Search Results for: residuals

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.

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

**John August:** Hello and welcome. This 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 doing great. I know that that is a rhetorical question, but actually lately I have been having…

You know those days where you can’t seem to get on top of your own schedule? You are running behind on everything, and even the strange little quirks of circumstance seem to conspire against you and make you later, and later, and later? And for the last week everything has just been falling into place. Like today I knew that I had to be here to do this podcast with you and I was at Universal and this meeting was running long and then there was a lunch, and it just worked out almost to the minute that I was here on time.

Because… — I don’t know. The clouds parted. The sun shone through. Just things have been going my way.

**John:** Well that’s great. Congratulations.

**Craig:** No, no, no. That’s not great. That means that very soon…

**John:** Oh, I’m sorry, yes. I feel bad for you because it clearly means that your run is about to end and you will be sad soon.

**Craig:** The regression to the mean will occur.

**John:** The regression to the mean will inevitably occur.

**Craig:** Inevitably.

**John:** I had a… — I was in New York for almost two weeks to do casting for Big Fish. And I had to speak… — I was invited to speak to the film school out in the Bronx. It’s this public school that has this amazing film program there and so they invited me to speak. And it was… — Of course I’m going to go out and speak to them.

And I was so convinced that I was going to make it there in plenty of time. I was taking the 6 and I was going to get up there, and the trains conspired against me.

**Craig:** Mmm.

**John:** So, it was one of those days where I had the opposite of the Craig Mazin luck, and I watched as my speaking time passed while I was still on the train that was stopped on the tracks for about 15 minutes.

**Craig:** No way!

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It was stopped?

**John:** It was stopped.

**Craig:** Oh, eh, it was probably a suicide.

**John:** Oh, yeah. That’s a good way to think about it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So my minor inconvenience versus some family who lost a loved one.

**Craig:** Well you always want there to be some kind of death at the other end of any kind of commuting stoppage. I feel like if I am going to stop, there should be a price in blood.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But I did finally make it to speak to this film school in the Bronx, which is this amazing film program which I was so incredibly envious of these students because they are in high school but they are studying making movies. And they have to do all of the normal stuff you have to do in high school, and all the basic requirements, but they get to shoot movies and talk to filmmakers. And I am just incredibly envious of people who get to come of age in this time of wonder.

**Craig:** Yeah. What school is this in the Bronx?

**John:** It is called — and I will put a link to it in the show notes — but it was called the Cinema School. It is a New York Public School, but it is especially funded for the arts. And so I think it is an equivalent of the Fame school if you were a dancer, but if you were a director or a screenwriter you might get to go to this school.

**Craig:** Right. Like there is the Bronx High School of Science which is the science version of that; it’s public. And it is selective I presume?

**John:** It is selective. Yes. You have to sort of apply to it and get in to it. But it is not a charter school in the normal sense.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It somehow magically works and they got money to do it. And God bless them.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, it’s like Hunter High School and Stuyvesant High School, Midwood — I think it is called — yeah, it’s like a pre-med.

New York actually has a really cool system like that; it’s smart that they have a movie one.

Yeah, you are envious of those kids in a positive way, and I hate them for having advantages I didn’t have. So…

**John:** That pretty much explains the difference between you and me.

**Craig:** Yup. White and dark. Here we go. Yin and yang. Let’s do this. [laughs]

**John:** I was talking to Dana Fox this week, who is busy casting her TV show. She has a… — Dana Fox, who is my former assistant and a very good friend, she sold a show to Fox, the studio, and Fox the network about her brother, Ben Fox.

So there are so many Foxes involved that it is kind of crazy.

**Craig:** Yes. I mean, I could say that is pretty Foxed up, but, well, I’m not going to say that.

**John:** Yeah, that would be kind of a hackneyed joke.

**Craig:** I did not just say that. It didn’t happen.

**John:** No. But I’m not going to let Stuart cut that out. That’s going to stay.

**Craig:** No. He shouldn’t cut it out. It is evidence that I didn’t do it.

**John:** Ah, okay. Yeah. But talking to her about casting, because she is in the middle of casting right now, and I just came out of a casting thing, made me really think about the difference between feature casting, and TV casting, and Broadway casting.

When you are casting a feature, you have actors come in and they are reading the sides; they are reading the scenes from the actual script of your movie. Or, sometimes you will write special scenes that are better for figuring out who these people are. But your only question is: Can they perform the scenes that are in your film?

When you are casting a TV show it is really a different experience because you are wondering, “Well, will they be good in the pilot, but will they also be able to do stuff like three years down the road when our show is a giant hit?” It is all of this sort of… — You are banking on what that person is going to become. It is a very different process.

**Craig:** Mmm. Yes. I could see that. Casting for movies is very limited and narrow and, yes, you are going to…

And also, you only have to perform it once for a movie. But you have to find somebody with some kind of stamina, social stability, the availability to just commit to this for a really long time. Totally different animal.

**John:** It is. If you are casting a feature, sometimes you are willing to put up with an incredibly difficult person because it is just a feature, and they are going to shoot however many weeks and then they are done and they are gone. You never have to see them again.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** If you are casting a TV show, you are saying, “Do I want to show up to work every day to deal with this person?” And a lot of times the answer is no.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah. So, how is that going for her?

**John:** Good I think. I think it is going to have an amazing cast. It’s a good, funny script. She’s awesome.

**Craig:** She is definitely one of the… — I would say she is probably the sunniest writer I have ever met.

**John:** Yeah. Sunny is a nice word. I like sunny.

**Craig:** Yeah. Very sunny.

**John:** Right now, she is a consulting producer on, or some sort of producer, on the New Girl, and the new show has a similar vibe and, I think, a similar opportunity for future success as that show.

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** Speaking of success, I thought today we would focus on, well, what I would call “Six Figure Advice.” Because we did a previous podcast, I called it “Five Figure Advice,” which is when you are just starting to work, and you are starting to make five figures. So, $50,000, $60,000, you are getting paid to write and that is a great thing. So we talked about what life was like at that level.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Now I want to talk about the six figure advice. So, you are making more than $100,000, probably a fair chunk more than $100,000, and a lot of your decisions about things might be a little different. Your life looks a little different. And, based on my experience with screenwriter friends, the people who have problems with money and finances, a lot of times it really happens at about this level.

Because when you are just starting to make money you kind of know what that is like. You sort of know what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck. You know how to sort of pay for things and sort of how much, you know, to pay off your credit cards and that kind of stuff. When you hit the six figures, you are not sure if you are rich or not. You are not sure how much money is really coming in. You are not sure what your life is supposed to look like. And people make the wrong assumptions about what their life should look like. And then they end up having to take jobs out of desperation because they burned through their money quicker than they thought they would.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well that is a really good way of putting it, that people sit around and think to themselves, “What should my life look like now that I am a writer of a ‘this’ kind of movie or now that I have made this much money in a year?” And that is exactly where people go wrong because if you decide what your life should look like, what you are really basing it is on other people’s lives.

And what I have come to discover is, you have no idea truly what is going on in other people’s bank accounts. There are people who make so much more than I do, and you would never know. There are people who make so much less than I do, and you would think they make way more.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** People spend and borrow at rates that are widely disparate. So, put out of your mind what you think your life should look like, and instead just take a look at what is real for you; so that is sort of a basic starting place.

**John:** Yeah. The underlying advice behind all of this is: really pick a life that is comfortable for you, that you can easily maintain, at even less money than you are making right now. And pretend that you never make more money than that, and then you won’t go bankrupt. Then you won’t run out of money most likely.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I guess, first of all, don’t be the kind of person that defines your life by the stuff that you buy, which is hard for some people I think.

But I like, sort of the first advice is, because I feel when you start making a certain amount of money and you are looking at ways to maximize what you earn, the number one way to maximize what you earn is to pay less in taxes. [laughs] That is… — Because that is something that you actually have some control over, whereas an agent will take 10%

So we talk about incorporating, and we talk about saving money for retirement. So I guess we should probably start with incorporating.

**John:** We should talk about incorporation. So, maybe a little bit of prefacing: By the time you are making six figures, you likely have some sort of a team who is working for you. So you would have an agent, certainly, at this point. You would have a lawyer who is making your deals. Those are kind of givens; it is unlikely that you are paying a lawyer per contract or something. You have a lawyer who is taking a percentage, taking 5%.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You might have a business manager — sorry — a literary manager, someone who is your manager, who is legally not soliciting work on your behalf but is working for you. So that might be another percentage of some money going out.

You are also probably incorporating at some point in this stage. It always used to be, the rule of thumb I always heard is, when you are making more than $200,000 a year consistently…

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** …then you incorporate. I don’t know if that is still the advice, but…

**Craig:** Yeah. I have heard the…

**John:** Your lawyer would tell you that.

**Craig:** $250,000. I mean because the deal is that there are benefits that come with incorporating but there are also some costs that go along with incorporating. And so the math is to do the cost benefit and the break point where it seems like it evens out is somewhere in that $200,000 to $300,000 a year range. So, you are right. The first thing you have to ask yourself is, “Is this real? Am I actually going to be making this on a year-to-year basis?”

So you have to actually get good at sort of figuring out what your deal is, and whether you have just had one big success that you may not be able to replicate. And the key is year after year. If you sell a script for $1 million in 2013, and then you don’t sell anything in 2014, you would get hurt by the corporate stuff in a weird way, I think.

You need to kind of be able, I think, you need to be able to replicate your success, in some way, year after year after year. And to that end, and it is a little difficult to do sometimes, talk to your agent and say, “Let’s just have a, forget about coddling me, don’t worry about my feelings, let’s just be super realistic so I can plan for my family — for me and for my family. What do we expect?”

**John:** And really, you can only be planning it based on, I think, writing assignments. Because you can’t plan, “I’m going to sell a spec every year.” That is just not going to happen.

**Craig:** You are so right.

**John:** Yeah. You are only going to be making $200,000 to $300,000 a year if you are pretty consistently being hired to write things for people. And, so if you have nested jobs where you are doing a rewrite on something and you are starting a first draft on something else, and that is pretty consistently your life; if there are always two things that are vying for your attention, likely you are going to start to make the kind of money where incorporation makes sense.

But if it is just a situation where you sold one script, then it is not time to incorporate yet. I didn’t incorporate until after Go. So, I had already sold three things — been hired to write three things — but I wasn’t making enough money that it made sense for me to incorporate.

So when I get my residual statements it is really interesting, sort of like a little history lesson.

**Craig:** [laughs] Right.

**John:** The residuals for Go go to John August. The residuals for everything after that point go to my loan-out corporation, because by the time I made the contracts for those other movies I was a loan-out.

Glossary entry here. A loan-out is another word for a corporation. So a loan-out is basically the company; rather than hiring you specifically, they are hiring your corporation. And your corporation is hiring you and loaning you to the company to do the work.

**Craig:** That’s right. Usually people are an S Corp. There are two kinds of California corporations, S Corp… — Actually, it is a federal designation, S Corp and C Corp, I think. And the idea is not to shield you from any legal stuff; it doesn’t. All it really does is give you the benefits of some tax work so that you minimize the amount of tax you pay. That is pretty much what it comes down to. Taxes.

**John:** It does. And when you are saying shield you from taxes, what it lets you do is expenses that you are accruing in business, you are able to take them, to pay for them as the business rather than having to pay for them as an individual.

So, rent on an office, an assistant if you have an assistant, agent fees, other things like that can be taken out on a corporate level before you are writing the check for yourself as an individual.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, essentially, the corporation is paying you on an annual basis, or more often than annually. But in return for that, you have to do quarterly taxes and a lot of other special filings that are a hassle.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, first of all there is an expense involved in just incorporating itself. But, there is another thing, one of the more hated aspects of the tax code is called the Alternative Minimum Tax where basically if you are an individual and you make a lot of money you can write-off a whole bunch of stuff if you want, but then they basically at some point say, “You have still made too much money. We are just going to now add more tax on.” You can’t write-off all that stuff because you are not a business. You are an individual. You couldn’t possibly be doing that much as an individual that is a business expense.

But corporations don’t have alternate minimum taxation. If you run a business and you bring in $1 million, and you spent $1 million to get that $1 million, you have a net taxable income of zippo.

So, while screenwriters don’t have the kind of expenses that go along with a shop, we do have our internet, and our cable, and if we go to see movies for research, and buying books, and traveling, and leasing a car, and all this other stuff. Oh, like I have an office, you know, so my rent here. And all of that gets taken off of the amount.

So, right off the bat, you have to talk to your accountant if it is time for you to incorporate and you incorporate. And I would say every single professional screenwriter we know that has been working for more than a couple of years is incorporated.

**John:** Yeah. Now I want to back up, because my understanding when I first formed a loan-out was that there was some legal shielding, that there were good reasons for, like, not losing your house for going through a loan-out rather than going directly, making a contract directly. But that is not your understanding?

**Craig:** Eh, they call it “piercing the veil,” where if you have a corporation that is really just you, and your corporation incurs some kind of legal liability, they will go after you. They can go after the officers of the company if their feeling is that people are individually doing wrong, but then hiding behind a corporation as if the corporation did wrong. There are fewer protections than you would think.

Now, that said, I should point out we don’t have that problem as screenwriters, because the only real liability we can incur is when a studio…

For instance, when The Hangover, when Warner Brothers, and Hangover Part II, and Todd Phillips, and I, and Scott Armstrong were all sued by this kooky guy who claimed that we stole his life, I got served papers until he withdrew the suit. But in our deals with the studios, they always indemnify us. They always say, basically, “You say that you didn’t steal it and we promise to cover your legal fees and all the rest of it if you are sued.”

So, given that, because I don’t really know what other legal liability we could incur.

**John:** But couldn’t it be sexual harassment or some other kind of discrimination?

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** I just could envision some other things which they might go after you differently as a corporation.

**Craig:** That’s true. I guess, like, for instance if you are on a set and you do something to sexually harass somebody. The point is, no, your corporation is not going to protect you from that because your corporation didn’t sexually harass somebody, you did. [laugh] And they are too smart for it.

I mean you can’t… — Maybe I suppose in some narrow place it might be advantageous legally, but really what it comes down to is taxes.

**John:** Yeah. Now on the subject of taxes, at this stage you would likely have an accountant who is figuring out your taxes, because your taxes would be more complicated than what you are likely to be able to do with just simple Quicken and the tax software.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** It gets more complicated. A lot of people will have a business manager. I had a business manager right about the time that I formed the loan-out corporation. But I think you don’t. Is that still the case?

**Craig:** I do not. Yeah. I do have a tax guy who handles my taxes. And I have obviously an investment guy who handles investments. But when it comes to… — Business managers tend to do things like pay your bills, calculate the taxes that you might expect to owe and make the installations, handle your payroll. Because one of the quirks of being a loan-out company is that you tend to have to employ a payroll service to make it seem like a real company. So you actually pay yourself from one account to another, which is a bit odd. And then they handle things like your dues and, I don’t know, stuff like that.

I do all of that on Quicken. It is not that hard, you know. So I take 45 minutes every third day, pay my bills, do it all through Quicken. Bing, bang boom and I am done.

**John:** Yeah. So I have a business manager so I don’t do that. And partly it is because I will be gone on a set and I won’t be able to think about that stuff. I will just submarine into a project, and I won’t come out for a long time, and stuff wouldn’t get done otherwise, which is just the reality of sort of my life and my situation.

The danger of having a business manager, I would say, is it can insulate you from the realities of your money.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And the people who run into problems, they really have no sense of how much money they have or what they could be doing or should be doing, and that can be very dangerous. So I think it is less likely that your business manager is going to rip you off. It is more likely that you are not going to be paying attention to how much money you actually have and will get into trouble because of that.

**Craig:** Yeah, look, there are two problems with business managers as far as I can tell. One is precisely what you said, that you become infantilized to some extent, and everybody is different, and I suspect that you are pretty grown up about it. But some people really do in an almost child-like way hire these people to be their mommy and daddy, almost like they are living on an allowance from these people. And so they don’t know what their liabilities are, and they are not really in control of their destiny. The other problem is that they cost 5% often, and that is a lot of money.

Any percentage of what a very successful screenwriter makes is an enormous amount of money for what oftentimes amounts to somebody who is basically doing what I am doing 45 minutes every few days on Quicken.

**John:** Yup. I’m paying a flat monthly fee…

**Craig:** Okay, that’s better.

**John:** …which is, I think, a little bit more reasonable.

**Craig:** Yes. And that is fine. And I would say that I am in the minority, probably, of screenwriters in that I don’t use a business manager, but I do stay on top of my money and I know where it is. I like to have control of these things.

**John:** Yeah. On sort of control, insurance is the kind of thing that you are going to start thinking about more as you get into six figures. So you will have health insurance through the WGA. If you are working consistently, you are going to have health insurance, which is great. But you may need disability insurance, which was a real surprise when it was first raised to me.

As presented to me, disability insurance is important if your earning potential is much greater than your actual assets are going to be. So, as it was explained to me, and you can correct me if you feel that I am misspeaking, if I got hit by a bus and was no longer able to write, at a certain stage in my career that would have been really catastrophic because everything I could have made I would not be able to make anymore, and that was going to be a real problem. Now that my assets are bigger than sort of the money that I can make over a couple of years, it is less of a factor.

But for a time, it was really important that we find somebody to give me disability insurance. It ended up being, like, Lloyd’s of London to protect me in that situation.

**Craig:** You are absolutely right in the way you described it. I never did it. And I didn’t do it because there were a couple of problems. One, when you get disability insurance as a screenwriter, it is a little punitive because they are going to presume that whatever money you made this year, or whatever money you made in the most, that is what they are going to have to pay out. So they jack your premiums up pretty high. And the truth is, what disability short of brain damage is going to incur in such a way as to keep me from writing. If you smash my fingers I can still write. If I get hit by a bus, and I am laid up for a few months, I can still write. It is not like we drive a bus or use our eyesight. I mean, we can be blinded. [laughs] I started running down the list of stuff where it was so extreme that, basically, it was far more likely that I would be dead than disabled to the point where I couldn’t write anymore. So…

**John:** Yes. A traumatic head injury; that’s always my favorite.

**Craig:** Pretty much traumatic head injury. Eh, I don’t know. It is a little bit like earthquake insurance. Like, for instance, here in California, the State of California requires insurers to offer the option of earthquake insurance or they are not allowed to basically sell any insurance in the state. The insurers, of course, turned back to California and said, “We can’t offer earthquake insurance. It is impossible, because when an earthquake happens we are going to be bankrupted.”

So they came up with this nonsense called the Fair Plan, where basically they charge you a very high amount of money and, in exchange for that amount of money, you are insured against earthquakes. But you are not really insured against earthquakes because there is a premium. So if there is earthquake damage, you have to pay 20%, I think, of the value of your house just right off the bat.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then they cover the rest of the structure. But the point is there is never 20% damage to your house. It is like 5% or all of it. So if it is all of it, just walk away. If it is 5%, you are not going to get any insurance money anyway. So very few people take the earthquake insurance, and that is kind of the way I saw disability.

I’m sure people are going to write in angrily and say that I am insane and I should get it, but…

**John:** Yeah. And I am not sure it is going to be as important for you to get it at this stage in your career as it was a couple of years ago.

**Craig:** So I got away with something. [laughs]

**John:** You snuck away with it.

**Craig:** I love it.

**John:** Look at my friends Chad and Dara. They just recently got disability insurance because they are at exactly that stage in their career where their earning potential is much greater than their actual assets would be at this point.

**Craig:** Right. That makes sense.

**John:** And life insurance is a similar situation where life insurance is important for a family up to a certain point of income, up to a certain point of assets. But once the assets are actually significantly bigger than the yearly income it is not as big a deal.

**Craig:** It is not as big a deal. And obviously, the older you get it becomes less and less important.

**John:** Now simpler decisions, I think they are simpler decisions, for younger people who are facing this is your student loans. And I think I see people rush to pay off their student loans, which I think can be a mistake. Student loans are the cheapest loans you are going to find outside of a mortgage. If the money is burning a hole in your pocket, I guess better to pay off your student loans than buy a fancy car.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But it is not the best use of your money.

**Craig:** Well, yeah, let’s talk about loans in general, because as you make money you do… — Look, you don’t need to become obsessed with finances. I actually, I don’t really like the subject of money. And when I say I don’t like it, it is not that it turns me off, it is just not… — I don’t have any passion for it.

But it behooves us to at least know some basics. And one of the basics of finance is what is the cost of money, what is the interest rate, what do people charge you for loans. And right now they are at historically low rates.

Student loans have traditionally always been artificially low because they are supported by the government, to some extent. And you are right; if you can, there are some kinds of loans that are good to have. I have a mortgage. I could pay off my mortgage, but I don’t because the interest is deductible for my taxes. I might as well just hold on to that money, let it grow at a certain rate, take the tax benefit, and if it is such time that rates should move in such a way that it doesn’t make sense, then I will pay it.

So, there are certain kinds of loans where it is okay to have. Here are the loans that are not okay. So, yes, student loans, yes. Mortgages, yes. Smart mortgages. Credit cards. Never.

**John:** Yes. You should never. And if you are making this much money you should never be carrying a balance on your credit cards. That is ridiculous.

**Craig:** Ever. I mean, I don’t care what you make. If you’re…

**John:** But particularly at this level of the podcast you should not be paying less than everything.

**Craig:** That’s right. Because credit card interest rates are always much, much higher than what you can get in the bank, and oftentimes wildly higher to the point of usury. You see rates of 17%, 18%, 19%, 20% when the prime rate right now is almost zero. Money is almost free at this point.

So, get all of your money off your credit cards. If you have any on your credit cards it is insane. And then start, I would say the next best thing you could do is figure out retirement, which seems a little weird, because I started thinking about that when I was 21. But it is the best savings, the best investment you can make.

**John:** Yeah. So, to back up a little bit, if you have a loan-out corporation, one of the advantages of your loan-out corporation is you can set up a pension plan.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** And that is one way to sort of divert some of your money to that pension that is in your name. And you can’t sock away all that much money, but you can sock away some money, and that helps.

Writers Guild has a pension. It is not going to be a ton.

**Craig:** Well, it depends on what you earn and how many years you have earned. I mean, it could be nice.

**John:** Yeah. But most of what you are thinking about for retirement is really just the money you didn’t spend. That’s the money you earned that you stuck in an account and forgot about. And that is your retirement.

**Craig:** Well, there is, look, level one as you alluded to, there are what they call Qualified Plans. A Qualified Plan is any kind of investment plan where you put your money in, specifically for retirement. You can’t touch it until you are 65; if you do there are penalties. But if you can be good, and not touch it until you are 65, there is a tremendous tax savings on that money.

Traditionally, you don’t actually get taxed on that income. So if you can sock away, and when you have a corporation you are right, you can set up your own 401(k) plan. Maybe you put in $40,000. That is $40,000 untaxed dollars. And when you are a big shot screenwriter, your tax rate is nearly half. So, that’s a lot of money that you are saving right then and there.

So, job number one is maximize as much as you can into a Qualified Plan. It saves a huge amount of money.

Then, I think the next thing that you are talking about is saving. The lost art of saving.

**John:** Yeah. Keeping the money. Just don’t spend it. Don’t be Derek Haas and set up your line of credit at the Hard Rock Casino.

**Craig:** Well, you know, you can, because I have gambled with Derek, and he is like a leprechaun.

So, like, he has a line of credit and then amazingly… — I didn’t understand how that line of credit stuff works, and then I did it with him. We were at the Wynn. So, you open up a line of credit, let’s say for $10,000. And then you sit down at a table and you say, “I want a marker for $2,000.” So they give you $2,000. You don’t have to give them any cash. And then they have you sign a check, and the check is to them for $2,000. Right.

Then, let’s say you win, and now you have $4,000 in chips. You go to the cashier and you say, “I would like to buy back my marker.” And you give them $2,000 in chips and they come back and they give you that check and you rip it up. And ripping that thing up is the greatest feeling in the world. It is actually, really; it is like a huge dopamine reward. Super… — God, gambling is pernicious.

**John:** Yeah. It’s all the fun of destruction, plus there is money involved.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah. And just like how cool — you are like, “Look at me. I’m ripping up a check! Screw you. I win.”

**John:** On a less dopamine-inducing aspect of money, if we are talking about retirement, I think we have to be honest about the lifecycle of a screenwriter.

And so you are unlikely to be making this six figures for your whole career. And your whole career may be a lot shorter than you would like it to be. There are not many screenwriters in their 50s who are making that much money.

And that is the issue, is that your maximum earning as a screenwriter tends to come in maybe, it’s not your first year. It is probably years five through ten.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And after that point, some people will continue to make a ton of money, but most people won’t so much.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, look, what they don’t… — Everybody has their eye on what they call their big break, where you break into the business. And no one tells you that right after the break is a cliff where almost everyone that got their break falls off the cliff. And this is what is so, and frankly, it has gotten worse as far as I can tell. It is a harder business to stay alive in, because when you and I broke into the business Hollywood was making way more movies.

Now they make fewer, which means they develop fewer, which means they hire fewer of us, which means there are fewer of us.

When people ask, “How long can I expect to work in this business?” obviously the answer varies wildly according to your talent and your abilities to make your weight. But let’s just talk about averages. Not long. In truth, it is a bit like professional sports where a lot of people get their break, they play for a season or two seasons, and then they hurt themselves, or they just don’t quite click. And they are gone.

And there are guys who work five years and then are gone. There are people who work ten years and then are gone. To have a career that goes more than 20 years, you are in rarified air. You are in limited territory. There are not many of us. Look, I am on year 16 right now. You probably are similar to that I would imagine.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I would like to think I can get another four years. I would like to think I can hit that big 20 year mark. I think I will, but to be one of those guys that can put together… — Look, when I look at some of the names of people that say to me, “I’m having trouble finding work,” my heart sinks. It is a very difficult thing to make an actual, real career out of this.

And, please, for those of you who do have that wonderful day where you get that break, do not confuse that with a career. That is the beginning. In fact, the hardest work is yet to come. So, be prepared for that. If you are, you have got a shot.

**John:** Yeah. What I will say is you and I are approaching this from a pure screenwriting point of view, where we are writing screenplays that will become movies. Some A-list writers and sort of near A-list writers transition to TV and do other amazing things because TV is better in many ways. And sometimes people extend their career at the edges of what is a traditional screenwriting career.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So there are other things other than just falling back and teaching at a university, but it is important to be realistic about how much time a person ends up having a screenwriting career.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you know, there is also something very cruel about the way the business functions. There is this famous experiment that was done many years ago with rats where they would put them in a cage, and then they would flash a green light, and then shock the bottom of the cage. And they had another cage where they would just shock them occasionally, but there was no green light. And the rats in the green light cage lived twice as long because they were able to prepare for the pain.

But random jolts of pain are disturbing. Similarly, random jolts of success are disturbing. And, you know, Pavlov found out that if you didn’t always reward the dog when you rang the bell, but occasionally, it was even a stronger effect, because there was this anxiety of maybe this time. That’s why casinos function so well. And screenwriting can do that to people. I have seen people just go for years and years, and then there is this burst of activity, and like, finally, it is going to be okay.

And they ride that for another three or four very difficult, difficult years. And then it happens again, or it doesn’t, and I have to say at some point, you turn around and go, “Wait a second, did I just waste 15 years of my life in panic?” And it is just a very hard career.

I have to say, of all the arguments that the Writers Guild make to the studios about why we should be paid more, or how we should be paid, or two-step deals and all the rest of it, I do feel one of the strongest arguments we make is that the studios have effectively made this, it’s like it’s not a career anymore. They have ruined it.

I don’t know why anybody would get into this as a 21-year-old expecting to be able to support a family and make it to retirement as a screenwriter. It is just brutal.

**John:** Well that was a very depressing look at six figure advice, which really wasn’t meant to be so depressing. If you are making six figures, that’s good. It’s a good thing. It’s a good thing. Congratulations, you are making six figures.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And we realize that this is sort of esoteric advice because most people aren’t going to have a screenwriting career that gets them to that point and they won’t need to incorporate, but we always get those kinds of questions. And when we talk to real screenwriters who are working, some of the first questions they ask is, “Hey, do I need to incorporate? What should I do? Do I need insurance?” And so we thought we would talk about that.

On a future date, we will talk about seven figure advice, because then everything changes, because then you are looking at, well, like what kind of wood is best for the yacht that you are building.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. And where can I legally kill and eat a panda.

**John:** Yes. And then there is eight figure advice, which is really esoteric because I don’t think there is any screenwriter who makes eight figures.

**Craig:** Not in one year. No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** No. Not in one year.

**John:** I think a couple of the super producers make eight figures in a year, but there is no screenwriter. And precious few directors make eight figures a year.

**Craig:** Yeah. I know one who definitely had a pretty good year.

**John:** I don’t want to… — One who you are working with who had a very good, lucky year.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t know how lucky, but definitely it was… — He earned it, but man, that was a big year.

Yeah. I have to say, in summary, that if you are making six figures, I am thrilled for you and frankly any depression I have is related to the fact that it has become harder to become one of those people. And I want screenwriting to be a successful, viable career where people can actually work at it for the big bulk of their productive years. And right now, the squeeze is very difficult. And I do think that the studios are going to have to confront the fact that they are depleting their farm system in a dangerous way. And screenwriters need to be nurtured just like anything else.

**John:** Yup. We are the research and development for the film industry. And if they cut the R&D, then innovation will suffer, and things will get very, very bad.

**Craig:** Very, very bad.

**John:** I was just talking with a mutual friend of ours who is now segueing out of screenwriting and into digital development, so doing stuff for the iPhone and for other applications. And so she was meeting with VC people, and the VC people would say, “Oh, we like your idea but we only write like $10 million checks. We don’t really do the $3.5 million checks.”

And I was torn between my desire to congratulate her, I guess, and find those people and either throttle them or take their wallets.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Because I feel what we are mostly wrestling with here is just a lack of money. And if we could open up some purse strings here, I think there would be a happier time for a lot of us.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t see that happening any time in the near future.

**John:** Yeah. We need another Village Roadshow or some other outside entity, to come in with a lot of money, and start throwing money around. And they will make stupid choices, but their stupid choices benefit us greatly.

**Craig:** I think even more than that, what would be useful is a new market. You know, whatever, if they could figure out downloads in a way that was really awesome or, I don’t know. It is getting tough out there man.

**John:** Yeah. But you know what? It won’t be our generation that figures it out. It will be the next generation.

**Craig:** We will be old and doddering in our chairs watching the world burn around us, giggling into our glasses of panda blood.

**John:** Do you know who is going to benefit from it?

**Craig:** No, who?

**John:** The kids at the Cinema School in the Bronx.

**Craig:** Those kids.

**John:** Those kids will figure it all out.

**Craig:** Those kids are going to graduate and go, “Wait, what?! I get what?! I’m going to earn…oh God.”

**John:** Those fools.

**Craig:** “I should have gone to pre-med.”

**John:** Yeah.

Craig, thank you for another podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. It was a good one.

**John:** I will talk to you soon.

**Craig:** Bye.

**John:** Bye.