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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-perfect-reader).

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

**Craig Mazin:** [laughs] My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 173 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today, we are going to be talking about the perfect reader, loan-out companies, and how to record a podcast. But, Craig, all of our listeners want to know first and foremost, how was your heritage turkey?

**Craig:** I got to say home run.

**John:** Oh, fantastic. Glad to hear it.

**Craig:** Home run. So changed up a couple of things this year for those of you playing the home turkey game. I got a heritage turkey from a company called Mary’s Turkeys, about a 17-pounder because I had a lot of people. I brined it — I always brine but this time, instead of brining it in a bucket or a cooler, I went with a brining bag.

**John:** Ah, those are the dry briners —

**Craig:** No, no, I’m a wet brine guy. I believe in the wet brine. But that’s a whole north/south, east/west civil war but I’ll —

**John:** Yeah, which is the right barbecue sauce, too, while we’re at it.

**Craig:** I mean, I don’t even get in the middle of that.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** But, no, I’m a wet briner. But the nice thing about the brining bag is that you put the turkey in this big — it’s basically an enormous super heavy-duty Ziploc bag. So it goes over the turkey, you fill it up with the brine, and the nice thing is you can put it in your fridge. Because, otherwise, you got to put it outside in the garage with a bunch of dry ice in a cooler. It’s a big pain in the butt.

And the other thing I did this time was I added some brown sugar into the brine. By and large, you know, people throw in, like, what I call potpourri into their brine. You know, like lemons and sprigs and things. That stuff, all those oil-based things, like, from citrus, that’s not going to dissolve in the water and it’s not going to go into the turkey. You’re wasting your time. Anyway, it came out fantastic.

**John:** That’s great. And how long was your bird in the oven?

**Craig:** This is also the simplest oven-cooking of all time.

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** I went with no basting. I did an olive oil rub.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** Put it in at 325 degrees.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** 3.5 hours later, it was done to perfection.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** Did not do anything.

**John:** So this year, I did what I’ve been doing the last couple of years which is the high-heat method.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** So you think yours is simple. This is how simple mine was. A little olive oil rub into a 475-degree oven.

**Craig:** Woo.

**John:** For two hours. Done. And so not only do you not have to do anything other than sort of clean and dry the bird —

**Craig:** It’s faster.

**John:** Yes. And you don’t even truss it. You sort of deliberately untruss it. So you have to stick forks in to sort of hold the legs out away from the bird so the heat can get everywhere.

**Craig:** Interesting.

**John:** And it worked really well.

**Craig:** Yeah, I did fail to mention that I trussed. I’m a trusser.

**John:** You’re a trusser?

**Craig:** Yeah, my method is —

**John:** Well, that’s really your bondage thing coming through there.

**Craig:** Yeah, Fifty Shades of Grey’d that thing.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Yes, the turkey will see me now. I did the slow-and-low method. But the truth is that if you put it in, you know, as long as you don’t have to do stuff with it, it doesn’t really matter.

**John:** It doesn’t matter. Time is irrelevant as long as —

**Craig:** Time is irrelevant. But I have to also, well, I’ll save my One Cool Thing because I did a — I made a lot of different things. I made a pumpkin pie. I made an apple galette, I made acorn squash, I made garlicky green beans with roasted pine nuts. I made a ton of things. But one thing I made, oh, pumpkin scones, which were spectacular.

**John:** Oh, good. Yeah.

**Craig:** But I’ll save my favorite thing for my One Cool Thing.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah. How about you? So did you have a great Thanksgiving?

**John:** We had a great Thanksgiving. We had some friends come over. We had a good simple outdoor Los Angeles Thanksgiving.

**Craig:** I know. My sister is in town with her husband and kids and, you know, it’s freezing in New York and they’re swimming today, so they’re super happy.

**John:** Yeah, life is good.

**Craig:** Life is good.

**John:** So life is also good on December 11th. That is the live Scriptnotes show in Hollywood. So as we record this on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, there are still some tickets left. I don’t know if they’re still really out there, because you, Craig, are bringing in a whole entourage. So I know that you requested, like, 20 tickets for you and your posse so —

**Craig:** I believe I’ve requested four tickets.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** A lot.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s too much. That’s way too much.

**John:** Way too much. You’re disrupting everything.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Our other guests are going to be, so it’s me and Craig, Aline, Jane Espenson, B.J. Novak, Derek Haas, actress/singer/funny person Rachel Bloom, all those people will have entourages as well. So we’re not sure how many tickets are going to be left but if you would like to come, you should come. So go to wgfoundation.org, click Events and you will have the option to purchase the tickets. Come join us on December 11th at 8:00 pm.

**Craig:** Let me do a little hard sell on this, by the way.

**John:** All right, sure.

**Craig:** For those people that listen to the podcast but haven’t been to one of these things, they’re great. It’s just a more relaxed, fun atmosphere. There’s something about it just being all together in a room is fun. You also get to meet other people that listen to the show and people have made friends at these things. You know, it’s like a little community.

**John:** Yes, and we’ve had some babies created out of —

**Craig:** We must have had some podcast babies. I probably made a few podcast babies. I mean, don’t tell anybody. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Don’t tell Melissa. Does Melissa listen to your show?

**Craig:** Hey, Melissa, I made, like, 14 podcast babies. [laughs]

**John:** That’s absolutely not true and is the worst.

**Craig:** Not at all true. No.

**John:** Not at all true.

**Craig:** I don’t do that.

**John:** But the shows are genuinely fun and while we’ll, of course, ultimately have this show up for listening, it’s not going to be same thing as being there because we will cut it down and we will cut out, the audience Q&A will probably get cut out.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So that’s why you kind of want to come.

**Craig:** Yeah, there’s a great Q&A. I’ll probably do 40 minutes on She-Hulk again [laughs], so that should be terrific.

**John:** Oh, don’t, no, don’t.

**Craig:** Oh, I shouldn’t do that? I shouldn’t?

**John:** No, no more She-Hulk. I think we’ve banned that discussion ever happening again. What I will say what’s interesting is because for my Kickstarter I had a video of me talking about it, some people wrote in and said, like, “Wow, you look nothing like I thought you would look like.” And that is a strange thing about listening to podcasts is that —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You have, just human nature. You form an image of, like, who you think goes with that voice, and apparently, I don’t look like my voice at all.

**Craig:** I also don’t look like my voice. Neither of us look like our voices.

**John:** Yeah. That’s a good thing.

**Craig:** I remember as a kid, you know, it’s funny, podcasts have kind of brought back an experience that you and I had when we were kids. And then I felt like it sort of went away because radio started to go away.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** When I was a kid, I remember wondering like what does Howard Stern look like? And what does Robin Quivers look like? What do any of these people look like? And then that sort of went away because — and now, it’s back.

**John:** I remember being in Los Angeles, well, as I first moved here and listened to KROQ, and there was Kevin & Bean in the morning. And I had this image of who I thought Kevin and Bean were.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And then I saw them at some live event and like, wow, that’s not even remotely what I thought that would be. It’s jarring.

**Craig:** They looked pretty much like I thought they would look like.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Yeah. I used to listen to Kevin & Bean every morning. Kevin & Bean, and you know, people don’t know, like, that’s where Adam Carolla came out of, that’s where Jimmy Kimmel came out of.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was a great show but, you know, it’s radio. What are you going to do?

**John:** Yeah. I remember when Go was being launched, I mean, that was an incredibly important platform for us to get our actors and I think Doug Liman may have even been on that. And like Doug Liman on the radio, it’s just, “Why would you do that?”

**Craig:** [laughs] I know.

**John:** But we were promoting our show. But, like, Breckin Meyer, Jay Mohr on that kind of show killed it.

**Craig:** Right, absolutely. Yeah, I know. It was a big deal back in the ’90s, yo.

**John:** Yo. Another thing we talked about on the previous show was Franz Kafka and we had a reader, Kevin, from Tokyo wrote in with a long response to that and I thought it was great so I thought I would read this aloud. “It was a pleasant surprise to hear Franz Kafka come up on the podcast. I spent many years studying his work and life, visiting the places he lived and wrote, archives, holding his manuscripts and so on. I’m writing to let you know that Craig’s literature professor lied to him.”

**Craig:** Mm-hmm, liar.

**John:** “The mention that Kafka’s works were only published after his death and against his wishes is a persistent myth. The truth is, Kafka oversaw the publication and translation of many of his short stories and novellas, including Metamorphosis. He fretted over details and illustrations, cover designs, and tracked the sales records of his books.

“It is true they asked his friend Max Brod to destroy his unpublished manuscripts in fragments which he considered incomplete. One justification Brod later gave for ignoring this was that after making the request, Kafka continued to actually publish his work. He was working on correcting his proofs for the collection that contains The Hunger Artist when he died. I certainly do not mean to criticize you since Craig brought up Kafka as a springboard for talking about writers’ feelings about their work. Your podcast is not about Germanic literature and the whole thing started by Craig’s professor lying to him.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** “I guess the professor wanted to leave out the facts to make a juicy story like the entertainment journalists who were the target of your umbrage. Thank you for your entertainment inspiration. Kevin in Tokyo.”

**Craig:** Well, thank you, Kevin in Tokyo. You know, this does happen. Sometimes these myths persist. And look, we are trusting Kevin because Kevin sounds informed. He could be lying to me also, [laughs], right? I mean, we now know that I am susceptible to these kinds of lies. But in this case, I think Print the Legend, that’s my theory.

**John:** I think it is a Print the Legend situation. So I was doing just a little bit of cursory research and it does seem that Kevin has other people in his corner backing him up. There’s a book by James Hawes and there’s a review I read by Joanna Kavenna in The Guardian, and I’ll read a little quote from her because I thought it actually really summed up sort of what we’re talking about. “Hawes strongly believes the myth surrounding Kafka has clouded the perception of his writing to the extent that his translators believe he should sound like some ghostly, plodding sub-Sartre rather than someone whose, ‘black-comic tales of what happens to modern people who can’t give up on the Old Ways’ could hardly be more timely.”

And I think that’s actually a really fascinating aspect of the Print the Legend because when you print the legend, it’s going to influence all the choices you make about that person’s work.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And in the case of Kafka, you are translating these things and so if your image of the person you’re translating is, like, “Oh, he’s dark and it’s all about, you know, gloom,” then you’re going to make choices that support that thesis rather than try and define, you know, the funny or the satirical aspects of what it is that he’s writing.

**Craig:** That’s true. And I suspect that this is all accurate because I know that I didn’t study Kafka anywhere near the extent to which Kevin has, obviously, but I did do a lot of Nietzsche studying in college and there are a ton of myths surrounding Nietzsche as well, that he had syphilis, which is not at all the case, that he was an anti-Semite, which is not at all the case. There’s just a lot. It happens, you know, and all these guys lived well before the time of over-examination. No more myths can possibly exist, it seems to me. Unfortunately, we repose mythology now.

**John:** Yeah, it’s very possible we are. I can think back to Columbus, for example, if you want to talk about a person who is sort of built around a myth. And so you and I grew up celebrating Columbus Day and, like this was the day of discovery and there’s all this imagery about sort of who Columbus was and now as we sort of discover more things about, like, “Oh, you know what? Maybe Columbus wasn’t such an awesome guy.” We have to sort of look at all this text we’ve read as a kid and say, like, “Wait, huh? Is this really the right thing to be talking about with Columbus?”

Or Thanksgiving, for example, Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. I would not want to change anything about the modern celebration of Thanksgiving. But if you look at sort of what is the legend behind it, it probably wasn’t anything like what we want it to have been.

**Craig:** Oh, no question. America itself, essentially, is the product of, I mean, the American dream, the American stories, all mythological. I see mistakes cropping up all the time. In fact, I was listening to, somebody had put on Facebook this bit that David Cross does in an audio book where he’s rebutting Larry the Cable Guy who was complaining about him. And at one point, Larry the Cable Guy is complaining that America’s on the verge of banning Christianity which David Cross correctly finds absurd and says, “You know, this is a country where, you know, George Washington was christened.” Actually, most of those guys weren’t Christian.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Most of the Founding Fathers were Deists. They weren’t even Christians.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** There’s just a lot of bad info circulating out there. And now, I’m circulating it as well. So good. Tune in next week for more disinformation.

**John:** Well, speaking of David Cross, David Cross’ frequent collaborator, Bob Odenkirk, is associated with our next —

**Craig:** Segue Man. [laughs]

**John:** A follow up. So on the last episode, we were talking about Simon Cowell and the aspect of, like, criticism and how criticism itself becomes a form of entertainment. And I said, like, “Oh, well, somebody should make a show where they just like criticize a stick of gum and it should be all about that.” And Jonathan Bell, a reader, wrote in, a listener wrote in and pointed us to this great Bob Odenkirk sketch which is on Funny or Die, which is all about — it’s called American Contestant.

And it’s a spoof of American Idol but it’s really just about the judges criticizing this woman who thinks she’s on a singing competition. It’s, like, “No, no, this isn’t about the singing.” It’s, like, “Well, I really want to go to Hollywood.” “We want to see that you want to go to Hollywood but, you know, you have to prove it.” And it just becomes about the nature of criticism and how criticism becomes a popular culture. So of course, I did have a good idea but about six years ago, Bob Odenkirk did a funny series of sketches about it.

**Craig:** Once again, trumped by Odenkirk.

**John:** Yeah. It’s not going to be the last time, I suspect.

**Craig:** No. No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Did you see the new Star Wars teaser?

**John:** I did. So we we’re recording this on Friday. So as we’re recording this it is a big deal because this new teaser came out so —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Craig, how erect were your nipples when you saw it?

**Craig:** Like I could’ve cut glass with those things.

**John:** Yeah. I’ll pause for a second. When did cutting glass with nipples become a thing? Because it is a common phrase. How did it happen?

**Craig:** Well, I don’t know how it happened out there. I cut glass with my nipples all the time. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Indeed.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah.

**John:** Basically, whenever you need to do a jewel heist, you have to get really, really excited so you can actually cut through the security glass and steal the jewel.

**Craig:** I have to sort of rotate my torso in a planar, circular fashion. Yeah. No, I do it all the time. I loved it. But rather than talk about the teaser trailer, I just want to tie in to what you were saying that it just seems like these things come out and then there’s just this horde of people just waiting to say, “Meh,” and “I don’t like it.”

**John:** I have to say, as we’re recording this on Friday, I have not heard a single “meh.” I’ve heard a lot of sort of like, “Holy cow, that was much better than I was expecting it to be.”

**Craig:** Well, look, it is exactly as good as I was expecting it to be but then again, as we know, I’m a positive movie-goer. I expect every teaser trailer to be awesome. I truly do. And then, you know, I start from a place of hope and then, you know, we’ll see what happens. But yeah, there was just a bunch, but you know what, sometimes when I’m on the Internet and this is a weird thing for somebody who does a podcast to say, I just want to — I wish there were a button like a shush button, and I could just shush the Internet, just shush. Everybody shush.

**John:** You can. You can close the window.

**Craig:** No, no, no, no, I want other people to shush. [laughs] I want everyone to be quiet, even on their own.

**John:** So on a previous episode of Scriptnotes, we talked about this list that a guy put out saying, like, you know, a list of reminders, sort of an open letter to J.J. Abrams and a list of reminders about Star Wars. And it is interesting that, J.J. Abrams is not a stupid person and it seems like he did a lot of the things on the list not because that list existed but because, like, they’re the right kind of ideas.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So the universe does definitely feel old. It doesn’t feel new and shiny. And, like, the helmets look battered and damaged. It definitely looks like it takes a place on a frontier.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It looks, you know, like there’s mysterious things happening.

**Craig:** Well, it also looks like it is part of the universe of the first three movies. It has the palette of the first three movies, those wonderful Ralph McQuarrie illustrations. It looks like those. The colors are like those. Obviously, we know from advanced publicity that he’s been erring towards the side of practical objects that are maybe enhanced by CGI as opposed to pure CGI creations. It just looks like a Star Wars movie whereas the other ones just didn’t, you know, so —

**John:** Very shiny.

**Craig:** Yeah, they were shiny. So, I’m super excited. I do believe that this movie will be the biggest. I believe it will be the biggest movie. I think —

**John:** It could be the biggest movie of all time.

**Craig:** I think it will be. I think it’s going to outdo Avatar.

**John:** Yeah. I think you’re probably right.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Hooray for everybody involved.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Last bit of follow-up. On the last episode, I asked if there were listeners who had insights about retail that could help me out as I’m trying to figure out Writer Emergency Pack and in 2015 we’re going to try to put it out in the world, both retails like physical retail and online retail. And about half a dozen people wrote in with like really, really good helpful suggestions. And so I just want to thank everyone who’s written in and if other people have thoughts about that.

And it’s a good segue to our first topic which is, I recognized this last week that we’re actually going to have to put Writer Emergency Pack in a whole separate company because right now I’ve been running it through my own loan-out company and it should not, for accounting reasons, it should just not be part of the loan-out company. So I thought we’d start by talking about loan-out companies.

**Craig:** The loan-out company, which is a quirk of the entertainment business. It really is, you know. It’s not something that anybody really should know about unless they are considering becoming a writer, an actor, a director. That is to say an individual who sells their own art that isn’t — and they’re not objects but rather us, our expression, our individual expression. So what happens is if you achieve a certain amount of success and you want it to be success that you expect to be repeated, not just a one-time deal, then everybody, every tax person, your agent, all of the people around you, your lawyer will say, “You need to form a loan-out company.” What is that?

It is a corporation. Typically, it’s an S-corp. Some people do a C-corp. And you become a company. So for the sake of argument, you’re the Joe Smith Company. The Joe Smith Company is controlled entirely by Joe Smith. Joe Smith owns all the stock. Joe Smith is the sole officer of the company. When you are hired to do things, let’s stick with writing because we are Scriptnotes, the studio makes a deal with the Joe Smith Company, not with you. The studio pays the Joe Smith Company. The Joe Smith Company, in turn, warrants that it is there to provide the services of Joe Smith. And then, of course, you set up something where the Joe Smith Company then pays Joe Smith.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** What’s the deal with all these hoops? What does it come down to? No shock, taxes.

**John:** Mostly taxes. So let me back up and make sure that a few terms are clear along the way. So when we say success, it’s not, like, “Hey, you got an Academy Award nomination.” Success means that you are earning a certain amount each year.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** And so when I first became a corporation, that threshold was about $200,000. They said, like, if you’re making more than $200,000 a year, then you should incorporate so that you could have a loan-out and things would just become much simpler. That bar may actually be a little bit lower now just for —

**Craig:** That’s what I read, yeah. Now, I think maybe even $100,000. But back when we were starting, yeah, $200,000 was the number that I heard as well. So every actor you see in movies, pretty much every working writer, every director, everybody has a loan-out company.

**John:** So some of the advantages for this are taxes. And so it’s a way of, Sony is paying through a loan-out corporation. Your loan-out company has that money. Your loan-out company can take write-offs against that money for things like your agent and things like your manager and things like your lawyer. Some of the things are going to being paid as a corporation, so they’re not being charged to you individually. That’s very useful.

In almost all cases, the overall balance of your company will be zeroed out of a year. So they’re ultimately going to pay you but it’s a way of delaying paying you as an individual writer for a little bit longer, and that can be very, very useful. It can also be useful because if you have legitimate research that you need to do, trips you need to do to study something for something you’re writing, if you have an assistant like Stuart Friedel, that person can be paid out of your corporation.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And it’s generally much better to pay things from a corporate perspective than to pay as an individual.

**Craig:** Yeah. As an individual, taking business deductions is arduous. It is often a red flag. A real simple thing, for instance, I have an office in Pasadena. That’s where I am right now. If you’re an individual and you have a home office, the IRS is, like, “Do you really? Because that’s something that a lot of cheaters say they have but don’t really have. Is it really just your bedroom?” But if you have an office-office and it’s a corporation, it’s an office. They don’t have a problem with that. They expect that.
So you’re right. And there’s something called the alternative minimum tax where as an individual they’re like, “You can deduct a bunch of stuff but then where if you deduct too much, we’re just going to add on a new tax because we don’t really believe you.” That gets circumvented when you’re talking about the — having a corporation.

The other huge tax benefit to having a loan-out is that you can then access different levels and expanded levels of tax-deferred savings. I’m talking about retirement plans. So you can save, you know, as an individual, you have your IRA where, I don’t know, they let you put in $2,000 a year. As a loan-out, you can put in six figures. You can put in a lot of money in tax-deferreds for retirement. You will pay taxes on it one day but it gets to grow without you having to pay the taxes upfront and it’s better.

**John:** Absolutely. And I think we should stress for writers is that if you were a screenwriter, you’re going to be a member of the WGA. And so there will be a WGA pension. The WGA pension, while good for most industries, it’s probably not going to be sufficient for you to be carrying on for the rest of your life. And so socking away money as a screenwriter during your most productive years is really quite important. And to be able to do that in a tax-deferred way through a corporation is fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a must-do.

**John:** Yeah, it’s a must-do. I mean, it’s not just silly, it’s actually dangerous not to do that.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Well, an interesting that’s happened to me is like I’ve had some employees long enough that they have actually become vested in the corporation and therefore, like, they have retirement plans with me, which is just weird but also kind of great. So assistants who’ve been with for, like, five years —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Where now they have a pension, which is wonderful.

**Craig:** That’s amazing. Yeah, that’s terrific. You have all sorts of options and flexibilities when you are a loan-out corp. Some people will say that the other benefit is that, you know, you’re shielded a little bit from some legal issues. Not really.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** The truth is that if you do something wrong as an individual, you can’t really hide behind that loan-out corp. That’s so easy. They call it piercing the veil. It’s so easy to say, “No, it’s really just you.” The other thing is that when we sign contracts with studios, one of the things we sign is a certificate of authorship that says, “We’re going to write this.” The individual is going to write this. That’s what the loan-out company is promising. And as an individual, we are warranting that we’re not ripping anyone off. We’re not infringing. We’re not making any, you know, bad mistakes.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk about this from a newer writer’s perspective. And people might be listening and saying like, “I’m an aspiring screenwriter. Do I need to form a loan-out corporation?” The answer is unequivocally no.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So it’s one of those things like getting an agent, getting a lawyer, getting all that stuff, it’s all stuff that happens down the road. And when it has to happen, it just has to happen. Actually, here’s the best parallel. It’s the kind of thing like joining the WGA. You don’t need to join the WGA until you need to join the WGA. Like, at the minute you sign to write a script for a studio that’s a signatory or you sell a script to a signatory, then congratulations. You have to join the WGA and you are now a WGA member. The same kind of thing holds true for incorporating is that at the minute you need to incorporate, your agents, your lawyer, your manager will tell you, “Oh, about that time. You got to incorporate.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And there will be a whole process to do it because literally thousands of people have done it before you.

**Craig:** That’s right. There’s a fee involved to incorporate in the State of California. You know, it’s tempting to think, “God, what I should do is incorporate in Nevada because they don’t have taxes there the way that we have taxes here.” Yeah, it don’t work that way. You got to —

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Incorporate where you live, in the state you live. But they will tell you — it’s good information though to have in your pocket for those of you, especially if you’ve just sold your first thing, if you’re on the verge, this is something you should start talking about with your attorney because it’s a huge benefit to you. You will actually save a lot of money. By the way, do you, question.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Do you use a business manager?

**John:** I do use a business manager. So I will get into that. But first I want to back up one step and say that the first thing I sold, Go, was the first, actually, that wasn’t my biggest sale. I sold two things which I was paid as an individual, neither of which got produced. And those were just paid to John August. And I sold Go and that was just paid to John August. It was after Go that I incorporated. So I still get checks sometimes for just John August money. It’s not my loan-out money.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And it’s fine. It’s just a little bit weird that there’s some stuff that falls outside that veil and falls outside that —

**Craig:** I’m in the exact same boat. My first two movies, RocketMan and Senseless, were both —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I didn’t have a loan-out.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So the residuals go to me personally for those. But everything else, they go to the corporation.

**John:** So actually back to your question about a business manager, yes, I do have a business manager, Carrie, and I love her to death. And so she is responsible for keeping track of the corporate money and keeping track of sort of the individual John August money. So I get quarterly statements. She files, you know, the estimated taxes, the quarterly taxes that have get through and make sure that all of the stuff happens.

And again it goes back to the heart surgery thing. She does this for a lot of other writers, a lot of writers that you and I both know. And because she’s seen all the stuff before, it’s just gets done, and it gets done right. But you do not if I can remember correctly.

**Craig:** I don’t, no. Because I kind of like this sort of stuff. I mean, some people have different arrangements. Some business managers do everything for people. They pay their bills. You know, they talk to, “Oh, I need to switch my, the guy that does my exterminating.” Okay, we’ll handle it. So I don’t do any of that. I pay all of my bills. I like Quicken, you know, I’m a Quicken guy. I do have a tax guy that I work with and I have financial investment managers that obviously I don’t , you know, I don’t know what stocks or anything like that. I don’t do that sort of thing.

But the other stuff I handle, you know, it’s not that bad. It’s pretty simple. And, you know, with computers now, it gets even simpler than it used to be.

**John:** So the conversation I had to have this last week with my business manager and with my accountant, and ultimately with my lawyer is that my company, my loan-out company, has been doing all the stuff we do for apps and it’s worked out just fine. So I have employees and we do stuff. The challenge is the company works, the corporation loan-out, works as a cash-based business. That’s fine when you don’t have inventory. But once you start having inventory —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Things get a lot more complicated. So the only inventory we’ve had to date, has been literally like our 150 episodes Scriptnotes drives and our t-shirts and those just sell out and then they’re done and nothing sits around.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But these will sit around and there will be orders coming in and orders going out and there’ll be this whole timeline thing, and first in, first out. And it’s just going to be very complicated and wrong to try to bend this company to deal with that kind of situation. So it will end up being, I think, a whole separate company that will end up being the distributor of Writer Emergency Pack and other things we hope to make.

**Craig:** As well as it should, yeah, because when you have — I remember talking with my late father-in-law about this. He was a Burger King franchisee. So he owned a couple of Burger Kings and you would have to do the same thing with your new company if they get in to profit and loss statements.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** It’s just a whole other world. See, the loan-out company exists and can exist because it’s so simple.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, we don’t have stock, we don’t have inventory. We don’t even have profit and loss because our overhead is such a joke, you know. I mean, let’s put it this way. If your overhead is so great that it’s eating up all of your money, I mean the idea is whatever your overhead is as a writer, that plus the money you pay yourself should equal all of the money you’ve earned.

**John:** Exactly. The goal is to zero out everything, every —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Every year, every financial year. And as a writer, that’s really simple to do. As someone who has inventory, that’s just not going to be possible.

**Craig:** Right. Because if you don’t, then ultimately you end up paying taxes twice.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because the corporation is making money, it has to be taxed. And then it’s going to send it to you, and then that’s going to be taxed again. Anyway, this is something that you, I know it’s all wonky, money, annoying stuff. But if you want to be a screenwriter, you kind of got to know about it.

**John:** You do.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And you need to think about it at the time that you need to think about it. And so awareness of it before it happens is great. And then when the time comes that you need to do it, you do it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So my questions are mostly the writers I know from loan-out companies are feature writer people but it happens in television too.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And at a certain point you’re getting paid enough money, and you’re being paid as both a writer and producer, and that’s going to be enough money that that will happen. But I wonder, are professional athletes a loan-out company?

**Craig:** I believe they are. Yeah, I can imagine —

**John:** And musicians are probably the same. Like Taylor Swift, I’m sure is.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** She is a multibillion and whatever. But I think any time that you’re being paid a lot of money as an individual —

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** That’s when you want to be paid as a loan-out.

**Craig:** And particularly when you are essentially an individual actor not performance actor but an individual person doing something. So, you know, it’s the difference between now becoming an employee of a company temporarily as opposed to a corporation that’s being contracted and providing a service to somebody. It’s just a better thing. By the way, a little bit of advice for those of you out there who are successful enough to incorporate and have your loan-out company. Don’t name it something stupid.

**John:** Because that name will stick with you for the rest of your life.

**Craig:** And it’s super hard to change it. So —

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** When I started out, I was working at Disney. And when I had to set up my loan-out, I remember that my business card from Disney, it said The Walt Disney Company. I thought, “Oh, if it’s good enough for Walt Disney, it’s probably good enough for me. I think The Craig Mazin Company is probably, that sounds like a good name.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Did you pick something silly?

**John:** I picked something good, it’s Quote-Unquote Films Inc.

**Craig:** Oh yeah, that’s totally fine, it’s respectable.

**John:** But unfortunately, it doesn’t actually make sense with things that aren’t films, so —

**Craig:** True.

**John:** You know, the new company name will be something different that it makes more sense for that. And if you want a good advice on picking a good name, I would go to the recent South Park episode, I think it’s Go Fund Yourself where they actually picked names for their startup venture. And it’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Those guys are the best.

**John:** So our second topic is the Perfect Reader. So this is the third installment of our Perfect series. We have no idea how many installments there’ll be. Craig, how many installments will there be? Thousands?

**Craig:** Thousands, yeah.

**John:** So we previously talked about the perfect studio executive. We talked about the perfect agent. Today, we want to talk about the perfect reader. And by reader, we really kind of mean two different things. We mean a reader who is a professional gatekeeper, somebody who is the difference between your script moving on some place and not moving on some place.

We’re also talking about the sort of casual reader which is the friend or acquaintance or compatriot who you’ve given your scripts to and that person is reading your script and they’re both looking at your script and judging it and hopefully giving you some feedback on your script. But there are very different goals behind it.

So we just want to talk about what it’s like to be a great reader.

**Craig:** Well, why don’t we start with the friend version?

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** And then we’ll get to the professional version. So I do this all the time. Just in the last month, I’ve read a script by Scott Silver. I read stuff by Koppelman and Levien. And the first thing that I think that the perfect reader has to do is make sure they understand what the person giving them wants.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** And you don’t always get it right, you know. Sometimes you get it wrong. But it’s important for me to know, okay, has anyone read this before? Are you looking for a wide open what do you think? Or is this something that is already set up and you’re having questions about A, B, or C?

Is this targeted? Do you want to know what I think about what I would call like inside the scenes or do you want to think about the total thing? And you try and get a sense of that so that you don’t, so that you don’t go too far or just bore them with stuff that’s irrelevant or that they can’t do anything about.

**John:** I sent a script to a friend and her first response back was, “Do you want me to tell you that it’s really good or do you want notes?” And it was such an honest response. And I sort of split the difference saying like mostly I want you tell me that it’s really good. But if there’s anything that sticks out that says like, uh-uh, that part doesn’t work, please let me know. And it was such a wonderfully, upfront way of addressing sort of what I was looking at —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** For the experience.

**Craig:** That’s the other thing is that sometimes people send you something and that’s what they want. They want validation with some little bon mot of easily done work.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Sometimes people really do want shotgun to the face. In general, when I read things, what I say to people is, look, my default position is what I would want which is shotgun to the face. But if you’re not looking for shotgun to the face, let me know, and I’ll adjust.

And again, you know you don’t — everybody’s different. Like not every reader is right for every writer. You know, so like Scott Silver and I, we have a good, like I really like reading his stuff and I feel like I have a good, and the same thing with Brian and David. And Scott Frank and I read each other’s stuff. And so you find people that you’re like, okay, yeah, this is actually working, this is a good deal.

Then other people maybe you’re like I don’t think I helped them or whatever. But when you’re doing this for somebody else, the most important thing, I think, the perfect reader does is not think how would I rewrite this, which is a mistake I think a lot of writers make. And it’s natural because most of the time when you’re a professional writer and you’re reading someone else’s script it’s because the studio has given it to you and said, “Would you rewrite this please?”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So your natural instinct is to go, all right, I’m going to read this now and imagine what would I do. That’s not helpful for your friend. What’s helpful for your friend is, I’m just going to read this and then I’m going to say to you here’s where I got confused. Here’s where I wasn’t sure what to think. Here’s where I thought what you wrote didn’t feel good. You know, it’s all about just pure audience style reaction. And then ideally you offer some solutions. They don’t have to be hard and fast solutions or overspecific because you want the writer to feel like they’re going to write their work.

But it’s not enough to say, “You know, this scene felt a little bit too much like that other scene.” It’s better to say, “You know, this scene, when these two people talk like this, these two other people are talking the same way in this other scene. So what if instead they did something like this or this or this, just so I didn’t feel that repetition because I like what’s happening in the scene. I just feel maybe, it felt repetitive to me.” That kind of thing.

**John:** So it’s a different experience when you know the person whose script you’re reading and when the person is a stranger. And so I love reading scripts from friends who are tremendously talented writers. A lot of times I’m reading scripts for things like Sundance, The Sundance Institute. And so I’m reading their scripts and but the first thing I always think about is, “What movie are they trying to make?” And I’ll never sort of — it’s dangerous — you should never ask that question first because that just sets you off on a path of like talking about things rather than talking about the movie itself.

But again, I don’t want to think about, “What movie would I want to make?” I’m saying like, “What movie did they seem to be trying to make on the page?” And when I think in the sense of what movie is it that they’re trying to make, then I can really look at it from perspective of like, “Are these scenes helping them tell the story that they seem to be wanting to tell?”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Which scenes best encapsulate this vision of what they have and which scenes stick out because they’re not actually getting to where I think they want to be going. And that way, I can sort of start the conversation with them, saying like, “Here’s what I think is so awesome and amazing. Here’s where I think this movie is. Tell me if I’m wrong, tell me if this is the right thing you’re aiming for. And if so, then let’s talk about how well these things are working and why these things might not be helping support that vision of what you have for your movie.”

In general, if you can talk about your reactions in terms of this future thing, the movie rather than this thing that’s sitting there in front of them that they’ve been slaving over, they’re going to be much more free to extrapolate and expand and move away from decisions they have made because it took them so long to write that moment.

**Craig:** That’s right. And I think what you’re zeroing in on is that when we are reading things for our friends, we have to read them like we’re producing the movie rather than that we’re rewriting the movie, you know. And a good producer is there to say, “I’m going to tell you how I felt not as a writer because I’m not a writer. I’m an audience member. I watched this movie in my head. Here’s what I thought of the movie. Here’s where I thought it worked, here’s where I thought it didn’t work. Here’s what I think, like you said, the movie is or wants to be. Here’s something that I loved and wish there was more of.”

It’s just an honest expression of your reaction. And it is not at all clouded by anything other than a pure audience member rooting for the movie as opposed to, “Oh, I don’t like this sort of thing,” or, “I don’t write like that,” or “Why would you? Your character, you know, is always like the way you do action.” No one needs that, you know. And particularly when it’s a fellow professional, one of the nice things about reading scripts from fellow professionals is that I never worry that there’s a subtext of, “I’m evaluating you as a writer.” Because I’m not. We’re all good writers, we all are professionals. I’m just evaluating the movie.

**John:** So let’s talk about the other kind of writer, the other kind of reader, I should say. This is the kind of reader who is working for a production company, for a studio, for a producer, a director. Is reading through a bunch of material and has to render a decision about like, “This is a script that I think is worth this next person reading or I think we can pass on this right now.” And I used to have this job. I think you used to do some reading as well.

One of my first jobs in Hollywood was as a reader at TriStar. And so I would have to read — I was reading 14 scripts a week and writing up coverage on them. And that’s a very different kind of reading because while you’re still flipping the pages and sort of taking notes and looking at what’s working and what’s not working, ultimately your audience is not the writer who wrote that script, but it’s some other decision maker. And so what your job is is to encapsulate, well, this is what is actually here and this is what’s working about what’s here. This is what’s not working about what’s here.

And there’s a third thing which I think is also really important which is a thing you don’t do when you’re talking to an individual writer is you’re saying, “Here’s the good writing and here’s the bad writing. Here’s strengths I see in this writer and here are the weaknesses I see in this writer.” It’s a very different experience because you’re not trying to think about being supportive, you’re just trying to be kind of blunt.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And honest about sort of an assessment of what this is in front of you.

**Craig:** And these people not only read, I mean we’re all familiar with the notion of new writers who are sending their work in and it’s getting coverage somewhere, and they’re hoping that it gets passed to somebody, and that’s true. But frankly, for you and for me, this also occurs where studios, internally, have work that they’ve commissioned to be covered by their own readers. They want that as well.

So we all live in the world of these people. And by and large, I think they do a good job. I’ve read some, lots of coverage, some of my works, some of other people’s work. And what I think is the best kind of gatekeeper reader is not so concerned with jamming the movie into a box. They’re not a production executive, they’re not trying to figure out what would be good in our slate or would this make a lot of money or any business concerns. They just concern themselves with the script and with the craft of the script and whether or not the script is true to itself and is well written. So they avoid some of that stuff.

I find that the good ones tend to leave out what feel like personal axes. If you don’t like violence, if you think that violence is distasteful, don’t cover bloody R-rated action movie scripts. They’re not for you and that’s just not an appropriate, you know, reason to ding a script. So you leave out your personal ax grinding.

I remember Todd Phillips showed me coverage that was done of a script that he and Scot Armstrong wrote many years ago and it was really, I really like the script and so did the reader. But then the reader — there was one joke. It was a 9-11 joke and it was, I think it was — the script was covered like on 9-12. And the reader was just outraged and wrote an entire paragraph about how this joke was the worst thing ever. And I just thought that’s a bad reader because that’s not relevant.

The joke will be cut — if it doesn’t work, guess what, it gets cut. We don’t even shoot it at all. That’s not why you’re there, to argue about a line in the movie, you know. So that’s less than ideal. But, you know.

**John:** Yeah. So quite earlier in my career, when I think I first had an agent, I was working at a production company and I had readers who worked for me. And so there was a slow week and there really wasn’t quite enough to cover. So I’ve slipped this reader, who I thought was a really good reader, my own script under a different cover page. Just to see like, oh, let’s see what he thinks about this. And he slammed it. He just really ripped it to shreds. And it was so fascinating. Both to see what he wrote, but also to sort of internally look at my own reaction and sort of like how I was gauging my own work that other people really liked because this one reader has sort of slammed on it and it sort of gets to the nature of all criticism. But I will tell you that that never actually kind of stops.

And there’s one project that I have that is dormant at a studio. And I’m pretty sure one of the reasons why it’s dormant is because someone snuck out the coverage, the internal coverage at the studio. And it’s really negative coverage on this project that they paid me a lot of money to write.

And it’s just so fascinating that after, you know, being employed to write this thing and having people like it and, you know, getting directors on board, this one piece of coverage apparently does, I’ve heard from other people, continues to hurt it.

**Craig:** When you say snuck out, you mean put it online?

**John:** No, no, no. Like somebody at — I think my agency or someone else’s agent said like, “You know, the coverage there is really bad.”

**Craig:** Oh, yeah. And this can, this is a real problem because you would think, “Well, look, all of these people are paid a lot of money to decide what movies to make. They’re the president of a studio or the senior vice president or whatever.” And then there’s a guy that they pay, I don’t know what readers got paid, but not a million dollars a year. And this person takes a dump on the script and they all go, “Well, it got bad coverage.” And that becomes kind of the path of least resistance to sort of yield to that.

**John:** Yeah. I think it has been a bit of a momentum killer on this particular project. Now is that insurmountable? Hardly. We can totally get past that and getting one director or one piece of talent on it will completely change everything. If Cowboy Ninja Viking gets bad covered someplace and then it gets, you know, Chris Pratt attached, well who cares about that coverage.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But it is a piece of momentum, you know, early on in the process.

**Craig:** It’s true. And frankly, you know, I was — happily Cowboy Ninja Viking got very good internal coverage. If it hadn’t, the problem is there’s just suddenly less of an impetus to get the script out to agents, and managers, and big actors because internally they kind of lose a little bit of their love for it and that’s a weird thing. But it’s a true thing, and I have to say that those people, we don’t know them. They’re very powerful.

There’s one reader at Universal, in particular. I don’t know him, I don’t even know his name. I just know the legend of him that he’s kind of their guy. And he’s a very powerful person. And, you know, in a way I’m glad he’s there because he’s like that silent, unseen person that is in the back of my head when I’m writing. I’m just thinking, you know, you can’t really get away with stuff because one day that guy is going to read it. And that guy isn’t thinking about marketing. He’s not thinking about the schedule or, “Oh, we need a movie that fits into this particular box because we don’t have anything like that.”

He’s just going to read the script and say is this good or bad and I like that. Actually, if you’re writing a script that’s off the beaten path a little bit, then that reader actually could be your best friend which, let me just say is another thing that I think the perfect gatekeeper reader does. They don’t shy away from different or ambitious. They kind of like it.

**John:** Well, I’m going to disagree with you on a bit of this because I worry about mythologizing this terrifying reader as the person who is going to stop you from being able to make your movie. I know I just said that it was a momentum killer on this one project. But I don’t want to sort of ascribe too much power or fear among this one person because if your studio executive loves the project and it gets bad coverage, yeah, you’re going to be fine. So it’s not the one sole gatekeeper. It’s the person who’s writing their opinion down and therefore it matters.

I will say as the person who was reading at TriStar, so you know, I looked through my coverage when I left and I had just covered like 110 scripts. And I had given two really enthusiastic recommends on two things. And in both cases I was called to the matt for having wasted people’s time.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** With these enthusiastic recommends. And that was incredibly frustrating. One of them was a really good Billie Holiday biopic and they were just like, “Well, who would want to see a Billie Holiday biopic?” And I was like, “You know what, I bet you can make a really good one now and I bet it could be really kind of great.” But I got called to the matt for wasting people’s time.

**Craig:** Really? See, to me that’s outrageous. Because I mean, and this is why I — look, I wasn’t a studio reader and I would have been fired immediately because I would have said, “That’s not my job. My job isn’t to tell you who would go see this or why you should make it. My job is —

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** “To tell you is this good or not? How about this, you didn’t waste your time. You’re not going to make a Billie Holiday pic but look how good this writer is. Do you have something else you want to make that this person could write? You know, she’s really good, read her stuff.” That’s just dumb.

**John:** The other one I remember recommending was a script called Full Honeymoon. It was by a writing team. And it wasn’t perfect but it was a very good solid romantic comedy. And you could sort of see where it was going but it was a very good version of that. And the ability to say like this is a really good version of this kind of movie. So, while you may not make this movie, these are writers you should probably consider hiring for other stuff. And I remember being called to the floor for that too. So I have tremendous sympathy for readers as well.

**Craig:** Yeah, I do, too.

**John:** And many screenwriters are going to be readers along the way. And my recommendation is reading is really a great way to learn about scripts and learn about sort of what things never work on the page. But you have to get out of being a reader before you just get that hole burned in your brain. Because it’s impossible to read 15 scripts a week and actually write your own.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah. I totally agree. I think that any overconsumption of something is bad for you. Overconsuming movies the way that critics do because they have to is bad for them. It skews their appreciation of movies because they’re not intended to be consumed that way. And the same thing is true for scripts.

If you’re writing, I mean, I know, I don’t know about you. But when I’m writing something, sometimes someone will say, “Hey, do you want to read this script? It’s kind of in a similar vein.” I’ll say, “Absolutely not.” That’s the last thing I want to do is read anything that’s in the same tone because I just know the way I am. It’s going to bother me, it’s going to affect my choices. I want to be able to choose freely and not worry like, “Oh, but they kind of did a thing that was sort of like that. Or I didn’t like the way they did that, maybe I should do something else.” I could see where it would become a little toxic.

**John:** Yeah. And I have a hunch, though, as we do with Perfect series we’re going to come back to the same characteristics for every perfect person. But I think they’re going to come down to honesty, clarity, kindness/forthrightness, the ability to sort of to speak the truth but speak it in a way that understands what the audience for it actually is.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And as we talked about a studio executive, those are the characteristics to look for. As you look at an agent, those are the same characteristics. And the same is true for a reader, be it a professional reader who is, you know, deciding which movies the bosses should read or it’s a friend reading a script. You want those people to take their jobs seriously and be able to communicate effectively what it is that they’re seeing.

**Craig:** I agree. And I guess I would throw on there another unifying quality to all these perfect professionals is a lack of cynicism. That they approach their tasks with a rooting interest and a desire to see success occur as opposed to the opposite which I think does affect quite a few people.

**John:** I agree. So our last topic for the today is Dan Benjamin who runs the 5by5 podcast network has been doing podcasting really from this whole new area of podcasting. You could trace a lot of the stuff back to him and sort of the shows that he created on his network. And so when we started to do our show, I remember looking for like what equipment should we use. It was one of his blog posts that became the go-to for sort of which microphone should we use, how should we do this. And so this last week he updated his blog posts with some new recommendations and so I want to point to that because it’s really, really good.

So if you’re thinking about doing a podcast, this is probably the first place you should look in terms of hardware and software recommendations. So it’s Dan Benjamin. The URL is podcastmethod.co and it’s just a really terrific expert’s opinion on sort of how stuff should work.

**Craig:** Are we still doing it right?

**John:** We’re doing it right. And so it’s interesting because we are using a lot of the stuff that he is recommending. And so let’s talk about our microphones. So we used to use these accent microphones. So you still use the Audio-Technica 2020?

**Craig:** I don’t. I now use the Apogee —

**John:** Ah-huh.

**Craig:** Something, something.

**John:** All right. And so you are using a condenser microphone. And a condenser microphone classically records voices really well but also records the surrounding environment, which in your case, your office is pretty well padded, so there’s not a lot of —

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Bouncing around happening.

**Craig:** Right, yeah.

**John:** So other than the sirens, it’s all good.

**Craig:** If there were no sirens, it would be perfect.

**John:** And so I used to use the Audio-Technica 2020. I just switched three episodes ago to the Heil PR-40 which is a dynamic microphone. And that is because my office is really bouncy and noisy and so my side of the audio I always felt was a little bit too live and a little too present and echoey. And so after some negotiation and discussion, we switched to this microphone. And I think I’m happier. So I’m going to give you an example of what’s so different about my microphone.

So here, I’m talking into the microphone. And if I move a little bit off to the side, my voice really completely fades away.

**Craig:** That’s right. Whereas if I do that same test, I’m over here, I’m over here, I’m over here, it’s probably the same.

**John:** It’s about the same.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So that is one of the useful differences. And because I’m working in a busy office, honestly the guys downstairs can have a conversation, you wouldn’t hear it up here. So it’s really useful this dynamic microphone. If I’m directly talking into it, it’s awesome, otherwise you can’t hear me at all.

**Craig:** Well, I’m glad that our setup is still pretty good for what we do. But, you know, it’s not about the setup, man. It’s about the content, bro.

**John:** It’s all about the content. I would much rather hear a poorly recorded podcast that has interesting things being discussed than a terrifically recorded podcast that’s boring.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So we are recording this on Skype. So you and I are very rarely in the same room together. So we are on a Skype call. You’re recording your end locally on your own device, I’m recording my end locally on my own device. Just QuickTime, hit record. Recently we started using Call Recorder, so we actually are recording the Skype call as well. So when Matthew Chilelli edits the podcast together, if he needs to, he can grab this Skype recording of the whole thing together and use that if anything goes wrong on one of our sides.

We cut the show, I believe Matthew’s he’s cutting it on Logic these days, but we still end up going back to GarageBand because GarageBand let’s it put in chapter markers. And I want to step up for chapter markers for a second because so many podcasts don’t do it. I think they’re so useful.

So in our podcast, in most podcast players, you can hit the jump forward button, it’ll jump to the next topic. And so Stuart puts in those little chapter marks, so if you really don’t care about loan-out companies, you can skip over that whole segment.

**Craig:** But who doesn’t care about loan-out companies?

**John:** Everyone should care.

**Craig:** You know what we should do? On the chapter marks for this, under loan-out companies it should just say sex tips.

**John:** That’s nice.

**Craig:** Yeah. Everyone will check that out.

**John:** So GarageBand is also where you put in all your metadata, so information about the show itself. And that’s what shows up when you are in your podcast app and you want to see what the episode is about, it’s all there.

**Craig:** You know who loves sex tips?

**John:** Who?

**Craig:** Sexy Craig.

**John:** I walked right into that.

**Craig:** Hey, dude, how was your Thanksgiving, man? Did you stuff that turkey? Did you stuff it?

**John:** So it’s time for One Cool Things.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** My One Cool Thing is A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. It is a great Iranian vampire western. Did I say Iranian?

**Craig:** You said Iranian and I thought maybe you meant Randian like Ayn Rand had written a vampire Western.

**John:** No. Iranian, Iranian, both of those would be better choices than what I just said.

**Craig:** Iranian. Yeah, Iranian.

**John:** Iranian vampire western. It’s by Ana Lily Amirpour. It’s just great. It is black and white. I saw it at Sundance. It is terrific. It is, you know, set in Iran. It is a vampire movie. It is a western. It is sort of period, it’s black and white. It’s just terrific. And so I highly recommend people go to see it. It’s in five theaters in the Los Angeles area, including the Sunset 5. And so if you have a chance to see it in a real theater, I would definitely go and see it in a real theater. If not, come see it when it comes out on video. It’s just great.

She’s really talented. And I don’t think all the details about her next movie are released yet. I am fascinated to see what she’s able to do with it because it’s really ambitious and could be really, really cool.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** But this movie that she made is a great example of picking things that, you know, you can do and letting your limitations be empowering. And so she didn’t shoot this film in Iran, but she was able to find places in Southern California that looked like Iran. And by shooting it in black and white, she can create this really unique and special world that supports, you know, just cool things we’ve never seen in a vampire movie before. So I highly recommend it.

**Craig:** All right. That’s good enough for me. I’m there. I’ll go check that out.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing is something that you need to file away for next year.

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** It’s a recipe.

**John:** I love it.

**Craig:** I don’t know if I’ve ever cited the best recipe as my One Cool Thing. It should be. The best recipe is the big Omnibus Cookbook put out by Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen where they take lots and lots and lots of recipes of things and they basically do every version they could find, get a hold on and then say to you, “This is the best one and here’s why.” And they’re very scientific about it. They love to talk about molecules and things. It’s great.

However, sometimes the best recipe is not the best recipe because one size does not fit all, you know. However, I did make the best recipe stuffing, specifically the bacon, caramelized onion, sage, and apple stuffing.

**John:** Well, that sounds great.

**Craig:** It was spectacular. Rave reviews from everybody. Best stuffing I’ve ever made. Best stuffing they ever had. If you’re looking for a good stuffing, and I’m not a stuff inside the turkey guy. I don’t do that.

**John:** No, no.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s just —

**John:** Dangerous.

**Craig:** It’s dangerous, it’s going to dry your turkey out because your turkey takes too long to cook, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the point is it’s not easy to make, it’s annoying to make, it’s spectacular. It’s really, really good. That is the stuffing recipe.

**John:** And Cook’s Illustrated could probably point out the reason why it’s so successful is you’ve combined, you know, smoky, salty, sweet —

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Carby.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Because it is stuffing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Whatever you quality you want to say sage has, it’s —

**Craig:** Savory. You’ve got the tartness of the apples, a little sour from the apple because you’re using Granny Smith’s. It really does hit every part of your tongue. And texturally, it’s super crunchy because you start with a baguette that you slice up and leave out overnight. Then you chop that up into cubes and leave that out overnight and then it burns really super hard, which is great because then as it cooks, it sucks up some of the liquid so it’s still crunchy but soft. It’s just perfect.

**John:** So I have two stuffing related bits of follow-up. First off, Ike Barinholtz who is a talented writer and actor on The Mindy Project, he Instagrammed today, “Oh, this is my breakfast.” And so he basically took leftover stuffing and then cracked an egg on top of it and baked it with some cheese on top. Is that not a genius idea?

**Craig:** I mean, generally the day after Thanksgiving is when you’re trying to unclog your arteries, but yeah. [laughs] That sounds awesome.

**John:** And so my only stuffing modification this year, because I had a very classic, you know, celery, onions stuffing — cranberries. And just, you know, we had fresh cranberries. And so I microwaved them a bit so they softened up, added some sugar so they weren’t incredibly tart, and mixed those into stuffing. Delicious.

**Craig:** Well, spectacular.

**John:** Spectacular.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah.

**John:** If you would like to know more about the things we talked about on the show, join us at johnaugust.com/scriptnotes. There you’ll find show notes for this episode and all of our other previous episodes. You’ll also find transcripts for our previous episodes. We’re one of the few shows that does transcripts, so please look those up if you’re curious.

If you would like to find us on iTunes, just search for Scriptnotes. You can also search iTunes to find the Scriptnotes app for your iOS device or also on the Android Store and the Amazon Android Store. And that’s where you can find episodes of our premium show. Premium subscription is $1.99 a month.

**Craig:** That’s it.

**John:** $1.99. A bargain.

**Craig:** So easy.

**John:** Let’s you get to all the back episodes and bonus episodes that we put up as well. If you would like to come to our live show on December 11th, go wgfoundation.org and join us for that. If you would like to reach Craig Mazin, find him on Twitter. He’s @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust. Longer questions, go to ask@johnaugust.com.

And our outro this week is provided by Betty Spinks.

**Craig:** Yeah, Betty.

**John:** Thank you for running that in. Yay, Betty. I think Betty Spinks is a pseudonym for somebody but —

**Craig:** Okay, all right.

**John:** Thank you, Betty Spinks. If you have an outro for our show, something that uses the [hums theme] in a clever way, please write it and please send us a link to that so we will know to find it and use it as the outro to our show. And that is our episode this week. Craig, thank you for a fun podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** All right, talk to soon.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Mary’s Heritage Turkeys](http://www.marysturkeys.com/)
* [Get your tickets now](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-show/) for the Scriptnotes Holiday Show
* [American Contestant with Bob Odenkirk](http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/da114dc7e4/american-contestant-delicia)
* [Dan Benjamin’s podcast guide](http://podcastmethod.co/), and [Marco Arment’s](http://www.marco.org/2014/11/29/easy-listening)
* [A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night](http://www.analilyamirpour.com/#!untitled/c13ay) by Ana Lily Amirpour
* [Bread Stuffing with Bacon, Apples, Sage, and Caramelized Onions](http://heatherhomemade.com/2011/11/bread-stuffing-bacon-apples-sage-caramelized-onions/) from [The New Best Recipe](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0936184744/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Betty Spinks ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-tentpoles-of-2019).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 167 Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, huge news on my side. I am finally buying a new computer.

**Craig:** Oh, thank god. So, are you going to get the 5k iMac?

**John:** I’m going to get the 5k iMac.

**Craig:** Love it.

**John:** And so I’ve been looking at the same monitor for the last eight years.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Had this monitor for eight years, which is a very long time. And I’ve had different computers that have been driving it, but I’ve always been really far behind because I I’ve always thought like, oh well, there’s going to be the computer that’s just right for it.

So, usually I get castoffs from Ryan Nelson who is a designer who needs a much better computer because he’s doing stuff that needs a good computer.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But finally I’ll have a good computer.

**Craig:** So, have you been like on a MacBook and a Cinema Display?

**John:** Yeah, I’ve been on an old MacBook Pro and then a Cinema Display. I have a 30-inch Cinema Display which there is just the one year they made that.

**Craig:** That’s big. Yeah, it’s huge.

**John:** It’s huge, but it’s nice. It’s not especially sharp anymore.

**Craig:** Right. Plus I don’t think it was Thunderbolt and all that stuff.

**John:** No, none of that.

**Craig:** I assume that you updated to Yosemite.

**John:** I did.

**Craig:** As did I. And I’m so far very pleased. But the one thing I noticed is that, so I have the most recent MacBook Pro, and a fairly recent 27-inch Cinema Display, so it is Thunderbolt and all the rest. But it’s not Retina or —

**John:** And you notice it.

**Craig:** Okay, I do notice it. It’s a huge difference.

**John:** Yeah. So the fonts in Yosemite are Helvetica Neue and it looks really good on Retina and looks really not so great on things that aren’t Retina. So, I said that I updated to Yosemite, but I’ve only been using Yosemite in the betas on my 11-inch MacBook Air. And that has a sharp enough screen that it looks pretty good.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, not so much here. Which is okay, because I split my time between — usually when I’m on the Cinema Display it’s because I’m writing and Fade In looks very nice on it, although I have noticed that when I export to PDF, and I don’t know if it’s just a function of the way Courier Prime is or all fonts are, but now when I export in PDF on the Cinema Display the printed Courier Prime just doesn’t look very good. It’s like jaggy.

**John:** Well that’s not good.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** It should look great. And so —

**Craig:** I know. It’s Yosemite.

**John:** It’s that constant challenge. Trying to balance the representation of what the computer knows the thing looks like to itself and how it’s portraying it on the screen are very difficult things. And that’s why these 5k displays have very custom circuitry to hopefully make things look as good as they possibly can.

**Craig:** Well, the bummer for me is I don’t want to get an iMac. I like being completely mobile. So, what I guess I’m waiting for now and I presume is inevitable is a 5k Cinema Display.

**John:** Yes. And those will happen. The challenge is that the actual bandwidth required to get from your computer to that display is huge. And so even Thunderbolt 2 by itself won’t be able to power that.

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** It will have to be a Thunderbolt 3, which doesn’t exist. So, it could be a little while to wait. I’m sorry.

**Craig:** But is 5k equivalent to Retina, or better than Retina?

**John:** They’re calling that Retina. Retina is really just I think a term of art for anything that has dots so small that you could not possibly see them.

**Craig:** Right. And so I don’t even know what the Retina resolution is, but —

**John:** It’s sharper than what you’ve got.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s sharper than what I’ve got on the Cinema Display. But everything looks fantastic on the MacBook Pro screen, which is Retina Display. And by and large I think design wise this is pretty great. I love it.

**John:** Yeah. The MacBooks are fantastic, but I love having a big screen, so I’m looking forward to having this and having a nice sharp display.

**Craig:** Well, congrats.

**John:** Thank you very much. It is my Tesla. So, I’m excited to finally get it.

**Craig:** You know, I am getting the —

**John:** Yes, everyone on the podcast knows that you’re getting the new Tesla. Because you have to be able to accelerate to, what was it, zero to 60 in three seconds or something?

**Craig:** 3.2 seconds.

**John:** That’s just absurd.

**Craig:** That’s super car speed. It’s got 691 horsepower. And I just like the idea that I have that many horses. I’m like a horse magnet.

**John:** I love that we talk about things in horsepower.

**Craig:** Well, of course we do.

**John:** Of course we do.

**Craig:** Everything should be in terms of horsepower. Like computers we shouldn’t talk about gigahertz or processing or clock speed. We should just talk about how many clerks the computer is duplicating. Like, the clerks from Brazil with the little visors.

**John:** That’s what you need.

**Craig:** Like my current MacBook Pro is four billion clerks.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s good. Today on the podcast we are going to be talking about superhero scheduling and the 31 superhero movies that slated for this next decade, which is absurd. Not even decade, like seven years.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** We’re going to talk about this great article about copyright. We are going to talk about developing a pitch. And we’re going to look at three —

**Craig:** Developers, developers, developers. [laughs]

**John:** Oh, god, you’re going to make me never use the word developer again, Craig.

**Craig:** Developers. Developers. Developers.

**John:** Let’s look at synonyms. So, figuring out a pitch. Perfecting it. I don’t know.

**Craig:** Rowing.

**John:** If our listeners have suggestions for words they can use other than develop, so that Craig never does that again —

**Craig:** Developers, developers, developers.

**John:** And we’ll be looking at three Three Page Challenges from our listeners.

**Craig:** Do you ever listen, this is going to shock you, but I did listen to a podcast once.

**John:** Oh my gosh. I’m standing up, but still I’m sitting down.

**Craig:** I think it’s called Comedy Bang Bang. It’s the Auckerman, Scott Auckerman, is that right? And they have this ongoing thing, like years ago whenever they started it, whenever somebody would say my — they had a whole thing about how Borat goes “My wife” and now it’s their thing. Whenever somebody is on their show and they happen to mention the phrase “My wife,” one or more of them will just quietly go, “My wife.” And somebody made a super cut of all the times it happened and it’s one of those things like The Simpsons rake gag that just gets funnier and funnier because it never stops.

And I think maybe developers is our “My wife.”

**John:** “My wife.” Either that or it’s “Uh-huh.” My tacit thing. It’s interesting, this last week I was at Singleton and we were talking about podcasts. A lot of people there make podcasts. And we were talking about some people have these long monologues. And it’s that choice of whether you say the Uh-huhs or you just leave it out and just let the person monologue for like five minutes.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** And I’ve always done the Uh-huhs because it just makes it clear that I’m actually paying attention and listening.

**Craig:** Have you ever spoken with somebody that does this, they’ll keep saying, “Right, right, right, right,” as you talk?

**John:** So many development executives do that.

**Craig:** Right, right, right. Right.

**John:** Right. I’m checking in with you, yup, I’m with you, I’m with you.

**Craig:** Right. Right. Right. Yeah, and they don’t know they’re doing it. I can tell they don’t know they’re doing it. It’s the weird — and it’s the most annoying thing.

**John:** It’s almost the Tom Cruise like constant eye contact thing, where it’s just like, oh, you’re freaking me out. You’re just too present in this situation.

**Craig:** You’re too present. Exactly. I need you to ignore me just a little bit.

**John:** Just back off just a little bit and then I’m good.

**Craig:** Let your mind wander.

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Follow up. This week, and really our next episode, is the Austin Film Festival. So, there’s two things which Scriptnotes listeners may want to participate in. First off, we’re doing a Three Page Challenge, and these entries will all be the second rounders from the Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Competition.

Craig will not be there, but I will be there with Franklin Leonard of the Black List, and Ilyse McKimmie from Sundance Labs. So, they will be up on stage with me. And I picked them because I think they’re going to be great, because they’re reading a lot of scripts and they’re sort of gatekeepers to their respective domains. And I want to talk with them about sort of what they see as they start reading scripts and what their experience is like. And so I think that will be a fun time.

**Craig:** I think that’s great. And, you know, now that you mention it, and I’m so sorry I’m missing it, but for the next time we do something like this together with the Three Page Challenge, we should really think about getting, routinely getting an executive or producer up there, because it is so useful to hear that perspective from them.

**John:** It should be fun, so I’m looking forward to that. That will be Friday at 9am if you’re coming to the Austin Film Festival. It’s an early session.

**Craig:** Early, yes. People will be hung over for that.

**John:** They will be. I will not be.

**Craig:** Yeah you will.

**John:** And then we’re doing Scriptnotes Live on Saturday at 12:30pm. Susannah Grant will be my co-host.

**Craig:** So great.

**John:** I’m excited about that.

**Craig:** So great.

**John:** And our theme is all about writer-directors. And weirdly like everyone on stage I think will be a writer-director. So, I’ve written-directed, so has Susannah. We’ll have Richard Kelly. We’ll have Peter Gould from Breaking Bad.

**Craig:** Very cool.

**John:** And Cary Fukunaga, just announced.

**Craig:** I mean, how did you? You’re just rubbing my face in it now.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Can you please tell Mr. Cary Fukunaga how much of a fan I am?

**John:** He’s a genius. And I actually met him at the Sundance Labs, with Ilyse McKimmie, many years ago when he was doing Sin Nombre. And I didn’t work with him there, but he was clearly one of those, oh, you’re a super talented person. And I’m so happy when my predictions prove correct.

**Craig:** It’s amazing. And Peter Gould really is, sometimes TV directors don’t get their due. And he certainly deserves because obviously he was a writer on what I believe is the greatest television show in history, but also a director of that show as well. And you can’t go wrong with Richard Kelly. Please, for those of you at Austin, go see this, if only to look into the unfathomable bottomless cruel eyes of Richard Kelly. Stare into the abyss of Richard Kelly and tell me if it does not stare back into you.

**John:** Indeed. There will also be special guests that I’m not allowed to announce, but I think you will enjoy some of these other people who are going to come to the show. So, please come to that. That’s 12:30 on Saturday at the Austin Film Festival.

**Craig:** That’s great. That’s a must do. I don’t care what else is going on. If you’re going to Austin and you’re going to be there, and I’m so sorry I won’t be there this time. This time only. I’ll be back next year. But Saturday at 12:30. If you don’t go to this, you’re just dumb.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** Stupid.

**John:** So, a little protocol. If you see me at the Austin Film Festival, it is totally fine to say, “Oh, hello, hi.” But know that I may be running from one place to another, so if I am brief with you it’s only generally because I’m trying to move from one facility to another facility and things are sort of spread all out.

But if you do see me, and you see me in a moment where I have some time, I will have on my person this thing called Writer Emergency which is a website you can go to. It’s this thing we’ve been working on for four years. And I actually have a physical thing I can show you. So, if you would like to see it, I will show you this small pack of suggestions that I will be carrying with me. Because we’re sort of beta testing them, so I need to show it to actual writers.

So, if you see me at Austin, I will have it on my person.

**Craig:** I was quite sure that you were going to say if you see me, feel free to talk to me, but do not touch.

**John:** Yeah. Do not touch. Do not touch me. Just maintain a safe distance.

**Craig:** Do not touch John August.

**John:** If you’re wearing a Scriptnotes t-shirt, I will probably notice that. So, that’s a thing you might do.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** My trainer today was wearing a Scriptnotes t-shirt. It was the first time I’d seen one in the wild, and I’ve got to say it looked really good. Now, as we’re recording this, Craig, you just said that you have not actually physically gotten yours because you live out in the hinterlands, but everyone else, if by the end of this next week you have not gotten your thing, something is wrong and it’s probably Stuart’s fault. So, you should probably email orders@johnaugust.com and let Stuart figure this out.

**Craig:** Now I’m hoping I don’t get it because I want Stuart to suffer.

**John:** I think we did a really good job shipping everything out. We’ve gotten much better at it. But as we were shipping them out we realized, wow, there is one Highland t-shirt, like one person ordered a small Highland t-shirt, and we were out of small Highland t-shirts. And we realized like after we’d already gone to the post office we put someone who had ordered XXL and we sent them a small.

**Craig:** Ooh, no!

**John:** So, fortunately our wonderful listeners, he emailed us and so we were able to get that t-shirt back and give it to the right person.

**Craig:** Oh good. Good. Good. Good. Because, wearing a too-big t-shirt is perfectly, but a too-small t-shirt.

**John:** That would just not be good. No.

**Craig:** It’s no good. It’s no good. It shows all the soft squishy parts.

**John:** Yeah. Unless you’re wearing Spanx, which is something we learned about from Aline.

**Craig:** Man Spanx.

**John:** Man Spanx. People who may need Man Spanx are all of the actors who are going to be in all the superhero movies that have now been set for the next seven years.

**Craig:** Are you starring in Transition Man? [laughs]

**John:** Oh, I’m Transition Man. That I locked down. But this last week just got crazy. So, I want to just take a minute and talk through all of the superhero movies that are currently on the slate, and then we can talk about the reality here and sort of what’s going to happen.

So, I’m pulling from a list that was at News-a-Rama, but I think these are all sort of officially announced things. For 2015, here are the superhero movies:

May 1 is Avengers: Age of Ultron.

July 17 is Ant-Man.

August 7, the new Fantastic Four that Simon Kinberg is producing. And Simon was a great guest this last week at the WGA.

So, that’s three for 2015.

For 2016 we have Deadpool on February 12.

We have Batman vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice, on March 25.

May 6 we have Captain America 3, which is reportedly Civil War, which is kind of going to be great.

May 27, X-Men: Apocalypse, also Simon Kinberg.

July 8 is an Untitled Marvel film unofficially widely believed to be Doctor Strange.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** August 5 is Suicide Squad, which is a Warner’s project and DC project.

November 11, Sinister Six, from Sony, which I think is Drew Goddard if I’m correct. I hope I’m not wrong.

So, that was, I’m counting up here as we do this, that was seven movies for 2016. Seven superhero movies.

**Craig:** Seven superhero movies in 2016.

**John:** But, 2017, not to be outdone.

**Craig:** Surely there won’t be anymore.

**John:** Oh, there are a few more.

**Craig:** Oh!

**John:** March 3 of 2017, the Untitled Wolverine sequel.

May 5 is an Untitled Marvel Film.

June 23 is the Wonder Woman movie.

July 14 is the Fantastic Four 2.

July 28 is Guardians —

**Craig:** Wait, they already know they’re doing a 2?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They don’t even care if number one does well. They’re like, screw it, we’re doing 2. I love it.

John. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 on July 28.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** November 3, another Untitled Marvel film.

**Craig:** They should just keep that title. It’s good.

**John:** Yeah, I think it’s pretty good. Just say like the Marvel Movie.

**Craig:** It’s just Marvel. Just show up.

**John:** Marvel. Show up.

November 17, Justice League, Part 1.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** Which I think is potentially the expansion upon whatever happens in the Batman vs. Superman.

There are two unspecified in 2017. One is a Sony female Spider-Man spin-off. And also a Sony Venom: Carnage Spider-Man spin-off.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** So, I’m going to quickly count this. 10. I’m counting ten for 2017.

**Craig:** Great. Yeah. More.

**John:** Ten superhero movies, not too much.

**Craig:** More.

**John:** Yeah. Then, 2018: March 23 of 2018, The Flash.

**Craig:** Hold on a second. This can’t — 2018, they’re just guessing.

**John:** Oh, it’s going to get better than this. Just wait.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** So, The Flash, March 23.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** May 4 is an untitled Marvel film.

July 6 is an untitled Marvel film.

July 13 is an untitled Fox Mystery Marvel film.

**Craig:** Uh…all right.

**John:** So, I think, I’m talking that to be —

**Craig:** Like an X-Men sort of thing?

**John:** Yeah, something that is in the canon of the stuff that Fox owns would be part of it.

**Craig:** Right. Which will be the X-Men vs. Fantastic Four.

**John:** Oh, that would be great.

**Craig:** It’s inevitable.

**John:** Yeah, they have to.

**Craig:** Yeah. Ugh.

**John:** July 27 is Aquaman.

**Craig:** Oh, finally.

**John:** Jason Momoa.

**Craig:** Oh, oh, I thought it was what’s his face? [laughs] I thought it was the guy from Entourage. Okay.

**John:** No. [laughs] Yeah, it’s James Cameron finally got around to making the Aquaman film.

**Craig:** Finally got around to making, okay.

**John:** November 2, an untitled Marvel film. I think they’re cheating. I think you’ve got to pick some titles. But, all right.

Unspecified date for the Amazing Spider-Man 3.

**Craig:** Oh good. Is that a reboot of the last Amazing Spider-Man? Oh, no, there’s only been two. Okay.

**John:** So, I take all the Sony things with like a huge grain of salt, because who knows what they’re actually going to do because the Spider-Man franchise is in transition. But do I believe that they will make some movies? I certainly do.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** So, back to a little bit of reason, there’s only seven movies, superhero movies, slated for 2018 right now.

**Craig:** Oh good.

**John:** This is 2014 though still we’re in right now?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Okay. 2019, this is why I wanted to do the list. April 5: Shazam. So, I’m so excited that they’re going to do Shazam in 2019 because back in 2007 when I wrote the Shazam movie, I remember having to scramble because Warners was like on my ass about delivering because they wanted to get in production and do budgets. So, I’m just really glad that I sort of canceled a vacation back in 2007, so 12 years later —

**Craig:** Well, they had to get ready for 2019.

**John:** So, this is supposed to have the Rock, Dwayne Johnson, as Black Adam, which is perfect casting and was also perfect casting 12 years ago when we started this process.

**Craig:** Now, let me ask you something. Is this still your script?

**John:** It’s still my chain of existence. It’s still the continuous development on the same project.

**Craig:** But they’re not, in other words, they haven’t just been sitting with your script for 12 years? [laughs]

**John:** No, I think other people have clearly come on and done this. And this was Pete Segal when I was doing this, who is clearly not going to be directing this now. But it is just bizarre.

**Craig:** That’s insane. Wow.

**John:** May 3 is another untitled Marvel film.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** June 14, Justice League, Part 2.

**Craig:** Yeah, because, you know.

**John:** Because.

**Craig:** Because.

**John:** 2020 is Cyborg.

**Craig:** Oh, good, 2020. Are we even alive?

**John:** It’s really a strong prediction of like what will the world be like in 2020. That is six years from now.

**Craig:** I mean, we all know that phones will be implanted in our ears.

**John:** So, April 3 is Cyborg.

**Craig:** Oh good, Cyborg. Everyone has been begging for that.

**John:** Yeah. And then June 19 is Green Lantern.

**Craig:** Worked well the first time, let’s do it again. [laughs]

**John:** It did! You know what? I think part of the lesson of Green Lantern is that you just jam a movie into existence, it’s going to work.

**Craig:** So, listen.

**John:** 31 movies! 31 movies stretching in to 2020.

**Craig:** First of all, this list is highly suspect once you get past 2017. What happens is the real estate during the prime movie months of essentially March through July, really March through June is truly the big months now, because summer has sort of shifted up, it’s so treacherous to release a big movie because you’re always worried that you’re going to go up against two other huge movies. So, people start squatting on these dates. A lot of this is just nonsense. It’s nonsense posturing, and squatting, and some of these movies will move.

So, for instance, when Marvel says, look, on May 4, which is a huge weekend, in 2018 we’re putting a movie out. What they’re really saying is everybody be worried about us, but maybe they will, maybe they won’t. You never know.

A couple of things come to mind when I hear this crazy long list. One, you know, movie studios are businesses and they’re giving people what they want. People keep going to these movies, so why not? And a lot of them are good.

But, two, and this is really the big one, this is the Marvelization of Hollywood and I’m not sure that other people really are doing it right. Marvel is doing it right. And Marvel has a massive catalog. Massive. The Marvel universe has always been famous for having thousands of characters that are all interrelated in this huge soap opera universe. It’s very Game of Thrones in that way.

So much so that they can even, for instance, Nicole Perlman as we had on our show, picks an obscure comic out of a pile and lo and behold it’s now Guardians of the Galaxy and it’s a franchise.

DC never really had that depth. You can see them trying, because they’re colliding Batman and Superman the way that Avengers collided Iron Man with Hulk and so on and so forth. So, they’re trying, and I get that. And they should, frankly, Marvel should roll out things Dr. Strange and so on. I’m sure they’ll do very well.

Where we start to get to the Justice League I begin to worry because I’m not sure that DC really does have the depth there character wise, interesting character wise. Frankly, even Marvel was struggling a little bit. I mean, no offense to Jeremy Renner or Joss Whedon, who did as good as they could do with Hawkeye, but he’s just — he shoots arrows. [laughs] It’s not really, I mean Olympians do that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, it’s starting to get a little thin out there. Certainly by the time we get to Aquaman, your eyes should be rolling a little bit. Shazam, I don’t, I remember —

**John:** Shazam I think, I mean, I will defend Shazam because I wrote Shazam. Shazam is actually a great idea for a movie, because it’s big with super powers.

**Craig:** Right. The little boy can say Shazam and he becomes awesome.

**John:** Absolutely. So, it has the potential for both big superhero movie and sort of comedy. It has the ability to sort of — that wish fulfillment comedy aspect of it. But this is going to end in tears.

**Craig:** I mean, the problem is you and I remember Shazam because there was a television show when we were kids. It was, do you remember, it was paired with Isis.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Not the beheading ISIS, but the —

**John:** It was the Shazam/Isis Power Hour. And I remember as a person who was excited to see Isis, there were only like three episodes of Isis, so it was almost always Shazam.

**Craig:** I know. And I loved Isis, too. My sister and I were —

**John:** It’s the power of the pyramid. Come on.

**Craig:** It’s the power of the pyramid. And I thought she was hot. I really liked Shazam and Isis. I liked Isis more. But I don’t think Shazam is particularly — and look, it doesn’t have the cool factor that Guardians of the Galaxy had because the whole idea was that they were kind of bad ass misfits, which is always fun. So, I’m just wondering if that property is going to appeal to a 17-year-old male.

**John:** I should step back and make clear that I don’t that Shazam is actually the problem. I think Shazam independent of all this stuff could be a huge success because I think it could actually do that crossover kind of — you can take seven year olds to it and make it feel like a good family movie, but I think the overall — you were worried about that thinness of the character slates. I just think the real problem here is the thickness.

I think you are painting, there’s just too many superheroes trying to jockey for attention. And people will get sick of it.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, they haven’t yet. They haven’t yet. So, and some of these things we know will do great. I mean, we know that Batman vs. Superman will be a huge movie. I would like to see that. That sounds like fun.

Captain America is sort of on its, perfectly well on its own steam. It’s a good series. I like that they’re calling it maybe Civil War because hopefully the villain this time will be dysentery.

**John:** You know that the actual premise is essentially Captain America vs. Tony Stark.

**Craig:** Oh, I thought it was going to be more just like, oh, gang green set in and we’re running short on black powder.

**John:** Oh, see that would be really good.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** A little north, a little south.

**Craig:** Right. Oh, oh, we need to amputate. Here, drink this bathtub hooch while I saw your leg off. [laughs] That I would go see.

**John:** Now, Craig, indulge me in a thought experiment because let’s take, let’s step aside and like not look at this as superhero movies, but let’s just say there’s some other genre that was tremendously successful. And so let’s say westerns are the tremendous success, but westerns are really, really expensive.

My worry is that by sinking all of our time and energy into making these incredibly expensive westerns, we are going to be screwed when westerns stop working. Also, we’re limited in our ability to make other kinds of movies, or other kinds of big movies because we’re spending all of our capital making these giant westerns.

**Craig:** I will give you a rosier point of view on it. Most of this stuff is a guaranteed hit. Yes, at some point the bubble will burst, but when the bubble bursts and the sixth Spider-Man movie fails to turn a profit, that’s okay. It will be absorbed by the five that came before it. And the same for all of the Marvel films and all of the — I mean, good, another Wolverine. Thank god, right?

So, the truth is these are the safest bets Hollywood has. And, yes, they cost a lot, but they also know that they’re going to generate enormous profits because they have so far. And they have to the extent that when it finally ends they’ll be okay anyway.

And, I would argue that the profits that these movies generate are essentially what is funding every other movie they make, whether those movies are big or small. These are the things that allow them to take a little tiny bit of risk here and there. It’s not like what they used to take, but without these, I’m not sure they would be in the movie business at all. That’s the scary part.

**John:** So, they’re not actually as guaranteed though. If you look at the ones that have not worked, there are some notable things you can single out. Green Lantern did not work. This last Spider-Man did not work to the degree that they needed it to work in order for it to propel the franchise forward. So, you can’t say that they’re a lock. And, you know, I’m so glad that Guardians of the Galaxy turned out so well, but as you look at that movie, a 20% worse version of Guardians of the Galaxy would have been a disaster. It was one of those things that had to be executed perfectly.

**Craig:** That’s true. And I’m not saying that they bat a thousand. I guess what I’m saying is that if Green Lantern fails, that’s a failed movie. If Green Lantern succeeds, it’s five hits. And so, for instance, Fantastic Four, the first Fantastic Four movie just didn’t really click.

So, what are they doing? They go back to the drawing board and they’re like, no, no, no, we can make this work and we’re going to put Kinberg on it. It’s going to be a different kind of vibe. And my guess is it will work.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They’re learning how to make these better. And there are two twin pillars of superhero success. No, three. Three triple pillars of superhero success.

There’s what Bryan Singer actually deserves a ton of credit, I think —

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** For kicking this thing off with X-Men. And to me those were the first superhero movies that got out of pure cheese mode and really went great. Obviously you’ve got to give Nolan a ton of credit.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Nolan, however, they’ve tried to Nolan other movies. Doesn’t work as well because Batman is perfect for Nolan. Batman is unique. Really no one else is like him tonally. And then you’ve got to look at what Whedon in collaboration with Kevin Feige at Marvel has done. Right?

So, they’re all learning from each other.

**John:** I would say Whedon is fantastic, but I would say the arc of Iron Man into The Avengers is already sort of well, you know, you make The Avengers because you actually already made Iron Man.

**Craig:** Right. I mean, Kevin Feige deserves — Kevin Feige may be the greatest movie business genius in the last, well frankly since I’ve been working in the business.

**John:** I would give the Pixar folks a bit of that, too.

**Craig:** Pixar folks are creative geniuses who are business successful because they’re so brilliant creatively. Kevin Feige doesn’t write and he doesn’t direct.

**John:** True.

**Craig:** He’s like, you know, you have to go all the way back to like, I don’t know, Thalberg, and guys like that to find these really powerful, very smart guys that actually made like a good creator-like impact on the movie business. He may be our generation’s, I don’t know, whatever you want to call it, Zanuck or Thalberg. One of those guys.

**John:** Yeah. Okay.

**Craig:** Look, I’m not a huge superhero movie fan the way that a lot of other people are, but I pick and choose ones I like. Business wise I think this actually generates money for them to make other kinds of movies. They do make other kinds of movies. Without them I worry that movie studios just start to stop down to more of a Disney-like existence of two or three movies a year.

**John:** So, let’s take a look at the range of studios here and sort of who’s not making them and who might be able to prosper by just doing something else. So, Sony is trying to do things in the Spider-Man universe. And so female Spider-Man, Venom, that kind of stuff. Sinister Six is theirs.

You have Fox with X-Men and Fantastic Four, which love them, grateful for that.

Over at Warners you have this whole DC universe that they’re trying to do.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** At Disney you have the whole Marvel universe of things they’re trying to do. That leaves Universal without a superhero —

**Craig:** Well, but they’re trying. And you know what they’re trying with.

**John:** With the Monsters.

**Craig:** Correct. It’s not the same.

**John:** And maybe that will work that it’s not the same.

**Craig:** Because it’s not the same. And I know that Chris Morgan and Alex Kurtzman are shepherding that. And that’s obviously something that they are well aware they don’t have. And it’s interesting that all the studios essentially are saying how can we Marvelize stuff. How can we Marvelize — let’s just look through our catalog. Find intellectual property with multiple characters in it and then Avengerize it. They’re all doing it right now.

**John:** And then Paramount. So, Paramount has Star Trek. I’m trying to think what else they have that is I that vein?

**Craig:** Well, they had Iron Man but they’ve lost it. Is that the idea?

**John:** Or Dare Devil, right?

**Craig:** Dare Devil I thought was —

**John:** Oh, Iron Man was always Marvel, wasn’t it?

**Craig:** No, Iron Man was Paramount.

**John:** It was Paramount, but I think maybe they still have some distribution rights on it, but it’s back now in Disney’s hand I think.

**Craig:** Oh yeah, they had it and it’s gone. I think Paramount doesn’t have any. They have Transformers. Well, Transformers are kind of theirs.

**John:** Yeah, that’s at DreamWorks/Paramount, right? Or is it Amblin/Paramount? It’s all confusing.

So, yeah, the challenge is, and maybe the opportunity is if you are not in that business, maybe you stay out of that business and find ways to thrive in some other —

**Craig:** Yeah, like you know Lions Gate’s superhero franchise?

**John:** Twilight.

**Craig:** Tyler Perry.

**John:** Oh, that’s true. But they also had Twilight. They also had —

**Craig:** Well, Twilight and Hunger Games are there, but they’re limited. They’re like Harry Potter. They end because the books end. I mean, obviously you can see now that Harry Potter is not ending.

**John:** Nope.

**Craig:** When you talk about like a character that can renew over and over and you can just making new episodes with that character, Tyler Perry, Madea. Madea is their superhero.

**John:** Madea is the superhero. Speaking of Tyler Perry, did you end up finally seeing Gone Girl?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No, you didn’t.

**Craig:** No. But I’m gonna.

**John:** You’re gonna. You’re gonna sometime. Because then we’ll have a special podcast just about that.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** Yay. Anything more on superheroes before we move on to the next topic?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Next topic. Copyright. And so copyright is fundamental to the things that we do. There was a good article this last week by Louis Menand — who knows how he chooses to pronounce his name — but it was in The New Yorker. It was an article called Copywrong. And there will be a link to it in the show notes.

And I thought it was an interesting assessment of where we’re at now and really how we got to this place. And his thesis is that, I’m just taking a thesis from other folks, but is that copyright was established with this idea that you want things to be protected for a short time, but ultimately fall into public usage so that everyone can benefit from them. And that has been changed and altered in a way that is sort of the opposite of that. And so it’s holding stuff to the individual, to the creator of things for such a long time that things never fall into the public use.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah, it is an interesting article. I mean, the root of copyright ultimately was to encourage works for the public benefit. The idea being if you could give creators some exclusive right to their work for some period of time, it would be enough of an incentive for them to then do those things so that they could eventually move into the public domain for everyone’s use, a bit like the way that drug companies are allowed to own their drugs for awhile and then it becomes a generic.

What’s happened since then is a collision of two different forces, both of which I don’t think the initial copyright theorists could have foreseen. One was the rise of corporate intellectual property. And the other is the information revolution and the prevalence of cheap, easy, quick piracy.

So, on the one side we have companies that have used their influence over the legislature to extend copyright far beyond what it was initially intended to be, sometimes out of pure greed, a lot of times out of a kind of cultural panic that Mickey Mouse will be in the public domain and that doesn’t seem right. But really ultimately it’s about protecting the pockets of the people who pay for and distribute intellectual property.

And for us, of course, that interest is aligned with ours in a purely selfish way because that’s what puts money in our pockets.

**John:** Yeah, I want to step back to that idea of the public benefit because it is in the public benefit for people to write things, to create things because that is moving culture forward, it is dissemination of ideas. And so the idea behind public benefit in those initial years is really valid, because you want people to be incentivized to make things and share things and publish things so that it can enrich sort of everyone.

And so it’s in people’s public benefit for those creators to be able to charge for things and be paid. That makes sense.

The question becomes how many years after that is it more than public benefit for people to be able to use and share and reuse and do new things with that material. And originally it was like 17 years and it’s now up to 95 years because of the Sonny Bono Copyright Act. And the issue that’s come up, and Howard Rodman from the WGA has actually sent a survey around asking us about things, like have you ever encountered dead books. And by dead books it’s meaning like books that you would love to adapt or love to do something with, but it’s impossible to figure out who actually owns this. Sometimes things are copyrighted, but there’s no actual way to find out who it is.

**Craig:** They’re called orphans.

**John:** You can’t publish it. They’re orphans. And that is a situation that has come about almost uniquely because of these extensions of the copyright term is that normally these things should have easily clearly fallen into public domain and yet they are not.

**Craig:** In fact, the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild have worked together to petition Congress to assign the copyright to orphaned movies to the writers and directors of those movies, which is not the same thing as saying put it in the public domain, but rather, no, no, we should have — keep the copyright, but we should get it. Copyright can last a very long time, particularly when it’s framed as a certain amount of time after the death of the author.

For instance, the movie that I’m writing right now is inspired by the general genre of Agatha Christie’s works. I mean, it’s based on a different book entirely, but the idea is that it’s an Agatha Christie style whodunit. There are only two Agatha Christie books in the public domain, the very first two books she wrote. And they date back to the ’20s, I believe. So, you could see how long copyright lasts.

Now, on the other side of the equation, you have this fact that the vast majority of intellectual property that is downloaded over the internet is pirated. The vast majority.

**John:** Okay. The only thing I’ll push back on that is that pirated in terms of this is a completed work of art and you are downloading the whole thing and using it. The challenge is like when you’re using a snippet of it, something that should be fair use, something that should be I am using this in order to make a statement on it, or to do something with it that is useful new work, it becomes very difficult to know whether that is a legal use or an illegal use.

And companies are, especially now in the age of corporate copyright, companies are extraordinarily aggressive at stomping down on anything they perceive could be an infringement on their copyright. So, it creates this chilling effect that new work is not happening because you are terrified that someone is going to come after you.

**Craig:** Well, I’ll push back on that a little bit. Fair use is really about use. It’s about the duplication or sampling of the republication of. But it’s not about the purchasing of. So, I can make a fair use argument that I’m allowed to put a clip from The Dark Knight on my website.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** But what I can’t make is a fair use argument that I’m allowed to download The Dark Knight for free. We know that, for instance, there are — I mean, god knows, millions of pirated copies of Game of Thrones globally. So, what we have now is a weird storm like collision of a cold front and a hot front of this hyper-extended legal copyright and this hyper-truncation effective copyright.

And we are trapped in between right now. And so the people that follow the laws are being unfairly injured, I think. The people who are creating property are being unfairly injured, I think. Everybody is suffering right now. And I’m not sure what the answer is other than to say this: as somebody that creates intellectual property in conjunction with corporations, I must be on behalf of myself and my family ever mindful of the other sides, I guess I would call it hypocrisy when companies — the distribution companies or the provider companies like Google or Amazon bang the drum of copy fight and intellectual property freedom when really they don’t care about that at all and, in fact, defend their own intellectual property brutally. They just want to make money.

**John:** What this article points out though which I’ve also noticed is that you have tremendous legal teams with vested interest in maintaining the current copyright laws and extending them even further. You don’t have — to the degree you have Silicon Valley who wants to sort of make things free, whatever — but they’re not organized in a way to push for lower, like to rein back the Sonny Bono Copyright Act, to bring it back from 95 years to something much more reasonable.

There is no business model for that and therefore you don’t see the organized fight of lobbying and trying to get some of these copyright laws written a little bit more sanely.

**Craig:** Well, I think the sad thing is that they don’t have to because they know it doesn’t matter. I can go on YouTube right now and watch, you know, big chunks of all sorts of the movies that I’ve written that have just posted on there. Google owns YouTube. They’re distributing the content. They know they’re breaking the law. They don’t care.

**John:** But, Craig, I’m talking about the things that you and I do. So, exactly the situations where I would love to adapt this book, but I cannot adapt this book because it is still under copyright because of craziness. And so things that should have fallen in to popular culture that I should be able to use and adapt and work with are not available. And I think, and we’re talking, also I would say you and I will make the distinction between fair use and sort of piracy, but if you are a Disney company, you will come after both with the same hammer because you have one hammer and it’s an incredibly effective hammer.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, in the end the people that suffer are the wrong people. There’s no reason that you and I, if I wanted to work a little more freely with a novel that was written in 1931, it sucks that I can’t. It also sucks that my residuals are impacted by the fact that people can just go on YouTube, a Google Corporation company, and just watch that stuff illegally uploaded for free.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, once again, John, you and I are getting screwed.

**John:** [laughs] Indeed. I wanted to debate it. I don’t think we’re going to find any meaningful answers. What I would love to see though is — I would love to see the Elon Musk of copyright law who is going in and saying, okay, this is crazy, this cannot continue along these same lines. We have to both protect copyright from piracy, from real piracy during that initial period of profitability on a new work, but then recognize that copyright is designed to protect new work and not to give you a century of profits.

**Craig:** Yeah, well…

**John:** I don’t know that we’re going to find that person.

**Craig:** I’ve got news for you. If we can find the Elon Musk of legislation, there are other things I would like him to work on first.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** We are in dire straits. Dire.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s not zoom out too much. Yes, things are bad.

So, next topic.

**Craig:** Next topic!

**John:** Next topic. So, I’m going to set this up and you will tell me like this is just the classically bad situation. I got sent this thing to look at. It was an adaptation and they’re like, “Can we just get on the phone with your really quick and just sort of talk through it. I know you don’t have a lot of time.” And so I got this thing on like a Wednesday and I’m looking through it and I’m like, oh, it’s sort of sparking and I can sort of see what the movie might be here. And it’s like is there any way we can get on a conference call, like four of us on a conference call, like me and four other people on a conference call on a Friday afternoon at 4pm.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Would you say that’s a good idea or a bad idea?

**Craig:** Well, considering that the Sabbath is right around the corner, John, I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.

**John:** I think in general you don’t want to have a first pitch or kind of meeting on something to be on a conference call with four people you don’t know, especially Friday at 4pm.

**Craig:** You don’t want to be on a conference call. You don’t want to be with four people you don’t know. And Friday at 4pm, everybody is essentially done.

**John:** They are done and they are dead. And so classically a bad idea, but I was traveling, I was going to be traveling so I was like, uh, it’s the only time I can do it. So, I did it. And, remarkably, it went really, really well.

**Craig:** Oh, good.

**John:** Which is great. Which is very exciting. And I think maybe partly because expectations are so low at that point, that I could just do it. I think, also, the fact that you and I do this podcast every week, I’ve gotten much better at just sort of like talking on my feet.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So I talked through it. So, anyway, that went great. And so now I actually have to go in and pitch the real thing. Because on that first phone call I could just pitch like this is what I’m thinking. I think it’s more like this, I think it’s like this, I think this is the world, this is the universe. And that was sort of kind of easy.

I could sort of do the elevator pitch of it really, really well. So, now I have to go through and figure out the whole pitch of it. And that’s a very different skill set.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** And so I just want to talk a little bit about sort of moving from that “here’s the idea” to “here’s the expectation of what you are going to be delivering when you go in and talk through a pitch.” And I know you just did that pretty recently, too.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I thought we could give some helpful tips for people.

**Craig:** Well, there’s different kinds of pitches. So, the first thing you’ve got to figure out is what’s the kind I’m doing. For most people starting out, they do need to deliver a fairly detailed pitch. The purpose of which is to convince the other person that you know what you’re talking about.

There are times when people don’t really need you to give them the whole movie. They just need the big points. They need the big data for what’s going to kind of happen in the movie plot wise, act breaks, and twists and reveals, and the general idea. Every now and then you get to kind of just talk conceptually, which is always the best thing. But, you know, for instance, in your case you kind of did the conceptual and now it’s like, okay great, at least give us the big data.

So, when I think about putting these things together, I try and — I keep in mind who I’m pitching to.

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** It’s not a movie audience. It’s not my friends. The people that are listening to this are going to make decisions based on marketing, they’re going to make a decision based on how they feel in the moment and they’re going to make a decision based on how they can conceptualize this movie in the context of other movies that have made money.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, I do try and pitch the concept with an emphasis on the characters which I think plays better in a pitch than “And then, and then, and then,” which gets really boring. I try and pitch with an emphasis on the big moments that I know in their minds they’re already putting in a trailer. And I also try and pitch with any context, so I can say in many ways it’s like this movie except that it’s not because of this.

**John:** Yeah. And that’s classically that thing you hear in sort of the elevator pitch is like, “It’s like Raiders of the Lost Ark, but in Space.” Or, you know, it’s this but it’s that. It’s not exactly this, but it’s these other two things combined.

And this thing I pitched, there are movies that I can sort of do that two things handoff with. And it’s very glib but it’s helpful because it provides a frame. It’s like the kinds of things that would happen in these kinds of movies —

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Is useful. And then you end up distinguishing but these are the things that sort of make it unique and different. These are the unique elements that are going to be helpful for marketing, but also sort of make this movie a movie worth making. Like why you’re going to have the kind of response you want from this.

And so for me with this pitch, weirdly I’m going to be pitching quality because it’s a genre that you don’t necessarily associate with quality that often and sort of detailed character work. Hopefully it’s the kind of movie where the expectations about sort of what characters are supposed to be doing in it are incredibly low, but then so to push beyond that will be useful. It’s the kind of movie where the characters hopefully don’t recognize what genre of movie in they are in.

**Craig:** I think that’s always a good idea. I think that when you’re pitching something, you are in that wonderful moment where you are on your first date and you and your date partner can fantasize freely about the life you live.

Later on down the line when you wake up in a doublewide, and you’ve both gained weight, and you’re out of work, you can confront reality. When you’re pitching, it should be ambitious. It doesn’t have to be ambitious — budgetarily it should be creatively ambitious. It should be audacious. You should be willing to say I want this to be great. Because everybody wants it to be great. Nobody wants to, “Well, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to deliver pretty much just what you’d kind of ho-hum about.”

**John:** Yeah. So, it’s that moment to not be cynical at all. Like, I’m going with really the expectation of like, you know what, I think we can make something really, really, really cool here that will be surprising. And the same way like Guardians, again, was surprising in that it was doing things like, wow, I didn’t necessarily anticipate you were going to do that. And this movie succeeded so well in large part because you did these things. That’s a crucial thing.

I often describe the great pitch is really as if you just saw a fantastic movie and you’re trying to convince your best friend that they have to see that movie.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** It’s that level of excitement that you’re trying to communicate.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that’s why it’s also good when you’re doing “It’s like this thing” to say something that’s surprising. When you hear something like, “Well, it’s like Raiders in space,” people go, okay. So, it’s Raiders except that they’re in space.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But if you say something like, “It’s a romantic comedy and it’s Raiders,” you go, well wait, how does that work? “Let me tell you.”

But I can already feel people leaning forward. It’s like, well, how does that work? You want to tweak curiosity. I mean, I always think that the Matrix must have been the best, I mean, I don’t know if they pitched it or spec’d it, but what a great pitch. Like, “Imagine this kind of Blade Runner-y, sci-fi world with this incredible martial arts. Yeah, it’s that, and also it’s not real. It’s Philip Dick. It’s this. It’s that. Now, let me explain how that’s going to fit together.”

And if you can pull off how it fits together, well, that’s what movies are. It’s basically — you know, we always say you put your character in an impossible situation and then you get them out of it. Put your pitch in an impossible situation and then get yourself out of it and you will be rewarded, I think.

**John:** Yeah. So, anyway, that’s going to be happening in these next couple of weeks, so.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** I will let people know what the outcome of that was. But it was one of those sort of fun situations I think people don’t — writers of all levels will find themselves in a lot, where you had the sort of initial, you know, oh, that’s a really good idea, come and pitch me the full thing, and stepping from that whole like, oh, I think this is potentially really interesting to here is the whole movie I’m going to try to right is a challenging transition sometimes, because you start to recognize like, oh, that’s actually going to be a lot of work. And so it’s going to be a lot of work for me these next two weeks, but I’m looking forward to it.

**Craig:** It will. But I will say to you that I’ve never, even when they say we would love to hear the movie, they don’t really want to hear the whole movie. So, like everybody at some point starts to — they love listening to the first act. They love hearing how the second act works. And by the time you’re done with that, they just want to know, oh, so like what happens in the end?

**John:** Yeah. And this is an adaptation. So, there is already expectation about like these are some of the kinds of things that are going to happen, so it’s really I can tell them about like this is how I’m going to do this thing. And that is great because it’s both they have the expectation like, oh, he’s going to need to be able to do this thing. Oh, that’s how he’s going to do it.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. They just need to be able to say to the person that runs their life, “No, this guy has got it,” you know, “she knows what she’s doing,” which is why frankly if I had a choice between knowing every single scene of the movie or being able to deliver three moments that they would think, oh my god, those are great trailer moments, I go with those three trailer moments.

**John:** Oh, absolutely. Always.

**Craig:** Because that’s what they’ll end up pitching.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And that’s all it’s going to take.

**John:** Yes. Craig, are we going to do these Three Page Challenges, or are we going to save them for another week?

**Craig:** I see we’ve blabbed a lot today.

**John:** We blabbed a lot this week.

**Craig:** So much blabbing.

**John:** So, should we save these for another week?

**Craig:** I think we should save these for another week.

**John:** I do. Because I don’t want to rush through these because they were interesting things to talk about and I don’t want to sort of slam through them. So, I’m going to save my notes in these and we will get to them another week. So, we apologize to — fortunately we never even mentioned the names of the people, so they will never know that they could have possibly been a part of it.

**Craig:** But they will be. They will be.

**John:** They will be.

**Craig:** Do we need to do any questions and answers? Or should we just —

**John:** I think we’re good. Let’s do our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Great. Oh, should I do mine?

**John:** I can do mine. So, my One Cool Thing is this app that a friend of mine who was at Singleton who I didn’t know was going to be there, but she was there, and she recommended this thing that her daughter loves to play on the iPad. And I checked it out and it really is just great. It’s called Dragonbox. And it is a game for iOS, both on your iPhone and your iPad. And it looks like a simple pattern matching game, where you’re trying to clear these levels by moving these tiles around.

And there’s sort of the board is divided into two halves and so anything you do on one half of the board you have to d the same on the other half. And so it becomes a sort of logic puzzle.

What’s so ingenious about it is it’s actually algebra. And they’ve sort of abstracted it all away. So, you think you’re just moving these colored tiles around, but as you go through levels you sort of realize like, oh, this is actually algebra, the same way you have to balance both sides of the equation.

Then eventually they start to introduce some tiles that sort of look like numbers. And you go through and it’s like, oh, wow, you’re actually doing algebra and you’re actually solving for X but the X is just a Dragonbox.

So, I played through, you know, almost all the levels now and they keep introducing concepts that I would say like, well, they’re never going to be able to deal with things in parenthesis or distribution of stuff. And they have these ingenious metaphors for what that’s like. So, parenthesis are like these bubbles and so it’s everything inside a bubble. And then you can break the bubble and pull the stuff apart, but you have to do it a special way.

It’s really quite ingenious. So, everything up through single variable algebra is actually presented in it, but I think you can actually — a kid could get through all of it and not really know they’re doing algebra, which I think is smart.

**Craig:** I think that’s awesome.

**John:** So, it starts, you know, there’s a version for like five year olds that’s obviously very, very basic. And then there’s the version I’m doing now, my daughter is nine, and she can totally do this. So, Dragonbox.

**Craig:** My daughter is nine. I’m going to start her on it today.

**John:** And weirdly I’ve been playing it like while watching stuff on TV. And it’s kind of fun.

**Craig:** I just sit down and do proper algebra when I’m watching TV.

**John:** Well, that’s always a good choice.

**Craig:** I will say that one thing that’s kind of funny, were you a good math student?

**John:** Yeah, I was good. I wasn’t brilliant, but I was good. I was always honors.

**Craig:** I loved math. I just loved it. But it’s been so long. And my son who is 13, he’s now in algebra and occasionally something will come up and I’ll just think, oh, I’ve just got to — like the other day he was working on some simple trigonometry, tan, cosign, etc.

**John:** You will never use that again in your life, unless you’re a scientific.

**Craig:** But here’s what’s so cool. So, I’m like, okay, he needs some help on his homework. I haven’t done that in forever. Give me two minutes. And I sat there and I just flipped through and I’m like, oh, okay, okay. And what doing that now as an adult teaches you is that we’re so much smarter now than we were when we were kids because we know how to read things and understand them.

It’s not fair. Literally I relearned that stuff in two minutes. I was like, oh…

**John:** Reading the actual stuff in the book, you were able to do it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because we’re used to reading things in books. Like when we were kids we were forced to and it’s just like, oh my god, a book, and I better wait for them to tell me how to do it. Now you can just do it. You can teach yourself anything. We’re geniuses now.

**John:** We are geniuses. All of us.

**Craig:** Compared to when we were 13.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** All right. Well, speaking of geniuses, Transition Man, Lockheed. So, okay, I love fusion. I love nuclear fusion.

**John:** I was hoping you were going to talk about this. So, we’ll see if it’s real. I’m worried it’s not.

**Craig:** Well, a lot of people are worried it’s not. So, fusion reactors are the dream, unlike fission reactors which are all the nuclear reactors that work today, fission reactors work by basically neutrons colliding in to each other and smashing atoms apart, which releases an enormous amount of energy, but has some inherent dangers, see Chernobyl and Fukushima.

**John:** And they always leave horrible stuff at the end.

**Craig:** And they do leave horrible stuff at the end that lasts, that remains horrible, for basically longer than we’ll probably be here on the planet. There’s problems with it.

On the other hand, nuclear power doesn’t release a single bit of carbon into the atmosphere. Has zero impact on global warming and climate change.

**John:** To be fair, you actually have to get the ore somewhere. So, you’re doing some carbon by getting the —

**Craig:** It’s so minimal.

**John:** But much less.

**Craig:** It’s much less. So, it’s vastly preferable to burning coal. So, fusion reaction is entirely different. Fusion reaction is when two light atoms collide together and form — they fuse together to form one big one and in doing so release a lot of energy. What’s interesting about that is that the fuel itself ultimately comes from seawater. So, you don’t need to go mining around.

The fusion reaction has to take place under such specific containment that if there was any kind of failure of the containment the reaction would stop immediately. So, there’s no melting down. There’s no release of dangerous radiation. I think the worst case scenario would be minor radiation within the fence line of the property of the fission reactor.

And also the byproducts in the end while somewhat radioactive, maybe are dissipated within 100 years or so. So, at least they’re not going to be there forever.

Problem with fusion reacting is that it takes an enormous amount of pressure to smash these atoms together and up to date it’s been very hard to get more energy out then it takes to actually smash them together.

**John:** So, we’ve been able to make bombs out of it, but not make a sustainable fusion reaction.

**Craig:** Correct. Sustainable fusion reaction, it’s hard to run at a surplus of energy, which is the whole point. You certainly don’t want to run it at a deficit. They’ve had these large things called tokamak reactors, tokamak fusion reactors, the ITER which was a prior Cool Thing of mine which is the French version they’re working on.

But Lockheed all of a sudden comes out and goes, whoa, whoa, we actually figured out a way to make this really small fusion reactor and because it’s so small it’s going to be way more efficient and we think in ten years we’re going to have a perfectly well-functioning fusion reactor running on seawater that would be the size of a truck that could power a town or something.

**John:** Yeah. So, if — let’s just stipulate — if this could actually happen, that would be incredible. It would be incredible for the future of energy, for the future of American industry, for the future of — it would be incredible.

**Craig:** Yeah. It would be the single greatest industrial impact on human civilization. Period. The end. Because what we would do is eliminate the notion of energy resources. The one thing that we are not running short on on the planet is ocean water and frankly even then the reaction is very efficient.

So, essentially what we would do is we would say, globally, no globally, we have a safe pollution-free, endlessly renewable source of energy that we can put everywhere.

So, oil, done. All of it. Just oil, natural gas, coal, all of it, done.

**John:** There are some things, okay, so to be fair there are some things which fusion power is not great for. It’s not great for flying planes.

**Craig:** I disagree.

**John:** All right. How do you make a nuclear jet? A fusion jet?

**Craig:** Oh, if the Lockheed engine is correct, it would be no bigger than the big gas-powered engines on planes. You would have, absolutely. In fact, planes would be the first thing that would probably go, would be a fusion-powered plane.

Look, we already have fission-powered submarines. They’re dangerous. We have them.

If you have a small fusion reactor, yeah, for sure. You would basically tank up your plane with seawater and off you’d go.

**John:** Well, I mean, Craig, I know that you are looking forward to charging your Tesla off of this. I don’t blame you.

**Craig:** For sure. Now, here’s the downside. They may just be full of crap.

**John:** There’s an incredibly high likelihood that they are.

**Craig:** Right. So, let’s look at the balance sheet of the full of crapness. On the plus side in their favor, it’s Lockheed. It’s not like Ponds and Fleishman going, “Cold fusion,” which was nonsense. This is Lockheed. They’re pretty big and they’ve been around for awhile. And they don’t tend to just make stuff up and lie.

On the downside, there are a lot of scientists saying we don’t even think that’s theoretically possible. And the more concerning thing is that Lockheed is asking for private investment in this project. And as one scientist pointed out, that would sort of be like if the White House wanted a military project, them going to like a small town Savings & Loan.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s weird.

**John:** It’s weird.

**Craig:** Why isn’t Lockheed just funding it themselves? They have billions of dollars? So —

**John:** Yeah. If they started a Kickstarter for it then Craig would be really, really furious.

**Craig:** Oh my god, I would lose my mind.

**John:** Ha-ha.

**Craig:** My mind! But anyway, I hope that it does change the world forever, and ever, and ever.

**John:** I like to have hope. Hope is a nice thing.

**Craig:** I sure do like hoping about these things.

**John:** Well, I hope I will see many of our listeners at the Austin Film Festival next week. That will be our episode for next week. Assuming nothing goes wrong with the audio that will be our episode for next week.

If you would like to tweet something at Craig, maybe wishing him a very happy attendance at his wedding —

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, it’s not my wedding. I mean, I’m already married.

**John:** At the wedding he’s going to.

**Craig:** At the wedding I’m attending. It’s going to be a great wedding.

**John:** He is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. We actually have this new Twitter account set up for a thing we’re working on here called @writeremergency. If you tweet Help to @writeremergency, we will tweet back to you. And we have interns standing by who will write back to you with hopefully helpful suggestions.

**Craig:** [laughs] No.

**John:** [laughs] No.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** You should give up. Give up on your dreams. That’s what they’ll say.

**Craig:** Quit now. Quit now. You’ll never make it.

**John:** Never. Never.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If you have longer questions, you can write to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also, johnaugust.com is also where you’ll find show notes for the things we talk about. You can sign up for the premium feed. We are so, so close to getting 1,000 subscribers on our premium feed at scriptnotes.net.

**Craig:** Dirty show.

**John:** If we hit that, we’re going to do the dirty show, and man, we have some really good ideas for special guests for the dirty show. That will only be available for the premium subscribers. So, that’s yet another good reason to do the subscription.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** iTunes, just search for Scriptnotes. Thank you, again, to the iTunes Store for highlighting us as one of the best podcasts. That was terrific. And that’s also because people who subscribed left a comment and the iTunes people notice that. So, that’s lovely when you do that.

That is, I think, it for the show.

**Craig:** Good.

**John:** Oh, sorry, it’s produced by Stuart Friedel, who is actually not here today, but he does produce the show, so thank you, Stuart. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli who does a masterful job making us sound coherent. And that’s our show. So, thank you. And join us next week.

**Craig:** Have fun in Austin.

**John:** Thanks. Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* The new [iMac with 5k Retina display](http://www.apple.com/imac-with-retina/)
* [OSX Yosemite](https://www.apple.com/osx/)
* [Retina displays](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retina_Display) on Wikipedia
* [Comedy Bang Bang](http://www.comedybangbang.com/)
* John’s schedule at [the 2014 Austin Film Festival](http://austinfilmfestival2014.sched.org/speaker/john_august.1sssegfs?iframe=no&w=i:0;&sidebar=yes&bg=no#.VDMKbCldVjc)
* Help is on the way at [writeremergency.com](http://www.writeremergency.com/)
* If there is a problem with your shirt order, [reach out to Stuart](mailto:orders@johnaugust.com)
* The [31 scheduled superhero films](http://www.newsarama.com/21815-the-new-full-comic-book-superhero-movie-schedule.html)
* [Copywrong](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/20/crooner-rights-spat) by Louis Menand, from the New Yorker
* [Dragonbox](http://www.dragonboxapp.com/) secretly teaches algebra to your children
* [Does Lockheed Martin really have a breakthrough fusion machine?](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531836/does-lockheed-martin-really-have-a-breakthrough-fusion-machine/)
* [Tweet “help” to @writeremergency](https://twitter.com/writeremergency) for assistance
* Get premium Scriptnotes access at [scriptnotes.net](http://scriptnotes.net/) and hear our 1,000th subscriber special
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Jackie Ann ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/toxic-perfection-syndrome).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 165 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Before we get started, I need to warn listeners that my audio in this podcast will be kind of terrible. It’s because of my own fault. I set a setting wrong. So, this is me speaking after the fact with a better microphone connected properly to my Macintosh. So, Matthew Chilelli has done a heroic job trying to make my audio sound better, but it’s a little bit worse than usual. My apologies. And we’ll be back to normal next week.

[Transition tones]

**John:** Craig, how are you?

**Craig:** I’m okay. I’m coming off of a cold, though. I think it went from my kids, to my wife, to me, but yeah, you know that day when you finally feel better? That’s the day you finally feel better.

**John:** Yeah, it’s sort of the 90% day. Where it’s like you’re mostly recovered. There’s still a trace, a little trace of that cold.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s right. But not too bad. I might hack a little bit during this.

**John:** That’s fine. Matthew Chilelli will edit it all out. There will be sirens to cover it anyway.

**Craig:** Exactly. I’ll just time it when the sirens come by.

**John:** Nima Yousefi who is our coder for Quote-Unquote Apps who does Highland and all of our stuff, he was out sick all of last week with the flu. And so this is my annual reminder to everyone to get your flu shots, because the flu just is awful. And you shouldn’t get the flu. And you don’t have to get the flu. So just get a $20 flu shot.

Actually, to tell you the truth, our health insurance —

**Craig:** It’s free.

**John:** Free. So, just get your flu shot. The flu sucks.

**Craig:** Yeah, I know, the flu is stupid. Don’t get that. Is he sure it was the flu?

**John:** He’s pretty sure it was the flu. It certainly wasn’t a cold. He was out in a bad way.

**Craig:** Well, it’s probably the flu.

**John:** It’s probably the flu. And a reason to do it this year I think especially is because if you get the flu shot, you know, it’s not Ebola. So, it can be the situation where you’re like, oh, I’m coming down with Ebola. It’s like, no, you probably have the flu. But now you don’t even have to have those mysterious symptoms that you think are Ebola because you won’t get the flu.

**Craig:** It’s not Ebola.

**John:** It’s certainly not Ebola. And you won’t even be the flu if you get the flu shot.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Right. Today we’re going to be talking about Netflix and the Adam Sandler deal. We’re going to be talking about Turkey City Lexicon, which is this great compendium of science fiction terms and it’s also about writer groups. I thought it was just a great article that Craig linked to, so we’ll talk to that.

Toxic Perfection Syndrome, which is a Craig topic as well. And we’re going to talk about the WGA in 2014. Elections just passed and we should look at what the WGA should be doing and focusing on in the next few years. Big show.

**Craig:** It’s a big show. We’re stuffed.

**John:** We’re stuffed. But we have to start with some follow up, and the first bit of follow up is to thank Apple because Apple featured us this last week. They featured Scriptnotes as one of their top podcasts.

**Craig:** Boy, that made a difference. So, I never really look and see, you know, where we are in the podcast ranks, because of course we make no money off of this, so I don’t care. But we were like the number six podcast in the world for a bit there.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And it’s pretty great.

**John:** We were number four at one point when Stuart was checking.

**Craig:** Oh my goodness. That’s awesome. Wow.

**John:** It’s just crazy for a podcast about screenwriting. It’s wonderful.

**Craig:** I didn’t even know there were that many podcasts.

**John:** Exactly. You’ve been on like three and that’s basically it, right?

**Craig:** Yeah, so I thought being number four was the biggest insult ever. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Yeah. Craig Mazin’s solipsism knows no boundaries. But it was very nice of them to feature us last week.

**Craig:** Yes, very nice.

**John:** If you are a new listener joining us from last week when we had Nicole Perlman on, stick with us please.

Another podcast you may want to tune into is the Slate Culture Gabfest because that is happening live tomorrow. If you’re listening to this on Tuesday, it is happening tomorrow on Wednesday. That is downtown in Los Angeles at The Belasco Theatre. Doors open 6:30. There is a bar. And there will be drinks. Craig will be drinking.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You’ll be drinking, right?

**Craig:** Pretty heavily I would imagine.

**John:** Yeah, because it’s a podcast. You got to get them before a podcast.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And the show starts at 7:30. So, if you do not have tickets, go to Slate right now and get some tickets. And join us, because it’s going to be really fun. And Natasha Lyonne is actually going to be the other featured guest. For a long time it was just me and Craig, and then when they got Natasha Lyonne, there’s now a giant picture of Natasha Lyonne and we are like — “and John August and Craig Mazin.”

**Craig:** That’s appropriate. That is.

**John:** This last week Slate and Vulture did a piece on The Simpsons. And they had a bunch of famous people talk about their favorite moments from The Simpsons over these gazillion episodes. And so they emailed me weeks ago and so they had written this very good intro, so I wrote a really good answer which was the Homer’s Enemy episode, which is the one with Hank Grimes — Frank Grimes.

**Craig:** Frank Grimes.

**John:** I can’t remember his first name because he’s just Grimes. And so I had written this good answer and I was like when are they going to run it. Well, they finally ran it this last week. We’ll put a link in the show notes. And there’s these much, much, much more famous people than me. So, I got like the bottom answer on it. But it was nice.

**Craig:** They’re asking you for your favorite joke?

**John:** No, favorite episode.

**Craig:** Favorite episode. And you went Grimes.

**John:** And of course, it’s like picking your favorite child. You could say Mr. Plow, come one, there’s so many amazing episodes.

**Craig:** It’s an easy one for me. I think it was the one where Krusty loses his show. And it’s the Krusty Farewell Special. That may be my favorite.

**John:** Yeah. I love The Day the Laughter D ied. I love Lisa’s Valentine.

**Craig:** There’s so many.

**John:** This could be a whole episode about our favorite Simpsons episodes.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. True. True. But what is your favorite single Simpsons joke?

**John:** God, I would say actually, I’m going to bend that as saying favorite song, which is probably Monorail.

**Craig:** Pretty great. I think my favorite Simpsons joke is in the episode where Homer was dressing up as Krusty because Krusty was sort of franchising himself, when Krusty and Homer dressed as Krusty — both appear in the mobster hangout. And one of the mobsters rubs his eyes and says, “I don’t believe it. I’m seeing double. Four Krustys.” [laughs] That’s just —

**John:** It’s so good.

**Craig:** So good. Ooh, I don’t know how they think of that. That’s so good. Four Krustys.

**John:** Continuing our follow up, Austin Film Festival, Craig will not be there because Craig is going to be at a wedding. So, putting friendship above his duty to the podcast, which is completely unrespectable.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes.

**John:** But luckily Susannah Grant has agreed to fill in and take your place.

**Craig:** Well, she’s a much better looking version of me. And she’s smarter.

**John:** She’s kind of a terrific writer.

**Craig:** She’s smarter than I am. She’s more successful than I am. She’s better looking than I am.

**John:** There are a lot of reasons why she’s a better co-host than Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** I mean, she’s nicer than I am. [laughs] Oh, that’s a great get. I love it.

**John:** So, Richard Kelly will be a guest as will Peter Gould from Breaking Bad. Peter Gould who was my film teacher at USC.

**Craig:** Well, spectacular.

**John:** Also, there are some other guests to be announced, so that will be fun. We’re also doing a Three Page Challenge there which will be second rounders from the Austin Film Festival’s Screenwriting Competition. And the panelists on that one will be Franklin Leonard and Ilyse McKimmie, so Franklin Leonard from the Black List, and Ilyse McKimmie from Sundance. So, that is going to be a fun time, too.

**Craig:** Wonderful.

**John:** Craig, we had announced on our previous show that if we got to 1,000 premium subscribers we would do a dirty episode just for subscribers.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** How close do you think we are?

**Craig:** I’m going to say that we picked up 600 people.

**John:** That would be inaccurate. But we are now at 906.

**Craig:** Whoa!

**John:** So within the next week or two I think we will be able to cross over that threshold.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s great.

**John:** So, if you’d like us to cross over that threshold, go to scriptnotes.net and sign up. It’s $1.99 a month. You get all the back episodes. You get the bonus episodes. And you get the dirty episode. But we need to figure out who should be our guest for the dirty episode. So, if you are a premium subscriber, please tweet at me and Craig and tell us who you would like to see as the guest on the dirty show.

**Craig:** On the dirty show.

**John:** Because it’s going to be good.

**Craig:** It’s going to be dirty.

**John:** It’s going to be dirty. Let’s get to today’s business. So, you linked to this article that Adam Sandler has made a deal with Netflix for four movies. Tell us about it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, it’s a pretty big deal, actually. I mean, you know, I’m the guy that’s always going, oh well, look, people are jumping up and down saying this is the new way of doing things in Hollywood and no it isn’t, but this might actually be the new way of doing things.

So, Netflix signed an overall deal with Adam Sandler where they’re going to make four movies and he essentially has, they’re kind of implying has pretty much control over those movies. And he’ll be given an ample budget. And I’m assuming that because, you know, he had a pretty lucrative deal and was making pretty big movies with Sony. And what’s remarkable about this is that Sandler is sort of saying and Netflix are both saying we think that big movies can now be piped directly to an audience and skip the theater experience completely.

And that’s a little earth-shattering I think.

**John:** So, the article you linked to, it was unclear. You think that they’re not going to even just do a token theatrical run? You think they’re only going to go directly to home?

**Craig:** Absolutely. Why would they do it in theaters? I mean, the whole point is to get people to subscribe to Netflix. So, no, I think it’s going to be exclusive on Netflix. And I have to say, you know, I’ve read a couple of articles that predictably said, “Oh, Netflix, what — Adam Sandler is stupid, blah, blah, blah.”

Yeah, you’re stupid. It’s not about what the movies are that you like or don’t like. It’s about Netflix having access probably to better metrics than anybody else in our business. If you think about what — their database of what people watch, where they watch it, how frequently they watch it. My guess is they looked at their numbers and saw that Adam Sandler movies are extraordinarily popular with their subscription base, which I should point out is international.

Adam Sandler’s movies tend to do extraordinarily well overseas, particularly for a comedian. So, I think they ran the numbers and they’re like we can’t miss on this. And it’s also intriguing to me because Adam Sandler movies aren’t really movies that demand a theater viewing. They tend to be more appreciated frankly in their ancillary release after the theater experience when Adam Sandler fans purchase them and watch them over and over, often while they get high. [laughs]

**John:** I was going to say dorm rooms. We were in the same brain space there.

**Craig:** I’ve got no problem with that. Or, or, that’s one kind of Adam Sandler movie. The other kind is a family movie like Grown Ups and Grown Ups 2, which are then watched over and over by kids. And so I actually think this makes an enormous amount of sense. And I suspect that a lot of agents woke up this morning or yesterday when this news came out and said, “Uh, I should probably get this for one of my guys.”

**John:** Yup.

**Craig:** And the question now is does this become something that we start to see a lot of. And if that happens, then the people that got to start worrying are the movie theaters.

**John:** Yes. So let’s think this all the way through. So, let’s first talk about who else is like an Adam Sandler and it would be another actor or be a filmmaker who makes a consistent kind of thing, because there aren’t a lot of actors I can peg and say there’s an Adam Sandler movie. Adam Sandler is very much identifiable with every movie that he’s in, as opposed to Kevin Costner who is like an actor in movies and sometimes a director.

**Craig:** Yeah, Sandler kind of runs his own little Sandler studio over there.

**John:** Melissa maybe?

**Craig:** Maybe, yeah. I mean, Melissa I think is starting to get that way. I think a guy like Tyler Perry —

**John:** Tyler Perry. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Could easily do something like this and probably should. I think he’d probably end up making more money. I mean, because remember, one of the things that happens when you make a movie is if the idea is I’m going to get paid some money and then get a piece of this movie, your piece of the movie is negatively impacted by anything that costs money.

Well, what costs a lot of money? Distribution. Marketing. Huge costs for distribution and marketing. Typically larger than the cost of the movie itself.

Well, unless you’re on Netflix, because then —

**John:** But Netflix is going to do tremendous marketing — they’ll have to promote the shit out of it, but then they don’t have to do all the other distribution expenses.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, A, they’re promoting it heavily on their own thing, right? Whereas even though, for instance, Disney owns ABC, Disney has to pay ABC to run ads. And they have to run ads on other channels, too.

Netflix can promote their own stuff on their own system which people are using frequently. And obviously they’re trying to get more of a subscription base. But the distribution costs are essentially zero. And that’s enormous. It’s a huge advantage to them.

So then if you’re an artist, you theoretically would be dealing with a much lower overhead situation where your percentage of the returns would trigger sooner and be against a larger base. So, guys like that run their own show, I mean, for instance Woody Allen, who I suspect is probably way too wedded to film and the cinema experience, but Woody Allen could do this if he wanted to.

**John:** Absolutely. If you have an identifiable brand. If you came in with like people know you and want to come see your things regardless. Kevin Smith maybe could do this.

**Craig:** Yeah. If you have a brand, I could see absolutely Netflix. Now, I think they’ve signaled with this deal it’s not going to be enough to be Kevin Smith. We we’re actually aiming for people that have and can make $100 million regular movie theaters. So, they’re making a big bet here but they’re also signaling to everybody else, hey, you know, come on over. It’s interesting. Really interesting, I have to say.

**John:** So, we could probably find the transcripts from when we talked about Netflix going into television, when it did House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. And that seems like, well, that’s foolish, or at least weird, because we had never really seen Netflix as being a company that was in the television business. And suddenly they were trying to be in the television business, well that’s crazy.

But it ended up being very successful for them. So, I wouldn’t bet against Netflix.

**Craig:** Yeah, well, Netflix is becoming the other HBO. And we know that HBO spends money on things that attract people to their subscription base. I mean, I think that probably what we had commented on was that Netflix wasn’t going to kill network television, and it hasn’t. It hasn’t come close to it. Nor do I think this will kill traditional film distribution.

But, this may be good news for those of us who are screenwriters because as we talked about often one of the things that’s really impacted us negatively is the reduction of feature films that are being made, because there are only so many theaters and only so many studios that make these things. If Netflix is serious about this, they could become a viable new option. I presume that they will make these movies under a WGA deal.

**John:** Yeah, it would feel really strange not to. It would feel strange because the people who write Adam Sandler movies have traditionally been WGA writers. And so for them to start to try to make these movies with people who are not in that stable feels really strange.

**Craig:** It would feel strange. And I’m guessing that Orange is the New Black is a WGA show. I presume as much. So, hopefully that’s the case. That becomes a very enticing thing. Suddenly there’s another studio making movies. But this is a really — it’s an interesting development. I’m — this one, of all the new media is changing the world stories that I’ve read, this one could mean something.

**John:** So, Craig, you write big expensive comedies. You haven’t written an Adam Sandler, but you could write an Adam Sandler comedy. I wrote a Kevin James thing that never got made. If we were to write these movies, what kind of deal would we be taking because, you know, in looking at this there’s potentially no residuals, correct?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** There’s no secondary market. The whole market is for that. And are you writers as a made for television, or what’s the contract?

**Craig:** I think there are some residuals. I think if you make something that’s direct to video there is a certain formula for residuals on it, depending on the airings. I think. I would have to look into that.

But, essentially on something like this you would have to negotiate with the people making the movie who have a fixed budget for what percentage of portion of that budget you get. And, again, that’s why it makes sense with Sandler, because Sandler has guys that he writes with. He writes with Tim Herlihy, and he writes… — So, you know, they can sit down and go, okay, well here’s the money we have, this is what I’m taking because I’m Adam Sandler, here’s what we have left. I think we can carve this amount off for you. Okay, that sounds good. Great. Now, we’ll just go.

Because he’s not going to get into a thing where it’s like, well, we’re going to develop for awhile and then we’re going to hire another writer, and another writer. And it just won’t be that, you know.

**John:** Yes. So, my question which was also unclear in any of these articles it they’re going to make these four Adam Sandler movies, but is Adam Sandler free to make other moves at other places?

**Craig:** It appears that he is. Yeah, that’s what I read, that he’s not married to them. I don’t even know if it’s a first look or anything like that. He’s going to make four movies for them. And he’s kind of the perfect choice because he will make four movies for them, no question. I mean, it’s not like he’s ever disappeared for six years. I mean, the guy makes a movie a year, practically, right?

**John:** Yeah, I mean, he makes more than a movie, maybe two.

**Craig:** Maybe more than a movie a year, right.

**John:** And his movies are not complicated to make. I mean, because they are generally high concept comedies with kind of a rotating cast of the same — Rob Schneider probably, wow, I’m going to make more movies for Netflix. The same people are going to be showing up in his movies again and again. They know how to make those movies.

**Craig:** Right. And he has a stable of directors that he works with. There’s a whole machine in place. They are a kind of self-sufficient, they are a group of people, you know, Frank Coraci and all the guys that he works with, that you can kind of go, okay, money in/movie out. We don’t need to build a whole machine there. It’s built.

So, it makes sense for everybody. And my guess is that Netflix looked at some numbers and went we can’t lose. This is a zero miss proposition.

**John:** So, let’s take four Adam Sandler movies out of the business — basically pick one Adam Sandler movie a year out of the box office, it’s not the end of the world. Like, none of these movies are the top grossing movies of the year. But they’re profitable for most people to make them.

**Craig:** Well, maybe, that’s the thing. Some of them are and some of them aren’t. And the reason why is because it costs so much to market and distribute. So, you know, when you have a movie like Grown Ups, absolutely. Hugely profitable. When you have something like maybe That’s My Boy or, is that was it was called? I think it was called That’s My Boy. It just didn’t do that well at the box office. You put those earnings against what it cost to release, it’s a tougher proposition.

And so that’s why this is kind of a win-win for everybody. I’m fascinated to see how this works out. And I have to imagine that we’re going to see more of this.

**John:** So, second is an article that you lined to called Turkey City Lexicon. Where did you find this? Did someone send this to you?

**Craig:** Yeah, it was tweeted to me. And I just loved it. I loved it.

**John:** I loved it, too. So, what we’re looking at is an article from The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. And the blog post, this one is edited by Lewis Shiner. There’s a Bruce Sterling second edition here. But it’s talking through the science fiction writing workshops. And before we get into sort of the terminology of the Lexicon, I thought their description of the writing workshop process was really fascinating.

They described this process where you get the writers together. Everybody has to print out some of their short stories, science fiction short stories, and then you trade them and everybody sits and reads them and marks them up. And in the process of giving notes to people was very much like an AA meeting in a way, where you had to go around in a circle and you’re not allowed to sort of speak back until everybody has spoken their peace about your story.

**Craig:** Right. And it sounds awful.

**John:** Yeah, it does sound — it just sounds awful.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t like it. I understand how it could be very valuable for new writers, particularly new writers who don’t have access to decent criticism. But it sounds frankly like too much. I mean, it’s hard enough to hear one or two people go through a lengthy critique. But to have ten of them do it? It just seems like it would take forever. It’s boring. At some point it’s just too much. You start to shut down. [laughs]

I don’t know, I just didn’t like that part.

**John:** The only thing I could sort of say in its defense is it gets you to think sometimes critically about your own writing because you’re seeing the mistakes other people make.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And as I started out as a screenwriter, reading a bunch of screenplays and reading a bunch of terrible screenplays at times made me recognize the things I never wanted to do. So, this may be an opportunity for people to take a look at writing that’s not the best Ray Bradbury science fiction writing of all time, but is sort of more on their level and see like well these are the mistakes that this person is making. I’m not going to make those mistakes.

**Craig:** Right. And so what they’ve done is they’ve compiled with very cute names some of the mistakes that keep popping up over, and over, and over. And some of these are very specific, I think, to science fiction, but some of them I think we could imagine easily occurring in screenplays.

**John:** Absolutely. And they’re just terrifically well named. I mean, from the very start, the Brenda Starr dialogue. Brenda Starr dialogue referring to the Brenda Starr comic strip which often had these speech bubbles that were sort of floating above the city. And it’s like, but who is that? And so this Brenda Starr dialogue refers to when there’s long passages of dialogue that seem unconnected to a place. It’s like you’re not really establishing a place where this speech is happening.

**Craig:** Yes, and we will see this in screenplays. I call it ticker tape screenwriting where it’s just streams of dialogue and where are they, what do they look like? So, there are things like this. Some of these things, again, they are more connected to novels, but in looking for some of the ones in here that work with our thing.

**John:** I like Gingerbread. So, Gingerbread is their — sort of when you use a really expensive, fancy words and fancy structures to do something just sort of like to distract you from the fact that there’s actually nothing there. And because in fiction you’re actually reading the physical words as the reader, you notice that. But sometimes that even applies to movies where you see like people did something in a really fancy, complicated way when there’s really sort of no reason to do it in a fancy, complicated way.

**Craig:** Right. And they have something called False Humanity, which I think is such a clever term. “An aliment endemic to genre writing,” and I would argue to a lot of screenwriting, “in which soap-opera elements of purported human interest are stuffed into the story willy-nilly, whether or not they advance the plot or contribute to the point of the story.” And I will see that in screenplays where suddenly people are talking about, you know, how they’re suffering from cancer and this has nothing to do with anything that’s going on. It’s just poking me in a button and making me supposedly feel something for them. It’s just irrelevant to anything else.

**John:** Yeah. It’s sort of spray on notion.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Like it’s not actually endemic to the nature of the story or to the scene. It’s almost like someone giving notes like I really want to love that character more. And so you sort of give them some weird backstory that has no bearing on the plot whatsoever. It’s frustrating.

There’s a thing here called Not Simultaneous, which is also kind of Ing Disease, I-N-G disease, which is that sense of, they describe it as “Putting his key in the door, he leapt up the stairs and got his revolver out of the bureau.” And sometimes you will see that in screenplays where you’re trying to combine a bunch of action into one sentence, but that’s not all happening at once. Screenwriting especially is such a present tense situation that those are separate things. Those are actually separate whole locations. And so you can’t just sort of bunch them all together in one sentence.

**Craig:** And then here is Signal from Fred. “A comic form of the ‘Dischism’ in which the author’s subconscious, alarmed by the poor quality of the work, makes unwitting critical comments: ‘This doesn’t make sense.’ ‘This is really boring.’ ‘This sounds like a bad movie.'” And I’ve seen this in screenplays where someone goes, “None of this, this doesn’t make any sense.”

There’s one screenplay I read where two characters are doing something that is physically impossible. And I go, wait a second, that’s not possible. And one of them says, “This doesn’t even make sense, does it?” And the other one says, “Eh, just go with it.”

**John:** Just go with it, that’s the sign.

**Craig:** Signal from Fred. I like it.

**John:** Other terms I loved were Card Tricks in the Dark. So an “Elaborately contrived plot which arrives at (a) the punchline of a private joke no reader will get or (b) the display of some bit of learned trivia relevant only to the author. This stunt may be intensely ingenious, and very gratifying to the author, but it serves no visible fictional purpose.”

And, man, I’ve seen that a lot where you were able to do something really, really clever, but it didn’t actually pertain to the story that I just saw. And Card Tricks in the Dark actually is a great description for that.

**Craig:** It’s so good.

**John:** We’ll see why that’s magic because there’s no lens on this at all.

**Craig:** Yeah, we don’t get it. One of my favorites is: You can’t fire me, I quit. [laughs] That’s an attempt to diffuse the reader’s incredulity with a preemptive strike, as if by anticipating the reader’s objections the author had somehow answered them. “I would have never believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah, except that you made him see it yourself and none of us do believe it. And I see that a lot, too. I mean, these are all, like some of these are versions of shining lanterns on things, but a lot of times it’s just — you’re just trying to get away with stuff, you know?

**John:** Yeah, with that last one you sort of picture the cutting to grandpa on the rocking chair on the porch like, “I never would have believed it if I hadn’t…”

**Craig:** Yeah. “It was one of those amazing coincidences that can only take place in real life.” Yeah, well, yes.

**John:** And this is a genuine concern for a lot of movies is Idiot Plot: “A plot which functions only because all the characters involved are idiots. They behave in a way that suits the author’s convenience, rather than through any rational motivation of their own.”

**Craig:** It’s just so true. And this happens all the time. [laughs] Idiot Plot. It’s so great. I mean, it really is —

**John:** Especially in comedies, especially if it’s a high concept where like people have to just go with it to establish that this thing could possibly happen, but I think if we have any recurring theme on this podcast it’s getting back to being honest with what characters in that moment would do. And if you need characters to do something that doesn’t fit your moment, you actually probably need to — you can either change your characters or change the moment. But just forcing them to do something that is not natural for them in the moment is never going to be a good choice.

**Craig:** It’s never a good idea. And then my last one I’ll give out is Funny Hat Characterization. “A character distinguished by a single identifying tag, such as odd headgear, a limp, a lisp, a parrot on his shoulder, etc.” And you do often see this in movies where somebody is just — they’re the one thing.

**John:** They are the one thing. And the one thing characters, I find them actually to be fine if they’re going to show up in one scene.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** If that helps you remember them in one scene, or kind of if they’re going to be in two scenes that are long time apart, having that one thing lets you sort of remember them — that can be great. But if they’re going to be along for the ride, you got to find something else that’s going to distinguish them and make them feel like they’re integral to things, because so often that one thing is just weird.

**Craig:** It just becomes grating. I mean, you’re right, if it’s a day player and they’re job is to be the guy pumping gas who says three things, sure. Like a good example is in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles the guy that picks them up in his truck and he’s just sort of like [snort/snoring noise], you know, he does that thing with his nose, that’s a Funny Hat Characterization. But he wasn’t a big part of the movie.

Yeah, if you’re going to actually have somebody in there for awhile, yeah, you got to give us a little more than that.

**John:** An example of it done well for me is in Pitch Perfect. I can’t remember the character’s name, but the girl who sort of whispers under her breath.

**Craig:** Lilly. Right?

**John:** Lilly. Yes. And we talked about her on the show before. And she’s great, but there’s a build to it. It’s a rounding device. It keeps coming back to her doing things and then finally you get these little great bits and moments. It’s sort of her one trait, but it’s funny. And so you like every time that you get one of those little moments with her.

**Craig:** Yes. And you can, I think, get away with — you know, Pitch Perfect is a kissing cousin to Police Academy. The sort of ensemble broad character comedies where you’ve got seven people and each one of them has a specific talent, you know.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, that worked there. But, yeah. Anyway, this is a good list. I really enjoyed reading it. Anytime we pick up these lists of clichés it’s just fun to read. And a decent reminder to us all that people are watching, [laughs], and they know what we’re doing.

**John:** Yes. So, Craig, next topic, you described it as Toxic Perfection Syndrome.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, I was thinking about this lately. And, I could be wrong, but I think that this is something everybody does. Every writer does this, whether they’re professional or aspiring. And the idea of Toxic Perfection Syndrome is you write something and you begin as it’s being completed, perhaps in the time between your submitting it and your receiving feedback, you begin to daydream about this overwhelming positive response.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** In which somebody is going to call you and say, “This is the single greatest screenplay I’ve ever read.” And they are full of unconditional love and approval and it’s just a complete — it’s just “Don’t touch a word of it. It’s perfect. It’s amazing.”

The cousin of that is the Oscar Speech in the Shower Syndrome, where you very tearfully thank the Academy for understanding how brilliant and perfect the screenplay is.

I suspect that this is something that a lot of writers do naturally because it’s an offshoot of the psychological effort required to actually finish a screenplay. You need to believe that what you’re doing is good. And that part of it is fine. As long as we understand it’s not real once you turn it in, because what happens — the toxic part of Toxic Perfection Syndrome is the feeling that you get when you’re suddenly hit in the face with this icy blast that is nothing at all like the daydream.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Nothing at all. And it’s hard enough to accept criticism and to not judge yourself, but to do it when the context was that in fact this was going to be the biggest thing — it was prefect and everyone was going to love it. That’s wrenching. That is soul-wrenching, and that’s where it gets dangerous.

**John:** Yeah. So, let’s talk about that space between you’ve finished a draft and you are getting your first reactions back from people. And I know that feeling so well is that you have been through this marathon to finish this draft. And there were ups and there were downs. There were moments where you doubted yourself. And then you finally, you have this thing finished and you have poured everything you have into it.

But then you look at it and you’re like, wow, this is really good. This is going to be a fantastic thing. And then you start imaging like, well, how are you going to get it to these people, how are you going to get it to these people. It’s like, oh, what if this actor wants to do it, what if both of these actors want to do it. How can we…?

You just start to visualize all the things that are going to happen, but then like what if we do a sequel and then you start going forward, forward, forward, forward. And on some level it’s completely understandable that we as writers do that, because it is our job to imagine things that don’t exist.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so we are imagining a future for this script we’ve written and it’s pretty understandable that given our process of writing the thing, that we would continue the chart of the success way up into the future. We think like, oh, it’s going to continue exponentially on this path into the stratosphere and it will be Titanic. We will be the unstoppable movie of all time.

And on some level that’s, I don’t know, I never want to sort of kill people from daydreaming because I think being a little bit delusional is required for success in almost any industry.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Particularly one that’s all about just making stuff up.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But how — I’m actually really genuinely asking the question — how do we bring ourselves back down to earth in a way so that when we do start to hear that feedback it isn’t just bewildering and shocking and seems like it’s coming from Mars.

**Craig:** Well, I think we do what you and I are doing right now which is essentially acknowledging that this happens. Because if we don’t talk about it, then we might think it’s just us. We won’t recognize that it’s a syndrome.

But you’re absolutely right when you say that we’re prone to this because we invent narratives for a living. That’s what we do. So, naturally we’re going to invent a narrative about our own work. And about ourselves and about our careers and how this is going to be received. And in that narrative we’re going to indulge in all of our dramatic tendencies.

The underdog wins. The bad guys lose. Somebody that doubted you all along is sitting in the audience just chewing their Oscar program, you know. And that’s wonderful. And we should feel to indulge in that because it’s a lovely fantasy, as long as we recognize that it’s a fantasy. That no movie that has ever done beautifully in the world started with a screenplay that somebody said, “This is perfect. Change nothing. You’re the best. Let’s shoot it. It’s perfect. Everything is great. Oscar. Legend for all time.”

It just doesn’t happen that way ever. So, if we can acknowledge that it’s a fantasy, then when we’re confronted by reality it won’t be so shocking.

**John:** Yeah. That makes complete sense, just emotionally and internally I’m trying to figure out how I would talk myself through that process and talk somebody else through that process, because you want somebody simultaneously to be completely passionate and engaged and they have fallen in love. It’s honestly a really good analogy for it is you had somebody wonderful and you are so excited to go out on that first date. Maybe like you met somebody on Match.com and you traded emails. And like, wow, this is going to be perfect — we click so well. Maybe you even talked on the phone.

But then you get into that sort of actual first date and it’s not what you think. And you had built this whole narrative about sort of like who he is and how it’s all going to fit. And then it’s just not that. And then you start to doubt, here’s what I think it is: is that you start to doubt that person, you start to doubt yourself, you start to question how did this narrative even come to be. And you sort of destroy everything rather than sort of acknowledging what was possible there.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And I think that the only solution to that, the only preventative is something that Dennis Palumbo talked about and that’s allowing yourself to indulge in the warmth and comfort of a fantasy without assigning real life meaning to it.

So, if you’ve discovered it’s a fantasy, that doesn’t mean that you’re a delusional idiot who knows nothing. It just means that you’re a human being that indulged in a very comforting fantasy. Similarly, if somebody who you in your mind fantasized would accept you and love you completely is in fact not doing that, but instead is providing conditional affection and criticism, that doesn’t mean they’re no good. They may be the best thing for you.

We just have to allow ourselves to do it but know what we’re doing. Toxic Perfection Syndrome is toxic if you don’t know that you’re fantasizing and you think, in fact, you’re predicting.

**John:** Yeah. I absolutely agree. Now, Craig, have you ever tried the opposite where you assume that it’s going to be terrible and that everything is going to go horribly, horribly wrong? I can’t sort of name the project, but there was one in which I was like well this is going to be just a disaster. This is not going to work well. This is doomed. I’m only doing this because I have to do this.

And weirdly, of course, it works out great. That may just be luck. But in a weird way it was sort of — I think by giving myself an emotional protection I never got my hopes up too high and I was probably a little bit more realistic with sort of what this situation was.

Many of the times rewrites are kind of that case, where I’m going in and I know like I’m not going to get this to an A. I’m going to try to get this to a B, because there’s not a way to get to an A. Emotionally that’s an easier thing for me to deal with.

**Craig:** Yeah. There obviously are some projects where you don’t have as much emotionally invested because you are coming along and helping to sweep up, mop up, finish the game, whatever analogy you wish. I will routinely while writing things think to myself, “Well, this is a disaster. I mean, I do this all the time.” Usually, though, by the time I get to the end I’m happy.

And I’ve tried to play the game of let’s do the bad fantasy, let’s fantasize the loss. But I usually stop because I realize I can’t — I’m not doing it well enough. This doesn’t match what actual bad news feels like. Bad news feels so much worse than this.

**John:** Yeah. Bad news feels like melting through the floor.

**Craig:** It does. It does.

**John:** It’s the worst.

**Craig:** You just feel — you feel like the inside of you is being flushed with something cold and dead.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s really — and that’s how you know, by the way. That’s how you know that you are a real writer. If you feel that terrible feeling, ugh.

**John:** Yeah, it’s a sense of like loss and no one died, but just like all this time that I put into this thing, it’s just like evaporating right before you and you see sort of no end to it.

When I described after seeing the first cut of Go, and I remember praying like maybe we will just never release it because it’s that bad. That’s what it can be. Sometimes it’s just like a phone call you get. It’s like, well, that was just awful.

I was coming into the office yesterday and I saw this look. Stuart had just hung up on the phone and I saw the look on his face. I’m like, oh no, something terrible has happened. And it was. He had just gotten a piece of bad news. And it’s just a physical, visible thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. And we have to acknowledge that. You know, when we get this bad news and we feel this, that it’s not precious to feel these things. It’s totally normal and it’s nasty. Nasty to feel these things. But, in a weird way once you kind of let yourself feel it, it gets a little bit better.

**John:** It does. And the other thing I basically said in Episode 99 with Dennis Palumbo is when you feel yourself getting these really strong emotions, I find it very useful just to turn on the record and see the little red light on the edge of your vision and just actually experience what it feels like. Because you are a writer and you’re going to be writing character’s with strong emotions. So, feel what it feels like to feel this emotion. And what does your body feel like? What does the world feel like? What are the words you would use to describe how you are feeling?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because there’s going to be situations where you’re writing characters feeling this thing and you’ve got to have a memory of what that is like.

**Craig:** Absolutely. Or, alternatively, [sings] “Turn it off like a light switch.”

**John:** Just push it way, way down and never let anybody see it. That’s another really good solution.

**Craig:** Form it into a small tumor.

**John:** Let’s talk about the Oscar Speech in the Shower. I’ve totally been guilty of that.

**Craig:** Every writer has done this.

**John:** Oh, it’s so pernicious. When I’m not fantasizing about like my Oscar speech, and basically the order in which I’ll thank people, and I’ll be classy about it.

**Craig:** Wow. I love it.

**John:** Because you’ve got to be classy. How am I going to get done with my Oscar speech before they start playing the strings.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s tough. It’s really a challenge. And do you do the Soderbergh where you don’t even really acknowledge the film. You’re really trying to give a message to the world about creativity and writing? Or are you thanking your mom? Who are you thanking?

**Craig:** Right? Are you going to do the thank thing? I mean, after all, everyone thanks somebody. I mean, maybe I should do something different. Should I not thank people? I mean, but it’s so funny because the concern about, okay, I got to get this speech done before the time is such a writerly thing. I guarantee you no actor ever thinks about that. Ever.

**John:** No, exactly. They’re thinking is the camera on me? The camera is on me? Great. Everyone is paying attention to me? Awesome.

**Craig:** The actor is like what should my face be like? Should I be like bewildered by all the love? Like should I do the Sally Field bewilderment? Should I do graceful, calm appreciation? Should I act like I’ve been there before, or should I just let all of my emotions pour out?

Meanwhile, we’re like, all right, I need — I have 45 seconds. If I speak at a rate of four words per second…classic.

Yes, we all do it. We all do it. It doesn’t make you dumb to do that.

**John:** Yeah, it’s dumb. And you’re wasting a lot of water because you’re in the shower and the water is running.

**Craig:** But you’re dumb. But you’re not dumb. You’re sweet and human for doing it. And, you know, we are in a drought, it’s true. That is true. You could always reduce the flow of water while you do your Oscar speech —

**John:** Sure. A good time to write an Oscar speech, or fantasize about your Oscar speech might be like when you’re on the treadmill or you’re doing some other exercise that’s just incredibly boring.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Do it while you’re there. Because then at least you’re like you’re burning calories and you’re planning your Oscar acceptance speech.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah. But I can’t imagine any screenwriter has avoided this.

**John:** So, when I’m not planning my Oscar speech, the other thing I found myself doing way too much of is figuring out like if Beyoncé were to sing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl, how she should do it?

Because it’s really, the National Anthem as we’ve talked about before, is a challenging song to sing.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** My latest theory is that you are asked to do it, so you’re Beyoncé, and you’re asked to do it. So, it’s really advice for one listener if Beyoncé listens to the podcast.

**Craig:** Obvs…

**John:** If you are Beyoncé and you’re going to do it, I think you actually start with America the Beautiful and then from “Sea to shining sea” you hold the Sea into “Oh beautiful.”

So, that first part can be — you can get some big energy out America the Beautiful and then segue that into —

**Craig:** Oh, that’s interesting.

**John:** Star Spangled Banner.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, that could work. I mean, but what if she’s Sasha Fierce? Then it’s a whole different — we got to give her a different vibe.

**John:** But I think that way you could actually get a little Sasha Fierce with like, because America the Beautiful is lovely. Star Spangled Banner is actually kind of militant. It’s kind of fight. And so then she can get a little Sasha Fierce and I think she’s done the “we’re all brothers and sisters together and now it’s time for let’s fight.”

**Craig:** The problem with doing the National Anthem is that Whitney Houston did it the best and it’s over.

**John:** That’s why I think you can’t do the National Anthem like the National Anthem anymore.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s done. She nailed it years ago.

**John:** 100 percent. She just completely — that’s the best you can do.

**Craig:** You can’t do better.

**John:** Nope. Done. While we’re making sure that things are the best they can possibly be, the WGA, Craig. So, what does the WGA need to focus on in 2014?

**Craig:** Yeah, so we’ve got a new board, which is a little bit of meet the new boss/same as the old boss. I mean, mostly incumbents. We picked up a couple of new guys. Jonathan Fernandez, who is terrific. Shawn Ryan, who while he’s new to the board is not new to leadership. He was very active in negotiations for a number of years now.

So, I’m just thinking, well, okay, this is all great. And every time we have an election people talk about the same stuff. Read the book, I’m like here we go.

**John:** Here we go.

**Craig:** Here comes the list of all the things that are going to change suddenly when we elect these people and they never do. Ever. And I’ve started to ask this question in a fatalistic sort of way, but also in a realistic sort of way. What the hell can the WGA actually do different or better than it currently does? Because the answer may be nothing, which is a little bit of a bummer because it doesn’t function brilliantly right now, but I’ve been wracking my brain and, I mean, look, ideally enforcement, but they don’t seem to have the capacity for it. And the nature of our rules are such that they’re difficult to enforce.

**John:** I would say there are two things that I would love the WGA to focus on in this next round. And weirdly they are sort of two internal things and the two things that are so unique to us as an organization as opposed to any other unit. First off, we are the only union that is — we are actually hiring ourselves a lot. And so we’re one of the few unions where this showrunner is hiring these writers, and these writers are working for this showrunner. That’s a unique situation. And I think we have to have a closer look at sort of what that relationship is.

And sometimes the hiring practices that they encounter, both in terms of diversity of representation but also the way we paper team writers. It really comes back to how are we employing ourselves. How are we hiring our fellow writers in television. That feels like something that we need to take a look at.

And it’s not a going to be a comfortable thing to look at because if you are a showrunner, you’d love to have a bunch of teams of writers, but you have to make sure you’re actually treating them well, and you’re treating them fairly.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** My second bit is also really about teams. You don’t hire acting teams. You don’t hire directing teams. You can hire directing teams, I guess, but it’s really rare. But you hire writing teams all the time, writing partners all the time. And it’s how you deal with them in features and how you deal with them in television. There needs to be a little bit more parity because right now when you hire a writing team for your show, you pay one salary, but you get two bodies. And how you are able to use those bodies is sometimes challenging. Even two brains, and sometimes you’re not supposed to separate them, but you send one person to set and you keep one person in the room, or send people to different rooms to break stories. That feels crazy. And I don’t think we should be doing that.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, yes. Those are all true things and I hope they change. If I had like an overall complaint, like a very generic, generalized complaint about writers, it’s that when we are en masse we tend to be very brave. And when we are individual we tend to be very cowardly.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** And I don’t like that. And I think you see that where we’ll have showrunners band together and make a big deal of it during strikes, but then individually they just turn a blind eye to all this stuff, which is not cool. Things like paper teaming is just really bad.

**John:** So, for people who don’t know what paper teaming is, paper teaming is: oh, here are these two writers I want to hire; I’m going to tell them that they are now a writing team and we’re going to basically pay one salary to hire two of them.

**Craig:** Right. So, you should be paying two people a full salary. Instead you just said, “Hey, you guys are both going to be working like individuals, but I’m going to call you a team just for the hell of it so I can pay each of you half of what I’m supposed to.” And that’s just wrong and we should be fighting that like crazy. And we should call in every single showrunner we have and just say, “Explain yourself. Explain yourself if you are allowing this to happen on your show.”

**John:** So, it’s not that there needs to be rules against paper teaming and those rules got disbanded, it’s like there were changes in practices and the union was not able to step in and sort of acknowledge that this has changed and it’s not acceptable. This is costing our members.

**Craig:** That’s right. So, what you have is a situation where every year there’s an election and people say, “Here’s what’s wrong with the guild and here’s how we’re going to change it.” And every year I think to myself, forget what you’re going to do to make the union better. How do you stop the erosion? It’s just been a general, slow erosion and I don’t know if it’s just that there’s nothing sexy about saying, “I have no ideas how to make this union better. I just want to keep it as it is right now and not have it be any worse.” Maybe that’s not a very sexy way to win an election.

It’s dispiriting. And I don’t have the answer. I don’t. I don’t know what to say to the WGA to say here’s how you’re going to make a bright new future for writers. I mean, other than digging in, you know, and holding the line here and now. I’d settle for that.

**John:** Yeah. Are there any examples of places where you don’t think they are holding the line?

**Craig:** I think there was an opportunity when they saw that culturally two steps were shifting to one step. There was an opportunity, because it wasn’t a guarantee that there would be two steps. And our contract to maybe shore up two steps for writers who were earning less than a certain amount, which I think would have been a very positive thing.

The paper teaming should have just been jumped on. That should have just been all out legal war on that one. And, frankly, tremendous pressure on the writers who were turning a blind eye to paper teaming.

So, Scott Frank’s very good movie, A Walk Among the Tombstones, is out right now. Have one of the great, I love this tag line from the poster: “People are afraid of all the wrong things.”

The WGA is afraid of all the wrong things. While we were staring into the void and whipping ourselves into a frenzy about what would happen if the network got to air another episode of The Office on your iPad, people were literally losing half of their incomes. We’re afraid of all the wrong things. So, there’s a monomaniacal focus on the companies and these big moves that they do and then just no real attention paid to what’s actually grinding people in the moment on the ground.

**John:** So, I have a counter example that’s really from this last negotiating committee, which was options and exclusivity.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** It was a thing that actually did change. That is acknowledging a new reality on the ground with respect of writers on TV shows were being held under option where they couldn’t work on any other shows for a year at a time because the TV season had changed in ways that everything was just upside down.

And so this was one of the few things we really dug our heels in on this last time. And we made some progress. So, I would have loved to have seen that same attention being paid to paper teaming and to these other things, but that’s an example of something that did change.

**Craig:** You’re right. That’s an example of something that changed. And it also indicates the kinds of changes that I think the guild probably — if I’m going to anything sort of hopeful or constructive here, I think the guild should be focusing on what I would call quality of life issues for writers.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** And focusing less on how to combat multinational corporations and internet neutrality and consolidation, vertical integration. Get off of it. We can’t stop any of that. It’s just a waste of time. It’s a huge waste of time. And every day while they’re wasting their time on that nonsense or trying to litigate old battles of old dead things, what they should be doing is addressing quality of life issues for writers because it’s hard enough to get jobs. Then you get them and then suddenly there’s this new world of pain you’re in. That’s what they should be concentrating on.

And that’s a good example of one.

**John:** Yeah. And so I would list the situation for writer teams to be a similar kind of quality of life thing, because it’s made it incredibly difficult for writing teams to even stay together, or just to make a living writing for TV shows.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you just have to be careful to not put a rule in that makes it even harder for them to get a job at all.

**John:** Absolutely. That’s one of those challenging situations where — but the fact is true I think for all union situations, isn’t it Craig though? Where the rule that could ultimately help the writers as a whole could hurt some individuals? And that’s just the nature of trying to do stuff union wide, is that you’re not always going to make the thing that’s best for this individual, but it may be best for the overall class of people trying to do this thing.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. And now what you have to be careful of is let’s say you said, all right, we pay a writer X. And we currently pay the two members of a writing team X divided two. Well, the new rule is we’re actually going to be paying a single writer X, and we’re going to be paying a team 1.5X.

Well, I could easily see people going, let’s just avoid hiring teams. Let’s just hire individual writers instead. The actual hiring wouldn’t change. It’s just that people in teams would suddenly be disadvantaged. And be disadvantaged by the very thing that was supposed to help them.

You know, that’s where you’ve got to be careful. And, look, we could certainly start with the paper teaming. Like that’s just so to me a quality of life issue that’s just got to stop.

**John:** The Directors Guild, who often frustrate me, and people who are genuinely writing teams get frustrated by the Directors Guild because Directors Guild does not want two directors on a project partly because they’re I think nervous of sort of this kind of situation happening, where two people are being forced to sort of share one job and to share one salary.

And so paper teaming doesn’t happen in the director’s chair because the DGA is very, very strongly opposed to it.

**Craig:** Yes. That’s correct. And they don’t like teams for a whole bunch of reasons. Maybe the prime one is that they feel that the single director is the thing that gives them this certain authorial respect. And they’re right. I mean, the singularity of the director does solve a lot of problems for people that are reporting on who made a movie.

But the Directors Guild has, to me, always been better about worrying entirely about quality of life issues for their membership. They are entirely about that. And the guild is not. The guild is entirely about some sort of political stance against corporations. As far as I can tell, that’s their focus.

So, for instance, if you direct a movie under a DGA contract, as I did, you are visited twice on set by a DGA representative who has a pretty involved discussion with you. And make sure that they’re following the rules and ask questions. And then stands and watches for awhile. Nobody come to you in the middle of a production and says, “Let’s go down and see how you’ve been…”

What they do is they call you after it’s over and say, “Hey, how were you treated?” Does it matter how I was treated? You know? Shouldn’t it matter how I’m being treated now? We don’t have that. We don’t do it. We’re just too oriented to a once every three years battle with the AMPTP. We’re too angry at these companies to spend time doing this other stuff. Yup. Yup.

**John:** Yup. Let’s get on to our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Craig, what is yours?

**Craig:** So, John, begun the drone deliveries have.

**John:** Ah, I’m so excited about drones.

**Craig:** I know. So, they’ve been talking, it just seemed like the most ridiculously thing. I didn’t believe it would ever happen, but it’s happening. So, there’d been talk that Amazon was going to try and basically create a drone army of little mini helicopters that would deliver packages to you, because the Holy Grail for Amazon is to skirt around UPS and the US Post Office and FedEx.

Well, DHL, which we’re all familiar with, it’s a big international shipping company, they’ve begun this in a very, very small way. There’s this little island called Juist that’s off of the north shore of Germany. And they’re only accessible by a ferry. And so DHL has created a system of little helicopter drone things that now daily carry packages between the mainland and Juist.

And it’s automated. It’s an automated flight. And it lands in a designated spot where a guy that works for DHL put them all, all the packages on a truck and drives them around and delivers them.

I do think that this makes sense. That we’re actually going to live in a world where there is preserved air space for drone traffic and we’re just going to get stuff delivered to us by drones.

**John:** See, I think that this example where it’s landing in one place, that it’s a hub and spoke system makes a lot of sense. I think the drone coming to the house is going to be problematic. Just, I’m looking at my house, and we have a backyard, but it’s going to just be weird and uncomfortable. And so your two-year-old runs out there and starts attacking the drone. It just — there’s so many variables that I worry that in actual normal residential life it will be problematic.

**Craig:** I think they’re going to figure it out.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** I don’t doubt the future. I just think the future is going to probably look a little different than what this is right now.

**Craig:** I don’t know. But I just like the idea of just streaming done traffic constantly above us, bringing us our stuff.

**John:** So, your drone could deliver my One Cool Thing. So, two or three weeks ago on the show you mentioned that you had a new razor that you love that has 19 blades and is, of course, great.

**Craig:** Swivel Thingy.

**John:** Swivel Thingy. And so sort of follow up to that, that same week I got this thing called Blade Buddy. And I heard about similar kinds of things and this one was well reviewed, so I tried it. It’s a $20 thing you get and it’s basically sort of like how you have a sharpening skill for like a fancy kitchen knife. So, just take the edge and the curl off of a blade, so it’s not like wet stone that’s taking the edge off. This thing is for sharpening normal Gillette kind of razor blades.

And so what you do, it’s this sort of rubberized little stand thing and you brush the blade against it 20 times. Takes like ten seconds. And it just takes the dents off the blade. And so you can use one blade quite a lot longer than you normally could.

**Craig:** And it works on multiple blades, like the kind you use?

**John:** Yes, it works great.

**Craig:** Buy now with one click. And done.

**John:** And done. But here’s the thing: I do find that the new razor blades are really good and they do make shaving delightful and comfortable. But they’re so crazy expensive.

**Craig:** They’re ridiculously expensive.

**John:** You can get, I mean, if you can double the life of one of those blade heads, that’s money very well spent.

**Craig:** Yeah, this sounds awesome.

**John:** So, anyway, you will try it out and maybe next week you’ll let us know how it is.

**Craig:** Great. Done.

**John:** And that’s our show. So, as always our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. Is edited by Matthew Chilelli. If you like the show and want to subscribe to it, just go to iTunes and click subscribe and leave a comment there. But if you’d like to subscribe to the premium feed, which has all the back episodes and bonus content, you go to scriptnotes.net and click on the little banner thing. And it says Premium Stuff. And then you put in your information and then you can listen to us on the apps for the iPhone and for Android.

**Craig:** How much does that cost again?

**John:** $1.99 a month.

**Craig:** I mean, it’s insulting now if you don’t do it. And you know our pledge. What’s our pledge, John?

**John:** We are a money-losing podcast.

**Craig:** We will always be a money-losing podcast.

**John:** We will always be a money-losing podcast.

**Craig:** Don’t you worry.

**John:** If you have a question for Craig Mazin you should tweet at him, @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust on Twitter. Longer questions go to ask@johnaugust.com

johnaugust.com. is also where you’ll find the show notes for today’s episode, so things about the drone helicopters and science fiction lists and Adam Sandler. It’s also a place where you can click to find tickets for the Slate Live Culture Gabfest which is tomorrow. And maybe we’ll even find something about why you should get a flu shot, because you should get a flu shot.

**Craig:** Yeah, get the flu shot.

**John:** Get the flu shot. Come on. That’s our show. Craig, thank you.

**Craig:** Good show. Thank you, John. See you next time.

**John:** See you next time.

Links:

* Get your [flu shot](http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/flushot.htm)!
* [Get tickets now](http://www.slate.com/live/la-culturefest.html) for tomorrow’s live Slate Culture Gabfest with guests John and Craig
* John and others [on their favorite Simpsons episodes and moments](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/09/29/the_simpsons_daniel_radcliffe_amy_schumer_fred_armisen_and_other_celebrities.html?wpsrc=fol_tw) from Slate
* John’s schedule at [the 2014 Austin Film Festival](http://austinfilmfestival2014.sched.org/speaker/john_august.1sssegfs?iframe=no&w=i:0;&sidebar=yes&bg=no#.VDMKbCldVjc)
* Business Insider on [the Adam Sandler/Netflix deal](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-netflix-did-adam-sandler-deal-2014-10)
* [Turkey City Lexicon](http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/)
* [Drone delivery has begun](http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/dhl-drone-start-making-deliveries-german-island/)
* [Blade Buddy](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NIPQ0VW/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) on Amazon
* Get premium Scriptnotes access at [scriptnotes.net](http://scriptnotes.net/) and hear our 1,000th subscriber special
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Betty Spinks ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))