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The original post for this episode can be found here.

Craig Mazin: The reason I don’t like this producer is because they’re doing this thing that makes me insane, which is to elevate their personal issue to an industry-wide rule that does not exist. It is an appeal to authority they do not have, or rather, it’s an assumption of authority they do not have, and they are inviting people to just throw a wadded-up poster of Home Alone in their face. I shall do so virtually.

John August: 30 minutes earlier. Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

Craig: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is Episode 735 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

What you just experienced was a flash-forward, or what we call in this podcast, a Stuart Special. They are surprisingly common in spec scripts, to a degree, they can feel cliché. Today on the show, we’ll look at what makes an effective flash-forward, when to consider them, and when to run away.

We’ll also be answering a bunch of listener questions, including some from our random advice mailbag, and in our bonus segment for premium members, how to go to Hollywood parties. Craig, if there’s one thing you and I know about, it’s how to go to parties.

Craig: I can’t wait to learn.

John: Absolutely. There are some minimums. We’re going to teach you the minimum.

Craig: We’ve been to enough.

John: We’ve been to enough.

Craig: We can fill people in who have not been to Hollywood parties on what they’re really like.

John: Yes, absolutely.

Craig: If you ever do find yourself in one, how to behave?

John: 100%. Absolutely. One of the last Hollywood parties I think I went to was premiere for second season of The Last of Us, and I did the things I think you should do at a Hollywood party. We’ll talk through those.

Craig: Great.

John: Some follow-up. Last week and the week before, we invited our listeners to participate in a ScriptNotes survey. We asked them to click a link, go through a form, and answer some questions about ScriptNotes. 333 people, Craig, answered that survey. That’s a good number.

Craig: That’s a great number.

John: About half of them were premium members. Half of them were- our regular listeners.

Craig: I’d like to say about half of them enjoyed the podcast.

John: More than half enjoyed the podcast. What would be terrible if you put the survey like, “We hate this show. Please stop doing it.”

Craig: We’re running about a 55% right now.

John: Yes, that’s what it is. Just above the minimum-

Craig: Just above.

John: We’re higher than Congress.

Craig: Yes, we’re higher than Congress.

John: That’s our goal on this podcast.

Craig: We got all those people, and what did we learn?

John: Some top-line numbers to tell you. 82% of our listeners listen to almost every episode.

Craig: Wow.

John: That’s great. Half of them have been listening for five years or longer. 40% of listeners found out about ScriptNotes through word of mouth.

Craig: That makes sense.

John: That does make sense.

Craig: We don’t really advertise.

John: We don’t advertise. The other ways people find out about it would be like Google, or it was recommended through the algorithms on Spotify, or they saw us at Austin Film Festival, that thing. Word of mouth is probably the way. I guess tell all your friends you listen to ScriptNotes. That’s probably the only way that people are going to start listening.

Craig: You at home are our Salesforce.

John: 100%.

Craig: We do offer some commission.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: 100% of 0%.

John: Yes, exactly. How old do you think our listeners are, Craig? What percentage of our listeners are college-aged? They’re between 18, 22, 23.

Craig: I would say a curiously large number. I’m going to go with 12%.

John: 3%.

Craig: Wow, okay.

John: Small?

Craig: See, I thought 12 was curiously large, so I’m not surprised that it’s not.

John: Again, this is people who filled out the survey, so there could be some of that.

Craig: A little bit of self-selection.

John: What percentage are between 35 and 54?

Craig: That’s going to be the meat there. I’m going to go with 60.

John: 65, yes, that’s 100%.

Craig: We’re an adult podcast.

John: We’re an adult podcast.

Craig: We’re a mature podcast.

John: Absolutely. What percentage of our listeners who filled out the survey have an undergraduate degree or higher? For international listeners, that’s college.

Craig: Sure. We’ll have to deduct 3% from the kids who haven’t graduated yet. I’m going to say 78%.

John: 98%.

Craig: 98?

John: 90.

Craig: Oh, 90.

John: Nine zero.

Craig: That’s rather educated.

John: Yes.

Craig: I’m not surprised.

John: If we were to have advertising, which we will never have advertising, that would be a very attractive market for them. What percentage of our listeners live in the Los Angeles area?

Craig: I’m going to go with 22%.

John: 25%.

Craig: Oh.

John: Yes, see? Craig knows this stuff. What percentage work in the entertainment industry? As writers or as anywhere else in the entertainment industry?

Craig: 34%.

John: 50%.

Craig: Oh, that’s more than I thought.

John: Yes, that’s good.

Craig: Okay, that’s quite good.

John: 67% of premium subscribers gave the premium service a 10.

Craig: Oh, that’s great.

John: 90% gave it an eight or higher, which feels great. People just seem really happy in that.

Craig: I like the people who just keep paying for it, but they’re like, it’s a three.

John: It’s a three.

Craig: It’s so mid, here’s another five bucks.

John: Absolutely. I’ll never stop subscribing. We asked about some other things that I’d be interested in. Of the recurring segments, people liked most of them. There wasn’t a-

Craig: A big favorite or a-

John: Some people don’t listen to the Three-Page Challenges. “Mike, my husband, never listens to Three-Page Challenges,” which is great.

Craig: Sure. I don’t think Melissa does either.

John: No, which is fine.

Craig: Then again, Melissa mostly listens to the podcast to fall asleep. I think I’ve said this before. It’s not an insult, because I’m not around. She likes hearing my voice. Your voice apparently does not put her to sleep. My voice gives her some comfort.

John: You are her sleepcast.

Craig: I don’t think she ever makes it to the end. Then again, she rarely makes it to the end of any media before falling asleep.

John: One finding that was interesting in terms of a new thing we could try to do more of is, we could describe it as a screenplay book club, which is basically where we just talk through a screenplay. It’s a deep dive, but if we could tell people in advance that we were doing it, that we’re all reading the same script and going through it.

Craig: That’s a great idea. I think we should do that.

John: I think we should do that too.

Craig: That would be fun.

John: What we need to figure out is are we doing something that’s already been produced or an unproduced screenplay. What is the best way to do this?

Craig: I find that people tend to like things they’re familiar with. It’s a little bit abstract, I think. Probably fewer people will be interested in reading a script of an unproduced thing. What we could do is pick a script for something that’s been made that isn’t necessarily the one people talk about.

John: 100%. That makes a lot of sense. I was also thinking if there is some screenwriter who’s really good, and just for whatever reason, this thing was never made.

Craig: Well, there is that.

John: They’re willing to share it with us.

Craig: Scott Frank wants to give us that great unmade screenplay. I’d be happy.

John: Some other suggestions from the open answer sections. Someone said they would love John and Craig to get into writing phone call scenes because I always struggle with how to best represent this type of scene on the page. We should do that.

Craig: Great topic.

John: An entire episode devoted to what we could learn from the work of Stephen Sondheim, Tony Kushner, Jeremy O. Harris.

Craig: Oh my gosh.

John: Yes. We haven’t done a lot on playwriting overall, and it does feel like-

Craig: Sondheim alone deserves a 750-episode podcast, and I’m sure there are some out there, but what a wizard. What a wizard.

John: I would need to do some reading, and I need to get up to speed with his workflow and the fullness of the work because I know a lot of the musicals, but I don’t know the process behind them.

Craig: Very rigorous. Not surprisingly because if you look at the lyrics, they are so crafted. I do remember reading one interesting thing about a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The show initially, when it was running, it began with this song about war. It anchored the audience in a position where they were like, this isn’t a funny show because it wasn’t a funny song. Everything that happened after that was a comedy, no one laughed at. Sondheim, in a panic, wrote Comedy Tonight. What became the opener, and nothing else changed, and everybody laughed at everything. It was just anchoring people.

John: As we get into our discussion of flash-forwards, that is actually one of the main things is whatever you introduce the audience to first, it’s anchoring them. It’s setting a frame for what everything’s happening around there. A flash-forward could do that or could mislead the audience in terms of what they’re expecting. Other last things, people suggest your episode on how to write a movie is a thing people can keep coming back to. I’ve always promised I will do my own version of that. At some point, when you’re gone, I will try to do a version of that because we have similar aims but different techniques.

Craig: Different methods. I have promised people how to write a television episode. One day, I’m going to have to do that one.

John: Maybe when you’re done writing television episodes. If it will ever happen.

Craig: My God.

John: It will end. Within a year, you’ll be done writing new episodes of this series for a while.

Craig: Yes, it will end, but until it ends, “Oh, man.” It’s a lot of words.

John: It’s a lot of words.

Craig: When I look back, and I put all the episodes together, it makes large volumes like big thick books on your bookshelf of pages. Oh, man. John, can you imagine if you did that with everything you wrote? Oh, it looked like the World Book. Hey, kids, remember the World Book?

John: No reference at all.

Craig: None.

John: Our listeners are 35 to 54, so they’ll know what the World Book encyclopedia was.

Craig: The 48 to 54’s will remember the World Book.

John: That 3% who are in college right now, they have no idea what we’re talking about.

Craig: The F is a World Book. That is not fire. Cringe.

John: Cringe.

Craig: Cringe.

John: Let’s talk about flash-forwards, or as we call them on this podcast, the Stuart Special. Craig, can you remind us who Stuart Friedel is, what his role was on the podcast, and how the Stuart Special became its thing?

Craig: Stuart, I believe, is the first producer of Scriptnotes. One of Stuart’s jobs, of course, as producer, is to select Three-Page Challenges. We came to note, I think probably because it was just very au courant among people writing screenplays, that so many of them began with a flash-forward where there would be some half a page or page, and then a title would say three weeks earlier, or one month earlier, or one year earlier. We came to call that a Stuart Special because we just figured, “Oh, Stuart loves these,” which he probably doesn’t.

John: No.

Craig: No, he’s indifferent.

John: The volume of what’s coming through, these are- the ones he’s picking, and he’s not the only person who encounters them. We have a listener question from Anonymous.

Drew: “I read for The Black List website, and as with your Three-Page Challenges, I get a lot of Stuart Specials. In my opinion, the flash-forwards generally aren’t interesting enough to get the audience excited about what’s to come, or they give away too much and take some of the suspense out of the story. What makes a strong flash-forward? I’m very interested to hear your thoughts.”

Craig: Let’s say you had a story where the hero, in the end, kills himself. You probably wouldn’t want to start anything like that.

John: Well, except they did.

Craig: Except they did, and I Stuart Specialed the hell out of it.

John: Go opens with a Stuart Special.

Craig: There you go. Here’s the deal with Stuart Specials. Like everything else, if it’s interesting, it works. If it has purpose, and if it needs to be a Stuart Special, if it really does add something, then it’s of value. If it’s just, I don’t know how to begin this thing, so I’m just going to do a record scratch, and then someone’s going to say, “You’re probably wondering how I got here,” then it doesn’t work because you don’t need to do it.

For me, at least, in Chornobyl, I did not want people to eventually get to the end and go, “I wonder what happens– Oh, no, he kills himself.” I’m just like, “Let’s just get that out of the way. Let’s ask ourselves, why did this guy end up doing that?” I think the way ones that work, work.

John: We’ve talked about opening scenes many times on the show, most notably in episode 493. What we were stressing is that an opening scene needs to ask a provocative question and set a promise and an expectation for what the story is about to see. I talked about with Comedy Tonight, it is setting a frame for what the experience is going to be like. You’re starting that contract with the audience in terms of, give me your attention, and I will make it worth your while, and that’s what you’re supposed to be doing.

What’s interesting about a Stuart Special is that you are essentially borrowing drama from later in the story for whatever reason. It may be because the actual chronological beginning is too quiet or too ordinary, or it doesn’t feel like where the movie’s going. That can be legitimate, but you have to really think. You are borrowing, so you’re creating a debt, and you have to make sure that you’re paying off that debt in a way that is meaningful and rewarding for the audience. Otherwise, it’s just going to feel like a cheat.

Craig: Correct. You do need to be able to tell a story moving forward that allows people to arrive at that moment again and go, “Oh, actually, now that I know what I know, I feel differently about this. I’ve learned why this was important.”
The most powerful Stuart Special I have ever witnessed is Gandhi. Gandhi begins with Gandhi being assassinated. As a kid, I was so shocked and traumatized from the jump.

Immediately, I was in a place where I felt unsafe in the best possible way, which is to say in a movie theater where you are safe, but understanding that whatever this man did, it earned him death by gunfire. What was it? In a beautiful way, you begin to forget if the story does it well, so that when you arrive there, again, you go, “Oh, no. Oh, that’s right. Oh, no. Oh, no, he’s going to die.” That’s when the Stuart Special is working well.

John: That moment where you have returned to that place that you set up in the Stuart Special, if it’s just like, “Oh, now we’re here,” that’s not so rewarding. If you’ve recontextualized that moment based on what we experienced before, now we know the characters, we know the situation, and it’s actually surprising that we got to this moment, those tend to be the ones where it really was structurally a great choice to open with that flash-forward and get us there.

We talk about the framing, Comedy Tonight, this is actually comedy, you’re supposed to be laughing. Often, a movie will get big, but if we don’t know that it’s going to be able to get big later on, those first five, 10 minutes might feel so small that it doesn’t work. I would just always urge the writer to think about, does it need to be so small to start? There may be a way to actually start with the size and scale of what the thing is going to get to in those opening moments.

Craig: Or it may be that the moment that you’re thinking of as a Stuart Special would play better if it just unfolded. Here’s an example. I love John Wick. I love that movie. It starts with a Stuart Special. I got to be honest, I’m not sure it’s necessary.

I remember seeing that Stuart Special and thinking, “Okay, well. Sure, fine.” It didn’t actually make that moment better later, and given what happens early on in the story, I don’t think I needed it. That’s really the test for me, is would this be better to just happen once or is it better if it happens twice.

John: Let’s also talk about anticipation. Because one of the things that a Stuart Special does is it creates an anticipation in the audience that we’re going to get to this moment. That can be great. It can create a sense of dread because the audience is ahead of the characters because we know that this thing is going to happen. We know the gun is going to get shot, and they don’t know they’re going to get shot.

It can also make the reader impatient because it becomes that, “When are we getting to the fireworks factory? We know that’s going to happen at some point. Come on, let’s get there now.” It can make us pay less attention to the scenes leading up to it.

Craig: Which is a good challenge for yourself as a writer, don’t let that happen. Titanic sinks. James Cameron did not let us sit there going, “Oh my God, this boat sinks. Can we just get to the sinking part?” No, he brilliantly distracted us with a lovely romance. I think that’s the challenge, right?

That’s why Stuart Specials are seductive as a writer. You’re basically saying, “I’m a magician, Penn & Teller, do this. We’re going to show you how we do this trick. Got it? Now watch us do this trick.” It’s still awesome because there’s so much sleight of hand and ingenuity that goes into it. That’s the fun challenge of a Stuart Special.

John: The last thing I’ll say about a Stuart Special is you think like, “Oh, we’re setting up the size and scale and scope of the movie,” but sometimes you’re actually just delaying the start of the movie. We’re delaying getting to know who our hero is, what their situation is because it’s all this extra [unintelligible 00:16:20] before you get there. There was a movie I watched a bit of on a plane, this was last time, with talented actors who I loved, but the opening sequence was just meant to set up the size and scale. It’s like, “I don’t care about any of these people.”

Craig: Who are these people? Why is this happening?

John: It’s not the movie I signed up for, so why are we watching this thing?

Craig: Yes. I think sometimes what happens is people make a movie, they test it, which is a horrible process. The guy who does the focus group after inevitably says, “Let’s talk about pacing. Overall, did you think the movie dragged a little bit, was pretty well paced, or moved too quickly?” No one ever says move too quickly, ever, even though many movies do. Almost always, about half the people say it was about right, and half the people say it dragged in spots because every movie will drag in a different spot for everybody. Inevitably, they will say, “It took a while for it to get going.” Correct, that’s how stories work.

Watch Star Wars, a half an hour of robots walking around in the desert. That’s how it starts, a half an hour of that and it’s slow. What do producers do? They panic, and they go, “We got to get them right away, right off the top of the bat. Take this thing, put it in the beginning, and then go three weeks earlier, and now it starts better.” No, not always. No. Sometimes, just let people, I don’t know, get there. They’ll get there.

John: They’ll get there.

Craig: They’ll get there.

John: Takeaway here, Stuart specials are not categorically bad, but if you’re going to use one, it has to really have a purpose. It has to be a purpose, not just because the start of your movie is boring. It has to be there’s a reason why you’re starting with this moment to set up the size and scale and frame of your story that is meaningful. If you’re just doing it for those things, ask yourself, could you do it with the actual present-tense start of your story? That should be your first instinct because you’re always borrowing something from later in the story, and there’s a cost to that. Sometimes the cost is 100% worth it, but so often it’s not.

Craig: It should definitely not be an excuse for you to not try to think of an awesome opening scene that would be present tense.

John: 100%. All right, let’s answer some listener questions, which is most of what we’re doing today. Do you want to start with this one about time jumps?

Craig: Yes, it feels relevant.

Drew: Michael writes, I’m writing a feature set in the late 70s that intercuts between present day 1977 and about seven months earlier. For the first roughly 40 pages, the script moves back and forth in five to 10-minute chunks, often in the same locations with the same characters. These play like different timelines more than flashbacks. My concern is clarity for the reader, especially someone skimming. The two timelines have very different tones. The present’s darker, more grounded. The earlier timeline is warmer, slightly heightened, almost nostalgic. The story really depends on tracking those shifts. What’s the cleanest, most professional way to signal these time jumps on the page?

John: That’s a common thing we run into.

Craig: That’s an extreme situation, though, because there’s so many shifts back and forth, and it’s not large jumps in time. If you go from the 1970s to the 2000s, it’ll just feel different from the way people are talking and probably what they’re doing. Seven months in time is not a lot. If it’s something really subtle like that, the choices, as far as I can tell, are– The most mundane thing is just, in your scene header, you just say what year it is. You can constantly remind people which part. I guess you’d have to go with the month if you’re just doing a seven-month shift.

John: Yes. My instinct would be, because I’ve had to do this in a couple of things, is for the things that are set further back, you put past there and don’t put present. Because the present is our present, that’d be confusing.

Craig: The present is assumed.

John: If you just put the years, I worry that you would actually– There’s two timelines, just mark one of them differently.

Craig: Seven months earlier is a weird thing to write. It’s a weird thing to write 40 times. The other big swing you could do is to just let people know right off the top of the bat, this is what’s going to happen in this script. When we’re in this timeline, it looks like a regular script. When we’re in this timeline, the font is like this.

John: Greta Gerwig does this in Little Women, and all of the past, I think, is in red.

Craig: Yes, exactly. If you can visually set it apart, then you never have to mention anything because they’ll know.

John: Because when you actually make your movie, you’re going to do things to visually distinguish those two timelines. It’s a problem of the script on the page.

Craig: This is the thing where people are, “But the rules.” I guess Greta Gerwig didn’t hear about the rules.

John: No.

Craig: You know what? There’s an interesting thing people ask, what is a common trait among successful screenwriters and as far as I could tell, the only common trait is none of us give a damn about the stupid rules. Literally none of us.

John: Related to that with Greta Gerwig, I would say that she, and this is true to every good screenwriter I know, is she actually does care about the read and she’s trying to make sure that she’s fully communicating what the movie feels like on the page.

Craig: That’s her job. That’s her job. Don’t direct on the page. Yes, do it and make sure people are feeling what you want them to feel. What you said is what she cares about is the read, not the rules.

John: Correct. Now, let’s intersperse this with some random advice. Where do you want to start with it?

Drew: Let’s start with Anais. She writes, “My oldest is going to kindergarten in the fall.”

Craig: Oh, congrats.

Drew: “Any advice for the elementary school years?”

John: By kindergarten, your kid has probably already gotten all the daycare sicknesses. Basically, they pick up all the things, which is just fine.

Craig: No one gets chickenpox anymore because of the vaccine.

John: Which is great. Listen, kindergarten is largely about learning to sit in a circle and just learning how to be around other kids and just do the things. They’ll be very basic. They’ll learn to read. They’ll learn to count and stuff. They’ll mostly just learn how to be a student and how to follow some rules and follow some structure. That should really be all your goal there.

Craig: The elementary years are the best years. This is the good news, Anais. Your child is, I assume, five or six. It’s typical kindergarten age. By the time they’re done with elementary school, they’ll be 10. Yes, some kids, especially girls around 10, will start tilting over into a different phase of life. At least five, six, seven, eight, nine, those are the best years because they’re children. They are not wrapped up in anything adolescent. They are fun and ridiculous, and they still love birthday parties. They love birthday parties. My advice to you, Anais, is, oh my God, enjoy this because, yes, man, then it gets a little crazy.

John: One luxury you have when they’re this age is that they probably get along pretty well with a lot of kids. See if you can figure out which parents you can actually stand being around because you’re going to play dates, and birthday parties, and stuff like that, where you’re going to just be around other kids’ parents a lot. If you can find friends, other parents you can stand to be around, and your kids get along, you’re happier. You’re better.

Craig: You know what? That brings to mind one last bit of advice I have for Anais. I have two kids. One is on the spectrum, one is not. Now, the thing about kids who are neurodivergent is, socially– As we know, a lot of neurodivergent people struggle socially, but children will generally struggle less socially in the elementary school years because everyone is struggling socially because they’re also young. What happens is somewhere around 11, 12, 13, what do we call the non-neurodivergent people?

John: Neurotypical.

Craig: Neurotypical kids will start to peel off and accelerate socially, and the neurodivergent kids just stay where they are, and then the gap grows, and then trouble starts. One bit of advice I have for you, Anais, is if you feel maybe your kid is neurodivergent and is struggling a little bit socially, but you’re tempted to go, “Oh, but they have friends,” keep an eye on it. Take it seriously because it’s never too early to learn skills, and it can become a significant issue for them and create a lot of stress for them and you once they hit those horrible middle school years.

John: Yes, middle school is universally bad for everybody.

Craig: Nightmare.

John: If you’re coming in there-

Craig: Absolute nightmare.

John: -with extra challenges, it’s horrible. All right, let’s go back to normal questions. Charlie in Sheffield.

Drew: “I’m very hyped for The Sheep Detectives.”

John: Congratulations on your movie, The Sheep Detectives.

Craig: Yay. In theaters.

Drew: “I noticed Craig is credited with both screenplay and screen story. What’s a screen story? Why say both? Presented like this, aren’t you just saying the same thing twice?”

Craig: It’s embarrassing. No, we’re not saying the same thing twice, but I wish we could just fold it into one thing. Here’s the brief summary. When you adapt something from source material, in this case, there is a book, Three Bags Full, written by a fantastic German author pseudonymically named Leonie Swan. I don’t even know her real name, but she’s a lovely person.

When you adapt things from source material, you get screenplay by, but if you adapt it in such a way that you create a story that is significantly different from the source material, then only through an arbitration, the Writers Guild may award the screenwriter also screen story by. The reason that’s important for us as writers is it confers separated rights, which we’ve gone through in a prior episode. If you get screenplay by and story by in an original film, they just fold it together and make it written by. Why they refuse? I’ve tried. They refuse to fold screenplay and screen story by into written by because they’re like, “Well, because written by is just for originals.” You end up with this very silly arrangement of multiple credits. I don’t like it. I apologize.

John: That’s reality. It’s one of those things which with great effort and probably a member vote, you could change. To change those credit things is elaborate and complicated. It’s a question of where do you spend your energy.

Craig: You basically have to go to the membership to get a vote, and then you have to go to the AMPTP and have them agree to make that change, also because it’s dictated by the MBA.

John: I will tell you that the AMPTP wants to say no to anything, even if it’s 100% free. It will cost them nothing.

Craig: If you offered them pizza, they would say, ” Pay us for it.”

John: Absolutely.

Craig: What, we’re buying it for you. No, their immediate answer is no. They love saying no. Everything you ask puts everything else you ask in jeopardy. Of course, if the Writers Guild had a– Many years ago, there was a mid-contract mechanism, called the Contract Adjustment Committee, which was somewhat controversial. The idea is that as little, tiny things would come up inside of the term, you could then go back and, without an official reopening of the contract, adjust some things. Now that our contract term is four years, there is perhaps some wisdom in considering the value of something like that. This is the thing you would do in that.

John: Totally.

Craig: It’s not a big money issue- it’s just a little friction point.

John: Absolutely. A related question that I think we may have answered on the podcast before, but sometimes a writer’s name will appear multiple times in the credit block because they did some writing by themselves. They also wrote with a partner, or they wrote with multiple partners on things. You see one person’s name mentioned three times in a credit block. It is weird and uncomfortable. You could imagine some scenario down the road where the mathematical credits should be a certain way, and the actual credit you see on screen could be slightly different than that.

Craig: It actually does work like that in those cases if the writers agree. If you have written by A and then end the writing team of A and B, if writer A agrees, and they should, but sometimes they don’t, it’ll just say written by A and B, but A will get more residuals because of that. That is possible, but in this case, not possible.

John: It wasn’t, yes. Weirdly, yes.

Craig: It looks like I just threw a tantrum and asked for my name to be on there twice, no. Anyway, I hope they enjoy the movie.

John: Let’s answer a listener question from Colton.

Drew: What is something that is undervalued yet offers the greatest return when it comes to health or quality of life?

Craig: Oh my gosh.

John: I will say relationships. Obviously, having a life partner is incredibly valued, but I think people know that. I would say other relationships. Relationships outside of your marriage are really important. That you have a group of people that you can-

Craig: Friends.

John: Friends, yes. Our weekly D&D game, super important. My other friends who I see independently of Mike, super important.

Craig: Yes, especially as men grow older. There’s just so much research to show that women maintain lots of friendships as they get older and men don’t, and then they just get sad and die. The answer, I would probably say there is sleep by any means necessary. People struggle with sleep, and you can get by on less than you should get. The more you get, the better off it seems you are, unless you’re depressed. If you are feeling fairly mentally healthy, getting sleep, and if you have trouble sleeping, I’m a pro-sleep aid person as well. Whatever it takes, I don’t care. Sleep. I know they’ll say, “It’s not as good of a sleep.” It’s better than not sleeping. I just think people struggle, and sleep is huge.

John: Money spent on a good mattress, a dark, quiet room, try a white noise machine. Do the things-

Craig: Yes, blackout curtains. Although we’re all trying to be energy conscious, one thing we do know is it’s hard to sleep in a hot room.

John: Air conditioning is good.

Craig: Yes.

John: Victoria has an audio question.

Victoria: I wanted to ask a question about the problematic way that unfilmable is used. I don’t think it’s a very helpful note because I almost never see it applied to visual logic issues. It’s usually something that’s directed at– The camera can’t see it, so it’s not real. I also see it frequently criticizing a screenwriter’s use of internal character narrative. I really like to use that, and I like reading it. Not a ton of it.

One of my favorite examples of this is in the first Chornobyl script, where Bryukhanov is said to envision a very likely fate for himself. An inquiry, an arrest, a trial, a bullet. I love that because I feel it. I feel it from the script. That said, I do think there is a valid note that applies to the invisible information being laid out for the reader that the viewer has no way of getting. I guess my question is, when do you decide to add detail to a character’s internal world, and when is the information on the script readable but not legible to the viewer? Thank you so much.

Craig: Thank you. That’s a good question. I’m certainly a criminal when it comes to this. I do this all the time. Victoria, to me, the big difference in what I would call a annoying and useless unfilmable and a helpful, useful unfilmable is when it informs the actor so that they can perform something because then it is filmable. Their inner thoughts, their inner feelings, and emotions come out.

Most of the time, I think good direction is not about how to say the words. It’s about how to feel or what you might want to feel here, and it comes through. It is filmable. That line, for instance, Con O’Neill made that clear in his performance. It was filmable. What I don’t particularly find useful are these omniscient, novelish narrations where a character is introduced and then the writer says, there are so-and-so who thinks they’re this and thinks that, but really they’re this or really they’re that. Well, that actually is not filmable because you’re not their writer. If it’s something the character is feeling in the moment, or thinking in the moment, then yes.

John: I would add to that, if the audience is going to experience that visually in watching the movie, then it’s not unfilmable. Sometimes you’re really portraying, if you’re talking about what this small village feels like and you’re giving description to it that may not directly match what this is, but it can be a metaphor that just helps us understand what this is going to feel like when we actually see it, and it gives information to the director-

Craig: Absolutely.

John: 100% valid.

Craig: Absolutely. It’s the [unintelligible 00:33:28] doesn’t know it is the classic, right? That’s the most cliché, horrible, unfilmable there is. So-and-so arrives, “hot but doesn’t know it.” How the hell do I know that she doesn’t know it? How is that possible that I can show that she doesn’t know she’s hot? I’m not sure. Anyone has actually ever not known they were hot anyway? Maybe some people do, but there’s only one way for me to find out. That’s for her to be shocked when somebody thinks she’s hot. Otherwise, it’s useless. It’s useless. Things like that, we avoid as best as we can, but anything that would help the actor, the production designer, the director, the costume designer, the composer making the score, anything that helps them is filmable.

John: Absolutely. I will also say there’s things you might include in an outline or a treatment that don’t make it through to the screenplay because those documents, they’re preliminary, and you can swing bigger in some of those ways because it’s not-

Craig: They’re meta.

John: They’re meta, yes. They’re talking about the scene rather than being the scene itself.

Craig: Exactly. Yes, they’re meta. Whereas the screenplay is the drama, and you can say whatever you want in an outline. You can interrupt yourself and say, “Okay, imagine this is like from Breaking Bad except blah, blah.” You can do whatever you want in an outline.

John: That would be dumb in a screenplay. It’s referencing another movie in your screenplay-

[crosstalk]

John: Yes. Final bit of random advice from Nick.

Drew: “What advice would you give to your older self?”

Craig: Didn’t we just do this?

John: We did our younger selves.

Craig: Oh, this is older self.

John: Older self, yes. I don’t know. I guess I would have to do it based on my observation of older people and things that frustrated me about them, or things I’ve seen that worked really well for them. Let’s go on the positive.

Craig: Okay.

John: Dick Zanuck, who produced Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Big Fish, and many of Tim Burton’s movies, and was just an absolute mensch, I would say, don’t retire just because it’s what’s expected to happen to you. He genuinely loved working and producing movies for Tim Burton. It gave him so much joy, and so he didn’t stop just because he was old. He was loving doing it, and so why stop? He also called his sons every day, no matter where he was, and I love that for him.

Craig: Oh, how old am I?

John: You can decide.

Craig: Well, I’m going to project forward to quite old. My advice is, don’t bother doing a whole bunch of stuff to try and live longer. You’re not going to. Just keep rolling. Just keep rolling, you’re good. You’re good. No one lives forever. No one lives forever. What are you going to do? You’re going to start going to the gym every day? No, you’re not. At 80, you’re going to decide that’s when I’m going to start?

John: People don’t fundamentally change. I think that’s an important thing to remember. When I see people say, “Oh, well, maybe I’ll change.” No, they won’t change. They never will change.

Craig: No, old dog. No new tricks required. I would advise myself to eagerly go to any lifetime achievement ceremony that might come my way- because that’s actually the good sign that you’re done. That’s when you know they don’t want you anymore. They start giving you the thank you for your service awards.

John: Let’s go to another audio question. This one’s from Robert.

Drew: This one’s also follow-up from our conversation about avoidance in episode 731.

Robert: Hi. I just listened to your episode on protagonists’ motivation being driven by their desire to avoid things. I was just wondering if you have any tips for how to differentiate between a character driven by avoidance and a character that appears to have very little agency. I’ve received notes on a story that I am currently in the middle of and about half the people respond to the character positively and can totally understand why he’s doing what he’s doing, while about the other 50% of people seem to very much think that the character doesn’t have any agency, that they’re very much just reacting to everything around them and therefore is not very likable. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much.

John: Let’s recap what we were talking about before with avoidance. The thesis of that episode, 731, was that we tend to think about characters going off on a quest and wanting to do and achieve things, but often they’re just trying to avoid uncomfortable situations. In agency, we’re talking about a character’s ability to take action that moves them in a direction they want to move in, so they proactively go after a thing.

They’re related concepts, but they’re not quite the same. A prisoner has very little agency over certain aspects of their life. A person trapped in a bad domestic situation might have little agency over certain things. Yet, as an audience, we get frustrated by watching that person because we feel trapped there with them.

Craig: Yes. This is a bit different than the question of wanting something or avoiding something. This comes down to– Robert is describing what we would often call a passive character, which is a very easy character for people giving notes to pick on, and here’s why. Passive characters don’t seem to demand our attention because what we’re looking for in stories are those special moments in someone’s life where something important happens.

There are some art movies where you just sit there and watch someone stroll around through some random week of their life. I don’t like those. I like movies where stuff happens. When you have a character who doesn’t have agency, at a minimum, you have to give them a desire, a hope, some need. Even if you were to say, “Here’s a story about a prisoner, they’re never getting out, ever, and there’s no way to get out.”

Then the question is, how do they survive here? Can they find love? Can they find some spiritual peace? Can they figure out how to handle their own guilt or remorse? Can they seek amends? What is it that they want to do? They need something or are they just trying to stay alive, which would be avoiding death? Either way, what you really can’t do is just get pushed around and react without any goal.

John: Yes. I want to stick up for and defend two different groups. The groups who might say, well, there’s a whole range of cinema that is valid, which has passive heroes, passive protagonists. They’re just sure seeing their daily life. That’s absolutely valid. That’s not what we focus on on this podcast, which is movies where things happen, movies where people go on a one-time journey that is transformational, which can absolutely happen in a prison movie.

You’re right in saying that there has to be a point of view, a perspective that the movie has on this character and why we should be caring about this character and why we’d be so interested and invested. I want to defend the people giving these notes, saying, “I didn’t connect or didn’t relate because this character just wasn’t doing anything. It wasn’t moving the ball forward. That was my set of expectations.”

Craig: That’s what I want.

John: Yes. As we said from the start, from Comedy Tonight, you’re setting a frame on why we’re supposed to be paying attention to this character and his situation, what the journey is going to be. Maybe that’s really the issue is you’re not properly establishing what it is we should be looking for in this movie with this character balling things forward.

Craig: Great. Great points. There is a genre that I would call person trapped in lunacy. Kafka writes these stories beautifully. Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil is insane and bananas. Jonathan Price is a cog in a massive machine who slowly starts to realize that he’s a cog in a massive machine. Then, of course, it changes him.

There’s also the after-hours/something wild type of story where an average Joe ends up in a series of wild circumstances that they weren’t expecting. They are pushed around, except inevitably they’re also in desperate need of this, and they fall in love. The point of the story is you need to live.

These are essential, I think, to traditional storytelling. Certainly, if you hand somebody a script that doesn’t have that, give them fair warning. This is not one of those scripts. If you don’t like stories where nothing happens, this one isn’t for you.

Drew: It’s fair. A question from Mare. I’ve been working on an original screenplay that features a nine-year-old girl. I’ve had a few professionals in the field read it and provide really helpful notes. One producer director argued that, in no uncertain terms, that unless I were to direct a film about a child protagonist, a film featuring a child would never be made and could never be sold. He suggested that if it was something I needed to write, that I should write this as a book instead of a screenplay. I’d appreciate your insight on this opinion. I can’t shake the story. Most of the stories I’m drawn to feature younger people coming of age.

Craig: John, what do you think about this producer and his interesting insight into Hollywood?

John: This producer can say, like, “I wouldn’t make this movie.”

Craig: Totally. Not a problem.

John: That’s true, and that’s valid. Is there somebody who would make this movie? Yes.

Craig: They’ve made movies about children, starring children, since time immemorial. Shirley Temple, for God’s sake. Not to mention Little Man Tate and Sixth Sense and the movie where Macaulay Culkin died from a bee sting. Spoiler alert. There’s been so many movies.

John: Home Alone.

Craig: Home Alone. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There’s so many movies starring, I don’t know, are they specifically nine? I don’t know. Yes. How old was Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone?

Drew: Probably nine or 10.

Craig: Let’s Google that. I’m tempted to say about this producer, what an idiot. I’m going to. What an idiot.

Drew: Macaulay Culkin was nine years old.

Craig: He was nine years old in Home Alone, one of maybe the most successful family film of all time. The reason I don’t like this producer is because they’re doing this thing that makes me insane, which is to elevate their personal issue to an industry-wide rule that does not exist. It is an appeal to authority they do not have, or rather, it’s an assumption of authority they do not have. They are inviting people to just throw a wadded-up poster of Home Alone in their face. I shall do so virtually. Ha.

John: Is it valid to say it’s harder to make a movie with a nine-year-old protagonist? Sure, but it’s hard to make any movie. Come on.

Craig: They’re all hard.

John: Every movie’s hard. The thing, Mare, you should take away from this is try to get your movie made. Also, hopefully, this script is great, and that this is a sample for you to do other stuff too. You should not avoid writing the thing you want to write because it has a child protagonist. Stand by Me.

Craig: Stand by Me, for God’s sake. I’m going to actually get angry about this. Mare, broad advice for you now for your life. Anyone who says you can never do blankety blank in Hollywood, especially when it’s something that you know you can, don’t argue. Just walk away.

John: They’re not the person for you.

Craig: Cut them out of your life. I don’t know who that producer is, but if they are successful, it’s a mistake. It’s literally a cosmic error.

John: There’s producers who would say, “Oh, you can’t make a no-budget horror film,” because it’s not a thing they don’t want to make.

Craig: Exactly. You could say, I’m not going to make it. You could definitely say it’s really hard making a movie with a nine-year-old kid as the star because the restrictions on shooting with children are very specific and very onerous.

John: Also, well-intentioned and good because–

Craig: Oh, necessary. Yes. We don’t want child labor laws to be violated. It’s tough. We have kids on our show all the time, usually in smaller parts. We just know, here’s the deal. The time they take to ride there, then the time that they’re in the makeup chair, the time it takes to take the makeup off, that plus lunch, plus their teaching time, plus their mandated rests, and they can’t work more than eight hours total anyway, including all that stuff, you end up maybe four hours shooting with them, maybe?

John: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had five kids. How challenging.

Craig: It ends up costing way more money to make the same amount of movie with a kid than it would with an adult, like you said, for good reason. Still, people do it all the time because it works all the time. I’m not saying it doesn’t fail all the time, but when I say all the time, I mean lots of the time throughout history.

John: Let’s do another audio question. This one from Sydney.

Sydney: Hey, John and Craig. My name’s Sydney. My question is craft-related. I find that in my scripts, I often describe a lot of movement in the action lines, like a character walks this way or crosses the room. I’m actually noticing I end a lot of scenes with a character leaving a room or walking away from another character if they’ve just had a confrontation. I just feel like I do that very often, especially with the ending the scenes that way. Then I don’t know how to end them.

Is it better to just end on the dialogue line or is that cutting it off too early? Sometimes it feels like that’s almost getting out too early, but maybe that’s just because I’m used to ending it with someone walking away. I’ve been looking at other scripts for movies or pilots I’ve seen just to compare what’s on the screen versus what they wrote in that scene. I did just want your guys’ input to see what you thought.

John: It’s because she’s noticing a pattern, and it’s bugging her a bit that she’s doing it. It’s valid. Listen, characters walking away in a scene, it’s a choice, but if you’re doing it in every scene, something weird.

Craig: It’s a rough choice, specifically for ending a scene. If somebody walks away with purpose, if it is shocking that they walk away, if they walk away and slam a door behind them, if they walk away and disappear into a fog, sure. If they finish an argument and then turn and walk away, you’re just watching that. Then the question is, okay, let’s imagine us in the movie theater, where are we going to put our camera? At that point, you need to really end the scene on how the person who is being left feels. That’s more important than just somebody walking away because you’re not just going to watch people walking. It’s shoe leather there at the end of a scene.

John: I would ask, Sydney, if we’re following the person who’s walking away, a good choice can often be they have the confrontation, cut, and then we find them walking away, and then we can focus on them. The reaction they don’t want to show to the other person, and what that is, that’s a chance for us to get into that space. Just look at what you’re doing there. In terms of the movement within a scene, Craig and I are both huge fans of screen geography. Let people move around, let us see where things are going.

You might worry like, oh, you’re going to box people in on the blocking, you’ll figure it out. It gives a sense of what the flow is in the space and what things are like because if it feels like two characters are just standing, talking to each other in a scene, it’s not good.

Craig: No. If you don’t know how physically it’s possible for these things to happen, you end up with directors on the day just coming up with stuff which they seem to love and which I don’t.

John: Lots of bits.

Craig: I think it’s important for the screenwriter to give everybody something real to hang onto. Then, when you get there, if it’s not quite working, you adjust. I do that to my own writing all the time when I’m directing, but at least have a basis that is set in reality. Moving people around, where are they standing, Lindsay Doran’s most important question. You say two people are standing in a bar. Where in the bar? Against the bar? By a wall? Why are they standing by a wall? Why aren’t they sitting? How did one get there so quickly from all the way across the room?

These questions are worth asking. When you end a scene, one thing that you mentioned is, okay, you can cut to the next thing. Sydney, don’t think about the ending of your scene as the ending of a scene. Think about the ending of the scene as one side of a cut. The other side of the cut tells us something about how you ended, and how you ended is going to tell us something about what you see next. If you start thinking that way, for instance, if you have somebody walking away and the next shot is somebody else walking toward us, or somebody else walking away, that’s a different person, or there’s some sort of contrast, that could be interesting.

Think about the relationship between what we call the A side of the cut and the B side of the cut.

John: If you had two walking scenes back-to-back, it could work, but it’s also going to feel weird.

Craig: It’s going to start getting a little silly, isn’t it?

John: Yes, it is. You got to think about that. What’s also good that you recognize here, Sydney, is movies are not plays. You don’t have to enter and exit characters all the time. The film does that for you, which is great.

Craig: Last bit of advice for you, I love a door.

John: Love a door.

Craig: Love a door. I am obsessed with doors. I write doors all the time. I know there are things that I do that, have you seen that Aaron Sorkin supercut where he just reuses dialogue all the time? It’s all really good. I don’t do that, I don’t think, but just giving away one of my crutches. People will have a conversation with somebody, then turn, walk away, get to a door, stop, turn back, say one last thing, and then go, and the door closes, and that’s an end of a scene. A door closing, scene’s over. I like that. It’s better than just walking.

John: We’re going to have Elaine come on the podcast shortly to talk about The Devil Wears Prada. I think I noticed in her movie, which I may not have time to bring up in our conversation, is glass doors. There’s a lot of times where people are walking– You’re able to see somebody through a glass door, but not open the door, or the decision to open a door or not open the door, and so that movement becomes really important in what they can see and what they can’t see. I love it.

Craig: Doors.

John: Doors.

Craig: Doors.

John: Helpful. Doors and windows.

Craig: Big fan of doors.

John: Let’s answer a question from Andrew.

Drew: I searched your transcripts and looked in the script notes book, but I haven’t found an instance of you two tackling best practices for cutting down your screenplay. You mentioned how vast Scott Frank’s early drafts are.

Craig: [laughs] Poor Scott.

Drew: It’s well-known to me. That’s reality.

Craig: Yes, it is. It’s quite well-documented.

Drew: My question is, how does he trim those back? Everything in my script seems so important and special. I’ve condensed many scenes, and I’ve arrived late, and I’ve left early. All right.

John: This is a great question. I think we should save it for his own marquee topic. I know you’ve written on the blog about cutting. To give you a taste of what’s to come, it’s like you can make the small changes, but ultimately, if you really need to cut a lot, you need to make big changes. You need to cut scenes and sequences rather than trying to just take all the fat out of existing scenes.

Craig: It’s definitely a topic worth its own episode, because I think if you have a lot to cut, it is either an indication of the nature of your process or a problem with the story itself and the way it was conceived in the first place, if you have a lot to cut. For some people, it is part of their process, and they are aware as they’re writing that, okay, I’m not sure if this is going to make it in or not, but I need it now. Sounds like, in this case, I like all of this. Well, okay. Then I suspect there’s actually an unseen problem here that we will dig into and diagnose at a later time.

John: At a later time. Let’s try one cool thing. My one cool thing is a blog post by somebody named Malmsbury.

Craig: Malmsbury?

John: Malmsbury. M-A-L-M-S-B-U-R-Y.

Craig: Love it.

John: What they’re doing is they’re looking back at a cookbook, Microwave Cooking for One, which is a book from the mid-1980s.

Craig: My heart just sank.

John: It garnered momentary attention on the internet as being the world’s saddest cookbook.

Craig: Honestly, most microwave cooking is for one, but that is such a profoundly sad title.

John: Well, you would think so. It’s written by Marie T. Smith, and she wrote this book, Microwave Cooking for One. What I like about this blog post is it’s going back and just resuscitating and reframing, basically, how to think about this cookbook because the author goes through and actually makes a bunch of the recipes. It’s like, this woman, Marie T. Smith, was an absolute genius. In terms of, if you take the mandate of, okay, what is the best way to cook everything on earth in a microwave oven? She just figures it out and basically, like, do this for seven seconds and this, this. She has all these techniques for browning and crisping things in a microwave.

It is basically a pay-on to the power of technology and the wonders of a microwave oven.

Craig: I get that it would be incredibly useful. It’s just the title.

John: Oh, it is.

Craig: Why did it need to be for one? You know what I mean? If she’s so good at stuff, why limit it to just– You could just say, if you’re going solo, do this. If you’re cooking for two to four, do this. I mean, for one? Oh.

John: The blog post does go into the whole, the one of it all, because also, like cooking for two, it’s more than twice as long to do it because it’s not like heating an oven or a fry pan, where you can sort of do, it’s just as quick to do it for two as for one. It actually is different. We don’t reward domestic home life optimization and stuff to where we should.

We don’t acknowledge like, oh, there’s actually, it’s like a scientific rigor applied to things you don’t normally apply it to.

Craig: Some great early life hacks.

John: Yeah, completely. It’s a person, if she had lived at the YouTube era, we would celebrate her as like, look at this woman who’s figured out how to do all this stuff.

Craig: You can’t shake the image of somebody softly crying while the little thing inside the microwave rotates and just waiting. It’s still always three minutes left. It is eternally three minutes to go.

John: Craig, I don’t know if you’ve witnessed this phenomenon where you have work crews on a site, like they’re doing stuff at your house. Sometimes they will bring a microwave oven to plug it in so that they’ll have a microwave oven on their truck, and that’ll heat up all their food, which I just find terrific and remarkable. I just love it.

Craig: Oh, a little microwave is powerful. I mean, look, we’re old enough to remember what life was like before them.

John: Absolutely. I remember our first microwave.

Craig: Yes. The first time you microwave something, you lost your mind.

John: Incredible.

Craig: I feel the same way about the air fryer. The air fryer is just incredible.

John: Yes, we don’t have an air fryer.

Craig: It is spectacular.

John: Yes, everyone knows that.

Craig: Basically, it’s like a microwave, not technologically, but practically, it’s like a microwave that takes maybe twice as long as a microwave would, but tastes 10 times better.

John: In many ways, I was reading different blog posts about technologies and what’s the earliest the technology could have been invented. The air fryer, it’s just a hairdryer mounted differently.

Craig: It’s just a massive convection air dryer thing that works so well.

John: We could have had them 30 years ago. It’s a while that it was invented.

Craig: There it is. My sister introduced me to the air fryer many years ago. We played D&D, and we had pizza. We often do. I always over-order pizza because I’m a Jew, and if you run out of food, you go to hell. We don’t even have hell, but they make hell for you. I end up freezing all these slices of pizza, and putting pizza in a microwave is sad. Putting pizza straight from the freezer, a slab, like a piece of slate, put it in an air fryer, eight minutes later, brand new pizza, like it just got made. It’s spectacular.

John: Lacking an air fryer, what we do is heat up the oven with a pan in there so the pan gets hot, and then you put it on there, 400 degrees, a few minutes, delicious. Air fryer.

Craig: Air fryer, that’s great.

John: Craig, what’s your one cool thing?

Craig: As is often the case, I have a game. Now, as everyone knows, I’m rather obsessed with Baldur’s Gate 3. Because I love what Larian, the company that made Baldur’s Gate 3, did, I went back, and I played Divinity 2 and then Divinity 1, which were the prior games. Of course, I will play the upcoming Divinity, but I’m out of Larian games to play. Of course, I go on my Steam Deck like, “Let’s say you love Larian games. What’s like it?” The answer is, here’s something like it. It is. This is not at Larian level.

I appreciate what this company is doing. They’re very small, actually. It’s a company called Tactical Adventures. Do they have the polish of a Larian game? No. I think the entire company’s 35 people, or something, where Larian, I believe, employs hundreds of people. They made a game called Solasta II. They made Solasta I: Crown of the Magister. Then they made Solasta II. It is in early access right now, which is how Larian does their games, too. They don’t give you the entire game upfront. They give you a chunk of it. Then they’re using it to get feedback, debug, advanced features.

It works like Baldur’s Gate very much, what I really enjoy about it is that it is not just based on the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset and encyclopedia the way that Baldur’s Gate was. It is firmly, very strictly attached to 5th Edition rules. The way we play, that super crunchy way, that’s how this works. I actually find it on that level fun. I wish them great success. I believe in little companies trying things. Not everything has to be Baldur’s Gate 3.

John: Totally. You’re playing on Steam Deck. Is it just a Steam game?

Craig: I’m playing on Steam Deck. It is available for platform. I guess it’s available on PC as well. I guess everything that’s on Steam is theoretically PC-ish.

John: I’ve not been using my Steam Deck at all recently, so maybe I’ll break that and try it.

Craig: I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed with the Steam Deck. I know I could sit down and play, and I will. Look, once Grand Theft Auto 6 hits, I’m not going to be on my damn Steam Deck. I’m going to be playing on the biggest screen I have on my PlayStation, going crazy.

John: Have you hooked up your PlayStation to your big screen downstairs?

Craig: No. My home used to be owned by Kevin Williamson. Kevin had set up a Sony PlayStation down there to go on the big home theater screen, but it was an older PlayStation. When I moved in, I was like, “Ahh.” It’s such a big screen. It’s overwhelming.

John: Yes, that was my worry.

Craig: Rather than feel like I’m being punished by the game I’m playing is so big, even the sound down there is great, it’s a little bit better on just a good old-fashioned, big-ass, wall-mounted. I play upstairs in a little gaming nook. It’s my gaming nook.

John: Everyone needs a gaming nook. That’s the advice we needed to–

Craig: Everyone needs a gaming nook. Doesn’t matter how big or small.

John: Whatever your game is.

Craig: Doesn’t matter.

John: Could be a puzzle nook. Could be whatever you want to do.

Craig: Whatever. You got to have one.

John: Got to have a nook. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. If you want to include an audio version of your question, go for it. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. I just saw you put through an email that we’re on another college’s curriculum. I think it was at University of Missouri, Kansas City, I think.

Craig: University of Missouri, Kansas City. Yes. Those students have to buy the book.

John: Those students have to buy the book. That’s how we do it. One by one. Apparently, the first time they’ve ever signed a book, and the book is ours.

Craig: Well, that’s great. Thank you, university.

John: You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram @scriptnotespodcast. We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week.

Craig: 80% of you really enjoy it.

John: Yes, which is fantastic.

Craig: Thank you for continuing to enjoy it.

John: I think it was more like 90%.

Craig: 90% of you enjoy it.

John: That’s a very high number. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those backup episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Hollywood parties.

Craig: Woo-hoo.

John: Craig, it’s always a Hollywood party with you.

Craig: Aw. Thank you.

John: Thank you, Craig. Thank you, Drew.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. The question was how to go to Hollywood parties.

Craig: Got to go to Hollywood parties.

John: I’m taking this as not to how to get invited to Hollywood parties because–

Craig: No. We can’t help you with that.

John: We can’t help you with that. We can talk about, okay, you’ve been invited to a Hollywood party. It could be a premiere party. It could be a for-your-consideration party. It could be some producers throwing a party at their house. It could be a friend of ours doing a New Year’s Eve party. You’re going to a Hollywood party. What to do? Let’s start with when do you arrive?

Craig: If it’s a premiere, you have to get there to see the movie.

John: Except the thing to point out is they always start late. You can get there and be waiting for an hour in the theater.

Craig: They will tell you that you have to be at the theater by 7:30 PM under penalty of death. Around 7:50, the biggest star arrives, starts walking the carpet, and doing interviews. I’ve been to some that have really gone late, but typically speaking, it’s actually not too bad. A typical premiere will start about 30 minutes after. Then there’s always a speech or two. They will close the doors on you, though. Better to be on time for those things, and what I like to do is, you get to a premiere, and the theater lobby will be choked with people all yip, yip, yip, yip to each other. Oh my God, me, me, me, me. Even at premieres for things I’ve done, I don’t know almost anyone there.

I’m like, “Who are all these people?” I just go into the theater, and I sit down. It’s nice and quiet in there for a while everyone’s, me, me, me, me in the lobby. If you like chit-chat and being smashed up against people, sure, the lobby.

John: The party would be after the screening, generally. Ideally, it’s at the same venue or an easy walk. I always hate it when there’s a premiere someplace and you have to drive to a second thing.

Craig: It’s pretty rare, but yes, typically, it’s a little walk. If it’s a bigger premiere, it’s almost always a little walk because you have to get to some larger venue, but they’re pretty good about keeping it close by. The party will start technically immediately after the end of the movie. It will take possibly an hour or two before it really gets going. I don’t know what happens in that hour or two. Where did everyone go? Did they just go somewhere else and then go to the party? I’m always befuddled.

John: I’m thinking of two different parties, party for the first Iron Man and the party for the second season of The Last of Us, which were the premiere was at the Chinese and the party afterwards was at the Roosevelt Hotel, which is great because it’s an easy walk to get over there. A gladiator, too. It’s also the same situation. Yes, it’s weird. You get there, and it’s empty. It’s like, why did it take–

Craig: Did I make a mistake?

John: Then it does fill up.

Craig: It fills up. What happens in part is when the movie ends, if you are involved in the production, as you’re walking out, 4,000 people stop you to tell you how wonderful you are. Some of them you actually want to talk to, and you haven’t seen for a while, and you’re so happy that they’re there. You don’t know. Some of them you’re supposed to know, and you don’t know, but you get stuck. Everybody gets bottlenecked and stuck. Of course, you also naturally want to talk to the people that you’ve made the show with.

If you’re a guest at one of these things, just be aware you’re going to have to weave your way around this thick chunk of people. If you feel like congratulating someone, congratulate someone that isn’t currently being congratulated or is being under-congratulated. The actors don’t need more. Go find the writer. Then make your way to the party and enjoy the fact that there’s not a big line for food, and you could probably get a drink pretty quickly.

John: Let’s say we’re now at the party. I want to stress that you may have some agenda. Just think about what your agenda is. At a party, generally, I want to congratulate the person who I want to congratulate. I wanted to stay at your party until I could see you and say, congratulations, Craig.

Craig: Exactly. Bye. [laughs]

John: Same to Favreau on the first Iron Man and through the second. Once I’ve done that, I can leave.

Craig: You can leave.

John: I can leave.

Craig: You can leave. It’s up to you.

John: Absolutely. I can stay. I can go. Even if it’s not a “congratulate the person” party, it’s worth thinking about who am I expecting to see there, because that way I can think, oh, I’ll look out for that person and be able to have those conversations. For example, I was at the Interstellar premiere, and I didn’t know Christopher Nolan at that point, but I did know Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan. Oh, they’re going to be there. I could look for Lisa. We actually just had a great time chatting there, which is great. It started our friendship really more there. That’s the good thing about one of these parties. It’s an excuse to hang out with people you actually wanted to hang out with.

Craig: Now, if you are somebody who is going to your first premiere and you’re not expecting to know many people at all, it’s perfectly fine to go there. Don’t go alone because that’ll get awkward. Go there with somebody you can talk to, and inevitably, you will bump into somebody who will say something, and you might meet somebody, and it’s just like any other party. Feel free to compliment people who are involved in the movie. If it’s a famous person or it’s the director or whatever, somebody you want to get a selfie with, it’s cool. It’s fine. What you don’t want to do is just talk their ear off.

They don’t want to talk to you. They don’t know you. They would much rather talk to people they know. It’s as simple as that. In the case of actors, other famous people love talking to famous people.

John: A good conversation starter is, “Did you work on this?” If you don’t know, “Did you work on this?” Great. What was your problem? I really like that part of it. Or if they didn’t work on it, it’s like, oh, then why are you here? What did you like? All that stuff. What’s fun for you?

Craig: What brought you here?

John: What brought you here? Always a safe bet.

Craig: How did you end up at this fun party? Then someone explains their connection. You explain yours. It just works like any other party. You described a different kind of party, though, which is what I would consider the Hollywood party, which isn’t an organized event by a studio. This is more like a producer, a director, an actor is having some big party at their big house. You know somebody who brings you. You’re going to your first–

John: Good plus one.

Craig: Yes. This is like a real party. Now what do you do?

John: Walking back through examples of when I’ve done that situation, it’s more just like a normal party, which you’re basically just figuring out what is the point of entry for a conversation to have with somebody around me who looks interesting, who I want to talk with. That’s just a basic skill that’s not always easy to do.

Craig: Certainly, you should have the awareness that unless you do know a lot of people there or you are, in your own way, a fascinating human being, nobody wants to talk to you. You have to earn people’s interest. Be cool and don’t push yourself on people. Certainly, allow people to mingle. Don’t monopolize anyone’s time. Just be nice about it. That’s all.

Here’s another bit of advice. Those parties always start much later than you say, so show up later. Here’s something that happened to me at a party. I want to give people, this is my, you’re allowed to leave. It was the Golden Globes or something like that, I think. There was this big party that CAA was throwing at the Chateau Marmont.

They have one of those big rooms that they open up. My agent was like, “You got to come.” I’m like, “Okay, I will.”

John: I feel a dread. Those upper rooms, the Chateau Marmont, lovely view, but come on.

Craig: It started well. I got in the elevator, and Tobey Maguire was there. I thought, “Oh, this is cool. I’m in an elevator with Tobey Maguire. He’s Spider-Man. This is awesome.” We get out of the elevator, and we walk over to the room, and the door opens. It was a joke. You know the Star Trek episode Trouble with Tribbles?

John: Yes.

Craig: Is that what they were called?

John: Yes, Tribbles, yes.

Craig: Yes, where they just fill every space. The door opened, and it was just humans. You couldn’t even go anywhere. It was the most packed nonsense I’ve ever seen.

John: Sundance parties can be that way, too.

Craig: Here’s what happened. I said, “Okay,” to myself, and this is like, it’s full of famous people. It’s full of executives, full of people I know. I’m just going to go in there, see my agent, show him that I came, and leave. I slowly make my way. It took me 15 minutes to get through this throng just to the outside area where I could breathe a little, hoping that he would be there.

I did see him, but he wasn’t there. He was on the other side of the room. I went, “No, I’m done.” I spent another 10 minutes walking out. I spent 20 minutes at the party, walking in and walking out. You are allowed to leave. I did not want to be there.

John: You know what? You sent a text like, “Hey, I couldn’t make it over to you.”

Craig: Oh, I told him. I was just like, “Bro, you know me. You know this, I will not do this.” If you are at a party in Hollywood that is jam-packed with people, go. My feeling is like nothing good can happen here. There’s going to be an earthquake or a fire. That’s how my mind works.

John: You’ve had experience with Hollywood parties, too. What are we missing?

Drew: A little bit. My question was, I’m in this weird pocket where someone will be like, “Oh, I have to introduce you to this person who’s the director or someone, and then they don’t want to talk to me.” You have this weird introduction where you’re like, “Oh, hi, and there’s supposed to be this excitement,” and it very quickly fizzles. When do I leave? Because I understand what’s happening. I also, there’s another person here who’s introduced me, and I feel like I need to keep the ball in the air.

Craig: In those situations, my advice would be when you get introduced to that person, tell them why you’re so happy to meet them. Say something about them and what they’ve done that you think is great, and shake their hand and say, “It was great meeting you.” Rather than, okay, you’re probably wondering who I am and what I’m about, because as you know, they’re not. Everybody likes being complimented.

Drew: I keep trying to make a human connection, and I’m like, “Actually, I don’t think this is the time for that.”

John: The person that’s trying to introduce the two of you, are they trying to get rid of you? Are they trying to slough you off, or did they come over to you and say, “Oh, Drew, I want you to meet this person?” They’re trying to be–

Drew: In my situation, it’s usually a friend is the director’s assistant or something like that. It’s like, “I would love for you to meet this person who I’ve been telling you about.” It’ll be people who listen to the show, and they’re like, “I know my boss listens to the show. They’ll be super excited.”

Craig: What are you going to do with that? It’s okay for you to say, “That’s cool. I’m good.” Because you can say, “Hey, I’ve had a lot of these,” and unfortunately, what happens is they’re like, “Oh, cool.” Then it’s just dead silence. I don’t want to do that.

Drew: Well, but I think early career, there’s that scarcity mindset where you’re like-

Craig: I should meet everybody.

Drew: -“I should meet everyone.” You never know, and make those connections. You want to follow through on that, but you don’t.

Craig: You know, really, it’s not a connection.

Drew: Oh, no, not at all.

Craig: If your friend, and I’m annoyed at your friend, but if your friend really wants you to meet somebody to get to know them because they think, oh, you two would really hit it off, well, why don’t they just have a fucking dinner party or something with eight people? That’s how you meet people.

Drew: That’s much better.

Craig: Not at some throngy event where 90% of the people who are there are there out of some weird social compulsion to be able to say they were there. That’s the thing about these parties that I find so dreadful, is that they’re not actually– Most people who are at these parties are not there to celebrate anything, nor are they there to commune with anyone. They are just there to be there so that they could say they were there. Nothing makes me less interested. I don’t go to a lot of parties, as you can imagine. It’s not my thing.

John: Yes, and we don’t throw a lot of bigger parties here. We’ll have friends over for game nights and stuff like that. We had a party for our house turning 100 years old.

Craig: That was nice.

John: It had a purpose, and we had fun activities. We had a scavenger hunt. Things people can do.

Craig: Melissa and I went on a scavenger hunt. We didn’t need to worry about getting stuck in a corner with somebody. That’s fine. It was like an open house-ish sort of style thing. I keep saying to myself, “Oh, I should have a party at my house.” Then I’m like, “Why? Just why?”

John: Friends of mine moved up in the ranks and basically bought a house where they need to start throwing the party. It’s their agents who need to start throwing parties at their house.

Craig: Oh, no.

John: It’s like, I would not want–

Craig: What does that mean?

John: There’s an expectation they’ve got to entertain and do these things.

Craig: Apparently, my house was quite the party house when Kevin Williamson ran the show over there. It’s a good house for a party. Maybe one day. Since I’m a guy who’s constantly trying to leave a party, our friend Derek throws a great party. I actually enjoy those because it’s sort of an annual event.

John: Absolutely. I will know 30% of the people there, which is great.

Craig: You run into the sort of people that you don’t even spend much time with, but you’ll see them at that party.

John: Let’s talk through people who are like, “Oh, I know I’ve met this person. I don’t know where.” It’s so tough. We’ll do that. It’s so good to see you. Obviously, if you have a Mike at your side, say like, “Oh, hey, I’m Mike. I’m John’s husband.” That’s helpful. I just feel like we need to give a lot of grace for like, I cannot summon who you are.

Craig: Everyone should say their name to everyone. I’m still dealing with the paranoia that when people who haven’t seen me in a while see me, they don’t know who I am, just because I shaved my beard off. I’ll say my name to you if you look like maybe you’re not sure. There is no crime in forgetting someone’s name, or forgetting their face, or forgetting that you’ve met them before. It is not a crime. Anyone who holds you accountable for that is jerk as far as I’m concerned. A jerk. It’s cool. You’re not that important. Nobody is.

John: We were talking about Kevin Williamson a lot on this episode. Kevin Williamson, when I met him 30 years ago, whatever, four times in a row, he was like, “Oh, it’s nice to meet you.” I got a little annoyed at a certain point, but then I realized like, “Oh, I know who Kevin Williamson is because he’s like an Entertainment Weekly famous person, and I’m not. He has no reinforcement of who I am, whereas I knew who he was before I met him.”

Craig: Or maybe he just forgets names and faces. Sometimes you will meet somebody, and they remind you of maybe four different people you might know. Now it’s like, I don’t know which one this is. That’s okay.

John: We’ll talk about this when it lands on the show, but one of the things that I really appreciate about our movie is that obviously from Andy’s perspective, Miranda was a huge influence on our life, and Miranda has no idea who Andy was. It’s so classic and relevant and true.

Craig: It is something that happens. As you get older, if you are in our business, if you have succeeded and hung on and achieved things, people will know who you are. You don’t always know who they are. Sometimes you should know who they are. I realize sometimes I’ll remember somebody that worked for me in some capacity, and I can’t remember their name. I think, is it dementia? No. There’s too many people.

John: There’s too many people.

Craig: There’s too many people. There’s long-term memory. There’s short-term memory, but there’s also mid-term memory. Mid-term memory is where I put the names of everybody on a crew. Five years from now, and if I’m working on something else, I won’t remember that because a new crew came to take the mid-term memory.

John: So often I find myself searching email like, I know this person exists. Who is this person? It’s not memory. It’s a lot of this.

Craig: You get the text from somebody, and you’re like, okay, it’s just a number. They’re like, “Hey, man, da, da, da,” and you have to scroll back and look for context clues. You’re like, “Oh, that’s who this is.”

Drew: On the iPhone, there’s that little company thing, and I use that like crazy just to do context.

John: Oh, nice. All right. Good hints from you.

Craig: Well, I probably have chased people away from some Hollywood parties. They can be very glamorous. It’s cool to see famous people. I like it. It’s fun.

John: Yes. We didn’t talk about clothes at all, which is good because–

Craig: Oh, clothes.

John: Clothes, whatever. Wear clothes. Here’s the one–

Craig: Wear clothes.

John: The one tip I can give you is that if it’s an annual thing, Google photos from the last year. If it’s a thing that’s being photographed for places–

Craig: So you get the sense of–

John: It’s like where the vibe, what the vibe is.

Drew: That said, I went to a premiere a couple of weeks ago that was for a fighting movie, and everyone there was in all black. Every dude, all black. Black sweatshirt, black baseball cap, that kind of thing. It just felt like that was the dress code that we were all doing. It felt like the default. I had a blue and white shirt.

Craig: And a pink hat.

Drew: I didn’t get the memo. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I don’t know.

Craig: It’s not. One of the great rules of life, no one’s thinking about you. You think everyone’s thinking about you. No one’s thinking about you. They’re only thinking about themselves.

Drew: Yes, it’s true. Thanks, guys.

Craig: Thank you. Party.

Links:

• The script for episode one of Chernobyl
• Scriptnotes episode 493: Opening Scenes
• Greta Gerwig’s Little Women screenplay
• The Sheep Detectives
• Scriptnotes episode 731: Avoidance and Other Anti-Quests
• Sorkinisms – A Supercut by Kevin T. Porter
• My journey to the microwave alternate timeline by Malmesbury
• Solasta 2
• Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Follow Scriptnotes on Instagram and TikTok
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: Oh, my name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is episode 731 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Often on this podcast, we talk about characters heading out on a quest. We discuss wants and motivations. Today on the show, Craig, let’s flip that around. What are characters running from? What are they trying to avoid? How can that help drive story? Let’s also answer a listener’s question. Questions about writing as a couple and what happens to residuals after we die.

In our bonus segment for premium members, I want to talk about the pivot to video because if you’re a premium subscriber, you sometimes see us in addition to hearing us because we’ve been doing videos for the last couple of months, but this is still basically an audio podcast. There are some changes coming to Scriptnotes, and I want to give listeners a preview of what is to come in the road ahead.

Craig: Change, John.

John: Change.

Craig: Change. Feels like something we should avoid. Perfectly on theme. I love it.

John: Mostly, Craig, I want to say hello because I’ve not seen you in so long. There’s been an interregnum. You were off directing an episode of your great series. I went to Madrid, and then Portugal, and I was locked in a room negotiating the WGA contract, which just wrapped up.

Craig: Oh, I thought that was your code for being locked in a room. You’re like, “I got to go to Madrid again today. I’m stuck in Portugal.”

John: We’re back.

Craig: We’re back.

John: Thank you to our listeners for your patience while we did encore episodes and other things to fill the month that we were away from our microphones.

Craig: Just to be clear, the reason is because when I’m directing, once Saturday comes, my brain just stops. It’s just pudding. It’s pudding for Saturday, and it’s pudding for Sunday. Then I start again on Monday. Got through that happily and glad to be back. Particularly glad because there’s stuff about the new contract that you guys did on your sidecast, which is awesome. I just wanted to say congrats to you, John, as co-chair of the WGA Negotiating Committee for the least drama-filled while still successful negotiation for our union. Thank you.

John: Certainly. You’re very welcome. It was an honor and a privilege and absolutely exhausting slog at times. It was more normal. We just haven’t had normal for a long time. 2023, of course, was a strike. 2020 was the pandemic. 2017, ended up having a strike authorization vote. It was also a healthcare fight. It’s been a while since we’ve had a cycle that was more, these are the things, this is how we’re going to get it done, and we got it done.

Craig: New leadership on their side as well, which sometimes makes a big difference. If you can hit a reset button there. Carol Lombardini, who was the head of the AMPTP, wasn’t really new. She worked for Nick Counter, who was the prior head of the AMPTP. It was more of a continuation of that regime or even a worsening of it, I think some people would say. Some new faces over there, maybe a sign of better things to come.

John: Yes, one would hope so. I would say that we have to remember that the AMPTP’s job is to give us the absolute least they can possibly get away with. That was consistent in this round as well. Hopefully, some tone matters too. We were able to get through this.

Craig: Tone and a basis of historical success. It’s good. It’s well done.

John: Yes, absolutely. All right. Let’s get back to our actual podcast, the thing that we are here to do this morning. Let’s do some follow-up. It’s been a minute. Drew, help us out. What did we miss?

Drew: Jesse in Chicago writes, “I remember a discussion about Craig’s frustration with locking pages during production. He suggested that because most people receive and view scripts digitally, that we really only need to lock scene numbers. As a script coordinator, I agree, but I’ve never had the buy-in to put it into motion. I’m wondering if Craig has implemented this on the new season of The Last of Us. If so, how is it going?”

Craig: Jesse, I tried. I tried, and I could have. It wasn’t that I didn’t have permission, but somebody I remember when we were talking about this, a script supervisor, mentioned that there was some aspect of the software they used that would make unlocked pages a little more arduous. Because our script supervisor already does 12 different jobs a day, and because I rely on him so much for so many things, he asked nicely if we could keep the pages locked. I said, “Sure.”

Just the other day, something happened that drove me crazy. Because of some adjustment, there was a scene, and then the next page, there was just one line of dialogue. Then on the next page, the scenes continues. There was something when we were doing it where that line, people were putting this emphasis on this line. I’m like, “Why is this happening?” Then I looked at the sides. I’m like, “Oh, for F’s sake.” I went over to them. I understand psychologically why this line is sticking. It has its own page. That doesn’t mean anything. Just flow on through. It was devil’s road to earth. Jesse, oh, man, next one. I swear, I swear to Moradin, the dwarven god of steel.

John: Back in future times, you and I were basically our own script coordinators. If we had run into that situation, we might have done something tricky in order to pull that line onto a previous page. This way, it’s a roundup. I hear you. I feel you. It’s so frustrating because we associate white space with emphasis, and this was not meant to be emphasized.

Craig: No. I do try and do that, but there are times where I think to myself, am I screwing this scene up just to change? That really, oh, that one. I haven’t. Maybe the last episode, I’m going to go, no page breaks, drive them crazy.

John: We have more follow-up from Stephen Follows, who is the data scientist who does a lot of stuff with movies and screenwriting. We’ve had him on the show before. What’s this bit of follow-up here?

Drew: He tried to calculate whether one page was actually one minute. He grabbed over 2,500 screenplays, put them up against the runtimes on IMDb, and basically, what he found was that one page doesn’t equal a minute. It equals about 55 seconds.

John: Yes. This is a follow-up on, he’d done an earlier study, but he took a larger sample set to make sure that this rule of thumb, which is approximately correct but not actually accurate, and how it all works out. The takeaway is that for four out of five scripts, the rule doesn’t really hold. Screenplays are normally longer than the movies that result.

Different genres have different standard lengths. It falls apart for long scripts, for short scripts, and if you take the end credits out of the movies, it’s even worse and sort of less applicable. Again, it’s what you’d expect. It’s a rule of thumb that should not be taken as an actual rule or law.

Craig: Do you happen to know if when he did this study, he also included the notion of standard deviation? If most scripts don’t follow this rule, it’s just that in the aggregate, this is what it ends up, then do you know what I mean? Some scripts are–

John: Standard deviation and how it falls on the bell curve is absolutely a thing. We’ll put a link in the show notes to his post, which really runs through in exhaustive detail.

Craig: I love exhaustive detail.

John: It’s approximative but not accurate.

Craig: Yes. I actually don’t think it ever works for me.

John: We’ve discussed this topic before. The reason why we need to be mindful of this fake rule is that people use it to justify having to cut things shorter than they should be.

Craig: Also, it may be that a produced single page takes more than a minute on screen, but things get cut. Barring additive reshoots, the general process is to winnow things down, which means you will effectively get fewer seconds on film per page, which means when you get the script, it doesn’t mean– If it’s 120 pages, it doesn’t mean the movie’s going to be two hours. No.

John: We’ve had conversations with folks who’ve been on shows, long-running TV shows, and on those cases, you probably can much more closely estimate, like, okay, based on this length of the script or this number of words, it’s going to track because you’re doing in a set thing. For any given single screenplay, it’s not going to be accurate.

Craig: No.

John: More follow-up. I love it when a How Would This Be a Movie becomes an actual movie. We have another example of that.

Drew: Christian writes, “In Episode 525’s How Would This Be a Movie, you discuss the story of Syllable and Brains, a Scottish rap duo who faked being American to land a record deal. Craig’s verdict was that the stakes were too low and that he struggled to care, but I’m pleased to update that the story has now been turned into a movie directed by James McAvoy. It’s called California Schemin’.”

Craig: Well, let’s find out if I was right. [laughs]

John: If you’re right.

Craig: There are movies where the stakes are simply, we want to succeed as a band, and that can often be nice. I struggle to care about all sorts of things. That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t become movies. Now, the question is, do we think anybody heard what we said, and then we’re like, “No, there’s no chance,” right? They’d already licensed it, I’m sure.

John: At some point, our paths will cross with James McAvoy, and we’ll ask if he had any awareness that we talked about this idea.

Craig: After he punches me in the mouth.

John: Exactly.

Craig: I deserve it.

John: We’ll put a link in the show notes to the trailer. The trailer is charming, and I hope it succeeds. McAvoy seems really smart. I can totally believe him being a solid director on this. I like that he’s Scottish, the band is Scottish. It all makes a lot of sense. Two bits of follow-up on the Scriptnotes book, which remains out there in the world for people to buy. It’s always nice to see it featured prominently at bookstores. What do we have on follow-up for Scriptnotes book?

Drew: Micah says, “I’ve recently purchased a Scriptnotes book and have been having an amazing time reading it thus far. I’m sure many have brought this up, but one of my favorite things is the lightweight quality of the paper. In particular, it makes it such that my cat can jump on my lap and stretch out fully as she’s prone to do, while I can raise the book into the air and keep reading without my relatively weak wrists getting tired. The result is a satisfying situation for all parties.”

Craig: [laughs] I just love the idea that Micah and his cat are both sort of like boneless people.

John: Totally.

Craig: That’s great.

John: We made a book for weak wrists writers, and that’s fantastic.

Craig: That’s most of us.

John: We know that Micah is American because it’s the US version that is lighter than the British version for just reasons. It’s mostly because you perceive that it should be heavier. We talked about the support. You perceive that it should be heavier than it actually is, so it looks more like a textbook size, but it doesn’t have a textbook weight. That’s what happens here. More follow-up from Luke in Mallorca.

Drew: “In the introduction to the book, you say, struggling with theme, you can jump right to that chapter, but there’s no chapter on theme, nor is there an episode specifically dedicated to theme. Craig’s How to Write a Movie episode looks at thematic arguments, which is super insightful, but I’d love to hear both of your thoughts on theme and the many different interpretations of exactly what theme is in a story.”

Craig: Then they included this beautiful picture of where they were in Majorca with the book and a glass of, I’m going to say, beer. Beautiful.

John: Beautiful. I think as we wrote that sentence, as I probably wrote that sentence in the first chapter, there probably was a chapter on theme that was pieced together, and it all pulled apart into different things. Drew, you’re nodding. I think there was a theme chapter at some point, and-

Drew: I think there was.

John: -it just got broken into other pieces. We have a page in The Notion about the Scriptnotes book of things to fix in second printing. I think the sentence about the theme chapter will probably be updated in future printing.

Craig: John, you and I read the classic Choose Your Own Adventure books as children.

John: Oh, God, yes. So amazing.

Craig: I remember one. I think it was one where you go to some new civilization in space or something where there were two pages. There was a point where you would open the book, and on the left and the right, it was a place that you couldn’t get to by choosing. They were like, “We don’t know how you got here.”

John: You’re not supposed to be here.

Craig: “This is the secret place, and blah, blah.” I was so like, “Oh my God.” Yes, maybe that’s what’s happening.

John: There’s a secret theme chapter. You just haven’t found it yet.

Craig: It’s not listed, and you haven’t found it. I will say, Luke, the how to write a movie thing, that is basically how I think about it. You got my two cents in there. Yes, mostly when I think about theme, I try and get rid of that word as quickly as I can and come up with something that’s more useful.

John: If we update that sentence, I’ll say, you can skip ahead to Craig’s chapter on how to write a movie, which is his analysis of theme. Finally, we have a question about free work.

Drew: Brian writes, “In Episode 727, Craig mentioned that, per Working Rule 8 of the WGA contract, if you’re a member of the WGA, you cannot write for anyone without an employment agreement. I hope this isn’t a stupid question, but as someone who has currently written two freelance scripts for television, and is about to join the WGA officially, does that mean I cannot work on a project on spec, which I later intend to pitch?”

Craig: No, it does not mean that. When we say you cannot write for anyone, anyone means any employer. It means anyone who could pay you. You yourself can write anything you want for yourself, of course. What happens if you sell something on spec is a little bit of legal jujitsu, where the employer says, “Yes, you wrote this, but really, you wrote it because we wanted you to write it. Now, we own copyright, and here’s a bunch of money, and you are now employed on a thing that you, in fact, created.

Then everything is fine. No, you are free to write on spec to your heart’s delight. There’s this interesting thing that happens. There used to be a lot of this. I don’t know if it’s going on as much anymore, where producers would ask writers to write things on spec. That is a funky territory. We know that, for instance, a studio cannot ask you to write something on spec, obviously.

John: Like, a producer saying, I’m really looking for inexpensive horror that could be shot in this sort of schedule or in this location. In those situations, you’re writing this thing that you actually own, you have no agreement with that producer. It’s the idea that producer will then be able to set that thing up for a thing.

Craig: Yes. Really, Brian, the rule is there so that you don’t take money from people under agreements that are not WGA agreements. That’s really what the rule is there for.

John: Yes. One of the best things about being a writer is you can just create your own stuff. Actors have to wait for someone to hire them. Directors need material. You can just self-generate, which is great. In the time that I’ve been a WGA writer, I wrote Go on spec. I wrote The Nines on spec. It’s a thing that writers are often doing. That’s absolutely appropriate. In TV, you’re often writing new samples for yourself to get yourself considered for other projects. Yes, you’re always writing your own stuff. Never stop that.
All right, let us get to the marquee topic today. I want to talk about avoidance. Here is–

Craig: I don’t. I don’t want to talk about it.

John: Exactly. Craig has the spirit already. I’m reading this book called Indistractable by Nir Eyal. There was one bullet point that just stopped me cold. His quote was, “All motivation is a desire to escape discomfort. All motivation is a desire to escape discomfort.” I said, “Well, that’s not true.” I feel that’s fundamentally not correct. Yet, it feels plausible on some level. It’s provocative.

I wanted to pick this apart because, Craig, we’re often talking about motivation. That’s what’s driving story. You have a hero that wants something, and that’s what’s causing the story to begin. Craig, do you mind talking us through the basics of the hero’s journey kind of thing we’re usually talking about with motivation?

Craig: Sure. This goes to the simplest thing. What do I want? We do want things all the time. Whatever we want could be something like winning a race, or getting the girl, or defeating my enemy, or saving my village, or keeping my child safe, or it doesn’t matter, or going faster than the speed of light. Whatever it is, it’s the thing we want. Typically, in these stories, and this goes back to the most ancient of fables and mythology, typically, what a story is, is somebody trying to get what they want, and other things or people trying to keep them from getting what they want. If they do get what they want, their life will change for the better. If they don’t, their life will change for the worse in significant ways.
That’s the most basic plumbing of a story I can imagine.

John: Part of the reason why it’s so important to think in terms of what a character wants, what a character is trying to get to, is that as the reader, as the audience, we lock into what they want. We want them to get that thing that they want. We understand what the story is about. It’s like the contract that we’re setting with the audience is, okay, this character is trying to get this thing, and we will see the character work to try to get this thing. At the end, they will either get it or not get it, but that’s the journey that we’re going on. We often talk about the freeze frame.

You should be able to watch a scene and freeze the frame and point to each of the characters, like, what are they trying to do? What is their goal? What are they aiming for? What I’d like to talk about today is, so often, you can actually reframe that as, what are the characters trying to avoid? Reframing that positive motivation, what they’re aiming for, as the negative motivation, what are they trying to escape from or get away from? Generally, the characters are running from something. Sometimes that is built into a classic hero’s journey, which is the denial of the call to adventure, that they want to stay put and stay at home.

Often, it’s just, they’re trying to just avoid anything unpleasant, and they want to stay in the place they are.

Craig: Very often, a character will want the right thing, but for the wrong reason. I don’t think all motivation is a desire to escape discomfort, but I do think a lot of it is. I think really, there are only two real basic motivations that humans have, fear and love. Those are the things that drive us. One of them is generally viewed as positive. One is generally viewed as negative.

What we often find in stories are that characters are moving towards something or away from something out of fear, and then are taught to elevate themselves and change their motivation to a more positive love, that is a higher motivation based on the well-being, not just of themselves or anything selfish, but everyone, or sometimes it’s a higher spiritual state of being.

Luke Skywalker wants to get off his stupid planet. He wants to be a pilot. He wants to fight in the war. He’s doing all these things because, in a sense, he’s afraid of being meaningless. He’s afraid that people around him will die, like his uncle and aunt, who are all crispy there. Then, of course, in the end, he has to change that so it’s not fear, but rather this higher, sort of stretching love here to embrace the force and join with everybody as one consciousness so that he can commit an act of violence that kills many, many innocent people and is a war crime.

John: Yes. You’re talking about fear and love, and those core emotions are driving a lot of the avoidance here. Fear, loneliness, awkwardness, all of the things that keep people at home, keep people from stepping out of their comfort zone, it’s understandable. Our brains psychologically are hardwired to try to get back to homeostasis, that we’re going to go back to this thing that we recognize, the thing that we feel safe in.

Sometimes what looks like a lack of motivation is just someone just trying to avoid that discomfort. They’re making choices that are unproductive, either for story or for themselves, because it’s understandable why they’re trying to stay close, stay at home, keep things normal.

Craig: They could be productive in the sense that they are staying safe, and it’s working. It’s just not the best life they could live.

John: The idea of avoidance, of course, goes back. It’s always been part of philosophies. You see it in Buddhism that dissatisfaction or suffering is the source behind craving, craving being ambition or a call to action to do things. Schopenhauer already talks about will comes from a lack, that you’re missing something, that you’re suffering, and that’s what causes you to go out and try to do a thing. Again, a positive motivation is often really just an expression of this thing you’re trying to avoid.

Craig: Yes. There is the pleasure principle, which would argue the opposite, that what people go for are the things that make them feel good positively. I think it’s both. I do. What we forget, I think we tend to overlook how important avoidance is for us, and how important fear is for us, and how much of what we do really is secretly about that.

John: Let’s get some concrete examples. The first thing that jumped to mind was Carl in Up. This is a man who has shut himself off from the world after losing his wife, and he’s an almost entirely avoidant character. He just doesn’t want anybody to do anything. His quest, and the balloons, and going into Paradise Valley is about shutting himself off from everything else.

The movie is constantly creating obstacles and forcing him to confront these things he doesn’t want to confront, and step outside of his comfort zone. Up, we talked about your chapter in the book, and you talk a lot about Marlon in Finding Nemo. This is again an avoidant character. It looks like he has a quest. He’s going to see his son, but really, he’s driven by fear. He’s driven by trying to avoid the pain of the loss and acceptance of what’s actually happened.

Craig: Yes. This duality of fear and love was something that I think I made as concrete as I possibly could in the Bill and Frank episode of The Last of Us. Bill is avoidant. He does not want to deal with the world. Anyone who locks himself behind a fence is theoretically thrilled. Doesn’t matter. Even before the world ends, he avoids expressing his sexuality or experiencing connection with other people. Frank is about love. Frank’s goal is to make the street look nice and to have friends and to enjoy things as much as he can while he’s here to make the world around him better.

We do find typically that when we have a choice of a character, we want to choose the guy who’s avoidant to be the protagonist because they’re the ones who have to change. So much of the story of avoidance is face it. Face the thing you can’t face. Deal with it because after all, I think that’s what 99% of therapy sessions are. Can you face the dragon, slay the dragon, or are you going to continue to get eaten by the dragon?

John: Yes. It represents two Pixar movies, but the third, which one is also iconic, is Inside Out. In the real world, you have Riley, who’s trying to avoid uncomfortable situations. Then in the inner world, we have Joy who’s just trying to keep things happy and avoid the reality like, “Oh, there’s other emotions too who need to have their turn at the wheel.”

Craig: Toxic positivity.

John: Toxic positivity, for sure. Paul Giamatti in Sideways. This is a character who looks like they have a quest. They’re going to go on this road trip to encounter all this great wine, but really, he’s just trying to escape his failures, his failed marriage, his book, his life. It’s avoiding confronting the realities and situations, and the movie is forcing him to encounter those along the way. Whiplash. This, again, looks like a kid who has a quest to become a legendary drummer, but when we see his home life, we see like, “Oh, no, he’s actually just trying to avoid being the normal kid. He’s trying to avoid this being ordinary or nothing special.

Craig: Which is what a great example because there, throughout the movie, you do sense he is driven by this avoidance of that life. His move towards something is really a move away from something, and he is punished for it. Over and over and over. In the end of the film, it is clear that he is no longer motivated by fear. He is motivated by love. He creates something spontaneous and outrageous because he’s not afraid anymore. He just is experiencing love. He doesn’t care what that guy does to him anymore. In that moment, the caterpillar becomes a butterfly of bloody hands, and there’s a whole lot else going on there, but basically fits into this dynamic.

John: Now, when we talk about the Bill and Frank episode, they’re partnering up two characters who are an avoidant and an outgoing, one are often successful, but you look at Lost in Translation, Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, they’re both essentially avoidant characters. Neither one wants to confront the reality of their situation, and together they kind of do, which is an interesting dynamic that you don’t see very often.

Craig: Yes. In that case, which is a wonderful story of two people in limbo, they will not see each other again. They should not have seen each other this first time. This is an ephemeral moment in which they can both take comfort in each other’s fear and loneliness. Two lonely people getting stuck together is fascinating because they’re no longer lonely. You’re right. The dynamic of the avoidant and the, I’ll just call them the loving person, is classic. Planes, trains, and automobiles, John Candy, just outwards.

All the movies that David Spade and Chris Farley did, Spade avoidant, Farley outward and loving, and it always ends up where the one changes the other. It’s always the avoidant one who must change, always. You never want to see a movie where an outwardly loving person goes, “Yes, you’re right, we actually would like to change. This is a little crazy.”

John: You see the same dynamic in Groundhog Day. You have Bill Murray’s character, who is super avoidant, and then becomes trapped in a situation. Annie McDowell’s character is the one, even though she doesn’t realize she’s doing it, is the one who’s pulling him out of this thing and making him see the love in these moments.

Craig: Yes. With very little agency, by the way. There is a better version. I love that movie so much. It does suffer from the very specific ’90s era woman as morally perfected human syndrome. It’s just this sloppy man trying to reach the already perfected height of a woman who was created perfectly and will exist in such perfection. You’re like, “No, what’s interesting about people is that they are not,” but it’s still awesome movie.

John: Yes. The opposite case of the morally perfect woman is Lydia Tár in Tár, who is the most complicated woman. We find her already at the peak of her career, and then she’s avoidant about everything crumbling around and the bad choices that she’s making that is causing it all to unravel. I just love Tár so much. I just love what an incredible character is there. Obviously, she had a goal going into this, but we’re coming into this moment where she’s avoiding all of the negative repercussions of the things she’s done and love it. It’s just the right moment to see it.

Craig: It’s also one of the best character names possible in general, but also specifically for what is happening to her, Lydia Tár.

John: Tár. It has to have that–

Craig: The little slashy.

John: The little accent, the little down slash on it.

Craig: The movie, just being called Tár with the little slashy, it’s wonderful.

John: So good. I want to talk about sometimes avoidance can become the quest, which is actually a fairly natural pattern. Legally Blonde, Elle, she’s going to Harvard, but really to avoid the pain of heartbreak. She doesn’t have a vision for what her positive version of her life is going to be. It’s like she wants to get back to homeostasis. She wants to get the guy back, and that’s motivating her initial quest to Harvard. Mad Max: Fury Road. Max is trying to stay out of everything and ends up getting dragged into it, and then becomes the reluctant hero in it. A classic pattern.

I guess what I’d ask people who are thinking about this for their own characters is, does the character know they’re running away from something, or do they think they’re running towards something? How does the audience react to this? Is the character self-aware or not self-aware of what they’re trying to avoid can be helpful?

Craig: Yes. You need to at least understand what they’re afraid of. I don’t care who the character is. If you are a loving character, you’re still afraid of something. If you are a fearful character, you still have the capacity to love something. Han Solo can just keep saying over and over, “I’m just in this for the money. I’m just in this for the money. I’m avoiding being part of the fight. I’m avoiding giving crap. I’m avoiding falling in love with that lady who’s kissing her brother.” Then, in the end, he comes back and does something loving.

John: I think what you’re talking about is there’s a pivot. There’s a moment in which the character, what they’re running from, someone else needs them to face it. Basically, it’s the thing that they’ve been avoiding is the thing they actually need to address in order to help something else. That pulls them into, it brings them across the barrier into the positive quest.

Craig: They will inevitably get called out. Somebody at some point in a story where the main character is avoidant will call them out and say some version of, “Are you going to run away like you have your whole life? Are you going to pretend to not care your whole life just to protect yourself? Are you going to give a damn about something because we need you?” There will be that moment always. Inevitably, at the end of that little speech, the avoidant character will say, “Screw you, I’m going home.” Then they’ll just think about it. Then they’ll come back. We like that. We love the rhythm of it. We love it as much as we love verse, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, break, chorus.

John: Let’s wrap this up by talking about, so often we’ll get notes about making sure the character has agency, that the character is driving the story. Some of those are good, well-intentioned notes. I think it’s easier to imagine characters who have a lot of agency and a lot of vigor and vim and zeal. They’re driving stuff forward, but they don’t feel real because real characters have fears. Real characters have things that are pulling them back from moving forward. The avoidance things are what we as an audience recognize in them. The fact that Indiana Jones is terrified of snakes, that’s a reality. If he didn’t have that, he wouldn’t feel as real to us.

Craig: Yes. Indiana Jones also avoids the religious, spiritual implications of the things he engages in. They’re simply objects that belong in a museum. He needs to be avoidant of these things so that, at the end, when there is something that is about to happen that is supernatural, he must embrace that in order to save himself and Marion.

John: The takeaways for our listeners is that, yes, you should be thinking about what characters want and being able to articulate what they want and to what degree the characters understand what they want, to what degree the audience understands what they want. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t running from something as well. It’s finding that balance between what they’re running from and what they’re running towards, so it feels like a continuous arc.

It feels like, “Oh, this is the journey that I’m seeing these characters on.” Obviously, we’re talking largely about movies here, where there is a clear arc and trajectory. Even in series television, there’s a sense of seeing both aspects of a character to make them feel real. They’re both driving story, but they also feel like real human beings.

Craig: Always. Sometimes it switches. As characters go through things, somebody may be on the rise, or another person is. For ongoing series that are meant to keep going, like soap opera, drama, whether it’s daytime or prime time, they need people to cycle around each other where one is avoiding, and one is creating and moving toward. It’s inevitable.

John: All right. Let’s answer some listener questions. Drew, help us out.

Drew: Trepidatious Boyfriend writes, “My girlfriend and I are both early-career TV writers in LA. We’re a couple of months into our relationship, and she wants to write something together with me.”

Craig: Ah.

Drew: “Wondering what the pros and cons are of writing with your romantic partner. What sort of feedback have you received over the years from writing partners who happen to be dating or married to each other?”

Craig: The ones that we know that are married to each other who are writing are only the ones that were successful. [chuckles]

John: Exactly.

Craig: The rest of them broke up in all possible ways. We don’t even know.

John: There’s a strong aspect of survivorship bias in the things we would cite.

Craig: Exactly.

John: A couple of first instincts here is basically, do you want to write the same kinds of things? If that’s not the case, you should definitely not write together. Are you Crepidacious Boyfriend, a person who is a good, creative roommate? Do you share well? Do you like having that second brain? Would you write with a partner if it was not your romantic partner? That’s a good question.

There are big advantages to writing with your romantic partner because you see each other more and that can be great. It can be a problem too if you need some space from each other, but it can be really good. We know so many teams who it’s great they’re working together, because they’d like to be together, and they get to stay together, and they get to do the stuff they love to do. Craig, what other instincts do you have? What’s the checklist you would give them in terms of yes or no?

Craig: I think the most important thing would be that you both fill slightly different roles in the process. From the married couples that I know who work together, and we know a few, it does seem like one of them fills a different role or capacity than another. Typically, while they are both imagining and thinking, one stays more in dream town, and one is more in typey town. Not like I’m only typing what you say, but rather there’s one that generally is a little bit more constructive on the page, while the other one is more imaginative, outlining, conceptual. That’s just my impression.

For you, Trepidatious, the thing that’s concerning to me is you are a couple of months into your relationship. Give it a little more time, maybe? Because, man, this could kill it fast.

John: It could. I’m thinking back to some of the writing couples I know who’ve lasted. In some cases, they were writing partners first, and then they fell in love over it.

Craig: That’s different.

John: That tracks and makes sense.

Craig: That’s fair.

John: I think your love life, your emotional happiness, your finding a partner in life is more important than finding a writing partner. I would say prioritize that.

Craig: I agree. Yes, you don’t need a writing partner. Clearly, because you’re both writing individually anyway. Finding somebody that you can love and live with, honestly, it’s like so much. What’s the point of, you know? God help you, the day you guys break up is the day you get a call that you just sold a script as a writing team. I guarantee you, it’s a nightmare. Give it some more time. Get a little more of a basis.

John: Friends of mine were a married writing team who were staffed on a TV show, and they broke up during the episode. It was really, really hard. It’s hard for them emotionally, but then they also have to have a professional relationship split up, and that’s so tough. Don’t go into anything expecting catastrophizing it, of course, but these are just things to think about.

Craig: I’m guessing the odds are low. I’m guessing the odds are low here. The odds in general are low. 50% of marriages end in divorce, I think. I’m not suggesting marriage here, but that’s the funny part is writing together is sort of marrying somebody. It’s an entwining you may not be ready for.

John: All right. Another question here from JP.

Drew: With the recent passings of so many Hollywood legends, I can’t help but wonder what happens to a person’s residuals when they die? When a person’s no longer around to collect those checks, who does?

John: The setup of this question, recent passings of so many Hollywood legends, this probably came in around the time of the Oscars. Wow, that in memoriam segment was so long. There were so many iconic people who passed away this last year. It made me realize, “Oh God, that’s only going to continue. I’m going to know more and more people who show up in the in memoriam section.”

Craig: This is good news, John. Because the more people that we know that die, the more comfortable we will be when it is our turn to die. Because we’ll be like, “Yes, that’s what’s going on these days. That’s what we’re doing.”

John: Craig, true confessions here. I cannot help but watch the in memoriam segment and say, “If I had died in that group, how much notice would I have gotten in that group? Would I have been a slide that goes past? Probably?”

Craig: Yes, I think you would. I think when the screenwriter slides come by, my expectation is that when they’re creating the death montage, they are orchestrating for swells of emotion. When you know you want a big swell, put the screenwriter into lower.

John: I’m in the middle of a beach.

Craig: It’s a dip. It’s a dip to set you up for an actor. It really is. Let’s face it. You don’t end the thing on the screenwriter.

John: Whereas, Craig, I think you would be in the Emmys in memoriam more likely than you’d be in the Oscars in memoriam.

Craig: That’s correct. I think I would be currently in the Emmys. Do people normally show up in both? Is that a thing?

John: They can, for sure. I feel like Rob Reiner would show up in both.

Craig: That’s true. Yes, I do. It’s funny when I watch these. I just do think like, “Oh, okay, they just put that.” He’s like a camera operator. He worked a really long time. I think I got a shot at getting into this thing. But I’ll never know. That’s the thing. I’ll never know.

John: You won’t even know. There are unanswerable questions, JP, but this is a very answerable question you asked about residuals after you die. I looked it up. This is a thing you could have Googled, but I’m actually happy you asked the question because I actually can have an answer for you. I’m going to read you from the page that I found. In 1977, the Guild negotiated for the member’s right to receive residual compensation in perpetuity. As a result, even after death, a writer will continue to receive residual compensation if their material is reused. Your residuals will be dispersed pursuant to the terms of your will or trust document or under intestacy law. Did I say that right? Intestacy?

Craig: Yes. If you are intestate, it means you died without a will. It sounds dirty, but it’s not.

John: As well as under the terms of community property, as may apply. Yes, residuals are forever. They go along with your estate and, in some cases, can be meaningful. That’s some good stuff. I looked it up in SAG-AFTRA. It’s basically the same thing. The bottom line is there’s no expiration date on residuals. They follow the worker, and so therefore they get passed on to estates.

Craig: It is important, actually, for so many reasons, to have your stuff in order. Even if you are not, say, ready for the Emmy post-mortem montage, you’re a young person; it’s still important to have some sort of arrangement made. There are very, very cheap ways to do this. What does happen sometimes is when someone dies, and there’s no arrangement, and nobody tells anybody anything, the guild tries to figure out who to give the residuals to. In the end, a lot of money ends up in the unclaimed residuals pile. That money eventually, I believe, starts to filter back into the general fund of the writer’s guild, but they do try to distribute those funds as best they can. Obviously, you want to make it easier on them than harder.

John: Absolutely. All right. I think it is time for our one cool thing. My one cool thing feels like a Craig one cool thing, but it’s delightful for both of us.

Craig: Oh, yes.

John: Josh Wardle, who created Wordle, he came on the podcast many years ago. We celebrated Wordle as a great product that he’d made. He has a new thing out called Parseword. Parseword is a cryptic crossword puzzle game that Craig directly inspired. It’s based on his conversation with Craig on this podcast, and Craig extolling the virtues of cryptic crosswords that got Josh thinking about, “How could I make a game for cryptic crosswords that would actually be accessible and playable even by someone like John August?” He succeeded. Parsewords is delightful. It’s just parseword.com.

It walks you through how to think about these things because it’s complicated. It’s not as simple as Wordle is, but I see Craig smiling. You’ve got to be delighted.

Craig: Of course. What Parseword does is, in its own way, teaches people how to do this. It’s a very specific format. A typical crossword clue will just give you some prompt, and you have to answer it like river in Egypt, Nile. The cryptic crossword will give you both a straight clue and a wordplay clue within the same clue in a way that’s funky. Let’s say, winding river in Egypt leads you to straight. What is that? In Egypt, it’s not a very good crossword. It’s not the bad cryptic clue, but it’s Nile, and then you anagram it to line.

There’s all these like– actually, what I just did is illegal, but regardless, the point is, this teaches you all the tips and tricks of how to do these things. I have to say, once you get into cryptic crosswords, you just don’t care about the regular crossword anymore because it’s just like, “Do I know a thing? Sure.”

John: It’s why, after you started skiing blacks, you don’t want to ski bunny slopes anymore.

Craig: You leave it behind. Checkers was fun. This is chess. Then there are so many levels, and I go deep into, as I’ve mentioned before, the Kevin Wald cryptics, which are insane. Even beyond those, there are the cryptics from The Listener in the UK, which are borderline impossible.

It’s all fantastic. It’s just such good brain work. Doing a cryptic crossword is my night routine to go to sleep. I spend 20 minutes or so, and then when I feel like, “Oh, I made some progress,” I put the iPad down, and I go to sleep. If I didn’t have that, I don’t know if I would sleep. I think I would just stay up all night.

John: People should check out Parseword. It’s a really well-executed version of a difficult thing to do. It’s just so smartly done. Check that out. parseword.com. What have you got?

Craig: I have a book review. I’ve not read the book, but I’ve read the review. It’s in The Nation, so it’s quite thorough. The book that is being reviewed is The AI Paradox: How to Make Sense of a Complex Future by Virginia Dignum. Side note, when did books have to be title, colon, explanation of title?

John: Oh, yes, that’s interesting. I don’t know when that started.

Craig: It just happened, and it just never– there’s no way to not know it.

John: I think it’s within the 2000s, but if you just called it The AI Paradox, it wouldn’t be meaningful at all.

Craig: That’s how books used to work, though. Anyway, The AI Paradox: How to Make Sense of a Complex Future by Virginia Dignum. This review is by Ben Tarnoff.

What she seems to be digging into, per his analysis, which I think is really fascinating, is that we seem to be caught between either fearing that AI will destroy us all or fearing that AI is a huge scam and our economy is about to collapse because it’s just a sham. What Ms. Dignum takes the philosophical position that, actually, artificial intelligence isn’t really like our intelligence, but it is something to cooperate with our intelligence, and that we ought to be–

Rather than running away from it or elevating it instantly to replace us, we should be actively figuring out how to work with it by its side and make it work for us. I liked the review mostly because I think it was positive about– and I thought a very reasonable approach, like, “Hey, what if everyone on the extremes is wrong here? What if there’s just this messy middle?” I remain generally in the, I think this might be a scam camp, but I was somewhat hopeful that this could be a really, really good version of a calculator, and work like that is of value.

John: I’m looking forward to checking out the review and possibly the book itself. It is tough because you have to hold multiple things simultaneously in your head. It’s like there are genuinely useful things that people are using it to do, which is great, and applications that seem valid and like, “Oh, that’s a thing you couldn’t do without this kind of technology.”

Disruptive and dangerous, just this last week, the security implications of the new Anthropic model that could basically break everything. That’s why they can’t even release it until they find all these patches for stuff. The fact that all the money pouring into it and the weird side deals, it could be Enron, but also be real. It’s very frustrating.

Craig: It is frustrating. It’s hard to tell if people are in so deep financially that they have to just keep shoveling crap at us to make sure that we don’t notice that it’s just bland. Then again, maybe this is in its best version, a great new tool like the computer. The computer changed– it wasn’t like when the computer came along, people were like, “Oh my God, so many people are going to lose their jobs.” A lot of people did lose their jobs and had to retrain doing other jobs, but it notably created a billion jobs. The notion that artificial intelligence must replace us, that seems like that’s the toxic point of view.

John: An article I was reading yesterday was talking about are humans horses or coal when it comes to AI? Basically, we used to have so many horses in the world, and it was like, “We just don’t need the horses anymore,” so all those jobs for horses went away, or is it like coal, where it’s just like, we are still necessary for actually figuring out how to implement it and do all the things with it. By being able to do stuff, we can actually grow things bigger. I don’t think we know yet.

It’s probably both. It’s a very different thing. I think the rise of computers and the rise of the internet are directionally similar, but it’s just a different force than we’ve had before.

Craig: She makes the argument that part of what makes human intelligence different is its cooperative nature with other human intelligences, that we are constantly relating to each other, learning from each other, and changing our minds because of each other in an inventive, creative way, including people whose minds don’t work quite right. For lack of a better word, mentally ill people have had an outsized impact on art and culture forever. That part of things, I don’t think AI knows what to do with. I don’t think so.

John: We’ll check in several hundred episodes to see where we’re at, if we’re still around.

Craig: We’re at the bots. We’ve got Craig Bot, John Bot.

John: Craig Bot, John Bot. It’s all working.

Craig: One final, one cool– I have an extra one cool thing this week. My daughter, Jesse Mazin, was asked by the Indigo Girls to open up for them. She will be opening for the Indigo Girls on all of their western dates. If you go to their upcoming concert, it’s Portland, LA, and all places in between, and I think Boulder, I think Colorado is her first– she’s put this song out, and it’s attention, and this is going to be her first real thing. We’re all very excited and very proud of her, and she did this all on her own. I don’t know the Indigo Girls, but she will be opening for the Indigo Girls, and we’re all very excited. If you want to buy a ticket, check it out.

John: Absolutely. Every father is so proud of their child’s first national tour.

[laughter]

Craig: I never expected that I would ever say– when I was in college listening to the Indigo Girls, I never thought, “You know what, it’s fun, maybe I’ll make somebody, I’ll make a person, and that person will open for these ladies one day.” Did not have that on my bingo card.

John: Life is full of surprises.

Craig: Indeed.

John: That is Scriptnotes for this week. It is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Craig: Don’t know him.

John: Our outro is by James Ashley McLaren. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with a signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. The Scriptnotes book is out and available wherever you buy books.

You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram @ScriptnotesPodcast. We have T-shirts, hoodies, and drinkwear. You can find those at Cotton Bureau.

You’ll find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you, as always, to our premium subscribers. You keep the lights on and make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record about video and other changes coming to Scriptnotes. Craig, it is a damn delight to have you back in my little Zoom window to record another episode of Scriptnotes.

Craig: He’s back. Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: Let’s talk about video. For Episode 726, we recorded our first full episode as a video podcast. We didn’t have Craig, but our guests were Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh, who have since gone on to win the Oscar for their shorts.

Craig: Probably because they were on the show.

John: Honestly, probably because it was a tie.

Craig: Then definitely.

John: Literally.

Craig: Literally, somebody voted because they heard that episode.

John: Absolutely. I voted for him. I’ll say I voted for him. I was the one.

Craig: You were the one.

John: They were our guinea pigs. We sent that video as an exclusive link to our premium subscribers and asked them to give feedback. Drew, what did they say?

Drew: Very muted, no opinions.

John: No, that’s crazy. I really thought our listenership would have had opinions, but no, it was just silence, radio silence.

Drew: No, we got a lot.

[laughter]

Drew: It was very helpful. I can just run through some. Grigorij writes, “Huge fan of the podcast. This is really amazing. Well done. Would love to see all episodes as video episodes. Just miss Craig, 100% the way to go.”

Craig: All right. That is super positive. Why don’t we quit there?

Drew: Yale says, “This was really well done, and everyone’s heads had the right amount of shine. That said, I can’t see myself switching over to this format. It’s just that we’re 700 episodes in, and I just can’t say that in all those hours of listening to you guys as I’m doing the dishes or putting away laundry or on the subway, I’ve ever had a thought of, ‘Oh man, I wish I could see John and Craig right now.’ I’m very happy to have you continue to chat away in my headphones while you accompany me on my errands.”

Craig: Do you know what Yale just said? She said, “Oh, thank you, but I prefer that we just stay friends.” She straight-up did that. You know what? I get it. Don’t want to see me either, Yale. We’ll call that– what do you call that, a neutral?

John: Yes, we’ll call it neutral.

Craig: Neutral. Neutral, like take it or leave it, I guess.

Drew: Christopher says, “I had no intention of watching the whole video when I hit play. I just wanted to check it out for a few minutes since I don’t watch video podcasts. I prefer to listen to podcasts because I was born in the ’70s, and that’s what we do. 71 minutes later, I’m writing this email. What I enjoyed the most was connecting with Natalie and Alexandre as people visually. I felt more emotionally connected to their story as I watched them tell it than I think I would have just by listening to the podcast. I guess that’s why we write scripts in the hopes of turning them into films for audiences to watch. I loved seeing the studio space you’ve set up for these video recordings.

Nice attention to the background detail without being distracting, wonderful soft lights with the lamps. I even caught a squirrel on the wall just above Alexandre’s head at one point, to my delight.”

Craig: That was an unexpected win there with Christopher. I like that.

Drew: Rich says, “For me, this worked, and I love your background, but just be careful if and when you start to show video clips of movies in this medium to remember your roots and know that us in the car or on a walk can’t see it.”

John: That’s always a big problem with audio podcasts who try to include clips because then you have to describe what people saw in the clip, and it does slow everything down.

Craig: We generally don’t do much in the way of clips anyway for this very reason.

Drew: Guy says, “For me, pictures ultimately distract from your core purpose.”

Craig: Here we go. Finally.

John: “Scriptnotes was put here on earth in order to have two very experienced and amiable screenwriters chat about how to use words well in service of building pictures in people’s heads. With audio, there’s no distractions. I don’t want to see mics and cables. I just want to listen to my one-way friends and concentrate, usually while I’m driving or doing the washing up. ‘That’s fine,’ you might say. Just keep listening to the podcast. You won’t be forced at gunpoint to watch us. True, but here’s the thing. This will take up a lot of time, energy, and resources, and I suspect that ultimately may get passed on to your loving but financially stretched subscribers in the form of increased subscription fees.

Although you’re both fine-looking gents and this is slick, it’s audio-only vote from me.”

Craig: I like that Drew added some good old anger into that as he read it. He just imagined Guy getting pissed.

John: He’s an actor. Drew is fundamentally an actor. He’s a trained dramatic actor.

Craig: He’s an actor. He’s a trained dramatic actor. Also, by the way, I love Guy. Guy’s awesome. This guy’s great.

John: Give us the numbers. What was the breakdown here?

Drew: I broke it down. About five people said, “I prefer Scriptnotes as a video podcast. This is the only way to go.” We got about 26 people who said, “Heck yes, I love this,” but didn’t name a preference. For the people who said, “Looks nice, but there’s really no value add for me, and I’m probably going to stick to audio-only,” that was about 18 people. Finally, about four people said, “Do not do this. You’re ruining a good thing.”

John: That’s fair.

Craig: Let’s see. How would we evaluate this overall?

John: This is what I would have expected, but as Drew was reading through this, I was thinking back to Craig, we didn’t even used to look at each other on Zoom, or was it on Skype when we originally did it? We have our cameras on right now. We’re looking at each other, but for most of the podcast, we’ve only been hearing each other. I think one of the reasons I think we’re successful is because we actually do listen to each other.

We think of ourselves as an audio podcast. I still think of us as an audio podcast that has some video now. That’s where my head’s at. What’s your feeling, because we haven’t talked about this?

Craig: You’re right. The fact that we were audio-only has shaped what we do. I don’t think we would do anything differently with video as an added thing because I completely understand where people are coming from. I hope it doesn’t lead to more higher subscription fees. Maybe the idea is you get more subscribers, I would imagine. I understand that it looks nice, but no value add for me; we’ll stick to audio-only people. Then from time to time, if we have a guest on or somebody, I think that’s really where it can be valuable. I think this is generally positive.

I think the two of us are self-aware enough to know. If we suddenly started acting like on-camera jackasses because there was a camera there, it’s just not who we are. We are as set in our ways as Guy is. [laughs] I think we would just keep doing what we do. It’s just that if he did want to see, you could.

John: We sent you that episode to take a look at it. Your feedback was exactly my feedback. Do you remember? You were talking about camera placement, basically making sure–

Craig: Framing.

John: Yes, making sure we’re just not always in profile, which is how we were set up.

Craig: This is something that I’m constantly talking about on set all day because profile is, or three-quarters, often is a very flattering view of somebody. If you’re having a moment where people are connecting and learning, teaching, agreeing, arguing, something about the on-axis frontal view-

John: Say both eyes.

Craig: -it creates connection. You can feel it better.

John: We have gone back. We didn’t have to relight, but we had to move some stuff around in the studio to do it. Our great DP, John Pope, has been helping us out with that. We’re going to do some more of these. When we have guests in, we’re going to roll the cameras and have those as video episodes. A logistical thing, too, is when we record video, should Matthew edit the audio and then match the video to it, or should he edit the video? Prioritizing the two of those is a factor. This episode we’re doing right now, we’re not doing the video. We don’t care about the video for it. It’s just an audio episode. He’s great at both, but it’s where do you prioritize?

Craig: Way easier to edit audio. Way easier.

John: You can hide things. All of our little flubs just like, disapear.

Craig: If you have a couple of angles, obviously, you can cut to the other person when you need to snip something out, but it can get a little tricky, and you might end up with some jumping and stuff or just a cut to some little weird thing. Maybe we just do that. It’s called the video editing frog, and it’s like a little ceramic frog you just cut to, and there it is for some reason, and then we’re back to the discussion.

John: That’s the frog. Our current plan, just for listeners to know, is that when we have guests or we have a marquee topic, we may pull that marquee topic out as a video that just lives on YouTube, but full episodes will probably not be showing up on YouTube. As Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other places let you do video podcasts, we may put the video version of the podcast up for premium members and not have it for our standard feed. Our standard feed is just the audio of it all. Partly because one of the things we do at Scriptnotes, we’ve always done, is only the most recent 20 episodes are available in the free feed, and it’s a premium feed for everything beyond that.

If something’s on YouTube, then why would anybody subscribe? From a business model, it doesn’t make sense. We want to be able to make this a sustainable business. Part of sustainability is also recognizing the limits of our time and ability to do things. I am about to embark on a project that’s going to be taking a lot of my time over the next year or so. Drew is going to come with me over on that new project. There will be a new Scriptnotes producer at some point in the future. You’ll hear a different name there.

Craig: Who?

John: You’ll hear a different voice.

Craig: I wonder who it is.

John: We’re excited to introduce.

Craig: If I had to guess, could I guess what that person’s name is?

John: You could guess.

Craig: Meredith.

John: The Ouija board, where’s the tile?

Craig: I’m just guessing, Meredith. I don’t know why. I’m chucking it out there.

John: It feels right.

Craig: Putting it out in the universe, let’s see what happens.

John: No, that’s a thing that’s coming at some point down the road. I love co-hosting this podcast, but it’d be great to have someone on who could do a little bit more of everything else and whose job it is to just full-time be the Scriptnotes producer.

Craig: You’re very sweet that you say you co-host it. I co-host it, you host it, and I show up.

John: We want to make sure that we can keep the quality excellent even as I get much busier doing other things. I think we’ll be able to do that. Because we’re in the premium feed here, just thank you to all our premium members. The only reason that we can do some of this professionalization of Scriptnotes is because people pay the money for this thing, and we want to make sure that it stays excellent, and you are the people who let it stay excellent. Craig, Drew, thank you for a fun episode of Scriptnotes.

Drew: It’s just nice to be back.

John: Thank you.

Links:

• Does one page of a screenplay really equal one minute of screen time? by Stephen Follows
• California Schemin’ trailer
• Indistractable by Nir Eyal
• Explanation of Disbursement of Residual Payments After Death from the WGA West
• Parseword
• Frankenstein’s Regrets by Ben Tarnoff for The Nation
• The AI Paradox: How to Make Sense of a Complex Future by Virginia Dignum
• Indigo Girls Tour featuring Jessie Mazin!
• Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Scriptnotes on Instagram and TikTok
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by James Ashley McLaren (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

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 Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to Episode 701 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, how do you leverage connections to get work and help others get work? We’ll discuss the sometimes uncomfortable aspects of getting writing jobs and really almost any kind of job. We’ll also talk about the surprisingly good news for future writers in the recently released WJ numbers.

Then we’ll answer more listener questions we didn’t get to in last week’s live show. In our bonus segment for premium members, Craig, let’s continue our discussion of connections with literal connections, this being Lego. Here, we are looking at some Lego flowers. We’ve talked about Lego in a general sense over the 700 episodes of the podcast. I want to have a deep dive discussion on Lego and our philosophies regarding Lego because there’s the Lego we grew up with, and then there’s the Lego now, and how you’re treating these bricks we’re assembling.

Craig: I’m always here to discuss Lego, the plural of which is apparently Lego.

John: Which I love. Some news. The Scriptnotes book is now up on Goodreads. If you’re a person who uses Goodreads to review your books, you can mark that as a want to read and just helps people remember that, “Oh, this is a book that people want to read.” We look forward to hopefully some very positive Goodreads reviews once the book is out there in the world.

For now, a thing you can do is mark it as want to read. You can also preorder the book and send Drew the receipt. Right before we got on microphones, we were talking through a special thing we’re doing for all those people who sent us their receipts.

Drew Marquardt: We don’t have enough.

John: No, we do. We have a lot. It’s been a chore for Drew to sort them, but it’s a chore you love, right?

Drew: I love it.

Craig: Oh, yes. I can tell he loves it.

Drew: You see the twinkle in my eyes?

Craig: It’s always fun when you’re like, “But you love it, right?”

John: Don’t you just love it?

Drew: So good.

Craig: I said you love it.

Drew: I’m very excited.

Craig: Keep loving it.

John: We have a bit of follow-up here because last week was our 700th episode. It was a live show. It was so much fun to do. It was on YouTube, so thank you for everybody who participated in that. We forgot one thing from last week, which was that we actually had a thing we were supposed to do. It was something that had been set up a year in advance. Drew forgot the thing.

Craig: Oh, well, that’s all right. You’re only human.

Drew: Thank you.

Craig: You’re welcome.

John: People decided to see Drew on the livestream because everyone thought Drew was a child.

Craig: Why would they think he’s a child?

John: I don’t know.

Craig: First of all, that violates labor law.

John: Absolutely.

Drew: That feels like you guys, though.

Craig: Oh, that we would do that?

Drew: Yes.

Craig: It feels like we might. It feels like the kind of really good hypocrisy. Oh, we’re talking about the union and getting assistance paid. Now we make our seven-year-olds put this all together. We keep them in a room the way the musical Oliver! begins.

John: Yes, absolutely. It is a hard-knock life.

Craig: No, that’s Annie.

John: Oh, that’s right. I’ve confused my musicals. Well, they’re both about ragamuffin food.

Craig: Food. Glorious food.

John: I don’t know all of that.

Craig: Oh my God. We have to have an entire Oliver! podcast.

John: Right. Before we do that, we need to talk through this bit of follow-up here. Way back episode 645?

Craig: 645.

John: 645. Meredith Scardino was a guest along with Jen Statsky. We opened up an envelope that I had sent to Jen Statsky with my prediction for what was going to happen on the upcoming season of Hacks. I had written the prediction and sealed it and mailed it to her. She opened it live on recording. Meredith Scardino was like, “Well, I want to do that.” She made a prediction for what was going to happen on the 700th episode of Script Notes. Drew, will you open this and read what Meredith Scardino– this is a sealed envelope that Drew is opening.

Craig: I can confirm this. 700th show prediction, Meredith Scardino, June 1st, 2024. Over a year ago.

John: We were living in a different universe.

Craig: I hope it says something like, you both died.

Drew: “700th show prediction. One, compilation of best advice from guests,” which we kind of did.

Craig: Did we?

John: No. We brought people in for some advice.

Drew: “Two, then you go into an interview with special guest, one but not both Coen brothers.”

Craig: Wow.

John: No, we’ve not gotten the Coen brothers on this.

Craig: Oh my God, that would have been amazing. I’m not saying it would have been better than what we did, but we really should get one if not both. Did you say one but not both?

John: Yes, one but not both Coen brothers. She still think we can do it? She think we can bring the brothers back together for our podcast episode.

Craig: We’d like at least to get a Coen brother in here at some point. Oh, we could do a deep dive on a Coen brother movie.

John: Totally.

Craig: That might be fun.

John: They have one or two good movies.

Craig: They just have a few. Just a few, literally all of them. Miller’s Crossing, by the way, is one of my favorites.

John: I like Miller’s Crossing. I love some Fargo. I love–

Craig: Fargo, of course, Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men. It goes on. You know Barton Fink is the one I really want to do. We’ve been talking about Barton Fink for a long time.

John: It’s a screenwriter movie.

Craig: It has that Barton Fink feeling.

John: Funny that a Barton Fink movie has Barton Fink.

Craig: Where would I find another writer? Kidding. Go to the commissary. Throw a rock, you’ll hit one. And Fink? When you throw it, throw it hard.

John: Meredith Scardino, thank you for this card. Also, your handwriting is fantastic. It almost feels like architect handwriting. It’s tidy and neat. It’s printed. It’s all uppercase.

Craig: You know what I like? It’s not gendered handwriting. I wouldn’t know if this was a man or a woman. There could theoretically be a slight serial killer aspect to this handwriting. If you look at it, the kerning is really chaotic. It’s very ordered and yet it’s also saying, I might murder.

John: The I is very close to the P.

Craig: You see what I’m saying?

John: There’s some weird spacing there.

Craig: There’s signals there. If you are close with Meredith, just keep an eye open, is really all we’re saying. Just keep one eye open.

John: She makes the both and the brothers, they’re very different Bs too. It’s like she’s just choosing–

Craig: Like there’s a lot of different people up in there.

John: She’s cutting and pasting things out from a magazine.

Craig: There’s a little bit of a ransom note.

John: I love it. Thank you very much for sending it.

Craig: Also, she has great– her cardstock here is a great imprint on it. It says–

John: It says, from the drywall experts of Scardino & Sons, established 1859s. Awesome. So fantastic. We have some more follow-up on streaming services and creator pay.

Drew: Jeffrey writes, “A couple under-the-radar platforms worth mentioning. Vimeo On Demand. Not a subscription streaming service and very few consumers know about it or use it, which is a shame because the revenue split is extremely favorable for filmmakers.

Another one is Kanopy, which is the library and university-based streaming platform. When your film is on Kanopy, the residuals are decent compared to other streaming services. Best of all, you need is a library card to use it.”

John: It’s Kanopy with a K because, of course, it’s Kanopy with a K. Vimeo On Demand I have used for things. Not for things I’ve made, but to watch other people’s things. It’s good. I’m glad Vimeo has persisted in the world of YouTube.

Craig: I go there when it’s a result. I never think about going to places. I just go where–

John: Another reason I end up on Vimeo is when people have a trailer that’s not released yet, they want me to see it. A password-protected thing.

Craig: I will see some things there. Sometimes when I’m looking at, they’ll send me, “Oh, hey, here’s a director if you want to hire them for your show.” Then they’ll send a movie that they did or another episode. They’ll put it on Vimeo.

John: Exactly.

Craig: It’s password-protected.

John: It’s good stuff. Last bit of follow-up here from Dan who’s asking, “In regards to renting a movie on Apple TV or Prime, does one service provide higher residual payments or are they both the same?” They’re essentially the same. I think because it’s based on the actual price they’re charging, I think it does not matter.

Craig: The price that they charge is relevant, but the formula that we use is applied across all of the companies because it is a collective bargaining agreement term.

John: If you choose to pay $4.99 versus $3.99, that’s technically a little bit more. Also, just thank you for actually doing that and not pirating it.

Craig: That’s the most important thing. Don’t feel like you need to shop around for the highest price.

John: No. Not at all. Please don’t. Continuing the discussion of writers and money, last week, the Writers Guild sent out the Screen Compensation Guide, which was synthesizing data from 800 screen deals, feature deals, for high-budget features, which is high-budget features or anything with a budget of $5 billion or more, that was made during the term of the 2023 MBA.

We negotiated this new contract, and there were 800 screen deals made since that time. They looked through all the deals, and this is how you get a bird’s-eye view of what writers are actually being paid for the work that they’re doing. Craig, can you remind us of some of the terms we’re going to hear here? Talk to us about scale and what does scale mean for feature writers? How important is scale for feature writers?

Craig: Scale is the minimum amount that a WGA writer can be paid under a WGA agreement. Typically, we don’t see a ton of it in features. Scale is the rule of the day in television because so much of television compensation is moved over into producing numbers and things like that. For feature writing, you’re paid entirely as a writer, typically.

The lowest you’ll usually see is scale plus 10, so the company agrees to add 10% on so that you’re not losing money to your agent and going below that. Scale for original scripts is probably something like $130,000 now or something like that.
John: It’s over $100,000, so it depends on whether there’s an attribute or outline involved.

Craig: Generally speaking, if you’re going to be hired to do something as a screenwriter, you’re probably looking at six figures. Low six figures, at least to start, but not below scale.

John: As you and I, and this predates Script Notes, as we were going around meeting with studio bosses saying, “You need to really look at how you’re paying feature writers to make sure that you’re paying them better,” one of the things we were talking about is, it’s not just that you’re being paid a certain amount for this draft, but if you’re only being paid for one step, that is a crisis.

That was a real problem that we were seeing was that writers are being paid X dollars for one draft and there was no guarantee of a second draft. Therefore, they were being held hostage to these situations. As we talk about one-step deals, we would often describe that it’s an issue if they’re paying you or me for a one-step deal as higher-paid writers, but it’s really debilitating to younger, newer, lower-income writers.

Craig: The part of the problem was that studio executives were used to paying big writers, A-list writers, a lot of money, and not worrying about steps. If you hire somebody to fix a movie, “It’s a rewrite, fix this.” “Okay, well, it’s going to cost you $1 million.” You’re going to get a draft and be like, “Hey, well, blah, blah, blah. Okay, let me fix that,” or, “First, I could use some work. Okay, let me fix that. You paid me $1 million.”

They get used to that. They get used to not worrying about the paperwork of like, “Oh, sorry, the amount of yogurt you put in your cup went over the medium size. Now you have to pay the large.” Nobody likes to deal with it. The problem is, when you’re paying people a little bit, if you make them do more than one step, they are effectively getting shoved under scale.

All the way back in 2004, the last time that they were silly enough to put my dumb ass on a negotiating committee, what I asked was that, if a writer was being paid less than twice scale, they should be guaranteed two steps. In this way, the writer gets a chance to get the studio notes, get paid to write something else officially. The producer doesn’t have quite as much anxiety about that first draft and quite as much meddling to do. That request went nowhere until 2023.

John: In the 2023 MBA negotiations, that’s the thing we actually won. Future writers earning less than 200% of scale, you’re guaranteed a second step. That was designed so that it’s helping the writers who are most hurt by one-step deals.

Craig: It protects, in a way, the studio. This is why I never understood why the studios, why it took them 20 years and a strike to agree to this, it doesn’t cost them anymore. Okay, I pay you $200,000 for one step, or I pay you $200,000 for two steps. You see what I mean? Anyway, I hope that that has made life a little bit better and has retrained the studios a bit to see that two steps are helpful.

John: Anecdotally, based on what you were experiencing in these 10 years leading up to this, how many writers did you feel were encountering one-step deals in the future land? What percentage?

Craig: I would have guessed it would have been over 50. I would have said 60%.

John: That’s my guess too. At least over half, maybe two thirds. The good news is one-step deals now account for only 3 in 10.

Craig: That is definitely a reduction. It has to be.

John: It has to be. The better news is, when they actually break it down by the amount that the writers are earning, the median pay for one-step deals went from $250,000 to $450,000 over the course of this term.

Craig: What that tells us is they’re still reserving the one-steps for the people who are being paid a lot. They’re being paid enough that, really, doing two steps or even three isn’t going to push them below scale. In short, we protected scale. That was what this was always about. Sounds like it’s working great.

John: Looking through the numbers, at least one screenwriter got $2.25 million for a one-step deal. Good for them.

Craig: I get that. That’s fine.

John: The other factors in here, the other–

Craig: I wanted 2.7, but they only gave me 2.25.

John: 2.25.

Craig: 2.25. It’s a nice number. I like 2.25. You could tell that that’s a negotiated number. Nobody wants to be there.

John: No. It was between 2 and 2.25.

Craig: They were like, “Fine.”

John: Members with two-plus credits got the biggest bump of $100,000 for the last three years. Even new members with no credits were receiving $25,000 more than they were in 2021. It’s progress in future pay across. That matches anecdotally with what I’ve been hearing from people.

Craig: This was always a quality-of-life thing. The question that I am interested in is, again, it would be anecdotally, survey-style, do writers feel like they are doing more or less “free work”? I would hope that it would be a little bit yes. I mean, a little bit, yes, I’m doing less free work because, in my mind, this term was never going to increase the earnings that much. It was really quality of life.

John: That’s the hope, too. One way, if you are a future writer who is encountering these things and want to help figure out what it looks like on the ground, is that they’ve started sending out the survey leading into the negotiation cycle. It’s a good chance to fill out that form and let us know really where you’re at and what the biggest issues are for you. If there’s a thing that we’re not catching here, this is the time to speak up.

All right. Let’s get to our main topic here, which is connections, which is not just a fantastic New York Times game. Do you still play Connections?

Craig: Of course, played it this morning.

Drew: It’s great.

John: I’m trying to remember, today’s Connections involved– what was the purple category of this one? It was–

Craig: Well, there was Blank Land.

John: Blank Land, yes.

Craig: There were things with the antennae.

John: Like in Teletubbies.

Craig: There were Blank Doodle.

John: Yes, Blank Doodle, I think, was the-

Craig: It was Blank Doodle was the thing.

John: -the purple.

Craig: Oh, yes, and the other things were Blenders.

John: Dipsy Doodle. I didn’t know what Dipsy Doodle was.

Craig: Oh, you didn’t know about Dipsy Doodle?

John: What’s Dipsy Doodle?

Craig: The first thing I thought when I saw Dipsy Doodle, I knew that she was trying to fool us into heading towards the Teletubbies. Nice try, Wyna.

John: Wouldn’t happen.

Craig: Nope, not today.

John: I love Wyna Liu.

Craig: What’s that?

John: Wyna Liu.

Craig: Wyna Liu. By the way, I don’t even know what Wyna Liu looks like. I’m looking up Wyna Liu right now.

John: There’s an interview with her, and she’s a woman in her 30s, maybe early 40s. She seems to love what she’s doing.

Craig: She’s got a great name. Wyna is a– oh, look how happy she is.

John: Doesn’t she look happy?

Craig: Oh my God, she looks thrilled. She looks thrilled.

John: I also love the discussion around Connections. People will have whole TikToks on, let’s break down the most insane connections of them all, and they’ll talk to you.

Craig: Somebody said to me early on, I won’t say who it was. They were like, “It’s good, but there’s no way Wyna Liu can keep this up day after day.” I was like, “I have faith,” and she has.

John: It’s justified. That’s Connections the game, which is fantastic and we all love, but let’s talk about connections in real life. Connections between people, and especially people who need a thing from each other, and how we handle those connections in our town, and how we use connections, but even just saying use connections feels gross.

Craig: It’s a better word than exploit. How do you exploit your connections?

John: The good use of connections implies a reciprocity, a generosity, a good-for-everyone quality to it.

Craig: I think sometimes we feel like we are begging or that we’re charity cases. In fact, if the connection works, it’s not because the person that you begged took pity upon you. It’s because they thought that your thing is good and it will reflect well upon them. That’s really what that is. Otherwise, sometimes your connections, “Oh, my mom is best friends with your mom.” That’s going to get you a 20-minute chit-chat. Is it going to change your life or career? No.

John: No. Craig, you spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, I can tell.

Craig: Love LinkedIn.

John: How many connections do you have on LinkedIn?

Craig: I have zero connections on LinkedIn, John.

John: As do I. We’re not talking about LinkedIn connections or any of that performative networking. I think we’re talking about the casual stuff that does happen all the time, and this is the thing I’m sure happens with you, is that a friend asks you to put in a good word on a show that they’re trying to step on. That’s a valid, accepted part of the practice.

Craig: Absolutely.

John: Let’s talk about the specific kinds of connections, when it’s okay to reach out, when you should step back a little bit. You were talking about our moms, our friends kind of thing. Weak connections are things like acquaintances, your dad’s friend’s friend, the guy you went to high school with but you don’t keep up with. If you’re reaching out to them specifically for this thing but you wouldn’t talk to them otherwise, that’s a weak connection.

Craig: It’s important to be mindful if you are the one that is being connected to, that the person that is asking you to talk or consult or advice, you’re their thing. You are probably the sum total, in many cases, of their connection to Hollywood. There’s an importance that they’re putting on this that you’re not. At least be mindful of it. I try and be as respectful as I can and I try to remember what it was like when I was grasping for crumbs, little hints of threads of things. Everything is high stakes, everything.

John: Let’s talk about strong connections. Close friends, collaborators, your writing partners, all that kind of stuff. Employers, supervisors, classmates in a program is good. Drew and I both went through the Stark program. The real advantage of going through a film school is you have 25 connections who actually you can get information from, they can help you out and stuff, and that is super invaluable. Those are the people who you should feel like you can count on and they can count on you. Again, it’s that reciprocity thing feels so crucial.

I think another aspect of reaching out to somebody is intent. Are you trying to exchange information? Are you trying to extract something from them? Are you asking someone that will take five minutes of their time or is it a lot more than that? If you’re asking someone to read something, that’s a lot to do. If you’re asking for advice on a specific situation, that’s a thing I’m more happy to take some time to do. Tell me about being a screenwriter in Hollywood, it’s like, “I got a podcast. Listen to this.” Now there’ll be a book.

Craig: We have a book. Advice for people reaching out, the more specific you can be about what you want, the more likely it is that the connection will at least happen initially. The hardest ones are the, “Can I just pick your brain podcast.” You can go pick my brain for 701 hours, but when they say, “I have three questions I need to get answered somehow,” or, “I have one situation that I’m wondering if you can help me with,” then it’s practical, it’s targeted, it feels a little bit like a mission.

It’s not an open-ended quest. When it’s an open-ended quest of just like, “Hey, I just want to talk with you about–“ then we’re just going to talk. It’s not great.

Craig: An example of the former, which is the specific thing, a friend reached out to say like, “Hey, there’s a thing they’re trying to put in my contract for this deal. Can I talk to you about it?” “Yes.”

John: Oh my God, yes.

Craig: 100%. To me, that’s not even connections at that point. That’s like, okay, we’re colleagues. We’re in the same business. That’s different.

John: It’s in the category of generosity, but a thing I do, which some friends do and other colleagues do, but I don’t see people do enough and I think that people should do more is, if I see a friend written up a deadline, like they sold a show or they did a thing, I’m always right there with an email saying, congratulations. I’m making it clear that I’m rooting for that person.

Craig: You’ve never sent me that email, not once.

John: Then I’ve said something like that to you.

Craig: I don’t think you have.

John: You probably have.

Craig: I’m different, I know. You know why? Because you just take me for granted. That’s why. I’m just the guy that’s there. I get it. I know how Mike feel.

John: Actually, you had a show that you were producing that was announced in Deadline, I didn’t email you [unintelligible 00:21:54].

Craig: You didn’t. Exactly.

John: How many other people– did other people email you about it?

Craig: Yes. They texts, mostly texts.

John: Texts, yes.

Craig: I don’t expect it. I don’t expect it, and also, I never do it because I don’t read Deadline.

John: That’s good for your sanity.

Craig: I think it might be.

John: Here’s what I’ll say about the dropping the email or the text. The email is good in the sense that there’s less of a pressure to respond to a thing sometimes, or like an Instagram congratulations to somebody. It’s just reestablishing. It’s making it clear that I’m rooting for you and some good things have happened in my life because that.

Like, “Oh, this is a good chance for me to catch up with this person,” or there’s actually a project I ended up doing when I sent through the congratulatory email. The guy said right back, like, “Oh, you should do this other thing.” I’m like, “Oh, yes, I should do this other thing,” and I ended up selling a project. Do those. It takes a minute to do and do it at the time.

Craig: Generally speaking, when it’s people in our business, if you’re already inside the business, I feel like you have a very specific need, want, that another person can help you with. Some friend that you and I both know called me the other day with this exact situation. “I have a problem. I think you’ve had this problem before. Let’s talk.” Those things are great. Then, of course, great job and so forth. I’m very texty about that sort of thing because I’m a teenage girl. I don’t know. Text is better.

John: Text is better for a friend or somebody if you regularly keep in touch with, or semi-regularly. For example, writer friends who I haven’t seen in six years but then I see that they sold a show.

Craig: Really?

John: I want to drop them a note.

Craig: I go text.

John: I think it was maybe I’ve actually never texted these people.

Craig: You may not even have their number. You may only have their email. That’s a different situation. Even then, I try and do the thing with text where it’s like, “Oh, can I text you via your email?” If it turns blue, just like that.

John: That works.

Craig: I always say, “This is Craig.” Never text somebody that you are not in an active conversation with.

John: If there’s not a thread back and forth.

Craig: There are a few, I have to say, that I occasionally get. It’ll happen once every two years. I’m like, “Thank you,” and I don’t know who it is because it’s a number. I’m saying this quietly like no one’s going to hear me. I can look back over six years of these. It’s too late now.

John: It’s not too late.

Craig: Can your phone do this?

John: Sorry, your name isn’t showing up.

Craig: They’re like, “Has it ever been showing up? Have you ever known who I was?” That’s what I would say. I wouldn’t. I am so against making people embarrassed for not knowing something about me. We need to have a whole podcast about how to handle the, I don’t know who you are. That’s like a whole situation. It’s a real life situation.

John: It’s in real life, for sure, too.

Craig: It’s a massive situation. It wasn’t when we started. The older you get, the more people you know.

John: There’s just more people.

Craig: It just becomes a real issue.

John: A situation that happened, we were at a restaurant way out on the west side, a place I never would have been. We’re sitting at this big table and having a good conversation. There’s a guy who’s in my eyesight who waves to me. It’s like, crap, I know I must know who that person is, but I don’t.

It was the challenge of I’m more recognizable than he is. He’s seeing me repeated in deadline stories and other things. I have no idea who he was. Fortunately, at the end, he did come over and reintroduce himself. Of course, an agent I had 15 years ago who I hadn’t seen in person in so long.

Craig: They all look the same. They wear the same clothes.

John: He did a very gracious thing. I think that’s the right approach.

Craig: He said, “Hey, it’s so and so.” There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s so much right with that. This is why it’s hard to go somewhere when your spouse, this is the case for both of us, is not in the business because they’re not going to know who the person is. When that person goes over, you are now supposed to go, “Oh, hey, Melissa, this is blah-di-di-blah.”

When I know who somebody is, I’m so proud. I’m like, trumpets, red carpet, this is so and so. Here’s what he’s done. Here’s what he did. Here’s where he came from. I’m like a Wikipedia article all of a sudden. Then the other people, I’m like, “Oh my God.”

John: Obviously, this is advice. If you’re the plus one going into one of these situations, get in there.

Craig: Get in there fast.

John: 100%. Let’s talk about other connection outreaches. Make sure to give people an out so that you’re not boxing them in. If you’re too busy, no sweat at all. Recognize when someone might be stretched thin. The last thing I’ll say is close the loop. Thank them for doing it. If there’s an update, give them the update because so often, I’ll give someone advice, I have no idea what happened. Just a follow-up email, “I just wanted to let you know this is what happened. It was great, and thank you for this.”

Craig: I can think of a couple of people that have emailed me years after I spoke with them, and did it perfectly. Reminded me of who they were. Acknowledged that I might not even remember it because it was just 30 minutes two years ago. Give me some context that might help me remember. Tell me why they’re updating me because this good thing happened. A lovely sentiment of thanks or gratitude.

John: My day is better because of it.

Craig: Then, thank you, goodbye. Perfect.

John: Perfectly done.

Craig: Perfect.

John: Wrap this up with an example of a connection that ends up paying off for everybody involved. Years ago, we were hiring a designer for the company, and I met with a bunch of people. One guy was great, but he wasn’t quite the right fit. He asked, “Hey, can I stay in touch?” I’m like, “For sure. You’re great.”

He was really good about dropping an email once a year to keeping up with where things were at. He ended up getting a job at Amazon and working on a very specific top-secret project. It was a once-a-year email and sometimes a short Zoom to catch up on stuff. We ran into a problem with our emergency pack, which is sold on Amazon, where we suddenly weren’t able to sell it because Germany was requiring this authorization. Basically, our whole account was shut down until we verified with Germany, but there were no appointments to actually do this video.

Craig: I immediately feel a pang of fear when you tell me that Germany, because of new regulations, is shutting something down. I start to panic.

John: For two months, it was this bureaucracy nightmare. Finally, I’m like, Jared works at Amazon. I don’t think he works anywhere in that department. It’s like, “Can you help?” He’s like, “Yes, I think I can help.” He was able, because he just knew people, was able to connect the things and thoughts.

I still had to do the stupid German interview, but I got it bumped up so I could, at 3:00 in the morning, talk to some German person. He made the thing happen. That’s because he was a smart person who was like, “Oh, I’m rooting for you.” He could help me out down the road.

Craig: You could make an interesting graph of how much you’re going to be helped by connections in your life. The graph will start with a line that is very low to the X-axis, and then it will not rise linearly. It will rise exponentially.

John: There’s a compounding effect to that.

Craig: The more you achieve, the closer the proximity to other people who are achieving, which means the more likely it is that you can help each other, and that grows and expands. It is very easy, I think, and reasonable to be close to the X-axis and look upwards at the people who are high on the Y-axis and go, “Well, this is unfair.” It is, but it is also just a function of reality.

I’ve thought about that a lot, actually. There’s really no way to create equity there. It’s just something that’s going to happen. At least, if you are high on the Y-axis, try to not just shut down the X-axis people completely.

John: 100%. I think I found myself doing during the WGA negotiations is we have all these big member meetings. We have them with strike captains and with members and all these forums. I wasn’t answering a lot of questions, but I was up there on the stage or I was in the audience. When people come up to the microphone, they say their name and they ask their question.

In my little notebook, I wrote down people’s names and I wrote down their question and put a star by them. That is a smart person. Sometimes afterwards, I would come up to them and thank them for asking a smart question. Just to establish a radar for, these are good people who are going to be the leaders of tomorrow, it’s always easy to remember the jerks and the idiots. When somebody is like, “Oh, that is a smart person who is asking a good question,” it’s helping you understand through the invisible mesh of trust and smartness that’s out there.

Craig: I try with the connection thing to also look for institutions. These are mentorships that aren’t already dealing with people that have other legs up. It’s not that I don’t talk to people who email me from Princeton because they get my name from the Princeton Alumni Guide. It’s just that I’m not as motivated. They’re Princeton. You got a lot going on. I’ve done my charitable work there.

It’s more interesting when other groups come and you have a chance to talk to people who don’t have– okay, well, that one didn’t pan out, but here’s 40 other people in the alumni handbag. I don’t know. I’d rather talk to other people. Sorry, my Princeton [unintelligible 00:31:51].

John: You’re setting some boundaries, too, which is a helpful way to–

Craig: Prioritizing.

John: Prioritizing. I think the final bit of advice we would probably both agree on is paying it forward. The degree to which you are benefiting from connections, make sure you’re creating connections with other people that can help lift them up.

Craig: Everybody who achieves a certain status in our business is going to get hit up by people. That’s inevitable. It’s not like you’re going to have any shortage of opportunity. Don’t never do it. Do it. You can’t do it all the time. You have to gatekeep somehow. You just have to because you have a job and you have a life.

The other thing is, sometimes, I remember thinking when I was starting out, this person just needs to give me 10 minutes of their life. I know that they’re wasting 10 minutes all the time. That is true. I am constantly wasting time. Also, I’m sorry, I can’t. If I just talk to people, then that’d be a rough life.

John: That’s one of the things. It’s like, I can’t have this conversation with each individual person, but I can have a conversation in aggregate among all these people.

Craig: Just listen to the 701–

John: Or buy the book.

Craig: Or buy the book. I keep forgetting we wrote a book. I wonder how I could forget that.

John: Let’s answer some new listener questions. Can we start here at the bottom of the list with Michael Neal?

Drew: Michael writes, “I had my first kid at the beginning of the year.”

John: Congratulations.

Drew: “Well, my wife had the kid. I was the cheerleader.”

Craig: Well done.

Drew: “When I watch film and TV now, I find myself having much stronger reactions to scenes, even ones I’d seen before. They don’t even have to involve kids. When I talked to my mom, she said she had to stop watching horror movies for years after I was born, and I was her second kid. After you both had your kids, was there anything that changed about your viewing habits or how you reacted to film and TV? Was there something specific that surprised you?”

John: I’m trying to think whether my viewing habits changed greatly. Obviously, at a certain point when she started watching TV shows, I was watching a bunch of inane TV shows with her. I think we talked about it on the show. I used to swear a fair amount, and it just stopped completely suddenly. It really is awkward for me to swear now.

Craig: Whoa. I started swearing more.

John: You did?

Craig: Yes, because of those effing babies. I don’t think there was anything that changed in terms of taste. My threshold for, yes, I want to see that, went way higher because I had a kid. That is a question of, would you like to not be with your baby and see this movie that, whatever? Just because people are like, “Oh, it might be–“ It just changed. It changed.

I used to see movies all the time. I would watch a lot of different shows and things, and then it just changed after that. It does change you. This is why critics are unreliable. Think about what he’s saying. It changes. As your life changes, you change, your taste changes, your ability to appreciate or not appreciate something changes. The rhetoric of, I have deemed this good or bad, just doesn’t make sense. It’s an odd thing.

John: My sensitivity towards onscreen when children are in danger probably shifted a little bit. It’s not like I was like, “Oh, I want that kid in peril.”

Craig: You used to love it.

John: I think there’s always the aspect of watching something is that you’re imagining yourself in that situation. When you have a kid, that kid is an extension of you and you’re imagining that kid being hurt. It feels like it’s a part of you.

Craig: I think maybe I probably did also empathize more with parental characters whose children were in danger. It is a different feeling. It’s a bit intellectual prior to that, and it becomes incredibly middle brain when you’ve had a kid and your limbic system is getting triggered by Liam Neeson getting a phone call and taken.

John: My eyes are on Mike. Watching the end of Toy Story 3 when the kid is going off to college, just broke him. He couldn’t even think about it without sobbing.

Craig: Interesting.

John: That was directly a factor of having a kid and not being able to imagine our daughter going to college. Then the teenage years make you really ready to leave.

Craig: Get out. It’s almost like it’s all planned. They make it so that you finally are like– although my youngest is living with us right now, which is great. She could get her own place, but you know why she’s living with us? She’s like, “It’s better here.”

John: Honestly, it’s better.

Craig: Yes, it is. It’s cool. We’re good. You’re all right. Just stop making a mess.

John: Let’s answer a question that actually ties back into our initial connections question. We have a question here from Tara Garwood, which is related to connections.

Drew: “I’m almost finished with my first screenplay, a horror comedy, which I wrote under the mentorship of two well-known Hollywood horror screenwriters. As someone living outside LA, how can I best proceed with my first screenplay and mentors who are presumably willing to help me out?”

John: Great. Tara, congrats on this project. We don’t know how you got it to these horror screenwriters, but if they’re actually working in the business, they’re great connections for you here. The real issue is, how do you let them help you in a way that they’re going to be able to help you and not be too much of a hassle to them? They can connect you to other people, including a rep, a manager, somebody else. They can just get your script in front of people, and that’s going to be the most helpful thing to you going forward.

Craig: Sounds like you know what to do. You’ve got two people. They’re your mentors. You’ve written something. Depending on how close that mentorship is, you might want to say, “Hey, I’ve written the script. I’m not going to make you read the whole thing. Unless you really want to, just read the first 10 pages. Just read the first 10. You don’t even have to respond. If you do, I’ll send the rest.”

John: Assuming they like it– I went into this question assuming that they had read the whole thing, which would be great, but if they haven’t, that’s also fine. If they can help you find other people to talk to so it’s not just them all the time, will be good. That’s why I was trying to look for a manager or just like, who else do you think I should talk to? Who else could be a good connection here because that feels useful and important?

You’re outside of LA, which is great and it’s fine, but I think you need to find some other writers, people in this space who you can talk to so it’s not just on the backs of these two mentor people because they will burn out if they’re getting an email from you every two weeks.

Craig: Yes, eventually they will burn out, no question.

John: Cool. Let’s do a question here from Reid.

Drew: “John and Craig compared being hired on a weekly project as making a corpse presentable enough for an open casket funeral.”

John: That was Craig’s.

Craig: That’s me. It’s not always like that. Sometimes it’s like that, yes.

Drew: “Well, when you’re in a situation like this or in the throes of rewriting a scene for the fifth or sixth time, how can you tell if you’re actually improving it or are you just making it different?”

John: Sometimes you’re just making it different for the sake of freshness and just dealing with people’s egos and needs and situation. You have to be honest with yourself when it’s like, this is not a better version of the scene, it’s just a different version of the scene that starts in a different place, it goes to a different place, it has different words, but hopefully it’s serving the same function.

When you’re actually trying to improve a thing, I think you need to step back and look at, what is the function this is trying to serve? Is it consistent with the tone and the voice and the spirit of the movie, and especially the section of the movie or the section of the storytelling? Is it fresher? Is it more exciting for an audience to encounter? That’s hard. We’ve talked a lot about it in comedy. Sometimes you forget that things are funny because you’re just exposed to them so many times.

Craig: I remember reading about Mozart when I was a kid and how he was able to learn some classical piece when he was seven, and then just sort of extemporaneously create seven versions of it. I just thought, “Well, what are those versions?” Well, turns out if you are a writer, you could do seven versions of something. You understand, then, what versioning is. When you’re in a situation where you’re on one of these deals, you’re usually trying to make one person happy. Sometimes that one person is happy because you’ve made somebody else happy. You’re trying to make the head of the studio happy.

They say, “What would make me happy is if this star agrees to get on the plane and fly there to do the movie. Right now, this is what he or she wants.” Great. How would this do? “Almost, but they want this or they don’t want that.” Got it. What about this version? Really, you’re not writing anything that is expressive of you. You are versioning until someone goes that because you actually don’t know. Nobody knows. You’re just trying to get people to say, “Oh, yes. Okay, that. That’s what I think this should all be.” Then it is useful because then everybody can go, “Oh, we were making Meatloaf, but you wanted Baked Alaska. Okay. Let’s realign.

John: That is the frustration is often they’ll focus on the script because that script is the thing they can control, but the issue isn’t the script at all. The issue is the actor, the director, the location-

Craig: Always.

John: -the budget, it’s all this other stuff. The problem never was the words on the page, but the words on the page are the only thing that can change. That’s what they’re focusing on. You’re getting paid, hopefully well to do impossible things and do the least damage possible while you’re doing it.

Craig: There are, I think, a lot of situations where studios like an idea that is inherent to a script, and they find an actor that means something and a director that means something who also really like the idea of that script. Everybody agrees the script could “use work,” meaning the execution of that idea isn’t thrilling to them. There be dragons because what happens then is a parade of highly paid, extremely competent writers all versioning to figure it well, is it this? Is it this?

John: The truth is there’s no one decision maker. It gets off like a consensus situation. There’s not a king to please.

Craig: There is no king to please. Everybody’s fighting with everybody over it. Everybody wants it to be something, and none of them have the ability to write two words together, not two, and there’s the problem. You go in, as we’ve talked about this before, in those situations, you are a surgeon, you are a mortician. You are also a therapist, you are a diplomat, you are a priest, confessor, you are so many things to so many different people.

It is one of the great ironies of the feature side of our business that those are some of the highest-paid people in Hollywood who are still treated like crap in their own way. It’s like, “Well, we’re not treating you like crap, we’re giving you all this money.” Also, change everything because somebody that shouldn’t have any power whatsoever doesn’t like the word blue.

John: Oh, yes. Their notes are like, “I don’t like seeing people eat on screen.” Sure. I recognize that you’re number seven on the power structure here, but also if I don’t yield on this, you’re going to dig in your heels to the other side. I’m going to need you to fight on my side for something else.

Craig: Also, I’m not going to be here in two weeks. I’m gone, right? One actor, his issue was he just didn’t like dialogue when he was standing. He wanted to be moving. Well, I’ve got a director and a producer who are like, “This is a scene where there’s nowhere to go.” I don’t know. What if? Now, this is the problem I’m trying to solve. This is not a writing problem.

John: No.

Craig: It’s really not. Now it’s just this weird puzzle of like, oh, well, I still want this lovely scene where Vito Corleone is talking to Michael Corleone in the garden and explaining to him the innermost truths of running a mafia family. Let’s say Al Pacino was like, “But I don’t want to sit. I want to be walking.” Marlon Brando was like, “Well, I don’t want to be walking. I want to sit.” Now I’m not doing art at all.

John: No.

Craig: Now it’s Lego.

John: It is Lego. How does it assemble properly? All right. Let’s draw one cool thing. Mine is an article by Cate Hall in her newsletter, Useful Fictions, called 50 Things I Know. There’s an industry out of this newsletter like lists of stuff I’ve learned over the course of the years. They’re skimmable, but I thought hers were really good. I’m just going to hit the first three here, Craig, and see how you respond.

She says, “You are allowed to care about people who don’t care about you and even people who dislike you. The way you feel about someone can be totally decoupled from how they feel about you. In fact, uncovering your capacity to love people who will never fully reciprocate it is the definition of grace.”

Craig: Yes, that’s a beautiful thought.

John: It’s also a good theme for a screenplay. That’s a good dramatic question.

Craig: Yes, it is. The idea of unrequited love implies an unfairness and a wound. Here’s something that changes when you’re a parent. It’s unrequited love. Their love for you is not like your love for them, nor will it ever be.

John: It’s never going to be perfectly reciprocal.

Craig: Never. You don’t really, nor should you really require it to. That’s an example where you just go, “I’m going to care about you.” There’s no quid pro quo. This is how it goes. Yes, there are people that you can do that with.

John: Second point, if you’re unsure how to have better opinions, try just having fewer of them for a start.

Craig: Well, first of all, what is a better opinion? [laughs] I’m not sure what that means.

John: What is a better opinion? I guess you pull that apart. To me, it’s–

Craig: Maybe justified.

John: Justified opinion, yes.

Craig: Instead of just saying stuff because.

John: I feel like sometimes you have this instinct of like, “Well, I have to have an opinion on something.”

Craig: No, you don’t.

John: I don’t have an opinion. No.

Craig: I don’t know, and I’m not sure are wonderful phrases.

John: “The most dangerous people have an exquisitely tuned sense of just how much they can get away with when it comes to how they treat different people, so pay special attention when others have sharply diverging opinions of someone’s character. Lots of variance in opinion about whether an idea is good means there’s a good chance the idea is good. Lots of variance in opinion about whether a person is good is a warning sign. If you’re hearing a lot of diverging reports about a person, that’s a red flag, and that feels true to me.”

Craig: Yes, I can understand her point that people that you would want to treat well are saying, “Oh, this person’s wonderful.” Well, yes, because they’re probably wonderful to you. Then, ‘Oh, these are people for which there is no reward if you treat them well, and all of those people are saying this person’s a monster.” The agent that a big star loves but all the assistants loathe, yes, that’s going to be a person who’s probably not great.

John: Going back to connections, I got a call from a writer who was asking about an actor who I’d worked with, and I could tell him that obviously this should be on a phone call. Don’t text this. Don’t email this. I can say, I had a really good experience with them, and I know that other people have not had good experiences with them. I personally did not encounter that at all. I would say keep asking and check on people, but I also wonder if there’s just a bad mix of personalities and types.

Craig: Yes, qualifying, things like that, all the time. Absolutely. I’m very nervous about saying, “Oh, this person is “bad.” It’s best to talk about your experience with somebody. I try to lead with, I’m just one person. I do think that there are people about whom I’ve been warned who turned out to be great. Then my question is, “What’s the deal with you? You warned me about this person.” There are people who warn you, and they warn you in a careful way.

They go, look, here’s the context. The truth is all of us can be warned about. We all have something that isn’t going to work with someone else. We’re not compatible with everyone. The warning should be not something abusive, horrible, racist, whatever. It’s just these are the ins and outs of this person. If you don’t mind a person like this, great.

John: Those are 3 of the 50 recommendations on Cate Hall’s Useful Fictions. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that. Craig, what do you have for us?

Craig: Well, it’s fun. We were talking about connections today. My one cool thing is a new game, Pips. Love it. Have you been playing it?

John: I tried the demo and did not click for me. Tell me what’s working for you about Pips in your brain.

Craig: First, let me admire the puzzle that I did this morning. Pips, it’s pretty simple. It’s a dominoes-style game. Unlike dominoes, where every square of a domino has to match up to another one, what they do is they give you a little grid, a little snaky grid, in which to place the collection of dominoes they’ve given you for that puzzle. They’ve created regions inside of the grid that have constrictions. For instance, in today’s, there was an area where the numbers in this one region had to equal 10. There’s another area where a plus sign region had to all have the same number.

I played it on hard because I got to be honest with you, it’s a pretty easy game. It’s a lovely little easy logic puzzle. When it clicks, there’s a very odd satisfaction to it. What I also like is, as much as I love words, there’s a lot of word-letter-based stuff here, connections, spelling bee, Wordle. I do the Sudoku occasionally. Sudoku is just Sudoku. It’s so number, crunchy, simple in its own way. It’s just straight dead logic. This at least requires me to move shapes around, which is not my strong suit. I like the spatial aspect. It’s fun and it’s quick.

John: Their games are quick. It’s interesting because The New York Times games were originally just digital versions of things that could be done on paper and pencil. This is an example of the thing that couldn’t happen on paper and pencil. Wordle couldn’t happen on paper and pencil.

Craig: No. Wordle could not happen on paper and pencil. Now, this is my chance to decry the removal of the acrostics. I don’t understand. I will never understand why The New York Times just– Mike, how much could it have cost to pay Henry Cox and Emily Rathvon every two weeks to bring acrostic? Come on. It was perfect for digital. If ever they were a puzzle made for digital, it was that. I don’t care if 12 people did it. I was one of them. Boo.

John: Boo.

Craig: Boo.

John: It wasn’t bad enough to make you cancel your account, which is why they didn’t do it.

Craig: I know, but I’m still–

John: There’s still time.

Craig: I’m still out here being– you know what? They’ve never encountered a cranky, rigid customer in the top of [crosstalk]. Listen to me, I’m still the most flexible customer I have.

John: That is our show for this week. It’s produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Spencer Lackey. 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 like the ones we answered today on the show.

You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes. We are also scriptnotespodcast on Instagram. We’re posting stuff about the show and the book, and new vertical videos on there too.

We have T-shirts and hoodies, and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes with the links for all the things we talked about today, and the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to those premium subscribers who make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on Lego.

Craig, thanks for a good connections episode.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. We are looking at a vase full of– vase or vase? Are you a vase or vase person?

Craig: I’m a vase person.

John: I’m vase as well.

Craig: That’s a very New York way of doing it.

John: Yes. Full of Lego flowers. Can you describe it for the listeners at home?

Craig: Yes. It’s actually quite beautiful. I’ve made Lego flowers of a more chunky, tulipy kind. These are more delicate. It’s like a lovely bouquet with a couple of orange blossoms, some pink ones, some rose-looking ones. Then they even got that baby’s breath vibe going on and some nice stem work.

John: Yes. My daughter assembled these before she headed off to college this semester. It’s Lego. Things snap together, but there’s no blocks to this. There’s no three-by-two, the classic Lego block, to this all.

Craig: I will be honest, if you asked me, is this a Lego brand thing, I’d have to look close. I know that these little nubs, for instance, are very Lego-y, but this could be another brand of assembled plastic pieces.

John: I want to talk about that a little bit because I love Lego. I’ve loved Lego as a kid. I’ve built some things. I was looking around the office here. I have my Lego R2-D2. I have my Lego typewriter. I love them. Yet, at a certain point, the kits became so specific. The pieces are so bespoke. The flower here is the most recent example of these are not things you could apply to anything else. Basically, the kits are just to resemble this one specific thing. If you were to try to pull this apart and use them in other ways, they wouldn’t be useful. The joy of Lego growing up was just there’s a trash bag full of blocks, and we would just build houses out of them.

Craig: The Titanic does mostly have useful items.

John: Yes. You said on the show that you built a Lego Titanic.

Craig: I built the Lego Titanic.

John: The Lego Death Star, Millennium Falcon?

Craig: I built the Lego Death Star, the Lego Millennium Falcon, the big ones. Those I ended up just breaking down and giving them to my kids to play with.

John: [unintelligible 00:54:47].

Craig: Yes, because they were young and they wanted to. I’m not going to be that guy who’s like, “No, this is my Millennium Falcon.” I’m an adult here. The Titanic is in my office. This is awesome. It’s the biggest Legos out there. It’s huge. Then I built a lot of– this is what I do in prep usually when I go home. I did the Pac-Man arcade one and the Mario on TV, the Nintendo one. There’s a lot of fun things like that. I agree with you when they get too bespoke. For instance, I did Rivendell, the Lord of the Rings setting.

John: Yes, I saw that. It was on your table, yes.

Craig: That one’s a D&D one. The Rivendell one, I ended up breaking down. Like you said, it was too– by the way, it’s why I haven’t finished the D&D one. I just left it on the table because it’s sort of too far into not Lego.

John: There’s the spectrum of– there’s the model kits that you assemble, which are like, growing up, you glue together the thing, and it perfectly forms this one thing, which is exactly the replica of this thing. There was a classic Lego, which is just a bunch of blocks you can assemble any way you want to do. I just feel like we’ve gone so far over towards the assemble this perfectly to this thing.

It is a skill to follow those instructions and be able to do the engineering feats of what these new things can do, like what this typewriter can do, are remarkable. I’m sure it’s good for our visual intelligence, but also I worry that it robs us of some of our– it’s not a new thought. This is in the Lego movie, too, but it robs us of some of our individual agency to build things ourselves. Which is why our friend Phil, who’s just building this giant ship out of just a block seat himself, I’m inspired by.

Craig: If I weren’t imaginative as part of my job, but this is actually a weird refuge from that where I don’t have to create anything. I don’t have to worry about variations. I don’t have puzzles to solve about architecture. My job is to zen out and do something that I can do perfectly.

John: That’s what I miss about standardized tests where actually like there’s a correct answer to things because everything we do in our writing lives, there’s just like, is that the right way to do it? Sure.

Craig: There’s no [unintelligible 00:57:07]. It’s even worse. Sometimes there is a right way to do something, and everyone is like, “Yes, but do it differently,” which is the worst feeling. You want me to do the test wrong.

John: Yes, absolutely. I gave you the right version of the scene. Now you want me to start from the heart. It’s frustrating.

Craig: It’s frustrating. Yes, I still do love following instructions. It’s such a nice, simple–

John: Well, I think it appeals to your puzzle brain, too. There’s an answer, there’s a conclusion, it can be done.

Craig: Yes. Puzzles, the fun part is I have the pieces. I just need to understand how they fit together, whether it’s words, or numbers, or anything. With Lego, I actually am not thinking at all. It’s a way to stop thinking. I’m just obeying in a safe way.

John: This is actually interesting because you hate jigsaw puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles, it’s ambiguous for a long time, that things click together. While there is that state of completion, there’s no instruction manual. It’s like this piece could be one of a thousand things in it.

Craig: Yes. A jigsaw “puzzle” is a bit like if I said, here is a Lego typewriter, here are all the pieces, here’s the instruction guide, but I’ve jumbled the pages and I haven’t numbered them. Well, let’s look through these pages. Do you think this maybe is where it starts? This is busy work. For what? A picture of a hamburger or a cat jumping over a thing?

John: I will say, building the Lego R2-D2, there were some ambiguous sections. I think the assembly books are really good, but there were some ambiguous situations where I don’t know if I did this right, and it’s going to take 20 steps before I realize if I did it right.

Craig: That is part of the process, is the, uh-oh, flip back and go, “Oh my God, I was supposed to put the dark gray piece and not the black piece. Okay, let’s undo, undo, undo because it must be right.” It drives me crazy. The one thing that I wish Lego would do– so they’re very good in a way now about supplying you with extra bits of little tiny things. The problem is they don’t tell you what the extra bits are. They should say at the end of a chapter, “By the way, we were hoping that you would have these extra bits, so if you do, don’t panic.”

John: So you didn’t make the mistakes.

Craig: If you have two extra bits of something, you probably screwed up. One thing that I know is true is the piece that you need to make it is there. You might think it’s not there. You might be panicking. It’s there. Either you’re not seeing it, or you don’t understand what the shape is, or it’s on the floor, or it’s in the box. It’s there.

John: It’s Scott Frank’s advice. Don’t move until you see it. It’s there.

Craig: That’s Steve Zaillian.

John: Oh, Steve Zaillian. You’re right.

Craig: Yes. Don’t move until you see it.

John: All right. Lego flowers, I guess we’re going to keep them. The weird thing about this bouquet is it’s really pretty from a distance, and it’s actually pretty up close. There’s a middle range where it’s just like, ugh.

Craig: I think I’m in that middle range, and I’m still appreciating it because– you know what? It’s arranged very nicely because I don’t imagine the arrangement was dictated quite that.

John: It’s going to be a different vase for each.

Craig: Right. Your daughter put that together. She has an eye for arranging flowers, so she’ll never be hungry.

John: Absolutely, because there’s always going to be a market.

Craig: People love flowers.

John: People love flowers. I used to buy flowers, and then I realized, this is dumb. I don’t really enjoy having them.

Craig: Or horrible. You know who loves flowers?

John: Elsa. Yes, sorry. I can appreciate watching a Martha Stewart where halfway the flowers are like, “Oh, that’s beautiful, but I don’t want it there.”

Craig: There’s a bunch of vegetables, and then they’re dead within minutes. It doesn’t matter what you do, they’re dead, and they smell. They smell while they die, and then the bugs come.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: What is this– and it’s, “Ooh, look at the sad flowers, they’re all dead.” Yes, that’s why I don’t like clowns either.

John: Oh, flowers die.

Craig: Like, oh, happy? No, no, scary.

John: Which reminds me, I think my daughter has a bouquet of flowers up in her room, which is she’s probably-

Craig: Oh dear God.

John: -going to get rid of because she’s just gone.

Craig: Oh, yes.

John: I’ll smell it, so yes.

Craig: That needs to go.

John: Quickly.

Craig: Oh, yes.

John: Right. Thanks, Craig.

Craig: Thank you.

John: Thanks, Drew.

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