John: Coca Cola, nothing more. Well, we need to move on to a craft topic that everyone can relate to. So we’re not all going to be making TV shows, but we’re all going to be writing stuff.

Craig: Most of these people will be making TV shows.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: If Netflix continues at this rate.

John: Everyone in this room.

Craig: Almost everyone here will have a TV show.

John: As you walk out, please pick up your No Writing Left Behind sticker and your Netflix deal.

Craig: You will all work for Hulu.

John: This was a tweet that was sent to me and to Craig. Nicola Prigg tweeted, “Is there any storytelling reason why we get bored during an episode of television? Or why we feel a story is slow in a movie?”

So Craig and I both saw this tweet. Craig said, “Yes, that’s a good topic for an episode.”

Craig: Yeah. Do something about it, John.

John: And so I said, yes, let me put it in the outline where we actually keep these ideas for episodes.

Craig: He’s scolding me now. Because I’m lazy. But it worked.

John: But Nicola Prigg actually had a really good topic. So why sometimes as you’re watching TV or watching a movie–

Craig: Or reading a script.

John: Or reading a script, yeah, which is the prototype to sort of both of these. I’m bored. And this actually happened to me this last week. I was talking to a writer-director about his script, which I loved, but I had to say like, starting at about page 45 I got kind of bored until we got to this moment. And I could describe exactly why it was. And so I want to talk with this panel here, as you’re watching a movie, as you’re reading a script, the things that get you bored.

And so I can tell you what happened to me was the writer had set up that in like two days this thing is going to be happening. And so once he established that landmark, like this is a thing we’re going to be watching for, everything that wasn’t that was kind of filler and felt boring to me. So that was a reason why I was getting bored in that script. As you’re reading–

Phil: I know the answer, John.

John: Tell me why you get bored.

Craig: Came out of the gate very strong there. You have nothing. Got nothing.

Phil: No. I think that one of the best pieces of advice I ever got about writing in classic form, I don’t remember who gave me this advice, but I remember the advice. And the advice was to get rid of everything in your script that seems remotely obligatory. And so I think people get bored when they smell that there’s something even in a well-written, engaging, funny, interesting script something obligatory is happening. We have to show that this is a good person. We have to show that they’re really worried about this. Any statement that starts with we have to do this, and I think you hear when you work with people, a lot of times you hear that exact verbiage. We have to see this. We have to see this. We have to know that.

Sometimes that feeling, sometimes you do have to know stuff, yes, but to me that’s the thing like if I’m watching a movie or I’m reading a script, when I get bored is when I can smell that the person is doing it because they think they have to. And the scene is over and it’s not over because there’s still a little bit more – we have to show how nice this guy is now, or something.

So I think the word obligatory is what always comes to me as boring.

Craig: I think that’s good advice.

John: So that sense of like you’re doing a thing because you feel like you need to do it rather than you want to do it. There’s not an excitement. And there’s no curiosity from the reader because—

Phil: They see it coming. They’ve already seen this story.

Craig: The calculation is evident right. When you’re reading it you go, oh, they’re doing that thing because they feel that they have to do the thing. That immediately is boring. And it’s probably a sign that you didn’t need to do the thing at all.

Phil: And maybe the remedy or the experiment doesn’t work every time is to try to do exactly the opposite and see what happens because sometimes that does work. To truly deny the thing that everyone has told you to do could. So just even as an experiment in your writing, I mean, I found that helpful in our writing is to sometimes do the thing that’s the opposite and see what happens.

Craig: Nicole, you are particularly good at entertaining me, in particular. And you’re not at all boring, you’re the opposite of a boring writer to me. What are you doing to avoid being boring and what are worried about when you read things and you go, oh, it’s happening?

Nicole: Of my own work?

Craig: No, of other people’s. You are never boring.

Nicole: Well, so I read a lot of scripts because I mentor a lot, so I do a lot of work with Sundance and with SF Film and with Sun Foundation. And so I’ve read a lot of scripts that I would say, there’re a few things. I mean, I could speak many things of this. But one is when the writer doesn’t trust the reader to be following them, and so it’s not breadcrumbs, it’s like loaves of bread being heaved at you. And you’re like, yes, I get that they have an issue with their mother. OK. This is like the fourth time you told us. So obviously the thing with the girlfriend is going to echo the mother. We know. And then you’re just waiting for it to happen.

And I think a lot of times I’m sitting around reading a script waiting for them to get to the part where the story really should start. Or just like get past the thing that is the big reveal that we all saw coming. So I would say people who don’t trust their reader to be more subtle or to be more complex or sophisticated. Or they’re just telling us too much. Shoe leather I think can be really boring. A lot of the like how did they get from this file that they found on the desk, and then they have to go to the gas station to talk to the guy. And a lot of the times it’s just following a paint-by-numbers kind of thing and it’s just not that interesting because there’s not necessarily any compelling emotion or conflict that’s inherent in that scene. They’re just sort of following a to do list. And so then we feel like we’re reading somebody’s to do list.

And the other thing I would say is that as much as I love research and I’m a big research fan, I think I’ve read a lot of scripts especially because I frequently am given science-based stories that are just like there’s an interesting fact that I’m going to shoe-horn in there that isn’t that interesting. And it’s like maybe if I was reading it in a game of Trivial Pursuit, but not in the second act reversal.

Phil: And just to add to that, I think that what you’re saying is so right because I think a lot of times there’s a false value that has kind of taken hold which is no one should ever be confused for even a second. No one should ever wonder for a second. Or just think, whoa, what, for a second. That there’s this weird impulse that everything has to be explained. It doesn’t come from us. It comes from other people.

Craig: Them.

Phil: But that idea that it can be fun and entertaining to sit in not knowing and wondering. It’s a whole concept called suspense. That’s a great concept but that is kind of weirdly under attack all the time, with the fear that the audience will just be so mad that they don’t know right that second. And I just don’t believe in that, but I know that there’s a lot of people who do. And so I think a lot of the stuff that you’re talking about is exactly that. That people are trying to cover all their bases and make sure no one is ever wondering for a second. And to me wondering is an amazing thing. That’s a great thing.

Craig: Wendy?

Wendy: Sure.

Craig: Love of my life.

Wendy: Hello. What’s your number? Just kidding.

Craig: I just love, “Wendy, love of my life” is the greatest movie quote of all time. Any time I hear your name I’m like, “Wendy, love of my life.” You guys know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

Wendy: The Shining.

Craig: Thank you, Wendy. The Shining. I’m not being creepy. I mean, I am.

John: We’re in a hotel.

Craig: I mean, I’m being creepy a la The Shining.

Wendy: A couple of things. When I go into a writers’ room and we are breaking the story for an episode of television, I’m going to stick with broadcast because the gauntlet has been thrown down there. So, in broadcast television, which millions upon millions of people watch–

Craig: Do it. Keep going.

Wendy: Maybe less than five years ago.

Craig: Yes.

Wendy: But there’s still a lot of people who don’t pay for content and want to watch it for free and don’t bother watching a tampon commercial. OK, so.

Craig: You’re the villain of the podcast now.

Jason: Just to clarify, I was not taking down broadcast.

Craig: No, no, no, it’s too late. It’s too late. You’ve been defined.

Wendy: He likes the conflict. And that’s actually what this is all about.

Craig: I love conflict.

Wendy: This is where I’m going. I always go into the room when we’re breaking a new episode and I say, OK everybody, what is the climax of this story. Show me the climax. I want to see what’s happening at that act five break. And I drive people bananas because they’re like, well, we want to talk about the teaser. And we have an idea–

John: You have act breaks. That’s a crucial difference in broadcast. You have act breaks that you’re building up to.

Wendy: Yes. And if you have story blocks that don’t service that climax, bye. It’s not here. We’re not using that. And, by the way, it takes me a while to get there. As a writer I’m very honest about this. What I find in my drafts as I go along is I’ll just – I don’t know, we’re in Texas so I’ll use a gun analogy because ya’ll understand that.

So like, OK, imagine you’re at target practice, right. You’ve got your gun. You’re looking down range. So, what I find in my scripts, especially the first few drafts, is that I’ve shot all around the middle target. Like the scenes are almost there, but they’re not quite there. And when I hit the bullseye, damn, you know that’s not boring. Right? So to me that’s really how I feel. I often say what is the highest point of drama that I can find in this story I’m trying to tell and then what are the highest points of drama that will get me to that place.

And so that’s how I keep it from getting boring.

Craig: That’s kind of where I’m at. Well done. And I think when I’m reading something and I get bored, or when I’m watching something and I get bored it’s because the show has decided to take a break, or the movie has taken a break. And what I mean by that is there is a propulsion going on. Somebody needs something. At all points something must be done about something, or someone. And then another thing happens that makes it really hard, or really surprising. But every now and then a show will take a break and go, OK, let’s just have a chat. Or, you know what, I want to tell you what I think. That’s a break.

I don’t want it. Even when people – sometimes you’ll have that moment in a movie where someone will sit down and there will be a little fireside chat of some kind and someone will start telling a story, but you don’t get bored because there’s a meaning to the story that impacts the end. Case in point, Gandalf sits down at one point. They are lost in the mines of Moria. And little Frodo notices that Gollum has been following and he says, “Oh, Gollum has been following me.” “Yes, he’s been following us for a long time.”

And then they have this very long – this is an action-packed movie and now it’s just two people talking. But what it comes down to is Frodo says, “I just wish I were not alive right now.” And he says, “It’s not our choice to determine when we’re alive. It’s only our choice to determine what we do with the time we have.” That is literally the theme of the entire series and it is why in the end the end happens the way the end happens. That is not a boring scene.

Right? Because they understood if you dare stop and take a break you better deliver something that matters. OK? If you dare to stop it’s got to be amazing. Like that. Just so you know, write Gollum.

John: So that’s a quiet moment. But so often I get bored during really loud moments. So like a bunch of stuff, like cities are being destroyed, and I’m like I’m just so bored. And because I’m not watching characters do anything that I care about. I’m just watching stuff happen. And it’s basically they’ve stopped actually the story of the movie just to show a bunch of special effects. And you can only take so much of that. It’s just like, no, I’m done, let’s get onto the next – stop. Stop destroying the buildings.

Craig: How many buildings can you blow up? At some point there’s just enough–

John: So many it turns out.

Craig: Oh no, the city is, again with the buildings. And I also think about the insurance adjustors.

John: Yeah. That poor man.

Craig: Or just like people that erect and take down scaffolding. There’s so much work to be done.

John: There’s a lot of work to be done. So, Jason, I wanted to get to you because you have done some of the big smashy things. So, can you give us any suggestions for a bunch of smashy stuff is happening, what are you doing to keep us engaged during the smashy-smashy bits?

Jason: I think the thing about broadcast is…

Wendy: Bring it.

Craig: You’re so funny. You’re so funny.

Jason: When you’re writing these big action sequences I think it’s very easy for audiences to tune out. It’s very easy for it to become about the logistics, about sort of the physics of what’s going on and the visual effects. And it just has to be about character. And it’s so rare that you have big action sequences that are driven by character. And I think Nicole you did something really brilliant with the finale set piece of Guardians of the Galaxy where it’s just about this group finally learning to trust each other and to work as one. And so it really is just a group of friends who all got thrown together, or hate each other, trying to figure out how not to for one moment.

And the stuff that’s going on around them is cool and beautiful and James Gunn does an amazing job of visualizing it, but it really does feel like it’s just a character piece. That’s what I aspired to do with Wonder Woman. And I think it all stems, you know, to your earlier question about why audiences get bored when they get bored. I think a big part of it is familiarity. And everyone was sort of hinting at the same thing which is lack of faith in the audience.

And I think audiences are ready for smaller act three set pieces. I think an example, well, World War Z is a movie that’s not necessarily beloved.

John: Oh yeah.

Craig: So World War Z is a great lesson because initially the climax of World War Z was a massive action set piece that took place in Moscow.

Jason: Big Red Square finale set piece.

Craig: Where Brad Pitt faced off against waves of Russian zombies, which we wouldn’t know anything about now today, but when it was revised it was determined that actually Brad Pitt versus one zombie.

Jason: And it works way better because it’s character.

Craig: Much better.

Jason: But I think underestimating – we’re still I feel like–

Phil: Would have loved to see a sky portal in that opening.

Jason: Sky portal would have been nice.

Phil: Just for me.

Craig: Just one portal.

Jason: But I do think we’re still a little bit behind the audiences in big studio feature film land. I think audiences have gotten so smart and so willing to experience different things from characters. And it’s not just about, I think confusion is a good point. There’s a real aversion to allowing audiences to live in that space of confusion which I think is valuable as he was saying. But I also think audiences are able to process complicated characters. I think probably all of us, or at least maybe this is just me, you get the note about characters being likeable. Your hero being likeable.

Craig: Oh, that’s the worst note.

Jason: Heroic enough. And that’s boring.

Craig: Never do that. Never do that.

Jason: People can be unlikeable.

Craig: If anyone ever says to you your character is not likeable, you say thank you.

Phil: And even worse if they say the word relatable. Because honestly, you know, we just made a movie about a character who is not likeable and not relatable. And the only thing that’s important to me is if you think the character is interesting. That’s all that matters.

Wendy: And now add gender and race to that equation. Tell me. You know what I’m saying.

Phil: Exactly.

Wendy: It’s very, very different.

Phil: Exactly.

John: You can’t throw that out there and not do anything more with that.

Craig: What else is there to say? She said gender and race. End of discussion.

John: End of discussion.

Wendy: If you don’t know what that means I can’t help you.

Phil: But relatable to who, likeable by who.

Wendy: Exactly. Exactly. Who says what’s relatable? Who says what’s likeable?

Craig: There we go.

John: There it is. I wanted some closure on that moment. This next moment–

Phil: You did it again. Perfectly.

John: Is a moment we’ve been waiting for for 370 episodes perhaps. So this is about a character who is perhaps relatable.

Craig: Not likeable.

John: Not always likeable. Not always entirely consistent. But it’s a character who we’ve all come to know really, really well. So this is a new game we’re going to play tonight called Why is Craig So Mad?

So, one of the things we did very early from the start of Scriptnotes is we have transcripts of every episode. So I can Google words to see certain words. Words like “angry,” or “umbrage.” And so what I did yesterday–

Craig: Or “fucking.”

John: Is I went through and I looked through the transcripts to find examples of like Craig being angry. And the question is would even Craig remember what he was angry about. So, in previous years we’ve brought a person out from the audience to guess. When I showed this to Craig, Craig had no idea so Craig will be the contestant and the host of this.

So, we’re going to take things, real things from the transcripts and Craig is going to have to figure out what he was so angry about. And our panelists here, so you have this Why is Craig So Mad? And so we’ll be reading down A, B, C, and D so you’ll be offering these alternatives.

This is from Episode 34, way early on. Episode Umbrage Farms. Craig, can you reenact your speech here?

Craig: The thought that you would poison your show with somebody because their daddy was somebody is insane and inane. I mean, I don’t know, I haven’t watched the show. Obviously you do and you like it. I haven’t seen it yet.

John: All right. What is Craig so angry about? Option A.

Wendy: Now do I read the parenthesis as well or no?

John: Including the parenthesis, yeah.

Wendy: OK. He’s really angry about Zoey Deschanel on New Girl. Her father is acclaimed cinematographer Caleb Deschanel.

John: Or Option B?

Phil: He’s actually angry about Allison Williams on Girls. Her father is disgraced news anchor Brian Williams.

John: Or is it Option C?

Nicole: Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted. Her father is wackadoodle actor Jon Voight.

John: Or is it Option D?

Jason: Jason Ritter, in Another Period. His father is actor John Ritter, rest in peace. Why did I get the sad one?

John: So, Craig, talk us through your mental process here.

Jason: Tonal train wrecks in this show.

Craig: By process of elimination it can’t be Jason Ritter because it can’t be. That would be crazy. I can’t imagine that happening. Who would dare question lovely Jason Ritter? And I can’t imagine Angeline Jolie. I’m torn between Zoey Deschanel and Allison Williams. I’m going to go with Allison Williams on Girls.

John: You are correct. It is Allison Williams on Girls.

Craig: I’m so proud of myself for guessing something I said once.

John: Indeed. Zosia Mamet would also have counted for the same thing. All right, by the way, I should say you weren’t angry at her. You were angry at people who were angry at her being cast on the show.

Craig: Correct. Correct. I was in support of Allison Williams.

John: Yes. Next up is Episode 305. Forever Young and Stupid. Craig, take it away.

Craig: Second of all… [laughs] You can see by Episode 305 I had really fallen into my kind of rhythm. Second of all, screenwriters working in the feature business, I mean, the people that are constantly telling us, hey, things have to change are directors. And now directors are just shocked. Hey, it’s the same deal with us. You took a check. You did something as a work-for-hire piece. Shut up. Piss off.

John: What is Craig so angry about?

Craig: I don’t know.

John: Option A?

Wendy: Sony’s plan to sell clean versions of its movies with none of that upside down kissing in Spider Man.

John: Or B.

Phil: Bryan Singer complaining that he was fired off Bohemian Rhapsody after, you know, not showing up for days at a time.

John: Or Option C.

Nicole: Louis C.K.’s movie, I Love You Daddy, being pulled from theaters after Louis C.K. pulled his dick out.

John: Or Option D.

Jason: DGA complaints about Netflix not showing director credits on the ten thousand billboards they buy around Los Angeles.

John: Craig Mazin, which of these things were you so angry about?

Craig: Oh no. Sony’s plan to sell clean versions of its movies?

John: Craig was right!

Craig: Again, I’m so bizarrely proud of something that should just be normal.

John: Yeah, so I don’t even know, did Sony do the clean versions? I don’t know. But we talked about it.

All right, last one. So Craig has two so far.

Craig: Two out of three. Basic memory, yeah.

John: Absolutely. Episode 221, Nobody Knows Anything Including What this Quote Means.

Craig: Because you’re a good person – I’m talking about you – because you’re a good person. You know, here’s the difference between you and me. A good person sees something that is deserving of vomit and says I don’t understand. Those words don’t fit together. I’m puzzled. I will take a nap. The bad person says I am filled with rage because I can see the bad conscience behind this.

John: What is Craig so angry about? Is it?

Wendy: Warvey Heinstein? Or, I’m sorry, Harvey Weinstein.

John: Harvey Weinstein. Or is it, B?

Phil: Final Draft!

John: Is it C?

Nicole: College students protesting Kimberly Peirce.

Craig: Ooh.

John: Or is it D?

Jason: The Blue Cat Screenplay Competition.

Craig: Shit.

John: That’s a hard one. I got a good one for this last one.

Craig: I mean, they’re all really good. God, it would be so depressing if it was the Blue Cat Screenplay Competition. I got to go with an old chestnut here. Final Draft.

John: It was the Blue Cat Screenplay Competition! Oh, Craig, you almost won the whole game.

Wendy: You’ve got to trust your gut.

Craig: You’re right.

Wendy: Trust your gut.

Craig: Never change your answer.

John: Yeah. You could have won the Showcase Showdown. Instead you gave it up at the end.

Craig: Could have spun the big wheel. Dammit. That’s great. I’m smart. “A good person sees something that is deserving of vomit.” That’s great.

John: We have transcripts for the whole thing. If you listen to the show or read the transcripts you would have an idea of what our show actually is.

Craig: I just finally got why they listen to the show.

John: Yeah. Sometimes it’s funny.

Craig: It’s actually quite entertaining.

John: Yeah. With some planning it sometimes works out pretty well.

Craig: You guys aren’t crazy. This makes sense.

John: We have time for some questions. So, who would like to raise your hand to ask a question?

Hello, what’s your name?

Atticus: Atticus.

John: Atticus like Atticus Finch?

Atticus: Yeah.

John: All right. Very nice.

Atticus: So my question has to do with like writing for TV and streaming and stuff like that, like the difference. So, with the culture of like binge-watching shows now where like on Netflix and streaming stuff you can do a whole season in a day, like do you have to tailor your writing of a TV series differently nowadays?

Craig: That is a great question.

John: Yeah, because you do that.

Craig: That is a really good question. It deserves commendation. It does. You guys have been around these festivals. They’re not always good.

John: So let’s talk about why that was a good question. So that is a good question because it speaks to the expertise that people have on the stage. That’s always good. It is a thing that will be generally interesting to everybody else around you. That’s another good thing.

Craig: Also, there’s something very real and craft about the way that has changed. So, I’m going to start with you here on this one and maybe you have the full answer to this one, Wendy, because you are primarily working in network where you do write week by week, but have you written anything in the binge space?

Wendy: Yes.

Craig: So do you do it differently?

Wendy: Yes.

Craig: Tell us.

Wendy: The companies that make binge product [laughs] really believe that their audience will sit through probably the first three episodes before a major incident happens. That’s very different from network television, where we have about 15 minutes. So that’s a completely different way of thinking. So, that extra two to three hours allows you to develop character, place, set a world that in broadcast your window is about that big. So, you can imagine then the type of choices you can make as a writer.

So, when you’re writing in broadcast and you’ve only got 15 minutes to sell it, you have to go right for the punches. And when you’re doing something on a streamer you can take your time with it. You can flow with it. You can let it go a little looser.

Craig: And you’ve got, I guess the most helpful tool in your tool belt to ensure that somebody comes back seven days later because they don’t have another episode to watch is the cliffhanger.

Wendy: Right. Right. I mean, both models use the cliffhanger. That’s for sure. Because they do want you to keep watching. But I would say that on the streamers, because they do slow it down so much – sometimes too much if you ask me. Sometimes I’m not willing to invest that amount of money. Money, ha. Time. Time is money. What am I saying? But you know what I mean. So it is interesting, because it does change the way you approach the story. It changes the way you approach the season because when you’re making the season and you’re not having the constant interaction of an audience that comes through social media or through ratings or through any kind of, you know, that sort of constant interaction that you have when you have a show that’s on week to week, and you’re making it in a bubble and you’re going to release all of them at the same time you can really approach your storytelling in a much different way.

I know that the way they try to emulate is they imagine that it’s – if you’ve got ten episodes you think of it as a long feature. Right? So your first act break is actually the third episode. Second act break is actually towards the seventh or eighth episode.

Craig: All right.

John: So another episode you might want to listen to, Stephen Schiff came on and we talked about The Americans. And so The Americans is a show that kind of feels like it was streaming, but it was a week to week show. And so they talked a lot about the previously ons and sort of how you have to build in the expectation like a person could be watching them all at once or the person is watching them week by week and you have to make sure that they’re caught up in a way that’s different. Because classically on Netflix there’s no previously on. It just assumes that you’ve watched all of them all together.

Another question. Who has a question?

Male Voice: Hi. After writing so many successful comedies, how did you come to Chernobyl and what was the experience like?

Craig: And who is that question for?

Male Voice: For the whole panel. And when do we get to see it?

Craig: Thank you for asking. Don’t know when I’m allowed to say.

John: Not when it comes out, but you can say why you wrote it.

Craig: It will be coming out next year. Not past the halfway point. The first half of next year.

The way I came about writing it is, I mean, the thing is it doesn’t matter the other stuff I wrote. Like Phil for instance writes all sorts of stuff. I don’t know if you saw The Invitation. It’s a wonderful movie that he wrote with Matt Manfredi and Karyn Kusama directed. It’s a fantastic movie. It is not at all like for instance Ride Along. But he also wrote Ride Along.

I generally think that people that write funny things can do anything. I like the Vince Gilligan method of hiring funny people to play dramatic parts. But I’ve always been interested in not funny things. It’s just that they were mostly paying me to write funny things, so I just did what I could. But probably Chernobyl is the most me thing I’ve ever done. So, really I guess it was just me being me. There you go.

John: You being you. We have time for one more question. So, right behind him is a gentleman who is wearing a shirt. Great, you, sir. The gentleman in a shirt. That’s a really specific thing. You sir, what is your name?

Christian: Christian.

John: Hi Christian. What is your question?

Christian: OK, so Oscars are coming up, award season. What’s one screenplay for each of you that you hope gets nominated, besides your own?

John: I would hope that Black Panther gets nominated, because Black Panther is fantastic. And it’s a fantastically well-made movie, but it’s also a great script. And so Joe Robert Cole and the director also deserve huge credits for how good the writing was in that. I’m trying to think of another – there’s other good stuff, I just wasn’t thinking about what was great this year.

Craig: Oscars are coming up now already? Didn’t we just do them?

John: No. I know it feels like we did.

Craig: I so don’t care.

John: Yeah. Franklin was the show and we talked about like we just don’t care about the awards.

Craig: I mean, I just like movies. The whole rat race of it all. I mean, I know people do get into and everything. I just wish – I love the way the AFI does it where they’re just like it’s 2018. Here are ten movies we loved. Let’s celebrate these ten movies. They’re great. Instead of like pitting them against each other in a fight. But that’s just – oh, probably also because I’m never going to get an Oscar so it’s easy for me to say that, isn’t it. To be like oh Oscars, blech.

John: Can I punt your question a little bit and say that one of – the only good thing I will say about the whole award season bullshit is that the studios all publish their scripts. And so you as writers who are like curious about screenplays–

Craig: Oh, that is true. This is good.

John: You can now read all the screenplays. And like us growing up, it was hard to find screenplays–

Craig: Is there an app that they could read those on?

John: You could read it on Weekend Read, for example. So, Megan, is also going to be putting all of those scripts as they become available up on Weekend Read. So that’s a place you can read them, but you can also find the PDFs other places, too.

Read good scripts. You should also read some terrible scripts so you can understand what never works in scripts. But reading really good screenplays is a great way sort of to develop those muscles and sort of see like, oh, I should aspire to do these really good things. And you see like what it looks like on the page before it becomes the movie.

Craig: I feel like there should be one more question.

John: There should be one more question because I kind of punted that question.

Craig: Can maybe not a dude ask the last one?

John: Which woman in the audience – this young woman right here has raised her hand. She’s wearing a–

Craig: A shirt.

John: She’s wearing a shirt.

Female Voice: I’m also wearing a shirt.

John: All right. People in shirts. But it’s the same color. Is that an Austin Film Festival shirt?

Female Voice: No, it’s just palm trees.

John: Because that is the Austin Film Festival color. The official staff are wearing those shirts.

Female Voice: Oh that’s true. Please don’t ask me anything. I don’t know anything.

John: All right. But you have a question for us.

Female Voice: So my question is at this level of your writing I hear a lot of you guys talking about assignments and I want to know how often, I don’t know, weekly or if it’s maybe daily, you get to work on your kind of pet projects and your own things that nobody pays you for. Or, are they paying you for those?

John: They’re not paying. So, let’s talk about that. Let’s start at the end. Jason Fuchs, how much are you chasing or writing on assignments versus your own thing?

Jason: I would say right now it’s probably weighted more heavily on assignment stuff. But I think that part of staying sort of fertile and fresh creatively is focusing on things that are originals that mean a lot to you. So my time for the most part right now is divided between Robotech which is, although it’s a passion thing, it’s obviously something was an assignment. And an original. And so I try to split time between that and then in the back of my mind there are always original ideas percolating. But I think it’s really easy to get excited about open writing assignments and these are things that you have to work very hard to get.

And oftentimes they’re properties that you fall in love with and that you care as much about, at least in my case, certainly as some originals. But I think it’s really helpful to still focus on what those originals might be.

John: Nicole, what’s your split?

Nicole: Well, let’s see. The last year has been really intense. So, I did a studio project that was an assignment but it was based on an IP that was just basically a title and like a bad guy, so it felt like an original but it wasn’t. And a pilot that was also based very, very loosely on a short film. And then I wrote my own short film and adapted it from a New Yorker short story and directed it. That was a passion project which was great. My agent was like where have you been for three months? So that was fun. And then I have two passion projects I’m working on now in addition to the writing stuff. So, I would say that it’s about 50/50, but this year it’s been more like 60/40. It’s been a lot.

John: So Phil Hay, you do assignments but also this Destroyer, would you consider that – that’s your own thing? That’s your fun thing?

Phil: Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, it’s changed for us. So, my partner Matt and I who have been together for a really, really long time now work with my wife, Karyn, so the three of us – we basically have a family business. So we try to always have – we have one way where we’re trying to just make our own stuff at whatever budget level that is. And sometimes the next thing we do might be a studio. We have a studio that we might do next, but we also have an independent thing that we’re writing. So, for me personally and really fulfillingly the needle has shifted way toward just building stuff originally from the bottom up. And then doing assignments that really has a goal because it’s just our little group doing it.

But still doing some studio assignment work. But I would say like generally my lesson of my whole life and career, and I’m sure you guys feel similarly, you said something similar, is that you need to be doing your own stuff. Regardless of whether the results of it, just for you to be you as a writer and to stay alive emotionally and intellectually.

So, the original stuff always had a huge spot for me. But sometimes it’s had more of an economic spot and sometimes it’s had less of an economic spot. But it’s always been equally important.

Wendy: Yeah, I mean, he’s clapping. Like a dad.

Phil: I’m going to buy you a beer. Let’s go.

John: Wendy, do you get a chance to do your own original stuff? You’re doing TV for folks?

Wendy: Well, god, I’m so lucky right now. I feel kind of shamed.

Craig: You’re ashamed because good things are happening to you?

Wendy: Because good things are happening. Yeah. Yeah.

Craig: That’s the most writerly shit of all time.

Phil: Here truly is a writer.

John: Tell us why you said that. Why do you think he said that?

Craig: That is so writerly.

Wendy: Because I’m so used to losing, man.

Craig: There you go. There you go.

Wendy: I’m so used to being the – I had actually a showrunner once say to me in the room, “Learn to take a yes.” And, I mean, that’s me. I’m so used to fighting. I’m so used to having to push so hard. But this year was pretty brilliant.

So I’m in a deal and I sold two projects that I love. And so they’re assignments, but they were created by me. So, I don’t know, where does that fit in? So I would say 45% on the one piece that I sold, probably 45% on the other piece that I sold. But you know me. I always save 10% just for me. So I got 10% of things that are stories that I’m incubating that I’d like to go sell next year. Because, I mean, it takes a long time to develop what could be the concept for a television show.

You’re talking about millions upon millions of dollars of investment. So it’s important. I take that 10% and I invest my own money, not very smart but whatever. I invest my own time and really try to develop those stories so that come next June when the wonderful studio I’m working for comes and says, OK, what do you want to go pitch, I can say I got this ready, I got this. What are we going to do?

Craig: Great.

John: Craig Mazin, obviously Chernobyl is a passion project. It’s your own thing that you sort of came out and created.

Craig: It’s my own thing.

John: But the sort of – the stuff you don’t talk about on the show, you’ve also done a lot of work for other folks this last year, too.

Craig: Mostly. I mean, the truth is I have deferred for the longest time any kind of me time.

John: The personal enjoyment.

Craig: Like I’ve just always been somebody that’s helping someone else do what they do. And a lot of it has been wonderful and fulfilling. I don’t mean to ever suggest that I was not grateful for it. And a lot of it I loved doing. I mean, I loved working with Todd Phillips. That was great. But those were his things, you know. And I’ve spent so much time helping other people with their things, or coming in and fixing things, or dealing with distressed property, whatever it is, and to finally just do my own thing was wonderful. And I want to keep doing it. And so I think I’m going to.

And, you know, you can do the other kinds of stuff if you need money and you’ve shown that you have a track record of doing those things. That’s great. But I’m an odd one actually. I do feel like I’m very odd in the sense that I kind of started in a weird way, even though the first thing I did was like my own thing kind of. But it was really honestly it was a service job. It was like you guys need a movie like this. I’ve always been that. And only now weirdly after fucking 23 years am I finally just – so it’ll be tragic if it’s awful, wouldn’t it? I hope you don’t think it’s awful. Because if you do, then you think I’m awful.

John: No, we don’t think you’re awful, Craig.

Craig: I’m a little bit awful.

Wendy: Would somebody buy him a beer?

John: And so I will say from my perspective like doing Arlo Finch was a chance to just do completely my own thing. And so the best thing about making movies and television is it’s incredibly collaborative. The worst thing about making movies and television is it’s incredibly collaborative. And no matter what your vision is going into a thing, it’s always being filtered through a bunch of other people. And so to actually say like, oh, you know, that comma is there because I want that comma there and it matters to me was a great change for me and really, really good.

I won’t ever have that in features because it doesn’t matter. The screenplay is a plan for making the other thing. But to make the thing as a book was great. So that’s been my three books of doing my own stuff.

Craig: That was also a good question.

John: Yeah, see.

Craig: This row was nailing it.

John: The question row. Another free beer.

Phil: Another free beer.

John: This was a really – this was a pretty good Scriptnotes I think.

Craig: I don’t know. Was it?

Phil: It’s really up to them.

John: A good audience! We need to thank some very important people, starting with Beto O’Rourke.

Craig: Yes. And in all seriousness, how many of you – just raise your hand if you are a registered voter in the state of Texas. Now, lower your hand if you have not yet voted. So if you’ve voted lower your hand. If you still have yet to vote keep your hand up. You haven’t voted yet. And you can vote in the state of Texas. Very few of you. Wonderful. You’re voting, right? Good.

John: Good.

Craig: Yeah. Yep. I’m not going to tell you who to vote for, but I will tell you do not vote for Ted Cruz.

John: The only thing he asks is not to vote for Ted Cruz. We need to thank Megan McDonnell who made this whole night possible. Megan McDonnell, our producer.

Craig: Where is she?

John: She’s right there.

Craig: There she is.

John: Our show is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Thank you Austin Film Festival’s Colin Hyer. Thank you very much for having us here again.

Craig: Always wonderful.

John: Olivia Riordan. Travis, Joseph, Sonja, James. All the Austin Film Festival volunteers. You are fantastic. So let’s thank everybody here at Austin Film Festival. And Ben thank you very much for the lights. Hey guys, thank you very much. This was another fun year to do this.

Come tomorrow if you can get into our Three Page Challenge. We’re going to be talking through three Three Page Challenges.

Craig: We’ll be tearing humans apart in front of you.

John: Indeed. And we won’t be drunk. Well, we may be a little bit drunk.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Thank you all very much. Have a good night.

Craig: Thanks guys. Have a great night.

John: And Craig has one more thing to say.

Craig: So, if you’re a WGA member you now know that you can vote on our proposal to amend the credits rules for screenwriters. We strongly, strongly, strongly, both of us, urge you to vote yes on this. If you have questions, take a look in the booklet. There is a statement against it, which I strongly disagree with. And in fact you’ll see that the committee, including a lot of terrific screenwriters, have put together a very clear argument rebutting all of those points. So we really, really urge you to vote yes. It’s something that we need as writers.

Links:

• Thanks for joining us, Wendy Calhoun, Phil Hay, Nicole Perlman, and Jason Fuchs!
• And thank you, Beto, for the message! Check out the video from the audience.
• The Death of Hollywood’s Middle Class by Nicole Laporte for Fast Company
• This tweet by Nicola Prigg
• Keep an eye on Weekend Read for screenplays this awards season.
• T-shirts are available here! We’ve got new designs, including Colored Revisions, Karateka, and Highland2.
• The USB drives!
• Wendy Calhoun on Twitter
• Phil Hay on Twitter
• Nicole Perlman on Twitter
• Jason Fuchs on Twitter
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Find past episodes
• Scriptnotes Digital Seasons are also now available!
• Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2018/what-is-a-movie-anyway).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 369 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program we’ll be answering a fundamental question: what is a movie? We’ll also be talking about award season and other stuff. We’re going to do follow up from five years ago. It’s going to be a big show. And because we have a big show and fundamental questions we asked Mr. Fundamentals on himself. Franklin Leonard is here joining us. Franklin Leonard of the Black List fame. Franklin, welcome to the show.

**Franklin Leonard:** Thanks for having me. I’m going to add Mr. Fundamentals to my Twitter bio.

**John:** That would be nice. You were on quite early episodes of Scriptnotes. I remember the first time I think you were on was at the Austin Film Festival.

**Franklin:** Yeah.

**John:** You came on to announce the Black List website.

**Franklin:** Yeah. It was like six years ago. Because we launched the site October 15, 2012. And it’s funny because I don’t think of it as being early in the Scriptnotes’ lifespan, because I had been listening since the beginning. But, yeah, I guess it was.

**John:** You were there right at the start. So, thank you. Our first bit of follow up is actually from five years ago. And so we have a little clip that we’ll play. So, five years ago we talked about iPads in movie theaters. And so Disney was doing an experiment where like you bring your iPad in so you have a second screen experience in the movie theater. And Craig and I wondered if it was going to be a slippery slope. Let’s hear what Craig predicted.

[clip plays]

**John:** And so you will see more and more kids with glowing devices at movie theaters.

**Craig:** That is incorrect.

**John:** And it’s going to suck.

**Craig:** That is incorrect because this is especially designated as an iPad-allowed zone. I have no doubt that the Disney people will very smartly say to every kid as part of the app and part of the audience thing that this is a special thing and that this isn’t something you do in the theater normally. They’re very good about that sort of thing. And I also – and I also know that movie theaters and other audience patrons are very good about policing these things.

So, no, I don’t believe children will be bringing iPads anymore because of this into any other movie and the slippery slope argument is – it’s a fallacy.

**John:** I know slippery slope is a general fallacy and yet I will ask Stuart at this moment to flag in a follow up pile. Five years from now–

**Craig:** Oh good.

**John:** We will discuss whether there are more children trying to use electronic devices in movie theaters.

**Craig:** I am totally in support of that.

[clip ends]

**John:** So the Stuart I mentioned there is Stuart Friedel, the original Scriptnotes producer. Stuart Friedel sent himself some email to the future and so he emailed this past week to say it has now been five years. So, we are now living in the future. We can only imagine back then. Five years later are we seeing a preponderance of iPads in movie theaters?

**Franklin:** Thank god no. At least I haven’t.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** I have not seen it either. So Craig was correct. I think every once and a while we need to point out when Craig is completely correct. The number of iPads in movie theaters has not increased. And I would say even the abuse of cell phones in movie theaters hasn’t increased at all. It’s still annoying when it happens, but–

**Franklin:** I mean, I’m aware when it happens enough because it doesn’t happen that often. And weirdly about this, thinking about it now, I actually think kids are better about this than adults are. Right. Kids just kind of want go in and take me away. Adults will be distracted every five minutes by the thought of our phone, at least I know I am. And a good movie will make me not think about that.

But, yeah, I don’t think it’s changed that much.

**Craig:** It just was never going to be a thing. Mostly I think because it’s just annoying. I mean, children in movie theaters are already annoying, to add more annoyance to their baseline annoyance level. And I just think in general Franklin is right. People are getting better about it. Everybody knows that it’s kind of the equivalent of, I don’t know, blowing your nose into your hand or something. It’s just bad etiquette and you shouldn’t do it. So, I’m glad that that hasn’t happened. It’s actually kind of amazing in a weird way that it hasn’t, I suppose, because phones in particular – forget tablets – but phones have infiltrated everywhere else. But the movie theater remains a little bit of a sacred space.

**John:** Yeah. We never let our daughter use the iPad at restaurants, but I do see so many families, which is like they prop up the iPad at a restaurant and it drives me crazy.

**Franklin:** 100%.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Franklin, you were just back from the Toronto Film Festival. I take it it was a good time. You enjoyed Toronto?

**Franklin:** Yeah. I mean, it’s sort of a high point of my year and certainly my cinematic year. Yeah, I mean, it’s a really strong year for movies, or at least it feels like it, at least that’s the big take away from me from the festival.

**John:** I was watching your coverage from it and a tweet that you sent out from the Black List had Kate Hagen who was on the show before and the hashtag “show us your room.” And so can we talk about #ShowUsYourRoom and sort of what that is?

**Franklin:** Absolutely. So, #ShowUsYourRoom actually did not start with us. It started with a writer who on the Black List last year, Amanda Idoko, who just wanted to share photos of writers’ rooms to sort of show the makeup of it. And I think some of that had to do with showing the diversity or lack of diversity in some rooms, but I think it also had to do, and the thing that I really took away from it was these are the people that are writing the things that you love. And especially in a space like Twitter if you’re a 16-year-old kid or a 21-year-old kid and you don’t think that you’re represented, like here’s a bunch of photos of people who look like you, who come from where you come from. If this is something that you ever gave a thought to wanting to do, it is possible. Not that it’s going to be easy, but like there is a path, which I always think is a good thing. So, should-out to Amanda. She does amazing writing and amazing sort of social media advocacy I suppose.

**John:** Yeah. Especially in this time where I think ten years ago we started to see showrunners who were social creatures, and so you knew who Joss Whedon was, you sort of knew J.J. Abrams. They were sort of the giant titans. And so you associated a show completely with that thing. But now in the age of social media you have accounts that are run by the writers’ room and you have the individual writers on that. And so there’s a lot of pressure, but it’s also an opportunity to really show what you look like and there really are people behind those words.

**Franklin:** Yeah. It’s one of my favorite things about social media actually. Like when you watch an episode of television that you really loved you can literally sort of say to the people who wrote like thank you. Which how often do we get that opportunity in everyday life, even if you work in Hollywood?

**John:** Craig, are you going to show us your room for the writing room on Chernobyl?

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s me.

**Franklin:** Actually, you should do a photo of just you with the hashtag.

**Craig:** That would be a bit obscene. No, it’s just me. It’s the least diverse room ever because there’s only one person in it.

**Franklin:** But there’s so many Craig Mazin personalities.

**Craig:** No, I mean, they’re all of a sort really–

**Franklin:** They’re all actually the same. Fair enough.

**John:** I’ve really tamped down on the number of personalities he’s allowed to–

**Franklin:** Well just the intros alone.

**Craig:** The intros alone. That’s where I really get to spread my wings. John is a very controlling podcast daddy. But, I actually am helping out Rob McElhenney on a new show that he is doing that’s not yet been shot but it will be. And so I’ve actually had my first experience working a little bit in a writers’ room. Again, I’m not like a full time, I’m just sort of like a consulting – I don’t know what you call this. I really don’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m helping my friend. That’s what it’s called for me. But I do spend time now every now and again with a room full of writers in a proper writers’ rooms. And it’s actually fascinating.

I’m learning now after whatever 24 years in this business how a writers’ room works. Finally. A quarter of a century later. And I really enjoy it. I think it’s really interesting. And I’ve met some really, really smart people in there. But I’ve also come to appreciate and understand that some people, they’re not big room talkers, they’re more writer-writers. But it’s OK. Not everybody needs to the room talker, you know.

I always thought that that was a big part of it, but I guess there’s enough flexibility for different styles. So that’s nice to see. There’s a social aspect to it that’s kind of awesome.

**John:** We had Alison McDonald and Ryan Knighton in here last week talking about being a staff writer and sort of the life inside the room. And Alison said that she will meet writers who are just genuinely great writers who just don’t fundamentally belong in a room. You have to be able to share and just play with others in a way that is just so different than other kinds of writing.

Craig, do you think if you could put the 25-year-old version of Craig Mazin out here in Los Angeles, do you think you would fit in well on a room or not?

**Craig:** Yeah. I generally do very well in those situations. I mean, again, I haven’t been in the writing room, the classic television writing room situation, until now. But over the years have been in many, many, many roundtable rooms where you spend a day with other writers trying to plus or punch up a movie and those are writing room situations. They’re not just sort of extended, you know.

And I’m very comfortable speaking in front of people, obviously. I like that. I enjoy that process. But what I wasn’t aware of and what I had no experience in was the way that things are sort of built and then unbuilt and rebuilt and unbuilt and rebuilt. And it’s fascinating. I really – I just enjoyed watching that part of it happen.

**John:** So before we get to our marquee topic there’s one bit of news for our premium subscribers, so these are the folks who pay us two bucks a month to get all of the back episodes and there are some bonus episodes we’ll be doing. But one special bonus thing we’re going to do for our premium subscribers is Craig and I are going to record an episode of the show that is answering any question, so not just writing questions, but it can be anything. So it’s a random advice episode on my take and Craig’s take on anything that is troubling you in the world that you have a question about.

But you have to be a premium subscriber to send in those questions. And so there will be a link in the show notes for where you send those questions. We’ll check your email address to make sure you really are a premium subscriber. But we’re be recording that in the next couple weeks, so if you would like to have us answer your question and to hear the answers to those questions this would be a good time to sign up for the premium version of the show at Scriptnotes.net.

**Craig:** And we have all of the answers, right?

**John:** We have all the answers. There’s literally not a question you could ask that we won’t have an opinion on.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It might not be actually true.

**Craig:** I’m going to say it’s going to be true.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a true opinion is what it’s going to be.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** All right. It’s time for true opinions on movies. This was a thing that Franklin and I had sort of talked a little bit about online and so that’s why I wanted him to come in because it’s sort of a fundamental question and he’s Mr. Fundamental. What is a movie? And I think growing up I had a really clear sense of what a movie was and what a TV show was and what other things were. And it’s just gotten increasingly blurry. And you might say well does it really matter and from a writer’s perspective it really matter financially. It tremendously matters. And so I thought we’d spend a few minutes talking about classically what we think of as movies and sort of where we think we’re headed.

So I’ll start off saying growing up I thought a movie was a thing you bought a ticket for and you saw on a big screen. And after it had been on a big screen eventually it would show up on VHS, and then DVD, and sometimes it would show up on ABC. I got to watch the James Bond movies on ABC. But those were clearly movies that were just showing on TV.

And then there was a thing called a TV movie which really happened kind of during my lifetime where this sense of it’s a thing deliberately designed for network television. That was about two hours long but had a seven act structure or something. And that was a whole different beast.

But now we’re moving into a time where I don’t think those distinctions really apply. Franklin?

**Franklin:** No, I totally agree. I think we’re close enough in age that I think I have exactly the same conceptions. A movie is something that you went to the theater for, you bought a ticket, it ran somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours and 15 minutes. Yeah, a TV movie was about two hours with commercials, but it definitely had commercials. And then a TV show was something that, you know, came on every week. And it was a half hour or an hour long. And I guess the miniseries was, you know, but even miniseries though I think of that as something that came on four consecutive nights. Or, did they even do them over four weeks? I think it was just a sort of consecutive night special event.

**John:** It was like a block event. Because Roots I think was night after night. I don’t think it was a once a week.

**Franklin:** I think it was night after night. Absolutely. So, yeah, and those were very clear – it was very clearly delineated. Like the idea that I wouldn’t be able to distinguish them never even occurred to me until relatively recently, but it really does feel like all of that is collapsing. And I’ll be honest. I don’t know that I have a clear definition. It’s one of the reasons I emailed you was how are people talking about it right now. And so I sought the advice of people wiser than I.

**John:** Craig, you’re wiser than either of us. What is a movie?

**Craig:** A movie is a closed narrative story that takes place over a time span that is greater than one hour and can be viewed in one sitting, and is intended to be viewed in one sitting without interruption. That’s what a movie is. And we are no longer in a world where we can define it as that kind of story and also shown in a theater. That’s over. There are theatrical experiences of movies, no question, and there will continue to be so. But the notion that these feature films that would have otherwise been in theaters but instead are airing first on another channel, I mean, we used to call them direct-to-video movies, remember?

**John:** Oh yeah. For sure.

**Craig:** They were movies, right? There was no question that those were movies. It’s just that they were direct-to-video. Well, it’s the same thing. It’s just direct-to-streaming, or direct-to-screaming if it’s really bad. But it’s a movie. And we all know. We all know. There’s no question. I mean, maybe every now and then you’ll run into something and go, uh, what’s this exactly, but most of the time I’m pretty sure we know. And so the real question is what does it matter? And there it actually weirdly matters a lot because we have – well, the thing that most people think of is awards. But, the awards are ultimately irrelevant. They are trophies as Seinfeld calls them.

The bigger issue is we have these massive and massively complicated collective bargaining agreements where the directors, the actors, and the writers have negotiated all this stuff over decades, decades, with those studios. And those are based on a division of this is what happens in theatrical, this is what happens in television. And that’s all getting blown to hell and our deals no longer reflect the reality that’s going on.

So, we have a problem where we have one set of rules for instance to determine the credit of a movie that runs in a theater for seven days and then goes to streaming and one set of rules that covers almost a similar experience except it just doesn’t do the seven days in the theater. That makes no sense. So, we’re going to have to figure all of this out.

**John:** So, there still are equivalents of movies of the week or made for television movies, so there are movies that are made for Hallmark channel that really fit kind of what we grew up with in the sense of like it’s a very limited pattern budget. It’s designed – a certain kind of story that is still a made-for-TV movie. And those still exist. And so as we see the reports going out of the WGA we see folks who write for those movies and that is still a thing that exists. The challenge is like these movies that are debuting on Netflix, are those made-for-TV movies? Not in any meaningful sense. They’re exactly the same movies – in many cases they were developed at studios to be theatrical releases.

**Franklin:** 100%.

**John:** And instead they’re showing up there. So the Cloverfield Paradox is an example.

**Franklin:** Right. Exactly.

**John:** That was going to be a giant budget studio movie.

**Franklin:** Movie release.

**John:** The same with Bright. I was talking with Liz Hannah last night who is doing a movie that’s going to be a Netflix movie and in every way it’s like an indie movie, a pretty significant budget indie movie, but it is technically, maybe a movie-of-the-week. It’s really a made-for-TV movie. It’s really hard to say what these things are. And where it matters is we have formulas for what the residuals are going to look like, how credits are going to be determined, that are vastly different based on our expectations of where movies end up.

**Franklin:** Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting to me because really the distinction between what we think of as a TV movie, like Hallmark Channel is a great example, and what we’re thinking of in terms of Netflix and these other platforms, it’s a quality distinction or sort of our assumption about what the quality of those are.

**John:** Assumption of quality and budget. We assume that a TV movie is going to be budgeted under $2 million and it’s going to have like a 17-day pattern. There was a way those used to work.

**Franklin:** But even, I mean, there are platforms now that are making a large quantity of those, of movies that fall into exactly that category. And maybe even made on lower budgets and sort of with more constrained production realities, and so it really is – it’s a fiction of our brain on some level this distinction. And I’m, A, glad that I don’t have to be the one to resolve it, though I mean my general attitude is tie goes to the writers. I mean, again, at the end of the day you’re creating minimum an hour and a half to two and a half hours of content. Where it screens is a separate question from what contribution you made to it and you should be compensated fairly for the contribution to the thing and where it chooses to be distributed is a different question that other people have to deal with.

**John:** So we look at this from a writing point of view because we’re so egocentric with writers, but of course it also matters for directors because directors have different deals based on where it’s going, actors have different deals. So it’s a more systemic thing. So, the Writers Guild could come and say – and Craig maybe you could help me out with your answer where we’d actually say this.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig’s basic definition of this is a piece of entertainment that is between and one and three hours or something.

**Franklin:** Seems right.

**John:** That it’s designed as one piece and not a serialized piece of entertainment, that I guess is what the boundaries of what we’re going to call a movie is. So we can say like anything that’s like that has to be treated by certain rules. That still is not going to fundamentally change the nature of the industry. Netflix is an example. Because a movie that debuts on Netflix is only on Netflix there are no residuals. It’s not going to go to another place where you would earn residuals. So it’s not going to go on home video. You’re not going to get those rentals. So you’re going to get – they’ll buy you out of your hopeful residuals. And it’s just a flat fee based on how much they expect it to do. It doesn’t actually correlate to how many times the project is viewed.

**Franklin:** Right.

**John:** And that’s not just a writer’s thing. That’s a director’s thing. That’s an actor’s thing. That’s an everything.

**Franklin:** Yeah. And I think the other thing that’s interesting is, I mean, there’s indications that Netflix is going to make a move with some of their movies and put them in theaters. And how does that affect those deals? Do they just sort of fall under the sort of original deal for theatrical distribution and then Netflix is the post-theatrical distribution window? Again, lots of open questions. I don’t know what the answer is. But, again, my fundamental thing is the people who are making the thing need to be compensated fairly for it. Period. Full stop.

**John:** Craig, what do we do?

**Craig:** We may come to a day where we have to, all of us, ban together and fight Netflix. Wouldn’t be shocking to me. Depending on how things proceed. And we could also do the same with Apple if need be. We could do the same with Amazon. And we could do the same perhaps with Disney. So that’s the one that’s over the horizon but it’s coming fast is Disney’s direct competition for Netflix.

You’re right to say that at least in the short term, assuming that for the sake of argument we did change things so that movies are movies, and we take the word “theatrical” out of it and we just say, look, a movie is a movie. We all know what it is. That’s a movie. That’s not a movie. The residual thing is the residual thing and it would have to be worked out, you know, but credits would change. The way that we determine credits would change. And I think frankly putting the pressure on movies to pay residuals. We don’t have to define residuals the way we define it. You know, we can define it in all sorts of ways.

I mean, right now we all struggle. I think the entire business, frankly, the entire non-Netflix business, is struggling with the fact that Netflix is so untransparent. And it may be frankly that they are not making any money on these things. Who even knows? We don’t know. No one knows.

**John:** So let’s talk about classically what residuals are so we’re all talking about the same thing. So, a movie is released theatrically and then every other time it is released on home video or if it shows up on ABC TV or premium cable there is a fee that is paid to writers, to actors, to directors, and that ends up being very significant money. So, that could be millions of dollars of residuals. A big family movie can generate a tremendous amount of residuals.

And the equivalent Netflix movie would not make those residuals. So, with Netflix it’s even a question of are they making money? We don’t know anything about sort of how many times those movies are being watched. But I think what we’re trying to get at in residuals is that a tremendously successful movie that’s watched a lot should generate additional revenue for the creator.

**Franklin:** You would think so.

**Craig:** So, it’s important for people to understand why we even have residuals. The whole purpose was to emulate what would normally be a royalty system. If we maintained our copyright then reuse would have some sort of fee. Every time a song plays on the radio there is some reuse fee that is generated and siphoned back through ASCAP or BMI and then some portion goes to the artist. And every time a copy of a book is sold the writer receives a royalty.

Similarly, our system was based on reuse where they said, OK, look, for the movie once we put it in theaters that’s what we call primary exhibition. That’s not reuse. That’s use. And then everything after that with the exception weirdly of airplanes is reuse. And then you get paid your royalty.

Well, for Netflix I think what you end up looking at is something similar to what they have done on television where it’s a window. There is a window that we define as primary exhibition. Once you start showing something you have two or three or four weeks or whatever the normal theatrical release life would be to say that’s primary exhibition. And then after that it’s reuse. And that means every freaking time you show it some nickel goes in a box. And they may, you know, kick and scream about that. What they’ve been doing is essentially saying, look, this is roughly what you would have gotten under a system like that. We’ll just pay that to you now.

And a lot of people are taking that deal. My general philosophy in life is when somebody offers you a check you should be immediately suspicious. Why? Why are you offering me this money? Why are you telling me that this is just as good as something? If it’s just as good then do it the other way.

**John:** Sometimes Netflix they’re paying you your full rate and so like it’s the sense of like, well, you could either make this or not make this. So you’re going to take the deal to make this. But, you know, you don’t know what the back end is going to look like.

**Franklin:** Can I ask what might be a dumb question? Specifically how do they handle residuals for writers let’s say on pay cable, like HBO or Showtime?

**Craig:** There’s upset fees. It’s a similar thing. There’s a way for them to essentially buy out your residuals. That’s built into these deals. And it’s part of our agreement. And I hate it. But–

**Franklin:** Because here’s why I ask. If a bunch of people buy tickets to the movies you deserve a piece of that. If they watch it on television, they’re making greater ad revenue because more people are watching it, you deserve a piece of that. If you buy a VHS or a DVD or streaming, you deserve a piece of that.

Netflix’s model, like they’re not necessarily getting more money because more people are watching it. But they may be getting more money because they get more subscribers. Someone may stick around on the platform longer because they know your movie is coming or they know that there is the possibility of a movie like yours coming. And that feels like, A, a very difficult thing to sort of determine the value of something algorithmically in that system unless they were being hyper-transparent and they’ve made clear they have no interest in being – and in fairness, they don’t really have an interest in being, and not just for that reason alone, but it presents problems that are, I mean, it could be darn difficult.

**John:** So let’s figure out sort of why it’s different than what’s happening right now with studios. Is that when a studio ships a DVD that’s a physical thing that ships. When a studio makes a deal with somebody for this movie to show up on this pay cable place that is a deal. There’s a paper trail for all of this. When you are both the creator of a thing and the distributor of a thing–

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a closed loop and it’s self-dealing. And Franklin is right. There are many, many metrics that they use in theory to define success. And we don’t know what they are. And nor do I care. Because they can’t really monetize those specifically. At some point you simply have to create some kind of artificial structure to mimic what would normally happen in a royalty situation.

And in a pure royalty situation if Netflix didn’t have work-for-hire they would come to me and say we want you to write a movie. And I would say, great, I’m going to write this. It’s my movie. I own the copyright. I then will sign a licensing agreement with you. This licensing agreement allows you exclusive rights to air this and it’s in perpetuity. And this is the fee that you pay for that. And also this is the royalty rate for every single time someone watches. Period. The end. There’s no other way to do it.

Or you do time. Right? But there has to be some kind of system in which you are rewarded for the only thing you care about as an artist which is how many people saw it.

**John:** So, theoretically, we’re going to talk about Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma later on. I know it’s your One Cool Thing. Alfonso Cuarón makes this movie for Netflix. So, Alfonso Cuarón has some deal that’s going to be a little different than what you and I would have, but ultimately we need to have collective decisions for sort of like what the overall deal is going to be. And that’s the WGA. That’s SAG. That’s DGA figuring that out.

**Franklin:** Yeah. I mean, look, I don’t claim to have the answers and I think that really the only way to come to any answers that anyone could realistically be happy with is if there was greater transparency around how many people were watching it. How much time they were spending on the platform? But again for obvious reasons Netflix is going to be loath to make that information public. Maybe there could be some sort of private information sharing between the guilds and them as an organization. But again I don’t think Netflix is going to be the only sort of platform that’s going to have to struggle with these issues. Like Craig already said, Disney is coming in hot.

**John:** So I was talking yesterday with a friend, a former Scriptnotes guest, who is writing a movie for Fox right now. And so I asked him what’s going to happen, where is your movie going to end up showing up. And is it going to be at Fox? Is it going to be on Disney? Is it going to be Disney streaming? And he has no idea. So to be in the middle of production and not knowing where your movie is going to end up is just a crazy situation to be in. And it’s not just an esoteric like you know oh what little label is going to be at the front of the movie. I don’t know what his deal is like, but theoretically if it debuts on Disney’s streaming will he get residuals in a normal sense?

**Franklin:** I think that’s another reason why these issues sort of need to be resolved in a macro sense, because I actually think we’re headed in a direction where that will become the norm for a lot of folks, like where you’re making a movie and the results of the film, like the final product determines where it is distributed. And that is just sort of – it’s untenable the idea that people would sort of go into making a movie without knowing what the business structure of the thing is.

**John:** Yeah. So, any last thoughts on movies? So we defined movies as being between one and three hours long. They’re a closed story. Yes, you can have Marvel cinematic universe movies, but they’re essentially a closed narrative that’s not supposed to have a second installment right after them. And it doesn’t matter where it shows up.

**Franklin:** Yeah, I mean, I’ll add one additional wrinkle to it and it’s sort of on the eve of the coming Game of Thrones final season. But I actually think for example HBO is leaving money on the table by not putting those in theaters.

**John:** Agreed.

**Franklin:** And they’re coming in at like, what, 1:15, 1:20 each episode? I would go to a theater every Sunday night to watch each episode of the final season of Game of Thrones. And they’re not a closed narrative necessarily but there are certainly episodes that you could beside most movies and feel just as sort of fulfilled with a closed narrative when you leave the theater. So, all of these things are collapsing and expanding simultaneously and I think it’s all the more reason why these big questions about how people are going to be compensated for making them need to be resolved sooner rather than later.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** I think they have a little bit of a limitation, I think all these places do, in that they’re charging people money to watch their product on a television screen. If they then start to release them in theaters for money they’re kind of double-charging. Or, yeah, they’re double-charging. And that’s a problem. And then you get into like well OK if you subscribe then you can go for free. Then what’s the point at that point, right?

So, they are a little bit jammed up. The only way I think they can get away with these things is if they do like for instance a special movie event. But even then I think you start to risk danger of people wondering well what am I paying for exactly, what am I getting. Because my understanding of HBO and Netflix and Amazon and Apple is I pay you a subscription I get to see everything you do without an additional nickel spent.

**Franklin:** Oh no, 100%. But I actually think they could double charge and people would willingly double pay. Like I pay for HBO right now. I would continue to pay HBO, but I would take on an additional cost in order to see the final season of Game of Thrones in a theater. I think the same thing is true with a lot of these Netflix movies that’ll be in theaters. I’m going to continue to pay for Netflix, but will I pay to go see Roma again in a theater? I absolutely will.

**John:** So you brought up Roma. Roma is going to be one of the movies we will look forward to this award season. But I have to confess I am not looking forward to award season.

**Franklin:** Me neither.

**John:** I’m just done with award season. And so this doesn’t have anything to do with the popular Oscar. I actually enjoy watching the Oscars. I don’t think they’re too long. I’m happy to watch them.

**Franklin:** Same.

**John:** What’s way too long is the four months leading up to the Oscars, or five months, or however long it is.

**Franklin:** It’s basically six months of the year at this point.

**John:** It’s such an industry.

**Franklin:** Yeah. Look, the award season unofficially starts now with the sort of Telluride/Venice/Toronto thing which is end of August/early September and runs until the Oscars which are the end of February. I mean, the year is basically summer movies, which creeps earlier and earlier every year, and Oscar season, which is now until basically late February.

**John:** So, Craig, what should we do about award season? Or should we just ignore it? Should I learn to pretend it’s not there?

**Craig:** I think it’s over. It’s too late. Toothpaste is out of the tube. Like so many things in our world, all of this has become commoditized and turned into an orgy of list-making, odds-making, betting, gossiping, argument-causing nonsense. We can’t help it. It’s a reality show now. And it’s stupid because it has absolutely nothing to do with any of what needed to happen to make those movies exist. Quite the opposite in fact. People had to all come together and collaborate on things and love each other to make these movies exist. And then it becomes this stupid rat race of nonsense.

I don’t know what there is to do about it because basically Harvey Weinstein weaponized the process in the ‘90s and it’s just gotten worse since then. And unless you – you can’t change the constitution and outlaw 90% of what publicity people do. This is how it’s going to go for a while because people are chasing money, although I have a weird feeling that it’s not even about that money. I think it’s just about the pointless need to be at the front of a line. It’s a very Los Angeles thing.

You know, I think it was Bill Maher who once said if you put a velvet rope in front of a toxic waste dump in Los Angeles people would start lining up. And that’s kind of what I think award season has become. It’s just this weird pointless craving, like getting the best table in a restaurant, which has always confused me because I don’t know how to tell the difference between tables in a restaurant. I’ve never known that. So, that’s, you know, I think it’s too late. It’s over. It’s gone. We lose.

**Franklin:** The one thing that I will say in defense of award season, and it’s not even really in defense of award season so much as being maybe an errant consequence of award season is that they do serve as marketing for movies that might not otherwise get it. And I’ll use a movie like Moonlight as an example. And certainly it’s a rare case. But without the award season, without the Oscar race, I think a movie like – I think a lot of people don’t see a movie like Moonlight. I think a lot of people went to see it because people were talking about it as a contender for Best Picture.

I think that’s probably true of Roma for example. I think it could end up being true for If Beale Street Could Talk, although more people were anticipating Beale Street because of the Oscar success of Moonlight and Barry in particular. So I agree with you Craig in the main about the content of award season and I wish there was some other way that you could frame a showcase of the best of cinema, or sort of the things that people think of as the best of cinema that didn’t have all of the sort of toxic realities that are really just a sort of boiled down version of everything that can be terrible about Los Angeles and Hollywood in particular.

**John:** Listeners, if you have suggestions for how we could get rid of award season, or get through award season in a more sane way you can write in. But let’s make some predictions for Megan to send five years into the future. Five years in the future what’s going to become of award season and what’s going to become of movies?

**Craig:** Oh, well I’ll take the lead on this. Nothing will change. In five years movies will pretty much be as movies are. There will be more original movies running on our screens at home through the Disney service and Netflix and so on. But there will still be huge theatrical releases coming out every single week. There will be a big summer box office battle issue of Entertainment Weekly and so on and so forth. And when it comes to awards nothing is going to change at all.

**John:** But will anything have changed in terms of getting writers and other people fairly compensated for movies that are not released theatrically?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Will we figure any of that stuff out?

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** We will have essentially the same conversation five years from now you predict?

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Yep. Franklin what’s your thinking? Five years in the future.

**Franklin:** It’s really hard for me to argue against that honestly. Yeah, look, the theatrical business will still exist in five years. I think people will be going to see movies of all sorts. There will continue to be a giant summer blockbuster season and probably a six month award season. As far as how people are compensated, I certainly hope there’s a change, but you guys have much deeper knowledge on the realities of that than I do so I happily defer to your judgment.

**John:** A thing we found out as we surveyed screenwriters for the WGA is that 80% of screenwriters are also TV writers. Either they’re currently working in TV or they’re planning to work in TV. As these things get more and more combined we’re going to have to figure out ways to do what Craig describes. Basically after a certain window every new time it’s watched a nickel goes into the jar. Because it shouldn’t really kind of matter ultimately whether it was a 90-minute thing or a 30-minute thing. Just you pay that person.

**Franklin:** I totally agree.

**John:** There will be more things like Chernobyl, like Craig’s.

**Franklin:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**Franklin:** And more limited series specifically authored by Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** There will be at least one more. There will be at least one more of those.

**Franklin:** That’s my big call for 2023.

**Craig:** I do agree. I think that that is a format that is expanding and expanding rapidly. It’s a tricky one because I feel like a lot of these – here’s another award season bunch of baloney. The whole like limited series, not really limited. Like The Crown was a limited series its first season. No it wasn’t. And so a lot of these limited series become these sort of back door seasons into a multi-season show.

But I do think that that is going to – what’s happening is the television business seems to be shifting away from just pure ratings and into more of a kind of targeted depth. So they’re like, look, we don’t need to be the Super Bowl. We don’t care if 80 million people watch. What we want is these five million people to all watch.

**Franklin:** Right.

**Craig:** And if we can get those five million. And the only way to get those five million people is to show them this. So, it doesn’t matter that most people don’t see it. These five million did. And that’s going to keep them paying for all the stuff, right? Because they’re not going to watch any of the rest of this junk. They’re just going to watch this.

So, you start to get into the – you know, there’s a great article by Malcolm Gladwell many, many years ago about how Prego figured out for the first time that if you sold five different kinds of Prego you would make so much more money than if you just sold one kind of Prego. So, it’s the Prego-ization of television. That’s what’s happening. And I think that is going to drive actually a lot of wonderful new content. I think there’s going to be a lot of limited series. There’s going to be more documentaries. There’s going to be all sorts of smart stuff.

But for movies and for award stuff, I just think as the guy says in Fall Out, “War. War never changes.”

**John:** It has come time for our One Cool Things. Craig, why don’t you take it away?

**Craig:** OK, well, sometimes I have like a prospective One New Cool Thing, which I don’t know if it’s going to be cool or not. You know what? In fact, I’m going to hold that one off because I’m trying it. So I’ll be able to come back in a week or two and tell you if it was cool. This thing is cool right now. You know I’m a huge fan of these Rusty Lake games. We’ve talked about the Rusty Lake games before. They’re amazing.

So Rusty Lake has a new one out called Paradox. For the first time they’ve incorporated video of actual people which makes their normal totally screwed up experience even more totally screwed up. I love these games. And it’s not so much about the gameplay, although I do like that. It’s their aesthetic and their weird backstory mythology which barely makes sense and yet you can tell the people doing it it makes sense to them. And their weird fetishization of certain strange objects like shrimp. They just keep showing up.

It’s so weird. It’s so weird. And so it’s just very much like if David Lynch kind of created a point and click adventure in a series that’s been going on now for years. So, Rusty Lake Paradox. Totally worth the – I guess there are two chapters in this one, so maybe the total amount is $4. Come on.

**John:** Yeah. Play it.

**Franklin:** I’m sold based on that description.

**John:** Yeah. Franklin, I think we’ve already spoiled it for you. But your One Cool Thing is?

**Franklin:** My One Cool Thing is Alfonso Cuarón’s film Roma. And it’s funny I was nervous about mentioning it because I didn’t know if the One Cool Thing could be a movie. But I saw it at Toronto and it just hasn’t left me. I find myself in traffic thinking about its images, thinking about what it was trying to say about the world. And it’s just an extraordinary film. And the one thing that I will say is that you should see it in a theater. It rewards the theatrical experience. The sound design is just exceptional. The performance by the lead actress, Yalitza Aparicio – speaking of award season. But like I want her to get the notice that an actress of a different background would receive for a performance of this caliber. It is just remarkable.

So, yeah, everyone should see that movie. Go see it in a theater. It is very much unlike anything that you’ve ever seen. Bring tissues.

**John:** Cool. My One Cool Thing is, well, so every week on the show I do a One Cool Thing but I generally have like many cool things I would like to share. And so on Twitter sometimes I will link to them or sometimes I’ll put them on the blog. But I wanted sort of a repository of all the things that I kind of find interesting. So, I started a weekly newsletter just called Inneresting, the way that Aline makes fun of me for saying interesting.

And so it’s just a once a week, probably on Wednesdays, maybe on Thursdays, maybe not every week, but it’s a little short email of just like here’s a list of things that I found kind of cool that you might find cool, too. So if that sounds at all appealing there’s a link in the show notes. It just shows up in your inbox and it’s a way to sort of see what I found cool this past week.

**Franklin:** That does sound appealing. And I will be subscribing.

**John:** Very nice. 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 is also by Matthew Chilelli. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions or follow up.

If you want to reach us on Twitter, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Franklin you are?

**Franklin:** @franklinleonard.

**John:** Makes it very simple. You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. While you’re there leave us a review. That helps other people find the show. Transcripts go up on johnaugust.com about a week after the episode airs. But you’ll find the show notes up just with this episode. So the stuff we talked about you can see there.

And all the back episodes are at Scriptnotes.net. If you subscribe now you can send in a question for me and Craig to answer on our random advice episode that will be coming up soon.

Franklin Leonard, thank you so much for coming in.

**Franklin:** Thank you so much for having me. I have always enjoyed it and consider it a great honor.

**Craig:** Thanks, Franklin.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, Episode 108: Are two screens better than one?](http://johnaugust.com/2013/are-two-screens-better-than-one) addresses the fear of iPads in theaters
* Become a [premium subscriber](https://my.libsyn.com/get/scriptnotes) in time for our bonus Q&A episode. Submit your questions [here](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15w0Xhe3505AM4KsFRWTHCdB77814KDYXJSbHZDRz6bM/viewform?edit_requested=true).
* [Show Us Your Room](https://variety.com/2018/tv/features/show-us-your-room-social-media-initiative-1202939127/) and the [Instagram hashtag](https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/showusyourroom/?hl=en)
* Rusty Lake’s new game, [Paradox](https://store.steampowered.com/app/909090/Paradox_A_Rusty_Lake_Film/), with video of actual people
* [Roma](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKVYRtE-kXI), written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón
* [Inneresting](http://johnaugust.com/2018/inneresting), a new John August newsletter. You can [subscribe here](https://johnaugust.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=2b0232538adf13e5b3e55b12f&id=aeb429a997).
* T-shirts are available [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/john-august-1)! We’ve got new designs, including [Colored Revisions](https://cottonbureau.com/products/colored-revisions), [Karateka](https://cottonbureau.com/products/karateka), and [Highland2](https://cottonbureau.com/products/highland2).
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [Franklin Leonard](https://twitter.com/franklinleonard) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Scriptnotes Digital Seasons](https://store.johnaugust.com/) are also now available!
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([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_369.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is [sings] Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 366 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’re going to be looking at how you end things, both in a narrative and in life. Specifically, what happens to your work after you die?

Hey, Craig, in general what happens after you die?

Craig: Nothing. So I asked my dad this question when I was very young and he gave me what I still consider to be the very best answer anyone has ever come up.

John: All right.

Craig: I said what happens after you die and he said, “It’s just like it was before you were born.” And that is the correct answer.

John: Yeah.

Craig: Nothing. You’re done.

John: Yep. You do live in people’s memories until they die.

Craig: Yeah. That’s meaningless. This is a meaningless ride. It’s a great ride. I love this ride so much. I’m so sad that it will end, but it doesn’t mean anything. Like no one goes on a roller coaster ride and says, “Now, when this ride is over do we live forever in a magical place in the sky?” No. No, no, it’s over. But you enjoyed it. Simple as that.

John: So today we will talk about what happens to your work after you die and the decisions you might want to make about your work for after you are no longer on this mortal coil. But first we have some news and some follow up.

So you and I are both on a different podcast. Sometimes we cheat on each other on other podcasts, but this time we went in together. We were sort of swingers. And we went on a different podcast. We went on Jordan, Jesse, Go! which came out last week. It was a fun time. Did you have a good time?

Craig: I did have a good time. It’s so funny because as you know – as everyone knows – I don’t listen to podcasts. So I’m never quite sure what to expect with any particular podcast and I always just assume that it’s going to be exactly like the one we do and it never is. First of all, everyone has much better equipment than we do. But I feel like we sound pretty good.

John: I think we sound pretty good, too. And also they had a good soundproof room, but they were banging their microphones constantly. Did that drive you a little nuts?

Craig: No, I didn’t mind that so much. I was just – mostly – our podcast is a little bit like us. You know, you and I, even though we seem very different, I don’t actually think we are that different. I think we’re both fairly rigid in our ways. And they were much more loosey-goosey improvisational fun. Like you got the feeling that if they wanted they could just spend an hour talking about anything at all and we’re not like that. We like routine. We’re set in our ways.

John: We have an outline. We have a structure. We get back to it. Theirs is just basically pancakes and sex toys. But it was a great conversation about pancakes and sex toys and mountain cabins.

Craig: Yeah. It was nice to take a little vacation from a structured podcast and actually just go bananas. It’s the morning zoo of podcasts. But in a good way. I like morning zoos. I’ve always liked them. I like a nice drive time banter.

John: Always good. But let’s get back to our structure. Dean wrote in to say, “You mentioned on the podcast that, ‘It would probably be quicker for you to write a half-hour than to pull together a pitch for it.’” I’m not sure which one of us said that, but I believe someone said that.

He continues, “I can guess as to how that might be the case, but explicitly what takes time in prepping a pitch? How much time would you spend on a pitch versus writing up a half hour of television comedy?”

So, you and I don’t write half hour comedies, but the overall idea that sometimes it’s just quicker to write it does feel kind of true. When I talk to people who write half hours, it’s really fast. They might spend a lot of time in the room figuring all the beats out–

Craig: Well, there you go.

John: But then when you actually write it it’s quick. Here’s what it was. I bet it was when I had Mindy Kaling on the show and she was talking about pitching a show versus writing a show. And sometimes you can just actually write the show more quickly than you can sort of pull together the full pitch.”

Craig: Look, the thing is if you put a stop watch to it, I doubt that that’s true. However, there is something called ease which is different than speed. Sometimes it’s easier to write the half hour, or write even an entire feature film than it is to pitch it. Because the problem — pitching requires you to know everything ahead of time so you already have to kind of write the movie anyway in your head, or a lot of it, or a lot of the show in your head.

And then be able to, oh, trippingly convey it to somebody in a non-audio visual form and just you talking, right? There’s no show. And that can be very strenuous and very nerve-racking. And you are incredibly aware that it is entirely based on the feeling in the room and whether or not you forget something or trip up or if you use words that are slightly ambiguous because, I mean, remember a script is already an audio-visual work that has been reduced or compressed into text only. Now you’re going to take sort of oral relaying of a text-only version of a thing that’s eventually going to be audio-visual. So at that point you think to yourself, ooh, you know what, the other problem with a pitch is they view it as an act of faith to buy a pitch. Why don’t I just not even go through all that mess? Why don’t I just write the damn thing?

And certainly if you’ve gone through the work that’s required to create and deliver a pitch, you’ve done the work that’s required to write the 30 pages or the 110 pages. So, in those cases the math might work out in your favor to just write it.

John: When David Iserson and Susanna Fogel were on the program they talked about how they ended up specking The Spy Who Dumped Me because it just felt better to write the whole thing and be able to deliver the whole thing versus going in and trying to pitch that idea around town. Sometimes writing is just a process of discovery. So sometimes you really won’t know what the movie is, what the show is, until you’ve written those characters. And so that’s a good example of why you might just want to write the half hour to see what it feels like.

There have been definitely times where I’ve gone in for a pitch and I’ve written scenes that would be in that final movie just to get a sense of the character’s voices, to get a sense of like what is this actually going to feel like.

So, that’s not blanket advice. I won’t say that you should always plan on writing that half hour. And ultimately if you write that half hour and you’re trying to sell that show you’re going to have to be able to pitch it further than that. You’re going to have to be able to describe this is where the show goes, this is how it grows. They’re going to need to sit across sit across from you and understand that like you are a person who can deliver this thing. But maybe writing that 30 pages will help you understand what the show is you want to make.

Craig: The other thing to consider is that when you’re pitching you are essentially in salesman mode which means that they’re in arms-crossed suspicious mode. When you have a script, then there’s an object to discuss. Work has been done. And so it’s a little realer. You know? I mean, people get burned by pitches all the time. I mean to say the pitch buyers get burned by pitches all the time. And they are well aware that sometimes writers need money. And they’re pitching something, they’re pitching their butts off for money, but then the money is just as the writing that you’re going to do is speculative, the money giving is speculative. We don’t know what we’re going to get. And they have been burned. So when you have actual writing I think it just changes the tenor of the conversation anyway in a much better way.

It’s not to say that you shouldn’t or can’t pitch, because I have. It’s just that, I don’t know, the gun is in your hand I think when the writing is there. And the gun is in their hand when you’re dancing for your supper.

John: Yeah. So Dean’s question about how much work are you doing before you go into a pitch, it varies wildly. And so the project I’m writing right now was a pitch. And so I went and I sold the pitch and I got hired to do it. And Megan, our producer, saw me sort of working through developing the pitch. And I think she was probably surprised at sort of like how little I had actually done. How little I had actually put down on paper. But I had done sort of the internal mental work of what is the conversation about this movie and I was able to describe the feelings and sort of what the overall goals of things were. And so if I didn’t have all the plot points really figured out, that really wasn’t the crucial thing for going in to pitch this movie.

It was basically like let me give you this take. Let me show you what this world will feel like. And that is ultimately what they were hiring me for for this movie.

Craig: Well, I will say though that Megan shouldn’t draw too much of an object lesson from that because you are in a different position. Over time the more you do it the less concerned and wary people are. They know that you deliver time and time again. They know you are a responsible professional. It’s a bit like actors when they start out they have to audition. They show up, read the lines in a scene, walk away, hope. And then later on the next step is I’ll come in and I’ll have a general discussion with you but I’m not going to actually audition by reading lines. We can just discuss the character. And then the third step is offer-only. And writers kind of follow those things, too. And we adjust it slightly as do actors depending on the part.

There are plenty of actors who, like for instance if you want to hire Jason Statham to be in your action movie, that’s offer-only. We know Jason Statham can do action. There’s no need to have Jason Statham come in to discuss the character with you. He can do it.

If, however, Jason Statham wants to spread his wings a little bit and maybe, I don’t know, Spielberg is making a movie and there’s this fascinating dramatic part and he wants to play a war surgeon, he might have to come in and meet. He might even want to read for it. You never know. And similarly with us. If there’s something that’s kind of – like if you want to write a Star Wars movie, my guess is you got to have a pretty lengthy conversation about what it is you want to do, especially if it’s their movie. And it doesn’t matter who you are. But if somebody is calling you up, John, and saying, “Listen, we have this movie. It’s going to be kind of, well, it’s family but family plus. So sort of elevated family entertainment.” You’re going to say, great, offer-only.

I mean, I’ll have a conversation with you if you want, but basically the point is if we’re having the conversation that means you want to hire me because you know I do this.

John: Absolutely. And when you and I are brought in to do weekly work, those are essentially offers only. Basically it’s just like, “Hey, we need help on this thing.” And if we go in it’s very clear we can do this job in front of us. But you doing Chernobyl, that is like Jason Statham doing a dramedy. That is not something that everyone would necessarily know is in your wheelhouse, so you do need to be able to describe your vision for what this is more fully.

Craig: Right. And that’s exactly what I did. So I went in with Carolyn Strauss to HBO and sat with [Carrie-Anne Follis] who is the head of their limited series department. And I pitched. And I pitched and I pitched. And I pitched how the series would work, who the characters were, the stories that would happen inside of it. I tried to keep it, you know, somewhat compressed. And it wasn’t kind of an overly rehearsed thing.

What helped there, in television there are so many different ways to stop people from working as they go through. All right, you’re going to write a bible and then you’re going to write an episode. And then we don’t have to do anything after that. And, of course, also in that field, too, is an understanding of and you’re not getting paid what you get paid to write movies. So that all made it kind of easy, but even so there was no question that when I went in there my track record, none of it mattered. None of it. Nor should it have.

John: I mean, your track record in terms of being able to like actually deliver something, like that you’re not going to run off and just disappear into the woods. You would actually give them something, but was it something that they actually wanted? They wouldn’t know that until they’re sitting across from you and ultimately until they’re reading the words.

Craig: Yeah. I think if my track record accomplished anything it was simply that I could get that meeting. That at the drop of a hat I can probably sit down with somebody who runs any division of anything anywhere and say, listen, I have something I want to tell you. But they’re under no obligation to buy anything. All the burden of proof is on me. If somebody wants to make an R-rated comedy where two adults are doing crazy things on the road I don’t really think I need to audition. I’m not going to. So there you go. You’re just going to have to pay me to do that. I’m not going to sit down and dance for that. That’s kind of offer-only. That’s sort of the way it works.

The only thing I think that you or I can count on track record-wise is that we can at least – you like, what’s the job, like have you written horror, like a Leigh Whannell kind of movie?

John: Yeah. I’ve written one of those and I did have to sort of like pitch more fully sort of what my take was on that because it was very off the rank and normal track for me.

Craig: Then you there you go. And so the good news is you can get that meeting no matter what.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: But then you got to work for it. So, it all depends. And obviously when you’re just starting out everybody is dancing for everything. First of all, you’ve got to convince people to even meet with you. And then you got to do a full dance. It’s pretty exhausting, but that’s what youth is for.

John: That is youth. All right, now further follow up, so on last week’s episode it came up that Craig really dislikes ventriloquism. No, no, no, I think you actually hate ventriloquism. You don’t understand ventriloquism. You find no artistic value in ventriloquism.

Craig: None.

John: And I think this is actually a call for a whole new segment on the Scriptnotes podcast so this is being inaugurated right here.

Craig: Oh, new segment.

John: New segment. Change Craig’s Mind.

Craig: Ah.

John: Yeah. So Craig has very strong opinions, but one of the things I like so much about Craig is that he also believes that other people can change their opinions about things they are obviously wrong about, such as vaccines. Like vaccines are good.

Craig: Right.

John: So, this will be an experiment to see whether we can change Craig’s mind and make him appreciate the artistic merits of ventriloquism. So, I welcome all your suggestions for things we can throw at Craig that will make him see that ventriloquism is a true art form. I’m going to start. I started by Googling. I started by Googling “best ventriloquist” and the first video that came up was by a performer named Nina Conti. It is I think terrific and Craig is watching it right now.

So I will describe for people, obviously there will be a link in the show notes, but here is a woman who brings a man up on stage. She affixes a mask to him that she can control the mouth of the mask. And she basically uses him as a ventriloquist dummy. He is helpless and has no control over what he says. Craig, what is your reaction to what Google has told us is best ventriloquist?

Craig: If this is the best ventriloquist ever I can think of no better defense for my position than ventriloquism is crap. Because she’s actually figured out a way to make ventriloquism even easier than it already essentially is. I mean, the hardest part it seems to me of being a ventriloquist is manipulating the multiple things on their stupid dummy. The stupid hands and that dumb face, the eyeballs and the mouth. What she’s done here is, and she seems like a very nice person, don’t get me wrong. A very nice Scottish lady. But what she’s done is she brings somebody out of the audience and puts a little mask on that covers his nose and mouth with her hideous dummy nose/mouth. And then she has that connected to a little thing in her hand that makes the mouth go up and down. That’s it. Now she’s got the hardest part down to just pushing a button repeatedly while she does the silly talking like this.

And he just stands there while people laugh at him. This is terrible. I think it is terrible. I understand why it’s vaguely funny. I do. But it’s just – this is sort of like I never understood Gallagher. Like why are people laughing when he hits the watermelon with the thing? I don’t know. And to me it’s all in the same world of Gallagher. I don’t get it.

John: All right. So a thing I’m surprised you’re not appreciating is the fact that she is talking constantly. So, her breath control is remarkable because it seems like she’s having a conversation with this other person, but she’s actually doing both sides of the conversation. How she’s breathing, how she’s making that all work, do you see the skill involved there?

Craig: No. Ella Fitzgerald had great breath control. Patti LuPone has great breath control. I mean, I can do this because I’m talking like myself and then I’m talking like this. But if I ask you a question, yes, well I just want to know how, how, I just want to, I’m thinking that, well why don’t you just spit it out already? Anyone can do this. Literally anyone. It’s not hard. Just take breaths. And then while the audience laughs you breathe. Because they’re laughing – and listen, I have been accused of making audiences laugh with garbage. So I sympathize on that level.

I’m just saying I don’t get it. I don’t get this. Why ventriloquism is funny. Or hard.

John: All right. So this example has not changed Craig’s mind.

Craig: No. Made it worse.

John: But I remain hopeful that there is something out there that will change Craig’s mind and make him appreciate the art form of ventriloquism.

Craig: I will say that it was refreshing to see a woman doing this as opposed to that weird Vegas-y, fake face, bad toupee type of dude.

John: OK.

Craig: You drive around Vegas, like impressions. I don’t understand impressions. Why is that cool? I don’t get it. It’s not that great.

John: Like Rich Little is not a person for you?

Craig: OK. You sound like those other people. But I could just – those other people are entertaining. That’s why you want to sound like them. But why don’t I just watch those other people. I get it. Anybody that does a Christopher Walken impression. Cool. You’ve made yourself like Christopher Walken. Which reminds me, I’m going to watch a Christopher Walken movie now. Impressions are also just like, meh, OK.

John: I remain hopeful that we will get you there at some point, Craig, and thank you for humoring me with the first installment of Change Craig’s Mind.

Craig: Oh, no problem. Yeah, I can’t wait for my mind to be changed. I like a good mind change. You know, my thing is all my opinions are strongly held but not firmly held.

John: Great. Good. All right. But let’s get to our feature topic, or one of our two feature topics. This is a Craig Mazin suggestion, so Craig start us off.

Craig: Well, you know, we’ve been doing all of our various segments, old and new lately, but my fondest kind of episode is the one where we talk about craft, probably mostly because I just want to put film schools out of business. So, it’s not with me as always any kind of pro-social thing. This is more vindictive.

It seemed to me that one of the things we hadn’t talked about over the course of our many, many, many episodes is the end. Not the end the way people normally talk about the end, when we say well how does the movie end. Usually people are talking about the climax and there’s all sorts of stuff to be said about the dramatic climax of a film and how it functions and why it is the way it is. But the real end of the movie comes after. The real end is the denouement, as the French call it, and this is the moment after the climax when things have settled down and there’s actually a ton of interesting things going on in there. It is the very last thing people see. And it’s an important thing.

I’ll tell you who understands the value of a good denouement. The people that test films. They’ll tell you if you have a comedy and you have one last terrific joke there it will send your scores up through the roof. If you have one last little bit of something between two characters that feels meaningful it will send your scores through the roof. The last thing we get is in a weird way the most important. So I wanted to talk through the denouement, why it is there, and what it’s supposed to be doing.

John: Great. So denouement is a French word. Denoue is to untie. To unknot something. And so it’s interesting that it’s to unknot something because we think about the tying everything up, but you also think about undoing all the tangles that your story has created. Sort of like straightening things out again so that you can leave the theater feeling the way we want you to feel.

So as we’re talking through, if we’re imagining the prototypical 120-page screenplay, these are the very last few pages, correct Craig?

Craig: Yeah. Absolutely. This is after the dust has settled. There’s going to be inevitably something, and we’ll talk through it. Like for instance sometimes it’s one single shot. Typically it’s its own scene. But there’s something to let you know this is the denouement.

And in that sense you – I guess the first thing we should do is draw a line between climax and denouement and say like, OK, what is the difference here. And the climax, I think we all get the general gist there. It’s action, choices, decision, conflict, sacrifice. And all of it is designed to achieve some sort of plot impact.

In the climax you save the victim or you defeat the villain. You’ve stopped the bomb. You win the – whatever it is that the plot is doing that’s what happens there. And the climax dramatically serves as a test of the protagonist. And the test is have you or have you not become version 2.0 of yourself. You started at version 1.0. We know some sort of change needed to happen to make you better, fix you, heal you, unknot you. Have you gotten there yet? This is your test.

And at the end of the climax we have evidence that the character has in fact transformed into character 2.0. The denouement, which occurs after this, to me is about proof that this is going to last. That this isn’t just a momentary thing but rather life has begun again. And this is the new person. This is the new reality.

John: Absolutely. So, in setting up your film you sort of establish a question for this principal character. Like will they be able to accomplish this thing. Will they be able to become the person who can meet this final challenge? In that climax they have met that final challenge. They have succeeded in that final challenge generally and we’ve come out of this. But was it just a one-time fluke thing or are they always going to be this way? Have they transformed into something that is a lasting transformation. And that is what you’re trying to do in these last scene or scenes is to show this is a thing that is really resolved for them.

Craig: Yeah. And that is why so many denouements will begin with six months later, one year later, because you want to know that, OK, if the denouement here is right, I used to crash weddings like a cad, but now I’m crashing my own friend’s wedding because I need to let this woman know that I really do love her and I’ve changed. And she says OK. We need six months later, one year later, to know, yep, they did change, they’re still together. They’re now crashing weddings together as a couple. So, they have this new reality, but it is lasting and their love is real. We need it, or else we’re left wondering, oh, hmm, all right, but did they make it or not?

Now that said, sometimes your denouement can happen in an instant and then the credits roll. And it’s enough because of the nature of the instant, particularly if it’s something that is a kind of very stark, very profound reward that has been withheld for most of the movie. Karate Kid maybe has the shortest denouement in history. Climax, Daniel wins the karate fight. Denouement, Mr. Miyagi smiles at him.

John: Yep.

Craig: That’s it. But that smile is a smile that he has not earned until that moment. And when he gets that smile you know that he’s good. This is good.

John: So as we’re talking I’m thinking back through some of my movies. In Go the denouement is they’ve gone back to the car at the end and Manny’s final question is, “So, what are we doing for New Years?” So it’s establishing that like they’ve been through all of this drama but they’re back on a normal track to keep doing sort of exactly what they’ve been doing before. That the journey of the movie has gotten them back to the place where they can take the same journey the next week, which is the point of the movie.

In Big Fish, certainly the climax is getting Edward to the river. There’s a moment post-climax where they’re at the funeral and see all the real versions of folks. But the actual denouement as we’re describing it right now is sort of that six months later, probably actually six years later, where the son who is now born and saying like did all that really happen and the father says, “Yep, every word.” So essentially we see the son buying into the father’s stories in the sense that there’s a legacy that will live on.

So, they’re very short scenes. They’re probably not the scenes you remember most in the movie, but they are important for sending you out of there thinking the characters are on a trajectory I want them to be on.

Craig: Yeah. The climax of Identify Thief is that Melissa McCarthy’s character gives herself up so that Jason Bateman’s character can be free of her and the identity theft and live with his life, which is a huge deal and that’s something she does that’s a self-sacrifice she does because of what he’s kind of helped her to see and that’s what he’s now learned from her. And the denouement which is important is to see, OK, it’s a year later and she’s in prison, which was really important to say, look, it’s real. Right? She went to prison. But what’s happening? Well, Jason and Amanda, who plays his wife, they’ve had their baby and everything is OK. He’s got a great new job. He’s doing fine. She’s been working hard in prison and studying so that she can get out and come work for him. And he then has something for her which is he’s found her real name, because she doesn’t know who she is. And he found her birth certificate and found her real name.

And so you get a kind of understanding that this relationship did not just stop right there. And it could have. She was a criminal. But it didn’t and that they’re going to go on and on. And then she punches a guard in the throat because the other thing about the denouement is typically it is a full circling of your movie and it is in the denouement that you have your best chance for any kind of fun or touching full circle moment. So in Identity Thief you have both. She at one point says she doesn’t know her real name. Here we find out her real name, which is Dawn Budgie, which is just the worse name ever. And the way she met him originally was by punching him in the throat and here’s she going to go ahead and punch a guard in the throat because you change but you don’t change completely because that feels gloppy, right?

But, both of those things are full circle moments. And in the denouement if you can find those, or if you’re wondering what to do in your denouement start thinking about that and looking for that little callback full circle moment. It is incredibly satisfying in that setting.

John: Yep. And a crucial point I think you’re making here is that the denouement is not about plot. It’s about story and theme, but it’s not about sort of the A plot of your movie. Your A plot is probably all done. It’s paying off things you set up between your characters. It’s really paying off relationships generally is how you are wrapping things up. It’s showing what has changed in the relationships between these characters and giving us a sense of what those relationships are going to be like going forward.

Craig: Oh, and that’s a great point, too. You’re absolutely right that it is showing what has changed and therefore it’s also showing what hasn’t changed, which can sometimes be just as important. So, for instance, if your theme is all you need is love, then it is important to show in the denouement that, OK, our protagonist has found love. She now has fulfilled that part of her life. But the other things that maybe she had been chasing aren’t there. So, if your problem is, OK, my character is Vanessa and Vanessa thinks that it’s more important to be successful than to be loved, which is an incredibly trite movie. I apologize to Vanessa.

At the end I don’t necessarily – if she’s found love I think maybe that’s good. I don’t need also then success. Because then I start to wonder, well, OK, what was the lesson here? Sometimes you just want to show nothing has changed except one thing. At the end of Shrek he still lives in a swamp and he is still an ogre, but he’s not alone. So one thing changes and the denouement is very good for almost using the scientific method to change one variable and leave the others constant.

John: Absolutely. So you’re saying that if you did try to change a bunch of variables, if the character ended up in a completely different place, in a whole new world than how they started, then we would still have a question about sort of like what is their life going to be like. We just don’t understand how they fit into all these things. But by changing the one thing we can carry our knowledge of sort of the rest of their life and see that and just make that one change going forward.

Craig: Yeah. Exactly. It’s a chance for you to not have to worry about propelling anything forward, but rather letting people understand something is permanent. And permanent in a lovely way. Very often the denouement will dot-dot-dot off, the way that a lot of songs just fade out, right? Some songs have a big [Craig hums] and that’s your end, and you can do that. And some of them just fade out, which is also lovely. The end of Casablanca is a brilliant little fade out. You know, he says goodbye to Ilsa. She’s off on the plane. The plot of the Nazis is over. Everything is finished. And then, you know, two men just walk off and say, you know what, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And therein is a dot-dot-dot. And they just walk off into the fog. A plane takes off. And you understand more adventures are ahead, but for now everything is OK.

John: Yeah. It’s nice when you get a sense that there will be further stories, we don’t necessarily need to see the sequel, but you get a sense of where they’re generally headed and that you don’t need to be worrying about them an hour later from now.

Here’s the counter example. Imagine you’re watching this film and you’re watching Casablanca and for some reason the last ten minutes get cut off, like the film breaks. That is incredibly jarring because you’ve not been safely placed back down.

There’s a social contract that happens when a person starts watching a movie. It’s like the writer and the filmmakers say if you give me about two hours of your time I will make it worth your while. And you trust me and I will take you to a place and I will deposit you back safely where you started. And if you are not putting people back safely where they started they’re not going to have a good reception, a good reaction. And that’s what you find when you do audience testing is so often what’s not working about the movie is that they didn’t feel like they got to the place where they expected to be delivered.

Craig: Yeah. And I suspect that people, well, reasonably invest an enormous amount of time, energy, and thought into building their climaxes. And then the denouement becomes an afterthought. And for me it is the actual ending. That’s actually the ending I back up from is the denouement.

John: Well, OK, let’s talk about that literally, because I literally do write those last few pages very early on in the process. I don’t know if you do that as well. But sometime after I’ve crossed the midpoint of a script I will generally jump forward and write the last ten pages. So some of that climax but really it’s that denouement. What are the final images of the movie? What are the final moments, the final words of a movie? Because if I know that, I know where I’m going, that second half of the script is much tighter and better and cleaner for where I’m headed towards.

Also, I like to write those last couple pages while I still have enthusiasm about the movie. So often you’ll read endings of scripts and you kind of feel like people were just rushing through the end. It’s like they were on a deadline and just plowed through those last pages and they spent so much time on their first act and spent so little time on those last ten pages which are sort of loose and sloppy because of when they were written.

Craig: That just infuriates me. The very thought of it. Because I obsess over those, the way I obsess over the first ten. And I don’t write out of order the way you do. But I think I plan very stringently in a way that you don’t. I try and write the movie before I write the movie essentially. And so I definitely know what those things are. And I don’t really have spikes or dips of excitement. I’m more of a kind of – you know, I think you write the way people probably think I write, and I write probably the way people think you write.

John: Probably so.

Craig: You know what I mean? I’m very robotic about it in a certain kind of procedural way, creatively obviously inside the robot management. I go all over the place and lop the heads off of giraffes and so forth. But I’m very kind of, you know, I’m a big planner.

John: I’m very instinctual and I will not know necessarily what the next scene is as I’m writing the current scene.

Craig: You know what? I think you and I just are so surprising to each other.

John: All right. So let’s wrap up this conversation of denouement because the denouements are about wrapping things up. So, the key takeaways we want people to get from a denouement is that it is a resolution of not plot but of theme, of relationship, of sort of the promise you’ve made to the audience about these principal characters and sort of what is going to happen going forward. What else do we want people to know?

Craig: I mean, that is essentially what they’re going to do. You’re going to show them that last bit whether you’ve done a good job or a poor job. When they see the last bit of the movie they will in their minds add on the following words: And thus it shall always be. And if you have done it well, and thus it shall always be, it’ll be really comforting and wonderful for them.

By the way, sometimes it’s not comforting. Sometimes it’s sad. You know, I mean, honestly the denouement of Chernobyl is quite sad and bittersweet. No shock there. Fiddler on the Roof has one of the best denouements of all time. Fiddler on the Roof opens with a guy playing this [hums] and it’s very jaunty and he’s on a roof and it’s silly. And Tevye is talking to the audience and saying, oh you know, our life is hard and tricky. And we’re like a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a simple little tune without breaking your neck.

At the end of the show, they have been driven from their town of Anatevka by pogroms and they’re trudging off to a new home. And the fiddler is the last person to go and he plays that same little tune, but it’s so sad this time. And the denouement is there to say and thus it shall always be, meaning we know based on the timeframe that what follows the people who leave Anatevka in whenever that takes place, let’s just call it 1910, is going to be worse. And it’s going to get worse before it gets better and thus it shall always be.

So, it doesn’t always have to be “and happily ever after.” Sometimes it can be and sadly ever after. But the point is it will be thus. And it shall thus always be. So, if you think about it that way the denouement becomes incredibly important because that’s where you’re sealing the fate of every single character in your film.

John: Yeah. Everyone is sort of going to be frozen in that little capsule that you created there and that can be placed up on the shelf. That is the resolution for this world that you’ve built to contain this story. So, that’s why it’s so crucial that it feel rewarding. So whether it was a happy ending or a sad ending that it feels like an ending.

Craig: Yeah.

John: All right. Let’s transition to our real endings, which is basically our short time on this earth and at some point we will not be on this earth, but some of our work will still be around. And so I think this was a question from Pam Stucky on Twitter. I couldn’t find the actual tweet that sort of led to it. So if it’s not Pam, if it was somebody else, I’m sorry. But someone asked a smart question about like, well, have you guys ever talked about what happens to our work after we die? Or how stuff gets inherited? And I don’t think we really have.

So I wanted to dig into this a little bit and talk about two things. What happens legally to our work? And what happens creatively? What are the creative choices we might make about how we want to see our work passed down in the future? So some of the stuff is really straightforward and some of the stuff is a bigger discussion.

But legally you own copyright to the things you write. And that copyright is a real thing. It is an asset that can be passed along to your heirs. And if you don’t lay it out in your wills and other documents to describe where you want that copyright asset to go to, it will get passed along just like your comic book collection or your couch. So, it’s worth thinking about who you would like to own the rights to – the copyright to the stuff you make.

Copyright is worth a lot potentially for certain properties because it’s reproduction rights, it’s the ability to make more copies of that thing, so for a book. It’s distribution rights, who can sell and distribute your work. Performance rights, which is incredibly important for playwrights in particular. And adaptation rights. So, for authors it’s the ability to take that book you’ve written and turn it into a movie or turn into a TV show, or to remake it.

So, these are crucial things for the original works that you are creating. But, of course, as screenwriters so much of what we’re actually doing as our job isn’t original works. They are works for hire.

Craig: Right. And interestingly the term length is much different for individuals or for people commissioning works for hire. So in general we’re talking about anything that’s made since 1978, if you – John, you’ve written Arlo Finch. You are the copyright holder of Arlo Finch. The copyright protection lasts you how long?

John: My life plus a certain number of years, 75 years?

Craig: 70, yes, correct.

John: 70 years.

Craig: So, as long as you live and then the day you die a clock starts ticking and there are 70 more years for your daughter to gather up those delicious Arlo Finch royalties. At which point after that theoretically it goes into public domain the way that say the works of Arthur Conan Doyle are in public domain. And anybody can do anything they want with Sherlock Holmes.

But if there is a work-for-hire and that covers every time say Warner Bros. employs you or me to write a screenplay, the length of term there is 95 years from the year of first publication, or 120 years from the year of its creation. Now you can say well life of the author plus 70 could be more than that, but you know, typically people aren’t getting copyright to important works when they’re 10. So right now as you and I both approach 50 and maybe we’ve got another let’s say 30 years in there, they’re starting to even up.

And that number is going to get longer and longer because every time Mickey Mouse almost becomes public domain they seem to get an extension.

John: Yep. And so this will not be the episode where we actually talk about copyright systems and the weird ways it has been perverted to benefit – to really do the opposite of what copyright was supposed to do which was to get ideas out there in the public. But you could say, well, it doesn’t matter the things that I’m writing for Warner Bros. because I will never control copyright, therefore my heirs will get nothing. That is not true.

Craig: That is not true.

John: So, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which was a movie I made for Warner Bros. that pays me residuals. Residuals are collected by the Writers Guild of America. And those residuals are based on every time they sell the movie through iTunes or license it to Netflix. I get checks. I get checks every quarter for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and it’s quite valuable. Those checks will keep coming after I die. And that is a very good thing. And those checks will keep coming as long as that movie is worth something and it is being licensed under copyright. So as long as Warner Bros. has copyright on the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie I’ve made, residuals will keep coming. And that is a good asset down the road.

Craig: Yeah. That’s basically the long and short of it right there. We do have a kind of perpetuous income source with the residuals. And that’s why we have residuals essentially to simulate royalties, to overcome the absurd fiction of the work-for-hire, which I guess is sometimes is not a fiction but a lot of times it is. So, yeah, that’s basically what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with 90 or 120 years following creation of or first publication, or first publication or creation of. That’s how long it lasts. So when we die it kind of doesn’t matter. The law doesn’t really care, in our case, because our death is not actually triggering any time constraint.

For you it will matter on Arlo Finch. Or interestingly for you and I have both written music for movies, so we’re in ASCAP and we get ASCAP royalties. Those I think will be tied to death and copyright and all that, the publishing.

John: They should be. Yeah. That’ll be interesting to see. And also it’s complicated because it’s comingled with people who did the music for it, so it’s me and Danny Elfman and I don’t really know how that all sorts out. I’ve choose not to worry about it. But, Craig, while I have you on this call I have a question about separated rights.

So, separated rights would also pass to an heir, correct?

Craig: I believe so. They pass to your estate.

John: Yes. So if you are a person who writes a work for which you receive separated rights, which is a complicated topic but essentially it’s the ability to derive money from sequels and other things based upon your original work that should pass along to your heirs. Sometimes there are even creative choices that come along with that. So that’s another useful thing.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, separated rights are at times tricky to invoke because the companies hate that they exist. But for instance if you write an original screenplay and sold the original screenplay you will maintain a separated right for dramatic exploitation under certain circumstances. In other words, you have the rights for a play to be done of the original script you wrote. And when you die that doesn’t go away. That stays with the family.

John: Yep. So quite famously J.F. Lawton who wrote Pretty Woman controlled the separated rights for Pretty Woman and did not want there to be a Broadway musical for a very, very long time. And could stop it. That separated rights is giving him that ability.

But let’s talk about sort of the creative aspect of this. Not the legal, but just sort of creatively what you might think about down the road. And so you may have specific intentions for how you want to see your work used in the future. A zillion years ago I worked on an adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time which was not the same thread of the current Wrinkle in Time. But Madeleine L’Engle had already passed away, but her estate had tremendous controls over what could be done with that property. So not just who could do it, but like specific things that had to be in the script or could not be in the script. They had creative controls. And that was given to her estate.

Edward Albee’s estate has sort of famously tangled with people who wanted to make casting changes to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that.

And I was talking to Andrew Lippa, my friend, about stuff he’s doing with the Dramatist Guild for playwrights and musical writers who want to be able to think about their works after they’ve passed away. And so there’s some things like basically a council of playwrights that will look at people’s intentions with plays at the time they were written and sort of how they should change down the road, so that after playwrights pass away there can be some consistency about sort of what kinds of things are done with a play. So it’s a fascinating topic creatively.

Craig: Again, for those of us in movies and television, not particularly applicable in that regard, other than the minor separated rights. But that ultimately comes down to your family or whomever you have assigned the executorship of your estate. Yeah, you know, I – it’s funny, I just don’t think much about this sort of thing. Probably because I don’t have any concern that I’m going to be watching either from heaven or from hell as people make bad decisions with the things I’ve done. I don’t think I’m going to be around.

John: A thing I’ve been thinking about a lot recently though, and it probably started with Morrissey and Morrissey being a crank on Twitter. And I loved Morrissey’s songs, but now it’s like I don’t want – ugh, Morrissey shut up. And it got me thinking about whether I want to put some system in place where I would deputize three people of different generations and if they agreed that I needed to retire or basically move out of public view that I would have to take their decision. Basically a council of advisors who would say, no John, you need to stop. Because you look at people who have decided to step away and like maybe that was a great choice that they stepped away.

So Robert Redford recently announced that he’s retiring from acting. He’s not retiring as a public person, but he’s retired from acting. Daniel Day Lewis did it. Gene Hackman did it. And maybe there could be good cause for someone to give advice to somebody about this is the time to stop. Craig, what do you think about that?

Craig: I don’t think – the problem is if you become a crank then you’ll just say I’m not listening to these people anymore. Look, everybody has a moment where they should probably put it down, but then some people don’t. Some people go all the way to the end and you’re thankful for it, you know.

Look, it’s a personal decision. Sometimes these actors announce that they’re retiring from acting and I just think or just maybe retire from acting and not announce it. You know, stop. Just stop. That’s all. You don’t have to do anything to retire. That’s the beauty of retiring. An announcement that I’m no longer going to be doing – oh, do you need one last round of attention here? I think it’s more interesting when you discover that like people go, by the way, did you know that Gene Hackman apparently retired? That’s the best way to do it I think.

So when I finally retire – no one will care anyway.

John: Craig, do you think you will retire?

Craig: I think I will be retired. In other words, I hope that when I look at my own work and my mind and I have an assessment that it is of diminishing value that that will come either simultaneous with or slightly ahead of everybody else’s similar determination. The bummer is when everybody else figures out that you’ve lost it before you do. You don’t want to be that pitcher who is still going out there and getting shelled and guys are like, dude, you can’t throw a 95 anymore. You’re barely touching 90 and your stuff is flat. Maybe it’s time to hang up the spikes. No, I got one more season in me.

I don’t want to be that guy. But, you know, I keep a fairly careful eye on myself and I have a tendency towards self-loathing anyway, so I think I’ll be OK. I think if anything I will constantly try to retire and if people don’t want me to, or they need me to do something they’ll say, “No, no, no, not yet,” and then I’ll feel bad and do it. That’ll be the ideal situation.

John: You and I both know writers who sort of functionally got retired and they basically kind of stopped working. Like people stopped hiring them. And it is sad when they want to keep working and no one is hiring them. Ageism is a real thing in Hollywood. And this is the kind of insight in which if I actually went to therapy I probably could have had ten years ago, but a thing the last few weeks I’ve realized is that I think part of the reason I keep pursuing new things or stuff that I kind of don’t know anything about, like writing a book, writing a musical, software stuff, is that it’s nice to be the new person in something. It’s nice to feel like I am actually a beginner. That I’m a younger person in that field rather than sort of like the person who has been a screenwriter for 25 years.

Craig: Yeah.

John: There’s something nice about that. So I don’t know that I will ever retire, but I can also envision some point where I’m basically not writing movies anymore because I’m just doing other stuff, where I haven’t been doing it for 25 years.

Craig: No question. I mean, it’s just like video games are very difficult in the beginning when you’re weak and you’re confused and you’re not quite sure how the controls work and they’re a little scary. And then there’s that wonderful process of slowly and steadily mastering what’s happening, until you get to a point where you’re so powerful it’s boring. And the more you do something, even if it’s not in terms of power it’s just in terms of mastery, it can get – like I don’t really want necessarily to write rated-R comedies anymore, because I feel like I’ve done it a lot. And I’m a little bit bored.

And it’s not even to say that I’ve done it well, or that I couldn’t do it better. But there’s been a lot of it. And there’s been a lot that people haven’t seen, also, where my name is not there, but there’s more work than people know. And so I agree with you that changing things up and trying new things is delightful. I’m 100% in that place with you.

I think sometimes with some of the people who get retired, forcibly retired, ageism, yes, I think truly is a thing. However, Ted Eliot did point out something many years ago that had the ring of strong truth to it, which was that there are people that kind of happen in Hollywood. They make a big splash with a thing. And it’s a shiny thing and people get excited and they begin hiring that person. And slowly but surely as they go from project to project to project the word spreads that maybe they’re actually just not that good. And that some of these people aren’t aging out, they’re just being found out.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And they just weren’t as good as people thought. And there’s been a bunch of those. Also some people behave poorly and they get retired out because all things being equal people would rather work with somebody that’s nice than not nice. Especially these days I think that’s more of a consideration than it used to be.

But, yeah, it’s a tough thing because the market is cruel, but not irrational necessarily. Racist though. It’s definitely racist. See that one there’s no question about.

John: Yeah, there’s a little of that. So a thing I found is at a certain point you become – when you first start in this business you are younger than the people hiring you, and then you end up becoming about the same age as the people hiring you, and then you become older than some of the people hiring you. And at a certain point it becomes challenging to take instructions from people who have less experience than you do. And that I think is probably true in all industries across the board. It is weird to be working for somebody younger than you. That is naturally a part of it.

But I think another thing that happens is that sometimes if this executive is used to working with young writers who will do 50,000 drafts and keep smiling and will try to incorporate all the bad ideas because they’re hungry and desperate for a job, the fact that the more experienced writer isn’t so hungry will change the nature of that relationship. You know, if a writer says, you know what, I’m not going to try to implement that ridiculous note that won’t conceivably work because it’s just a waste of everyone’s time.

That’s a thing that the older writer might say that the younger writer wouldn’t say and ultimately that older writer I think gets hired less and less.

Craig: Yeah, you know, I have found that there’s been a nice shift in a weird way. I was – I think it’s different for everybody. Honestly it’s just the way you carry yourself and how you are. I think some people as they get older they just don’t refresh their minds about the world around them and I try and do that as best I can.

Having children helps. You know, having a 17-year-old and a 13-year-old makes it so that I have a certain amount of awareness of what’s going on around me. Also there’s a little bit of a sweet spot which I think you and I are probably in right now. It’s as you’re approaching 50. My guess is it’s your 50s where you’re not too old, but you are old enough where it seems like you’re kind of the vet. Like you know, like you’re a reliable vet who is going to get the job done. Thank god you’re here. I want somebody slightly older than me who I feel like I can listen to. And you’re not too old so you’re not grandpa.

That’s a real thing. I think that you and I have the best possible insurance against ageism ever which is this show. Since by the time we’re in our 60s every single person running every studio I believe will have grown up listening to this podcast. Therefore we should be fine. You and I will be OK forever.

John: As long as the council that we’ve appointed to tell us that we need to stop doing the show doesn’t tell us we need to stop doing the show.

Craig: I’m already saying no to them. I defy them.

John: I refuse!

Craig: I refuse.

John: Let’s wrap this segment up with just a little bit of practical advice. If you are thinking about sort of who should control your work after you pass away, at a certain point you’re going to need to make a will. So every screenwriter at a certain point wakes up in panic and says like, oh crap, I have no will, I have no estate, I have nothing planned. You go to a lawyer and do it.

I think if you’re young and starting out without a lot of assets you can probably do one of those online things or get a book or do something that way and just write the will, do whatever you’re supposed to do in the State of California. File it wherever you’re supposed to file it so it’s found after your death. And make those choices about where those things are supposed to go.

If you are a person with some substantial assets you do need to go find a person who can figure out how you should structure all the stuff, because at a certain point you’re going to put stuff into a trust and there’s reasons why you do things the way you do them. But it’s worth everyone thinking about so you have some sense of where you would like your work to go.

Craig: 100%. I believe you and I use the same guy.

John: Yep. He’s the guy. All of our friends do use the same guy.

Craig: There you go. Boy, I hope that guy is good or else we’re all–

John: Just toast. It turns out he’s just awful and made fundamental misassumptions.

All right, let us go to our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing are actually two awesome women who both write and perform. The first is my friend Erin Gibson. So Erin Gibson, she’s the host or cohost of Throwing Shade podcast which is fantastic. Co-creator, writer, and director of Gay of Thrones, which I’m sure you’ve watched. Jonathan Martin sort of recaps of Game of Thrones. They are fantastic.

But she has a book out which is also great. I went to the party. The book came out today but it’s already gotten great reviews. Called Feminasty: The Complicated Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself to Death. And it’s great. And Erin is fantastic. But she’s one of those people who – this is how I first met Erin Gibson.

She and Bryan Safi, who are cohosts on Throwing Shade, were both correspondents on this show called Infomania on the Current Network. And I stumbled across this show. I thought they were singularly fantastic. This is pre-Twitter I guess, so I emailed them and said like you guys are both fantastic and we ended up having coffee and they’ve been friends since then. So, Erin Gibson, a fantastic writer and performer.

The second one is Phoebe Waller-Bridge. And sometimes in life you find little individual things you like and then later on realize they were all the same thing. And that was Phoebe Waller-Bridge for me. So, she is the writer-creator of Killing Eve, which is remarkable. It’s so good. You should watch it. But before that she did Fleabag, which I hadn’t seen, but now I’m watching and it’s great. And she stars in and wrote that. And then she was also L3-37, the robot in Solo, which was one of my favorite things about that movie. And so she was all of these things and is all one person. And so I’m so happy that there’s a Phoebe Waller-Bridge out there. So, Erin Gibson, Phoebe Waller-Bridge are my two great One Cool Things.

Craig: Wow. That is pretty cool. I love it when that happens. And that is a bit of a sign from the universe that you should be friends with somebody, isn’t it?

John: Probably so. So, she should probably come on the show next time she’s in Los Angeles.

Craig: Yeah. Seems like that should happen.

Well, just like your two things, my third thing is also a video game DLC. What? OK. So, I’ve been playing The Witcher 3.

John: I don’t like The Witcher. So tell me why you love it.

Craig: Well, I don’t love it. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t love it. I like it. I did not like it to start with. It took a little bit of time to get into. And then once I got into it I was like, OK, OK, it’s pretty cool in that it’s massive. It’s sort of like do you like Skyrim? Well, what if it was Skyrim but not as good but bigger, like there was more stuff to do.

So many quests, you’ll never finish them. But, you know, not bad. Terrible video game sex in it. I don’t think I’ve seen good video game sex.

John: Terrible in what way?

Craig: The mouths don’t touch. And the hips are moving incorrectly, so it is a hideous simulacrum of sex. It’s just incredibly not arousing. The breasts do not move. They will show bare female breasts but they have no jiggle, so it’s like that’s not right. That’s really not right at all. Yeah, video game sex not sexy.

Also, this game, Witcher, from 2015 just absurdly sexist in a way that I think like I can only assume that the people over there in Poland at Project Red who are no doubt hard at work on Witcher 4 have noticed the world has changed. I hope they have. And maybe some of their women could have shirts that close. You know, that would be nice if all the buttons went up to the neck. Just a thought.

Yeah, anyway.

John: So, I mean, Witcher 3 is really, I mean, I played it back when I was in Paris. And it is beautiful. It really does look terrific and looks better than Skyrim kind of does. But you’re always playing the one guy and I felt like I was on rails the entire time. So I probably only played like two hours into it and just gave up.

Craig: The first two hours you are on rails. And when they take you off the rails, that’s the weird part, is that the first part of the game is absurdly railed and then once that’s over they’re like, no rails. Also, you have 4,000 quests to do. Good luck, bye. And then it really is fun. And never-ending. So you probably quit just a little too early. But I will say that in terms of the beauty aspect of it I got this DLC Blood and Wine where you go this new region which is essentially French wine countryside.

John: Nice.

Craig: And it is gorgeous. Oh, it’s so great to look at. I mean, the gameplay is the same damn thing, but it is beautiful. And you get your own vineyard estate to renovate. You have your own major domo who is very nice. You have nice chats with him.

You know, I’m not a big craft your own home guy, but when I did, like in Fallout 4 I’m like, OK, I better sort of spiff up my little homestead here you know. But the guess you can do is use terrible post-apocalyptic materials to build your weird creepy hut. Here you’re living in this gorgeous French, you know, countryside manor with fields and Bougainvillea and it’s quite lovely.

So, anyway, Witcher 3: Blood and Wine if you feel like escaping slightly to your French countryside estate while you are slaughtering Necrophages with your silver sword. There you go.

John: All right. And 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 is by Rajesh Naroth. And special thanks to Luke Davis for sending us that cool intro bit with Craig.

Craig: Oh yeah.

John: If you have an outro or intro thing you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions and bits of follow up like we discussed today.

You can find the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, anywhere where podcasts are found. Leave us a review. That’s always great. Links to stuff we talked about in today’s episode will be in the show notes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can find transcripts. They go up about four days after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. We have nearly 3,000 of you premium subscribers. And so I think after we wrap here I’m going to talk to Craig about a special little thing I kind of want to do for those premium subscribers, because that’s pretty cool.

Craig: That’s amazing.

John: All right, Craig, thank you so much for a fun show.

Craig: Thank you, John. I will see you next week.

Links:

• You can listen to John & Craig on another podcast: Jordan, Jesse, Go!
• You can check out our episode with Mindy Kaling, or our episode with Susanna Fogel and David Iserson for some context in this week’s follow-up.
• John’s attempt at “Changing Craig’s Mind” about ventriloquism: Nina Conti
• Edward Albee’s estate has special rules about casting for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
• Erin Gibson: Throwing Shade podcast, Gay of Thrones, and her new book, Feminasty: The Complicated Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Patriarchy Without Drinking Herself to Death.
• Phoebe Waller-Bridge: Killing Eve, Fleabag, and she’s the robot, L3-37, in Solo
• The Witcher 3: Blood And Wine DLC
• The USB drives!
• John August on Twitter
• Craig Mazin on Twitter
• John on Instagram
• Find past episodes
• Scriptnotes Digital Seasons are also now available!
• Outro by Rajesh Naroth (send us yours!). And thank you, Luke Davis, for Craig’s musical intro!

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2018/netflix-killed-the-video-store).

**John August:** Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is Episode 364 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today Craig is off in Chernobyl land in a hotel that from his descriptions sounds like Eastern Europe’s equivalent of the Overlook, so he is my Daniel Lloyd, I am his Dick Halloran, except instead of The Shining we have spotty text messaging. Assuming he escapes the hedge maze he will be back next week.

In the meantime, I am lucky to have a special guest. Kate Hagen is Director of Community, is that correct?

**Kate Hagen:** That’s right, yeah.

**John:** At the Black List. I want to talk to her about what that means, but mostly I want to talk to her about her blog post about the state of home video, video stores, and the many movies that are weirdly unavailable. Kate, welcome.

**Kate:** Thanks so much for having me, John. This is a pleasure to be able to be on the much-loved Scriptnotes.

**John:** And so I’d seen your blog post, the one that kicked this all off about the last great video store months ago. And I had always bookmarked it. It was going to be a One Cool Thing, but it felt too big to be a One Cool Thing because I actually wanted to talk about it. And it sort of slipped down in my feed of stuff to discuss. And in the past two weeks I had trouble trying to find a copy of The Flamingo Kid, and it all surfaced up again. So, I was encountering what you had encountered. What was the movie that you were trying to look for?

**Kate:** I was trying to look for a movie called Fresh Horses, which is most notable for being the only reteaming of Andrew McCarthy and Mollie Ringwald after Pretty in Pink. It’s not a good movie, it’s just one of those ‘80s curiosities that I was like, “Oh, I’d like to see this again.” And I started looking for it one night and the only version I could find was on like a very illegal website where it was dubbed in Polish. And I was like well that’s pretty nuts. This movie is 30 years old. Ben Stiller and Viggo Mortensen are also in it, so it’s not like a nobodies’ movie. And the only way you can get Fresh Horses currently is in one of those six-movie ‘80s collections on Amazon, which is a bummer, because then it’s just like a crappy version of the movie.

**John:** Cool. So let’s try to figure out and solve all the problems of missing home videos in the next hour.

**Kate:** I think we can do it.

**John:** But we’ll start with simpler things which you can explain what you actually do at the Black List.

**Kate:** Yeah. So my fun answer for this is I am like the ultimate Internet team for the Black List. So I’m kind of the online mom of the Black List. I make sure all of our online community is healthy and getting along with each other. That includes everything from doing all of our social media, to editing and curating our blog, to overseeing customer support. I run point on all of our site partnerships. So, Franklin likes to put it that Megan and I – Megan is our director of events – and she kind of handles everything that is an in-person interaction and I handle everything that’s an online interaction.

**John:** So Franklin Leonard launched the Black List as a site shortly after one of the Austin Film Festival appearances. So he came on the show, on a live show, to talk about this plan he had for the Black List and it’s been fascinating to watch it grow into this big thing that it is right now.

So, you are part of a small team, and so as people are submitting scripts that they want to show up on the site for coverage and for other things for professionals to look at them, you are part of the team that interacts with those folks?

**Kate:** Yeah. So like day-to-day I’m just keeping an eye on everything that’s coming through the website in terms of evaluations, if there are any issues with any scripts or anything. I’m kind of just the keeper of all of that stuff. And, you know, making sure people can opt into partnerships, all that kind of good stuff.

**John:** Now at this point are you still reading scripts that come in, or are your days as a reader behind you?

**Kate:** My days as a reader are behind me. I was a reader – it was my full-time gig for about eight months, but I was doing freelance for about a year and a half. And I covered about 500 scripts in that time. Yeah, and there are definitely days when I miss being a reader. I mean, there are other days where I’m super glad I don’t have to do that anymore. But like friends will reach out to give notes on their scripts and I’m like, “Oh, I really like doing this,” the kind of page notes where you have a good relationship with someone and you can be like this is not working and they’re not going to get mad at you, as opposed to just sending coverage off into the void.

**John:** Weirdly over the course of all these episodes of Scriptnotes I don’t think we’ve talked that much about the job of a reader, sort of what it’s like to be a reader. So, my first jobs in Hollywood were as a reader. I started as a reader covering scripts for Prelude Pictures, which doesn’t exist anymore. It was this tiny little company based over at Paramount. And every week I’d go in, they’d give me two scripts. I would write up my coverage on these two scripts, then come back in, deliver those, and pick up new scripts. This was back in the day when there weren’t PDFs, so you were actually physically picking up scripts and reading them and writing up your coverage, and printing them out and sending them back in.

I assume this is all happening digitally these days?

**Kate:** Yeah. It’s all happening digitally at least as far as the Black List is concerned. People just upload their scripts to the site. The readers are then able to access those scripts, and they provide an evaluation. And our coverage is a little bit different than traditional coverage. It’s meant to be kind of a high level notes for the writer. It’s not getting into like page-by-page details some of the time. Although some readers choose to do that. It’s more focused on what’s working in the script, what’s not working in the script, and what the likely audience for that might be.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a very different relationship to the writer than coverage traditionally is. Because coverage classically what I was doing for Prelude, then I was a reader at TriStar, you’re really just a gatekeeper in that function. Basically a script comes in, the executive doesn’t have time to read it, so you are basically writing a book report, a summary of what happens in the script and your overall reaction to the script. Sometimes it’s a page and a half of summary and then one page of comments talking through characters, plot, sort of overall impressions of “Is this a good writer?” a recommendation – like consider this script, consider this writer, consider both. And generally the answer is consider neither for most–

**Kate:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s the function is basically to say no to everything.

**Kate:** Yeah. It’s so funny. So before I was reading for the Black List I was reading freelance for Bold Films. And I read probably I’d say about 100 scripts for them in that period of time. And the only two things I ever recommended were Arrival and Dark Places, the script for that. But, yeah, I think most people don’t realize that as a reader and a gatekeeper you need to be passing on 95% of stuff. It’s very rare that you get anything that kind of emerges from the pile.

But I would have moments, too, where like it would be a very talented writer who was given like not a great book to adapt or something. And it was nice to be able to be like, “Hey, this writer is really great, even if this material is not working.” And I do think that’s something that like we don’t focus on enough in evaluating scripts. It’s all about the script itself, and obviously you have to execute a script, but it would be nice sometimes if we directed some of that love back to the writer if they’re doing a good job.

**John:** Definitely. Sometimes the function of a reader is you’re looking for a specific thing that this company can make, and so if something doesn’t fall into the purview of what this company would make you’re going to pass on it because you don’t want to waste the executive’s time reading this thing that they can’t actually do. But along the way you sometimes will read good writing and in my time reading for TriStar I read 200 scripts. I still have a list of all that coverage. And none of the things I read ended up getting made. Two of the things I ended up recommending I sort of got called to the mat for wasting people’s time for recommending them. It’s so frustrating.

**Kate:** And taste is so crazy. You know, there’s a sort of consensus I feel like in terms of what’s good in Hollywood, but then you get a lot of outliers and it depends on people’s bosses and all that kind of good stuff. And like you were saying in terms of what a given company can make within a calendar year, or couple of calendar years. Yeah, so it’s a tricky gig.

I think a lot of screenwriters have this kind of attitude about readers that like they’re trying to pull one over on them. And it’s like, no guys, we just want to read good scripts. Like that’s all we ever want to do. And I’m sorry that most scripts are not good. It’s a bummer. I would love to recommend scripts all the time.

**John:** And I think another thing people don’t understand is that most readers are writers, or at least a sizable portion of readers are actually screenwriters themselves. And it’s a very classic first job in Hollywood is to be one of those readers. If someone wants to be a reader, I mean, the Black List is a sort of a special case, but in general how are people getting hired as readers these days?

**Kate:** Yeah, I mean, this is a tricky question. I have a number of friends who are still reading and I think a lot of it like everything in life and especially in this business is relationship-based.

It was funny, when I graduated college there was this idea of like you move to Los Angeles and you went to film school for screenwriting and you’ll get a reader job like that. It’ll be no problem. You’ll be able to support yourself. Those days are long past. So most folks I know are either reading for multiple companies or reading is just one of the many things they do.

But I think a lot of that is based on your relationships with assistants, with executives, finding folks that like even if your taste is not the same it’s in the same ballpark so that you know that like even if we disagree about a script we can argue both sides of this to come to some sort of agreement on whether or not we’re going to recommend it.

**John:** When someone is being hired as a reader there’s usually sample coverage that they’re looking at. So, you will have written up coverage on a script, and even if they haven’t read the script that it’s based on you get a sense of like this person can evaluate story. This person can summarize things well enough so I can understand what the plot of a script is.

**Kate:** Yeah.

**John:** One of the biggest challenges I always had as a reader is you read a script and you’re trying to write the summary and how do you even summarize this thing. The story makes no sense. And sometimes, in the course of writing the synopsis, I’m kind of inventing – in the simplification of it I’m trying to create story so there is a narrative thread to go through there.

**Kate:** Ugh, that was always a challenge. I remember one time I got a script where I believe it was four different versions of the protagonist and the way that this was denoted in the script was different levels of gray scale to tell you which version of the protagonist was interacting within which scene. And you’re like I don’t know what the medium gray is after 30 pages. What am I supposed to do to keep up with that? It can be a real challenge sometimes to just even, you know, pick your way through the narrative and like you said try to find some kind of cohesive narrative thread.

**John:** Are most readers still in Los Angeles or with the rise of the Internet are they just spread out throughout the country?

**Kate:** Speaking for the Black List, we have folks who read all over America and some folks throughout other parts of the world. But most folks I know who are reading as any kind of full-time or steady gig are here, because they have other aspirations in the industry and reading is just a part of that.

**John:** And when they say they’re doing it as a full-time gig or a steady gig, is it still a per-script basis where you’re getting paid per unit? You’re getting X dollars for reading a script?

**Kate:** Yeah. I’ve always heard rumors of these fabled studio readers, WGA readers. I have never met one in the flesh. I don’t know if that’s just something that used to exist and no longer exists. But I only ever got paid for script coverage on a by-script basis. I never got any kind of like weekly fee or anything.

**John:** And what are the ranges you’re hearing about in Los Angeles these days?

**Kate:** It really depends. I have gotten paid everything from $10 to $300 to evaluate a single script. So there’s a wide range. I would say most folks’ going rate for kind of a script evaluation is in the $40 to $50 range. I think especially there’s so many folks reading and because the Internet exists and because we’re all on electronic devices anyway all the time it’s a little easier to read a script then like when you were talking about, you know, got to go to the office, got to pick up the paper copies. The fact that you can do it remotely.

So there are definitely some factors I think that have dropped the price a little bit. But I would love to see a world in which reading was like a legitimate full-time gig for many people that had its own union and all that fun stuff.

**John:** Yeah. It’s horrifying that you say it’s $40 to $50 because that’s – I was getting $50 to $65 20 years ago reading at TriStar.

**Kate:** It’s hard out there. When I was reading full-time I was usually reading two or three scripts a day, depending. And then I know some folks who have been doing it for ten years and can do five or six scripts a day. I would occasionally do four scripts a day, but at that point you’re like I have no brain function left at all.

**John:** And reading that many scripts does just burn a hole in your brain. I feel like at a certain point – it was good, like the first 100 or 200 it was very helpful for me as a writer being able to understand what kind of never worked on a page, and also what my personal taste – I never want to write that kind of way because I sort of feel what happens when you try to do that thing. But it ultimately is using some of the same parts of your brain you need as a writer. You’re visualizing all these things. And it can be really sad.

**Kate:** Yeah. But I mean, it’s also super instructive. I highly recommend that most folks, even if you’re not doing it in a professional capacity, even if you can go on a screenwriting forum and pull a bunch of amateur scripts or something just to give yourself the challenge of writing coverage. Because nothing will teach you more about what not to do as a screenwriter then reading a bunch of really bad scripts.

**John:** That’s actually a great idea. I don’t know if we’ll ever do it as a feature, but it would be interesting to take a script and have people just go off and write coverage for it and be able to cover the coverage and sort of see what people are–

**Kate:** Right before I got hired for Black List I was in consideration for another job for a small production company. And it was down to me and one other person to be the kind of assistant executive catch-all role. And they gave us both the same script and they said one of the execs likes this script and one of the execs doesn’t like this script. And we are going to hire based on your coverage.

The script was just this very boring, middle-of-the-road white guy coming of age sexual fantasy. And I told them about it. And I did not get that job. But I was like, “Well, I guess I didn’t want this job anyway because our taste was not going to align.”

**John:** Well let’s transition now to talking about video, because your piece which was great when I read it, as I go back and reread it now it’s like, oh, she actually answers some of the questions that I had sort of in my head about the availability of movies and sort of our misperception of how big some of these video stores really were in the day and where we’re at right now.

And I also want to get into sort of the difference between streaming and online download and stuff like that because they’re similar but they’re not quite the same thing. And even in your piece, I realized today as I was reading through it again, you did have some answers for sort of why some of these movies are missing and there are sort of big structural issues that need to be tackled to get into it.

**Kate:** Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of issues that keep movies off streaming, off home video. A couple of the big ones, the one that’s most compelling to me is music rights. I’m also a huge music person, so the idea that films can’t be put on home video with their original music intact is just absolutely sacrilegious to me. But at the same time, you know, that’s one of the few ways you can still make money off music anymore is by licensing it to a film. So, like my friend Marc Heuck who is quoted in the piece talks about, it’s much cheaper for most studios to just do nothing with these titles rather than relicense the music and put it out in some kind of official home video release or get it back on streaming.

And that’s a huge bummer. There are so many movies for which the soundtrack is an essential part of them and the idea that that’s what’s keeping them out of the public sphere is a huge bummer.

I would say for a lot of the ‘90s indies it’s really interesting. A lot of those production companies have since folded and like even the parent companies have folded. So then it becomes a chain of title situation of like do the rights revert back to the producer, the director. Who ended up with the rights to these films? And most of the time you can’t see your way through the darkness and so it’s very difficult to get those films on streaming. But, you know, these movies are 25 years old and all of a sudden unavailable and you’re like, guys, this is going to be like a second silent era kind of erasure if we’re not careful.

**John:** So, before we get into fixing the problem, let’s talk about the scope of the problem. I think most people’s perception is that when Netflix by Mail existed that kind of solved the problem. It seemed like it solved the problem because any movie you could possibly imagine, oh well, it was available on Netflix by Mail before it was even “By Mail” back then. That sense where they would send you a little disc in a red envelope and it would come and show up.

Obviously it was a solution only for movies that existed on home video. It was only for movies in North America. Obviously we’re in a global world, but right now we’re just focusing on what happens in the US and Canada. But for a while it seemed really good and it was very hard to think of a movie that you’d want to see that wasn’t available sort of through Netflix.

As Netflix moves to streaming, I think most of us, myself included, just sort of assumed that well obviously they’re not going to be able to have all the same kind of content there, but it’s just bits. So it sits on a server someplace and if one person a month wants to watch that movie, great, it’s going to be available for them to watch. That’s not at all what happened.

So, in your piece you talk about Netflix at the time of your writing has about 3,686 films available for streaming at any point. But even like a Blockbuster back in the day could have 10,000.

**Kate:** That was a really mind-blowing stat to me. I would have never guessed that my local Blockbuster was stocking 10,000 movies and then putting that next to the Netflix number you’re like, “Wait a minute, so we just get like drama, children’s, and comedy.” And so much of the Netflix content is original and from the last ten years. I mean, that’s a whole different conversation, too, the idea of classic films that are kept off of streaming. I mean, Netflix only has 100 movies on the service from 1900 to 1990, which is absolutely insane.

**John:** And so we can’t rely on Netflix to be the solution to all the problems and obviously Amazon Video has their own streaming services, but Amazon and iTunes/Apple they also offer the ability to rent or to purchase these movies. And I guess I assumed that that was going to be the other solution, because it feels like once a movie is available for purchase or for rental through those sites it can sort of just be permanently there. And at least in your article I can’t find a listing of sort of how many movies are available for rental or purchase on iTunes or through Amazon.

**Kate:** iTunes I have not also been able to figure out. Amazon you can look at through Just Watch, which is the website I used for much of the piece. And that will list everything that’s available for rental. But you know the way I think about that is particularly like I’m thinking about this a lot in terms of the young film fan, kids, teenagers who are just getting into movies. You know, if you’re 14 are you going to watch the free movie on Netflix or are you going to go to your parents and be like “Can I have the credit card, can I do the $3 movie purchase?” No, you’re going to pick the free stuff or you’re not going to watch anything or you’re going to watch YouTube clips. And, you know, I will gladly pay $2 or $3 to rent something on Amazon or iTunes or whatever, but you know, that’s still not fixing the problem that’s still gatekeeping in a way.

My friend, Kate Barr, at Scarecrow in Seattle said the most interesting thing about Amazon and Netflix in particular and she was talking about this idea that for her it’s a First Amendment issue that, you know, when home video began it was suddenly freedom of choice for people in a way that they had never had before. You could pick exactly what you wanted to watch when you wanted to watch it. And in a weird way we’ve come full circle to like limiting our choices again. Like we went from having so many choices to not as many choices, even though it seems like streaming is more accessible.

**John:** Yeah. So I’ll push back a little bit on some of that stuff. I mean, First Amendment, it’s not government control, but it is that access, that sense of I need to be able to access culture and I am being denied the ability to see that thing of culture because of weird corporate restrictions. I think what is so great about the piece you did on Scarecrow Video, so we’re going to link to your main article, but you have done great follow-ups at other video stores and talking to the folks who run these video stores, many of which have become non-profits because they’re really about access to these movies rather than trying to earn a buck.

I would say that we can have this sort of golden age idea of like, “Oh, I could get to all those movies because I could go to Scarecrow Video or I could go to these places and all those movies were there,” but that relied on your ability to actually get to those places.

**Kate:** Sure.

**John:** And so for kids who grew up in rural Iowa there was no video store, so they were completely dependent on what would show up on TV or what was available at their little small tiny video store. I guess what’s surprising is even those small video stores had more than I think we sort of remember them having.

**Kate:** Yeah. I mean, I would say two things about that. I think something that became really apparent to me in writing this piece was how much I had undervalued and I think how much most of us undervalued the video store as a living library archive, as just kind of a history of record. Because, you know, it doesn’t matter what the quality of a movie is, you know, for new releases most video stores are buying all new releases every week. When you start doing that you start to build up a pretty robust collection of stuff and that also kind of catches movies that might slip through the cracks otherwise. And nobody really thinks about that when they think about video store erasure. Like I think about some of the great video stores have closed and it’s like what happens to all these movies when they do close?

I would also – I have not figured out a way to zero in on this, but you were talking about the idea of what was available to folks on television, like to me that is something that has significantly shrunk, too, the kinds of movies we show on TV. Like when I was a kid I watched a ton of weird stuff on IFC and Sundance and movies like Kissed that have never even been put on DVD. And to me now cable is about 250 movies that we have decided we’re going to show and that’s it. And I don’t know if that’s also a licensing issue and with streaming, but to me that’s a huge pool that shrunk, too, and it’s much harder to stumble upon something on cable.

It’s just like, hey guess what, it’s Ghostbusters or Pulp Fiction again.

**John:** Yep. So you talk about video stores used to be kind of the movie libraries of a community, and so obviously one solution to that is the actual library. Andrew in LA wrote in based on what we talked about last week saying, “A couple years ago I discovered what a great resource the LA Public Library is for movies that were otherwise unavailable online. I was one of the first holdouts with the Netflix DVD subscription so I could have access to older, more obscure stuff, but I found that the library had all that was on Netflix and more. The Flamingo Kid is no exception. Just a suggestion for next time you run into that issue.”

**Kate:** Yeah. When I was a kid we rented from the library I would say maybe about a third as much as we rented from Blockbuster. All I had as a kid was Blockbuster, so that’s where we went. But, yeah, the library is an incredible resource. Also I know there are certain library subscriptions where like they will put the catalog online so with your library card you can then stream titles which is really cool.

But, yeah, these kind of creative solutions to working around the streaming bubble. I think people don’t realize there are still – at least when I wrote the piece – there are still at least 90,000 DVDS that one can rent from Netflix online, which is pretty nuts. Part of me has wondered if I should go back to disc Netflix, which is like a very weird thing to do in the Year of our Lord 2018. And, you know, those DVD subscriptions are still playing quite a bit of Netflix’s overall budget for the year. So, people are still doing it. People still want access to more films than what is at the streaming service at any given time.

**John:** As a WGA board member I also have to bring up the issue that while the ability to get to those discs is fantastic for people who want to watch those movies, those discs that are sitting at the LA Public Library that were sitting at Blockbuster, they earn nothing for the writer. So figuring out how to make this available for streaming, for rental, for purchase online is actually very meaningful to any writer, director, actor who is relying on residuals from these movies, because if you were to go stream Charlie’s Angels I get paid for that. If you go find a DVD, you get it from Redbox or you get it from the library, I don’t get paid for that. So it’s worth solving on many fronts and not just sort of like getting access to those physical things again.

**Kate:** Yeah. I mean, that’s something definitely to think about. This is something like I was talking a little bit about the ‘90s titles. For all of those creative teams, and like that’s so unfair to them that just because the company who put it out folded that they now have no ownership over this title anymore. And those rights should, you know, of course there are legal – all that kind of stuff you have to go through and hoops, but the chain of title on that stuff should revert back to the creators at some point if there is kind of no powers that be left.

**John:** Yeah. So, let’s talk about the legal teams involved here, because as you look at classic film preservation, so there’s the kinds of movies that are in the danger of being lost to history because the only print was in a vault someplace and it’s falling apart, and so we have these really smart chemists and colorists who go through and they save these movies and then we do a giant projection, 70mm, and everyone cheers because this movie has been saved.

For every one of those movies there’s thousands that are not being saved because they only exist on VHS or they sort of never really came out on video. And those are the movies that we need to be able to salvage. And it’s not that there’s no copy of them available, there’s just no legal copy of them available. There’s no way to actually get to it. And I kind of feel like we need that band of lawyers and sort of paralegals and other folks who can just figure out the copyright on the stuff and get those things out there the same way we have the chemists and the colorists saving those big prints, just so that we don’t lose this kind of culture.

You talk about sort of a silent moment, especially movies in the ‘70s, ‘80s, early ‘90s that are in real danger of just being lost because they are unavailable. There’s no place to find them.

**Kate:** Yeah. And I mean to say nothing of all of the kind of home video ephemera that arose as a part of that whole movement, you know, where you’d get trailer compilations or a behind-the-scenes documentary, or cartoon compilations. All of that kind of stuff has also vanished. And, you know, most streaming services aren’t offering those kind of special features, bonus features, and that’s as much of a content apocalypse as the movies themselves, like just getting rid of all of the kind of additional materials that were attached to that.

**John:** So, overall goals. We talk about film preservation and film history, sort of the chemists who are making those prints actually work. We talk about the archivists and sort of the film buff, but also the film student. And so those folks are going to be able to find that collection of animated shorts. If someone is willing to put in five hours to sort of discover this place and to drive to that place and find that one copy of something, she’s going to be able to find it somewhere. At least for now she’s going to be able to find it somewhere. But I think your point about the kid who is used to just being able to get everything online immediately is not going to seek that stuff out and there’s a whole bunch of culture that’s going to be lost because that kid is not going to have any way to sort of find it.

**Kate:** Yeah. And I mean I have this argument with folks all the time of like, you know, “Well kids are curious. They’ll figure it out on their own.” I’m like, no, not if they don’t have the tools. Not if they’ve never been to a video store before and not if they’ve never used a library archive system to like truly dig for something. Most of us have lizard brain. Like we just want instant gratification, whatever is easiest. And, you know, as these things become more and more challenging to find and there are other distractions it becomes easier to just be like, “I’ll get to that later.”

**John:** Mm-hmm. So things are holding these movies off, and Marc Edward Heuck had a really good point that you mentioned in your blog post about music rights. And so this really makes sense, because as a person who has made movies when you are putting a song in a movie, you’re putting a piece of existing music in a movie, you are buying sync rights and mechanical rights which are the ability to include that song on a soundtrack of your film.

And along with that you might say like this is for theatrical distribution, so this if for a certain number of years of home video. And you may no longer have the ability to have that song in your movie, which is really a challenge when it comes time to actually try to release that movie again on home video. If you don’t control the rights of the thing that’s in there, either you can’t do it yourself, or you can’t sell it to somebody who would put it out on home video because they worry about getting sued.

**Kate:** Yeah.

**John:** Have you talked to anybody who has been through this situation or do you have any sense of how you sort this out?

**Kate:** That’s a great question. I know that there have been some films released with alternate soundtracks in the last couple of years, or put on streaming with alternate soundtracks. And, you know, is that better than not being able to see the film at all? Yes. Is it a bummer that you can’t see the movie as it was originally made? Absolutely. I would love to get more of a pulse on the whole music rights situation because so many of my favorite films, like Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, it’s like you strip the music from that there is no movie. And like that’s a DVD that’s out of print. It was in print for a couple of years and now is like $50 on the used market.

Yeah, but I am not entirely sure what can be done to kind of rectify that because that’s also a problem with the record industry and the way online availability of music kind of tanked the entire record industry. And you’re like, “Oh, but we can get some pennies out of relicensing this for movies or television.” So I understand where the record companies are coming from. But also it feels like there needs to be a more reasonable solution for both parties.

**John:** Well also it feels like it’s very much targeting the movies that set us off, which is the early ‘80s movies which would have had pop songs of the time and things could just be complicated. Those were also companies that were bought and sold multiple times. The Flamingo Kid was MGM, but like who knows – MGM has been so many different things over the years. That entire catalog has come and gone a zillion times.

**Kate:** Yeah. It’s wild when you think about all the tiny production shingles that have since folded and then, you know, just what happens to these movies when that company no longer exists. Yeah, like Little Darlings is another big one for me that’s really hard to find and that’s got a bunch of very expensive music cues. There’s a John Lennon song in it. And that has been broadcast once on TCM like several years ago and that’s the only way you can see that movie if you can’t find a VHS tape, which is a huge bummer.

**John:** Marc’s piece also talks about The Heartbreak Kid, Stepford Wives, and Sleuth, which basically were made by a secondary studio. They were made by a smaller company, and so a bigger company buys them out and really has no interest in putting those movies out because it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be profitable for them to put them out. They want those titles because they can be remade. And so they want them for the remake rights, not for the actual underlying thing itself.

And I don’t know how you pressure them to actually do anything. And I do wonder if there is some legislation, some sort of bigger movement to get these titles sort of set free. The challenge is who pushes that? The copyright holders have a vested interest in not changing anything. And so it’s going to have to be filmmakers who sort of insist that their early works be released into the public sphere. It’s the kind of thing where in France it would be actually easier for those filmmakers to probably get stuff to happen than it is here.

**Kate:** Yeah. Something really interesting that happened, so Dilcia Barrera, a programmer at LACMA, reached out to me after the piece and was like would you like to show Fresh Horses at LACMA? And I was like absolutely. So, Sony did not have a functional print of Fresh Horses, so they struck a brand new beautiful 35mm print for the screening. And now there’s a chance that it might be put out on Blu-Ray because this new print was struck. So I think that’s an interesting piece to consider, you know, if you demand these movies theatrically and that kind of forces the hand of companies to make new prints. Even if it’s a digital version, whatever.

**John:** Great.

**Kate:** Just a new version of the film that could then be put on streaming or released on home video, that’s awesome.

**John:** Well, Kate, what you’re saying, which is very encouraging to me, is that it’s not that the negative had been lost to all time. So they had a negative. So if you have a negative you can make a beautiful digital version of it and that digital version can go out.

So do you know anything about what was the hold up with Fresh Horses? Was it a music issue? Why had it gone off–?

**Kate:** Fresh Horses was released by Hemdale which I’m fairly sure does not exist and has not existed for many years, but I mean, Hemdale also put out Blade Runner. What was I just watching this weekend that was a Hemdale movie? Oh, Miracle Mile from the ‘80s.

I would just assume that they folded and whoever the kind of rights defaulted to are like “We don’t need to do anything with movies like Fresh Horses or Miracle Mile.” I know Miracle Mile got a Blu-Ray a couple of years ago and obviously like Blade Runner has many home video editions, but you know, that’s a beloved and classic film, so it’s a little easier to figure out the rights situation for that than something like a Fresh Horses, which is not as beloved.

**John:** This idea of being able to watch Fresh Horses, it seems odd to do a screening of Fresh Horses because it wasn’t like a masterpiece that everyone was clamoring for, but it is very true that most people who are going to see this movie are going to see this movie on video. And that’s true even for the movies that are coming out next week at the cinema, most people are ultimately going to see that movie on home video and how do you make sure that that home video is going to still be around 20 years, 30 years, 40 years down the road?

**Kate:** I am really disturbed by the fact that Amazon and Netflix seem to not care about putting any of their original movies or TV series on disc. Like I know Stranger Things got a disc release, but like people really had to pressure Amazon to get Blu-Rays of Wonderstruck. And to me that suggests a scary overall trend for those companies that they’re treating these products as disposable. It’s like we’re not even going to put it on any kind of permanent format. It’s either on the streaming service or it’s not on the streaming service. And that’s a bummer for folks who still like home media, who want to guarantee that they will have these movies or TV shows in perpetuity.

Yeah, and I think there is a market for home video, especially as home theaters become more and more in depth and people get more into the idea of movie screenings in your own home. I just wish more folks would realize that.

**John:** I just saw the trailer for Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, which is a Netflix film, black and white, gorgeous-looking, at least from the trailer. I mean, of course it’s going to be gorgeous. He’s an incredibly talented filmmaker. But it will be fascinating to see is there going to be a Blu-Ray for Roma? Because it’s going to come out theatrically and on Netflix. And for Alfonso Cuarón as a filmmaker, fantastic he got to make exactly the movie he wanted to make. He probably got the budget he wanted. It’s great for cinema that Netflix stepped up and sort of helped him make this movie. But I do wonder whether it’s great for cinema ten years from now, 20 years from now that this was made for a digital platform that has no vested interest in the long term existence of a physical version of this thing?

**Kate:** Yeah. I mean, that’s a really good example. I feel like also Scorsese’s The Irishman is going to be a real make it or break it moment for Netflix. You know, the idea – if we’re not giving home video releases, if these are films aren’t getting nominated for Oscars, if they’re not picking up theatrically. You know, the Irishman especially is about as prestige of a prestige project as you could get, and popular as a prestige project could get. And if that doesn’t get the kind of reception that a normal theatrical release might then I think that kind of indicates where the vibe is on Netflix in terms of how they’re going to release prestige movies going forward.

**John:** Yeah. It’s easy to look at Netflix now, which is so successful and everybody has it and it’s thriving, but there’s lot of companies that just go away. And if Netflix just goes away, what happens to all those things that were made for Netflix? And it’s not entirely clear. And folks who I know who have made deals with Netflix, no one I’ve talked to has anything in their deals that says like if the company doesn’t exist ten years from now I get the rights back to something.

**Kate:** Yeah. That’s got to be really sobering as a creator. I mean, I figured this out when I was writing the piece. Only ten years ago Netflix had their first production arm which was called Red Letter Media, which has since folded. So I think it’s really hard for anybody to try to predict where Netflix or any of the streaming services are going to be ten years from now. So much has changed.

**John:** Speaking of so much has changed, so this is a thing that’s been recurring on the podcast and we could probably do a segment on it every week, but this past week it looks like MoviePass has gone under. If it hasn’t officially gone under, it’s about as close as you get to going under. The stock did a reverse split which I didn’t even know was a thing. It’s worth very little. And people who try to leave the service are being prohibited from leaving the service. What’s been your relationship with MoviePass?

**Kate:** So I got MoviePass at the end of last year. I did the annual $90 one. I’ve gone to about 12 movies, so I’m like it paid for itself. Great. I have a lot of friends in the LA rep scene in particular who have really been using it to go to way more rep screenings than they would normally ever go to. And to me that’s a bummer with like the loss of MoviePass is the ability to see more movies than you would on a normal budget.

But, yeah, you know, I do think MoviePass is ultimately going to be a good thing to show that there is an appetite for these kind of pass programs. I would love it for instance if all the LA repertory theaters would ban together and be like, OK, you pay $25 a month and then you get X number of tickets to the Egyptian, the New Beverly, etc.

But I mean the MoviePass flameout has been kind of spectacular to watch on film Twitter, because, you know, it’s a totally unsustainable model. We all knew–

**John:** Yeah. We knew it was. This is all going to end in tears. It was like taking Omarosa into the White House. Like it wasn’t going to last. You knew it was doomed.

I think on the whole MoviePass you have to see the pros of it, in that for about a year a bunch of VC money gave people free movie tickets.

**Kate:** Yeah.

**John:** And so it helped the movie industry and it allowed people to see more movies. I think it definitely got more people to see the indie films because it’s like, “Well, I got to use this thing. I’ve seen everything else. I’m going to go see this movie.” And I think that does help those things.

You’re the first person I’ve heard talk about this idea of an indie pass that sort of goes to all those smaller chains. That would be fantastic.

**Kate:** I would be amazing.

**John:** If it helps keep those art houses in business the same way that we need to keep video stores in business that would be fantastic. Bigger chains, AMCs, have rolled out their own plans which seem great. And I guess I’m all for studios figuring out deals with those exhibitors just to sort of get butts in seats and keep butts in seats. Because what MoviePass did show is that people do want to still go to the movie theaters. There’s this myth that as home screens get better, as TVs get better people are just going to stay home and only watch movies on their TV screens. And it’s like, no, people actually want to go out and be with people and see movies.

And what was partly doing MoviePass in is that young people with friends were like well we all have MoviePass, let’s go out and see like three movies. And they would.

**Kate:** Yeah.

**John:** And if we can encourage that behavior that’s awesome.

**Kate:** Yeah. It’s interesting. I would say I definitely know a lot more young folks that got really into MoviePass, but I’ve also talked to some folks that like their parents – this became a huge thing to get them back to the theater after many years of not going to the theater. You know, the idea of a deal suddenly becomes more exciting.

But, you know, last weekend, I went last Sunday. I went to a matinee of BlacKkKlansman at the ArcLight that was almost sold out. And then that night I went to a screening of Wanda at the Egyptian that was sold out. It was in the small theater, the Spielberg. But, you know, obviously we’re in the movie capital of the world so that’s necessarily the best comp for most of the country.

But I do think that, you know, when you make these options easier for people to get on board with, how about that, they go back to the theater. It’s not rocket science. And I would hope folks realize the void that MoviePass will leave and we get an indie pass, or more subscription programs from major chains. Because I do think that people like being among other people. Like I really enjoy, this is a similar thing with video stores, even if you don’t talk to anybody else, you don’t like meet up with friends, just being among other people, not in front of your black computer screen, in very nice.

**John:** And your pieces on the different video stores you visited, I think that sense of community was really crucial and something I’d kind of forgotten. Is that while my local Blockbuster was just like whatever, who cares about that, when you go to a place that’s genuinely a video store with people who like love movies, not just the employees, but the people who are wandering through the aisles looking for stuff, they can give you recommendations. You can see the taxonomy is very much set up based on a hive brain of like these kinds of movies belong together even if it’s not sort of genre wise which you’d expect.

You have some maps of some of your interior layouts of these video stores that really show how they’re thinking about movies and how stuff fits together. Bookstores, which are thriving these days, smaller bookstores are thriving these days, I think it’s the same sense. That people want to go to a place where people kind of care about the things that are on the shelves.

**Kate:** Yeah. It was really interesting. Last Saturday I went up to Odyssey Video in North Hollywood which is closing unfortunately. It was an extremely cool video store. They had a lot of rare VHS still, particularly on the children’s side of things. But that was really interesting because it’s an everything must go kind of sale. So they’re selling off their entire stock. But it was a Saturday afternoon at four o’clock and there are 25 people in this video store right now. And we were all extremely amused. There was this extremely precocious kid who was just like running around being like “Do you have Poltergeist? Do you have Pretty in Pink? Why can’t I go in the back?”

And, you know, it was really invigorating to see like an 11-year-old kid just like so excited about movies, about picking up the physical movie, like crossing movies off the list. And like, I don’t know, streaming is just never going to generate that kind of enthusiasm. Like I don’t care what anybody says. That kind of tactile human community experience. We’re just never going to get that via a streaming platform.

**John:** You’ve convinced me. So I would say, and as recently as three weeks ago I was having a little Twitter disagreement with Robin Sloan, an author, and he had basically the thesis of video stores, things were better in the video store era. And I said, yes, if you compare to streaming. But if you add in iTunes, there’s actually more availability. We don’t have the real numbers to see sort of how many things are on iTunes, but I’ve been convinced over the past few weeks that something really has been lost as we’ve transitioned so thoroughly away from physical media that some stuff is just very hard to find.

And when I actually finally had to go out and get a physical copy of The Flamingo Kid, I realized like I have no player that can actually play this thing, which is a very strange place to get to in your life. Where I have all these drawers full of DVDs that I haven’t watched in a long time because instead I just watch Netflix or I watch iTunes. And I’ve actually found myself being guilty of like I think I have a DVD of that, but it’s actually just $2.99 for me to get it on iTunes, and so I just look for it on iTunes. And in some cases the iTunes quality is better. So it’s not a crisis to do that. But I’m not going back to those DVDs very often. And the existence of physical media is sort of a bulwark. It’s a protection against things being lost.

**Kate:** Yeah. My friend Matt Shiverdecker is very in the loop in terms of home video licensing and who owns what and that kind of thing and he has one of the most impressive home collections I’ve ever seen. And he has just kind of a running list of, you know, here are things that never got put on DVD that I love. Here are things that never got put on any kind of HD transfer that I love.

I mean, it’s shocking some of the things that aren’t available. A couple of months ago I was looking for Cronenberg’s Crash and I ended up watching it on YouTube with Spanish subtitles because that was the only version of the movie I could find. And I was like this was an important movie in the ‘90s. The fact that this was only on an out-of-print DVD right now is crazy. Cronenberg is a major filmmaker.

**John:** Yeah. Well, we need to talk before we wrap this up, we had to talk about piracy, because in some ways piracy is both the answer to and the cause of a lot of these problems. Is that without piracy some of these things would be impossible to find. If you hadn’t found that bootleg Spanish thing on YouTube you would not have been able to watch that. So, good that it exists there, sort of, with an asterisk. But piracy is also part of the reason why these companies feel like it’s not in their interest to try to make a legal version of it available because they’re like I could spend all this time figuring out the rights on this thing, getting it on iTunes, getting it on a streaming service, and I’m not going to sell anything because someone is going to just get the pirated version. That’s what happened to the music industry. That’s what’s going to happen to me. So–

**Kate:** It’s a tough conundrum. I don’t know what the good answer is to that because, you know, I would say I did a lot more torrenting and illegally watching of movies like ten years ago. And I would say it was much easier to do then than it is now.

But there are many things you’re like, you know, I have tried the legal methods. I have done my diligence. If I can’t find it, I’m going to watch the illegal version. Like, I’m sorry, and thank god that there are still people who put movies like Crash and Times Square up on YouTube to find, because otherwise then we can’t access the movie. And that’s really terrible.

**John:** Consolidation in the industry has left us with so few companies controlling so much. And some of your folks have acknowledged as you’ve talked to them about their video stores is that in a weird way we ceded control to giant corporations who are ultimately gatekeepers of like whether a thing can be seen or not. So, between Apple and Netflix and HBO, sort of those, and art studios which are so small, in some ways the zillion companies that made all these movies it was better because there were multiple people producing films. They were going out to many, many venues. There were video stores all across the country. And as the funnel gets narrower and narrower, I don’t know if this actually happening, but if someone at Apple really despises a certain movie they could just make the movie not available. And there’s really sort of nothing we as a culture or as that filmmaker could step up and get in the way of that.

**Kate:** Yeah. I mean, you know, losing that kind of personal choice that video stores provided where you were not at the mercy of corporations. Where you could rent a Hitchcock classic and like a garbage horror movie and like a kid’s program all in the same day. When that control is given to major corporations who have bottom lines and financial interests to hit, you know, they’re not going to put stuff on the service that nobody is watching. They’re not going to put stuff on the service that nobody is taking note of. But that doesn’t mean that those films still aren’t valid and deserve to be seen by the people who want to see them.

**John:** Cool. As we wrap this up, do you have any recommendation for a film that people should check out and where they should find it if it’s hard to find?

**Kate:** Ooh, interesting. I feel like I could go all day on this kind of subject. Let’s see. I was just talking about I found Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains on DVD, which was great. I’d been looking for that one for quite a while. So, something I would recommend, if you guys don’t have FilmStruck, you’ve got to get FilmStruck. They are really picking up a lot of the slack in terms of classic movies. And not just, you know, when we think of classic movies we think of like ‘50s epics, but you know like Bill & Ted is currently on FilmStruck. So, it’s a tide that raises all boats.

But my favorite thing on FilmStruck is Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky, which is completely unavailable elsewhere. It’s this incredible gangster movie with John Cassavetes and Peter Falk. It’s most famous because Elaine May fought like hell with Paramount about the final cut. At one point she stole the print from them and was like hiding it in her garage because she didn’t want them to keep tinkering with it. This movie is very hard to find and it is now on FilmStruck, so you’ve got to check it out.

**John:** Fantastic. FilmStruck I’ve not used yet but I definitely will. Rian Johnson loves it and tweets about it a lot. So that will be fantastic.

All right, it comes time for our One Cool Things. So this is where we recommend things that are out there in culture that people should go out and see or read. In my case it is a book. It is My Life as a Goddess by Guy Branum. It is fantastic. So you will probably recognize Guy because he’s often a guest on talk show kind of things. He’s a comedian. He’s been on Midnight, Larry Wilmore’s show, Chelsea Lately. But this book he’s written is fantastic.

So, it details sort of his growing up in rural Northern California, sort of the agriculture community. It’s just great, great writing and he’s really, really funny. So, Mindy Kaling who was our guest two weeks ago, she wrote the forward to the book and she’s exactly correct when she says that it is fantastic and you should check it out. So, Guy Branum’s My Life as a Goddess.

**Kate:** That sounds great. I’ve been hearing a lot of really wonderful things about that book. I’ve got to check it out.

**John:** It reminded me of Lindy West’s book, which I also loved, and sort of because Guy is a big, giant guy. And it reminded me some of what she wrote about in her book. But the specificity of where he grew up and what his life was like was fantastic. And not to spoil too much about it, but My Life as a Goddess refers to this Greek goddess who suffers all these challenges and then at one moment realizes, wait, I’m a goddess, and just transforms everything around her. And that sense of recognizing your own personal self-power is great.

**Kate:** Sounds awesome.

**John:** Cool. Anything more you want to recommend? Because you just made a great recommendation on that film.

**Kate:** Yeah. I’m going to plug a great movie t-shirt website. It’s called Tees-En-Scène. It is Colin Stacy who is a wonderful dude in Texas who has taken up the mantle of making these incredible t-shirts that highlight female writer-directors mostly. There are two out right now. There is the Elaine May t-shirt who we were just talking about. And then he just put out a t-shirt for Barbara Loden who made Wanda. He’s got an Amy Heckerling t-shirt in the pipeline. But they’re really cool because he pulls the frame of Written and Directed by from the movie itself on the t-shirt so it’s not just like boring text.

**John:** Oh neat.

**Kate:** He’s got Kathleen Collins coming up. And also some of the proceeds are funneled back to women of color filmmakers. So you get to get a dope t-shirt and you get to support a great cause. Check it out, Tees-En-Scene, or if you want to google Elaine May t-shirt, Barbara Loden t-shirt you can find it.

**John:** Very, very cool. All right. That is our show for this week. As always it is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Luke Davis. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. But short questions are great on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Kate, are you on Twitter?

**Kate:** I am. I’m @thathagengrrl like Riot Grrl.

**John:** Fantastic. You can find us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. But I will note that podcast feeds are actually directory based, and so Apple does not control your ability to get to our podcast. So, you really could find us any way. You could just type it into your little browser of choice and it would still be there. So for all the talk about like, oh, censorship control, podcasts are still an RSS-based medium. They’re still available out there in the world. They’re more free like the web than people think they are. Apple doesn’t actually host us. We’re just sort of out there.

But you can find us anywhere, just search for Scriptnotes. If you find us on a service, leave a comment because that helps people find the show.

Show notes for this episode and all episodes are at johnaugust.com. We’ll have links to Kate’s pieces that she’s written for the Black List. You’ll also find transcripts for our show at johnaugust.com. They go up about four days after the episode airs.

All the back episodes are at Scriptnotes.net. We also sell seasons of 50 episodes at store.johnaugust.com.

Kate Hagen, thank you so much for coming on to talk to us about reading and video and some great recommendations.

**Kate:** Thanks so much, John. And just one final thing. If you’ve got a video store in your neighborhood and you haven’t been there yet, what are you doing? Go to the video store.

**John:** Go to your video store. Thanks Kate.

Links:

* Thanks for joining us, [Kate Hagen](https://blog.blcklst.com/@thathagengrrl)!
* [In Search of the Last Great Video Store](https://blog.blcklst.com/in-search-of-the-last-great-video-store-efcc393f2982) by Kate Hagen
* [The Black List](https://blcklst.com/register/highlights.html#industry)
* [Netflix’s DVD service](https://dvd.netflix.com/MemberHome)
* [Fresh Horses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF2wY3uJdng) was one of those missing movies.
* [The Fall of MoviePass](https://variety.com/2018/film/news/moviepass-ending-subscription-service-1202891561/) and its [reverse stock split](https://deadline.com/2018/07/moviepass-parents-stock-plummets-44-after-reverse-split-takes-effect-1202433444/)
* Kate recommends [Ladies & Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06kCwPpyjCk), [Mikey and Nicky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_qMg8ZG0ic) and [FilmStruck](https://www.filmstruck.com/us/?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=MIDF&utm_term=filmstruck&utm_content=A200_A203_A015526&c=A200_A203_A015526&pid=adwords&cid=ppc_adwords_A200_A203_A015526&creator=Fetch&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIv_z-toj93AIVl6DsCh1Y0QjEEAAYASAAEgLAkfD_BwE) to watch classic movies.
* [My Life as a Goddess](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075RNFTTW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) by Guy Branum
* [Tees-En-Scène](http://www.teesenscene.com) sells shirts that highlight and support female writer/directors.
* [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
* [Kate Hagen](https://twitter.com/thathagengrrl) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Scriptnotes Digital Seasons](https://store.johnaugust.com/) are also now available!
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Luke Davis ([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_364.mp3).