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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/writing-other-things).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 318 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we won’t be talking much about screenwriting at all. Instead, we’re going to be looking at writing books and songs and other things with some advice for collaborating with folks outside of our normal expertise. To help us do that we have Aline Brosh McKenna back to join us. Welcome Aline.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** I am back in black.

**John:** So Aline Brosh McKenna is the Joan Rivers of our podcast in the sense that she is a frequent visitor, but also special in a way that Joan Rivers was special to us all.

**Craig:** Yep.

**Aline:** Everyone tells me that all the time.

**Craig:** All day long.

**John:** Before we get into the meat of the episode we have some reminders. Craig and I will be at the Austin Film Festival at the end of October. We’re going to be doing a live show. We’re also going to be doing a live Three Page Challenge. So for the Three Page Challenge we’re doing at Austin, we have a special little checkbox you can mark if you are submitting a script to the Three Page Challenge that says I will be at Austin and will be in the audience.

So if you’re going to go to Austin and you would like us to consider your Three Page Challenge, you need to go to johnaugust.com/threepage. Attach your script like normal, but then also check the little box that says I will be at the Austin Film Festival.

And so our producer, Megan, will be going through those scripts and picking some great ones for us to talk about live on stage and to invite those screenwriters up on stage with us to discuss what they wrote.

**Craig:** And we’re pretty nice to them. I mean, we don’t soft pedal anything when we do those in Austin. I don’t think we are any more or less discriminating about our comments, but I don’t want anyone to think that we beat you up or humiliate you in front of anyone. That’s never happened. We’re very nice.

**Aline:** Have any of those turned into movies or sold screenplays?

**John:** So, yes. Some of the Three Page Challenges we have looked at have sort of moved up through the ranks. I don’t know if anything has actually been produced yet, but they’ve placed well on Black List things. They’ve gotten people started. So, every once and awhile we’ll get — actually, the last episode somebody wrote in saying the three pages we looked at were instrumental in the rewrite and so therefore they were thanking us for helping out down the road.

**Aline:** And have you guys ever thought of sending in three pages of your own to see how it went?

**Craig:** We did it.

**John:** Craig and I on an early episode we took a look at our first scripts.

**Craig:** The very first ones.

**Aline:** But I mean sending it in randomly.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** Absolutely. The other one wouldn’t know that it was one of us.

**Aline:** I think you should just to see if it made it past your producer.

**Craig:** I think they will. I think they will. Yeah. Not to put down our pool of applicants, but yeah, I think we would make it through. I got to be honest with you.

**Aline:** I just found an old script from 2000. I mean, I went into the garage and I looked at the titles on the side and I was like, oh my god, I forgot that one. But I found an unsold spec from 2000. And the first 15 pages I was like this is pretty cute, and then it was just shame spiral.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Have you gone back to redo any of your old scripts? Have you tried to dust anything off?

**Aline:** You know what? A producer called me like a couple months ago and wanted to some of my old stuff. So most of it wasn’t on a computer anywhere. So, I had to scan it. That was pretty funny. And it had my notes in it. And a couple of those were pretty good. Those were two that had sold and I don’t think he’s going to do anything with them, but you know when people ask me if I have anything, I point them towards things.

**John:** Well you were so busy writing new things, so tell us about the new things. First off, you have a new season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend happening.

**Aline:** Indeed.

**John:** This is season three. So when do we start to see the new episodes?

**Aline:** Friday, October 13. Friday the 13 we start airing.

**Craig:** Right around the corner.

**Aline:** So we’re midway through shooting the season and so I’m pretty tired. But yeah it’s exciting. I can make an announcement here.

**John:** We’re so excited.

**Craig:** Oh! God!

**Aline:** Your friend and our friend, John Gatins, is going to be appearing on our television program.

**John:** Is he playing a high school quarterback?

**Aline:** He is not. He is playing somebody really handsome and memorable. And someone sings a song about him.

**Craig:** Huh. OK.

**John:** That sounds great. So John Gatins was also in my movie The Nines. I don’t know if that was his last acting credit, but he’s a very talented screenwriter but also a person who can be put in front of a lens without breaking a camera.

**Aline:** Yes. He has another thing coming up that he’s acting in, but I’m not at liberty to disclose. But I think this is a burgeoning little area for him. I think we should all as we retire look towards these like cottage industries. This leads naturally to what we’re saying.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s no surprise here. I mean, John Gatins is an A-list screenwriter who would at any given point swap out whatever he is working on as a screenwriter to do one day on a show with three lines. That’s a fact. He is a — I guess the most frustrated actor. He was an actor. He should have been an actor. He’s a pretty good actor, you know.

**Aline:** He still seems like a movie star.

**Craig:** He does. But the problem is he’s got skills. Like he’s got skills — his skill as a writer is extraordinary. His skill as an actor, forgive me John, is not extraordinary. It is good. But it’s not–

**Aline:** Well he was smart enough to figure that out.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah. But, man, he’s got the bug. You can tell.

**John:** All right. So we have Aline here not to talk about John Gatins, but to talk about and really to plug her new project. So this is Jane. This is a graphic novel that is the retelling of the story of Jane Eyre. How did this come to be? So first off, we should say — full disclosure — this book is available today as this podcast comes out.

**Aline:** September 19.

**John:** That should be the day this episode drops.

**Aline:** Great.

**Craig:** Drops.

**John:** September 19, they’re buying your book. Everybody who is listening to this podcast should pause and buy the book and then listen to the rest of this podcast so we can talk about this book.

**Aline:** Yes please.

**John:** What is it and how did it come to be?

**Aline:** So about six years ago I signed on to adapt a graphic novel called Rust, which I loved, which was published by a company named Archaia. And in adapting that graphic novel I kind of fell in love with graphic novels in general and started just devouring them. And I got infatuated with this artist named Ramón Pérez who did a book called Tale of Sand. And I had had an idea that I thought could be a movie but wasn’t necessarily a movie. And so I started talking to the folks at Archaia, including Stephen Christy who now runs their — Archaia was later bought by BOOM! And Stephen runs BOOM!’s movie department.

So I started talking to them about doing a book. And I really wanted to do it with Ramón. And I was always obsessed with the Bronte sisters’ novels as a kid, particularly Jane Eyre. And what I loved about Jane Eyre was the kind of sensual relationship that the books kind of in three parts, her growing up, her being with Rochester, and after Rochester. And I was always kind of infatuated with — and would go back and reread the Rochester section.

And I realized that was sort of my love template was the sort of remote kind of emotionally constipated difficult dark man. Love stories that I like. I think people who like Wuthering Heights are more into those stories where the love interest is like your sibling, like twinning. But I was always interested in men who were very other.

So I always wanted to do kind of an updated version of that. So I pitched that to Archaia and we got Ramón on board. And then–

**John:** Can I stop you for a second?

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** To talk about what a pitch is like to a comic book or a graphic novel house. So, how are you describing it? Was it sort of like going on a movie pitch? This is what it’s going to be and these are the beats of the story? What were you describing it as?

**Aline:** I don’t know if I can have the most representative experience, because I was working with Stephen and Archaia every single day. So Steve and I talked about it a ton and I wrote an outline for it and I gave it to him. Maybe I wrote like a five or ten-page outline that I gave to him. But, we were sort of dying to work together, so it was like — I think I had less of a screening process than you might normally have.

I will say that every single piece of it took forever. Sending in the outline. Them deciding to do the book. Finding Ramón. Getting Ramón. Making Ramón’s deal. Then waiting for him to be available, because he’s like one of the premier comic book illustrators and he’s always booked back to back to back.

So we had to wait for him, so in the meanwhile what we did was Ramón did a first series of drawings. And basically the book is like the sensual part of Jane Eyre, the Rochester part, in contemporary New York. And it’s a young girl who goes to be a nanny for a rich powerful man who is sort of Bruce Wayne like and gets pulled into his world. And at first it was going to be a little bit more genre spy and have more action in it. And so as we started working on it we thought, hey, this could be a movie. And so we sold it to Fox 2000 with Kinberg attached to produce it five years ago.

**John:** This is Simon Kinberg?

**Aline:** Simon Kinberg, yeah. So Simon Kinberg and Genre, his company, we pitched it around. Fox 2000 was the one who bought it. And I worked on it as a screenplay for maybe two years. And I had many different versions of it. As a movie, it was very hard to crack because as you guys know when you put any action intrigue thriller stuff into your script, it’s one of those things, it’s like dropping a tiny spore in a glass and then you come back a couple days later and it’s just covered in mold. Any little bit of action or intrigue that you build to — that you put in the beginning of a script really has to lead to something kind of monumental.

And that collision of that genre with the romance was always very difficult to calibrate. And at some point it seemed like the studio was looking for really just an updated version of Jane Eyre and I had wanted to add this overlay of kind of intrigue and corporate plotting. So, I developed it with them for a couple years. They had an option on the book. And then they fell out of option. And so Ramón and I started working on the book with three or four different drafts that I had written for Fox 2000, all of which were a little bit different.

**John:** So, to back up here, you have this idea for a book.

**Aline:** Yes.

**John:** And you make the deal for the book. But before you actually write the book you’re selling the rights to Fox 2000 and developing the screenplay and there’s still no book?

**Aline:** No, my god, we’re so far from a book. So we had sample drawings that I brought around with me and I met with everybody. And it’s actually, as you know, great to walk in holding something. So I had these beautiful drawings from Ramón. And so that was part of the sales pitch of it. And in working on the screenplay was sort of developing the book at the same time. And I was waiting for Ramón to be ready, also.

And so there was no book for a really long time and I think the studio started to believe there never was going to be a book. And I have never waited for a man more than I have waited for Ramón. I mean, I was like metaphorically waiting outside his doorstep for a very long time. And then he — when he finally turned his attention to it we kind of sat down, looked to what I had done with the screenplay, and then kind of formulated a story which was actually quite different from the screenplays. Because I had become convinced overtime that the kind of Hitchcocky plot needed to be very streamlined. And it could for a book.

And that’s what was great was like for a movie, especially in the moment that we’re in right now, you can’t really have — I mean, if you look at a lot of the Hitchcock movies they crescendo to a moment of great tension, but not action and not things blowing up, and not nuclear briefcases. And maybe you guys can think of one, but I can’t really think of a movie that has that sort of like Hitchcockian thriller thing but doesn’t build to a big genre — doesn’t then owe a third act where people are shooting each other in armor tanks.

**Craig:** Well, Get Out sort of I think is a kind of neo-Hitchcock kind of thing.

**Aline:** Yeah, horror. But that really is like, yeah for sure. And horror is definitely — like Get Out is horror but not very gory. But it’s a little bit more in the world of jump scares and Jane is a little bit more in the world of like Rebecca.

**Craig:** Right. Right.

**Aline:** Where it’s a romantic drama with thriller elements — suspicion, those kinds of things.

**John:** What you’re describing sounds more like what we do in television now, or what you do on limited run television, like a Netflix show can have that sustained build but doesn’t have the expectation of giant set pieces all the time.

**Aline:** Right. And so as a movie I started to understand why they were nervous about it and what was good about that was having explored that then when we got a chance to go full boar on the book we just were able to throw that aside and really go for the simplicity of the romance. There is an intrigue plot and there is a big twist in the book that I came up with after I saw the first schematic that Ramón did.

Ramón did a book that had partly finished art and then partly kind of sketches. And it’s really beautiful. I have it in my house. It’s gorgeous.

**John:** So, Aline, what were you actually writing? What was the document that you created that then Ramón would use as he went off to do art? Like what were you handing him?

**Aline:** Well, in our case because we had so many scripts we kind of started with that. And then he would do like a sketch book that was sort of taking certain bits and pieces of it and then I would respond to him with notes about the story. And then we had a couple of meetings where we went through and at that point you’re kind of — you’re kind of outside of text in a way because you’re in — you’re just in pictures, so you’re kind of making a silent movie in a way, like Ramón is.

You know, he’s really looking to boil down the pictures and it takes a while before you get back to the dialogue part. Because we were just talking about kind of purely visual storytelling. And this was — a lot of the stuff I did before I was working on the TV show. And a lot of what was driving me was before I did the TV show, I think I’ve talked about this here, I had really reached a point with movies where answering to directors is really challenging, especially when you’ve been doing it for twenty some years, and not having control over your finished product. Whether you love the director or don’t like the director, at the end of the day not having final say gets to be excruciating.

And so the book was someplace where Ramón and I were collaborating but his skills are different from mine. But I had final say over the story, so it was kind of like directing in a sense. But like sitting with your DP and they’re coming up with amazing visuals to translate the story. So there was a whole period time where it was really just pictures that were going back and forth. And I would look at the sequence.

And so because Ramón is so busy and because we had taken so long, Ramón finally gave me a pass that had all the images in it and kind of temped dialogue, you know, which you can imagine what that’s like. It was sort of temp dialogue. Some of which had been in the screenplay, but not a lot of it. Some from the beginning had. But then a bunch of it was just like stuff that had been slugged in there to kind of reflect what was happening.

So then I did two or three giant passes where I went through the book and I did dialogue. And what was funny is no one ever gave me a script. I kept asking them, “do you have all of the dialogue in one editable document?” And I probably could have had somebody do it. Instead, what I did was I kind of drew pictures and wrote notes and scribbled on it and drew bubbles. And so we ended up doing that all the way through two or three times to make sure that all the dialogue matched the action. And then there’s a little bit of, you know, at a certain point when we had this deadline Ramón had drawn some things and I wanted to tweak the story a little bit, but the art was already done. So it reminded me a lot of editing where you just got what you got, and then you’ve got to make it make sense, which is always kind of fun and challenging.

So we did a lot of passes through the dialogue once the images were all in there. And he’s very innovative in terms of the way he chooses to tell story. And it’s way, way sparer than a movie is. And there is some voiceover in there. You know, at the end really scrambling and getting drafts back was really fun, and the letterer is incredibly talented. It’s very beautiful. And the woman who did the color with Ramon is very talented. I can give you their names and their Twitter handles.

And so he’s a true artist in a sense that — as writers and directors like, yeah, you know, he’s an artist, she’s an artist. Meh. But like an artist-artist that you think of as a kid. You know, like somebody who picks up pen and ink and makes art. I think he’s a magician.

**John:** Let’s talk about your use of time. Because this was five years of your life. And so it wasn’t continuous, but it was a lot of your time. And every time there was a new draft there was more stuff to do. And I don’t know the economics of all it, but I’m 90% sure that this was not profitable to you in any useful way.

**Aline:** It was not, no.

**John:** But so why do it? Why — was it worth it?

**Aline:** I really wanted to have a finished product that I could hold in my hand that was mine. As I was saying, I just had had a lot of experiences with movies where I could kind of see my work in the movie if I squinted my eyes and didn’t look too closely and it had been changed so much by the time the movie got made and that’s a tough thing. So I really wanted to do something that I could have the final say over.

And then the other element of it was I always thought I was going to be a novelist as a kid. At a certain point it became clear to me that I was not really like a prose person, like a person who lives to sort of polish prose. And I remember being at a point thinking, god, what am I going to do if I want to be a writer but I’m not like somebody who wants to describe a forest for half a page.

So when I found graphic novels it was kind of similar to when I discovered movies. I mean, obviously I knew movies existed. But when I started looking at them as something I could do, it’s a format I really love because it’s also visual storytelling. But you don’t have to have a director tell you you can’t do what you want.

**John:** It sounds like you made it through the whole process without ever sort of hitting a graphic novel or comic book script. Because there is–

**Aline:** There is a more official format for graphic novels and I’m sure you can find samples of it. And they look like treatments and they’re very dense treatments and they’re like for a whole book they’re probably 60 pages. But because I had written multiple versions of the script we kind of started in conversation about that. And the other thing was it gave Ramón a lot more leeway.

And because I hadn’t written a lot of graphic novels, I wasn’t like panel six is this, panel nine is that, panel 12 is this. And I don’t think he would have enjoyed that. I think one of the reasons that he wanted to work with me was because there was a lot of room for him to invent in the storytelling and sort of come up with visual ways to translate the story beats.

**John:** Craig, you know, you’re going off now to do your TV show for HBO, and is there any part of your experience that is similar to Aline’s in the sense of like you want to do something that is actually just yours, that’s new territory? It’s not something that you’ve done before?

**Craig:** Well I suppose I would say that foolishly every time I start anything I think of it as mine. The difference here is that it’ll stay mine. And in movies they take it away. So, I just never learned the lesson. I don’t know how else really to write anything anyway unless I just think, well, this is mine. It’ll be mine as long as it’s mine.

But I think the major difference is going to come down the line. I mean, I have had the experience a number of times in movies where I have not worked like a typical screenwriter. You and I have talked about the Screenwriter Plus. So, I end up in editing rooms. And I end up in lots of meetings and talking about budget and planning and all the rest of it. So, I’ve had the experience there, but ultimately in film, yeah, at some point–

**Aline:** Yeah, I have, too. And I know John has, too. But when you’re in a room and you know somebody else can — you know, ultimately someone else has final say, you will really enjoy being in a situation where you’re the commander of the writing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well, I’m definitely the commander of the writing. There’s no question about that. And I think the good news is that our little family that we’re putting together is pretty great. And we’re all very respectful of each other and I think we all want to hear from each other. And so I’m not really actually dwelling that much, frankly, on the specifics of the authority fact, you know? I’m just kind of going about trying to make the best thing I can with these people.

**John:** I got to visit Aline on set this season to watch them filming a musical number, which was fantastic. And there’s still glitter that I find in my shoes. And one of the things that really impressed me about it is you had sort of a quiet authority as we were sort of sitting in video village watching things. And you would sort of ask me a question or you would sort of make an observation and the director, you were totally respectful to the director and to the choreographer and to Rachel who is doing stuff, but you were mindful of things that they might not otherwise have seen.

And I think that can be a crucial role for a writer on any set, but particularly when it’s your thing. You have a vision of what the overall thing is you’re trying to achieve. I didn’t hear you saying do this, don’t do this, but you were sort of reminding people of what your priorities were.

**Aline:** The three of us have often talked about how strange it is that there isn’t an onset writer on every project. Because we know the story. We’ve imagined the world before anyone else. So the only reason to cast that person aside is an ego reason. I can’t see any other reason to do it. And the directors that I worked with that welcomed me into the process where I was that Screenwriter Plus were the most confident ones.

So, you know, and a TV show, it emanates from the writing. And that is a cultural — I actually found as a screenwriter I thought a lot more about, hey, how can I get my point across in a tactful way? And in TV you don’t really need to. You just are the person that they’ll go to to ask which pants should they be wearing and what source music should be playing. And what color should this character’s hair be? And you know all those things.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, the weirdness of the delineation in movies is such that they think that the writer is just responsible for whatever they consider to be writing. But the problem is what they consider to be writing is a very narrow view. It’s certainly an incomplete view. And in television, somehow magically, they all understand that writing encompasses everything. We don’t go into these things not thinking about all of this stuff. It is a bizarre business we work in because I think that for everybody else it comes down to questions of title.

Literally. I don’t know why they are so sheep-like in their need for titles and authority that is rigidly defined by titles. But it is why when you are making a television show if you’re the head person on that television show, you need to be called Executive Producer. That’s it. If you’re not, you’re not. Because they need it. It’s the weirdest thing.

And really it should just be writer like in charge.

**Aline:** Well, because it’s a military operation, you know. It is. And so in those situations they need to know and it really is for practical purposes. You know, on our show from the beginning Rachel and I and Erin Ehrlich, we had three executive producers, but I’m the showrunner which is an extra designation. And you need to have that also because if there’s multiple executive producers, really for all practical purposes, the people on the crew need to know who they can go to to get the fastest answer that won’t change. Because you waste money and time if you’re going to this person and then they change and then it changes and then it changes.

So, having one person who is answering that shirt should be blue; the watch should be black. He should have blond hair. You want to make that one person for practical purposes as much as anything else. And in television that’s the writer.

**Craig:** Yep.

**Aline:** And, you know, I just wanted to say movies are in a desperate place creatively right now. I mean, I’ve left my house to go to the movies I think four times this year. And I think one of them is Get Out. We’ve all seen Get Out. Kind of a cut above. And TV is so good right now because it belongs to writers. It’s run by writers. I firmly believe that. And through whatever accident of circumstance made that happen, I’m really hoping that the movie business learns from like if you let the people who create the stories manage the stories, your stuff will be better.

**Craig:** Although, I have to say if you look at the historical context of these things, you could also point to the ‘70s and say that in the ‘70s, at the height of auteurism, movies were vastly superior to television. There was still the same delineation. The directors were in charge of movies. Writers were in charge of television. And an enormous amount of television was horrendous. Nothing like what it is now.

It seems to me that one of the keys to all of this is what’s happening on the other side of the creative line between us — all of us, directors and writers — and the companies that are asking us to make things. In television right now, because of the multiplicity of formats and the delivery system, I think that the people on the other side are adventuresome and also craving content. They are content hungry. Which means people are getting a chance to try things. And on the movie side, on the other side of this line, the people making movies are frightened. They are very restricted in how much content they want. And they are very limited in the kind of content that they’re willing to pay for.

So, all of that is a squeeze down. It is tempting to say, well, if we put the writers in charge, as opposed to putting the directors in charge, everything would change in film. I think it’s just as easy for people to point to this weekend with It and say, well, there is a director who is in charge and a different person who wrote the script.

Mostly I wish I could just say to the people running the movie studios, the movie parts, the feature parts, that writers don’t need to be in charge of movies any more than directors need to be in charge of movies. Writers and directors together should be in charge of movies. At any given moment on a set, if they decide that the director needs to have the ultimate authority there in that moment. That’s fine. But it’s the philosophy of auteurism that’s the stupidest thing and I think does rot away at a lot of what would have been otherwise been good films.

**John:** I can definitely see that. And circling back to what Aline was saying about sort of having to have one person in charge, having a militaristic operation, I think the reason why we get to that point is that the stakes are so high. Time is limited. Money is limited. Someone has to make those decisions and there’s all this pressure on it. And I wonder if part of the reason why you wanted to go off and do this graphic novel is because there was no pressure. There were not stakes. It was just basically — for you it was kind of a lark. And if it turned out great, fantastic. If it didn’t turn out great, there’s no skin off your back.

And to me like the Big Fish musical was to some degree that, at least in the early stages. Once it became — we were headed to Broadway, then the stakes were incredibly high. But for years as we were developing that show, the stakes were just like, well, we wrote a song. Like we made a thing. That song was delightful. And it’s a thing that didn’t exist otherwise.

Some of the stuff I do with apps is a similar kind of thing where the stakes just aren’t as high. I don’t have to get somebody’s permission.

**Aline:** And also you get to derive that beginning, middle, and end of a process of a product, of having something you can hold in your hand. And, you know, the writer girl that I was at 12 years old would be super thrilled to see this graphic novel about Jane Eyre. And rather quite confused by the giant pile of unproduced scripts in my garage. So, you know, you don’t set out to generate a bunch of printed out pieces of paper. You generate to make things. And I think now more than ever people want to make things. And screenwriters who are in a more frustrating circumstance, kind of everyone I know is making some thing.

**John:** Yeah. We always talk to these aspiring writers who say like, oh, it’s so frustrating as I do these things, and we always try to remind them unlike an actor or unlike a director a writer can just go off and write something, which is fantastic. But I think sometimes we forget that lesson ourselves is that we end up sort of seeking permission to write the things or we might go off and spec our own thing down the road, but usually we’re busy enough writing the stuff for the studios and we’re sort of in that grind.

**Aline:** But Craig, same thing for you. Or Chernobyl was like, yeah, I’ll do this. And it was sort of a sideline during many years of doing busy screenwriting stuff.

**Craig:** No, no, not really.

**Aline:** No?

**Craig:** No.

**Aline:** I mean, not on a sideline, but it’s certainly not making you as much money as the other stuff.

**Craig:** Oh, no, financially it’s nothing at all like that. No. There’s no question about that. But the amount of time that I have devoted to it and the amount of time I’m going to devote to it will probably make it the thing that I have worked the longest and hardest on, actually. I mean, because it’s five scripts. They’re each 60 — well, the last one is a little bit longer. So, think of it as like basically three movies. So it’s three movies worth of scripts and then there’s, you know, all of the prep and then the production and the post. It’s going to be a lot. And then just an enormous amount of research, also.

The nice thing about writing some kinds of movies, and I did about two weeks of research for Identity Thief. You know, I’ve done years of research for this. So, no, this is a pretty serious endeavor for me.

**Aline:** Can I say you have one of the most eclectic, delightfully eclectic filmographies of anyone I know.

**Craig:** It’s about to get more. I’m about to achieve levels of, yeah, strange eclecticism. No one would…

**Aline:** IMDb head scratcher.

**Craig:** Yeah, I think that’s great.

**Aline:** Oh, I think it’s great, too. I mean, listen, a lot of the writers and directors that we love from like the ‘30s and ‘40s in particular, it’s like they did everything. They made every kind of movie. George Cukor. They made every kind of movie. William Wyler.

**John:** As I always say in interviews, my favorite genre of movies are movies that get made. So I will happily write anything that can possibly exist.

**Craig:** Pretty much. But I think that there is a nice thing that does happen after a while. If you do spend a lot of time doing what you are asked to do, and what you’re being paid well to do, then eventually you do arrive at a moment where you have the luxury of saying I’m going to spend a lot of time now on something that I’m not going to make a lot of money on, but I just care about. I couldn’t have done that before. I just, you know, this is where when people do talk a little bit about the economic realities of starting out in Hollywood now, I am incredibly sympathetic to people who are like, look, this whole business now seems to be designed to be a place where independently wealthy children can begin to work. Because–

**Aline:** Boy, I really agree with that.

**Craig:** You know, I couldn’t have done — I had nothing. I don’t think any of us came here with a big bunch of money. And so, you know, I’m certainly grateful to all — I think all of the things that you do prior to something were necessary for one reason or another to get you to what you’re doing at this moment, just as whatever you do now will be necessary for what comes next.

**John:** Yep. So one of the things I did this last year was just a lark. And so a friend of mine, Sam Davis, was the dance arrangement composer for Big Fish. And so he’s one of these people who can hear a melody and then make it a thousand different versions which is what you have to do for a Broadway musical because you have to be able to fit things to the choreography. It’s a really unique skill and he’s just remarkably good at it.

But he’s also a composer himself. And so I was having lunch with him and I said like, you know, Sam, we should just try to write a song together sometime. That would be really fun to do. And it wasn’t to like be part of anything else, it was just to have something to do.

So he sent me a folder on Dropbox with a bunch of little things he’d written, and just little snippets of melodies. And so if there’s anything here you want to do, take a shot at it. And so this last year I did that.

And so I want to talk through sort of this project I did, and you guys both heard the final version of this, but I don’t think you’ve heard any of how this all came to be. So, I’m going to play a couple little clips to hear what the original stuff sounded like.

So, this is what Sam originally sent me.

[Clip plays]

So that was the original melody he sent me. It’s a waltz. It’s lovely. It feels very emotional, but as I listened to that I felt like, oh, there’s words that can go with those plunking. Does that — Aline, you’re writing songs all the time now. Could you hear where words could go?

**Aline:** No. My version of songwriting is I get in the room with songwriters and I throw out a bunch of lines and I hope some of them get in so I can get five or ten percent of the songwriting. But I am no more capable of hearing a melody and writing words to it than a child.

**John:** Craig, you’ve done quite a bit of this recently, too. So, do you hear–?

**Craig:** Yeah, with Jeanine Tesori, the great, great, great Jeanine Tesori. Yeah, no, for sure. Well, it sounds like he’s not just playing an accompaniment there. He is giving you the melody. He’s giving you the vocals, which is actually a remarkable thing that these people — these musicians — can do.

So, you know, when you sing a song you would never play the melody along with the vocalist, right? You’re accompanying them. But they can just sort of adjust to play it. So, [hums], you can just hear it coming out. And you can hear the way the sentences would be structured. And then the little sort of wistful part as it kind of comes down and hits that funky little minor thing. Yeah. No for sure. It’s begging for it.

**John:** It’s begging for it. So, what I heard in that main melody was “I want … I want…” And so it felt like an I Want song to me. And so that was my sort of initial instinct is that this feels like it wants to be an I Want song. It probably needs to speed up a little bit, because it’s a little slow for an I Want song. But imagine the faster version of this. Like, OK, “I want … I want bop-bop-bop-bop.” And so like, well, I started with I Want and who is the character who wants something? What do I want to do?

So, a thing which occurred to me as we were auditioning people for Big Fish is that there aren’t a lot of great I Want songs for boys. In the Disney canon you have all the princess I Want songs, so you have “Part of Your World” and that aspirational kind of I Want song is really common for women, but not for boys. So, like, well I want the song with which a guy will audition for a prince role, for prince charming, in a Broadway show.

And so that was my inspiration. And so I said like, OK, well, what is that character — what does the prince — the aspirational prince kind of character like? And so I wrote out all the lyrics and sort of tried to match them to the melody, including a lot of stuff that wasn’t part of that main melody line. So I just had sort of blank stanzas to sort of get us up before we got to that melody.

And so I’ll talk through the next part of that. So I sent this long document through to Sam and he’s like I don’t know what to do with this. I can see where the chorus is, but I don’t know what to do with this. So the next thing I sent through is what I call the Snap Track. And so I just snapped along to the words to sort of give him a sense of like what the meter of it would be. So, we’ll take a listen to that.

[Clip plays — But at night I have dreams that seem more like a calling. Where this lonely apprentice can end this appalling excuse for a nothing life, common life, lesser life, not a life. I want to live. But dreams are for night, and nights are not long when you wake to bake before dawn].

So with that I wanted to give a sense that like, OK, there’s some triplets in there–

**Aline:** Wake to bake? Oh why, because it’s a baker? Got it. Got it. Because I only think of pot when you say that. Keep going. Ignore me.

**John:** So I wanted to be able to communicate to him like, OK, there’s triplets here, but we’re still sticking in three. But I didn’t want to sort of poison him with the music I heard in my head, because I definitely had my own melody, but I didn’t want that melody to bleed over to him. So that’s why I kept it snapping.

Craig, you probably — when you’re working with Jeanine, do you have that same situation?

**Craig:** We did a slightly different kind of thing. The basic way we would start is we would have a long discussion about what we wanted a song to be about. And we were working off of a script I had already written. So we had characters. We had situations. We had the general sense of it, but then we were like, OK, but let’s get to the meat of what this is really about and how this is going to work, particularly because two of the three songs we did are duets.

After we figure out what the song is really about, then I thought what would happen is Jeanine, being the Tony award-winning composer that she is, would write some brilliant music and then I would attempt to just clumsily put words in. But she was like, no, you send me words first. So I would write these poems.

Now, I have no melody or music, but I would kind of form a little bit of a melody in my head, but I would never sing it or anything like that for the same reason that you wouldn’t do it either. You don’t want to unduly get into the head of your composer.

So, I would write these poems basically, lyrical poems out of what the song would be, and then she would read those and then she would then send over kind of like a here’s a thing. And then she would fill in nonsense lyrics sometimes. You know, and da-da-das and just whatever. Just fake words and things like that.

And then by going back and forth, we would find the shape of the song, the A, and the B, and the C. And then I would start really dialing in on the lyrics. But sometimes I would write lyrics and I would send them to her and she’s like I don’t know if this fits. And I would say it does. Let me send it with stress. And so I wouldn’t do the snap thing. What I would do is I would just underline where the stresses were of the words on the beats and stuff. And then she would go, OK, I got it, I got it, I got.

Because sometimes it would get kind of complicated. You know, what we were doing. And she’s very — and thank god for this — she is a stickler about consistency and true rhyming. She’s like no half-rhymes, no slant rhymes. Full rhymes. And if you pull some sort of wordplay in the first verse, I want a similar version of that wordplay with new words in the second verse. She’s rough. But it forced me, it really forced me to concentrate and work as hard as I could to try and machine these things so that they’re nice and tight.

I loved it. I just loved the process of it.

**John:** I loved this process, too. What was so different about this than any of the stuff I did with Danny Elfman, because I have like seven songs with Danny Elfman, is in all those cases I wrote lyrics and they were in the script and then they went off and Danny just made the song. And so in some cases he would tweak the lyrics. In some cases he sort of left the lyrics as they were. But there was very little collaboration between us.

Like, you know, we might have a dinner where we talk over what the songs were basically about, but there was no sort of direct working together.

**Aline:** I think our show is different, because there are jokes, there are sketches. So a lot of the songs I have credit on were things where I came up with the joke and the title and a couple lines. So like the concept of it and sort of — but one time there’s a song in last season where I said to Rachel and Jack, oh, they could sing a song called something like “we should definitely not have sex right now.” I went to the bathroom, I went to get something to eat, I came back and they had written almost all of the song. That’s usually more of what happens.

And then when I hear it I’ll contribute some jokes. But I would never — I mean, with comedy songs it’s really — they’re very, very conceptual. They’re like sketches. And they have to have very clean games.

So, I don’t actually — I rarely set lyrics down to paper and send it to them.

**John:** But a crucial part of your process though is the demo. So once you have the idea of the song, you have to record a demo so that everyone can sort of sign off on it and so people can plan how they’re going to build the episode.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** So what is the demo process like for–?

**Aline:** Adam, Jack, and Rachel, who are the songwriters, often sing their own demos into an iPhone. And then they send them to Adam, and Adam turns them into real demos with demo singers or often Adam. And what I love is Adam was in Fountains of Wayne, so we have numerous, numerous, numerous Adam demos for like Adam singing “Where’s the Bathroom?” which is a Tovah Feldshuh song, and Adam singing Rachel’s songs. And Adam singing everybody’s songs if he can’t get a demo singer in and we’re going really quickly.

And then we listen to the demos and I give notes on the demos. And a lot of times, you guys are more kind of it sounds like immersed in the technical. I refer to it as “I’m the monkey” and it has to make sense to the monkey. Because they’re much more steeped in music, so sometimes the jokes are abstruse or the lyrics are confusing. Or it needs to make sense to me. And then a lot of times my notes are like this needs to be a little bit more visceral, or this needs to be more joyful. Or its adjectival input.

**John:** Well that goes back to sort of what your discussion was with the artist for Jane, because you’re not drawing yourself. So you have to find a way — metaphors or similes to describe what it is you’re going for, because you don’t want to tell them how to do his job. It’s the same working with a composer. You find you end up describing a tone, a feeling. It’s in this world rather than that world.

**Aline:** Well, that’s actually a great thing for all writers to learn. It’s going to be applicable to what Craig is about to do. You know, I have multiple department heads. You have to describe what you want to someone and you don’t do what they do. So, you are going to say to the costume person, you know, we need something that looks like this, that evokes this. And they’re going to come back to you with choices. And part of being a good collaborator is letting people do what they’re great at and understanding what they’re great at. And sometimes when we have directors show up on our show, it makes me giggly that they get super camera talkie and they want to talk a lot about–

**John:** The crane?

**Aline:** Yes. And technical stuff. And that’s important and that’s wonderful. And I’m going to say that men do that a little bit more, because they want to show you that they know their lenses. It’s as important to be able to express what you’re trying to get emotionally and what’s the story you’re trying to tell. And that’s the same with songs and that’s the same with the book. That’s the same with, you know, if you’re trying to get a story across, it matters what color the mug is. But you don’t need to choose the mug. You need to be able to extract the salient detail and say to the person who is the artisan to say it’s important to me that it’s this.

And I think it’s good to collaborate on things that get made so that you have practice. So even if that’s just taking your iPhone and going to the yard with your friend and figuring out this needs to be blue. It doesn’t matter what color this is, but this needs to be that. And that’s really the key to — because a lot of what drowns artistic endeavors is unnecessary amounts of — confusing amounts of detail. So, you know, learning how to be really specific about what you want out of any process, a song, a book, a movie, a play, a bedtime story, is important. And learning how to communicate that is really important for writers.

**John:** Yeah. So for the case of this song, the case for “Rise,” what was great is we were able to finally record a real good true demo. So we got in–

**Aline:** When did you get the rise-rise pun baking idea?

**John:** Oh, the rise-rise pun came pretty early on. Actually–

**Aline:** How did it come to mind?

**John:** So I envisioned that this guy was a baker. So this kid was–

**Aline:** Why?

**John:** I’m not quite sure why baker was the initial sort of instinct behind it. So, I did envision like this is a guy who was toiling, but had sort of this fantastical notion of what it would be like to be a prince. And, again, you don’t see people aspiring to be princes. And this is about what it would be like to aspire to be a prince.

So, I saw him as like — I think originally he worked as a blacksmith, but then a baker felt better. And once I was in baker, then it’s like “Rise” became natural. And “Rise” felt like a very sing-able word for where he was going to.

**Aline:** Are you writing a play to go with this?

**John:** So I could write a play to go with this. And that’s what’s actually so interesting, so once we got the whole song together and once we recorded a demo, so we recorded a demo with a great Broadway guy named Curt Hansen who is in Wicked and could really do it. Like it was so surprising to hear the song. We only heard ourselves singing it poorly and like the aspirational notes we couldn’t quite get to, and this guy could actually belt it and sort of do the real good version of it.

Once we actually had it, then we had our sheet music, this is from the baker prince. So, eventually somewhere down the road it could become a thing, but I also just want it to be its own thing. I want it to have sort of value in and of itself. It’s a kind of song that people can download and sing or use for auditions. It felt good on those terms, too.

**Aline:** Can I ask you a question which I may already know the answer to and you can cut this out, but it is a same-sex love story thing possibly?

**John:** Not intended to be.

**Aline:** Because there’s not enough of those. There’s not enough of those that are in the genre of like longing wish-fulfillment romance. There seems to be more that are tragic, you know, tragic stories. And I think it would be awesome to have more fairytales about that.

One of my best friend’s husband is the same-sex Pasodoble Gay Games national champion.

**John:** Fantastic, yes.

**Aline:** And I’m waiting eagerly for the day that they have same-sex ballroom dancing on Dancing with the Stars. But having same-sex narratives in more kind of traditional “straight” genres I think is a great thing. And if that’s what that was, I’ve already bought my ticket.

**John:** Yeah. I think you and Craig both asked that question when I sent you the song months ago is like, oh, is this where it’s going to go to? And Rachel I think sort of fell in the same place, too.

**Aline:** Were we all stereotyping?

**Craig:** I think inside John’s — he goes, oh, yeah, you all thought that’s where this was going.

**Aline:** But I think, by the way, I think that could be a very important and compelling thing.

**Craig:** You know what? Here’s the thing. I don’t like those stories that much. I’m just going to say, because I haven’t had any–

**Aline:** Fairytale love stories?

**Craig:** I just find them so boring and cliché at this point. Now, granted, I’m older now. So children really do like them. But I like the tragic crazy stories. You know what’s a great song, to give Jeanine Tesori some credit, but she gets plenty of anyway, she’s a genius, is “I’m Changing my Major to Joan” from Fun Home.

**Aline:** Of course.

**Craig:** Which is a great same-sex love song that isn’t tragic. It’s joyous. But it’s not–

**Aline:** Well, “Keys,” forget it. “Keys.”

**Craig:** Well, “Keys,” that’s not a love song as much as like an aspirational kid seeing acceptance. But also an amazing song. But I don’t, like I don’t necessarily–

**Aline:** But I’m saying Frozen, Tangled, you know, I’m saying a fairytale. It’s just a genre that — one of the reasons you may perceive it as being a little tired is because it’s inhabited by the same types of characters all the time.

**John:** I think my other frustration, so people should go back and listen to our great episode with Jennifer Lee talking about Frozen because there was always such an instinct originally in Frozen that we have to have sort of classic love interests and Elsa has to be a villain and all these things. And once they actually figured out like, oh, it’s about sisters. Oh, they could actually build the whole thing out.

To me, it’s that we never see princess romances from the boy’s point of view. It’s always from the girl’s point of view.

**Aline:** Totally.

**John:** And so even if it remains sort of–

**Aline:** Hetero.

**John:** Mixed sex, hetero, then to see it from his point of view and sort of what it’s like — we don’t give young men good instruction on how to be noble heroes towards women.

**Aline:** Well, like the boy Cinderella stories tend to have a lot more genre, Harry Potter, Star Wars stuff going on, as opposed to romantic stakes.

**Craig:** But there are some. I mean, “Agony” is a great, great song written from the point of view.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** But it’s also a satire. It’s kind of making fun of those songs.

**John:** It’s spoofing the idea of those things. Yeah.

**Craig:** Right. It’s true. I think in the old days, in the old classic musicals you would have songs where men would sing these sort of moony love songs.

**John:** Oh, absolutely.

**Aline:** Well, Aladdin is–

**John:** “A Whole New World,” yes.

**Aline:** Right. But they tend to be a little bit more jaunty and adventure-based rather than romantic and yearning, although that has lots of stuff in it.

**John:** And it also becomes a duet though. And if it was just Aladdin’s solo, “let me share this whole new world with you,” it would be — it wouldn’t quite land the same way.

**Craig:** You know what else just came to mind is Andrew Lippa’s “The Moon and Me,” right? Which is a beautiful song and is the most non-traditional romance between a man and an orbiting celestial body. But it is a love song. And it is solo. It’s not a duet. And it’s gorgeous.

So, they’re there. I don’t like them that way. I like them non-traditional.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** That’s my jam.

**John:** This might ultimately become that thing, but until then it is a song, so if people want to check it out you can look at the lyrics and there will be links to video things so you can see for it at johnaugust.com/rise. I’ll also put the full track at the end of this episode instead of an outro, so if you want to hear the whole thing you’ll know what we’re talking about.

**Craig:** It’s a good song.

**John:** Thank you.

**Craig:** You’re welcome.

**John:** So, let’s try to answer one or two listener questions while we have Aline here. Let’s start with a question from Niraj in Allahabad, India. He writes, “I’m an author based out of Allahabad and have been in discussions with a Hollywood production company for optioning the movie and TV writes for my historical fiction novel, Daggers of Treason.”

**Craig:** Daggers of Treason!

**John:** “While they’re offering 2% of the starting budget for theatrical releases, their stated rates for episodic serials is abysmally low. 1/5th of the WGA rates. Can you please guide me to how much a non-US or WGA author should expect for a 60-minute serial? And who would help me in procuring a fair deal? I understand I cannot become a WGA member being based in India but would appreciate your help. Regards, Niraj.”

So, where do we start here? I think one of the places we can start is we can be so frustrated with the WGA, but when you’re outside of the US and you look in, it’s like, oh, having the WGA to set minimums is a really nice thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you don’t necessarily not have to have a WGA deal here, Niraj. So, the deal is if you’re writing in India but you’re working with a Hollywood company. Question number one is are they signatory to the Writers Guild or do they have a subsidiary that’s signatory to the Writers Guild? Still doesn’t mean that they have to employ you under a Writers Guild contract. However, what you can ask is that they employ you under the equivalent of a Writers Guild contract.

Now, all these things come down to leverage. How much do they want what you have and how much are they willing to spend on it? Sometimes I think companies will look to places that have burgeoning talent but aren’t covered by the WGA so that they can get better deals. And if these folks there are asking for more money, then suddenly it’s not as attractive a proposition. So you have to kind of gauge the interest level here.

Who can help you in procuring a fair deal? A lawyer. I don’t know where you live, oh, you said Allahabad. I don’t know Allahabad. I don’t know how large of a town that is. But I think if you reached out to a law firm in one of the many enormously large cities in India you will find an entertainment lawyer. India has a massive entertainment industry as we all know.

And the fact that you already have interest from a Hollywood production company I think would certainly mean that somebody would be willing to take your call and talk to you and perhaps represent you. Once that happens, that’s the person you’re going to be asking these questions of. That would be my first move.

**Aline:** Me too.

**John:** That’s a great idea. And the other place I might point you to is it could make sense for you to get an LA-based law firm to supervise the contract. You just need to figure out who has been doing this for other projects sort of like yours. And you end up paying them to do that work as well. But I wish you good luck with this.

The next question comes from Mack who writes, “I usually read my scripts on the screen in the screenwriting software, but I’ve heard the printing one’s script and reading it on the physical page offers a new perspective that may help with the rewriting process. So now my script is printed and ready for me to read, but before I undertake reading it for the 15th time I was hoping you could offer some insight on best practices for reading for rewrites.”

Aline, I saw you nodding, so you agree that people should print out scripts?

**Aline:** Yeah. I don’t do it as much as I used to. I think I’ve developed my skill at looking at a screen as critically as I do at a page, and in TV we’re just moving so quickly that having that extra paper step sometimes is a pain.

But, you know, get your pen out. It depends on what you’re reading it for. But sometimes if you just like change the size of the font on your screen or make it look a little bit different. If I’m proofreading, I read it backwards. Just anything that makes it look new to you. Reading it in a new environment sometimes will do it. There’s nothing for catching typos like sending it to someone. The second you send it for some reason you open it back up and you’ll find six typos.

But anything that makes it look fresh to your eyes is great. And then I would say reading it aloud with or to someone is a great way to go. And Simon Kinberg and I wrote a script together and when we were revising it would read it aloud. And it was really fun. That seems like one of the fun reasons to have a partner, to read it and scribble on it.

**John:** Craig, are you a printer? Do you print your scripts?

**Craig:** Yeah. I do. Usually by that point I have gone through them quite a bit, but my basic process once I get to that stage, I really am mostly looking for typos or things that jump out as reading a little weirdly. So I’m reading it aloud a lot as I’m going through and I don’t do the double-sided print thing because I want the blank back of a page on the left side to be there for notes or things that I need to remark on.

And when I do that I just dog ear it so I have a reference. Then I go back through and I make those changes. But, you know, I don’t think I would get too freaked out about this. Everybody has their own speed and their own way of doing things. I’m pretty sure that there are some wonderful writers that don’t print it out. Whatever works for you, Mack. Honestly. Whatever works for you.

**Aline:** One thing I really thought a lot about with writing in a TV environment as opposed to a film environment is sometimes I found, as a screenwriter, I would overly machine things because I had so much time with it. And so I would tinker with things to make them scan perfectly when actually they play better just the way they splurted out of you.

And in TV, especially when you’re writing comedy, if a room pitches a joke and it works, you don’t change a syllable. So it may not scan perfectly, it may not make sense perfectly, but that’s the comedy milieu in there. And so I find that screenwriters way more than TV writers, just because of time, just tend to overly machine their dialogue and sand off all the rough edges. And I like the idea of sometimes it’s the imperfect perfect thing. So, there’s a lot of like dithering and busy work that is really tempting to do when you’re getting ready to send a script out. And I think sometimes you can ruin things that are lovely because you’re trying to make them perfect.

**John:** Yeah. I would stress that if you’re going through to read, make sure you’re really reading. And that’s why I think printing is so helpful because you can’t actually fix things while you’re reading it. So, I like to print the script and I go to someplace new. I go outside. I sit at the table. And I’m flipping through the pages because I will see things I don’t see other places and things will occur to me that haven’t occurred while I’m cutting whole little short scenes because I just don’t need them anymore.

And if I were trying to do that on the screen, I feel like I might go through and like make a few little corrections right at that moment, then I wouldn’t be reading anymore. I’d really be writing. And that’s not what your goal is.

**Aline:** It’s a different mode.

**John:** Yeah, different mode. All right. Let’s change modes ourselves. It’s time for One Cool Thing. Craig, start us off.

**Craig:** Oh, I got a good one today if you like puzzles. Do you love puzzles, folks?

**John:** We all love puzzles.

**Aline:** Yeah, we’re all puzzlers.

**John:** After this podcast we’re going off to play games at Aline’s house.

**Craig:** Well, I’ll tell you, these are brutal but amazing. So there’s a gentleman named Mark Halpin and every Labor Day he puts out a puzzle pack. The puzzle pack consists of many, many individual puzzles. You solve all those individual puzzles, and then there is a meta puzzle that encompasses all of the answers you’ve pulled from the many, many puzzles. And so this Labor Day weekend, David Kwong and I eagerly downloaded this year’s puzzle package from Mark Halpin called When First We Practice to Deceive.

We have completed all of the individual puzzles except for the last one. We’re halfway through that one. They are really, really hard. And they are really, really good. They are super well done. Very complicated. Really, really just tricky. One of them has — one of them looks like it’s a word search. No it isn’t. I mean, it kind of is, but mostly it isn’t. And there’s about five different levels just to that puzzle alone to get to the answer of that puzzle.

So, Mark Halpin offers these for free, but there is a tip jar link on his page. If you do download these, I strongly urge you to chuck him some remuneration. He worked clearly extraordinarily hard on these. And we will put a link in the show notes for you. So, again, that’s Mark Halpin. And his puzzle pack this year is called When First We Practice to Deceive.

**John:** Very nice.

**Aline:** Very cool. My One Cool Thing — my favorite TV show right now is Insecure on HBO. And I’m obsessed with Issa and I’m obsessed with the show. And I watch it as it airs, or soon after. It’s the best romantic comedy I’ve seen in a long time, but it’s so much more than that. And I just love it. And it’s so great to have a TV show that I’m excited to watch. And so I think — and I have an ax to grind — but I think sometimes things that are created and written by women and deal with love and relationships don’t quite get the due that like a somber crime drama will get.

And I think Insecure is just an excellent show. And belongs up there in any critical appreciation of the best shows out there right now. So, I highly recommend that, and go to HBO to find it.

**John:** Cool. My One Cool Thing is a book by Jessica Abel called Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio. And so it’s done in a graphic novel format, or an illustrated book thing. It’s not fiction. It’s all real interviews that she did with the people behind This American Life, The Moth, Radio Lab, Planet Money, Snap Judgments, Serial, Invisibilia.

**Aline:** Whoa.

**John:** And so what’s clever is she recorded all these interviews, but then she built it out sort of in a graphic novel format. So she’s having these conversations with people, she’s inserting herself into it. And it’s a brilliant look at sort of how this kind of radio is made. And sort of both how reporters go out to find and really cast the people that they’re going to be interviewing, but then how the stories are found in the edit. And what the edit process is like, which is much more like really like your writer’s room than you would think.

So, they’re reading their scripts, they’re playing their tape, and they’re just digging in on story for hours and hours at a time.

**Aline:** Wow, that’s so cool.

**John:** It’s really great. So, I would recommend it to anybody who is interested in radio, but I also I thought there were interesting lessons about how storytelling works for the radio that I think most screenwriters would find fascinating.

Like one of the things about how they pitch these stories is it’s about blank, but what’s interesting is blank.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** And so–

**Aline:** That’s almost a podcast cliché. It’s about bananas. Everything you didn’t know about bananas. Yeah.

**John:** So, you know, you have your topic, but then your actual hook is something that is not the topic.

**Aline:** Your take on it.

**John:** Yeah. And that’s–

**Aline:** Hey, before we go, I’m going to sign my book at Barnes & Noble at The Grove.

**John:** Fantastic, what day?

**Aline:** And also at Chevalier Bookstore on Larchmont. And the book signing at The Grove is on Sunday, September 24 at 5pm at Barnes & Noble at The Grove.

**John:** Fantastic. I will be in London so I won’t be attending that one, but I’m so excited to see you and–

**Aline:** Well then perhaps you can go to the book signing at Chevalier’s on October 1 at 5:30.

**John:** That sounds great. Hooray! So we’ll have links to–

**Aline:** Plug. Plug. Plug. Plug.

**John:** We will have links to Aline’s book and the events which you can go visit Aline and have her sign your book. Also in the show notes you’ll find a link to the song I wrote and we’ll put that on the outro for this week’s episode. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

If you have an outro, a traditional outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you send questions like the ones we answered today.

For short questions, we’re on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Aline is–?

**Aline:** @alinebmckenna.

**John:** Fantastic. She’s on Twitter finally.

We are on Facebook. Search for Scriptnotes Podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts at Scriptnotes. Just look for Scriptnotes and while you’re there leave us a comment or a review. That helps a lot.

You can find all the show notes at johnaugust.com. If you have a Three Page Challenge for Austin, remember that’s johnaugust.com/threepage.

Transcripts go up about a week after the episode airs. And you can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net.

Aline, thank you so much for coming on the show.

**Craig:** Thanks Aline.

**Aline:** Cheers, you all. Cheers.

**John:** Cool. See you soon. Bye.

Links:

* [Submit](http://johnaugust.com/threepage) to the Three Page Challenge and check the box if you’ll be in Austin for the Austin Film Festival
* The [new season](http://www.cwtv.com/shows/crazy-ex-girlfriend) of [Crazy Ex Girlfriend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Ex-Girlfriend_(TV_series)) premieres Friday October 13th
* John Gatins’ [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0309691/)
* Order Aline Brosh McKenna’s new graphic novel, [Jane](https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Aline-McKenna/dp/1608869814)
* Ramón K. Pérez’s [website](http://www.ramonperez.com/v4/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/theramonperez?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) and [graphic novel, Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1936393093/?tag=johnaugustcom-20)
* “Rise” composer Sam Davis’ [website](http://www.samdavismusic.com/)
* The [Original Melody](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Rise_sam_original_piano_melody.m4a), John’s [Snap Track](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Rise_john_snap_trim.m4a), and the [demo track](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Rise_demo.wav) with vocalist [Curt Hansen](https://twitter.com/curt_hansen?lang=en) for “Rise”
* Or you can check out this [post](http://johnaugust.com/rise) for more details about “Rise”
* [Mark Halpin Puzzles](http://www.markhalpin.com/puzzles/puzzles.html)
* [Insecure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insecure_(TV_series)) on [HBO](http://www.hbo.com/insecure)
* [Out on the Wire](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385348436/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Jessica Abel
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by John August (lyrics) and Sam Davis (music) ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_318.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/first-day-on-the-job).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. A small language warning. There are some big words, some bad words, in this episode. So this might be a good time to put in headphones if you’re in a place where it is not appropriate to hear the F-bombs.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

**Craig Mazin:** Craig Mazin named Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 317 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast, we are debuting a brand new segment where we look at how different movies handle the same kind of scene. We’ll also be tackling listener questions about “therapy pieces” and writing for the international market.

But first we have some follow up. Craig, start us off.

**Craig:** All right. So we have some follow up from Anonymous Animation Writer. It would be great if that was this person’s full name.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Craig:** And they didn’t actually work in animation, but I think they do. I don’t think it’s their name. Anonymous Animation Writer writes, “I just finished listening to episode 310 where you dove,” I think we dived, “into the recently passed WGA deal. I am a WGA member, but primarily I am a fairly successful animation writer.” Hats off to you.

“The reality is most animation isn’t WGA. We get no residuals. The pay rate is extremely low. And yet our material is played and replayed constantly. Kids, you know? And, our material is the primary driver for toy sales. Animation employs a huge swath of writers in Los Angeles, yet I feel as though we are the most neglected segment of the writing community. Can you address or have somebody from the guild address why all animation is not covered by the WGA?”

Yes. We. Can.

**John:** Yeah. It’s actually one of those rare cases where we can answer the question fairly definitively. So, animation is writing. It is completely the same kind of writing as writing for features or for television. Animation should be covered by the WGA, but it is not covered by the WGA because it never has been covered by the WGA.

Once upon a time when animated films were going to be made and when animated television programs were getting made, that writing was not covered by WGA. And it got covered by other unions, specifically a branch of IATSE covers it. So you, Anonymous Animation Writer, probably are working for a union. You’re represented by a union. It’s just not the WGA. And it sucks for you. And it’s going to be very difficult to get you covered by the WGA.

**Craig:** It will not be difficult. It will be impossible. So, here’s the deal with the law, Anonymous Animation Writer, and this bums us out as much as it bums you out. Well, I grant you you’re bummed out even more. You basically have two options for employment. You can either work non-union or you can work union. That’s just in general in life, right? It’s sort of binary. You’re working non-union, or you’re working union.

In closed shop states like California, if a union covers a work area, and there are companies that are signatory to that union, then you are covered by that union. Period. The end. There’s no other way for John or I to write a live action movie for, let’s say Warner Bros, unless it’s done under a WGA deal.

The union that has jurisdiction over animation is as John stated IATSE. And specifically it’s IATSE Local 839, the Animation Guild. Locals are subsidiaries of a larger parent union. But essentially it’s part of IATSE. Like most of the crew and stagecraft unions are.

The deal that 839 has with the companies is such that there are no residuals and, as you note, the pay rate is much lower than the WGA pay rate. The WGA can do nothing about this. Jurisdiction between unions is a matter of federal law. It’s like the jurisdiction police departments. You can’t have Philadelphia cops rolling on into New York and arresting people. It’s just the way the law works. You can’t overlap.

So, the choices in animation are if you’re working for a signatory company it has to be through Animation 839. Or, you may be working for a non-signatory company in which case it’s not union at all. Pixar, for instance, not union. I’m sure one of the other big ones is not union. And so really the choice that you face as you’re taking employment as an animation writer in Hollywood is whether you’re going to have a bad deal or a worse deal. And there is absolutely nothing the Writers Guild can do about it. Zero. Period. The end. And it is so frustrating for us, but it is just fact.

**John:** Yep. So, Craig, talk us through quickly there are certain primetime animated shows that are WGA. Why are they WGA?

**Craig:** Right. So, what we’ve been talking about is feature animation. Now, primetime animation was never clearly covered by any jurisdiction. So what happens is once a union makes a collective bargaining agreement with a bunch of employers to cover a work area, that’s theirs.

From what I understand, primetime animation was never seized, because there was never that much primetime animation. There was a ton of Saturday morning animation on television, of course, but primetime I don’t think there was particularly much. So when The Simpsons happened, then there was this opening. And for the first time in decades an animation football was up in the air. And The Simpsons writers very quickly organized to become a WGA shop. Because, specifically, there was no primetime deal for Fox. Fox, which made The Simpsons, had never signed, I believe, any collective bargaining agreement covering primetime animation.

So, open field. And they obviously — Fox I think, probably quite strongly, pushed them towards Animation 839. That was something that happened also with DreamWorks made a show called Father of the Pride, which they successfully got to push over to 839. But in this case, The Simpsons writers, probably because of the amount of leverage they had, were able to get a WGA deal. And once they did, all primetime animation made by Fox is a WGA deal. So Family guy, WGA deal. And what are the other ones? American Dad. And all those.

**John:** Bob’s Burgers.

**Craig:** There you go. So any primetime animated show made by Fox is WGA. Now, this does give a little bit of a glimmer of hope. For instance, I don’t think Pixar has ever signed any collective bargaining agreements. So, theoretically all of the writers that write Pixar movies could organize and demand to be covered by the WGA. And I wish they would. But easier said than done, because of the nature of feature films.

In television, you have to crank out episodes, particularly primetime network television. I mean, so that’s 26 right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If your writers stop working for 10 minutes, you’ve got a huge assembly line problem. Not the case in feature animation, where those movies take years and years and years and there’s one of them. So, if there’s a halt for six or eight months, or two years, well, they absorb it. Much, much trickier to do. So, hopefully that answers the question of why The Simpsons, for instance, is a WGA show and not say a primetime program that maybe Sony Television is making.

**John:** Absolutely. So basically the way to get all animation covered by the WGA is to build a time machine and go back and have the decisions made differently. But I think with that theoretical time machine we can also be looking forward. And we need to be looking forward to what are the things coming down the pike that are going to be sort of like this animation situation. And how do we make sure that the people who are writing for those screens are covered and that they are WGA writers who are making a WGA living down the road. I think that’s a thing we need to focus on. And take the lesson we’ve learned from animation to make sure that we’re not leaving stuff uncovered.

**Craig:** Yeah. The legend — I don’t know if this is accurate, but the legend that I have heard is that way, way back in the day feature animation writers went to the WGA, the nascent WGA in the ’40s and ’50s, and said, “Hey, we want you guys to cover us.” And the WGA said, “Oh, no, no, no, we’re real writers. You people are making cartoons. We don’t cover cartoons.”

I don’t know if that’s true, but man it sounds true.

**John:** It does sound true.

**Craig:** Sounds super-duper freaking true. So, if there’s anything to guard against moving forward, it’s any hint of snobbery or exclusion, because whatever you think — if you look down at, I don’t know, content that’s made for YouTube, well, that will be the thing that’s destroying you 40 years from now. We really can’t afford to turn up our noses at any kind of writing for any screen as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** I agree. Second piece of follow up comes from Tim in Asheville. He writes, “I wanted to let you know how thankful I am for your feedback on the Reconstruction of Huck Finn over Mark Twain’s Dead Body in Episode 263.” So that was a Three Page Challenge you and I did.

“That story has reached the quarter finals of Nicholl,” and I actually just checked, it made it to semi-finals. “And although you only gave feedback on the first three pages, your thoughts engendered a come-to-Jesus type rewrite. And let me tell you, Jesus was not having that draft. Thanks for your thoughts and your inspiration.”

**Craig:** I like catty Jesus here. I am not having this draft. Oh no. Oh no! That’s great to hear.

**John:** Yeah. So congrats to Tim in Asheville. And we’ll put a link in the show notes to all the people who were the finalists in Nicholls this year. It’s the only I think competition that Craig and I both feel good about saying, yes, if you do well in Nicholl that’s fantastic. That is a feather in your cap and people actually do pay attention.

**Craig:** They do.

**John:** Congratulations to those folks.

**Craig:** They’ve already released their finalists?

**John:** Yes. So the article I read showed like the 10 finalists, but out of those 10 apparently five get fellowships, so there’s still another culling that happens. I can’t say I honestly understand how it all works, except that I’m very happy for the people who get to be a part of those lists.

**Craig:** So do I. And I hope that at least one or two of them, I mean, this is how crazy our business is. You think, well, there’s thousands of scripts, I assume, sent to the Nicholl Fellowship each year, and then it comes down to 10 finalists. And then five of them get fellowships. And here I am saying I hope one of them becomes a professional screenwriter. But that’s kind of — that is kind of the mesh size of this filter. It’s tough.

**John:** It is tough. Indeed.

All right, let’s get to our brand new segment. So this was suggested by Megan McDonnell, she is our new producer. And her idea was to take a certain class of scenes, a certain kind of scene you see in a bunch of different movies, and take a look at how different movies play that kind of scene. And so we’re going to be comparing and contrasting scenes from four different movies that are all about the same thing.

And in this case it is about the first day on the job, which is sort of a stock scene. And actually very common, I think, in features because as we always talk about features are about characters going through a journey they can only go through once. And so the first day on a new job is a very classic moment that your characters are going to have in lots of different kinds of movies. Comedies. Dramas. Everything in between.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, for sure. It’s a fun scene to write. I mean, we look forward to scenes like this. Sometimes we know what we have to accomplish in a story. We know how people are going to get in, and we know what we need to have them thinking or doing on the way out. And then the nature of the scene itself seems a bit, well, foggy. And then you have to figure out how to make it work.

No one has to really get lost in a fog over this.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** The first day of work we’re throwing characters at you. We’re throwing responsibilities at you. I know everyone knows how that feels. We’ve all been there before. So really it’s just about what is your unique perspective on this shared experience of the first day at work.

**John:** Absolutely. Well, let’s jump right in. So I put out a call on Twitter for people to send me their suggestions for great movies with great scenes about the first day on the job. And, of course, our listeners are fantastic and threw back a lot of suggestions. Probably the number one suggestion was one I hadn’t thought of which is The Hudsucker Proxy. So this is a screenplay by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, and Sam Raimi.

In the show notes for this episode you’ll find links to the full PDF, but also the individual scenes we’re taking a look at. So, Craig, why don’t you read the setup to this scene? This is scene 14 in Hudsucker Proxy.

**Craig:** Sure.

“SWINGING STEEL DOORS that read, ”MAILROOM.” They burst open as Norville, who wears a mail clerk’s leather apron, imprinted: HUDSUCKER MAILROOM/The Future is Now. The hellish mailroom is criss-crossed by pipes that emit HISSING jets of STEAM.

As he wheels a piled-high mail cart down the aisle, Norville is accompanied by an orientation AGENT who bellows at him over the clamor and roar of many men laboring in the bowels of a great corporation.

**John:** And now let’s take a listen to the scene.

**Scene:**

AGENT
You punch in at 8:30 every morning except you punch in at 7:30 following a business holiday unless it’s a Monday and then you punch in at eight o’clock You punch in at 7:45 whenever we work extended day and you punch out at the regular time unless you’ve worked through lunch!

NORVILLE
What’s exte–

AGENT
Punch in late and they dock ya!

People on either side bellow at Norville and stuff envelopes and packages under his elbows, into his pockets, under his chin, between his clenched teeth , etc.

FIRST SCREAMER
This goes to seven! Mr. Mutuszak! Urgent!

AGENT
Incoming articles, get a voucher! Outgoing articles, provide a voucher! Move any article without a voucher and they dock ya!

SECOND SCREAMER
Take this up to the secretarial pool on three!Right away!Don’t break it!

AGENT
Letter size a green voucher! Folder size a yellow voucher! Parcel size a maroon voucher!

THIRD SCREAMER
This one’s for Morgatross! Chop chop!

AGENT
Wrong color voucher and they dock ya!Six-seven-eight-seven-zero-four-niner-alpha-slash-six! That is your employee number!It will not be repeated!Without your employee number you cannot cash your paycheck!

FOURTH SCREAMER
This goes up to twenty-seven! If there’s no one there bring it down to eighteen! Have ‘em sign the waiver!DON’T COME BACK DOWN HERE WITHOUT A SIGNED WAIVER!!

AGENT
Inter-office mail is code37! INTRA-office mail is 37-dash-3! Outside mail is 3-dash37! Code it wrong and they dock ya!

FIFTH SCREAMER
I was supposed to have this on twenty-eight ten minutes ago! Cover for me!

AGENT
This has been your orientation! Is there anything you do not understand? Is there anything you understand only partially? If you have not been fully- oriented–if there is something you do not understand in all of its particulars you must file a complaint with personnel! File a faulty complaint…and they dock ya!

**Craig:** That’s great.

**John:** It’s delightful. So this is a very classically kind of what we expect on that first day, where everything is being thrown at you. You are just barely trying to catch up with the action around you. And it’s important to set up the environment of this world they’re entering into. This is a sort of dystopian hellhole of corporate machinery. And from sound design to sort of the monologuing of the orientation agent, you get a feeling for all of it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Classic bit of filmic storytelling to take the normal emotions that we have in shared universal experiences and then externalize them in these very broad, caricatured ways. Even though nobody has ever experienced a first day at work like this, you can argue that this is how it feels to us. Everything is confusing. Everything is scary. Everyone around you seems to be perfectly meshed together and frantic in a way you are not because you don’t understand what’s going on. And you are laden down with rules that you do not understand and consequences you do understand. So, you don’t know what you need to do to succeed. You just know what happens when you fail. Very, very first day.

**John:** Yeah. They will dock you. So, this is a great example of like this orientation agent is not a major character, so he’s just going there and he’s just establishing the rules of the world. He is basically — he’s just part of the setting really. This is not a significant character.

But I want to contrast that with the first scene from Devil Wears Prada, or at least the first day scene from Devil Wears Prada. This is a script by Aline Brosh McKenna based on the book by Lauren Weisberger. Here we see the same kind of orientation where you have somebody starting to lead somebody through the office, and yet this case it’s Emily Blunt leading Anne Hathaway through. And Emily Blunt is a major character. Emily Blunt is a character who we’re going to come back to again and again. And so you can see the scene is actually taking some time to establish her as a more important significant character who has a depth to her that this orientation agent doesn’t have.

Let’s take a look at the scene on paper first, and then we’ll take a listen to it. It starts in reception. “Andy is trying to arrange herself on the uncomfortable sofa when suddenly a taller, thinner, and amazingly more groomed version of the women in the room walks in. This is Emily, who looks the part of the sleek fashionista, but is propelled by a core of barely tamped anxiety. Andrea Barnes? Emily looks up, their eyes meet, as Emily takes in how different Andy looks from everyone else. Andy springs up and follows her down the hallway.”

Let’s take a listen to the rest of the scene.

**Scene:**

INT. RUNWAY RECEPTION AREA — DAY

Sleek, elegant, hard-edged chic. Behind the reception desk is an elegant logo that says RUNWAY. ANDY walks over.

ANDY
Hi, I have an appointment with Emily Charlton–

EMILY (O.S.)
Andrea Sachs?

(EMILY (and MIRANDA, later) pronounce ANDREA Ahn-DRAY-a. ANDY refers to herself as AN-dree-a.)

ANDY turns and sees a taller, thinner and, amazingly, more groomed CLACKER. This is EMILY. She looks the part of the sleek fashionista, but is propelled by a core of barely tamped down anxiety. She examines ANDY.

EMILY (CONT’D)
Human Resources certainly has a bizarre sense of humor.
(sigh, annoyed)
Follow me.

INT. RUNWAY HALLWAY — DAY

EMILY briskly walks ANDY down the hall.

EMILY
Okay, so… I was Miranda’s second assistant, but her first assistant recently got promoted so now I’m the first…

ANDY glimpses an office in front of them, seductively bright.

ANDY
And you’re replacing yourself.

EMILY
I’m trying. Miranda sacked the last two girls after only a few weeks. We need to find someone who can survive here. Do you understand?

ANDY
Yes. Of course. Who’s Miranda?

EMILY
(eyes widening)
You didn’t just ask me that. She’s the editor in chief of Runway. Not to mention a legend. Work a year for her and you can get a job at any magazine you want. A million girls would kill for this job.

ANDY
Sounds great. I’d love to be considered.

She smiles. EMILY tries to think how to break it to her.

EMILY
Andrea, Runway is a fashion magazine. An interest in fashion is crucial.

ANDY
What makes you think I’m not interested in fashion?

EMILY gives her a look. ANDY smiles, like she has no idea what EMILY could mean.

Suddenly, EMILY’S Blackberry goes off. She gasps.

EMILY
Oh my God. No. No, no, no.

ANDY
What’s wrong?

EXT. ELIAS-CLARKE — DAY

A black sedan pulls to a sudden stop outside the building.

INT. RUNWAY – BULLPEN – DAY

EMILY begins rapid-fire dialing four digit extensions.

EMILY
(all but screaming)
She’s on her way — tell everyone!

Just then a dapper man of about 40 walks briskly by.

NIGEL
I thought she was coming in at 9.

EMILY
Her driver text-messaged. Her facialist ruptured a disk. God, these people!

NIGEL turns and sees ANDY. Looks at EMILY. Who is that?

EMILY (CONT’D)
I can’t even talk about it.

No time to discuss. NIGEL calls down the hallway.

NIGEL
All right, everyone. Man your battle stations!

**John:** First off, it’s great to have Aline on the show, even if she’s not literally on the show, we get to hear her words and see her work. I think it’s a delightful scene. And so here we’ve already established Anne Hathaway’s character in the movie, but this is our first time meeting Emily Blunt’s character. And it’s a sophisticated thing that we’re seeing here. So, you get to see that Emily Blunt is trying to do her job, but she’s also very skeptical that this girl could even possibly be working here. We’re establishing the stakes of the world and we’re establishing that everyone else who has been hired for this job has been fired very, very quickly.

And then we end this scene with this moment of like, “Oh no, the boss is coming.” And then we get into this sort of montage of Miranda Priestly arriving at the office and everyone panicking and scurrying around to sort of prepare for her. So you’re establishing this big character entrance for a character who has not yet shown up in the movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. In some ways, this is the opposite way of playing a first day moment than the one in Hudsucker Proxy. It doesn’t seem like it starts as the opposite, because in walks this young woman who seems to be perfect, as opposed to our protagonist. But then as they move through the building and begin to talk what starts to come out is that our hero, Anne Hathaway’s character, doesn’t even know who Miranda is. And is oddly sort of Zen. You know, “I’d like to be considered.” She just seems so much calmer and more centered than Emily Blunt’s character, who is already kind of twittery panicky.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And when they hear that Miranda is coming early, you see Emily kind of fall apart. So, what this first day is setting up in a sense probably the arc of these two characters and what is going to happen ultimately with Anne Hathaway’s character, I think.

**John:** What’s also great in this scene is we’re used to the sort of bulldozer coming in and our protagonist being sort of run over by the bulldozer. Anne Hathaway’s character does stand up to her. “Well what makes you think I don’t like fashion?” Basically, she’s taking some agency. She’s actually willing to sort of hit the ball back over the net. And that becomes important in the next scene where she actually is interviewing with Miranda Priestly to make it clear like, you know, you are going to say that I’m not qualified to be here, but I really am. And you should take a chance on me. She’s actually going to stick up for herself in ways that are incredibly important for the character.

What I’d like to do now is actually compare it to her first actual day on the job. So, this is clip from later on in the film where she’s trying to get through her first real day after she’s been hired. And there’s a moment, which I think has become sort of one of the iconic moments in the film, where she is dismissive of sort of what it is they’re doing in general. She makes the mistake of laughing about how absurd it is. And let’s take a listen to what happens in that scene.

**Scene:**

ANDY lets out a little giggle. And it’s like she set off a grenade. Slowly everyone turns to her.

MIRANDA
Is something funny?

ANDY
No, no, no. It’s just…

And MIRANDA says nothing. ANDY twists in the wind.

ANDY (CONT’D)
It’s just that both of those belts look the same to me. I’m still learning about this stuff, so–

And the silence is deafening. Everyone looks to see what MIRANDA will do.

MIRANDA
This… stuff? Okay. I understand. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and select, say, that lumpy blue sweater because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what’s on your body. What you don’t know is that your sweater is not blue. It’s not even sky blue. It’s cerulean. You also don’t know that in 2002, De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns, Yves St. Laurent showed a cerulean military jacket, Dolce did skirts with cerulean beads, and in our September issue we did the definitive layout on the color. Cerulean quickly appeared in eight other major collections, then the secondary and department store lines and then trickled down to some lovely Casual Corner, where you no doubt stumbled on it. That color is worth millions of dollars and many jobs. And here you are, thinking you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry. In truth, you are wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.

She smiles at ANDY. Who quakes.

**John:** What I love about this clip is that it shows a crucial aspect of first day on the job which is failure. And that sense of the protagonist comes in with a head of steam. They think they’re sort of figuring it out. And then they meet a huge obstacle and a huge setback. And that setback is generally the antagonist. In this case, it’s Miranda. And it makes it really clear that as plucky and as smart as Anne Hathaway’s character is, she is out of her depths in sort of this situation and specifically opposite Miranda.

**Craig:** Yeah. Most movies that are workplace movies will involve a hero who is new to the job pushing up against an antagonist or villain who is established on the job. It could be a boss, as it often is. Or it could be a rival for a promotion. But no matter what, that villain, that antagonist, needs to have some formidable weight. This is a very common note that studios will give, and for good reason. It’s a good note — make your villains formidable.

So, we could easily begin to see Miranda Priestly as a nut. Just a tyrannical nut who should be laughed at. And, of course, a lot of fashion does seem, on its face, absurd. And it makes perfect sense for us to be with Anne Hathaway and thinking I see through everything here. I can see the matrix. This is all baloney and this lady is nuts.

And it’s really important for the movie and for the character for Anne Hathaway to hear, “No, you don’t see anything at all.” And it has to be done in such a way that in the audience, in the theater where we’re sitting we go, “Oh you know what, that’s a really good point. You’re right. It’s not just that you’re mean about it, or strident, you’ve convinced me. Right? And by doing so I now understand that the character I was identifying with and feeling really proud to kind of be in the saddle with doesn’t maybe know what she’s talking about. And doesn’t see all the things she thinks she sees. And now I feel that way, too.” This is the bedrock of making people care about characters in a movie.

So, it’s a terrific way to use a first day on the job scene to not only set up what it is that people do, but also set up the basis of a rivalry. And to take your hero, and as we always should, push them down. Push them down, because there is no satisfaction in their rise if we do not push them down.

**John:** I’m thinking about the archetypes of this relationship and you see this all the time in military movies where you have the drill sergeant. But you also see it in teacher movies. You think of Whiplash. And this is very much the same kind of dynamic in Whiplash where you have the upstart who thinks he knows what’s going on and then meets this incredible asshole of a teacher who really can show him up and sort of prove that he knows nothing.

And that’s a crucial dynamic. I think so often we think of the antagonist as being the villain in the story. And villains don’t always wear capes and sort of try to destroy cities. A lot of times it’s how they are challenging our heroes. And that’s what you’re seeing in Devil Wears Prada.

**Craig:** Yeah. And it is really important for people to note, in a time when a lot of movies do seem to feature villains that only are interested in the most broad villainous desires like total power and total destruction, that the most satisfying cinematic villains are the ones who in some way at the end of a story are actually vaguely proud of the fact that the hero has risen up.

It took a long time, it took three movies for Darth Vader to get to that point. But he did. And we really liked it. It’ll take one movie for Miranda to get there at the end, but that’s exactly where it ends up with the two of them. You get the sense that Miranda is a combination of antagonist and mentor. And that’s a great combo.

**John:** That is a great combo. When it works, it’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly.

**John:** We always think of mentors as being like the kindly old wizard or the caring teacher, but oftentimes it is a confrontational role that is pushing them to the next place. So, it’s great to see it here.

Let’s take a look at another sort of mentor figure and sort of authority figure in Hidden Figures. So this is a screenplay by Allison Schroeder and Ted Melfi based on a book by Margo Shetterly.

So in this scene we see Taraji P. Henson. She’s going to work in the larger office with the engineers rather than just being the calculator off in the little back room. Let’s take a read through the scene and then what actually happens.

So we’re inside the Space Task Group office. “Katherine steps into a cyclone of activity and stress. ENGINEERS chalk equations on blackboards, slug coffee. AIDES and SUPPORT STAFF scurry, answer phones. This is the Space Task Group: the world’s most exclusive scientific club. At the back of the room, Harrison paces in his glass bubble, talking with Karl Zielinski. For the briefest moment, everyone seems to be looking at the black woman who just entered their world. But it’s just a passing moment, there’s far too much to do.”

And so we’re going to actually skip ahead a little bit in the scene to listen to when she first has her conversation with the character played by Kevin Costner.

**Scene:**

AL HARRISON
Ruth. What’s the status on my Computer?

RUTH
She’s right in front of you, Mr. Harrison.

Ruth motions to Katherine. Harrison gives her a once over. Not what he expected either.

AL HARRISON
Does she know how to handle Analytic Geometry?

RUTH
Absolutely. And she speaks.

KATHERINE
I do, sir.

AL HARRISON
Which one?

KATHERINE
Both, sir. Geometry and speaking.

Harrison waves a finger at Ruth.

AL HARRISON
Then give her the-

She knows exactly what he’s talking about. She always knows what he’s talking about. She snatches a bundle of worksheets off her desk, rushes them to Katherine.

AL HARRISON (CONT’D)
(to Katherine)
Do you think you can find me the Frenet frame for that data using the Gram- Schmidt–

Katherine glances at the data sheets.

KATHERINE
–Orthogonalization algorithm. Yes, sir. I prefer it over Euclidean coordinates.

That’s all Harrison needs to hear. She knows her stuff.

**Craig:** Right. So this is a fairly common way of doing these things. You have somebody that no one would expect to be really, really good at something because of their gender or their race or their age. And they are going to impress somebody. It’s not actually — I mean, it’s a really, really good movie. This is a fairly cliché way of doing these things.

But there is something pretty interesting in it, and that is — and you can pull out and sort of go, ah-ha. You know, sometimes when there are scenes that feel cliché, you realize that one thing isn’t. And it’s a little bit like those puzzles when we were kids, like find the things that are different, right? And those little differences are actually really illuminating. And I’m certain quite intentional. And the little difference here is Kevin Costner just says, “OK, all right. Do you do this? Do you do that?”

There’s no “I don’t think so, or is this some kind of joke?” That’s the difference. And you will see that little bit play out and grow in their relationship over the course of the movie. So there’s a little seed in what is a fairly stock kind of execution of something that is different and refreshing and kind of counter to the hyper formula of this kind of moment.

**John:** Absolutely. So this is a moment that happens midway through the story, I think, because we’ve actually established quite a bit of backstory with the women that we’re going to be following. And they’re sort of all going through first day experiences. They already worked at NASA. They worked as calculators in the sort of backroom doing the difficult calculations. And one by one they’re sort of being pulled into greater responsibilities, so Janelle Monáe’s character is going to work with the heat shield people. And Octavia Spencer is really managing these women and basically wants to be credited with being their manager and being paid as their manager.

So, Taraji P. Henson is of them the most lead character of them, and so she’s going to work in the biggest room with the biggest most important people. And I think we have a natural expectation that her relationship with Kevin Costner is going to be classically antagonistic where she has to impress him and change him.

He starts pretty far along the journey, and so it’s really more about his coming to see the world from her point of view. And basically recognize his own ignorance about sort of what was going on. So it wasn’t that he was this horrible racist. It’s that he had never even thought to question what she was allowed to do and what she wasn’t allowed to do and how frustrating that would be for her. And so it’s nothing like the Miranda Priestly sort of relationship. It’s not — he’s not even sort of teaching her how to grow into this bigger thing. It’s her just through her quiet competence pushing him and the rest of this group forward.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that is kind of the thing that jumps out of this exchange. Because it is, like I said, it’s a very — we’ve seen this before.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. So, that’s the thing that is the little payload. I think there’s a really good lesson there, actually, that when you are writing these scenes sometimes people are so panicked that they’re writing a stock scene. And I think it’s not something to panic over as long as you are putting some kind of twist or thing on it.

It’s when you don’t. It’s when you fail to surprise in any way whatsoever that the thing just starts to lie there and feel super derivative.

**John:** I think one of the other reasons why this didn’t pain me when I saw it in the theaters is that it’s part of a much longer scene. So we did some of the setup, but she’s just standing around this office for a long time while people are waiting and doing other things. She has this moment, and then the scene just keeps going on where she has to — where she’s finding her desk. And so it really places you into her perspective of what it’s like to be there.

One of the brilliant tricks that this movie does is that by fully grounding the experience in these women’s lives, you see everything from their point of view. And so when we go into these sort of white male enclaves, we are going into it as her. That is the foreign territory we’re heading into and we are completely identifying with her perspective on things.

And so letting her be sort of quietly competent in this moment and not have her big speech here, but save it for later on, you know, saves our powder and lets us sort of really stick in our perspective.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree completely.

**John:** Cool. Let’s take a look at one last first day, which was the second most highly recommended thing on Twitter when I put out the call for these scenes. This is Training Day by David Ayer.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** And this whole movie is a first day on the job essentially. So, let’s take a look at a scene that happens in a coffee shop. So, we’ll read through the setup here.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a good one. All right.

”INT. COFFEE SHOP – DAY

Old and tired, near Good Samaritan Hospital. Jake struts through the door, confidently looks around. JAKE’S POV: DETECTIVE SERGEANT ALONZO HARRIS, in black shirt, black leather jacket. And just enough platinum and diamonds to look like somebody. He reads the paper in a booth. The gun leather-tough LAPD vet is a hands-on, blue-collar cop who can kick your ass with a look. BACK TO SCENE Jake walks over. Slides in across. Alonzo’s eyes will never leave his newspaper.”

**John:** And let’s take a listen.

**Scene:**

JAKE
Good morning, sir.

A young waitress pours Jake coffee, offers a menu. Jake waves it away.

JAKE
I’m okay, ma’am. Thank you.

ALONZO
Have some chow before we hit the office. Go ahead. It’s my dollar.

JAKE
No, thank you, sir. I ate.

ALONZO
Fine. Don’t.

Alonzo turns the page. A long beat. Then:

JAKE
It’s nice here.

ALONZO
May I read my paper?

JAKE
I’m sorry, sir… I’ll get some food.

ALONZO
No. You won’t. You fucked that up. Please. I’m reading. Shut up.

Jake does — Jeeez, sorry. Pours a ton of sugar in his coffee.

TIME CUT TO:

INT. COFFEE SHOP – DAY

The waitress pours refills. Alonzo reads. Jake fidgets.

JAKE
Sure wouldn’t mind not roasting in a hot black and white all summer.

Alonzo sighs, carefully folds his paper. Glares at Jake.

ALONZO
Tell me a story, Hoyt.

JAKE
My story?

ALONZO
Not your story. A story. You can’t keep your mouth shut long enough to let me finish my paper. So tell me a story.

JAKE
I don’t think I know any stories.

Alonzo waves the paper in Jake’s face.

ALONZO
This is a newspaper. And I know it’s ninety percent bullshit but it’s entertaining. That’s why I read it. Because it entertains me. If you won’t let me read my paper, then entertain me with your bullshit. Tell me a story.

**John:** This is a fantastic scene. I remember loving the scene when I first saw the movie. This is establishing the dynamic between these two characters. This is like the Miranda/Anne Hathaway relationship in that the nature of their relationship is going to be the entire movie. And this establishes it so well.

**Craig:** It does. And the story he goes on to tell also helps quite a bit. Indeed. We, I think, have all had an experience where we’ve met somebody that puts us on our heels permanently. Because not only are they aggressive and preternaturally in control of themselves it seems, but they are bizarrely unpredictable. They feel dangerous to us. And you try and catch up to them. You try and get into their good graces. You try and match them and their tone. You try and figure out exactly what wave length you’re supposed to operate on with this person until eventually you find out you can’t. That’s never going to happen.

And what’s interesting to me about this first day scene is that Denzel Washington’s character puts Ethan Hawke back on his heels really, really hard. Really, really aggressively. And Jake, Ethan Hawke’s character, goes ahead and does as he’s ordered. He starts to tell a story. And this guy keeps interrupting him, and he’s doing it in a way that is, again, dangerous. Until Jake finally starts telling the story kind of the right way.

You can see Ethan Hawke trying to tell it in a way that would entertain Alonzo, because that’s what Alonzo has demanded. Entertainment. And he does and Alonzo gets entertained. And Jake feels really good about it, you know? Until Alonzo smashes him down again. Verbally, of course, in this instance. You get everything you need to know in this first day on the job scene. This is not a scene where you are trying to catch up with somebody who is going to teach you lessons. This is not a scene where a large business is overwhelming to you. This is a scene where you’re meeting a dangerous person, and you’re trying your best and using all of your skills to make it work and none of them are working at all.

**John:** Absolutely. So, in contrast to all these other scenes, we’re not going into the classic workplace, except that the workplace of these two characters is going to be just them together in a car, in a place. We’re not going to be in sort of the bullpens. It’s not that kind of movie. And so the workplace of this movie is going to be wherever the two of them are. And so it’s a really good way of establishing what the dynamics are going to be there and telegraphing what to watch out for.

I think what’s so great about how Denzel Washington’s character is playing through this moment is he’s not boxing, it’s more like a kind of Aikido or a Judo where he’s just continually knocking Ethan Hawke’s character off balance. And so that he can’t sort of figure out what he should say or do next. And it his desperation to figure out what to do next that can sort of compromise him.

It’s just ingeniously set up.

**Craig:** Yeah. And the rhythm that this establishes will repeat over and over and over. And you realize that the only way that this rhythm will ever break is if Jake breaks, essentially. And the movie itself, I mean, I love Training Day in part because, for a movie with a lot of action and a lot of plot, honestly — there’s a big kind of, well, you know, internal affairs-y sort of conspiracy going on and you’re meeting characters and people are getting double crossed and all the rest of it, but it is a movie about these conversations. It really is. And obviously those of us who have seen the movie, we all understand the metaphor here of what the training is exactly meant to be.

But this scene is a good example of when you and I talk about a little seed, you know, our first three pages. This is a great little seed. All of the stuff that is going to happen in this movie is essentially all packed into this one scene. So that’s another great way to make use of these first day on the job scenes is by giving them double duty. It’s first day on the job and it is the thematic and character DNA for the whole film.

**John:** Absolutely. Some other choices that were suggested for these scenes included Swimming with Sharks, The Sound of Music, Hot Fuzz, 9 to 5, Men in Black, Mr. Mom, Tootsie, Soapdish. There’s a whole wide range. And so in picking these four movies we didn’t necessarily pick the best scenes, but the ones that I thought could show us a good contrast between the kinds of things that happen in your first day on the job scenes.

So, this was fun. I enjoyed doing this as a new segment. If you have an idea for a future installment of This Kind of Scene, let us know and we’ll try to do this in the future.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know what? We can do whatever we want.

**John:** Yes. But we like your suggestions.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I mean, well, you do. I just like doing whatever I want. Here’s the sad truth: I say that, and then I just do whatever you want. So really that’s what it comes down to. Do you want their suggestions? You get them. I do what you want. And here we are.

**John:** And this is how it all happens.

**Craig:** This is how it all happens, folks.

**John:** We have two listener questions we’re going to try to hit. So, first off, we have John who wrote in a question regarding how to write for an increasingly international market. Let’s take a listen.

John Listener: Do you think that the international audience has become significantly more important to the studios than the domestic audience? And if so, when you guys are working on studio projects how do you keep in mind the international audience? Do you try to limit dialogue, for example? Add more action? Add more CGI? Or do you not really worry about that?

How do you make your projects, you know, feel like they’re not pandering? Lately it seems like a couple films have been pandering to Chinese audiences, for example, and it sort of backfired. And the Chinese audiences rejected them knowing that they were being pandered to. So, how do you avoid situations like that?

What do you think we can expect, basically, going forward in movies and how can we train ourselves to be thinking about international audiences? Does it start at the concept phase? Should we come up with stories that are less regionalistic, for example? Would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

**John:** So, Craig, what John’s referring to is there have been some movies that definitely steered things in a certain way so they could either capitalize on Chinese dollars or avoid angering Chinese audiences or Chinese censors. Basically, it could be very hard to get your movie to play in China if China doesn’t want your movie to play there. So, there have been movies that have been nipped and tucked in order to play in China. And movies that have included a scene of characters drinking a Chinese product because it was important.

But, I will say that as a person who writes some big studio movies, it’s never come up for me that I needed to be writing something specifically different for China. Have you felt this?

**Craig:** No. I haven’t. But I suspect that it was probably couched in something else. Sort of the way you give your dog a pill by shoving it in a piece of cheese. We do hear things from studios: casting suggestions, and maybe, oh, we need another action set piece, or something like this or that. The truth is that we are in a strange dance right now with the rest of the world when it comes to our business and how important the international audience is.

For some movies it’s kind of important. For some movies, it’s really, really important. In general, the studios get a much lower percentage of the returns from international box office. But international box office at times dwarfs domestic box office on a movie by movie basis.

I’m thinking for instance of a movie like Warcraft. Warcraft was made by Universal. It starred people speaking English. So it seemingly was intended for a domestic audience. But I suspect it was really largely intended for an international audience, because Warcraft is just so much bigger in Asia than it is here. It used to be pretty big here, but it’s huge still in Asia, and, not surprisingly, Warcraft made a massive amount of money overseas. Far more than it made here. Far more. People think of that movie as a huge bomb. It’s not.

There are, of course, movies that then — and I think John is absolutely right when he points this out — they pander. And that’s horrendous. And hopefully we stop doing that because I don’t think it’s productive. One thing I know for sure is you’re going to be very hard pressed to have a hero in your movie from Tibet. You’re going to be extremely hard pressed to have the villains in your movie be Chinese people. That’s not going to happen. Nor North Koreans. It’s hard for that, too, because again China is incredibly protective of that sort of thing. And they have a strict government control over what gets released and how long it is in theaters.

So, it has been very disruptive to our business, I think. The emergence of this massive new market, and also a lot of capital, has been disruptive. But creatively speaking, I also feel like domestic audiences are moving closer to where international audiences used to be. They just seem mostly interested in spectacle. I think that’s why we are awash in superhero movies and will remain so for some time. They are massive spectacle. And they cross all cultures.

**John:** I would agree with you. I think we would be making those kind of movies regardless, because those movies are incredibly successful in the US. And so you look at how our movies have become sort of bigger and flashier and sometimes dumber when they’re trying to be the giant blockbusters. But we’re also still making really good movies that are intended for a domestic audience that do really well. And so you look at Girls Trip, which was made by Universal, and was incredibly successful. Nowhere in their calculations did they say like, oh, we have to be able to release this movie in China. That just wasn’t sort of on the table for it. And so it’s still very possible to make an incredibly successful movie that is mostly playing in the US. And that’s good. We want to have a range of things being made.

Also, to date, the television that we’re making, some of it goes overseas, but some of it doesn’t go overseas. We’re still able to make television that is appealing to a very American sensibility that’s about sort of America right now. And I think that’s only going to continue.

So, I’m not too pessimistic that we’re going to lose the ability to have a culture of filmmaking that is sort of uniquely looking at American culture because we have that, it’s just sometimes not on the big screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. From a practical point of view, I don’t think there’s much sense in tailoring your writing for some imagined studio executive’s desires. Look, if in your heart what you really want to write is Pacific Rim, well, congrats. Good news. That is the kind of thing that studios probably will look at and go, OK, that feels like it could play really well internationally. And, yeah, that will give you a leg up.

But you have to want to write that. You have to feel that. You can’t calculate these things. If you do, you just end up with a calculated piece of crap. And believe me, we’ve got enough of it. We’ve got enough calculated pieces of crap coming from highly trained professionals. So we don’t need amateur calculated crap. What we need is stuff that feels authentic and passionate.

So, the truth is you kind of have to play the hand you’re dealt by your own passion and your own desire as a writer. And just know that there are still avenues for everybody. There are — good news — far more avenues now than there were five years ago for, for instance, grown up dramas. Because now they don’t necessarily need to exist theatrically. They can exist in a very real way on Netflix or on HBO. So, you’ve got to write what you want to write. Don’t try and game the system. You will lose.

**John:** I agree.

All right, our last question comes from Arvin who writes, “I’ve received notes back on several of my short scripts. One person keeps giving comments back that I am writing a ‘therapy piece’ and I’m putting my own issues into the script and not dramatizing the conflict. What is a therapy piece and how do I avoid writing one?”

**Craig:** Oh, well, I can guess. I mean, it’s not really a common term, meaning I’ve never heard it before.

**John:** I never heard it before either. But I understand what the friend is saying. And to me what the friend is saying is that if feels like you’re writing this to work through some issue that is not necessarily interesting to a reader or potential viewer of this product.

**Craig:** Yeah. So we have all seen scripts that feel like they’re navel-gazing. Somebody is writing a script because the events in their mind and the insights that they are having about circumstances particular to them are occupying their every waking minute. And now they’re putting it into a screenplay. It is a terrible miscalculation to do that because by and by those specific details of your life are remarkably boring to everybody.

There is a reason you have to pay therapists. It’s not just for their expertise. It’s also because nobody else wants to listen to that shit week after week after week. It would be exhausting. Literally exhausting.

We all have our problems. We are all carrying our baggage. And it is fine to be informed by that, or inspired by that, to write something that would be universal for everybody, that would be exciting for everyone.

If you are writing a screenplay to exercise your own personal demons and you’re not doing it couched in a larger story that would play to somebody who has no interest in your personal demons, then yeah, you’re kind of not doing it right. That said, Arvin, one person is saying that. I don’t know what other people are saying. And, you know, there are smaller movies that kind of do this somewhat successfully. I mean, you could argue that a lot of Woody Allen’s films are — I guess you’d call them therapy pieces in a way. But they are done with such wit and intelligence that we are entertained.

**John:** When people make intensely personal movies, that can be a really good thing, as long as that intensely personal thing speaks to a larger universal truth. It gives you an insight to the human condition that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. And so some of our great filmmakers make things that are intensely personal to them and yet we’re able to see through their lens a much broader perspective around us.

Speaking to the sense that this one person has read your script and it feels like you’re just working through your own stuff, you know, you’re not doing the other things well. And so you’re probably having characters speak the kinds of things you wish you could say, and in doing so you’re basically writing yourself into it, but not in a way that is entertaining for everyone else.

You look at Aaron Sorkin, I mean, you could say that most of what Aaron Sorkin writes sort of feels like therapy pieces. It sort of feels like you’re going through a therapy session with him. And yet he has such tremendous mastery of craft that you’re sort of delighted to go through those therapy sessions with him. So, it may just be picking stories that let you examine things that are interesting to you — internally interesting to you — but finding a way to externalize them in a way that they’re interesting to other people as well.

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s a term that has become very popularized. Mary Sue. Or Gary Sue. Depending on gender. And the idea there is a writer creates a character that is essentially a stand in for them. And this character is an idealized perfected them. So, whenever something goes wrong, it’s because this character is being unfairly wronged. And they are able to quickly fix the situation and come out on top. And it’s just basically sort of a teenage fantasy version of yourself. It’s an immature, childish expression of kind of an overpowered perfected you, which in and of itself implies a need for actual therapy, which I think is pretty universal and common to all human beings.

I’ll make a suggestion, Arvin. Check out, if you haven’t seen it already, 500 Days of Summer by Neustadter and Weber and directed by Marc Webb. Because it is a therapy piece I think. I think — I think it was based on a relationship that Scott Neustadter actually had. And it is very much that and yet manages to be extraordinarily entertaining and I think provides a kind of universal pep talk for us all.

So, we don’t feel like we’re watching one person getting back at someone or proving to themselves that they’re OK or that they were wronged. We watch someone go through something that we feel we’ve all felt. So, take a look at that and maybe you’ll get some good lessons from that.

**John:** I think that’s a great suggestion. And what’s crucial about 500 Days of Summer is that you see the suffering and you also see the mistakes that the protagonist is making. And so often in the Mary Sue stories or the Marty Stu stories, the character is flawless and therefore uninteresting.

**Craig:** Correct. That kind of is the hallmark — I like Marty Stu. I don’t know why Gary Sue. I saw Gary Sue and I did think like that’s weird, because Sue is still, like no one is named Gary Sue. So Marty Stu. I like that. That’s much better.

**John:** Our friend Julia Turner was talking about that on the Slate Culture Gabfest today and they were talking through fan fiction and the prevalence of the Mary Sue and the Marty Stu character in fan fiction.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s definitely out there.

**John:** It’s out there. All right, it is time for our One Cool Things. Craig, I am so fascinated by what you put on the outline that I want you to talk me through it.

**Craig:** Well, this is the most — it’s just bizarre. So, George Plimpton, you know, George Plimpton knows — I don’t even know why George Plimpton is famous. I’ve got to be honest with you. I never quite got it. He was — I think he wrote some books about sports and —

**John:** But he was mostly a talk show guest is what I think of him.

**Craig:** Yeah. He was famous for being famous and for having that incredibly patrician American accent. And then he was also famous, I think, for people of my generation because he was the guy that advertised I think in television or something like that. But anyway George Plimpton was also quite rich apparently. And he purchased a 3,700-year-old tablet from the ancient civilization of Babylon. You know, and they had this cuneiform, we all learned that in school, their manner of writing which was these little wedge shapes in clay. And then eventually the tablet was gifted to some academics.

So, a guy named Dr. Daniel Mansfield, along with his team at the University of New South Wales in Australia, took a close look at this tablet. Everybody knew that it was basically mathematical in nature. What they figured out, in fact, is that it was a tool — it was essentially like a times table, except it was a trigonometric table to calculate right triangles at different sizes.

And what’s fascinating about it is it is actually a more advanced trigonometric system than the one the Greeks figured out 1,500 years later which we are still using today. So, our system of trigonometry is limited to our number system, which is basically base 10, you know. 1, 10, 100, 1,000.

But the Babylonians were using base 60, like time. So they divided things up into time. Which meant that they could have many more perfect divisions of things as they calculated them and they wouldn’t end up in these weird repeating fractions. Like if you want to take a third of 60, it’s 20. No problem. It’s exact.

You want to take a third of 10, it’s 3.33333 forever. Not as exact. So, really fascinating stuff. And we’ll throw a link here in the show notes. It actually will make sense to you when you read it. It’s not a particularly — you don’t need a math degree to understand this. All you need to know is there is a clay tablet from 3,700 years ago that may change the way we do trigonometry today. And that is awesome.

**John:** That’s very cool. My thing will not change the world, but it was a great observation. So this is a piece by Hana Michels writing for The Cut called Sword Guys are a Thing and I’ve had Sex with All of Them. And she talks through Sword Guys.

And Sword Guys are guys who own swords. And she really finds this sort of subculture of men who buy swords. Asian swords or other swords. And prop swords. Some are cos players, but many of them aren’t. And there’s just a very unique kind of man she’s describing as the man who owns a sword.

And she likens it to cat ladies, in the sense of like we have an idea of what a cat lady is and all the stereotypes about them, and you can kind of do the same things with any man who owns a sword. And so her piece I just thought was delightful, so I would recommend them.

It very much feels like the kind of observation you could see in a movie and say like, oh, wow, I totally get it because that guy has a sword hanging above his fireplace. It’s just very true.

**Craig:** I read this and I thought it was terrific but I didn’t think it was real. It seems not real. This is real?

**John:** Oh, this is real.

**Craig:** Are you sure?

**John:** I am going to bet $5.

**Craig:** Ok, because here’s the thing. Sword guys are real. There’s no question about that. I have sex with all of the sword guys feels made up to me. That’s not a thing. I just don’t believe that.

**John:** Well, I think I have sex with all the sword guys is the exaggeration of what it is like to be in a part of that piece of culture. Basically she’s saying I am the kind of girl who ends up having sex with the sword guys.

**Craig:** OK. I can see that. I don’t know. At some point while I was reading it I thought this is a master work of comic fiction. But if it’s real than I just am a bit confused, to be honest with you. Then I’m confused because the article seems to be both acknowledging and embracing what is — it seems to be painting this as a sort of pathetic pursuit and then also really appreciating it. I’m confused.

**John:** Yeah. So, you know, I think it would be delightful if I was confused and took this piece of fiction as a real fact. But I’m pretty sure that this is more on the order of a Modern Love kind of column in the Times where it’s like this is kind of a real thing. And so it’s a well-told version of the real situation.

**Craig:** I mean, she is a comedian.

**John:** She’s a comedian. Yeah. So like all comedians, there’s going to be exaggeration and things twisted around to make the joke better. But it feels real to me.

**Craig:** You know, she also wrote something called My Imaginary Boyfriend, Josh. I don’t know man. This can’t be real. Well, we’ll find out.

**John:** We’ll find out.

All right, that is our show for this week. So, our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. Edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Rajesh Naroth. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For shorter questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

We are on Facebook. Just search for Scriptnotes. You can search for Scriptnotes on Apple Podcasts and add us and subscribe and leave us a review. That is so nice and helpful when you do that. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. Go there. You can download the PDFs of the full screenplays for all these things, but also the individual scenes that we talked through.

That’s also where you’ll find transcripts. So Megan gets them about four or five days after the episode airs.

You can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. We also have a USB drive with the first 300 episodes available at store.johnaugust.com. Craig, thanks for a fun new segment.

**Craig:** John, thank you as always for being a podcast innovator.

**John:** Ah, we do our best. And I’ll see you next week.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [The Academy Nicholl Fellowships](http://www.oscars.org/nicholl)
* The Hudsucker Proxy [on Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hudsucker_Proxy) and [the full script](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Hudsucker_Proxy.pdf).
* [Our scene in The Hudsucker Proxy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv33SsGHYHo), and [in the script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/HUDSUCKER_PROXY_Orientation.pdf)
* The Devil Wears Prada on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_Wears_Prada_(film)), and [the full script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/DEVIL_WEARS_PRADA_Full_Script.pdf).
* [Our first scene in The Devil Wears Prada](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=t4isatjZ0BM), and [in the script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/DEVIL_WEARS_Andy_Interview.pdf)
* [Our second scene in The Devil Wears Prada](https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_9506656686&feature=iv-UoUErzCSSctn&src_vid=b2f2Kqt_KcE&v=Ja2fgquYTCg), and [in the script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/DEVIL_WEARS_Miranda_Monologue.pdf)
* Hidden Figures on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Figures), and [the full script](https://s3.foxmovies.com/foxmovies/production/films/123/assets/hidden_figures_screenplay.pdf-5183735384.pdf).
* [Our scene from Hidden Figures](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syZeizyYNUs&app=desktop), and [in the script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/HIDDEN_FIGURES_New_Computer.pdf).
* Training Day on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Training_Day), and [the full script](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Training_Day.pdf).
* [Our scene from Training Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3myRRZkErs), and [in the script](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/TRAINING_DAY_Coffee_Shop.pdf).
* [Sword Guys Are a Thing and I’ve Had Sex With All of Them](https://www.thecut.com/2017/08/sword-guys-are-a-thing-and-ive-had-sex-with-all-of-them.html) by Hana Michels for The Cut
* [3,700-Year-Old Babylonian Stone Tablet Gets Translated, Changes History](http://www.distractify.com/omg/2017/08/28/13BnNP/babylonian-stone-tablet) by Collin Gosell for Distractify
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_317.mp3).