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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/amazons-new-deal-for-writers).

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

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

**John:** And you are listening to Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting, and things that are interesting to screenwriters. How are you, Craig?

**Craig:** I’m fine. How are you?

**John:** I’m good. I’m back. I’m back from four weeks in New York.

**Craig:** I love it. I can tell just from the tone of your voice.

**John:** Yes. I’m actually very tired, but I’m heavily caffeinated at the moment, so I will probably talk faster than usual.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** But I’m happy to back. I’m happy to be back in my bed. And this is a thing about being 40 years old, is I used to be able to kind of sleep anywhere. Like the first three years I lived in Los Angeles I didn’t have a mattress, I just had like two of those egg crate foam things on the floor of my apartment.

**Craig:** As did I.

**John:** Because I was broke. And, like, why spend money on a bed? But now that I am 40 years old, I have a really good bed. I have one of those Tempur-Pedic mattresses that is amazing and sort of absorbs all energy.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So for the four weeks I was in New York I just had the crappy bed that was in the apartment that I rented. You could feel the springs and all that. And I’m like, I could suffer through it. But then when you stop suffering through it and you get back to your real bed, it’s so good.

**Craig:** Yeah. I just got back from a week away with my family, and returning to your own bed is such a good feeling. What is not such a good feeling is you repeatedly pointing out that you are 40 years old knowing fully well that yesterday I turned 41. I know what you are up to.

**John:** But I’m actually 41.

**Craig:** Oh, ha-ha!

**John:** So I would be in my forties. I’m older than you. You are the younger person on this podcast.

**Craig:** When is your birthday?

**John:** August 4.

**Craig:** Oh, I got you by three months. Four months. Oh…the youth flowing through my body.

**John:** You actually have me by like nine months though if you just turned 41. I turned 41 before.

**Craig:** Oh, so you are going to turn 42. You are right. Better.

**John:** You are making feel better with each word you say.

**Craig:** I have you by eight months. Oh…

**John:** Yeah, you are the youngin’.

**Craig:** What’s it like being as old as you are?

**John:** Let me tell you, the aches and the pains…

**Craig:** Oh, yeah.

**John:** …you know, honestly, for the very first… — For like the last week or something I started to notice that I will at some point probably need reading glasses because I felt myself literally holding something a little bit further away.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** What it was, my daughter had like a little — it’s not a hang-nail, but it is that little piece of skin right around the edge of your finger nail that you just have to pull off with your finger nail, that little tag or whatever. And so she held it up to me and it was too close; I had to hold it back away. And, like, ooh, what is that?

**Craig:** My wife has to do that. She wears reading glasses now or holds things away from her face. I, as of yet, have not had that problem. But it is coming.

**John:** It’s coming.

**Craig:** You know what that is caused by, correct?

**John:** It is actually muscular changes.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Yeah, so it is not really the lenses in your eye. You can’t do a Lasik for that specifically.

**Craig:** It’s called Presbyopia. And Presby, the root, the same root of Presbyterian. And there are muscles in your eye that focus your eye on close things; and those muscles eventually get weak and tired as they have in your incredibly old eyeball. And as they get slack [laughs] and begin their inexorable slide towards non-function and death, old people like you have to wear reading glasses for close up reading. I’m so sorry.

**John:** No, it’s fine. I’ve actually come to accept the fact that this will have to happen. And I remember going on a meeting with Pete Berg. Pete Berg and I flew to New York City to meet with Will Smith — Will Smith of all people — about this movie that he ended up doing. And it was fine. But Pete Berg had like three sets of reading glasses hanging from his tee-shirt because he kept losing them and then picking them back up again.

It’s like, well, I don’t want to be that crazy person with a bunch of reading glasses. So, I’ve also noticed this really geeky trend of glasses that actually clip together, that snap together. They are magnetic and they snap together in front of your nose. So they sort of just dangle from a cord and you can snap them in front of your face.

**Craig:** I fully expect you to engage in that level of geekiness. No question.

**John:** [laughs] No question. No question at all.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** I thought we would start with a couple of questions.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** A writer writes in, “I’m writing my first spec. Think of Swingers meets Entourage,” oh, stop being Swingers meets Entourage, but okay, “located in LA. Would it be wise to include actual restaurants in the slug line, i.e. Rainbow Bar and Grill, or just something like Interior Restaurant — Day and then describe the restaurant’s features with a sentence? Keep in mind this is my first spec,” blah, blah, blah.

I flagged this question because it is about specificity. And if you are doing something that is very specific to a locale and to a group of people, if you were writing the next Swingers I think you should absolutely pick what the real locations are going to be in your script.

That may not be that you are actually going to end up shooting there, but if that specific location is important to you, use that specific location in your script.

**Craig:** Yeah, of course. I mean, this is the time when there are no clearances; there are no location fees or concerns. You can write anything you want. And there is absolutely nothing irresponsible about calling out specific locations if for no other reason than it conveys your intention to the reader.

**John:** Yes. And so the reader may not be familiar with that specific detail, so it is good to give a line of color to show what that location is like. Give us a sense of what that place is. It should be short — don’t over-describe your locations. But give us a sense of what that place is. Use the real name. Use the real everything you can so that it is meaningful to you and it is meaningful to your characters.

**Craig:** Even if people will never know what it is because it is sort of arcane to everyone, sometimes including those things helps convey a sense that you know what you are talking about. It makes the reader comfortable.

I remember when we were writing The Hangover sequel; obviously a lot of it took place in Bangkok. And we called out specific places all the time as if the reader would know just because it helped get you in the mindset of you were in a real place. So you should absolutely do that.

**John:** Now I have made it sort of my daily vow to talk about Lena Dunham’s Girls every day until the premiere of Girls. Girls is a new TV show on HBO that Lena Dunham wrote, and directed, and created. And it’s great.

And so I saw the first three episodes. HBO did a premiere in New York while I was there. And specificity is one of the main reasons why it is so good. It is so very specifically these characters at this point in their lives living in exactly this neighborhood. And its universality comes from the fact that everyone in this world is living a very specific, finely painted, detailed life.

And you believe the characters really are talking about the things that are interesting to them. So, specificity is…

**Craig:** I’m glad you pointed out that was a TV show because I had no idea what you were talking about. [laughs]

**John:** Wait, you really do not know? I feel like there has been a huge media saturation on this show.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** So there is outdoor… — Also, Craig Mazin, by the way, doesn’t watch TV or see movies. Apparently he actually closes his eyes so he can’t see outdoor ads. He can’t see…

**Craig:** I like reading books.

**John:** Oh yeah. But I feel like HBO has found a way to probably interject it into books, because they are doing a full on hard push on this show.

**Craig:** I did not even realize that this was…

**John:** Do you even know who Lena Dunham is?

**Craig:** No. [laughs] Who is that?

**John:** Wow, it’s so fascinating. So, Lena Dunham is a writer-director. Her second feature was this movie called Tiny Furniture which won awards at South by Southwest. I met with her, I loved her. Judd Apatow met with her, he loved her. He took the initiative to say, “Let’s make a show.” And so they pitched a show to HBO. They shot a great show, ten episodes. It airs, I think, next week some time. It starts April 15th I think.

**Craig:** And is it funny?

**John:** It’s really funny.

**Craig:** I like funny.

**John:** It’s like Louis C.K. or Larry David, but it is a 25-year-old young woman who has written, directed, and stars in the show. And so you meet her and you talk with her, and you are like, “Wow, you are the nicest person. I can’t believe you have survived being so incredibly busy and doing all of these things.”

**Craig:** Well, I will watch it, and I will look forward to us giggling over the fact that I had no idea who this person was.

**John:** Yeah. You have the HBO Go, so you can watch it even though you don’t watch normal TV because you do have an iPad. So you will be able to watch it.

**Craig:** I do watch Game of Thrones.

**John:** Yeah, look, who could not watch Game of Thrones?

**Craig:** And I watch Major League Baseball.

**John:** Yeah. That’s fine.

**Craig:** And that’s about it. [laughs] Yeah.

**John:** Our second question, “I recently listened to the Nerdist Writer’s Panel,” which is another podcast, which is actually quite good, so we will put a link to it because it is really good.

**Craig:** I’m sorry, what was it called?

**John:** The Nerdist Writer’s Panel.

**Craig:** Nerd-est?

**John:** Nerdist.

**Craig:** Shouldn’t it be Nerdiest?

**John:** Nope. Nope. Just Nerdist.

**Craig:** But that’s wrong.

**John:** Well, it’s not. It’s like racist but Nerdist.

**Craig:** Oh, I see. So they have an ism, like nerdism, and they are nerdists.

**John:** Yeah, exactly.

**Craig:** I thought it was Nerdest, but it is Nerdist.

**John:** Actually rather than going for racist, I should have gone for nudist. But Nerdist. The Nerdist Writer’s Panel.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** And so it is a good podcast. And they bring in different writers, TV writers, screenwriters, and they talk about the writing that they are doing. It is sort of like how we always talk about how we are going to have guests on, but we never actually have guests on. They do.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, “On this podcast, Matt Nix was a guest.” So, first off, you basically need to discount anything Matt Nix says, because you and I both know that you can’t trust Matt Nix at all.

**Craig:** You can’t trust him as far as you can throw him.

**John:** What a horrible human being.

**Craig:** Bad man.

**John:** Oh, it’s actually, no — we should specify he is actually a very good guy. And he is the writer of Burn Notice, the creator of Burn Notice. And lovely, and he is involved in the WGA, and we love him to death.

**Craig:** And he lives up here by me in Pasadena, and that automatically gets you a pass as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** Well pretty much all working screenwriters and TV writers have to live either in Hancock Park where I live, or over in the La Cañada Flintridge area by you. That’s a rule.

**Craig:** I insist on it.

**John:** “Matt Nix talked about his career in features before he started working in television and shared his frustrations about not getting anything made despite working steadily for eight years. I was wondering whether you were ever tempted to go into the TV world. Obviously you can also work in television development and never get on the air, but at least sometimes you get to shoot a pilot and actually see your work materialize into something. And there is the possibility of working on staff on already existing shows. Is there any particular reason why you never worked in television? Is it something that you can see yourself trying at any point in your career?”

**Craig:** Well you did work in television.

**John:** That’s right. This is Luke from Poland. So, Luke from Poland, it is a well-written question about the American TV industry from somebody in Poland, which I love.

But I did work in TV. I have done three different TV shows. The first thing I did was called D.C., which was the same year that Go came out. And it was about five young people living and working in Washington, D.C. It was basically Felicity-after-college. And it was a disaster. It was a pretty good pilot I wrote, and okay pilot that we shot, and just a really bad series that I got fired from.

I did a TV pilot for ABC called Alaska, which you can also read on my blog. I have a library section; you can read the pilot for that, which turned out pretty well, which was a crime show set in Alaska back when no one was making things in Alaska. And I developed a show with Jordan Mechner called Ops which was about a private military corporation for Fox. And it was going to be way too expensive to shoot. And I just thank god every day that we didn’t try to shoot it.

So I think TV is great. And, so Craig, you have never developed anything for TV have you?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So here is the thing about feature writers writing for TV is that it is so tempting and appealing because you actually shoot something. Like not every pilot gets shot, but a lot of pilots get shot. And if you are a decent feature writer who gets recruited to write a show for somebody, there is a decent chance you are going to shoot something. It’s going to be quick; like everything in feature land just takes forever.

At least in TV you kind of fail quickly. [laughs] You will write a script and you will turn it in, and they will call you like two hours later saying, “Nope, it’s not for us.” It’s like, “Oh, oh, oh, okay. There. Done.” And then you are done.

**Craig:** Good.

**John:** So I know feature writers who sort of consider it like a trip to the ATM, because you don’t get paid a lot of money for it, but you get paid quickly, and it is something, and it is meaningful.

The challenge, and I think the frustration, and the surprise that a lot of feature writers find is that if — God help you if they say yes and they like it, because then your life is just overwhelmingly consumed by making this TV show.

So, David Benioff, who was really a feature writer before this, now doing Game of Thrones, and good luck with doing anything other than Game of Thrones for awhile, David Benioff.

**Craig:** As was Dan Weiss, his partner on that show. Yeah. I have avoided television for two reasons. One, that reason, and two, what I have heard about TV is that there is this lie that they tell us all that the writer is king in television and the writer is in charge. That is sort of true. Certainly writers are creatively more dominant in television than directors.

However, what they don’t tell you, and what many of my feature friends who have dabbled in TV bemoan is that the amount of intrusion and mishegas you get from the studio network is mindboggling.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Every single thing. They are over your shoulder, criticizing, second guessing, nay-saying, everything. You can’t cast a guy saying, “Here’s your coffee, sir,” without them demanding 14 auditions and then saying, “We like this one.” Who cares?! What?

And just the thought of that grind. And I guess on top of all of it, to be honest, it is such a different kind of storytelling, and the kind of storytelling I like to do is self-contained. I like tell stories where somebody goes from one place to another and finishes. And I don’t like telling serialized stories per se, even in sequels.

You know, I like them to have a beginning, a middle, and an absolute end. And that’s that. So, it is not for me for lots of reasons. I think I would just get too bored, frankly.

**John:** Oh, to me it’s not boring. It’s the overwhelming churn of it. When you are writing a feature you are writing something, and you hand it in, and you get a little bit of time while they are reading it. In TV land, you turn in a script, and literally an hour later they are calling you with notes. You never get that downtime that you have come to kind of crave a little bit in feature land.

Like in feature land, like three weeks pass and you haven’t heard anything, and you are going crazy. But there must be some happy medium in between there. The other big challenge of TV, of course, is let’s say you are a writer and a director in feature land. You are either writing your script, or you are shooting your script, or you are editing your movie, or figuring out the marketing stuff you are doing, one of these jobs at a time.

In TV land you are doing all of it simultaneously. So, you are in a room breaking the entire season, figuring out what the episodes are for the entire season. You are trying to write a script. You are reading another script that is about to shoot. You are shooting a script. You are dealing with the wardrobe for that thing that is coming up. You are editing an episode you have already shot, and you are dealing with the network on the marketing stuff.

And so any one of those jobs could be a full-time thing. I remember talking to Damon Lindelof at the height of Lost, and literally like after dinner would be the time that he actually would be able to go up and start writing. Because the whole day was spent running a TV show.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The running and the management; it’s a huge deal. But, there are some amazing things about that. And you are able to create these worlds that are unlike anything you have ever seen. And I really like TV. I would be doing a TV show right now; honestly I would be pitching a TV show if the musical hadn’t sort of sucked up every bit of time.

**Craig:** I think at this point I am starting now, even though I am so much younger than you are…

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** …I’m still old enough where I am starting to realize that I’m pretty deep into this journey and I suspect that I will continue writing features until a day comes when I am just kind of done, and want to stop in general and find something else to do with my life, and it won’t be TV.

**John:** So, Craig, are you going to direct more movies? Or are you going to mostly be writing?

**Craig:** That is something I am thinking about. I think that between now and when my kids –my youngest kid is seven, my older son is ten. So, my daughter is going to be gone in ten years, presumably college.

**John:** She won’t be taken away by aliens. She will be somewhere; she just won’t be under your roof.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t know. She might be. [laughs] We don’t know.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** But I think it safe to say in ten years, in one way or another, she will be gone. And then I will have quite a bit of a different kind of day, and a different sort of obligation to my family. And at that point, and quite a bit more experience under my belt, and at that point I might consider directing. I don’t know. I’m not sure.

But right now I have to say I am very happy screenwriting. I’m happier screenwriting now than I have ever been since I started. And, so might as well ride that. But, yes, I think about it. I think that it something I will return to. Cue the gnashing and wailing of critics.

**John:** [laughs] Honestly, part of the reason why I have been careful and selective about directing projects, in addition to the musical sort of wrecking in my life, is the overwhelming time commitment it takes to actually be in production, and the fact that you are not going to see your kid for a couple of months while you are shooting a movie. And that’s a big deal.

And this last week while I was in New York, I was able to bring my daughter to visit the rehearsal for just an hour or two while we were doing stuff. And she wasn’t going to be able to see the whole show, because is it too overwhelming of a show for her to see emotionally, but I wanted her to see that it is really hard work. I didn’t want her to sort of get the experience of, “Oh, suddenly everything is lovely. It’s like Glee. And suddenly everything is happening and no one had to do a lot of work.”

She saw us like running a scene 15 times trying to figure out how to make a joke be funny. And she saw us dancing. And she saw how we are trying to correct this one little tiny moment in the choreography. And that was more meaningful to me, not for her to see the finished product, but this is what your father is doing that is taking him away for three weeks, trying to get that joke to be funny.

**Craig:** Yeah. Daddy’s got a real job. Yeah. That’s a great experience. Even though I will — I often will travel with the movies that I write, the distance apart is a different kind of distance when you are directing because I can… — For instance, for the next Hangover movie, I go with the movie. I go with Todd. I’m there every day.

So, I might be away for weeks at a time from my kids. But when the day is done and I go back to the hotel room, I get on Skype and I talk with them, and I’m relaxed. It’s different.

When you are the director you are never relaxed. And you don’t have free time. And every waking moment you are being devoured by the enormity of your responsibility. And, so it is a different kind of away. It’s a bad thing.

**John:** Yeah. This last month I was in New York. I cannot imagine, I could not have survived it if it weren’t for Skype, if I couldn’t video chat home, I wouldn’t have been able to make it through there. I would have just been a mess.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let’s go to our next question. A reader writes, I think actually Kevin writes, “I recently decided to start a new screenplay, and when describing the plot to a friend of mine he responded, ‘Oh, it sounds a lot like [movie title redacted].’ I immediately looked up the plot synopsis of that other title and saw there were some obvious similarities. I rented the movie, and thankfully that film and my yet to be written screenplay were actually very different. But let’s say both plot were actually similar. Intellectually I know that everything is down to execution, but I probably wouldn’t have the confidence to continue. Have either of you given up on a spec idea because it was too similar to another screenplay or movie?”

**Craig:** Well, you know, in a case like that where the movie actually exists, in a weird way you are in a better spot. Because you watch it, and if you decide, “No, my screenplay, even if it is the same basic idea is such a wildly different execution,” you will not be… — No one is going to sit there and go, “Oh my god, you just rewrote blankety blank.”

No, they are going to read your script and go, “Oh, it’s a lot like that movie so-and-so, but here is how it is different, or here is how the tone is different.” I mean, the example I always famously turn to — well, it’s not famous that I turn to it. It is a famous example that I turn to is Rain Man and Midnight Run.

**John:** Oh sure.

**Craig:** Almost the same movie about sort of a straight-laced guy who has to road trip across the country with a weird sort of self-obsessive nerd who refuses to fly because he is frightened. And two completely different movies; it’s just not an issue.

Now, if somebody says, “Oh, that sounds like something I have in development over at so-and-so,” now you have got a problem.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then the problem is movie studios really — it’s already a gamble to pay a $1 for a screenplay, much less $1 million. And so if they feel like they are going to get beaten to the punch by a similarly themed…they are more concerned about marketplace confusion and marketing than they are about anything else.

That said, every now and then you get two movies about a guy and a girl who are best friends who also sleep with each other.

**John:** Yeah. And it works out okay.

**Craig:** Yeah. It works out okay. There is Dante’s Peak and Volcano. There is A Bug’s Life and Antz.

**John:** And most famously there is Armageddon and Deep Impact. And so Kevin’s question was have I ever stopped doing something because there is something similar. Yes, I had this whole plan out for an asteroid hitting the earth movie. And basically you know the asteroid is coming and you have to make decisions about what is going to happen. And they announced Armageddon and Deep Impact. I was like, “Oh, okay.” Well, that’s a case where it is probably not a good idea for me to write that movie. And that’s okay.

**Craig:** Yeah. You might be able to beat one movie in development, but not two. [laughs]

**John:** And I always look at that as “now I don’t have to write that movie,” because someone else wrote that movie. That’s great. Freedom to do something else. It’s like a snow day. It’s like a creative snow day. “Yup, I don’t have to do that anymore. I can do something else instead.”

**Craig:** Plus, a little pat on the back that your instincts were correct.

**John:** Agreed. “And I have commercial instincts. Hoorah!”

**Craig:** Yeah. Great. Let me come up with another one.

**John:** Speaking of commercial instincts, let’s talk about the actual news of this last week, which is Amazon Studios changed basically everything. It was like, “Oh, we are making some changes.” No. “Basically we are completely changing our entire business model.”

**Craig:** Yeah. They were very clever about it. They were sort of like, “Oh, we are going to make a few changes.” And they did it that way because really what they did was they went from being an awful, awful place to a very good place. And to announce it that way would have been to admit that they used to be an awful, awful place. But now they are a good place.

And here’s what happened…

**John:** So we really should give some back story, because we can’t assume that everyone knows what Amazon Studios was.

**Craig:** Back story us.

**John:** Okay, so the back story is Amazon Studios is from Amazon… — What do you even call Amazon right now? They are an internet retailer, I guess?

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Fine. They also make Kindle’s and other things.

**Craig:** Yeah. They are an e-tailer.

**John:** Perhaps you have heard of Amazon. [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] Yeah. I don’t think we need that much back story, John.

**John:** But we do need back story on the studio’s part of it. So, Amazon launched this initiative called Amazon Studios which was an attempt to do an end run around the sort of classical studio development, and let anybody in America or the world submit their screenplays to the site, and other users, other readers could read the screenplays, give notes on the screenplays, could rewrite the screenplays if they chose to, and Amazon would sift through this and take the most highly rated, and reviewed, and best liked screenplays and developed them further. Give awards to those people.

They would shoot little test movies from those things. And when they announced this, this was November 2010, I had had some conversations with some of the folks about it ahead of time, but I really based my reaction on what they announced. And I thought it was a really horrible idea for a couple of reasons.

The simplest reason is why would you want to, creatively as a person, why would you want to submit yourself to this process where anyone on the internet, any person who reads your script anywhere could rewrite your script and do whatever they wanted to do with it? And that didn’t make any sense.

And then you blogged at the same time — remember back when Craig used to blog?

**Craig:** Remember that?

**John:** Craig blogged, and we will find a link to that old blog post…

**Craig:** Amazon remembers. [laughs]

**John:** …about just the really bad financial and legal concerns.

**Craig:** Yeah. You had sort of thrown this great right hook that basically said this whole thing is kind of creatively corrupt. The whole point of screenwriting is that there is an authorial voice that is relating some kind of vision on a page, and this thing is sort of blowing that all to shreds.

And then I came in with a left hook and said, oh, and also, this is a sweatshop, basically that was not only end running the union and everything that the union brings us like minimums, and pension, and healthcare, and credits, and residuals, but was even more punitive than that. I mean, they were essentially kind of getting everything and being able to use it and resell it. They literally could… — You could write something, submit it; 15 people could rewrite it and then they could put it in a book and sell it, and you wouldn’t even get a dime. I mean, the whole thing was insane.

**John:** And if I remember the right terms, I think it was like 18 months they owned stuff. Like basically once you submitted it, they had over 18 months.

**Craig:** Yeah. They had it for 18 months. And I think they had an option to get it again. And there were no… — It was really bad.

If you link to the post I wrote people will be able to sort of sift though how bad it was. And what you and I did not know at the time, but what I have now learned to be true is that the enormous, many multi-billion corporation known as Amazon read your post, and read my post, and freaked out. [laughs] They were super angry. And apparently called around and called the Writers Guild complaining.

And the Writers Guild, to its credit, and to Executive Director David Young’s credit, entered into a dialogue with them that was predicated essentially on, “No, we think that you should adhere to these basic union rules. That is what this is all about.”

And I am very excited to say, even though it is not breaking news. This was reported a few days ago, but Amazon quietly and calmly has become a WGA signatory. So, if you submit your scripts to them, first of all you now have a lovely option of saying, “Actually, I’m submitting my script to you and I don’t want anyone to be able to touch it.” In fact, you have an option that says, “I don’t even want anybody to be able to read it. I just want you to read it, Amazon.”

Amazon is now saying if we purchase this literary material, that is to say exercise the option, or if we hire you to do any writing, we do so under the full MBA. So you get credit protections, and you get residuals, and pension, and health. And all of that great stuff.

It’s a huge, huge thing. And I have to say, here is why I think it is… — Well, let me back up for a second. First of all, I have to congratulate the Writers Guild and David Young. Spectacular job. And I think it is important for us to say that there is a path to success with organizing that doesn’t involve striking. One of the things that I heard all the time during the strike from very prominent screenwriter was, “The Writers Guild has never gotten a single thing without a strike.” And that is just not true. And there is a way to do this, especially now, and it does involve influential voices, such as yours John…

**John:** And yours, Craig.

**Craig:** Well thank you. Pointing out some very embarrassing things. And I remember when I joined the board, it was actually a year into my term when Patric Verrone came into office with a bunch of his guys. They were big on this whole idea of corporate campaigning. And the notion of corporate campaigning is to embarrass companies for things that are sort of away from the field of play that you are on.

So, if you want to get them to give you reality television, you embarrass them for, I don’t know, investing in toxic chemical companies or something like that. That doesn’t really work. It’s all a bunch of bunko. What does work is your thing is bad. The thing that involves me is bad and here is why, because that is what you know and you can make an excellent case. And that is exactly what happened here. And I have to congratulate Amazon frankly for putting big boy pants on and acting gentlemanly, and recognizing that writers, professional writers, deserve to be treated with this basic minimum amount of respect.

So, that was terrific. And I think that Amazon has gone from something that I sort of viewed as this toxic repository that was abusing writers, to an excellent new option for professional screenwriters. I don’t know if Amazon and their model will ever be successful. What I do know is this: the companies for whom we work primarily, the big studios, can no longer point to Amazon and say, “Well look, we have to compete with those guys, so we have to somehow roll this contract back.” That is now off the table.

In that regard, this is a big step. It also means that if Google or Facebook or anybody else like that should try and get into this space, there is now precedent for the Writers Guild to say, “Great. Do this deal. Just like Amazon.”

**John:** So let’s talk about whether this is a good idea for the individual aspiring screenwriter. Because the original Amazon deal I thought was a bad deal for pretty much everybody, except for Amazon. If you were maybe that screenwriter who had the script that was sitting in the trunk that had never gotten any traction, maybe you submitted it to Amazon and just saw if it stuck.

Now, I don’t think it would be anyone’s first choice to go to, but if you have a script that maybe has won some contests, or got some notice in contests but hasn’t gotten you an agent, but is probably a pretty good script, it might make sense to try this process. The new terms — I think it is like a 45-day exclusivity of an option period. Amazon, if they like something, can extend it for additional time. They can pay you like $10,000 to extend it for additional time. It is not a bad deal…

A lot of times with the original deal, writers would leave comments on my original post and say, “Well, it’s a choice between this or nothing, so I am going to take this.” Well, it was worse than nothing there. Now this really is sort of an alternative to getting nothing out of your script. It is a chance to get someone to actually read it and pay attention to it, and maybe want to try to buy it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, first of all, let me address this “it was better than nothing” argument, because I got that on my blog, too, at the time. And it incenses me.

Here is why that is stupid: you are either going to be a professional screenwriter or you are not. If you are not, then it doesn’t matter because you are not going to be a professional screenwriter. It doesn’t matter if it is better than nothing; you are not going to win nothing either. You stink.

If, however, you are going to be a professional screenwriter, all you have done is weakened your own hand and weakened the hand of everybody else around you. You have begun the process of termiting through the lumber that supports the floor upon which we all sit. And down the line you will suffer. No question. Either you act like a professional who belongs in the professional game, or don’t. That is, to me, such bedrock principle. That is why I am grateful for all the people who came before me who didn’t just think about themselves at the time, but thought about writers to come. And that is why writers in their 20s should not be reluctant to make sacrifices for writers in their 30s, because they will be writers in their 30s, and so on and so forth.

It’s just a terrible argument. In the question of how writers should now view Amazon, I think they should view it as a very legitimate employer. Look, the choice of is it your first choice, I mean, I think that everybody sort of recognizes that studios that make and distribute films directly are probably still the premiere choice, because they make and distribute films. And that is a very powerful thing. If I sell a screenplay to Universal I know that they don’t have to go find a distributor; they are a distributor.

However, there are a ton of companies out there that are in the same boat as Amazon as far as I’m concerned. And if you have material that is not attracting the eyes of the gatekeepers, but you think has a chance of attracting the popular eye, well I have to say Amazon is a great choice now because one thing that I know about the gatekeepers is that they are particularly bad at determining their own value set for what good is. All they really do, in the majority, is chase what they think people want.

If people tell them what they want, chase over. And your material will get purchased. And it will eventually find its way to a studio. And at that point you are off and running.

So, I think Amazon has gone from a red flag to a perfectly legitimate, perfectly respectable avenue now for screenwriters to seek their first professional opportunity.

**John:** Yup. I have some ongoing concerns with how they are presenting this new version of themselves, which is their open writing assignments. So, an open writing assignment classically is a project that is at a studio where they are looking for a writer to come in. So, it could be a piece of property that they purchased, like they bought a book and now it is an open writing assignment. It could be a remake they are making. Or it could be a script that they have worked on and now they feel like they need to bring another writer in to do some new work.

One of the things they are pitching with this new version of Amazon Studios is, “And we have two open writing assignments. We have,” I think, “it’s Twelve Princesses and I Think My Facebook Friend is Dead and we are going to be looking for writers for those two things.” That feels a little weird to me. And it feels like every script should have new writers come in and do some work on it.

And it is entirely possible that they have worked with those original writers, and they feel like they have come to a point where they can’t go forward on the project now. But that’s, I don’t know; saying that publicly feels really weird.

**Craig:** Well, but is it…it’s the public part that is bothering, because that is all that studios do.

**John:** It is. But, I mean it’s an internal thing. It’s never announced in the world that another screenwriter is coming in to rewrite this thing.

**Craig:** You think it’s embarrassing to the writer? Is that what you’re saying?

**John:** It’s a little bit embarrassing to the writer, and even though it is the way reality often works, publicizing it like that, you should be trying to get one of these two slots to rewrite these big projects feels really weird. They are saying, like, “These are the best two things we have. And we are bringing in new writers to rewrite them.” That feels a little bit weird.

**Craig:** Well, it is weird, but it is the exact same weirdness that goes on at studios. I mean, they sort of say, “Look, this is a script that we believed in so much we spent $1 million to buy it, and then we spent $2 million more for really big shot writers to rewrite it. And now we are saying we love it so much we want a new writer to work on it.”

**John:** And you just hit on exactly why I was chaffing about it, because when you have that big show — “These are our best two things and we are bringing in someone new to work on it” — you bring in your heavy hitters. I’m the kind of person you bring in to do that work that you feel like you need to do to take it to its final level.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You are not saying, like, “Some writer in America could be the right person to do it, some writer who has never sold a screenplay before.” You are not going to the brand new person to rewrite that thing to put it into production. That is just not how stuff works.

**Craig:** That’s right. But here is what is interesting: Amazon is going to learn just the way everybody else that first starts in this business learns. There is a learning curve for them as well. And I think that they have a certain hope that there is more talent out there than has yet to be discovered by the traditional method.

But they are going to sort of American Idol, like find Kelly Clarkson, and it is going to be great. And it might. But, I suspect it won’t.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I know that people don’t like it when I say these things, because they think I’m a snob, and they think that I am a talentless jerk anyway, so how dare I. But as talentless as I am [laughs], I think that Amazon at some point may come to say, “Look, we have a property here that Warner Brothers is actually interested in making. We have gotten as far as we can with the methods we have been employing. Maybe we should think about actually coming up with a different method, or, maybe not.” That’s their choice. But as far as I’m concerned from the business end of it, they are at least doing it honorably. They are now fulfilling the basic minimum requirements that an employer must fulfill.

**John:** And here is why I wish them every success, and this is honest, is they have a tremendous amount of money. And there are a lot of other technology companies that have a tremendous amount of money. And if Amazon has success making some movies, and making money off of some movies, I hope that will loosen the purse strings of some of these other giant companies — the Facebook’s, who just spent $1 billion to buy Instagram today, to make some movies.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** Because more money in the system really helps the whole film industry. And it especially helps screenwriters who are essentially the research and development of the film industry.

Right now, a lot of the tensions we are facing are really economic tensions. There is just not enough money in the system right now to pay for as much development as we would like there to be. And I think that would greatly benefit our film industry. And two years from now there could be some real payoff. Even if Amazon hasn’t made much out of this, the fact that they are trying to do this will get other people inspired to do it.

**Craig:** No question. No question whatsoever. It surprises me that it has taken tech companies this long to sort of fallow the lead of Pixar. Pixar was this tiny little company that was making hardware, and decided to make movies to advertise their hardware, and have become a true giant, and a true studio, as big and as powerful as any. And while we say that Disney “owns” them, you can make the argument that Pixar in a weird way owns Disney. They are merged. They are one in the same, but they are enormous.

And there is no reason that these other guys couldn’t arrive at that place. What Amazon, the philosophical decision Amazon has made is to not find a genius like Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, and Peter Docter, and Joe Ranft, and so on, but rather to open it up to the vox populi and see if there are some diamonds in the rough.

I am an elitist. I tend to feel like you have to find really, really brilliant to guide these things, but again, they may arrive there. You are absolutely right: it is a great thing. And certainly for us, to have another legitimate big deep-pocketed MBA signatory — we haven’t had one of those… — You have to understand. You know this. And I’m betting most of our listeners do, too. Fox, Columbia, Universal, Disney, Paramount, Warner Brothers. Those are the big ones, right? I’m not missing any?

**John:** You got them all.

**Craig:** Okay. Those have been the primary deep moneyed employers of screenwriters since the beginning of movies.

**John:** I actually ran a post on this that Horace Deidu had done this great chart that showed basically the top six studios have always been the top six studios.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And there have been some mergers along the way, but basically you can go back to the ’20s, and it is essentially the same companies.

**Craig:** That’s right. But today there is a seventh company that is signatory to the Writers Guild that has an enormous amount of money, frankly, more than some of the studios. And that is huge news for us if it turns the way I hope it does.

I hope that Amazon eventually realizes that there is more profit developing screenplays with, I guess I would say there is more profit targeting great screenwriters than there is sort of panning for gold in a kind of fun marketing type of way.

**John:** My very first instinct with Amazon when they talked about doing a new kind of deal, and making a studio, is that you have tremendous amount of money and you also have tremendous amount of reach with everyone who comes to Amazon every day. So, you know so much about the people who are buying your products. You can target things to them.

And Facebook could do it better than anybody else could. Can you imagine Facebook running a studio? It would be nuts.

**Craig:** Well, it would be. Part of the interesting thing about it is I think each of these places has their own DNA. And they want to impose their DNA on the development process. So, some of that means Amazon’s way of saying, “Everyone can be a screenwriter, and it’s open to all, and we are throwing the doors open,” and maybe Facebook wants to make it all about social connections and people reading and liking and so forth.

But the truth is none of that crap has anything to do with developing a good screenplay. Developing a good screenplay happens when a good writer with a good idea works with a good producer, the way a novelist works with an editor, all in concert to fill the vision of a studio that is focused on making good movies of a sort. That doesn’t change.

So, what I hope happens is that Facebook and Google and Amazon jump into this, at some point realize that the way that they run their normal businesses really doesn’t have anything to do with this, but what does have to do with this is all of their money. And that they can make a ton of money doing this.

And then once they have some kind of brand that means something in the movie space the way that Pixar means something, that becomes extraordinarily powerful for them. And, the more competition that we have, you know, so if six major employers become nine major employers, this is a very good thing for us.

**John:** Agreed. Yeah. Even the small consolidations that have happened over the last few years, like we lost New Line as a separate company. It hurt. And it is one less buyer for a spec script, but it is also one less set of development projects that are out there. If New Line was developing 30 projects, well, those are 30 writers who can be employed. And when that goes away, a lot goes away.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The other reason to be hopeful, if Amazon is spending some money here, even if it is a company that doesn’t have the intention of really getting deeply into development, or trying to be their own brand, it may just take some of that digital money and push it back towards our system. And so the same way that Disney used to make movies by, they would have these investment packages where basically you could buy into a share of — I forget what it was called. I will have to look it up.

But for awhile they would basically build a slate of movies and you would invest into a slate of movies. That kind of stuff can happen and getting more money into the system helps.

**Craig:** Yeah, like a big Kickstarter for a $200 million movie.

**John:** $200 million Kickstarter is what we need.

**Craig:** Yeah. Or a Kiva Loan. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. Absolutely. [laughs] Micro-lending. Macro-lending. Something.

**Craig:** So it was good news. Good news.

**John:** It’s all good news. And it is great to be back in Los Angeles and at my proper podcasting setup. I have been on my little 13-inch MacBook Air for the last four weeks. And honest to god it is a terrific computer, I love it to death, but I don’t feel at home until I am in front of my big monitor with my weird keyboard and my actual microphone. So it is nice to be back.

**Craig:** I know how that is. I, too, am a creature of habit.

**John:** Well, creature, thank you again for a lovely podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Have a great week. And we will talk soon.

**Craig:** See you later.

**John:** Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/lets-run-a-studio).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting, and things that are interesting to screenwriters. How are you, Craig?

**Craig:** I’m doing okay. It’s February 29th today as we record this, which will probably be the only February 29th recording we do.

**John:** Yes. It’s Leap Day.

**Craig:** Yup. Leap Day. Boop.

**John:** Yeah. Do you do anything special on Leap Day?

**Craig:** No. I do exactly what I do every day.

**John:** Yeah. One of the things you don’t do every day is watch television. So if you did watch television you would know that many of the sitcoms this year have referenced Leap Day. And Leap Day as being a special day to do things you would never do in real life.

**Craig:** But that is a plot?

**John:** That’s a plot. You’ve got to look for a plot, especially if you are on your 5th or 6th season. You have to find something good to do.

**Craig:** Leap Day? Really? Alright.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I can’t say that this is pushing me towards television, but fine.

**John:** Oh, yeah, it’s fine. Hey, we have a bunch of followup questions, so I thought maybe we would hit those first.

**Craig:** Do it.

**John:** Craig, did I just lose you?

**Craig:** No, I’m here.

**John:** Oh, your silence indicated boredom or something. But let’s address this question. A reader named Daniel asks, “I assume that the author of a novel gets more if a movie is actually made, just as screenwriters do. What is the typical ratio of upfront payment to the option?”

**Craig:** I have no idea.

**John:** I have no idea either. Options, when you are optioning a book to make it into a movie, you end up paying generally a pretty small amount. So it could be $1. It could be $5,000. It could be $10,000. For a big book that is selling out of New York, that people think is going to be a really big thing, maybe you are optioning it for $100,000 against a $1 million. 10% could be a good break.

It really depends. A book that they are hoping to make into a major Hollywood studio feature, $250,000 sounds like a pretty low-to-reasonable figure for that. But it really does vary a lot. And I think that the thing to remember, if you are a novelist who sold a book to become a big Hollywood movie, you are also looking at the fact that you are going to sell a whole bunch more of those books once that book becomes a movie, especially if it is not a title that breaks out and becomes a huge hit independently.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think for sure that whatever the sort of heat is behind the novel is going to impact the kind of deal that the book agent, the publishing agent, can get for the author.

**John:** I remember when The Help sold. Octavia is a friend of mine, and she had written on Facebook that, like, “Hey, my friend Kathryn wrote this great book, it is called The Help. Everyone is loving it.” And I was like, “Oh, so a friend of Octavia’s, I will buy that book.” And so I bought it on Kindle. I didn’t read it right away. And then it became this huge bestseller. It became this huge deal thing.

And I think it was on its way to becoming a big deal thing when they took it out on the town and actually sold it. And they sold it with a screenplay already written. Tate Taylor had, I think, optioned the rights to the book himself, who is friends with everybody involved. So that was probably a unique situation. But that was a case where the book becoming a movie certainly helped the book, but that book was going to be a huge book regardless.

**Craig:** Yeah. I can’t really… — I have to say, I can’t really answer this guy’s question because I just don’t know. It seems like if there is a Booknotes podcast that those guys, the alt John and Craig would be able to better answer this.

**John:** Yeah. Second question here. “It seems the author of the novel always gets some sort of official ‘Based on’ WGA credit. Does this come with residuals?”

**Craig:** It is actually not a WGA credit, per se. The MBA, our collective bargaining agreement, specifies that there are certain source material credits that the companies can use. But the WGA doesn’t determine them. All it does is make sure that those credits don’t show up in some strange form like “Authored by” or something like that that might confuse people about who wrote what.

So “Based on the novel written by” is the standard source material credit. But that credit is assigned by the studio. It is something that they determine if they are going to assign. It is sort of pro forma, I think, for novelists that that credit is assigned if the rights are exercised.

There are no residuals. It is not a WGA credit. It confers nothing. Because the union is for employees, let’s remember that, not for contractors or independent contractors.

**John:** So, the novelist may get some backend on the success of the movie, but that would be a separately negotiated thing that is not part of WGA residuals.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** Third follow up question. “J.K. Rowling is listed as a producer on the final two Harry Potter films. Is this as rare as I think it is?” It’s pretty rare.

**Craig:** I would say, yeah.

**John:** Yeah. In the case of Harry Potter, I believe that Harry Potter was a pretty big deal, even when she first set that up. Because remember Spielberg was interested in directing Harry Potter originally, and he really wanted to combine the first two books. And she said, “No,” and it became this whole big thing. I’m surprised it is only the last two movies that she has the producer credit on, because she controls that franchise with remarkable strength and finesse.

Good job, J.K. Rowling.

**Craig:** Sure. It may have been that there was kind of an agreement that… — It is sort of like when sitcom actors renegotiate mid-contract because the show is doing really well, and they just want them to be happy, and know that they will stay beyond the term of it. So, it may have been one of those things where halfway in Warner Brothers said, “You know, we would love to keep you around. If you wrote another book…if you wrote a laundry ticket, or a shopping list, we would like that, too.”

So, it was probably just a nice little “Thank you.”

**John:** Yeah. And at that point they could have been negotiating for some other extension of the Harry Potter universe or world. There may have been a very good reason why they wanted to keep her especially happy at that point.

I will say that I feel like I have seen novelists’ names listed as a kind of producer on movies not too rarely; like Stephen King will always be a producer of some kind on an adaptation of one of his books.

**Craig:** It sort of speaks to how watered down the producing credit is. And for those rare people who really are producers in Hollywood, that is producer-producers, it is a bummer. I feel their pain. The producer credit has turned into a sop as it were.

**John:** Here is the fourth follow up question from Daniel. He asks, “What is Daniel Wallace’s role in the Big Fish musical? Does he have to okay it? Does he share in the proceeds?”

**Craig:** You know what? Let me take this one, John. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. You know everything about this situation, so, go, Craig, go.

**Craig:** Daniel Wallace is a nightmare. I have been working with him for a long time on this Big Fish thing, which by the way is a terrible musical. I just don’t think it is going to work.

Anyway, he has hit me. He took a swing at me once. The guy is a nightmare. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] So that was Craig Mazin. This is John August who actually is working with Daniel Wallace on this.

So, Big Fish is based on a book that Daniel Wallace wrote. A great little book that I took into Sony, we got the rights to it, we optioned the rights, Sony bought out the rights. We made it into a movie. Now we are making it into a musical. Daniel’s role is as source material. I mean, his book is still considered the source material of the musical. And he actually, for Broadway rights, has much more — I wouldn’t say control — but has much more upside in having it become a Broadway show.

Essentially, in order to make the Broadway version of it we had to go back and reacquire the rights to Daniel Wallace’s book, and to my screenplay which Columbia Pictures owns. As the screenwriter of the screenplay, I have no claim over the things I wrote for Sony because Sony is considered the author of that movie. So we had to go back and option both the book and my screenplay, bringing them together so we would have this source material to write the musical.

Daniel Wallace, I’m not sure the exact fractions of how this all works, but Daniel Wallace and Sony Pictures will both receive a royalty on every performance, every incarnation of the Big Fish musical. And so, every week, depending on how many tickets we sell, they will be getting a check, which is a very unique different thing than he would be getting from the movie version of Big Fish.

So, he has no approvals, per se. I think there are certainly situations where I think the person who wrote the source material might negotiate for approvals on things. In this case he doesn’t have those, at least as far as I know.

Daniel is awesome, so even if he does have those things, he is great. And so he has been seeing stuff along the way and we are keeping him in the loop. But he doesn’t have like a sign-off thing.

**Craig:** Well it sounds like he has been really nice to you.

**John:** Yes. Switching to Craig, I mean, he beats him up. He runs him down.

**Craig:** Savage. Savage. That was a good answer.

**John:** Thank you. I tried. What I will say in a general sense is that the rules for Broadway are arcane, and different, and sometimes more complicated, and sometimes a lot simpler. And a lot of stuff is a little bit more standard practice rather than “this is the Guild that is overseeing things,” because there is really not an equivalent Writers Guild.

There is a Dramatists Guild, but it is not a labor organization in the same way. So it is a guild that is sort of representing the best practices of things. And partly this is, again, because what Craig always says: the Writers Guild represents employees; the Dramatist Guild represents authors and people who own copyright on things. And on the Big Fish musical, I will own copyright which is a very different situation.

**Craig:** Correct. And there are obviously some wonderful things that go along with being the copyright owner. There is a reason that studios want to be the copyright owner. But one of the benefits that we have as screenwriters in not owning copyright is that we get to collectively bargain. So, you know, there are some plusses and minuses with these things.

**John:** Yeah. Our next question actually ties into that. Jonathan asks, “Regarding the discussion of dramatic rights, if a spec is involved, what is to stop the writer from converting it into a book form and self-publishing it before selling a spec? Then the writer could license the copyright of the book to the studio or the writer’s corporation in addition to doing the ‘work for hire’ on the script.”

**Craig:** Well. [laughs]

**John:** That does happen, kind of.

**Craig:** Yeah. Kind of. It’s actually not a great idea. Here’s the thing: first of all, if they want to buy your screenplay, and what you have done is, in some sneaky way, written a book first, and then you are going to license them the rights to the book, and then the screenplay, they are just going to pay you for the screenplay and $1 for the rights to the book. They don’t care about the book.

Frankly, given that circumstance, nobody cares about the book. That is why you are self-publishing it. It is not a very good book. Or it is not a notable book. So, there’s that.

The other problem that you have is, if John August writes a script and goes, “Before I sell this I am going to game the system and quickly do a novel version of this, self-publish the novel, and then go to them and give them the rights to the novel, and then I will sell them the script.” What you have actually done is screwed yourself out of separated rights. And you screwed yourself out of a really good credit because you are not going to get a “Written by” or “Story by.” You are going to get a “Screenplay by” and “Based on the novel by John,” which is kind of weird.

And so I don’t really see what the point is. What is the upside?

**John:** I can imagine some upsides. I mean, how about remakes? Or how about doing other incarnations? How about with doing the Broadway version of things?

**Craig:** But here is the problem: I see what you are saying on the Broadway version of things, but we will get to that in a second; in terms of remakes and all the rest of it, when they buy the rights to your novel, if you have the amount of leverage that normally goes along with a self-published novel, that is to say zero, they are going to get all rights in perpetuity for everything. They are not going to… — The last thing these corporations do is leave the door open for anything.

Any time they have ever let the door open they have been burned. So they are not going to do that. When it comes to the stage rights, I don’t think that that is going to work either because they are not going to be amenable to you doing anything that might trade on or violate their interest in the movie.

Remember, they can block you from using the title, I think.

**John:** Yeah. But you could block them from using… — If you owned the underlying source material of something, they could not do the Broadway version of…

Eh, I guess it is sort of the same case with the screenplay.

**Craig:** They are going to license everything. They will literally say, “You are going to give us the rights in perpetuity across the universe and all known galaxies. All rights in connection to this.” They won’t leave anything for you. And your little game will not work.

Now, obviously it is a total different situation if it is a legitimate novel and you have legitimate leverage, multiple buyers are interested, and all the rest of it. Makes total sense.

The only thing I have ever heard from people to recommend this kind of strategy is just to make the studio more interested in the screenplay, because sometimes studios like the notion that it is based on something. Because they can read that thing, but then again, if you have a spec, they can read the spec, too. I don’t know. It seems a little nuts to me.

**John:** Going back to your idea of, like, sometimes studios want to buy something that is based on something. That has been the argument for doing a graphic novel rather than doing a spec screenplay, or really honestly taking your spec screenplay, doing it as a comic book, and then selling the rights to the comic book, because for awhile people were eager to buy comic books.

And I think Derek Haas with Popcorn Fiction, that was some of the same instinct, is that this was the chance for screenwriters to write short stories and for development people to read short stories in genres that they are maybe not making as many movies. And say, like, “Hey, this is a great idea for a movie. Let’s have this guy come on and write. Let’s buy this story and turn it into a screenplay.”

**Craig:** That’s right. But it is important to note that Derek acts as a publisher. And so in a sense, whether this is rational or not, studios can say somebody, in this case Derek, read something and liked it enough to publish it.

Similarly, if you want, I know a couple of writers who had a really great idea for a screenplay, decided to go the graphic novel route for precisely the reason you are mentioning. Set up the rights to the graphic novel at a publishing company. And the second that happened, suddenly people came calling asking about the script because somebody somewhere had bought it.

**John:** There is a Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

**Craig:** That is right. Self-doing it ultimately is a transparent ploy. I just don’t see it panning out.

**John:** Let’s change gears and let’s have like a John & Craig’s Fantasy Exercise. And so this is what I want to talk about this week is what if you and I were each given control of a studio. So, Craig, you are in control of… — You can pick any studio. You don’t have to pick which one it is.

But you were given control of one of the major studios. And part of the — thinking about this is — I linked to the blog a week or two ago, and I will put another link in the show notes, Asymco, which is a website that does statistics on things, took a look at maybe 50 years of studio data. And they looked at all of the studios’ outputs, and you realize that the top five studios have been the top five studios basically for the last 50 years.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** And they have traded one and two for top position, occasionally, but it has basically been the same people running — the same companies are running and making all of the major movies that we do.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So every once in a while there is a regime change, and you put somebody else new in charge of one of these studios. And let’s say that is you, Craig. So let’s talk through what decisions you and I would make if we were put in charge of one of these studios. Sounds good?

**Craig:** Sounds good.

**John:** So let me start with this. First question: Which overall deals would you want to keep at your studio?

**Craig:** I don’t want any overall deals with… — I don’t want many producer overall deals. I think there are a few producers that are absolutely worth it. And I would like to have them around. Although I think that in this economy you could probably get away with another kind of arrangement.

The most important overall deals that I would want to make would be with directors.

**John:** Okay. Which kind of directors? Who would you want to have an overall deal with?

**Craig:** I’m looking for directors that have a track record of delivering movies that people like within a reasonable budget. And particularly I would aim at directors who have shown a good track record of success in the $20 million to $60 million budget range.

**John:** Okay. So are you looking for Michael Bay Platinum Dunes, or are you looking for the ones that he is actually going to direct himself?

**Craig:** I’m not looking for… — Platinum Dunes, the idea of that is really about genre movies. To me it is less important about the kinds of movies. I am not necessarily…

If I am running my studio I don’t care so much about emphasizing genre or B-level or whatever, because I think there are really good movies, quality movies, that are made for $30 million. And there is genre that is made for $90 million. I am more interested in directors that I think are able to work with writers well and deliver good movies.

That combination, the director who delivers and writer who delivers, to me is the most important combination. If I can find teams like that and pair them up, that is how I want to develop my movies.

**John:** Yeah, I would say my criteria thinking through the overall deals at a studio that I am now in charge of, any producer deal that is costing me seven figures and they are not bringing their own money is highly suspect. If you are one of the people who makes those big, expensive movies, at this point you should probably be coming in with some of your own money. It feels really weird for me to be financing all of your overhead so you can have a really nice office on the other side of town, and maybe make a movie for us every once in a while.

**Craig:** I completely agree. I think there is a certain kind of dinosaur producer that has that kind of arrangement. And those are all disappearing. The only guys that really justify that are the ones that are delivering movies on a certain level in a big way, and there aren’t too many of those guys. And we know who they are.

But I wouldn’t make that… — Sort of prospectively moving forward that wouldn’t be my instinct. My instinct is all about the material and the director.

**John:** Yeah. Now, so rather than director overall deals, my focus would be TV showrunners who want to do features, and plucking some of them, plucking the very best of the TV showrunners and pulling them into the feature land.

So, the guys who are coming off of five years of an amazing show and can probably do amazing TV, I think they are undervalued in features. And I think they could probably do some amazing things. The danger, or course, is that they really are just going to go off and develop another TV show. You are not going to get anything out of them.

**Craig:** Yeah, as your competitor, I relish that this is your strategy, because to me, they are entirely different disciplines. And the things that work on TV right now, I think, interestingly are not working in theaters. There is material that requires people to go to a theater, and Mad Men isn’t it. But Mad Men is fantastic on TV. There are some showrunners that can make that jump. I mean, J.J. is sort of the most famous example.

**John:** You see, to me, I think you are spending not a lot of money to find who is the next J.J. Abrams, or Joss Whedon, or Ryan Murphy.

**Craig:** See, but I don’t need to make overall deals with them. They are going to find me because they want to do movies. If they want to do movies, they will come to me. And they will give me material. But more important, frankly, than the showrunner kind of guy to me is knowing… — J.J. is so valuable because he is a director. I just think that that is the most important part.

And the reason why I say that is the most important part, even as a screenwriter, which might seem crazy, is my new studio, or I guess I have taken over Paramount or whatever… — My studio can’t afford to make 30 movies a year because we can’t afford to market 30 movies a year. We have a small amount of these things.

When we have the material and we have the availability of actors, we need to get going. And that means we have to have a… — To me it means get a director on board from the start. Because what happens is if you develop material in the old school way, and then you bring the director in, you start going backwards and redeveloping.

**John:** That is absolutely true. You are making a very good point right there. And if you already have, in that director’s deal is already how much it is going to cost to direct the first movie you put him on, that is great and you can move faster.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** I completely agree, because we do waste a tremendous amount of time. I’m on two movies right now where the studio wants to get everything just perfect, and then they will go after a director, and once the director is on board we are going to develop the whole thing again.

**Craig:** That is very 90’s to me. Because inevitably what happens, it is a very amusing thing from the perspective of a screenwriter — you will go through this very delicate, exhausting brokered negotiation over how the script should be, down to the letter. And then a director comes in and says, “What if they were all women instead of guys?” And the studio is like, “Great!”

Because ultimately they need a director to direct this thing and all of that fastidiousness falls away, and you start redeveloping. The other thing that it gets you is, as you mentioned, budget. If a director and a writer develop the screenplay together, they are developing it with that number in mind. You are not writing… — You don’t get caught in the “I just wrote a $100 million movie but they want to make it for $30 million.” That will kill the project.

So, in my mind, I don’t like the notion of screenwriters developing in vacuums. And, frankly, I don’t really need my studio executives developing the screenplays either because that is not really what they are spectacular at. Directors are much better — good directors — are much better at working with writers than studio executives, in my mind.

**John:** Let’s talk about studio executives. Which studio executives do you keep? What is your criteria?

**Craig:** I would love to find people that know how to match-make. I want studio executives with great relationships who can encourage teams to come together and develop the material. I want executives who can keep the director and the writer inside the box of what the studio generally is looking for in terms of tone and scope. And I want studio executives who aren’t afraid to let that team come back and say, “This is a better way.”

The most important thing a studio executive can do in my mind is help the writer and the director get to where they want to go within the chalk lines on the field that you have drawn for them.

**John:** I would say my criteria would be people who have actually made movies. And people, independent of their sort of studio executive function, have literally made movies. Because my frustration with a lot of the studio executives you end up working with: they don’t have a good sense of just literally how films are put together.

And I want the person who kind of feels like a producer but works for the studio.

**Craig:** Interesting. I mean, there is a movement, it seems, at studios to kind of fold the producing position into the studio executive position, kind of make it like a producer-executive kind of thing.

And I get where you are going. It is kind of a choice you have to make, I guess. You have to decide are you going to go for that kind of, the hybridized thing, or are you going to still have producers come in and handle that part of it.

Because it is hard, frankly, to find people who have made movies, who aren’t still making movies, or who want to do this and weren’t terrible at making movies, if that makes sense.

**John:** No, it does make sense. But I would say producers are having a hard time. Like the actual real film producers are having a hard time getting movies made. So I think you could probably cherry pick some of the very best of those people and bring them into the fold and let them be the people running the ship.

**Craig:** That is a good idea. There are a lot of producers out there who could be excellent studio executives in the absence of the old model which was flooding the lot with producers, all of whom had their offices, because there is enormous redundancy in it. A producer has three development people. And then the executive suite has development people. And everybody has development people.

And in the end, the funny part is once a director and a writer are sitting together in a room, none of those people really are developing anymore. They are just helping, as they should. And that is a good thing because sooner or later the writer has to write it, and the director has to direct it.

**John:** I would also want to find some way to reward these development executives with a percentage of the success of the feature so that… — I don’t have the right formula for it, but like the bonus for getting a movie made, the bonus for “this” amount of box office, the bonus for “this” kind of award. Just incentivize actually getting movies made because I don’t know that we do enough incentivizing. And so that is why calls go unreturned for six weeks.

**Craig:** It must be the case, I say that realizing I am setting myself up, but it must be the case that studio executives are rewarded for success. I mean, it may not be as direct as a piece of a movie or something quite that mathematical, but I can’t imagine that that doesn’t factor into their individual negotiations, how much they are paid, their position.

I mean, it seems like that would be the case.

**John:** Yeah. But if they are renegotiating every three years, then I don’t know. I just feel like there needs to be more of an immediate reward for it.

**Craig:** I guess. I mean, look, the problem is I am running my studio and I assign Jim to oversee a movie. And all I deal with for the next eight months is the fact that Jim is screwing up. And now the movie comes out and is a success because of the writer, the director, the cast, me for working hard to get it all done. And, wow, now I am paying Jim for a piece of it?

**John:** That’s true. I get that point, too.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I’m cheap. I’m running a mean, lean machine here.

**John:** Now, you have just taken over this studio. There is a lot that is on its development slate, there’s a lot of things it owns, how do you figure out what are the stuff that is on the development slate you keep and what you get rid of? And do you put stuff in turnaround?

**Craig:** Well, sure. If you look at the material and you either don’t think that is going to connect creatively, or it is going to be impossible to sell, you need to turn it around. There is no sense in throwing good money after a project you don’t believe in; that is why they put you in charge. And that is just one of those… — That is part of the animal kingdom. When a lion takes over a pride…

Oh, it is kind of a gross analogy that involves infanticide. But, regardless, yeah, you have to put some things into turnaround, sure, of course.

**John:** I think I would bring in a committee of people I trust, and I trust screenwriters. I would bring in a committee, a group of six or eight screenwriters to literally read through everything that we have, and this might take a month. And so we will find writers who are awesome but were not working that month and bring them in. And literally sit down and go through everything we have and figure out what is promising and what needs to go away.

It is very much like we have just been going through and cleaning our bookshelves off. I think you need to do that. Because all of the cruft that sort of builds up on there is stealing focus from the things you should really be working on. And just going through and just saying, “Is this a movie that we want to make? Is there something here that is worth spending time on, and developing, and making into a movie?” If there is not, then it goes into turnaround.

And I would be much more aggressive than I think a lot of studios are about putting stuff into turnaround. Because there is always that fear that if you put something into turnaround, turnaround means that you are saying to the town, “Hey, does anyone want to buy this?” And another studio can say, “Yes, I want to buy that,” and they buy all the rights to it. And they can make that into a movie.

There has been a reluctance to put stuff into turnaround because of the fear of being embarrassed that someone else is going to take this property that you put into turnaround and is going to make a giant hit out of it, and then you look like a fool.

Well, yeah, but you weren’t making that movie either. So, put it into turnaround, let someone else deal with it. And focus on the things that you actually have that you like.

**Craig:** I agree with that, certainly the spirit of that. I am just far more autocratic than you are. I want to do what Steve Jobs did. I just feel like I am going to go through and I am going to ask myself, “Would people like this? And is it sellable?”

And even then, is it sellable? And could people like a version of this? And then ask myself the most important question, “What kind of writer should write this? What kind of director should direct this?” And hopefully if you are lucky find a script where you go, “We should be making this right now as it is.”

**John:** Yeah. Always about the situation.

Well let’s talk about what genres. What kinds of movies do you want to make if given everything you could make, what kind of movies are you going to focus on making?

**Craig:** Well, I’m a big believer in big movies. I am not one of these people that thinks that studios should just make little movies. I think big, huge bets are important, and they are good. You just have to pick the right ones. And obviously that is where the rubber meets the road. And you have to figure out if, okay, the Lone Ranger in and of itself doesn’t sound like a big movie, but Lone Ranger with Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp does sound like a big movie.

So, I am going to make those big bets for sure, because to me that stuff in success spins out enormous benefit. You just have to be on the lookout for things that sound like they are big movies, but you are forcing it. And you have got to be careful about not saying, “Well, look, we have a couple of stars that are sort of on the edge of being big stars. And we have this material that feels like a big, huge spectacle. And we have a director that is kind of like in that zone, so we should just do it because who turns all that package down?”

Well, I would, if I didn’t think that it actually was going to be big. It is funny. It’s like we can smell it when they are forcing it on us. We just know. So I would make the big movies that feel like the wind would be at their back. And then I would really, really concentrate on the $20 million to $50 million comedies, the $20 million to $50 million genre pictures, and also then try and find some of those great $5 million to $10 million little bets that don’t cost much but sometimes just blow up and are amazing.

**John:** Yeah. Going back to the Lone Ranger and that kind of thing, so I am not really just picking on the Lone Ranger just by itself, but other sort of like really giant tent poles where you are spending a lot of money, and the Lone Ranger was an example where they stopped because they said, “Wow, this is going to cost way too much money.”

If you have big star, big concept, big director, I feel at some point you look at where you are actually spending your money. It is like, “Wow, do we actually have to spend that $50 million to do that special effect sequence that is not going to actually make the movie any better?”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And that is where you get into it. It is like, if you are getting big just to get big, well is it actually helping you sell your movie? And a lot of times I think it’s not.

**Craig:** Right. You are just forcing it. And I want to be clear that, because maybe it sounds like I am saying I want to make moves from a range of zero to $500 million. Well, who doesn’t?

But, to me, the danger zone of movies is when you go north of $60 million on original/first films, forget sequels and all the rest of it. If you are north of $60 million and you are south of $150 million, you are in a dangerous place. And the funny thing is I feel like that is where so many of the movies end up right now, because you are not big enough to be “oh my gosh — wow,” but you are definitely big enough to hurt if it fails.

**John:** Yeah. It’s bad.

**Craig:** It’s bad. You know, whereas I feel like if I have interesting people and a very sellable title and concept for a comedy, and it seems funny, for $30 million I will make that all day long, you know? The trick is to keep that budget for those kinds of movies… — I don’t know, I like that $20 million to $50 million, $20 million to $60 million zone. I just think that makes sense.

**John:** I’m going to pretend I took over Paramount, because I feel like there are Paramount movies that aren’t going to be made now, that they need to make more of, which are sort of the mid-budget, high concept dramas. So I am talking the Fatal Attractions, the Bodyguards. Look at the success of The Vow, and like The Vow is a movie that we kind of should have been making a lot more of.

It’s weird that we are not making kind of the Joe Eszterhas sexual thrillers anymore — that we are not making sort of the star-driven romantic dramas that people like. And you need to have a couple of those, and nobody is making them right now.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s a good point. I guess it is all about the price point of these things. By the way, it must be, I mean, I can only imagine that some people who actually do make these decisions are listening to this and laughing their asses off at our naivety. [laughs]

**John:** I should have prefaced this whole thing by saying I recognize that these are tough jobs, and so people who come into these roles, not only do they have to meet with all of their own expectations, but they are not actually really in control of everything that we are pretending that we are in control of. Because they are reporting to other people, and there may be other reasons why they find themselves having to do those things. So this is why it is a fantasy exercise.

Like if we could come in and do anything we wanted to do, this is what we would do.

**Craig:** Yes. I have always found that when things seem sort of obviously fixable it just means you don’t understand them well enough.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** Because if it were obviously fixable, they would have fixed it by now probably is my guess. It just feels like that is the way money works. You know, it always finds a way. So it is possible that this is the best of all worlds, but I just believe that, to me, the biggest mistakes studios make right now — the two biggest mistakes they make — is not teaming directors with screenwriters to develop material early on, and forcing big movies when they know they are forcing it.

Those are the two big ones.

**John:** Yeah. And sometimes that forcing big movies, like, yes, you had the big movie idea, and you had the big movie star and the perfect director, but you lost the big movie director and you lost the right star for it. So, are you going to make it with that sort of fourth choice guy? Ooh. That is tough.

And sometimes that gamble pays off, but it really often doesn’t.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** And so then you start to panic, like, “Oh, but we will cut $10 million out of the budget.” Well, that didn’t actually change the equation at all. You are still making a way expensive movie with the guy who can’t carry it.

**Craig:** That’s right. And the dangerous thing about these big budget movies is that once this train starts rolling, it will not be stopped. Because you can’t even get to the point where you start making the decisions you are talking about until you have spent $30 million or $40 million in R&D. And now, what are you going to do? You are going to write off $30 million or $40 million and not have a movie while stars and a director and people are available? Of course not.

You are jammed. And so the big choice to make is earlier on. And that is, again, another reason why writers and directors together, developing the material together, is so valuable because you are not going to have that kind of weird mismatch. And you are not going to have the parade of A-list screenwriters that are each getting $1 million to confuse things.

No. Get a voice together. That team is the key.

**John:** And we sort of talked about this before, but what would you do about home video? So you are now in charge of the studio, how are you going to handle home video?

**Craig:** I mean, it’s rearranging deck chairs. It’s so bad, and the fact is, talk about something out of their control; the marketplace is swinging around wildly when it comes to home video. The desire to own a physical piece, a physical object, that has a movie on it has disappeared. So, home video is going to continue to diminish.

The industry, all of the studios together — ideally — would come up with a joint venture that would iTunes it for them all, but they can’t get that together. So, I don’t know. I wouldn’t run that division. That’s the other guy. That’s not my problem. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Oh, that’s good. Yes. Bring in the Wall Street guy to do that for you. You are the creative.

**Craig:** I can’t. Honestly, I see no light at the end of that tunnel.

**John:** I’m going to pretend to shine a little light down there. I’m going to do my best. I have a weak flashlight, but I will shine my weak flashlight.

I think there is still some market for physical goods right now. And so I think while there is still some market for physical goods right now, you need to be able to sell those movies to people who want to buy movies. I would bundle Blu-ray with the DVD, so that people can buy one thing that has both kinds of discs in it so that they will be able to play it no matter what. So do that for while, and keep the higher price point which is helpful for right now.

I would, I don’t think UltraViolet is going to work. I mean, UltraViolet is what you were sort of describing where all the studios together were going to try to do this thing, but no one trusts that it is going to be around, so no one is going to do it.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** People trust iTunes, so I would sell through iTunes. I would sell things you could buy at a store, that actually give you the download code through iTunes, people will understand. So, like, I am going to buy you The Vow on iTunes, and here is a physical thing that I can give you that is The Vow on iTunes.

And when I make licensing deals with places, I would make them long enough so that people feel safe that they are going to be able to find your movie. Because just this last week, Netflix lost its deal with Starz, that went down. And so suddenly several of my movies you can’t find anymore. And that is what frustrates consumers is that they can’t, they don’t know where to look for things.

And so, “Can I find your movie on this? Can I find your movie someplace else?” If you are going to make those deals, make them long enough that you really have a place to put your movies. Because otherwise people turn to piracy. And so the reason why people will download Charlie’s Angles off a torrent is because they can find it, and if they can’t find it a legal way, they are going to find it in an illegal way.

**Craig:** Yeah, it is true that people are still buying the physical objects. I mean, Hangover 2 sold millions of DVDs, many millions of DVDs. But when you look at the… — I was just doing a little research with a friend of mine. When you look at the amount of movies released in 2011 that sold more than 3 million DVDs, and you compare that to the amount of movies from 2007 that sold more than 3 million DVDs — in 2007 that number, I think, was 30. 30 movies. In 2011 it was 6.

And I have got to tell you, it’s not like the list of movies is that much more impressive from 2007. It is a dramatic falloff across the board. So, that is going away. And you are right to suggest that the problem is that the movie industry has failed to make an easy, obvious, new destination. And, by the way, the recording industry went through the same thing with even more turmoil because they were the first ones to be hit.

I don’t think that the problem is, at least in the immediate run, that people are going to turn to piracy, I think, because pirated copies still stink. I think the more immediate problem is that they are simply going to just turn to whatever is on cable, or just stop making movie watching a big deal. That is the problem.

If you untrain people to look at movies as a great way to spend an afternoon or an evening at home, they will find other stuff. And that is what is going on right now. The marketplace is retraining themselves in the absence of easy solutions to this.

So, if iTunes weren’t so wrapped up with Disney this would have been done awhile ago. But it is, and so we have got a problem.

**John:** Yeah. The last thing, which I think I suggested on a previous podcast, is if I am coming into a studio that has a big library, that big library is going to go on the equivalent of like the HBO Go. Because if you are Warner Brothers and you have crime thrillers dating back 50 years, put those together. Put those together as a thing that people can subscribe to.

And just the way that they at least have cable channels, I think there are internet channels where you could subscribe to something and be able to get any of those movies at any time is valuable. And try those new models.

**Craig:** That would be cool if you had access to decades, you know, just by subscription to Paramount — The 80’s. That would be cool.

I don’t know if our studio is going to work or not…

**John:** No. I think it could be doomed. But it is probably not more doomed than several other major studios currently.

**Craig:** Yeah. [laughs] I mean, it’s sort of like when they look at the performance of mutual funds and then just compare it to the index funds. It is sort of like time just generally churns out a certain average of hits, and a certain average of losers. And we pretend that we have more control over this than we do.

And, frankly, no one studio has seemed to corner the market on an ideal practice. And sometimes studios are rewarded for bad behavior. So, what do we know?

**John:** The only thing I would say, you could look back at 50 years and see, okay, who is actually the biggest of the studios has changed over the course of the 50 years, but like the top 5 are still the top 5. But you look at other industries that seem not completely dissimilar. You look at the computer industry and there are titans who are making most of the money, and everybody else is scraping for some scraps.

I think there is an opportunity for one or two studios to become much, much bigger if they were to be dominant. If one or two studios did a great job figuring out home video and had big hits to back it up, they could be very dominant.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the thing that keeps these studios consistent in leadership is distribution. Because physical distribution of movies to theaters is an incredibly complicated thing. And it is very — requires a certain amount of monopoly power. I mean, I guess in this case it is a five-opoly. But that is what has kept them alive.

If that distribution advantage should disappear, I think honestly that the studios would disappear. They don’t have anything special there beyond that distribution ability. But it is a very powerful one. If one of them somehow mastered home video distribution in a way that the others couldn’t, I just don’t know how that would even happen. Why wouldn’t they all just copy it?

But if they could just get their acts together on this. They are repeating, it seems, many of the mistakes of the record industry in sort of squabbling while their companies burn. The home video thing is a disaster right now.

**John:** Yeah. And it is understandable why they are trying to defend the status quo because the status quo is their jobs. And so if everything changes, they may not have jobs, and that is a huge concern. But it is one of the reasons why the industry feels prone to disruption because an upstart who doesn’t have to have all of those other people doing those jobs could do a lot.

So I am wondering whether there is going to be a rise of sort of the pure financier who doesn’t actually deal with a lot of that backend stuff, and just makes the movies could possibly work.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, we have those. We have Legendary and Relativity.

**John:** And they come in as just giant banks.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But then eventually they start making their own movies and they start having their own distribution arms and doing other things. And we will see if that works out for them.

**Craig:** Well, you know, Legendary… — I don’t know if Legendary — it seems like Legendary is really happy doing what they do. And they have been so successful at it. You know? I mean, if I were running Legendary, if I were Thomas Tull I wouldn’t change a thing. I mean, it’s great. They bankroll, they make smart choices, they bankroll big hits.

**John:** For people who don’t know, Legendary Finances is the bank behind a lot of Warner Brothers’ big movies. And so I think 300 is theirs, the Batman movies are theirs.

**Craig:** The Hangover movies.

**John:** Oh, yeah, those little…

**Craig:** Those small things. They have done extraordinarily well. And, I think, they might have done Inception. Is that right?

**John:** Probably.

**Craig:** I think that it is a great relationship for Warner Brothers because what do these studios do best? What they do better than anybody is advertise movies and distribute movies. And when it comes to actually being a bank, there is no reason that they shouldn’t mitigate some of their risk on these real big bets.

It makes total sense. I think it is a great business for Warner Brothers and for Legendary. Smart.

**John:** And I also think there is a whole big chunk of money that is going to be looking for a place to spend their money in the next five years. And so, I think, a lot of the giant Silicon Valley money, and the Facebook money and stuff will eventually find its way here. And they will make movies, too.

**Craig:** Maybe so. Hey, only good for us.

**John:** Only good for us. Yeah, the more people that are willing to throw some money around, the more they are willing to spend some money on screenwriters to develop material. And that is a very happy thing.

**Craig:** Absolutely. Yes, I am so sorry that Amazon’s venture hasn’t churned out massive hits for them.

**John:** Apparently they did actually write a check for a winner. I don’t know if they wrote like a million dollar check, but they actually did pick a best screenplay.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m sure they met the terms of their contest. [laughs]

**John:** I don’t know that they will be making a movie any time soon, but we will see how it all plays out. But my frustration, and this is dealing with stuff that happened before the podcast began, but I criticized the Amazon Studios deal as being a really bad idea for screenwriters in the sense of they were taking ownership of stuff that you really didn’t want them taking ownership of. And doing weird things that felt, not unscrupulous, but just kind of…

**Craig:** Exploitative.

**John:** Yes! Thank you. But, I like the idea of Amazon coming in and making movies because they have a tremendous amount of money, and they have a tremendous amount of advertising power and ability to reach people who are coming to their site every day. So, I supported the idea of Amazon making movies, I just didn’t like how they were doing it.

**Craig:** I support the idea of anybody making movies as long as they treat the professionals who make movies like professionals. Meaning that they pay them according to our contracts, and they give residuals, and healthcare, and pension, and credit protection, and all the things that we fought very hard for and have had for 70 years.

And Amazon sort of thinks that they are excepted out of that. And they can except out of that, but they also except out of being able to work with fine screenwriters like yourself.

**John:** Yeah. Exactly. Well, Craig, this was a fun fantasy exercise.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, it’s probably not the fun fantasy exercise that many of our podcast listeners were looking forward to.

**John:** I disagree. I disagree.

**Craig:** There’s quite a bit of slash-fiction. Podcast/fiction.

**John:** Someone recently was talking about the podcast. He was like, “Yeah, your podcast seems really weird because it feels like the only people who are the right target audience for it are people that are kind of successful screenwriters, but not really successful screenwriters.”

And I pushed back in saying I think most people who are interested in the film industry could relate to a lot of the things we are talking about. So, yes, the esoteric of credit arbitration, most people listening to this podcast will never go through it. But I think they can be interested and fascinated by it even if they are not affected by it.

**Craig:** I would have said to that person, it’s a fair point, that our audience is everybody that doesn’t already know everything about screenwriting, and is either screenwriting now or will be one day. And that is everybody minus A-list screenwriters. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And then A-list screenwriters can listen to it just to make fun of us. So it is everybody.

**John:** It’s everybody. Great. Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Have a great week.

**Craig:** Thanks. You too. Bye.

**John:** Bye.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/etiquette-for-screenwriters).

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

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

**John:** Kaj vi auskultas Scriptnotes, podcast por skriptistoj kaj ajoj grave skriptistoj.

**Craig:** What? What happened?

**John:** Google Translate added Esperanto to their engine. So now I can actually translate things into and out of Esperanto.

**Craig:** That’s fantastic.

**John:** [More in Esperanto].

**Craig:** Now all you need is a time machine to go back to 1972 and you could talk to the three other people that spoke Esperanto.

**John:** I know. That’s the whole problem. I feel like Google is giving us little bits and pieces of the future that I want, but at the wrong time. Like the future is not evenly distributed, of course. And this future came a little bit late, but I am still happy to have an Esperanto tool. Come on!

**Craig:** I thought you were speaking Polish.

**John:** It does sound a little Polish. I think, if I remember correctly the history of it, it uses a lot of Latinate kind of words, a lot of Spanish. But people say it sounds a lot like Polish.

**Craig:** It does sound like Polish. And I think until now the only other person that I had heard speak Esperanto was William Shatner.

**John:** Of course. William Shatner in his classic sci-fi film… — Now I am forgetting the name of it. It is, oh, something great.

**Craig:** Yeah. I have…

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** William Shatner.

**Craig:** William Shatner.

**John:** Awesome.

**Craig:** And now you.

**John:** Yeah. So Google is also developing some sort of like glasses that you wear that give you a heads-up view of information, which would be great, too.

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** So, again, that would be an amazing thing from the 1960s or 70s that is finally coming true.

**Craig:** What do they call it, “Enhanced Reality” something or another?

**John:** Yeah. Yeah. I think reality should be enhanced as much as you possible can do it.

**Craig:** It is basically another way for people to walk into light posts.

**John:** Yeah, or to sort of ignore you while you are in front of them.

**Craig:** [laughs] Fantastic.

**John:** So it is like the iPhone. With the iPhone you actually have to physically stick it in front of your face; whereas with this, they might look like they are looking at you, but they are not really looking at you. It is the same thing where I will be walking by someone on the street, and I think they are talking to me, but of course they are on their headset.

**Craig:** It’s the weirdest thing.

**John:** Yeah. It’s spooky.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Well, a good introduction then, because really our topic, our theme for this week’s podcast is etiquette. And etiquette in normal life, but especially etiquette as it pertains to screenwriters who are often mistreated, but sometimes actually mistreat each other. And, I think, that is maybe how you want to start off with; a thing that happened recently and had some fall out.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, we are in a strange business where we are colleagues, and we are in the same union, and so we are together in spirit in some ways. But we also compete for the same jobs, and we also rewrite each other. And that can create some difficult terrain to navigate.

And I thought it was navigated particularly poorly this past weekend by Alexander Payne, who is a director, of course. He just directed The Descendants. And he is also a writer. And he is one of the credited screenwriters of The Descendants.

And at the award show, when they were asking him about it he said — specifically of the prior draft by writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who again, I want to point out, received credit on the movie — Alexander Payne said, “I couldn’t get into the film through their drafts. I respected their work very much, but I had to return to the novel. I learned some of the things I didn’t want to do through their drafts.”

Now, my whole thing is that that is lame. [laughs] So, I’m now leaving journalistic reportage and entering editorializing.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** I think that’s lame. Listen, it may be absolutely accurate. I don’t know. It is interesting — some friends of mine have read the Faxon and Rash draft and thought it was actually better than Alexander Payne’s draft. But I haven’t read any of it.

All I know is this: No matter what the facts are, you are at an awards show. You are the director, also. You have gotten plenty of credit. Nobody refers to The Descendants as being authored by anybody other than you, Alexander Payne, because you are far more famous than Faxon and Rash. Why do this? Why throw them under the bus and say, “Actually what I learned from their script was what I didn’t want to do?” It is just unnecessarily… — It is unnecessarily stingy.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** And we, I think, what I would like to talk about with you today is sort of a best practices way of approaching the etiquette of rewriting other writers, being rewritten by other writers, and dealing with press when you have co-writers, or there is the understanding that other writers worked on a movie for which you are credited.

**John:** Great. Going back to the Alexander Payne story, my recollection of that context for that: It wasn’t the actual award show, it was a panel of the nominated writers at the Writers Guild Theater.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, you are talking in front of a whole audience full of screenwriters, and you are throwing the other two screenwriters — who are up on stage with you — under the bus, which struck me as just very poor form.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so, I don’t have video of this. I haven’t seen the actual moment. But I moderated that same panel last year. And I can’t imagine being up there on that stage and not having it feel just incredibly uncomfortable that this thing just happened.

And as a moderator you have to kind of acknowledge that this really strange thing just happened. The year I was moderating this thing, I had a situation where there was a guy who was rewritten who was up on the stage. And it can be fine. As long as everyone is sort of, like, upfront about it, and not horrible about it, it’s fine.

You had Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian on stage, who both worked on Moneyball, and they got through that.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you can discuss the different contributions to a script that screenwriters have made. And that can be navigated dispassionately and interestingly.

**John:** Which is actually a great thing to be discussing in front of a panel of writers because that is the reality of the situation.

**Craig:** Yes. Right. And it is interesting. I am the last person to say lets whitewash what happened. However, if you are the director of the movie, or the producer of the movie, and you had this particular additional creative authority over the film, what is the point of saying, “I learned what to not do from that draft?”

**John:** Look regardless of how much authority you have on the film, that is a bad thing to say. Here is the polite thing to say. Like the first Charlie’s Angels, Ryan Rowe and Ed Solomon created a draft, and I came in and did a very different movie. And so we are all very upfront about the fact that they had created this amazing opening set piece that set one kind of movie that was really cool, and that is still the same set piece that is in the movie. And we loved it, and that was the thing that never changed throughout the whole development process.

But their actual plot went in a very different direction. It wasn’t the direction we went in. And we can say that and talk about that in a very open and happy way because that is just the reality. And we are not saying that anything was bad or wrong in their draft, it just wasn’t the movie that we were going to be making.

And that can be a positive starting place.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can sort of talk about, “Look, here is where I went with it. Here is where they went with it.” But if somebody has credit on the movie, particularly screenplay credit, what are you suggesting? The Guild has already put its two cents forth and said, “This person wrote at least a third of this movie.”

So, I don’t get where the thinks he is coming from. Even if he feels like that was a bum decision, just be kind. Just be kind. You can say, “Listen, they…”

If it had been me I would have said, “I read their draft. I thought it was fantastic. I decided I was going to go back to the book a little bit just to tie in… — I was going to adapt it actually a little more closely to the novel than they did. So we went through quite a few changes. But, you know, overall I think the work that they did, and the work that I did, ended up on screen in a great way.”

How hard is that? It’s like, it’s baseball…

**John:** Just say it was a fantastic draft, but there were different things that interested me from the book, and I really went back and pulled those into the draft.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just be like baseball players when they are talking at the end of a game, you know. And everyone is like, “Wow, you hit four home runs. And the team won 4-3. That was all you.”

“Well, you know, it’s still a team effort.” Just be cool. How hard is that?

**John:** Be cool. Be nice.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** It costs you nothing to be nice.

**Craig:** And what it comes down to is: Are you so panicked that you are not going to get every little crumb of credit that you have to kick these poor guys in the teeth in front of their colleagues and in front of the press? You just… — I don’t know. It wasn’t his finest moment.

And, look, I don’t know Alexander Payne. I hope that he has apologized for that and won’t do that again.

**John:** Yeah. I hope he is a wonderfully nice guy who just said something stupid, like I say all the time, but didn’t have Stuart to edit out the dumb things he said.

**Craig:** We all need Stuart there in real life.

I mean, look, obviously — obviously — I have said a billion stupid things. And so I don’t mean to come down and say that this was the worst, most horrible thing anyone has ever done. I just felt bad for those other guys, and I just thought it was unnecessary.

**John:** Yeah. Pretty good segue to a question that someone wrote in. Kevin Arbouet, I’m going to say it is Arbouet — he criticized me for mispronouncing his name last time.

**Craig:** It is Arbouet. Yes.

**John:** Arbouet. Two scenarios. I will read the second of the scenarios he proffers. “A friend of yours has sold an original screenplay to a studio. Sometime later your friend calls and tells you that he or she has been fired from the studio. Then, dum-dum-dum, you get a phone call from that studio asking you to rewrite your friend’s script. Do you take the job?”

**Craig:** This happened to me recently. I got a call about a project and actually the director was saying, “Would you be interested in me… — I would like you to write this. Can I pitch you for this job?”

And I always sort of just generally look up, I’m just curious like anybody would, and I saw who had written it prior. And it is somebody I know quite well and I am friendly with. And I said, “Look, I would have to talk to them first.” And that is my thing.

We are all big boys. We are all adults. If you are fired, you are fired. There is no point in keeping your friends from getting work. You are fired. [laughs]

So, that is not the end of the world. I just think that you owe that person a phone call to say, “Is it okay with you if I go in and meet on this?” I can’t imagine anybody ever saying, “No. It is not okay.”

But you know what? If they did, I guess I would respect that. Because, I don’t know, if it is a good friend, you know. Maybe I am a Pollyanna but friends are friends.

**John:** Yeah. Every time I have taken a job that I am going to rewrite, if it is someone’s real project, like this is their thing, they came up with the idea, or they were the first writer on this thing, and I would be going in and sort of being that second writer, I am always going to make that call. And I will always get the number for the person, I will make the call, and it is always super awkward to do it, but I will do it because you owe that to them.

And in most cases it is a huge relief for them because they know who is potentially coming in. They know that you are not a jerk. And they can tell you where all the bodies are buried and who the crazy people are.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The times I haven’t done that it has been where like literally it has been a handoff from like a week, to a week, to a week through a whole bunch of people.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** In those cases I haven’t worried so much about being the last guy carrying the football.

**Craig:** Yeah. If it is a gangbang you don’t have to kiss the lady. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] We should explain that a “gangbang” is sort of a term of art in screenwriting in this kind of thing, where it is like you throw a whole bunch of writers at it. And so despite its vulgar connotations, it is a word that you will hear said all the time.

**Craig:** Yes. I apologize to your mother.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But, yeah, that is true. I have basically the same… — I use the same essential rule set. I will call the prior writer if, always if it is an original script, but even if it is somebody that was close to an adaptation or whatever. Or even if there were two prior writers, I will call them.

Yes. If it is I am one of 100 people that have come and gone, or if the studio has had a particularly bad situation; they just are like, “Leave that person be,” then I won’t do it. I have to say, I have never had a bad one of those conversations. They have always gone really well. If anything, the writers that you are calling are grateful that you are acknowledging that they existed.

So, it has always gone well. And so, as a general etiquette thing, if we are talking about best practices, I would say to our fellow professional writers listening: do this. And by the way, I have to ask the studio. I always say, “Do you mind if I call so and so?” They never care. And do it. It knits you together in a better way. And I have to believe…

In fact, I will tell you a story. I did this… — Well, I will start with in the future, which was in the past. Sorry. [laughs] I need notes for this story already.

**John:** Yeah. So you are time traveling. The Esperanto threw you off.

**Craig:** About two years ago I was having dinner with a friend. She is a producer, and she saw a guy she knew and said, “Oh, blah-blah-blah, come on over.” I won’t use names. And she introduced him to me and she said, “He’s a writer,” and I shook his hand.

And he looked at me and he said, “Wait a second, you are Craig Mazin?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Dude, seven years ago you called me because you were rewriting me on something, and I never forgot that, and it was the nicest thing. And I really appreciate it.”

And he had been walking… — Seven years he remembered that, which told me probably that nobody else had done it in the seven years that had lapsed. And so I urge everybody to do this. It just, I don’t know, it brings us together.

I’m very Pollyanna today.

**John:** You are. But, I think, I’ve had the same experience. One of my first interactions with Aline Brosh McKenna was on a project that I was going to be coming on board. And it was really her thing, so I had to sort of talk to her. I wanted to talk with her about sort of (A) that she felt okay about it, (B) is sort of figure out why she wasn’t going to be doing the next draft, and sort of what was up with that. And it was good. And we became better friends after that.

Same with the Wibberleys. The Wibberleys rewrote me on the second Charlie’s Angels, and I came back in and rewrote them. And we talked, and talked, and talked, and talked, and it was really good. And so I never met them in person until the premiere of Charlie’s Angels, but I knew who they were. And we actually ended up going through arbitration on that. It was the friendliest arbitration you are ever going to find because we had done that early talking.

**Craig:** [laughs] That’s a great point, by the way, that when it does come time for arbitration, there is a human being on the other end of that thing. And I think a lot of these really ugly arbitrations are about people who are just names on a piece of paper, and who haven’t spoken with you, and you don’t think are real. They are just people out to screw you.

And I do think it helps immensely when you do get to an arbitration to just know that we are all writers trying, you know. So that is my big etiquette speech on that.

Now, on the flip side though: What happens when you find out that you are being rewritten? And I will tell you, the first movie — this was back in 1996, I believe — It was the first job I ever had was an original script that my then writing partner and I did for Disney. And we did our two drafts, but you know, we were true rookies. And an actor was attached.

The movie essentially got a green light, and then they do what they do which is not trust a movie to 25 year olds, but to hire a couple of guys. And they hired Steve Rudnick and Leo Benvenuti who had done The Santa Clause, and were pretty big at Disney.

And they asked that I send over the script, the Final Draft file, or I think we had Final Draft then. And I did. I put it on a disc. [laughs] You know, an actual disc for those guys. It was the era that we lived in. And I wrote a note. It was sort of like it was the file, and then a note that was a file that was entitled, “For Steve and Leo: please read.”

And the note was basically, “Greg and I are really happy that you guys are coming on and we are really excited that you are going to take the script and carry it somewhere great. And if you have any questions or just want to say hi, this is our phone number, and this is our email,” I don’t think we had email, “and thank you so much.”

And they never picked up the phone or said anything. And I just thought that was lame. And, you know, when they got fired, and we got brought back, I felt glee frankly. Because I had thought they had treated two rookies unnecessarily coldly.

**John:** Yeah. Especially after you reached out to them and made it so easy for them to contact you, and made it clear that it wasn’t like a weird bad feeling, that they weren’t going to be walking in to get punched.

**Craig:** Right. Quite the opposite, you know? But I guess my point is, too, when you are being rewritten, and these things happen, nothing wrong with welcoming the next guy along. You didn’t get fired because he got you fired. You got fired because you got fired. And then this woman comes along to rewrite you, and you should be nice to her.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Or him.

**John:** It is hard to separate the anger and frustration you feel about being fired, about no longer being on board this project. You are angry at the producers, the director, the studio, whoever didn’t believe in your ability to carry the project further forward. And that anger is real, and you have to own it, and try not to be a maniac on the phone when you get the news. But you are going to feel those feelings.

But the guy who is coming on board, it isn’t his fault. And he is not the one who did it to you.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So anything you can do to reach out. And a lot of times, through the internet, and through how stuff works, it is not that hard to find out who that person is, and figure out the mutual friends or whatever, and try to reach out.

It hurts. And I feel like the times I have been replaced by people and they haven’t acknowledged me have been the situations where the anger just festers longer — my anger about sort of no longer being on board with the project, and just sort of the wondering.

Having that conversation with the next writer at least gives you some closure, and is like, “Okay, I can see what is going on here. I can give them some helpful tips. I can let them know that this one person is an absolute maniac, and to not trust that.” Or, the things that they are trying to do have already been done and it doesn’t mean that they won’t work now in this iteration, but let them know where the bodies are buried.

**Craig:** And then an important thing to point out about all of this stuff is that that phase that you are talking about, where you have either been fired, or you are taking over for somebody that has been fired, is all pre-premiere. That doesn’t mean that you are not going to have your name on the movie. That doesn’t mean that they are not going to have their name on the movie.

You may be sharing credit on this thing. And if that happens, you will be together. And you will be together promoting the movie. And you will be together talking about the movie. Or you will do so separately, but that brings us to a whole other layer on this which is how to deal with press and publicity when you are talking about your movie and you are sharing credit with somebody.

**John:** You can probably generalize it out with your movie versus the movie that got made. And different movies I have been involved with, I’m not at all happy with the final movie. But I am not going to throw the movie under the bus either. I’m not going to throw the filmmakers under the bus.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You are trying to be honest about what the experience was, but not negative.

**Craig:** Yeah. While I am entertained by people who throw things under the bus on some sort of lurid level, on the other hand it makes me uncomfortable. And I definitely just feel like there is no cause to be undiplomatic. And you know what is the word I am looking for? The word I am looking for is uncharitable. Don’t be uncharitable in the press.

The simple things in terms of etiquette that I like to talk about any co-writers: I talk about what they brought, and I don’t talk about what they didn’t bring. I talk about the director in a charitable way. And I talk about the actors and what they brought. And there is a funny game that goes on. And you notice it very early on in your career as a screenwriter when you start going through press.

The natural tendency of everybody who isn’t a screenwriter is to talk about everything on screen that wasn’t in the script. And at first you think to yourself, “Why are they being so mean? Why are they obsessed over the 12 adlibs or the thing that they came up with on the day? Why is that so important to talk about?” Because you will hear it all the time in interviews with actors and directors — “You know, that wasn’t even in the script. We just came up with that on the day.”

Well here is why they are saying it, not because they hate you or they disrespect you. It is because they are proud. They are proud of literally writing one-tenth of this thing that you wrote nine-tenths of. Or, maybe the ratio is even more out of whack. But they are just excited because they did it, and that is okay.

And similarly when I talk about the script, I don’t talk about all of the wonderful things that I wrote, “Well I wrote that, and I wrote that, and I wrote that.” I talk about how it was a wonderfully collaborative effort, and then inevitably they will ask, “Was there a lot of adlibbing on the set?” And inevitably I answer, “There was some adlibbing. I mean, largely the guys stuck to the script. Or largely the director followed the script. But always in the moment because we have such a wonderful cast, they are going to come up with interesting things.”

There is your vanilla pudding answer. But you know what, it is actually accurate. So, just be charitable and be cool.

**John:** My frustration comes… — There are actors who will openly disparage the script, not just saying like, “Oh, we came up with a whole bunch of new stuff.” And you and I know who we are talking about. We are not going to say his name because we hope to… — We should be so lucky to work with him. But who actually say like, “I don’t like the script at all. I hated the script. But I thought…”

**Craig:** I will never work with him. There is no chance that I will ever work with him. [laughs] It’s not my kind of guy.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But, whatever. He is not the only one.

**John:** And I worked with a probably bigger actor who had similar kinds of things where he would… — It wasn’t just like, “Oh, we adlibbed some stuff.” It was like, “Oh, we ripped out the pages and started over from scratch.”

It is like, yeah, you managed to rip up the pages, but somehow you ended up saying exactly what I had written. So it is great that you were able to sort of recreate what I had done, but that is not really…

**Craig:** Look, when they are being truly aggressive… — Well, okay, two things. First, if you can end up having a good professional relationship with the actor, the odds of that occurring go down. That is not always the case. There are times when you write a script, you are disappeared off the movie, and then the actor eight months later is on TV talking about how your script sucked. That is brutal. They shouldn’t do that. I wish they wouldn’t do that. And there is nothing charitable to say about that.

If you can have a positive relationship with the actor, 9 times out of 10 they are not going to do that just because now you are a human being that they are not going to be mean to. In the overall analysis though, we should be clear about one thing: Nobody really cares.

Nobody really believes that actors… Either people really believe that actors write everything, because they don’t know that screenplays exist, or if they know that screenplays exist, don’t really believe that actors write every line. Everybody kind of knows how movies are made if they know how movies are made. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter anyway.

Either way it doesn’t matter. So I don’t get too worked up over it, I guess, is my point. I would rather take the high road and be the guy that is charitable. And if somebody takes shots at the script in the press, what are you going to do?

**John:** Yes. I think we are calling for best behavior by writers because we can’t get best behavior out of everyone else. Control what you can control. Do what best you can do for yourself.

**Craig:** Listen. If you are an actor, or a director or producer and you are listening to this, you should also please show best behavior. Because I mean unless someone has been a total jerk, you know, come on.

**John:** I think the number of A-list actors who are listening to this podcast is low. But maybe there are some future A-list actors listening to the show and we will inspire them to do the right thing.

**Craig:** Yes. Exactly.

**John:** That’s my hope.

**Craig:** Thank you. You have given me great hope. We have changed the future, precisely. [laughs]

**John:** Let’s finish up with one more etiquette question. Mike asks, “What is the etiquette in following up with producers to see if they have read your script?”

So, I think he is talking about sort of like a spec kind of situation. I have heard one month is reasonable. I don’t want to be pushy, but I want to stay on their radar. One month is a really long time, if you are actually working for them, that is far too long.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, no. If you are working for somebody, that is a different story. At that point they are actually just hurting the project by not doing their job. Now, that said, there are some places where the wheel turns really slowly.

I mean, I remember, I worked on a project for Bruckheimer. And I love those guys, I love… — Mike Stenson and Chad Oman, great guys, would take forever — would take forever — to get back to me. Sometimes it would take them two months.

But then they would come back to me, and then the notes were really good, and we would do another draft, and then it would happen again. And, you know, once I realized that that was their rhythm, I was like, “Well, you know, I will see if I can fit other things in. This is one of those deals.”

But if you are sending a spec to a producer with a query letter or something like that… — Is it quAIRy or quEARy?

**John:** I think either one is acceptable.

**Craig:** I like quEARy. Then, yeah, I think a month is a pretty good check in time. Maybe three weeks. Not bad.

**John:** Yeah. Maybe it is a situation where you met the producer that said, “Hey, send me that thing.” And you sent them that thing, and you haven’t heard back. A month? Somewhere between two weeks and a month is probably good. I mean, that first check in is just like, “Want to make sure you got it. And make sure that it was what you were looking for.” It reminds them that you exist.

There have been times where I have asked people to do a first person thing. So a lot of times with the first person posts on the blog, I will get like six of them at once and I will sort of pace them out, but then I will kind of forget about one. And so it is really good when that person will remind me, like, “Hey, I wrote this thing for you. I just want to make sure that it is okay.” And it is like, “Yeah, that was exactly the right phrasing, this is exactly the way you would talk to a producer saying, like, ‘Hey, just want to make sure you got this thing that I sent you.'”

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the truth of how this all shakes out per human psychology, and Hollywood human psychology is incredibly predictable human psychology, very consistent human psychology. If you send 15 follow-up letters for your script, and it is good, you were persistent. If it is bad, you were a lunatic nudge, and a stalker. And that is the way it goes.

Everything will ultimately be processed through the lens of the quality of the script. And since that is already finished by the time you are writing your follow-ups, I would just advise to you: Relax and follow up as you feel the need to.

**John:** Mike’s second question here was, “Do producers usually give you a yay/nay, or is the lack of response code for a pass?”

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, you know, I always say there are 14 million ways to say no, and only one way to say yes. And so, everything other than the word “yes” is “no.”

**John:** Yeah. At a certain point you can assume silence is a no. If they are not getting back to you even about your checking in, that you got something, then it is a pass. And that is okay.

**Craig:** Yeah. And don’t bother sending strongly-worded letters trying to teach them etiquette because they don’t care. And they will just never read anything else that you ever send. It is just pointless. And depending on who they are, they may just be deluged with scripts. Or they may have just really, really hated it. Sometimes it is your fault.

**John:** Or it is just not for them at all.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** They read three pages and were like, “Nope, this isn’t a movie I want to make.” And so they are not taking the time to email you back or give you an official pass or whatever else. Sorry.

Eventually that becomes your agent’s job to follow up with that. And so they, on one of the weekly phone calls they have with that person, they will say, “Did you read this?” “Yeah, it wasn’t for us.” And that is the effective pass.

**Craig:** Yes. That is exactly right. That is exactly right.

**John:** So, Craig, this week I had the good fortune of being asked to be a mentor for some of the new members of the WGA . So, and I think it is every six months or every quarter as the WGA brings in new members, people who sold their first script or got hired on a TV show, or come in through some new media kind of project, which I don’t really understand, they are invited to the Guild to sort of talk them through, like, “This is the Writers Guild. This is how your residuals work.” And all that kind of stuff

**Craig:** I, too, am a mentor to lovely new writers.

**John:** How many mentees do you have?

**Craig:** I share mine with Ted Elliott. The two of us are team-mentoring I think five writers.

**John:** [laughs] Oh god! I fear for those people. They are going to get so confused.

**Craig:** It just means that I am mentoring them because I don’t think Ted writes them back. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] If Ted wrote them back, Ted Elliott — who is a brilliant man — but Ted will write them like 19 dense paragraphs about esoteric details of the WGA.

**Craig:** Ted’s normal speech mode is technical manual.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, yeah. I don’t know… — I knew when I took them on as…

It was sort of like when Ted and I started The Artful Writer I knew that that meant that I was starting The Artful Writer. He did write one blog article in — I think we were operative for six years — he wrote one article.

**John:** It was your site, exactly.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s right.

**John:** So, anyway, my mentees, they are great. And so I think my official commitment for them is that I have to have some meal with them, and then I will answer their questions as questions come up via email or phone or things like that. But I have a great group.

And so what was exiting talking about spec scripts is this one guy sold two spec scripts in the last six months.

**Craig:** Wow! Great.

**John:** And I’m like, wow, that happens?! That’s great. I had sort of assumed that spec scripts weren’t really happening now because it is not my business, but…

**Craig:** No, but they are. The market has definitely revived, or relatively revived.

**John:** Yeah. So it is not the heyday of the giant 7-figure deals for everything, but still that’s great.

**Craig:** No, it’s not the Last Boy Scout kind of days, but it is not as bad as it was sort of like around 2006 or whatever, where literally no one even bothered.

**John:** That was good. Exciting.

**Craig:** That is good. Excellent. Well good for him, or her.

**John:** Hurray.

**Craig:** So I feel like we…

**John:** We talked about some etiquette, yeah.

**Craig:** …we bettered the world.

**John:** That’s the hope. That is the hope with any podcast, I think, is to make the world a little bit better than where we found it before.

**Craig:** This is my only outlet for bettering the world. Everything else that I do is about ruining it, so, thank you for providing me with this opportunity.

**John:** I try to provide a positive forum for your happy thoughts so that all of your negative thoughts can be translated into things.

**Craig:** Yes. I have to go out and ruin someone’s life now.

**John:** Craig, thank you for bringing some sunshine into my day.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know what? You are always a ray of sunshine. I wonder if that is going to work its way into the… — Do we dare talk about this ridiculous drinking game? Your guys lost their minds.

**John:** Yes. So here is the thing. And we will see if this actually stays in the edit or not. There is a drinking game that was formed about our podcast. And I assumed that it was…

It was presented to me as this anonymous cabal of people who did this. And they were like, “What do you think of this?” And I’m like, “Oh, it is kind of amusing.” But then I realized that it is actually some of my people and some of my posse are doing it. So, I have given them the official notice that I want nothing to do with this. And so if they end up making it, that is their extracurricular project, but I am having no official part of it.

**Craig:** It is so strange. [laughs] But it is fascinating. I will say that there is something very flattering about having identifiable verbal ticks, because you can’t really hear your own verbal ticks, but apparently I start a lot of sentences by saying, “Look,” which I didn’t realize. That’s cool. I like that.

**John:** And I do this thing where you will make a very long pronouncement about something, and I will say, “Yeah.”

**Craig:** Now that I noticed. [laughs] Because sometimes I feel like I have just delivered this wonderful sermon on the mount, and then there is a little bit of pause, and then, “Yup.” And I think, “Oh, god!”

**John:** Yeah. But how am I supposed to respond to this sermon on the mount? That is the whole issue. I can’t just applaud. Applause sounds weird.

**Craig:** I mean, why not. I think you should applaud.

**John:** Okay, I probably should applaud.

**Craig:** You should applaud. You know what we really need is like a Robin Quivers in here, too.

**John:** Oh, thank you! That is what we are completely missing. Someone who thinks all of our jokes are really funny…

**Craig:** That is exactly right. Somebody that is laughing at everything we are saying, so you don’t have to do it. She does it. In fact, let’s get Aline. Let’s get Aline Brosh McKenna to do it.

**John:** She is not busy writing 15 other movies.

**Craig:** No! And also she is naturally prone to laugh at everything we say.

**John:** That’s a good thing. It’s a very key point.

**Craig:** She is not at all demanding, or critical.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** No one scares me more than Aline Brosh McKenna. You know, I have said this to her a hundred times. I’m frightened to death of her.

**John:** Yeah. One disapproving glare from Aline Brosh McKenna and I am ruined. I am in bed for the rest of the day.

**Craig:** Literally done for the day.

**John:** What is interesting also I found is that I listen to most of my podcasts at double speed, which some people criticize as, like, that is not the true art, but I am used to everything being double speed. And so on the rare occasions where I have to listen to things on the web, so I am not listening to it through my little player, I listen to it in normal speed and everyone’s voices sound completely wrong.

And people who I think are really, really funny are noticeably less funny when that pacing is different.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, I like this idea. I’m going to start doing that, too, listening to it at double speed.

**John:** Yeah. Because there is no reason this podcast should be 34 minutes long. It should be 17 minutes long.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well let’s see if we can get it down to five minutes; let’s go quadruple speed.

**John:** Good. Done.

**Craig:** [laughs] I don’t think you should edit this out. This is the most fun we have had yet.

**John:** Good. So it is in there and so everyone can enjoy it. And they can enjoy another week’s podcast. This was episode 26. Episode 27 will be about something.

**Craig:** Something exciting.

**John:** And we will talk to you then. Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** Thanks John. Bye.

**John:** Bye.