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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-one-with-the-austin-winner).

**Previously on Scriptnotes**

**Craig Mazin:** Zero.

**Amanda Morad:** Oh, that’s me.

**John August:** So, what this card says is John and Craig will read your script. If you would like to–

**Amanda:** Um, yes.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** And we’ll talk about it on the show and you will come on the show.

**Amanda:** Yes!

**Craig:** Great. Or, you could have a tee-shirt.

**Amanda:** I’m going to pick C.

**John:** All right. Well done.

**Craig:** C.

[Intro bloops]

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

**Craig:** My name is Craig Mazin?

**John:** And this is Episode 250 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the program we will be talking with the winner from our live show in Austin. And looking at the script she sent in. We’ll also be answering a bunch of listener questions from the overflowing virtual mailbag.

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

**Craig:** Right. So I did another Escape Room LA. This was my last one of that company’s rooms. They have four rooms. The Alchemist. The Detective. The Cavern. And The Theater. And so I went and I did The Theater and we did escape. Felt good about that. And there were only six of us, so that was a big deal.

But, while I was with Melissa in the little waiting room area there was this big group of people all going to do The Alchemist. And they were just, you know, talking. And then one of them said, “Oh, you know what? There’s going to be something that involves smelling different scents in this one because I heard Craig talking about it on Scriptnotes.”

And then someone is like, “Oh yeah, I heard that.” And they start talking about me. But I’m just sitting right there. And Melissa turns to me and goes, “You have to say something.” And I said, “Nah, I don’t want to.” [laughs] She said, “No, you have to. It’s crazy.”

And then somebody said my name again and finally I just said, “That’s me.” And then they turned and looked and they’re like, “It is you.” And so we had a very nice conversation. It was very strange because, you know, that is fairly rare to happen, but exciting in the moment. And I did promise them that I would mention them on the show.

And they did in fact escape The Alchemist. So, good for them.

**John:** Congratulations to everybody who survived.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** So back in Episode 248, we talked about the controversy over white actors being cast in Asian roles. And Kirk Shimano wrote in to say — Craig, would you read what Kirk wrote for us?

**Craig:** Sure. He said, “Thanks so much for your thoughtful discussion about the casting of Asian American actors. I also agree that star-washing should totally be thing and will use it in social media as frequently as possible.”

**John:** That’s Craig’s term. Craig made up that term.

**Craig:** I made up that term. And I want money. Kirk continues, “I wanted to add one other thought about the character of the Ancient One in Doctor Strange. I think another complicating factor in this is that original character fits into a common racist trope. That of a wise Asian master. I know for my part, whenever I see an actor of Asian descent in this kind of role, my first reaction is always, really, this kind of role? Again? So, from my part, I’m actually pleased to see this character go a different way.

“That all being said, I find the lack of Asian American actors in the Marvel universe hugely disappointing. I just wish the conversation was more about the lead characters rather than having yet another wise Asian master who helps the white people achieve their full potential.”

**John:** Yep. So thank you, Kirk, for writing in about that. And that was an aspect we didn’t really get into when we discussed it is that if you’re just casting a person of a certain race in a very stereotypical role, that’s not a great mark of progress.”

**Craig:** It’s true. I mean, I’m not sure you can claim it’s a great mark of progress to keep the racist trope role and also then deny employment to a poor Asian actor who now can’t even get the part of the racist trope.

I mean, I suppose you could say that we’ve come a long way. Because it used to be that we cast white men like Joel Grey to play the wise Asian master. No, I guess we’re still doing it. We’re still — although she’s not meant to be — at least she’s not meant to be Asian. So, that’s a minor improvement. But I think Kirk is absolutely right that that character is beyond shopworn and needs to be retired.

And the Marvel universe I think has done a very good job of being true to things that deeply meaningful and being a little more flexible with stuff that isn’t. I don’t think, for instance, Nick Fury was originally African American. So, they had no problem with that. So, I’m not really sure why this needed to be that way. But it’s a tough one.

It’s interesting. Marvel makes movies in 2016, but so many of the characters that they’re pulling up were created in the ’60s and ’70s.

**John:** Yeah. And so the way you reinvent those or sort of re-explore those can be challenging. And finding a good way through it.

It reminds me of our conversation with Alan Yang at the Christmas live show where he’s talking about Master of None, and the issues came up of like you have an actor who is going in for roles, and he’s refusing to go in for those very stereotypically South Asian roles. And like he doesn’t want to be the cab driver or the call center worker. He doesn’t want to put on the fake voice anymore. And that’s a real issue and that’s a decision every actor has to make about what kinds of things you’re willing to go in for, or not go in for.

**Craig:** Yeah. Whereas on the writing side of things, we get to do anything. I mean, acting is really hard. It’s always you out there. I feel for actors. Because I can sense how frightened they are of being embarrassed.

**John:** Yeah. It’s tough. All right, same episode we also talked about pitching open writing assignments. And Philip from Durham, North Carolina wrote in to ask, “What are your thoughts on using visuals of any kind to help convey the story you want to pitch during this open writing assignment process? Is it a good idea or bad idea to bring in visuals?”

**Craig:** I don’t think it’s either a good or bad idea. It really depends on what you’re doing. If you’re pitching something where one picture would be worth a thousand words, bring that picture. For sure. Generally speaking, I’m not pitching movies like that by the nature of the movies I do pitch. Although, on the sheep movie, I did make — I mean, this was after we already had set it up, but when I turned the script in I also included a book. I made a photo book.

So, I went on the Internet and found as many high res images of sheep that I could find that were evocative, I think, and would have made them feel something. And then I made a little Apple book out of it, and I sent it in.

**John:** Nice. Yeah, for the thing I’m writing right now, I did come in with some visuals. I had little small artboards. And it was really to sort of show what the world would look like, because it was hard to describe my specific take on what this world would be without some artboards. But, the thing that people were pitching to me, I had three different sets of writers who were pitching this project, and none of them brought in visuals and it was fine. We just focused on what they were saying. So, it can be useful. I think what can be especially useful about the visual boards is it gives you something to point at later on in the process.

So, like as you’re having the discussion, you can sort of like go back to the boards, or the producer can look through the boards and say like, “Oh, so back in this moment…” It helps anchor the thing you said to a visual, which can be useful post pitch.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, Ted Elliott used to say that he and Terry were so bad at talking, and so uncomfortable in those rooms, that they would bring visual stuff along just to distract people from them. Because they didn’t want their awkwardness to somehow make their odds worse.

Sometimes the visuals that they brought were literally just index cards, like here, look at our story points as we talk so you’re not concentrating on our stammering faces, which I thought was great.

**John:** But if you’re a highly charismatic writer, sort of performer. Like if you’re Mike Birbiglia, you probably would not bring in visuals like that because you want them focusing on your face, because that’s where the performance is.

**Craig:** You got it.

**John:** Yep. All right, last bit of housekeeping here. A few months ago we asked you to do a quick survey about the show and what we should do with back episodes and the bonus shows. And we decided that we’re going to make more 250 drive episodes. And this is episode 250, so in about two weeks we’ll have all 250 episodes of Scriptnotes, along with the bonus episodes, on a little USB drive that you can purchase in the store. So, if that’s something you would like, they will be available soon.

Craig, I think these USB drives are going to be black.

**Craig:** Oh. Sleek.

**John:** Sleek and black. Shiny.

**Craig:** Like little dolphins? Little black dolphins?

**John:** Maybe like little black dolphins.

**Craig:** Or, no, orcas.

**John:** Yeah. I was worried you were going to go to a Sexy Craig, like Scriptnotes After Dark thing. But I think orcas is maybe a better, safer thing. Because everyone likes whales.

**Craig:** You know, John, Sexy Craig doesn’t care about that computer stuff.

**John:** Yeah, it’s going to be good. The other thing we are experimenting with is people had asked — so all of the premium episodes and all the back episodes are available through the premium feed at Scriptnotes.net. You can also use it through the Scriptnotes app.

Some people had problems with the app, or if you’re overseas it can be a challenge with your bank accounts. It didn’t PayPal. There were some real frustrations that some people had. And people asked can you buy individual tracks for like those bonus episodes. So, we’re experimenting with just two of those tracks. And so the Justin Marks Jungle Book episode and the Q&A from the session with Aline and Rachel Bloom where we talk about introducing a character in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Those two tracks are available for $0.99 each in the John August store. So, just store.johnaugust.com. And we’ll see if people like to download those individual tracks.

**Craig:** I feel like I’m like a year away from having to hire somebody to audit you.

**John:** Yeah. You would not believe the dollars and cents coming into this operation.

**Craig:** I mean, if you buy a couple of houses and a few cars, just know I’m coming for you.

**John:** Okay. I want to point out that Craig Mazin drives a Tesla, which he talks about nonstop. I drive a seven-year-old Prius and a Nissan Leaf. I don’t even get to drive the Leaf, because my husband drives the Leaf. So I get a really beat up Prius.

**Craig:** You know, you could get a new car with the massive amounts of cash coming in on this show.

**John:** I probably could.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** A sensible car.

**Craig:** A sensible car. [laughs]

**John:** The tiny last bit of follow up here is I asked Matthew to record his screen while he edited episode 248, so it’s about 2.5 hours’ worth of video that I’ve shrunk down to nine minutes. So you can see sort of his process of what he goes through as he edits our show down.

Because we record basically in real time. So, one of our recordings of our show will take about an hour, but it takes about 2.5 hours for Matthew to go through and sort of get rid of all the uhs and ums and get everything synchronized right and get the music in.

So, if you’re curious what that process is like, it’s posted on YouTube and there will be a link in the show notes for that.

**Craig:** I might even watch that.

**John:** You might watch that. And my perception is that I mess up on the show a lot more than you do. And so that he has to do more work. But as you actually look through it, it’s about 50-50. You have a few ums and stuff there that go away through the magical process of editing.

**Craig:** I wouldn’t call that messing up, John. I think what you’ve done is you’ve tried to equate complete failure with innocuous pauses.

**John:** Perhaps I have. Perhaps I have.

**Craig:** This is already shaping up to be a great episode. I feel like this is an episode that we’re not drinking, but I feel a little bit like I might have had a glass of wine.

**John:** That sounds great. And our guest has been so patient, because she’s been like literally right across the table from me this entire time.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** So I think we should probably introduce the winner of our sort of special Golden Tickets. We’ll set up this whole detail.

At the live show in Austin, we had put up these raffle tickets and Craig called out the number and she had the right number. She came up and we told her she could give us her script and we would read her script and talk about it on the air. She is here. We want to welcome Amanda Morad. Welcome to our show.

**Amanda:** Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

**Craig:** Welcome.

**John:** So, Amanda, you were at the live show in Austin, but you’re actually a Los Angeles person. Is that correct?

**Amanda:** Yes, that was my first time at Austin Film Festival. And it turned out pretty well for me.

**John:** Cool. So, what made you want to go to Austin?

**Amanda:** It’s a great event. And it’s a great competition. Matt D. and everybody there is just amazing. And I learned so much and got to meet a ton of people. In fact, I made friends that I will likely have for the rest of my life. And it’s definitely an event that I would do again.

**John:** Cool. So, you show up in Austin and did you know people before you go there, or was it all strangers?

**Amanda:** I had one connection from my alma mater. He was a former professor, now technically colleague, who met me there. Shawn Gaffney. And he introduced me to some people and from there things just went great.

**John:** Great. So tell us about yourself. What is your background? Did you study writing? What are you goals? Do you do anything else other than write?

**Amanda:** Uh, yes. [laughs] I’m originally from the East Coast and moved out to LA in 2014 to pursue television writing. I would love to get into scripted drama. And right now I am working in digital development with you know Murray Productions. And on the desk of two development executives there. And working on original short form content in that capacity.

I am also a big board gamer. So, I followed along with several of the episodes that you guys mentioned. Ticket to Ride and Pandemic and everything. So, that would be like the secondary hobby outside of the writing, because the writing is certainly central and the reason I came out here. So, that’s the main focus.

**John:** Let me ask. Have you applied to fellowships? Have you gone after other things?

**Amanda:** Yeah, I’ve definitely applied to a lot of contests and all the network fellowships in the past. In 2014, I got to the semifinal round with CBS, so I got to go in and meet with their diversity, Carole Kirschner and Jeanne Mayo and all of them there. And it was a wonderful meeting and they said they really enjoyed the material but I was just really green at the time. I think I’d been in LA three weeks. And so their advice to me was go get some industry experience and try again.

So, now that I’ve been working in the industry for a little while I applied again, and so we’ll see where it goes.

**John:** Cool. And when you say diversity hiring, so you’re Latina and was that your focus?

**Amanda:** Yes. Yes. For that one.

**John:** What were they reading when they brought you in that first time?

**Amanda:** The first time was an early draft of Betty Bureau, many, many drafts ago. And a spec of Homeland. Because they require both a pilot and a spec script.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** I got to tell you that I feel like we won the raffle. Because the odds of randomly picking somebody that was a good writer were very low. And I apologize to all of the people that come to Austin. I assure you I’m not talking about you, dear listener, you are great. But, of course, how many great people can there be? But I thought your script was terrific. And I’m going to I think bum your current employers out by saying that you should absolutely — you’re ready to be on a staff right now as far as I’m concerned.

**Amanda:** Craig, you’re making my day. And you’re making me blush. [laughs] Thank you.

**Craig:** Well, you’ve earned it. I mean, we read a lot here. I mean, I can’t speak for John, but I thought it was really well done. It was professional. And it showed an ability to craft a scene, to pull a story through, to surprise me. Characters were distinct. I can imagine that this is already better than the work that’s being churned out by quite a few veterans of TV staffs. And I think somebody should put you on their staff right away. I really do.

**Amanda:** Thank you, Craig. That might be the best compliment of my life.

**Craig:** You’re welcome. I mean, and you know, 250 episodes of legitimacy behind that, because nobody can question the fact that I have no problem saying to somebody’s face, “I don’t like that.” So, you can take this to the bank. I thought it was terrific.

**Amanda:** Thank you.

**John:** So I have staffed TV shows, and I’ve staffed one-hours, and so I have a little bit more experience being on the other side of the table, and I agree with Craig. I think why I’m so, so happy that it was you who got that number and showed up is that you delivered a script that is professional in the sense of like there’s no — there’s no mistakes. Nothing about it feels amateur whatsoever. You have a really good sense of being able to draw small details out. I like some of your descriptions of characters. I singled out like there’s a minor police officer who is like a well-fed husband.

**Craig:** Yeah. I like that. And then the little boy in his father’s suit.

**John:** Daddy’s suit. Yeah. Those are great sort of like small little signifiers that show like, oh, she really does kind of know what she’s doing here. I thought you made a good choice about picking a distinctive subject for this script.

So, before we even get into some of the praise here, you wrote this script — this is a one-hour drama pilot. It’s a writing sample fundamentally. It’s written in a five-act structure. Was it teaser plus five, or just true five?

**Amanda:** Teaser plus five.

**John:** Teaser plus five, which is common in sort of like ABC land for this. Which I thought was very smart, because you could have easily done this as a cable pilot or something else that didn’t have breaks, but good to sort of show that you understand that there do have to be act breaks. All really good.

Also smart choice to make this be a period show. A friend is just staffing from one show to another show, and he had to write a new pilot, and his agency told him do the period one because it won’t get outdated so quickly.

**Amanda:** It’s true.

**John:** And so you could send it out season after season and it won’t become outdated, so these are all smart reasons. And I always like the — I’m a big fan of some of the period shows. You look at like Homefront. I don’t know if you ever saw that which was a great WWII drama.

**Amanda:** Yes.

**John:** Mad Men, of course. So, there’s a lot of stuff there that’s great. They’re not reading a ton of period things and they’ll remember yours, where they won’t remember like five other sort of Sopranos shows. So, those are great things.

I was less enthusiastic about sort of the overall experience of the script. I got a little bit bored, and so some of my notes for you are going to be about places where I kind of fell off the ride. But I want my underlying message is that I’m so happy it’s you, because everyone can download your script, read along with us, and see like, oh, she does know what she’s doing, and it’s so refreshing to see somebody who is not making just dumb mistakes, so we can focus on making it better, rather than bringing it up to a baseline quality.

**Craig:** Isn’t that nice for once? I mean…

**Amanda:** That’s nice.

**Craig:** Yeah, anyone reading anything will always have some places to say, “Well what about this, or what about this?”

**Amanda:** Of course.

**Craig:** And I have some of those for you that I hope are instructive and constructive. But we’re in a different kind of note-giving here. This is sort of the note-giving that I would give to a colleague of mine. You know, I’d say, okay, what were you going for there? Didn’t quite work.

So, I will talk to you like you’re already working on a TV show and I don’t know about you, John. I don’t feel quite qualified to ever say whether or not something like this is something they would actually produce and air. All I can really talk about is the writing itself, I guess.

**John:** And I would also say that I’m not sure that should even be your goal here.

**Amanda:** Right.

**John:** Talk to us — we’re talking too much. Talk to us about why you wrote this specific script? And actually tell us the name, tell us the premise, because people listening to this in the car won’t know what we’re even talking about. Tell us your script.

**Amanda:** The script is called Betty Bureau. And it is an FBI procedural drama that takes place in 1950 when the first Top Ten Most Wanted List is first published by J. Edgar Hoover. And it follows Caty Pelayo, a new secretary to the bureau, as she is covertly helping the agents solve crimes. Of course, this is not at all sanctioned by Hoover or anyone. There were no female agents in 1950. And so this is her kind of journey to independence, but also to helping catch all the crooks.

And this story actually originated at my grandmother’s funeral. My great aunt used to be a secretary for the FBI and she was regaling the family with all kinds of stories from that time period. And she told us the story about accidentally helping catch somebody on the Top Ten Most Wanted list at a department store one day. And from there, I thought, you know, this is an idea that I can run with and I can write passionately about because it is based on two very strong independent Mexican women in my life that I have loved and respected forever.

And so that’s where the script kind of originated. And it’s been through many, many, many drafts since then. And, yeah, I do hope that it is a good, solid writing sample. Hopefully for representation. Maybe for just getting my name and myself out there as a writer, because I am fairly new to town, and with the experience that I am getting at a production company now, I’m hoping that that will kind of start segueing into actual writing–

**Craig:** I mean, look, I think your days of not having an agent are over. Because I’ll send this to my agent. [laughs]

**Amanda:** Wow. Thank you.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, it’s stupid. Of course you should have an agent. This is a strong sample. And you should have an agent. It won’t be my agent, but it will be somebody. And I’m sure John has people that he knows as well, because that’s just crazy. Of course you should have an agent. This is good enough for that, in my opinion.

**John:** All right, and in my opinion I don’t know that you will get an agent right off the bat. And this is just me sort of talking reality is that having read a ton of these, I think it’s good and shows competence. I don’t think it was breathtaking to me. And I got kind of bored.

And I remember back to when we had Riki Lindhome on the show and she was like reading through for staffing. And if she stopped reading after page three, she stopped reading. And I worry that people are going to stop reading. And so what you described and what you pitched was more intriguing than the first sort of ten pages were for me. And as I was reading it, I felt like I was getting ahead of you at times. And some of that is the nature of what you’re trying to do. You’re doing a procedural, but it’s also a premise procedural. And those can be kind of like the two most boring kinds scripts to read.

Because in a premise show, you’re having to set up this whole world, and you’re having to introduce your character to this whole world, so the plot always ends up taking sort of a back burner. And in a procedure, well, people are just going through and doing their jobs. And so it was a lot of people walking through FBI kinds of stuff doing this.

I think you do a nice job setting up the world of things, but I — there were very few scenes where I’m like, oh holy cow, that’s amazing, like that’s going to be a really great moment. And I think as you look at doing more writing on this, and look at doing the next thing you want to write, focusing on the how do I keep it incredibly suspenseful, how do I make sure people are desperate to turn that page will be your challenge.

**Amanda:** That’s a good note.

**Craig:** I never got bored, but perhaps because the script was teaching me something different, you know. So it was teaching you one thing — and this can happen all the time. This is the great difference of opinion of the world, you know. People, they start reading something and they think, “I know what I want this to be.” And if it doesn’t become that, that’s disappointing.

Now, to be fair, John and I read scripts that are just objectively boring all the time. In this case, what this was telling me it wanted to be, and what I wanted it to be, was kind of more Mad Men-ish in a way than high capery, which is why actually in a weird way my biggest issue was the ending, which I thought was not congruent. It was sort of like the show suddenly remembered that it was supposed to have cops and robbers and Ka-boom-ies. And I didn’t want that in a way. I wanted an ending that was more about the character.

I was so much more into the soap opera of the characters than I was into the crime. I really was enjoying that. I loved the reveal that the newspaper man was this agent’s brother. And I liked their flirtation, and the fact that now she’s got two brothers kind of going after her. And I also liked the woman in a man’s world aspect which felt very Mad Men to me and really interesting.

So, that’s kind of where I — that’s where my eye was. So, I was never bored actually weirdly until the end, when it was just like, oh, now they’re just shooting. Shooting. Shooting. Shooting. Shooting. So, that was a different — it’s so funny how we have these different responses to things.

**John:** Yeah. I think, Craig, you read this as being like this is like a Mad Men. I read it like, oh, this is like an FBI procedural. And it’s trying to do both things at the same time. The issue is I would love the Mad Men show, but Mad Men is not fundamentally a procedure. It’s a character-driven show where characters are going through journeys and sort of coming at each other in strange moments.

And I didn’t feel the friction, the tension, the spark in those moments in this. And I don’t feel like there quite were the scenes there that could have had those sparks. And so as we look at — as we go through pages, we may find some moments that can actually break out a little bit more.

The last thing I want to say is sort of urgency. And in any of these things, you want a sense that there’s an urgency for like why this scene is happening right now. And there were a couple moments where I felt like that was just a random other scene to go to. And there wasn’t a pressing need for like that had to be the next scene. It could have sort of arbitrary. So, that’s sort of the one the page urgency.

There’s also sort of a “why am I reading this script right now, why is this script relevant in 2016?” So, when I previously said it’s great because you could write a period thing because it doesn’t have to have a timeliness, but there’s still an underlying quality of like what is this show saying about today. And has that resonated for you at all? Is there a reason why you think this is a show about today?

**Amanda:** Yeah. Absolutely. With Caty’s position as a secretary in a man’s world, and coming into — as a writer coming into Hollywood as a woman with very little Hollywood connection, I’ve encountered it on a few occasions where my strength and independence and ability has been mitigated by what people expect of me as a woman. And I know we don’t really like to talk about the overtness of it still happening, but I think it is still relevant. And I think a lot of what Caty feels about being relegated to certain tasks and relegated to certain roles, I’ve certainly felt that through the various jobs I’ve had.

Yes, I’m still early in my career, and it’s possible it will continue to happen. But I think her emotion and her response to it and the resistance that she’s feeling toward this relegation to memos and lunch orders is something that I identify with. And I think a lot of female professionals, particularly in this city that I know, definitely feel that.

**John:** Okay. But I mean, is that a new thing that’s happened in — is that a 2016 thing? Or would the same thing happen in 2006? I’m just wondering if there’s a special thing about why this is happening now, or why this conversation is happening now.

I think her Latina heritage might be an interesting thing to bring up a little bit more, because I missed it until her mother is speaking Spanish, sort of midway through. And that might be a thing that is extra interesting. Or the degree to which Hoover and sort of like that whole movement reflects sort of modern times could be a way in. I just — I want to be intrigued about what you’re trying to say about today in this period show.

**Amanda:** Right. Yeah, absolutely. I think her heritage and the politics of that era are certainly reflected in a lot of things going on in our world today. There’s lots of talk about — even what you guys were talking about in the follow up, with whitewashing of actors in roles that belong to ethnically diverse actors. And I think that that carries over into plenty of industries. And in 1950 at that time, it was very rare to have a Latina secretary in the nation’s capital in a professional job.

You know, at the time a lot of it was southern labor for Latinas. And so I think showing that Latina heritage, I think things like Jane the Virgin have exceptionally well because Latinas are seeing themselves on TV in ways that they haven’t before. And even though this takes place 65 years ago, I think that this would serve the same way.

**Craig:** I’m with you on that one. We never ask the period pieces with a majority white casts who sort of carry the burden of the difference between then and now, or if we do, it’s because that’s that what it’s about. I think that if this were a movie, I would be much more concerned, because a movie begins, middles, and ends. And it must have some immediate relevance for you when you walk out of the theater. That is beyond just whatever you saw.

For a show, I always feels like sooner or later, no matter how hard the show is trying to be relevant, the show becomes about the show. It ultimately becomes about its own soap opera. And in this case, I think you have an interesting opportunity to combine soap opera with procedural, which has been done before. And doing it in just a different background. I love the setting. I love the setting. I think the ’50s is terrific.

And certainly the imposition on her as a woman is — I think it’s always interesting. There were spots here and there where I thought either — she almost seemed like she had arrived in a time machine. This is an interesting thing. When you’re talking about characters who live in a world that is oppressive, sometimes when they arrive on the show they seem as aware as we that this is all off. But that’s the world in which they are. It’s a very tricky thing — do you know what I — I don’t know if I’m explaining myself quite right.

**Amanda:** No, that makes sense.

**Craig:** Yeah. So occasionally she seemed almost sardonic about it, like oh well, in 50 years you’ll realize how stupid that sounds. You know what I mean? Which is a little different than being in the moment I guess.

**Amanda:** I see.

**John:** Cool. Let’s get to your actual script. And so if people want to read along with us, there will be a link in the show notes for this PDF, so you can download it and take a read through it with us. Let’s start with the teaser. It’s a two-page teaser. It’s a teaser without dialogue. It felt a little strange and forced that it had no dialogue. I felt like I was missing some little bits of dialogue, or something to help ground me in a place. I felt like some of these characters talking, basically people are not reading this. It feels kind of like a tracking shot where we’re following this young hostess/server through this club. And she’s ultimately going to end up dead at the end of this teaser.

It felt like I wanted some snippets of dialogue, or something to help anchor us in a place and a time. Because as it is, they are two well-written pages of action, but you’re making a very big ask of the reader to like, okay, read through these two pages of action and I’m not going to give you any sort of break there.

**Amanda:** Got it.

**Craig:** I have a suggestion for that, because I agree with John. Sometimes in things like this, what could work in lieu of dialogue, because I like the mystery of not knowing what people are saying, and whispers in ears and all that. Sometimes a good song does miracles. And especially when you’re in DC in 1950, you’re period, and you’re in a — you have a band right there. A really great period song. And then just pull the lyrics out. And let the lyrics — find some great lyrics that kind of feel ironic and creepy and cool. And just pepper them in. Just layer them in. And then, you know, back engineer it, reverse engineer it, so your last lyric lines are really evocative over the image of this dead woman.

**Amanda:** Yeah, that’s a great fix, because I think one of my concerns with adding dialogue was that you do lose some of that mystery of the conversation in the booth and what this guy is giving her the note for, and all of that. So, yeah, I think I’d prefer something like that over kind of, you know, peeling back and letting the audience in on some of those conversations that are happening.

**John:** That sounds great. So, our out is on the dead body. And so by starting on a dead body, you’ve announced yourself this is a procedural.

**Amanda:** Right.

**John:** [Makes Law & Order sound] We’re in a procedural land. And so that’s fine, but we’re in a procedural land now. And so if at any point you say like, you know what, maybe this really wants to be more of a character study/character-driven thing, then you’re going to have to start with her. And that’s sort of your balancing act. It can’t be sort of — you sort of can’t have both in a way.

**Amanda:** Right. Okay.

**John:** I’m going to focus on little things I noticed in the writing along the way. There’s some moments you choose not to uppercase that I think could be sort of useful uppercase and can help sort of break up some of the action lines. We follow the girl’s “skirt” — like that follow feels like it’s a movement and that helps draw our eye across that.

Another place where I felt like I wanted some capitalization, page four. You do: SUPER: MARCH, 1950 Agents, analysts and secretaries buzz. Capitalize those people so we know that they are groups of folks.

**Amanda:** Got it.

**John:** Caty’s first line of dialogue is in reference to a guy, “Why are you following me?” “Slack sent me.” “ID?” “Left pocket.” It announces her as a badass in a way that is — made me feel like I was watching Agent Carter in a way. And I know if that’s actually applicable to the character we’re about to meet down the road. It made me feel like — I kept waiting for a reveal that she actually was a — she was actually special forces, or she was already well ahead of where she actually was.

And so it put me sort of on my heels about who she really was, or sort of maybe not trust my own instincts about the world she was entering into. I thought she was like a double agent going into it. It put me in a really weird place. Craig, did you feel that?

**Craig:** I did. Mostly because it didn’t quite payoff the way I was hoping. The character I probably have the biggest issue with is Slack, so we’ll talk about him later. But, yes, it did put me in a position where I was a little confused, particularly confused when she showed up and she was a secretary. This may have been sort of the time machine theorem that, you know, a woman comes in from 2016, lands in 1950. Some guy is following here. I could see her totally Krav Maga-ing the dude, right.

But this is 1950. Men follow women and catcall them. That’s the world that this woman lives in. one suggestion, something to consider perhaps, is that she’s aware that this guy is following her, and she stops, and he comes up to her maybe and lights her cigarette, and starts asking her some questions. And she’s sort of flirtatious and kind of innocent and feminine in the way he expects, you know, a little dizzy.

And then when no one is looking, then she grabs him and she says, “Why are you following me?” Like, I can see that she knows how to play a game, because there’s a little bit of a logic problem. When you’re in a busy train station and you physically assault someone, you’re probably going to get arrested, you know. So, there’s — you just have to figure out the logic of that, and figure out maybe if there’s a slightly twistier way of telling me more about her in this. Because I love the fact that she did it to this guy. I thought that was really cool and shocking. I think that he would be shocked, right, because that just doesn’t happen, so I’m shocked, too.

And I guess I wanted a little bit more of a misdirect before the shock happened.

**John:** I would also like to ask aloud the question of what if we lost this beat here and started with her doing her training at the job as a secretary. Basically like your first day as a secretary. And that way we can sort of assume that she is this person that she’s presenting herself, and then save this beat where she’s going after the guy who is following her. That can be a surprise later on.

Because it’s a challenge when you show her starting so strong, and then you have to show her being weak. We’re not quite sure what to believe. And so it’s intriguing if we see her really act out. And I think we’re more scared for her, because we’ve seen her being a milder character before this moment, and then suddenly, boom.

**Amanda:** I see.

**John:** Worth thinking about flipping those.

**Amanda:** I think my concern with having her first line, having her come in and say, “Hi, I’m Caty Pelayo,” was that it was a very weak introduction. That there was no POW to her first entrance and our first introduction to her.

**Craig:** I can see that. I mean, you do want something exciting and something very revealing about her. The issue is the way that you have it now, the POW is diminished by the fact that it’s nothing but POW.

**Amanda:** Got it. Okay.

**Craig:** It’s just an immediate Kaboosh, and you’re like, oh, okay, I guess — you know, again, we’re teaching people how to read this, right? So John is right. The teaser teaches you it’s a procedural. And this teaches you that it’s kind of action. And turns out that it’s–

**John:** It’s really not.

**Craig:** It’s more than that.

**John:** On her side, it’s not an action story. And so it sets an expectation that she’s going to be kicking ass a lot in the show, and that’s not the focus, and so–

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, so much of the show is about how smart she is. The big POW for me is smart. I want to see her smart, and then physical. That’s fine. I like that she’s both. But I need the smart.

**John:** If we could see a moment where you can watch her reading a room and figuring out something that another person would not be able to figure out, even if like she’s waiting for someone to actually come over and talk with her, and she actually is able to figure out a lot of stuff before anyone has actually come to her and then she can introduce herself in a really smart way, that could be a great moment. Another thing I think overall through the script, I was missing the other women. And so the degree to which secretaries aren’t supposed to do this, I didn’t feel the threat or sort of the group of other secretaries who were doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and the degree to which she is a threat to them for stepping outside of these lines.

And I think they’re going to be an important force. And even if they didn’t have a big role in this pilot, I think establishing them here would make it clear like in the series they’re going to be a major–

**Amanda:** Obstacle.

**John:** Obstacle here, too.

**Amanda:** I see. Okay.

**John:** Craig, let’s do a few more minutes here and look through some other things that stood out to you.

**Craig:** Sure. Well, one thing is I liked George’s move on her, where he poses as Slack and she kind of goes along. I think it pays off really nice when Slack comes in and she’s looking at this guy. And there’s some really clever writing there. Some good back and forth.

You have to help us a little bit when he first walks up to her, because I got super confused. I thought you had actually made a mistake with last names. Because you did too good of a job. You faked me out, too. It’s like in football, sometimes the play action, the camera is following a guy who is running with the ball and he doesn’t have it.

So, something just to make clear that, you know, when he walks over to her, she volunteers “I didn’t mean to interrupt Agent Slack,” a coy smile and a glimmer in George’s eyes says he’s happy to play along. It wasn’t quite enough.

And I also was a little confused why she just presumed this was Agent Slack.

**Amanda:** Okay. My thought in that was that he was the first authority figure to come up to her and give her some kind of order, some kind of task.

**Craig:** But does he want — when he does that, what’s his plan?

**Amanda:** His plan is to get her to take notes for him and pretty much — I don’t think he’s taking the bet that his coworker put out to get her number. I think he really is utilizing her and trying to get an in with her to figure out who she is, and what role she’s going to play here. I think it’s more of a curiosity thing than a game-playing thing. But, when she presented the opportunity by saying Agent Slack, he took it.

**Craig:** Got it. It’s a little bit hard for me, and I think for any reader, to read all of that into what he’s doing, because she’s a secretary. She showed up. He’s seen secretaries before. I can’t imagine why he would have a natural instinct to get to know her better already if it’s not about physical attraction.

**Amanda:** Okay.

**Craig:** And I think, frankly, that physical attraction is a great thing to be undermined almost immediately. And if he went over there and was trying to win the bet, and he was doing it by presenting himself as her new boss, because he knows that’s who it is, then he’s, you know, a charming cad. And she’s going to give it to him, you know. And I think that’s just clearer to me. I got a little confused in that zone.

**Amanda:** Okay.

**John:** Cool. Last thing I want to talk about is act outs. So, you chose to have this be a sort of broadcast spec that has act outs. Basically before you go to commercial breaks, there’s the moment of rising tension. Then we stop, and then we start again with a new act.

And when I first started writing television, I hated act outs because they were just torture and they felt really forced and artificial. And then once you sort of accept them, they actually can be kind of freeing, because you can sort of hang your story on those act outs.

And so generally in a writer’s room, as they’re breaking an episode they’ll sort of lean towards those act outs as sort of structural points which they’re going to hang the episode. I didn’t love your act outs. And I think a showrunner reading through this would probably send this back to you with notes about like, hey, we need better, stronger act outs.

And so an example would be at the top of page 18, the end of Act One, it’s an insert on a phonebook entry. There’s a lot to read. Caty find the block on the map and circles it. Three circles overlap. Off her disbelief. End of Act One.

One character alone looking at something doesn’t tend to be a great act out, unless it’s a huge revelation that’s really going to make sense for us. And at this point, I felt like I was ahead of her. The minute I see her start making circles I’m like the circles are going to overlap, and then we’re out.

And if this were episode 17, great. But this is your pilot, and so this has to be the one that is sort of like a showstopper. And so finding that moment where I can’t wait to see what happens next, and there’s nothing about three circles on a map that’s going to make me feel like I can’t wait to see what happens next.

**Craig:** I agree. The one that I loved was the one on page 40 when George reveals about Jack, “He’s my brother.” She stops walking, he keeps going. That felt good. I liked that.

**Amanda:** Yes.

**John:** Which is great. And that kind of moment is about a character and is about a change for a character and you’ve changed the dynamic of the story and the plot. That’s why that works for Craig as an act out. This just plot circling isn’t going to be sort of as fulfilling of an act out.

So, my question for you, Amanda, is if we send this to some folks who do TV staffing, would it be okay for us to do a follow up episode where we actually talk with them about sort of what they thought. Because we’re just two guys. I’d be really curious to see what other people think about this script and whether — where you would fall on the piles with this script. Is that okay?

**Amanda:** Absolutely. I think that would be incredibly helpful and way more generous than I was expecting. Thank you.

**John:** We have time for a couple questions. So why don’t you stick around, because you may answer some of these questions better than we can. Our first one is Steve from London who writes, “If you write a spec ‘inspired by’ a play or film from the ’60s that isn’t a blatant rip-off, but has echoes of the original ‘inspired by’ then what do you put on the front page?”

**Craig:** You wouldn’t put anything on the front page. I mean, if it’s an homage to other movies, it’s an homage to other movies. But unless you are, in fact, taking some of their intellectual property, you know, copyrighted material, then no. I mean, Austin Powers was referring heavily to Our Man Flynn and he didn’t have to put that on the front page at all.

Okay, so second question from RJ. He writes, “I found a true story for which I want to write a screenplay. The events took place in 1888. The subject of the story has many living descendants. Question: Is the story of his life in the public domain, or do his descendants own the rights? He died in 1963 and the last time I can find any record of his family preserving and maintaining his name was a museum that went defunct in 2003 when his grandson died.”

John, do you have any thoughts about this one?

**John:** So RJ wants to know if he needs to get anybody’s rights. No, the people are dead. And so dead people don’t have rights generally. You can use people’s lives or dead people, you’re kind of in the clear. With Amanda here, she used stories from her grandmother and she didn’t have to — I’m sorry, is your grandmother still alive?

**Amanda:** No, that was my grandmother’s funeral that we were sharing these stories.

**John:** And so you’re pretty clear. Here’s where RJ might run into a problem is that if he’s basing this story off of one specific account that he read, that is sort of only in that account, then he needs the rights to that account. There could be a book written about that thing that he’s really basing this around. That, he’s going to need the rights to that thing.

But if it’s a well-known event or just something he’s researched himself, he’s fine.

**Craig:** Indeed. I agree.

**John:** All right. Mauro writes, “I’m planning on shooting a feature this year, uber low budget, and I want to show two main characters playing Monopoly. Do I have to clear this with Hasbro? Or is a board game so utilitarian/mundane that showing it onscreen doesn’t need a clearance?”

Amanda, question for you. Do you think he needs the clearance for them playing this board game? You love board games.

**Amanda:** I do love board games. And I’m going to go with yes.

**John:** You are absolutely correct.

**Craig:** Tell her what she wins, John. [laughs]

**John:** She wins another script… — I used to work in clearances at Universal. I spent a summer doing clearances. And so clearances are anything you see onscreen in a movie that someone owns copyright to, you have to get that legally cleared. Which basically means I was calling up a bunch of people, getting them to sign these forms, saying it’s okay to put this up in the movie.

Monopoly is the kind of thing you have to clear every time, because the people who own Monopoly, they own Monopoly. And if you want to portray it onscreen, you have to get their permission to do so.

**Craig:** Yeah. The only exceptions to this are if you’re parodying something. So, if characters are playing a Monopoly-like game and the point is that it’s a parody of Monopoly, you are somewhat broadly protected there. But otherwise, yeah, you’re clearing it.

**John:** I had an interesting experience this last week. I was flying back from London and on the flight I was watching The 5th Wave, which was a movie that came out this last year. And about halfway through the movie I look and there’s a Big Fish poster on the wall behind one of the main characters.

And so I paused it, I took a screenshot, and then I put it on Twitter saying like does anyone know why there’s a Big Fish poster in The 5th Wave? And through the wonder of Twitter I found out that the director was on Twitter. He tweeted back to say there were three reasons why Big Fish was in that shot.

First reason is they were shooting in Georgia, and a lot of the crew had actually worked on Big Fish, and so it was kind of a nice thing for them. Second and probably the biggest reason is Big Fish and 5th Wave are both Sony movies, and it’s really easy to get clearance for a movie at the same studio.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But the final reason is the director is a big fan of Scriptnotes. And so he wanted to do a shout-out. So that’s why we are in, the Big Fish poster is in The 5th Wave.

**Craig:** Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for that inclusion.

**John:** All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. So, I think both of our One Cool Things are actually Hollywood related, just like that last story. My One Cool Thing is a GIF. And it is a GIF of superheroes jumping. And it came out this last week. And it’s basically a bunch of the Marvel superheroes doing their jumping, where they’re jumping off of apple boxes that are later going to be visual effects things. And it’s just so absurd. And I love it because it just points out how ridiculous it is, this whole process is for making movies.

And so you see Chris Evans like just jumping down off a box. The best by far is Benedict Cumberbatch, as Doctor Strange, who has to like stand up and then jump like he’s about to fly. But it’s just like sort of this skip. And I love our actors, but just imagining being on the set where like all you have to do is jump up a foot a lot. And try to maintain your cool.

**Craig:** That is this running discussion on every set now a director saying to the visual effects supervisor, “How much do you need here exactly?” And he’ll say, “I just need the first second of his coming up off the box. Everything after that falls away. It falls apart after that. I just need that bit.”

And so you’re like, okay, don’t worry if you look stupid. It’s just for the first little thing. And there’s a whole negotiation of tell me how long this lasts so I know. And then, of course, what happens? The whole damn thing ends up on the Internet. Classic.

**Amanda:** Of course.

**Craig:** Classic.

**John:** The best.

**Craig:** The best. Well, my One Cool Thing, this one doesn’t reflect well on actors. This is a real theme here. It’s called The Empty Cup awards. And I just love this.

So, this is a compilation video that was put together on Slate. The piece is done by Myles McNutt and Daniel Hubbard. And the idea here is all too frequently on television or less the case in movies, but on television characters are walking around with coffee cups. And there’s clearly nothing in the cup. And there’s all sorts of reasons for that. The least of which is water in the cup, it might spill, it might fall, whatever. But the problem is the actors simply don’t convey any weight whatsoever in the cup. So, you end up with actors effortlessly hoisting full tall lattes around or carrying two of them in one hand at one time.

In one case, one character has some kind of hot chocolate that’s got the whip cream on it. And the whip cream is definitely not whip cream either. And she’s just like wiggling that thing around. And it’s really funny actually. I think that a lot of actors are going to think twice the next time they’re handed a coffee cup.

**John:** It’s, again, a great compilation of absurd moments of acting. And I was frustrated and delighted about how many of those moments I actually had remembered seeing and they had annoyed me. And Supergirl for whatever reason, when I watched the first couple of episodes of that with my daughter, there’s a lot of coffee cups in that and I had never believed them.

Greg Berlanti, if you’re listening to this show, please spend some of the money to fix the coffee cup situation.

**Craig:** I mean, it does seem like it wouldn’t be that hard. You don’t have to put hot coffee in the cup. It’s got a lid on it. Just put water in it.

**John:** Not even water. Just put clear polymer. Just make it as heavy as the actual liquid would be.

**Craig:** Well, water is as heavy as actual coffee.

**Amanda:** But that spills.

**John:** But water could spill. Water could spill.

**Craig:** Okay, sure. I guess. Well, you know, yeah, put a weight in it.

**John:** So, while we’re ruining things for people watching stuff, I will tell you that if you ever see a paper bag in a TV show or a movie, it’s not actually a paper bag. So, because those make noise, because paper bags make noise, they use this brown cloth that they starch the hell out of it, so it looks like paper. But it doesn’t actually crinkle that way.

And they look really good, but they don’t look perfect. So now that I’ve told you that paper bags aren’t actually paper bags, you will see like, oh, that’s right, that’s not a paper bag.

**Craig:** Oh god. You know what? This is like the time the first person told me about reel change marks. And then there was the time somebody said, “By the way, you know that when people are driving in a car and you’re looking through the windshield at them, the rear view mirror isn’t there.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I’m like, wait, what? Oh god. Yeah, ruined. Life ruined.

**John:** Amanda, do you have a One Cool Thing for us?

**Amanda:** I do have a One Cool Thing. I know the show has been mentioned on a couple episodes before, but I just got my copy of Hamilton: The Revolution, the book.

**Craig:** Yep.

**Amanda:** And I am devouring it. I’m only like in the second chapter but I poured over every picture, every annotation, and it’s amazing.

**John:** Wow. So she came prepared with board games and Hamilton. She definitely knows her audience here.

**Amanda:** [laughs] But the great thing is this is not put on at all. Like I skipped board game night last night just to read my script again. And I got up this morning to read another chapter of Hamilton: The Revolution. Because I’m obsessed. So, it just works out. I love you guys.

**John:** Oh, fantastic.

**Craig:** We love you, too.

**John:** Thank you, again, for being so brave and for coming in and for showing up in Austin. We all lucked out having you be the person who got that ticket. So thank you very much.

**Amanda:** Thank you.

**John:** And that’s our show this week. So, our outro this week comes from Paul B. If you have an outro for the show, you can write into ask@johnaugust.com and send us a link to that. That’s also where you can write questions like the ones we answered on the show today.

Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. If you would like to talk to us on Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Amanda, are you on Twitter?

**Amanda:** I am. @amandamorad.

**John:** That’s fantastic. You will find links to a lot of the things we talked about on the show today, including Amanda’s script, and these wonderful One Cool Things, and other stuff we find that is useful. We will append those to the podcast that you’re listening to right now. So, thank you so much. Thank you, Amanda.

**Amanda:** Thank you.

**John:** And, Craig, I’ll talk to you next week.

**Craig:** Got it. Bye-bye.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Escape Room LA](http://escaperoomla.com/)
* [Scriptnotes, 248: Pitching an Open Writing Assignment](http://johnaugust.com/2016/pitching-an-open-writing-assignment)
* [Scriptnotes, 228: Scriptnotes Holiday Show 2015](http://johnaugust.com/2015/scriptnotes-holiday-show-2015)
* [Master of None, S1 E4: “Indians on TV”](https://www.netflix.com/watch/80065730?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C3%2C32842c79-3788-4f76-b086-740e1e8feaa3-16878876) on Netflix
* Individual bonus tracks are now available in the [John August Store](http://store.johnaugust.com/)
* [Watch Matthew edit an episode of Scriptnotes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp9MDdhZ2lY)
* The [Austin Film Festival](http://austinfilmfestival.com/)
* [Betty Bureau](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/BETTYBUREAUPilot316.pdf) by Amanda Morad
* [@amandamorad on Twitter](https://twitter.com/amandamorad)
* screenwriting.io on [referencing proper nouns in your screenplay](http://screenwriting.io/can-you-reference-specific-proper-noun-productssongslocationsetc-in-your-screenplay/)
* [Director J Blakeson answers John’s question about the background Big Fish poster in The 5th Wave](https://twitter.com/johnaugust/status/730150770922774530)
* [Hollywood jumps without CGI](http://www.avclub.com/article/gif-pre-cgi-superhero-jumps-proves-actors-are-just-236529)
* [The Empty Cup Awards](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/05/10/the_empty_cup_awards_are_here_to_raise_awareness_for_an_important_tv_issue.html)
* [Hamilton: The Revolution](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455539740/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) on Amazon
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Paul B ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/pitching-an-open-writing-assignment).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 248 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show we’ll be talking about how you pitch on an open writing assignment, plus we’ll try to tackle the question of whitewashing Asian roles in feature films.

**Craig:** Mm, yeah, that does sound kind of sexy.

**John:** Oh no.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Sexy Craig can’t be here for the whole episode.

**Craig:** No, Sexy Craig doesn’t last that long.

**John:** No. Let’s do some follow-up. So, last week’s episode was the Lawrence Kasdan show which was great. Thank you everyone who wrote those nice tweets about how much they enjoyed the show. We really enjoyed recording it. Thank you to the Writers Guild Foundation and The Academy for having us host that little Q&A session.

**Craig:** It was great. And Larry was in fine form.

**John:** He was. I would say if I had anything I would improve about that episode is Lawrence Kasdan is an incredibly talented screenwriter. He is not a good holder of microphones. And so even as we were recording the show, I wanted to grab the microphone — I wanted to have Stuart just come up and hold the microphone in front of him so he wouldn’t wrestle it around so much. If there’s you noise you hear on the track, that’s entirely Lawrence Kasdan.

**Craig:** Yeah, but it adds to his charm.

**John:** It does absolutely add to his charm. Also I thought we did a good job visually. If like this was a TV interview, we finally figured out like, oh you know what, we shouldn’t straddle the guest. We should actually both be on the same side looking at them. Because so often as we do live shows, the guest will be in the middle and we’ll get sort of like ping-ponged back and forth between us. And this time, we did the Kelly and Michael way of sitting together and talking to our guest.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t mind straddling my guest.

**John:** Oh no. I walked right into that.

**Craig:** I don’t know why you did that.

**John:** It’s going to become the “that’s what she said” of the podcast.

**Craig:** [laughs] Sexy Craig is always there. You know, the thing about Sexy Craig is he doesn’t show up a lot, but when he shows up, he really is irrepressible.

**John:** Yes, that’s true.

**Craig:** And you have no idea what to do with him. You are at a loss.

**John:** I am at a loss. I’m flummoxed when Sexy Craig shows up.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Last week was also special because it was a two episode week. We put out that little special Gold episode, the Gold Standard episode, which was really fun and random.

**Craig:** It was fun. Yeah.

**John:** So the reason we did that was because we changed something with the feed. Basically we changed the URL for the feed and things had to redirect. And it seemed to work. No one has written in with complaints saying that they lost the episodes, so hooray.

I don’t know that we’ll do more little special things, but it was kind of fun talking about like non-screenwriting things, and doing something short. So if people have suggestions of things you would like me and Craig to talk about, maybe we would do one again.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was fun. It’s fun also because I feel like you and I are both eternal students. So we like learning new things, so that’s fun. I’m really glad that the redirect worked because, you know, we had a big episode coming up. I didn’t want anyone to miss the Larry episode, so that’s great.

**John:** That was our real worry. Also, this last week I talked to Justin Marks, the screenwriter behind Jungle Book. I did a Q&A at the Writers Guild screening for the film. And so we did a half-hour conversation. It was really fantastic. So, Craig, I don’t think you’ve listened to that episode yet, but it’s just a half an hour that we put up in the premium feed. And I had sort of known this when I was talking to Justin while the whole process was going on, but they ended up writing it and sort of making it much more like an animated film.

So, he talks through about how — basically he was sequestered in an office at Disney for a very long time, and he would have to write and pitch, and write and pitch, and put up big art boards on the wall, and pitch Sean Bailey and Alan Horn through the whole movie for a long time before they actually said, “Okay, write a script,” or they got a director on board. And that whole process ended up being very much an animation process.

So, even though the movie is kind of live action, it’s very much how you would make an animated movie, rather than how you’d make a live action movie. It was a great conversation.

**Craig:** That is fascinating. And very interesting to me, just the creation of it, because I have a movie — the script that I’ve written for Lindsay Doran, and it’s a bit like Babe, you know, murder mystery involving sheep. And one of the questions was can you make animals now properly perform, you know, CGI animals. And whereas in Babe they used real animals and just did the old mouth movement thing which was fine, but people sort of are expecting a little bit more than that now. And it also limits your performance from the characters themselves, the animals. If they’re just real, it’s not like they can raise an eyebrow or anything, you know.

And this, I think, Jungle Book was the first movie — I think it’s historic — I think it’s the first movie where you now have what appear to be photorealistic animals that are acting. And apparently Weta handled the apes, but MPC is the company that did most of the work on the other animals. And remarkable stuff. Really amazing.

**John:** Yeah. So in our conversation, Justin talks about how it wasn’t until they really got their first test footage back from the animals that they knew what degree the animals could act. And before that point they were still debating how much of the emotion are we going to have to play on the boy’s face versus playing on the animal’s face. And once they got these tests back they’re like, oh, we can actually see reactions in the animal’s faces in ways that were just not possible before this.

**Craig:** Pretty amazing stuff.

**John:** Progress.

**Craig:** Yeah. It is real progress.

**John:** So I’ll also put a link in the show notes to this YouTube video that has Jon Favreau, the director, talking about the process of how they shot — basically in this big warehouse downtown they shot everything with motion capture. And they went back months later and shot the boy again, sort of in full costume, and sort of inserted him into scenes. So that whole process was really strange and groundbreaking, but just terrific.

So I’ll put a link in the show notes to that video as well.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Well, let’s transition to our big topic today, which is how you pitch on an open writing assignment. This is something that came up this week for me because you and I have both gone in, we’ve had these meetings where they’re looking to hire someone to adapt a certain property. And in general, an open writing assignment, just so we have sort of terms defined, an open writing assignment is something that a studio or producer, but generally a studio, is looking to hire a writer to do. So, this could be an adaptation of a book. It could be an adaptation of an existing piece of property like a TV series or a remake of a film. Or it could be a rewrite. It could be a script that they’ve already purchased and they’ve done work on, and they’re looking for someone else to come in and do more work.

We define open writing assignment differently than you going in to pitch an original idea, which is a completely different beast. So, an open writing assignment basically means there is a job out there, and we are going to hire someone to do this movie, to write this movie for us. And sometimes you’re meeting with multiple writers and figuring out which writer is the correct writer to hire.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Usually, Craig and I are the people go in and pitch on those jobs, but this last week I got to be in the room for a couple people pitching movies to me. So, I’m a producer on this film and I got to hear the pitches of these different people coming in to pitch on the same property. And that was actually fascinating, because I got to see what it looks like from the other side of the table. And they were all great.

And so I really liked sort of all the people who came in, but they were just so different. And I thought this would be great to have a conversation about what kinds of things you need to be sure you’re doing if you’re going in to pitch on an open writing assignment.

**Craig:** What a great topic. OWAs as they’re called, they land at the agencies, right. So a studio — let’s take a step back and talk about the birth of an open writing assignment. Sometimes it begins because a studio executive has a general idea or a piece of property. And it is agreed at the studio that somebody should write a screenplay, but if they can come up with an impressive take. But they don’t necessarily want to go to some big shot writer.

So, that becomes an open writing assignment. It is sent to all the agencies. At each agency, there are agents that cover a studio. So they have their own clients, of course, but they’re also responsible for fielding those general incoming calls from the studio. Sometimes an open writing assignment occurs when a writer has been let go because the project isn’t working, and they want to restart or come up with a new thing. And so the open writing assignment call goes out.

**John:** Indeed. And so also to differentiate, a lot of times the stuff that Craig and I are seeing, they are coming specifically to us, maybe exclusively to us, and that’s because we’ve made a lot of movies. Typically earlier in your career, you get out sent out for these open writing assignment to try to land these jobs. And so the writers I was meeting with are people who’ve actually gotten movies made, but they’re not sort of big, giant established writers yet. And so that’s why they’re going into these meetings.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that’s important to know, too, when you go out for open writing assignments, because I don’t really do that, John doesn’t do that. So, on the one hand, here’s good news, your competition is not A-list screenwriters, because they’re generally not coming in for OWAs. But also then you need to know that the net will be cast fairly widely and so you may not have star competition, but you’re going to have a great quantity of competition.

**John:** Absolutely. So, let’s talk about what things you need to do before that meeting ever happens. And so this is what I want to define as understanding the property, or like what is it that they’re trying to actually make. So, the questions you need to ask is why would the studio want to make this movie. What is it that they see in this property that they feel is a movie? What do you think they see as the movie they could actually release in theaters? Because if you don’t understand what they’re looking for, you’re very unlikely to be able to deliver it to them.

Ask yourself what are the required elements. And so, if you’re coming in to pitch on Ghostbusters, or some sort of adaptation of Ghostbusters, or an expansion of Ghostbusters, well Ghostbusters are going to have to some Ghostbusters in them. They’re going to have to have ghosts. They’re going to have to have certain minimum requirements for what is a Ghostbusters.

Same thing with Charlie’s Angles. It has to somehow involve the talent agency. It’s going to have to involve Charlie’s Angels, and probably three angels. What would you have to have in there in order for it to be Charlie’s Angels?

Or, if you pitching on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, there’s going to have to be a Mr. Toad and there’s going to have to be a ride quality. And if you have a great idea for a movie, and you think like, oh, I could maybe bend this to become Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, make sure you really are pitching something that fits the title or fits the name of — fits the idea behind what the property is.

**Craig:** All good advice. And it goes again to how the open writing assignment was created. Somebody in the studio needs you, the pitcher, to come and give them this wonderful ammunition that they can then walk down the hall and say I think we found the person who has cracked this.

In order to do that, you need to be cognizant of what it is that they want, because that’s the filter through which cracking it is going to be viewed. So, in addition to the notion of what is it that they need, the other thing that I would think about a lot when I went out for these things is what is my unique perspective on this.

Because if I don’t have one, I’m not going to get the job. Everybody can come in and give the generic version, right? So, better that I come in with a point of view. That point of view, if it’s incompatible with what they want, I’m not getting the job. But if I don’t have one, I’m also not getting the job.

**John:** I think it’s always worth asking what is sort of the minimum viable product version of this idea, or what is the bad version of this idea? And just think through what that is, because that’s what everybody else is going to probably be pitching. If you’re going to pitch the down the road middle version of that idea, and if that’s as far as you get, and that’s all you have for an idea of what to do with this property, you should probably just back out. Because it’s unlikely to get you through to the next level, and you’re going to burn a lot of time pitching this sort of like “eh” version of the movie.

You should only go after it if you have an exciting, interesting take. Something that you are excited to have the opportunity to write. And so the pros and cons. Going after one of these jobs — it gets you in the room. It gets you talking with these people. It gets them thinking about you as a person they could hire. Even if they don’t hire you for this job, they might hire you for something else. They might think you’re really interesting.

But if you’re pitching them something that is just sort of blandly generically a version of that idea, they’re unlikely to be so excited about you for the next thing.

**Craig:** You know, this is where I think — this podcast actually transcends screenwriting, and now we can just talk about life and life strategies. I don’t care what it is that you do in the world. If you do not manage to make yourself distinctive, you will be ignored. And the key to making yourself be distinctive is to actually have a point of view. To have a perspective. To have something about which you’re passionate in your field and whatever you’re going for.

That is what gets noticed. What they’re looking for — they’ll tell you what they’re looking for, but they don’t know what they’re looking for. What they’re looking for is a sense of excitement, comfort, this person has got it, they’re going to get it, they’re going to deliver something interesting or special. Understand every time you stick your neck out with your point of view, there’s a chance it will get lopped off because someone will say, “Why would I ever do that specific thing?”

But, there is no success without being specific. I do believe that. So, you roll the dice on these open writing assignments. You go in there thinking, well, if they don’t like my specific angle on this, I don’t get the job. But there’s no point in playing it safe on these things. None.

Precisely for the reason you just mentioned. Maybe you don’t get this job because they don’t like your specific take here, but they just might like you and the fact that you have specific takes.

**John:** Yeah. This is essentially a job interview. So whether you’re a feature writer going in for an open writing assignment, or you are a television writer going out for staffing, you need to be able to approach that meeting with an understanding of what they’re expecting — so it’s sort of what that minimum threshold is — and you probably already crossed that minimum threshold because you’re in that room in the first place.

So, then, look for what is unique about your take and you as a writer, something like, you know what, this is the person I should take the chance on writing this script. Because unlike sort of hiring somebody to work at Starbucks, they’re only going to hire one person. Or they’re only going to hire one person at a time, unless we’re doing some sort of crazy writer’s room. So, they want to know can I trust this person to deliver. And so they’re going to trust the person who seems prepared, who seems to have an interesting idea for how to do this thing. Who seems like a good person to work with.

Those are the qualities you’re trying to convey while you’re in this meeting while still pitching a three-act movie to them that hopefully makes sense and is engaging. So there’s a lot you’re trying to do simultaneously here.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. When I talk to studio executives or producers about certain projects, sometimes I’ll just say, “Oh, what are you guys doing?” And they’ll say, “Well, we’re doing this thing, and we have a writer who came in and just really impressed us.” And when they describe what impressed them, almost always what they talk about is that person’s love for it. And their passion for it. And their enthusiasm for it. That’s what they respond to.

And you may say, “Well, if you’re going to make a movie about the Rubik’s Cube, you know, who really loves the Rubik’s Cube that much?” Well, if you don’t love it that much, don’t do the movie. Just don’t. Because, look, they’re the ones who are supposed to be cynical and money-grubbing, right? So, okay, I’ll give you an example. I’m not going to say what the title is, but there’s a children’s book that we all know that we’ve read to our very small children. Everyone.

And a studio decided — they owned it and they wanted to make it. And they wanted to make it very much because they did calculations. That’s why. They didn’t care that much about the character and the book, or the book itself, but they did their calculations, they ran their numbers, and they saw that it could be very profitable. And so one of the people they talked to about it was me. And I just have no passion whatsoever for that.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** They’re okay with that. They respect that. They move on. You can’t be matching their cynicism. That’s their job. And they are not looking for somebody to be like them. They’re looking for somebody to be actually emotionally invested.

**John:** Exactly. There was a big project years ago that it was between me and one other writer for it. And it was a big high profile thing. And we both pitched our hearts out on it and he ended up getting it. And the word I got back was that like, oh well see, ultimately they felt like he was a super fan. He was a super fan of that property. And ultimately they just felt like, you know, they kind of liked some things in your pitch better, but they thought this is the guy who will kill himself for this, and they went with him.

And I get that. I understand that. There’s definitely been things where like my being a super fan made me the right person to do that job. Charlie’s Angels was a great example. I knew every little bit of Charlie’s Angels. And I knew what that movie wanted to feel like. And I was enthusiastic about it in a way that no other writer was going to be.

**Craig:** See, that’s exactly it. The whole, I don’t know, art of matching writers to projects so often comes down to that. You know, Max Landis, just sold a big — he sold like four big screenplays or something in a week.

**John:** Yeah, we had that conversation about like, oh, is the script market dead. And then Max Landis sells four things.

**Craig:** I think the spec market is dead unless you’re Max Landis. But, it’s so evident to me when I look at him — every now and then I’ll see a video or something of him. And it’s so evident to me that the reason that he’s successful, and forget, you know, I think whatever his success is on the other side of it has to do with an ability to write well. But on the front side of it, which is convincing people to buy something, or to hire him for something, his passion for whatever he’s talking about is just so evident.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And so of course they hired you to write Charlie’s Angels because you loved it. And it wasn’t like a fake love. It’s like when Dan and Dave who do Game of Thrones, when they met with George Martin to basically say, “Hey, would you let us — would you give the rights over and let us do this?” They said he had one question for them and it was, “Who do you think Jon Snow’s mother is?”

**John:** Hmm.

**Craig:** And they answered and they answered well, apparently. You know, he needed to know like do you love this because the worst thing you can do I think — if I were an executive, the thing that I would be the most terrified of is hiring somebody who just was looking for a check. You know?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You do that later when, okay, we have a movie. We need somebody to come in and kill for us on the third act, or this character, or production work. That’s, sure. But that’s far along, right? The basis of it needs to be somebody who loves it.

**John:** Yeah. And you and I have both done that work where we come in and we do that sort of craftsman work of fixing small problems, but I’ve definitely been that craftsman in movies that I never should have or would have been the first writer on because I don’t have the passion for it. I don’t have the — I’m not going to kill myself every morning waking up to try to write another draft of that movie.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly right.

And maybe that’s hard for non-writers to understand. Because the thing is it’s not like you and I don’t care about those jobs and doing the best we can when we do those jobs. That’s why we take them. But, there is — and it sort of ties back to the Huntsman. There’s an emotional difference, right? When you’re saying, “No, no, no, don’t let anyone do this. I have to do this.” Right? “I love this, I need this.” That’s a different deal.

And so that’s what they’re looking for on these things.

**John:** So let’s talk about when you actually get in the room and sort of how you are starting your pitch and sort of what the most crucial elements of that pitch process are.

I think you have to start — again, this is me watching on the other side of the table — you have to talk about what you’re going for quite early on. So like what the movie feels like for you. And this is where it’s okay to use references. I try to avoid the “it’s this meets that,” but it’s great to say, you know, “What I loved about this movie was the way they did XYZ.” Or talk about — we had the conversation with Lorene about movie touchstones, like the things you always bring up in the room.

So like The Burbs if you’re Lorene Scafaria. It’s absolutely fine to do that as sort of the early getting people comfortable with what you’re about to say, because as long as what you’re saying is going to match your pitch, it just gets them sort of seated in a comfy chair so they can actually hear what you’re about to say.

I think talking about in a general sense of like what the tone and the goal of your pitch is at the very start is really crucial, because in some of the pitches that have not gone so well I didn’t quite know what kind of movie I was signing up for. And in the case of this property, there’s a lot of different ways you could go, and if I didn’t know which way they were going like two minutes into it, I was nervous. And worried for them.

**Craig:** Yeah. No question. The way you’re talking about starting here, the big picture, also helps them key into where your passion is. Because generally speaking, your passion isn’t going to be in story structure. Your passion is going to be in the theme and the characters and the feeling of the movie. And these things are the big things that they will then convey.

You’re probably not going to sit in a room with the head of the studio and spit out your scene by scene structure. They’re going to call it a few moments that made sense and they’re going to tie them back into this part here, the big picture of why you want to write this.

**John:** Absolutely. And so to me every pitch that I’ve heard that’s worked, they started with a clear sense of who the characters are, and sort of who we’re going to be following. And so that’s obviously you’re protagonist. This is the person who most of the movie is going to be on their shoulders. But also the surrounding world, just so they’re specific.

And you don’t have to sort of necessarily cite actors, but you should describe them in a way that I can picture somebody playing that part. It’s worth spending a little time on who those people are and sort of what they’re like. And give us a moment very early on in the pitch that shows their personality and shows their unique thing, so that essentially if the plot of the movie never started, I would still find that character interesting. I would still want to be in a story with that character.

And so often pitches will start with just like plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, and I don’t know who I’m supposed to be following. I don’t know where my entry place is to this individual story.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can certainly start with a kind of cold open “wah” right, but once you get the “blah” out of the way, stop, and give me the characters. And then, as you’re going through and you’re talking about how you would approach this open writing assignment, focus all of the plot and all of the set pieces and the things you want to do through the lens of character. All of it.

People relate to character. The story parts, they’ll want. Believe me, they’ll be happy to say, “Oh good, you have a set piece. Oh good, you have this. Oh good, you have that.” But focus it through the character. It will make them appreciate it so much more.

**John:** Yeah. And as you’re crafting your pitch and you’re trying to make sure that all these points are focused through your character, you’ll start to recognize like, oh, is that really a character, or is that just a trope I’m putting in there. And so if you feel like it’s sort of a stock character who is, god forbid it’s your hero who feels like that stock character, but if it’s really that secondary person who you’ve just sort of shorthanded and you sort of used a trope for them, it’s going to feel really obvious as you’re working through your pitch. Like, oh, I don’t really have anything for that. I’m just sort of like pasting another character from some other movie into that spot.

You have to really make sure that it feels specific to the story you’re about to pitch. And that the choices that the characters are making match the overall description, overall sense of tone and what the movie feels like from the start. The worst thing that can happen in a pitch is where a bunch of stuff just happens to your protagonist, and you feel like they are just witnessing the movie happening in front of you.

**Craig:** And that would be an indication that the person pitching has not really thought this through. And behind that even, I hate to say it, but maybe doesn’t have the passion that they’re advertising they have. Because I’m not sure how to love the idea of writing something if I don’t know the beginning and the end.

And I don’t know the beginning and the end in any other way other than through the lens of character. So, I need to understand these things. And therefore I will never end up pitching something episodic because my passion won’t let me. My passion is telling me do this instead. These are the reasons why these characters must be doing this.

**John:** Yeah. And if you do find yourself pitching television, when you pitch television, you pitch a pilot, you really are pitching the characters. You’re pitching the characters and their situation. You end up pitching the episode, like sort of what happens in the pilot, but it’s mostly what you’re pitching is these are the characters, this is the world.

In the case of a feature, here you’re pitching this is the situation these great characters find them in which happens to be the perfect way to explore this property or this idea that you’re bringing me in for.

So, I think it’s also really crucial that whatever the property fundamentally is, get to that quickly. Don’t wait 15 minutes to get to the thing that is the thing. So, if you’re pitching an adaptation of that great game Star Raiders for the Atari 800, you have to attack the base pretty soon in the story, or else it’s not Star Raiders. It’s not the thing we went into.

If you’re pitching the Towering Inferno and you spend the first third of your pitch out in the desert, well, that’s not the towering inferno. That’s not — we’re basically going to be kind of discounting everything you said because that’s not the thing that you are supposed to be pitching.

**Craig:** Well, also, you’ll start boring people. You can’t be boring, right? So, obviously the primary component of boredom is a poorly thought out story that is episodic and the characters feel like they’re watching the story and it’s a lot of “and then, and then, and then, and then.”

The other component of being boring is you talking too much. It’s too long, right? I’m kind of curious, what were the lengths of pitches that you saw?

**John:** These pitches were all about 20 minutes, I would say. And some of them were writing teams and they would just sort of hand off the talking points in — actually all of the pitches I heard, they were fully written beforehand. And so they were referring back to a document and sort of going through stuff. And they were rehearsed. These pitches didn’t invite a lot of “let’s come in and stop you for a question.”

Actually, when I pitch things, I love to be able to — I plan for places where it’s very natural for them to ask a question. I can sort of anticipate what the question is going to be, so they feel engaged, so they’re actually asking questions about what’s going to happen next that the characters would want to ask. These were much more off of paper, but they were pretty good versions of off the paper.

How about you? When you’re pitching something, what’s your structure?

**Craig:** Very much like yours. I never go off of paper, in part because I never want to seem like I’m pitching. My goal when I’m pitching something is you didn’t know that you just got pitched something. We just had a conversation. And through the conversation, I demonstrated the possibility of a movie.

And the reason for that is, well, a bunch of reasons. One, if you’ve rehearsed something, it feels a little sweaty, even if the context is “come and pitch me something,” it feels a little sweaty to me. And, two, because it should be a conversation. I don’t like sitting and listening to somebody describe a movie to me. I like walking through it with somebody and having us connect on why we both want to do this, right? I’m trying to figure out also why they want to do it. And I’m trying to show them where my passion is.

The last thing I want to do is walk through a whole bunch of story if I think like, oh, they don’t really like this. So, it’s not necessarily what everyone can do, but the less rehearsed you are frankly the better. Because there’s a certain artifice to it. And subconsciously I think people are looking for writers who feel confident and the rehearsed quality can cut into that a bit.

**John:** The best thing about the conversational aspect of a pitch is that the things that you said were very important when you set out your pitch, like these are the things I really wanted to focus on, it invites circling back to what those things are that are very important. And so this project I pitched recently, I could sort of have three bullet points for like these are the things I really want to hit. These are things that really spoke to me about the property. And we get to a place and it’s like, “Oh, I see what you’re doing there. It’s because of this.” It’s like, yes, exactly. I think this is a really great way to sort of get into this thing. And it gets them involved in the process.

Now, that said, next week’s episode we’re going to have Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom talking about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. And they ended up having to pitch to like seven studios and it was a very rehearsed pitch. And Aline tells a story of how they were pitching one place and she just like flubbed one of the jokes. Like it was a practice joke, but she just flubbed it. And one of the guys who was in the room with her who had heard the pitch a bunch of times just goes, “Ugh.” She’s like “Audible sigh, oh, you whiffed that joke.”

And so there are situations in which really rehearsing it may make sense. The key is not to make it feel like you’re giving a performance. Make sure it feels like it really is a conversation.

**Craig:** Yeah. The nice thing is that when you allow, conversationally allow questions to be asked, the answer that you give in response to a question is so much more powerful than if it is just given. Because it implies that you’ve thought this through.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And you’re sharing something with them. And you’re also picking up on some things that they’re interested in. I’m very much about that. And you can just start the conversation by asking them a question, you know.

**John:** And then it’s possible to sort of circle that back in as you’re giving your pitch, then it’s clear that you are thinking about the same things that they are thinking about.

**Craig:** You’re also not just there to recite to something. You’re actually listening to what they have to say.

**John:** The last thing I’ll say is in terms of the pitch itself, when you’re actually describing the story, make sure you stick the landing. And this is sort of from my own bad history. There have been times where I’ve come in with a really strong opening, and the first act is great, and I’m sort of getting through those middle sections, and then I just don’t — I hadn’t thought through how I was going to close up the conversation of the story. Basically what the last things of the movie are going to be or sort of how we’re leaving it. And if that last bit is bad, they sort of remember the last bit.

So, if you’re going to practice anything, practice how you think you’re going to get out of it, or at least a couple ways to get out of your story, so that you can actually put some closure on it so it just doesn’t fizzle out here. So it doesn’t just sort of fade into nothingness.

Make sure it’s clear when you’ve reached the end of your story.

**Craig:** If you finish a pitch and then there’s silence and then someone says, “Oh, was that the end,” you’re not getting the job. The easiest way I think to approach this is to look at your story like a circle and when you get to that end, close the circle. And just say, “So, the person who wants blah, blah, blah now dah, dah, dah.”

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** And there’s the circle, right? Just a way for them to see like, okay, yeah, this is of a piece. It’s not an “and then, and then, and then.”

**John:** Yeah. So, you’re done pitching the story, and this is where I think the actual most crucial part of the process is, which is where you’re listening to what they’re saying and what they’re asking you. And if they’re asking you very specific questions about things that are in your pitch, that’s a really good sign, because that means there’s something that they are fascinated about or curious about in your pitch and they wanted more details. That’s amazing and that’s awesome.

If they are asking a question that speaks to your general idea of your pitch, that’s not a good sign. That means they fundamentally wonder if you’ve pitched them the wrong thing or the wrong approach, the wrong take. So be very mindful of the kinds of questions they’re asking, but then also try to answer them and try to make it clear that you can think on your feet, that you are flexible, that you actually have interesting ideas. That you are willing to defend — not defend — to explain your intention while still being open to other possibilities.

**Craig:** Well, I think it’s okay to defend certain things. I mean, remember that this is a job that it’s you don’t have. That means you also don’t — you could say no, too. Right? I mean, nobody is tied up yet. So, if there is something about your pitch that is that kind of beating heart, it’s okay to just say, “Well, if that’s not working for you, that’s probably — I may not be the right person.”

You don’t have to say that. You don’t have to give up the job in the room. You could just say, “Well, you know, that to me is where my passion comes from is that concept. But I can see what you’re saying about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And you can be flexible about other things.

When they ask questions, welcome everything. Even if you disagree, disagree in a welcoming way, because this is after all kind of pie in the sky time. Everyone can sort of chip in here and be heard.

**John:** I would say in general if the discussion after your pitch is longer than the pitch itself, that’s a really good sign. Unless your pitch was just like so amazing that they start talking about next steps immediately, which is sort of the fantasy scenario. It’s like, “Well that was fantastic. I need you to come in here and pitch that to the boss. Or we need to set up a meeting for tomorrow to go into the studio.” That’s your fantasy scenario. But if they’re asking questions that show that they’re engaged in it, you’ve done really well with whatever you’ve pitched so far.

**Craig:** Yeah, no question. [laughs] I will say that there are people who are not readable. When I went in to pitch this miniseries, my producer said, “This gentleman that we’re pitching to, you’re not going to know when you walk out of there.” And I was like, “Eh, I’ve been doing this a long time. I think I’ll know.”

I had no clue. None. None. Just didn’t know.

And some people are — it’s not like they’re doing it on purpose. They’re just sort of inherently inscrutable and you won’t know. There have been times I’ve walked out of a room and thought, well, that was a disaster. And then an hour later, got the job.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** And vice versa.

**John:** That absolutely happens. And so what I take comfort in is that like I pitch just as hard on the ones I didn’t get as the ones I did get. And while I can’t properly predict which ones are going to work and which ones aren’t going to work, I can only sort of control what I’m doing. And I just try to make sure that I was as ready for each one of them as possible.

**Craig:** Indeed.

**John:** Cool. Our next topic, probably the best jumping off place for it is this Chin Lu article for Vice entitled Being An Asian Actor Is Hard Enough Without Scarlett Johansson Taking Your Roles.

**Craig:** Great title for an article.

**John:** There will be a link to this in the show notes. And it basically talks about Asian American actors frustrated that certain roles are going to white actors and actresses when they could have been going to Asian actors and actresses. Specifically in this case the flash point was Scarlett Johansson’s casting in Ghost in the Shell, and to some degree Tilda Swinton’s casting in Doctor Strange.

But there’s a long history of sort of casting white actors in roles that are either explicitly Asian or could be Asian. And a frustration about that. And I think it’s an interesting topic to sort of get into because some of those decisions are made at the writing level, but a lot of them aren’t made at the writing level. And it might be useful to discuss the degree to which a writer can be involved in that process and not be involved.

**Craig:** Yeah, my guess is almost none of them are made at the writing level. Well, first of all, let’s say you’re right, that there is a long tradition of basically let’s call it “yellow face” in Hollywood, whether it was Joel Grey and Remo Williams, or John Wayne. I mean, John Wayne, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And in our culture, we have come to understand that blackface is just incredibly socially taboo. In no small part because it’s also linked to slavery.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We haven’t had the same taboo about yellow face.

**John:** Yeah. But I think it’s a growing taboo.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** And so I think it might be helpful to differentiate between two different kinds of things that are happening. And there’s some overlap, but I think there’s also some useful distinctions. So, there’s the very classic case of like this is a role that is clearly Asian. This person has an Asian name, and we are casting a white actor in that role. So that’s Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Fisher Stevens in Short Circuit.

**Craig:** Right. Right.

**John:** And the controversy over Emma Stone who is playing biracial in Aloha. And that’s one of those things where it feels like, well, that feels like a really bad choice you made. And this is a role that was clearly meant to be an Asian person and you are choosing not to cast an Asian person in that role, but instead cast a white actor. And that is a certain kind of frustration that feels like it’s sort of in column A.

The column B is the situation where a role is considered Asian because of its source material, or because of something else around that character, but it’s not so clear that it has to be an Asian actor in that role. So this was Rooney Mara in Pan. And so there’s a lot of controversy over that role and sort of this fictional creation. I guess Tiger Lily is perceived to be Asian, but it’s also in a fantasy universe, so what does that mean?

I think you could say the same thing about a lot of the roles in Game of Thrones. To what degree are you casting a person who is Asian in a specific part considering it’s a fantasy universe that doesn’t necessarily match our cultural geography?

Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell might be a similar situation where the source material, that character is Asian, but she’s not identified as being Asian in this movie specifically. It’s a remake. Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange. That role was a man I think in the original comics, I believe.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And is in Tibet, so he’s Tibetan, but it’s also a drawn character.

**Craig:** Well, you’ve hit upon some factors here that need to be teased out. So, first of all, I think that the days of yellow face are happily over. I don’t see that continuing. But then you have this other issue of whitewashing. And you’ve described the two kinds.

Now, sometimes it’s hard to differentiate even between like which category it goes into. For instance, Scarlett Johansson is playing a character that in the source material is named Major Motoko Kusanagi. And the character is now named Major. [laughs] So, you know, okay, but you called out two instances where the question is, “What are the intentions?”

So, is the intention to be racist because studios don’t like Asian actors? I don’t think so, although I would argue that the result is a racist result. I think what’s really going on here is star-washing and China-appeasing.

**John:** Oh, how fascinating that is. I really like the term “star-washing.” Did you make that up?

**Craig:** I did. I just made it up.

**John:** Craig, it’s going down in the pantheon. We’re going to put that in the Scriptnotes Wikipedia immediately. I think star-washing is actually a fascinating thing, and I think it’s also a false excuse for reasons we’ll get into later on.

But so I do think that’s really interesting, that idea of you’re being very flexible on the casting of a role because you want to cast the biggest star in there and you can’t find an Asian star.

**Craig:** Right. And so obviously anyone who thinks about this for a half a second can realize the vicious cycle, right? So, it’s true, if you look at the biggest, most bankable stars, I don’t know, maybe there’s one or two Asian Americans, and my guess is they’re on the male side, and probably action. And so what they do is they go, “Well, we’re spending all this money on Ghost in the Shell. We need to make our money, so we need a star.”

Oh, there isn’t an Asian star, right. Her name is now Major. Okay.

But, of course, how do you grow Asian American or Asian stars if that’s how you approach things? You’ll never get there.

**John:** Well, the other great argument against this idea of star-washing is that in cases where we’ve just chosen to find the person of the appropriate race or background to play that role, it tends to go kind of well. So, take a look at Jungle Book. We could have cast a white actor in the part of Mowgli, but they didn’t. They found the kid, this Neel Sethi guy, and he’s really good. And he’s appropriate for it.

You look at Vincent Rodriguez in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. That was a role that was specifically written to be Asian. They went out, they found a bunch of great Asian actors. When they found a guy who was Filipino, they changed his name from Chang to Chan, and they built out his whole family as being Filipino very specifically so that race could be a part of that.

And so it was never sort of backing away from the tough choices because, oh, we won’t be able to find a star for that part.

**Craig:** Right. I think that this is an area where the studios are probably — no, I’m going to say clearly — they’re being way too conservative. Way too conservative. Because, look, I understand that a big star is a big deal for a big movie. But I have to — I don’t know — I’m not familiar with Ghost in the Shell, but I have to believe that there are opportunities for star-washing in some other characters, but then, you know, there are wonderful Asian actors out there.

I mean, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, how much money did that movie make?

**John:** A zillion dollars.

**Craig:** Okay, there weren’t any people in it that we even knew the names of, because it was a good movie. The audience does not care — I really believe that. I think that the fetishism of star power is overrated when it comes to some of these bigger movies in a weird way. Especially movies that are based on properties that people really like.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Look at Doctor Strange. Okay, Doctor Strange is a Marvel film. So, right off the bat it’s going to be a huge hit because literally every single one they make is a huge hit. They have Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange. Great. There’s your big star.

Now, we have this other character to cast. Now, in this case, the character I believe in the source material was Tibetan and here we have a Chinese problem. The Chinese government is locked in a dispute with Tibet, if you want to call it a dispute. I’d like to think of it more as the Chinese government is repressing Tibet. And the Chinese market is enormously important to movie studios. And they don’t think that the Chinese censors will let a movie with a Tibetan hero go through. That’s what I think is going on. I probably just cost myself every Marvel job possible. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** But, you know, I don’t care.

**John:** So in this case they’ve taken a character who was described as Tibetan in the source material and made now her non-Tibetan to take that controversy away.

**Craig:** Although we can then go a step further and say, “Eh, all right, maybe that’s why that character is no longer Tibetan,” but that character could be Asian. Right? That character could be Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese.

**John:** But also that brings up the question of even if the character wasn’t that in the source material, any character in any movie could be Thai, Chinese, or any other thing. So, I guess I understand the frustration is that like this is a character who there was a pattern and a precedent for why this character should be a certain Asian background, and now it’s not. So I understand the frustration there.

**Craig:** I completely understand it. And I also think that if you look at comic books where the hero is African American, there’s no way that Marvel would cast a white guy in that part, at least not in 2016. No way. So, why is it okay to just go, “Well, let’s just ignore the fact that that character is Asian American and cast a white actor.” I’m a little surprised, I got to be honest with you, by some of the stuff.

I mean, look, the Emma Stone thing was crazy. And the Scarlett Johansson thing is star-washing. This one I just don’t get. I don’t get the Doctor Strange one at all. I mean, Tilda Swinton is amazing —

**John:** I think Tilda Swinton is amazing. I think ultimately it comes down to Tilda Swinton is amazing, and so having Tilda Swinton in your movie is kind of awesome and amazing and — not only is she great, but she’s just so wonderfully strange. That I kind of get it. And I can both understand why you make the choice to cast her in it, and I can also understand why people are frustrated and to some degree outraged over it.

I want to talk about the outrage, because I think the outrage is an interesting double-edged sword. It’s like the pros of being outraged or expressing outrage over it, or sort of letting there be a Twitter storm about it is that it gets people talking about it, it gets people noticing it, it encourages people to make their lists more diverse and inclusive, and really think about if a character is described as being Asian sort of keeping them Asian.

I think the cons of the outrage is that I know people in Hollywood and they’re so skittish. And so what they’re going to do is they’re going to back away from the controversy by just like backing away from the chance for there to be a controversy. So, a character who was described as being Asian, they’ll just get rid of that description before it ever makes it out there so that the character is no longer Asian.

**Craig:** I don’t think that will happen.

**John:** You don’t think so?

**Craig:** No. I think that that was all too often the response in the past, but you know, I encounter more and more an insistence on the studio side that the movie not end up being all white people.

**John:** Sure.

**Craig:** And I also think that there is somewhere some people must understand inherently that they’re not going to lose money by casting an Asian or an Asian American actor to play an Asian part. I mean, it’s hard enough for Asian American actors to get parts because of the default white syndrome, and now they can’t even get parts where the characters are Asian.

You know, I think this discussion is very, very long overdue. And I think it’s going to have a very significant impact on how things go forward. I do. I believe that.

**John:** Let’s look at what screenwriters can do and what they can’t do. So, what screenwriters can do is you can — you ultimately get the choice of what you’re going to name these characters, and so if you name a character Woo, you’re sort of describing that person who is probably Chinese, and that is an affirmative thing you can do.

You can suggest actors, you can suggest to people involved in casting the movie that let’s try to keep this role Asian. You don’t get the final decision on that, but you can always make that suggestion. But I think the most important and sort of interesting thing that writers can do is actually write about.

So there’s a great episode in this batch of Kimmy Schmidts where Titus Andromedon is putting on his one-man show about his past life as a geisha. And so he’s in sort of geisha white face for the role, and so there’s a huge outcry of Asian American actors about this sort of terrible thing, this affront he’s doing. And that show was able to really dig into it because they had the ability to have characters on both sides and really explore it.

And so one of the rare luxuries as a writer is you can actually write about these situations and these frustrations and explore it. And so one of the few gifts you actually have as a writer is the ability to create fictional scenarios in which characters are grappling with these issues.

**Craig:** Yeah. And, of course, we have enormous latitude here to describe our characters as we wish and to do so and then leave their race behind. You know, I mean, you introduce people, this one is Chinese American, this one is African American, this one is white, this one is whatever. And then that’s it, because most people, typical waiter in a restaurant works with people of every different race, and it’s not part of the daily discussion.

So, we can do that, but as you mentioned kind of at the top of this discussion, when it comes to casting we just don’t have the ability to determine these things. And we get blamed sometimes which is crazy.

**John:** And we get blamed for it and at the same time we are not particularly well positioned to defend ourselves. And so I would say if you are the screenwriter who is facing this situation, Twitter is not going to be a great place for you to sort of go out and try to defend yourself, and defend these decisions. You’re not going to win. No one wins on Twitter. It’s impossible to win on Twitter.

**Craig:** I’m currently winning on Twitter, but only because, you know, look who I’m fighting against.

**John:** Unfair advantage.

I think we’re living in a really exciting time, a really fascinating time for dealing with issues of race. And it’s because race is both an internal identity, it’s also a perceived identity. It’s something you hold inside yourself, but it’s also what someone sees you as. And that is rally challenging. It’s really interesting both on a fictional level and dealing with it on a daily basis.

A friend of mine is an actor who often gets cast as a terrorist because he looks sort of Middle Eastern, which is offensive. And also, he’s Italian, so he just happens to look like what we think a Middle Eastern person looks like, but he’s not. He’s Italian. And his wife is mixed race and gets cast as sort of like anything ambiguous she gets cast as. And that’s because no one is checking — I don’t think they actually even are allowed to check what is your actual ethnicity. They just say it’s what you came in the room looking like. Oh, well, he’s that guy, or she’s this thing. And race is a really interesting, frustrating, challenging thing we’re still trying to put our heads around.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can see people sweating as they attempt to do the right thing. You know, we are as an industry we are being asked to be more inclusive, and I think most people in our industry believe that that’s exactly what we should be.

But then, of course, to be more inclusive you have to be race aware. When you are race aware, suddenly you are beginning to traipse through a minefield, whether you know it or not. So, on the one hand you’re trying to do the right thing. On the other hand, you may end up blowing it. It’s difficult.

Regardless of the fact that it’s difficult, it is less difficult than actually being an actor of color, or a writer of color. That is harder to do. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the business to suck it up and deal with the uncomfortableness and the awkwardness and the occasional flub and make things better for these people who are honestly being treated unfairly. And there’s really no way to deny it.

**John:** Yeah. I agree. Craig, I have one last thought experiment. So, you’ve heard of this musical Hamilton?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, my question for you is what do you think happens when the first time they cast a white actor as George Washington in that show?

**Craig:** I think it will be fine.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a really interesting situation, because there you have the precedent for the show is that the cast is not color blind, I’d say it’s actually race aware. You can argue both sides, sort of where it’s falling on that. But musically it feels like that actor, there’s a tradition where that actor should be African American, or at least non-white. And yet, of course, he’s playing a character who was in fact white.

So, I find it an interesting thing to look at in terms of is the role based on sort of our perception of what that role is like in the show, or based on the real person.

**Craig:** Yeah, I think that Hamilton, which will be performed 14 billion times by 14 billion casts until the end of time, will detach itself from any sense of needing to adhere to a format of casting. You’re going to see women playing Hamilton. I mean, everyone is going to play Hamilton. You know what I mean? So, over time, everyone will play it.

You already have, I mean, you can’t really point to that cast and say, “Well, it’s about being African American.” It’s not because Lin-Manuel Miranda is Puerto Rican American. And Phillipa Soo is Korean American, I think. So, it’s not about being black, and it’s not about being Latino, and it’s not about being Asian. What it’s really about is not being white.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And that is an interesting commentary because the founding fathers in that world was so white. So, it’s like, okay, we’re not white. But over time, white people will play those parts, too. Because, A, white privilege, what? But, B, because in the end I think the music and the story of Hamilton start to transcend some of the racial contrasts that the original cast has presented.

**John:** Yeah. I’ll read those articles when it happens and see what the discussion is.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think Washington is the right place to start, by the way, if you were going to do it. If I were going to do it —

**John:** Rather than Jefferson Lafayette?

**Craig:** Yeah, Jefferson has got to — I mean, right now, there’s something about the fact that he has got his slaves moving his staircase around as he returns from France. It’s just more delicious the fact that he’s African American. I don’t know. I think so. But —

**John:** We’ll see. I’m not going to get my shot.

**Craig:** Not going to get my shot.

**John:** Craig, it is time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Yay. My One Cool Thing is so, so cool. This was sent in by a Twitter follower and they are gloves that translate ASL, American Sign Language, into verbal speech.

**John:** That sounds great.

**Craig:** How cool is this? So, it’s a couple of kids, and they’re adorable. These two boys. I can say that now, because I’m old. These two boys who work at University of Washington. I mean, they’re undergrads. Undergrads. They really are boys. At the University of Washington. Their names are Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor. And they just won a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, which is a national prize for the most inventive undergraduate and graduate students. And so they’ve invented these things called Sign Aloud Gloves, which translate American Sign Language into speech or text.

So, I assume that they figured out how to put little sensors into all the fingers, and the palms, and everything, and then all that stuff goes into a computer. The computer translates the movements into speech. And it’s awesome. And if they can get this refined and everything, wow.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** How great would that be?

**John:** Very, very cool. I like our love inventors.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** And when they make the Young Inventors movie, I really hope they don’t cast two white guys in that movie.

**Craig:** Well, I don’t know if Navid Azodi is — I don’t know. I don’t know what —

**John:** I would guess, Navid sounds South Asian.

**Craig:** No…I’m going to go with Israeli or maybe Persian. I’m going to go Persian.

**John:** So, can you cast a white person as a Persian? I ask because Nima Yousefi who works in our office, whenever he sees something he doesn’t like, he’s like, “Oh, white people.”

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, he’s whiter than I am. I think Persians consider themselves Aryans in the old sense of the word Aryan.

**John:** It’s complicated the idea of racial identity.

**Craig:** It is, yeah.

**John:** You don’t have to write into me or Craig about that.

**Craig:** Yeah, yeah. Don’t yell at us. We’re just trying to figure it out. We’re stumbling through, guys.

**John:** Stumbling through life. My One Cool Thing is called Hands in Wheat. It is a Twitter feed by Andy Baker. And it’s basically a bunch of stock photos of like people running their hands through wheat. And it’s one of those great absurd Twitter feeds where it’s like, oh wow, you know what, it really is such an incredibly overused visual cliché. Because no one in real life ever does that. And you see it all the time in movies and ads and other things. Like connection with your food and with nature and all this stuff. It’s just so funny.

And I love it and he’s incredibly angry in the feed about like it’s hands in wheat, it’s not elbows and wheat. The wheat has to be at just the right height. So, I’m a fan of a lot of absurd Twitter feeds, but this is a new one that I liked a lot.

**Craig:** Have you seen Women Laughing While Eating Salad?

**John:** Yes, that is a fantastic one.

**Craig:** It’s amazing.

**John:** I also love Women Who Can’t Even Drink Water. Like Water Fails. Women pouring water on themselves as if they can’t do it.

Another good Twitter feed I’ll throw in for bonus is Baby CMO. And so he’s a Chief Marketing Officer for an Internet startup, but he’s also a baby, and so he’s talking about his sort of two conflicting needs at times. And so he uses the jargon of both, which is great.

He’s very much like Stewie Griffin.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Excellent. That is our show this week. A reminder that next week’s episode will be Aline and Rachel Bloom talking about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. This was a live show I recorded with the Writers Guild Foundation. So it’s basically the same day we recorded the Larry Kasdan interview. That morning I spoke with Aline and Rachel and it was fantastic. It’s actually maybe our dirtiest episode ever. It may have crossed over the Rebel Wilson thing.

**Craig:** Whoa.

**John:** So, don’t listen to it with your kids, mostly because Rachel has to, or chooses to go into a lot of detail about how she did the ADR for a scene in the original Showtime pilot where rather than just making out with Greg, she is performing oral sex on him. And so she goes into quite graphic detail about the ADR session she did for that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. Our outro this week comes from Jonathan Mann. It is fantastic. And Jonathan Mann is sort of a legend in the podcasting world for doing music, so he did one for us, and that was awesome. So, thank you to Jonathan Mann.

If you have an outro for us, you can write into ask@johnaugust.com with a link to it. It’s also a place to send in questions or feedback on the show. On Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

Our show is produced by Stuart Friedel. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. You can find us on iTunes. Thank you for all those people who have left new reviews on iTunes. That’s always lovely and much appreciated.

You can find bonus episodes, including the Justin Marks interview, over at Scriptnotes.net. That’s also where the Scriptnotes App finds its great content. It’s a $2 a month fee for all the back episodes, including those bonus things. And there will be bonus Q&A I think for Rachel and Aline’s episode next week as well. So, if you sign up for that, you’ll get that as well. And that’s our show.

**Craig:** Great show.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Thanks.

**Craig:** See you.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Scriptnotes, 247: The One with Lawrence Kasdan](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-one-with-lawrence-kasdan)
* [Scriptnotes Bonus: Jungle Book Q+A, with screenwriter Justin Marks](http://scriptnotes.net/bonus-jungle-book-qa)
* [The Making of The Jungle Book](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkNArCG80Bg) on YouTube
* [Being An Asian Actor Is Hard Even Without Scarlett Johansson Taking Your Roles](http://www.vice.com/read/being-an-asian-actor-is-hard-even-without-scarlett-johansson-taking-your-roles)
* [Students Invented Gloves That Can Translate Sign Language Into Speech And Text](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/navid-azodi-and-thomas-pryor-signaloud-gloves-translate-american-sign-language-into-speech-text_us_571fb38ae4b0f309baeee06d)
* [Hands In Wheat](https://twitter.com/HandsInWheat) on Twitter, and [Women laughing alone with salad](http://womenlaughingalonewithsalad.tumblr.com/), [Women struggling to drink water](http://imgur.com/a/79OsM), and [Baby CMO](https://twitter.com/babycmo)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Jonathan Mann ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2016/the-invitation-and-requels).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 244 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast, we are joined by Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay to talk about their new movie, The Invitation, and how they balance writing small Indies with big budget franchises. And on the topic of franchises, we’ll discuss requels, which are not quite reboots and not quite sequels. Plus we’ll get to these listener questions.

Craig, how are you today?

**Craig:** Well, given the amount of work that we have to do here in this podcast, I’m not feeling that great. [laughs]

Actually, I was in a terrific mood and then you just laid that much on. I mean, that’s so much.

**John:** Absolutely. And that they’re terrible, dismal guests who will be not amusing or interesting whatsoever.

**Craig:** We’re going to have to drag them down the field on our backs.

**John:** So before we get to that hard, hard work, let’s do some follow-up from last week.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** Last week on the clip show, I asked listeners to take a three-question poll about our podcast and specifically the premium feed. Several hundred of you not only filled out the poll, you left great comments and suggestions.

Craig, once again, we have the best listeners of any podcast in America.

**Craig:** Well, I’m going to have to take your word for that, obviously, since I don’t listen to other podcasts. But from what I’ve seen and heard, I’ve got to agree with you, our listeners are basically pretty cool.

**John:** Here’s what our listeners told us. They said we should keep the premium feed because enough of them like it and enjoy it. It’s a way to get to all those back catalog episodes. Sometimes they listen to episodes for the first time or they listen to it for the seventh time. So we’ll keep doing that for the people who like that.

We’ll probably also make more of the USB drives that have all of the episodes on them, including the bonus episodes. We’re approaching 250 so we’ll probably do a 250-episode drive for that.

**Craig:** God, 250?

**John:** That’s a lot of episodes.

**Craig:** 250? John.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** John, it’s like five years.

**John:** It’s like five years of my life spent.

**Craig:** That’s five years of our life. [laughs]

**John:** No, it’s really my life. [laughs] It’s about like, you know, maybe 50 hours of your life.

**Craig:** Yeah, but I feel like

**John:** Well, I guess it’s 250 hours of your life.

**Craig:** Yeah, I feel like we have a life together.

**John:** We do have a life together. Some marriages have not lasted the number of episodes that we’ve recorded.

**Craig:** Especially where we live.

**John:** Yeah, especially where we live.

So the whole reason I started asking the questions about what we should do with the premium feed is because some people were having real problems with the premium feed both on a technical level and on a billing level. So we’re still going to look for some alternate way for people who want to support the podcast, to help pay for Stuart and for Matthew, because you guys are awesome. So some way you guys can support the show and get those bonus episodes as well. So it might be Patreon, it might be something else.

If you have specific suggestions for things we can do to make that easier, let us know. But we will keep doing what we’re doing, and we should get to today’s work.

**Craig:** What if people send in canned goods to Stuart?

**John:** I think that would be a terrific idea. I think

**Craig:** I mean, Stuart loves green beans.

**John:** Yes, he’s the best the biggest fan of green beans.

**Craig:** Corn nibblets.

**John:** Mm-hmm. Yeah. So as long as we keep Stuart fed, that’s crucial.

**Craig:** When you were a kid

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I’m sorry, we’ll get to Phil and Matt in a second.

**John:** Oh, there’s no rush.

**Craig:** I’m stalling because they’re going to be the worst. [laughs] When you were a kid, did you do the thing right in front of Thanksgiving in elementary school where would you do the canned food drive?

**John:** Of course, you had to do the canned food drive.

**Craig:** And I was always arguing with my because my mother is, you know, as we’ve established, probably I don’t know if we’ve established on the podcast, but she’s the worst. So she would always want to get like these healthy food. I’m like, “Nobody wants green nobody wants these nasty green beans in a can. Let’s get the yams.” I was always a yams guy.

**John:** Oh my God, yams are the worst.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** I can’t I can’t believe we haven’t gotten into this. Like who would eat yams?

**Craig:** I would.

**John:** The only kind of yam-type vegetable I’ll eat is like sweet potato fries. Delightful. Any other form of sweet potato or yam and you know, yams aren’t even yams. Like yams

**Craig:** I know. Oh God.

**John:** Are an African thing and God, it’s

**Craig:** You know what, especially the ones in the can. [laughs] God only know what those are.

**John:** Exactly. They’re some sort of special product invented by scientists.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s soylent orange.

**John:** It’s soylent orange.

So on the topic of yams, let’s get to our guests today.

**Craig:** Segue Man.

**John:** Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi are a writing team whose credits include Clash of the Titans, Aeon Flux, Crazy Beautiful and both Ride Alongs.

Their new movie is The Invitation, which is in U.S. theaters April 8th and also available through iTunes that same day. It debuted at South by Southwest and it’s currently 89% fresh in Rotten Tomatoes. It was only 88% fresh this morning, now it’s 89% so who knows how high it will be by the time we listen to this podcast.

The film, The Invitation, is set at a dinner party in the Hollywood Hills where a group of friends are reconnecting after a tragedy. But something seems a little amiss. Let’s listen to a clip.

[Clip plays]

**John:** So Matt, are they harmless?

**Matt Manfredi:** You have to go see the movie to find out.

**John:** All right. So it’s

**Craig:** You don’t just want to tell us what happens to save us the effort?

**Matt:** I find people usually like to just have some people tell them what the movie is and then

**Craig:** Right. Just skip the whole thing of having to go through

**Matt:** Yeah, just getting in the car. It’s narration.

**Craig:** Because the movie is, it’s like an hour-and-a-half. I mean, if you just tell us

**Matt:** It’s a big time commitment.

**Craig:** It’s huge.

**John:** It is a big time commitment.

So Craig and I both have seen your movie. I saw it at an official screening at ICM and it was a delightful night and it was I loved seeing it on the big screen. Craig didn’t see it that way. He saw it on a screener.

**Craig:** Yeah, I did. But I have to say and you know, it’s funny because we’re friends with Karyn Kusama, the director and Phil’s wife, and she was very concerned. She said you have to watch it with the sound really high and you’ve got to make sure that the lights are low.

So I did it.

**John:** Oh, nice.

**Craig:** I turned the lights way down, cranked the sound, looked great. I enjoyed the experience of watching a nice film at home. [laughs] It was great.

**Phil Hay:** So it’s in theaters and VOD. So however you like it

**John:** Absolutely.

**Phil:** You can have it.

**John:** So I think what I’ll pitch without sort of seeing it with an audience is there are not necessarily jump scares but there is a collective experience of trying to figure out like what is actually going on.

And so the reason why I asked like, “Are they dangerous?” like that becomes a real valid question. It’s like, “Are these people what they seem to be? Are there red herrings being thrown about?” And yes, there are red herrings being thrown about.

**Matt:** I think that our biggest conversations making the movie were all about where should where do we want the audience to be situated vis-a-vis Will, the lead character. And can we trust him? Can we trust his point of view? And it you know, the experience, I think, to kind of put a cell on the theatrical experience, it has been really gratifying and fascinating to sit with many audiences and watch the movie and see that it does play. There is a feeling between the audience members where there’s a palpable sense of sweating it out with other people

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Matt:** And there’s a tension and dread that it’s if it works for you, hopefully

**Phil:** Yeah.

**Matt:** It works better in the theater.

**Craig:** It does feel like it feels like one I mean, there are certain kinds of movies that require a communal experience. I don’t know if this requires a bigger and definitely see how it would accentuate it and, you know, that you because tension is something that you can feel in a room.

And it is available in big cities. I mean, so

**Phil:** Yes.

**Craig:** People in New York. What did you say, New York, Austin, Boston, where else?

**Phil:** Dallas.

**Craig:** L.A.

**Phil:** Houston, L.A.

**Matt:** Kind of expands the week

**Phil:** And the week after we’re in Chicago and

**Matt:** Cleveland.

**Phil:** Cleveland and Columbus.

**Craig:** So lots of opportunities for

**Matt:** Yes. Yes.

**Phil:** Absolutely.

**John:** So I saw it several months ago, but since the time I saw that, I also saw 10 Cloverfield Lane and the movies are similar in the sense that they are both taking place in small environments. You’re closed in and you’re not sure who you can trust.

And you Phil, what you were saying about character’s point of view, you’re not entirely sure if you can trust the point of view of your lead character because he has gone through a tragedy and he may be perceiving things not the way they really are. And by laser-focusing on just his point of view on things, you have limited information.

So can you talk us through sort of the writing process and figuring out like did this start from an idea of a dinner party? Did it start from an idea of this character? What was the impetus behind this movie?

**Phil:** This kind of came from an emotional sort of emotional/thematic feeling. And I think that we started talking this is many years ago. We’ve been living with this script for a long time. And I think it started out with a sort of what if question, which I think a lot of movies that could be categorized as horror or science fiction fall into to, which is what if you knew someone very, very well, you knew them better than anyone else in the world. You were married to them. And they disappeared one day and when they came back, they were a completely different person.

That sort of emotional horror was part of it. And then we also were sort of very interested in cults and interested in the kind of very dark mythology of the Hollywood Hills and California itself.

**Matt:** Also we were having a lot of conversations about grief and the isolation of it and how, you know, people can grieve the same person in very different ways and, you know, taking that to its logical and perhaps scary extension.

So yeah, and you know, in terms of and you know, in terms of the we kind of had the ending which, you know, is we had that first in the way that you’ll the ending is, in a way, the premise of the movie.

**Craig:** Right.

**Matt:** So we have these ideas that we’re working around. We have this ending which, you know, again, is the premise of it, and so we kind of worked from there. And in terms of like Will’s point of view and it was a challenge that was one of the big writing challenges I think, which was deciding how much information to parcel out and keep it going. Because the movie is kind of a slow burn and you want to keep the audience invested. You want to have events along the way, but it was like we kept removing things and seeing how much we could remove.

**Phil:** And in this context, what was interesting, you know, having written many different kinds of movies, in this particular movie, the sense that our turns of reveal in something being apparently true and then being revealed to be not true at all, and then that new apparent truth being subverted in a different way. It kind of required us to a very microscopic manner, think about character turns and think about shifts in mood and tone over the course of this party because, you know, I think a lot of it is wrapped up in a lot of what’s underneath, what we’re trying to explore in the script is just the idea of manners and social propriety and how our instincts for preservation can be sort of obscured by our desire to

**Matt:** Please others.

**Phil:** Be cool and not be the person that’s

**Craig:** Just follow the rules of the party. It’s really instructive for because we have a lot people that listen to us who are aspiring screenwriters and we talk about theme all the time. We talk about character all the time. We talk about knowing what your movie is really about, which isn’t what it’s about. And so it’s very instructive, I think, for people to hear that the things that you start with.

So this is a thriller. So on the other side of the screen, for the consumer, they’re seeing a thriller. It’s Hitchcockian. It’s suspenseful. It’s Polanski-ish, right? It reminded me of Rosemary’s Baby. It reminded me of Strangers on a Train. It reminded me of any kind of closed room story. All of those things are very craft-wise and they’re very front-facing.

But behind it, you guys start with what happens if somebody you know you don’t really know and grief. So very instructive, I think, for people to hear how you guys start and then the craft is in service of that.

**Matt:** Yeah. I mean, it makes the writing process easier. I mean, you know, the only times I get stuck writing is when I don’t know what the scene is about. You know, I know have to write the scene

**Craig:** Right.

**Matt:** And it happens to be in the plot but I all day, I’m banging my head against the wall and it’s just because I don’t thematically know what this is about.

**Craig:** And you know that you won’t get help from Phil.

**Matt:** No.

**Phil:** No. That’s not that’s not possible. [laughs]

**Matt:** He’s useless.

**Phil:** I’m just on the phone doing business. So [laughs]

**Craig:** He handles the business. [laughs]

**Matt:** Yeah, he’s basically an automaton who goes to lunches.

**Craig:** Right, exactly.

**Phil:** But, no, I mean I think that like that’s been important to all of us. We learn them we learn them as we do the process of writing. But we’ve sort of realized that that is what is the moment of genesis for us on anything that we write, whether it’s our own thing to say why should this exist. Why is this why do I want to what I’m trying to get at? What am I trying to explore? Or something that we’re working on that comes from outside where it’s like what is my connection to this. Why am I the one that needs to do this?

Once we know what it’s about or what we what we’re trying to discover about it, then every conversation is about that in some way even when it’s not directly. Every conversation a character has should be reflecting that in a not literal way. And it just I don’t know how to do a movie without that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Phil:** Without knowing what its place in the intellectual world is, you know.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So when did you actually start writing this movie?

**Matt:** A while ago.

**Phil:** Yeah. We were trying to figure that out. It’s been so long we could I think we sort of had the basic idea and some of the structure long ago, more than 10 years ago.

**Matt:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Wow.

**Phil:** And it’d been just sort of haunting us a little bit. And there’s something interesting about but I don’t know if it’s the same for you, if we’ve talked about this. But there is something about this particular story and script and making this movie that is one of the most mysterious of them to me that we’ve ever done just in terms of I felt like I was always learning about it while doing it.

So it took years for me, personally, to like be with it and live with it and try to understand it well enough to write it, you know. And then I think we started writing it probably eight years ago and then we were originally thinking of directing it and we sort of realized that I lived with a much better director.

**Craig:** Yeah. She’s pretty good.

**Phil:** And yeah. And

**Matt:** She’s talented.

**Craig:** Yeah.

Phil; So then it came to life in a different way once Karyn was involved. And you know, like every independent film, it took a really long time to get together but

**Craig:** Well, you know, there’s the question that I’m sure everyone is going to ask at the, you know, as you go through promotions. What’s it like when you’re wife is directing and all that. But what there’s another thing that happens before that happens. Because that question really I mean, putting aside the fact that Karyn is your wife, that question is always about what it’s like as a writer to see your work translated by somebody else.

But there’s also it’s interesting when you guys said that you’d been working on this for eight years or ten years. There’s a narrowing of possibilities that occurs as you get towards the end. And I’m always fascinated to talk to writers about that moment right before the director starts to translate, when you go, “We have arrived at an end.” Did you feel like you had gotten through that without too many compromises? Did it resemble what you had hoped it would resemble?

**Phil:** I would say it resembles it exactly

**Matt:** Very much.

**Phil:** In an almost uncanny

**Craig:** Great.

**Phil:** Way, because Karyn part of it is the three of us becoming a very inseparable unit during this movie. And part of it is Karyn’s approach. Every director is different and, you know, as a writer, no matter who the director is, you’re just trying to serve the director, you’re trying to merge what you can bring and what your and your story with their story and make it the same story. And Karyn, the way she works is very she wouldn’t have even approached it if she didn’t want to tell the story that we had right there on the script.

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** And then, of course, we went through it with her and we but the way Karyn works is she always like trusts us to get there. She’s talking in terms of the themes and the characters and the feelings and the moments and the tuning and the relationships. So it really is exactly I mean, I’ve, you know, never had an experience where it has been it is it’s truly I can’t imagine it any different

**Matt:** Yeah.

**Phil:** Because it is what it is.

**John:** So when did it go from like, “Here’s the script. Here’s an idea. We now have a great director on board,” when did you decide, “Okay, we’re going to just make this movie?” What was the tipping point for this is a thing we could do versus this a thing we’re going to start shooting?

**Matt:** I think when Karyn came on and then, you know, she started meeting with actors and then you in that kind of circular dance of financing

**Craig:** Right.

**Matt:** Casting, financing, casting.

**Phil:** They need a cast, cast needs finance.

**Matt:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Right.

**Matt:** And so but that all started pretty quickly after Karyn got involved.

**Phil:** And then the journey was like I mean, we entered that phase of at some point you enter that dangerous phase of going from something we wanted to do to, at least in my mind, something we had to do. That once Karyn and Matt and I were together and working on it and envisioning it and we had some of the actors that we’d have in the movie, you know, as every independent movie, so many crazy icebergs appeared at the last minute

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Phil:** As they always do. And like emotionally, it felt like we had to make this movie. And there was almost a calm in that, of knowing that all of us spend a lot of time building up our professional armature because we are extreme veterans of the feeling of getting something almost there and not having it happen

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** Or it gets diverted into a different area that you want it to. Any of that stuff. And I think that on a very emotional level, we all knew for all, many reasons, that we had to make this movie.

**Matt:** Well, because we were all heading towards the same place. Everyone. We saw it the same way and you could see the finish line already, you know.

**Craig:** Right.

**Matt:** We knew it was going to

**Craig:** And how many days did you guys shoot?

**Matt:** 20.

**Phil:** 20.

**Craig:** 20 days.

**John:** It was 20 days here in Los Angeles and

**Phil:** Yes.

**John:** I’m curious about sort of the financial model behind this because if I’m a financer looking at this, it looks kind of like a Blumhouse movie in the sense like you’re in sort one location. It’s a thriller. It’s not a horror movie, though.

**Phil:** Yeah.

**John:** Was there any pushback to sort of like make it, you know, bigger, more supernatural, to have some aspect that could be more easily marketed, so it wasn’t Hitchcockian but it was more, you know, gory or something?

**Phil:** Initially and there weren’t really any pushes to make it more genre or anything like that. At one point, you know, the movie cost a million dollars. At one point it was they were we were talking about well, it had a $3 million dollar level. And at that point that point cast there becomes

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** A greater pressure on cast.

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** And then all of a sudden you’re talking things, “Okay. Well, does that fit? Can we make it fit?” you know, and but there wasn’t really any pressure to

**Matt:** We yeah. I mean

**Phil:** We changed content.

**Matt:** We could have had in I imagine there could have been a time we had internal pressure, but we didn’t where you’d say like we want to get this movie made and so what are the kind of, you know, attractive things that one could and you know, that, you know, how you could turn it to kind of huff up its writer feathers.

**Phil:** Well, but you know, it is because you’re right. There is this it’s not a horror movie, it’s but it lives within the

**John:** In that space.

**Phil:** Genre.

**Craig:** It’s a it’s a

**Phil:** Galaxy

**Craig:** You know it’s a paranoid thriller

**Phil:** Yeah. But in that way, so like having not written one of those before. You’re confident in what you’ve written, but at the same time you’re like, “This is a slow burn. I wonder if this do we need to insert something

**Matt:** But we sort of knew

**Phil:** You know, stabby. [laughs]

**Matt:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** You know what I mean? Like, but I think we knew

**Matt:** Yeah.

**Phil:** We really knew that I mean, we really knew that there this could never be a movie where there would be a sort of regular pace of tension and release, tension and release, scares

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** Et cetera.

**Craig:** It wasn’t that

**Phil:** That it’s not that. And what it really is is a drama that turns into a paranoid thriller that

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** Turns into a horror movie. It’s all those things. But I think so I think that we did know that and this would be the, you know, the advice to give to anyone making an independent film, that the reason you make it is to do it the way that it has to be done.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Phil:** And to not jump for when it seems like the gap is really you’re really close and to jump for the thing that will make it go, whether it’s an actor that everyone wants but you know is not right, or any of those things, I think we all collectively realized that, you know, once we dropped the budget to be as low as possible and we’re counting on Karyn’s skill to make the movie feel big as a movie, then we can cast exactly the right actors, the people who will feel real, and we can shoot it here in L.A. which felt critical to us on many levels. But just

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Phil:** It is an L.A. and it should be here. So

**Craig:** But I mean, that’s what you get back from giving up things, right? So

**Phil:** Yeah, exactly.

**Craig:** And the tragedy is to give up the big budget and to give up all of this and then also then give up your vision at the same time.

**Phil:** Exactly.

**Craig:** That’s crazy.

**Phil:** Exactly.

**John:** A lot of these decisions you’re talking about remind of our conversation with Mari Heller about The Diary of a Teenage Girl which was basically how do you, you know, put together exactly the right package for the right budget so that you make the right choices to make the right movie. And it sounds like you guys found that at this budget level because looking at your film, there’s probably a much, much lower version budget that you could do with, you know, that doesn’t look as good, it doesn’t shoot as many days, it’s going to be rushed, it’s going to be frantic, but it wouldn’t be the same movie. It would be

**Matt:** Well, the movie had to have like —

**Phil:** I think it would lose its movieness.

**Matt:** The movie had to have like the house had to be seductive and lush, you know, as part of the story in a way.

**John:** Yeah.

**Phil:** So it has to be that. Also, you know, we had we were a union, you know, that it was a SAG contract, you have 12 actors on for the run.

**Craig:** Big cast.

**Phil:** Yeah.

**Matt:** It just eats up a lot of money.

**Craig:** Plus, any time you’re shooting like the dinner scene, when I saw people sitting around the table I immediately tense up. [laughs]

**Phil:** Yeah, you know what you know what that’s about, yeah.

**Craig:** Oh, god. There’s three days of angles.

**Matt:** So in order to have a SAG movie, the movie couldn’t have gone much lower than what we were at.

**Phil:** That was the thing we learned about

**Matt:** Yeah.

**Phil:** Independent films is that the you know, everyone knows that the number of days is a big is your biggest factor in budget, but the number of actors and the number of days you have is a huge one and you know, and talking about the dinner scene, one thing that was kind of fascinating about the process of making this is realizing again, Karyn, because the schedule is so limited had to be very aggressive about her choices

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** On the day, everything was there was not room to mess around and there was not room to kind of find stuff. It was which is why we worked to make the script exactly what the movie was going to be and the actors invested in that. And we did get two-and-a-half days of rehearsal which is a miracle because

**Matt:** Which was crucial though.

**Phil:** Critical because

**Craig:** To help them find their voice.

**Phil:** Exactly.

**Craig:** You set their pace.

**Phil:** And physically relate to each other in the space. And yeah, basically do some pretty precise blocking because Karyn knew she couldn’t just like hose down the scenes.

**Matt:** No.

**Phil:** Because you don’t have time and it’s not her style. So she knew. There’s going to be scenes, I’m going to be playing this in the master, almost the whole scene and it’s an important scene and it’s going to be that’s where it’s going to be. And then what you learn is, you cannot have a single actor who is less than great.

**Matt:** Yeah.

**Phil:** Because everybody is in the shot, everybody is reacting. Everybody is in the moment and you have nowhere to go. So it’s another kind of benefit of looking at every single part and saying the only the reason these actors are here is because we think they are the best actors, because they really are, they’re in everything.

**Craig:** They were it was a terrific cast. Everyone was spot on, gave great performances. You have that many people, everyone was distinct. You know, this is a common problem you’ll hear when people read a screenplay and it translates into a movie, “Well that one seem like that one. Those two seemed a lot alike, you didn’t need why did you have to have two of them.” Everyone was very clearly distinct.

I also think it’s a real benefit when you don’t have so Phil said, hose down. What that means is do coverage, so you shoot a master, and then hosing it down means, okay, now, I get a single on you, I get a single on you. I get an over, I get a two.

So when you’re shooting things in master style because you don’t have time to do all the coverage, I actually think it helps a movie like this because now things are happening behind in one. Because every time you cut, I don’t know who told me this, but I think about it all the time, every time you cut, you’re cheating, right? And sometimes you have to cheat, but if you cannot cut and somebody moves and there’s like that when he sees somebody someone’s talking and then a little bit off to the right you see two other people starting to whisper, that’s wonderful. There are a lot of moments like that.

**Matt:** Yeah, and it kind of you’ve forced the actors to kind of develop their relationships even further.

**Phil:** Right.

**Matt:** You know, and it’s fun and they really did. I mean, we shot it we shot it in order for the most part.

**Craig:** Oh, that’s really that’s great.

**Phil:** Which was really interesting

**Craig:** Which you can do because you’re in one place.

**Matt:** And we kind of had to do because the house had maybe one less room than we needed.

**Phil:** Right, right. I mean, we really every square inch of that house was

**Craig:** Did you do that thing where you redress one room to be another?

**Phil:** We didn’t. Though we I mean, and that what was interesting, too, about that is this particular movie was it was really helpful to be able to shoot in continuity for almost like 90% probably in continuity because I think the actual experience of making it and you know, it’s funny you it’s almost truism that sometimes like the darkest movies are the most positive experiences that the people and we had a lot of fun making this movie even though it’s a very dark film.

And I think that everybody had to be living together in that house basically. I mean, we were moving we had the production office upstairs and we were shooting downstairs, then the production office moved.

**Craig:** Crazy.

**Phil:** The copy machine is trying to get down the stairs.

**John:** As I watching the movie I kept thinking like everyone is like jammed in that little room down this corner. [Cross talk] And there’s a couple of times where the camera has to turn, like oh, how is he going to do it.

**Phil:** We had we had the DP at one point having to leap up onto a bar, a little mini bar and be sitting, you know

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Phil:** In this little box

**Matt:** Because there’s no walls can fly out of the way.

**Phil:** There is no.

**John:** Let’s talk a little bit about geography because that affects your scene writing as well because there’s moments in the movie where a lot of people are having conversations together but then they need to break off into separate conversations. So did you have to change anything in the script based on the house you ended up picking for this movie?

**Matt:** We did. The house I mean, the house actually ticked most of the boxes we had in the script. I mean, we there was definitely in the script there was like they go upstairs and they’re down. Now, he’s in the yard, which can look back at the house and, you know.

There were those things that for the most part ended up working out okay, probably 80% of it. But we did have to rejigger a few things. We also lost one character along the way.

**John:** What did that character do? Just so

**Phil:** She was Amanda who was mentioned, who is the character of Ben played by Jay Larson, his wife who is at home pissed. She used be at the party pissed and then

**Craig:** Just couldn’t support it?

**Phil:** We just sort of realized at some point in the process that she was the only like you said, I am glad that it plays that way, that every character has a reason they need to be there. She was the character that I think she had some interesting stuff to say but she didn’t really have a reason to be there and we liked what it did to Ben’s character to not have his wife there at the party.

And so but the things that were interesting on a screenwriting level is like walking through the house with Karyn, with the DP, with the ADs and mapping it and realizing the opportunities, you know. We’re saying, “You know, we have an opportunity in this house because the dining room is upstairs, which is a very weird thing.”

**John:** It’s a very strange house.

**Phil:** That it’s a very strange layout. It kind of gave the opportunity and Karyn sort of realized, she said, “I’m going to play this movie. The first half of the movie is downstairs and the second half of the movie is upstairs. “And there’s a real pivot right in the middle

**Craig:** Oh, yeah.

**Phil:** When they go upstairs.

**Craig:** And it’s a great shot, too. I love what she did. I’ve actually never seen anything quite like that. So it’s not this is a movie where it’s not a spoiler to say that there are spoilers for this movie.

**Matt:** Yeah, yeah.

**Craig:** But this is not a spoiler. When they go upstairs, Karyn shoots just their feet and you just see shoes and sneakers and slippers of people going and it was actually fascinating.

**Phil:** Oh, yeah.

**Matt:** Yeah, it’s a cool shot.

**Craig:** I love that shot.

**Matt:** It’s a cool shot.

**Craig:** It’s like you know, I’m like transition fan, you know, I always love transitions and I’ve never seen that one. I thought it was great. It was great.

**Phil:** That’s great. Cool.

**John:** So let’s talk about the cost of the film, not just in terms of actually making it, but in terms of you and your time because all the time you spent making this movie is time you’re not writing a movie for a studio and doing everything else. Did that factor in? As you set off to make this movie, did you think like, “Okay. Well, I’m going to have to jump out of our screenwriting career for six months to make this film,” and all the time in post, and all the time promoting it right now?

**Phil:** Yeah. I mean, it sort of has serendipitously so far worked out where there were you know, we’re all we’re really used to trying to do a lot of stuff at once and as we all have to be, sort of. But I think with this, in particular, we knew that we had to be there every day, we knew that we had fortunately, it’s only four weeks and, you know, and it was four weeks in June.

**Matt:** I mean, we got really lucky that break. I mean, Ride Along 2 was filming while we were filming this. So our work kind of

**Phil:** So we kind of

**Matt:** Was done with that.

**Phil:** We got right to the rehearsal period which is the

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** Important stuff and then we were making this while they were shooting that and that worked out, perfect timing wise.

**Craig:** That’s another thing I want to talk to you guys about, which is your range, which is remarkable. And I think that actually a lot of writers have a far wider range than people understand. They tend to see our names associated with certain kinds of movies because those are the ones that are getting made then these other ones take eight or 10 years.

And obviously, because they’re smaller, they don’t necessarily have the same visibility, but you guys are writing Ride Along, so you’re writing these big, you know, comic mainstream hit movies and then there’s this which is the opposite.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, the dead opposite. I guess my question is, am I wrong or am I right? I know I’m right about you guys, but are most writers like this or do you think it’s a rare thing?

**Matt:** It’s come up with us before, but to me it was a totally organic thing. I mean, you know, when you start out, you write a spec script, you go out to the lowest rung of executives and they pitch you their projects that are going nowhere.

**Craig:** That match your spec script.

**Matt:** You know what I mean?

**Craig:** Right.

**Matt:** And so and but there is a wide diversity of stuff out there and we’ve and we’re interested in all kinds of stories and so we would you know, we took a few on and we got a couple made and, you know. But you get these weird meetings where we’ve written like a Bull Durham type of comedy. And we got called in and someone said, “How would you like to work on a World War 2 biopic?” We’re like, “Yes.”

**Phil:** I love that. Yeah, yeah, of course.

**Craig:** We would like that.

**Matt:** We would like that because it these things interest us and I think very early on, we got opportunities to work in a few different genres and then and never even thought about pigeon-holing or not, or just kind of organically worked out that way

**Phil:** And I think that to what you were saying, Craig, I think it’s true of I mean, most of the writers that I know. I mean, people tend to get reduced in the conversation. You know, whether it’s internally or externally.

**Matt:** Lists, or.

**Phil:** And, you know, writers are like anybody, that everybody is complicated. That I don’t know anybody in the world that’s just one thing and

**Craig:** But they’re always surprised that “I didn’t know you could write this.” What?

**Matt:** Right.

**John:** Do you think that this movie will have any impact on your Hollywood careers or is this just a separate track?

**Phil:** I’d like to think that it would, simply because it does show however you feel about the movie, it does directly without any diffusion show what we want to do. And I think my hope is that people will you know, we have lots of great people we work with and those people and other people, I hope would see this movie and you know, sort of in the way, Craig, that you’ve been consciously pushing into different areas.

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** That’s kind of what we’d like to do, too. That hopefully this movie, whatever those are. And that there’s, you know, whether that means thrillers or whether that means a straight drama or whether that what that would be called. That’s what we’re hoping that people see.

**Craig:** I think it’s I think you did it. I mean, you have a movie. It’s well received. It’s going to I think, the audience that finds it is going to really appreciate it. This is there’s you know, it’s funny, there’s not a lot of barrier-to-entry to this movie, you know. I always feel like suspense thriller, psychological thriller and the fact that you made it about universal themes means that, honestly, I think people are going to like it.

I consider myself like I’m a representative of the audience. I really am. It’s like my whole career, I’ve always the thought of myself as that. And I think they’re going to love it and I think certainly people here in our business are going to watch it and really appreciate it. I also think Karyn’s going to get a huge amount of attention.

**Phil:** Well I’ve I

**Craig:** Perhaps overshadowing you guys completely and then you

**Phil:** That’s okay that’s okay with me.

**Craig:** With you?

**Phil:** Yeah. [laughs]

**Matt:** I’ll be fine. [laughs] I’ll be fine.

**John:** Does community property apply to writing partners? [laughs]

**Phil:** Yeah, definitely. At this point, definitely.

**Matt:** Oh, I got to consult our lawyer.

**Phil:** But yeah no, I mean and I think that’s my hope. I’m glad that you see it that way because I think that, you know, in a way one could say this is an art movie by its by some of its characteristics or by its budget or, you know, by the theaters that it’s being released in, et cetera. But for both Matt and I and for Karyn, we want to tell a compelling story. We don’t have a bone in us that wants to meander or, you know, like

**Craig:** I don’t think of it as an art film.

**Phil:** Yeah. And I think that

**Craig:** Do you think what did you think? Did you see it as an art movie?

**John:** No. I saw it as a thriller and the same way that, you know, like You’re Next is a great thriller that got him started and sort of got him put on lists. This is the one that I think, you know, shows, “Oh, you remember Karyn Kusama? She’s actually really, really good.” Because I mean people who don’t know who she is, I mean, I should have given her some of her credits. So Aeon Flux, she did

**Phil:** Girlfight was her first.

**Craig:** Girlfight was the one.

**John:** Girlfight was the breakout. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** Aeon Flux and then Jennifer’s Body.

**Craig:** But she’s also

**John:** A huge a great TV director. And so, Man in the High Castle, the best episode of that show as well. So I got to think if I’m her agent and your agents, I’m very excited to put you guys up for fascinating jobs, especially things that she can direct because

**Phil:** Yeah. And we definitely want to. I mean, something that’s, you know it was always our hope with this particular movie was that you know, Matt and I are now writing another movie for Karyn to direct. It would be, you know, which is because it’s just what we want to do. You know, it’s how we want to spend our lives.

And we, you know, it’s still going to be independent. It will be a little bit bigger than this one, but very consciously, it will be an independent film. But we also the three of us want to start going after working together in the studio system because it has been interesting. We’ve had our path, she’s had her path, and we want to pull it together.

**Craig:** But you will. I mean, you guys know because you’ve been around long enough, how this goes. You have these you know, you write a script and things go well and the studio says, “All right, we’re going to make it. Now we have to talk about directors,” because that’s the big thing. And then you get this list and you go, “Oh no. These people are I hate all of them. All of them.” And this is not a big list. It’s a short list.

**Phil:** Right.

**Craig:** So then the amount directors you like are so narrow and then you find the one you like and they maybe even really like what you’ve done but they’re not available. So if Karyn kind of gets on to this list now because of this, and I think she will because there’s a the desire for directors is massive compared to the supply, then you guys are already like in great shape. I mean, this will be a very fruitful relationship for all of you except for Matt.

**Matt:** Yeah. [laughs]

**John:** Oh well, he’s lucky to be included, a little bit.

**Craig:** He’s lucky to be included. [laughs]

**Phil:** Matt is really Matt the great thing about Matt is he’s just happy to be here.

**Matt:** I have a few strong concepts that I’m willing to talk about. [laughs]

**Craig:** Welcome, Manfredi.

**Matt:** Fast casual.

**Phil:** Matt is the king of fast casual.

**Craig:** QSR.

**John:** Let’s talk about some of these big giant movies because there’s an article that came out this last week. This was by Pamela McClintock writing for the Hollywood Reporter. And she coined a term maybe she’s not the first person to coin it, but I kind of like the term, requels, which is not quite a reboot, not quite a sequel. And it’s the way you might think of a J.J. Abrams Star Wars and that like it kind of feels like it’s the first movie but it’s actually still in the same universe as Star Wars.

I think the Star Trek movies are sort of that way, too. They’re kind of they manage to sort of have both where they’re rebooting the initial story but they’re also still set in the same universe. You know, upcoming Ghostbusters is doing that.

What do we think of this sort of idea, this trend of, you know, looking at a movie as a giant piece of universe IP rather than this is the story we’re going to tell again?

**Matt:** I mean, I like the idea the requel thing is you can look at it as a cynical thing, you know, as just we’re out of ideas, we’re going to make another one. But there’s something encouraging about it because it acknowledges what was great and what people love and how we can’t completely abandon that if we’re going to move forward. And so there’s something kind of encouraging, there’s an understanding of film that goes into that, and I think it’s kind of it’s fun.

**Phil:** Yeah. I think that they’re, to my mind, that there is a in a way, it reveals something that’s true about movies which is that they’re folklore and they’re mythology, and they are folktales. And so Star Wars is arguably our most powerful folktale that we have. And what’s true about folktales in every culture is they get the characters get put in different clothes and the same story is told.

And what you learn about that, whatever was the powerful thematic or emotional truth about the society it’s in, it’s refracted differently when a woman is put in Luke Skywalker’s clothes or when, you know, like that. And so they’re in on that sense, I think there’s something really interesting about acknowledging the sort of like first story that is what we’re dealing with.

On the other hand, you want to make sure that you’re telling the story that you’re telling and that there is a story that is that belongs to you. And I mean, I think the thing that is really most successful that was captured in the new Star Wars, in Star Wars 7, is the feeling of Star Wars. And to me, that is the thing. That is what you’re looking for.

**Craig:** Right. You’re looking for that feeling.

**Phil:** And you know, maybe it’s like sort of my post-modern upbringing, you know. But I also think what’s interesting is it further reflects the truth. It mainstreams a truth that I think is true when you think about post-modernism is that people are capable of holding stories in so many places.

**Craig:** Oh, yeah.

**Phil:** And especially in the world of comic books for example, where everything is about here’s an alternate universe where Spider Man is evil now and here’s a

**Craig:** Oh, yeah.

**Phil:** You know. And I think that there is something interesting about the play of our knowledge of stories.

**Craig:** Well, it’s like a we live in a remix culture and I feel like sometimes studios are very rudimentary in their understanding of these things. Like requel is a helpful term for people that are limited in their understanding of how to remix culture because now they can say, okay, reboot was a helpful word for studio executives to literally understand something that I think a lot of filmmakers just understood.

**Matt:** Right.

**Craig:** Like of course what do you mean? You just do it again but different, right?

**Phil:** Yeah.

**Matt:** I don’t think as many properties can withstand the universal treatment as is thought.

**Craig:** Well that’s a different thing than requel, yeah.

**Matt:** It’s a different thing. But it the article touches on that a little bit.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s a problem.

**John:** Well I think Terminator is a great example of that. Because like we know we love Terminator. Terminator is a fantastic movie. But as you try to reboot that universe too many times, we don’t we don’t grab on to it. Like you sort of forget like, “Oh what is it about that that we love so much?” Well it’s not what you gave us, so

**Craig:** Also, it’s not a universe. I mean, what people forget, everybody wants the universe because of what Marvel has done. Marvel has thousands of characters built up over decades.

**Phil:** Right

**Matt:** That were already crossing over.

**Craig:** They were already crossing over and being requeled and sequeled and prequeled and retconned and all that stuff, and remixed constantly. Marvel in particular, as opposed to DC, their whole schtick was that even though they’re dealing with superheroes and supervillains, they have human problems.

**Matt:** Right.

**Craig:** So that was a legitimate universe. When I was a kid I had the encyclopedia and I would flip through every and it was I could read that all day and

**Phil:** Did you play the role playing game?

**Craig:** Of course I did.

**John:** Of course. We all did.

**Craig:** We all did. Uncanny, unearthly, that as me.

**Matt:** Oh, defensive armor.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Matt:** Oh, I got one power. Oh, defensive armor. Yeah.

**Craig:** I have

**Phil:** I guess Matt’s going to be the warthog again.

**Craig:** I like dark force. I remember something like I can move a thing. It was not a great game, but that’s a legitimate universe, and that you see them desperate to try and turn things into universes and you’re like, “You’re out of characters in about ten minutes, buddy. You’re not going to there’s no universe here”

**John:** Matt, I want to go back to what you said about sort of post-modernism, or maybe Phil you said it. Like the ability to hold multiple things in your head at the same time. I think Deadpool was a great example of audiences actually are able to understand that you’re in kind of a meta movie. And they’re able to sort of take in that we are watching a movie and the character the lead character understands that they’re in movie and can talk to you directly. I think that ability to break the fourth wall is something we are underestimating audience’s abilities to hold complex information and complex information about the story they’re seeing.

**Matt:** Right.

**Phil:** And most importantly still care.

**John:** Yes.

**Phil:** Because I think some people would assume and maybe have evidence for it that if you undercut it to that extent, you won’t care and then so if you don’t care about the character. However, I’d you care about that character, it works —

**Matt:** Like Scream did that to some extent for

**Phil:** Absolutely. And I think in another genre, you know, that I think it’s relevant to talk about a movie that did this incredibly is Michael Haneke’s Funny Games which I don’t know if you guys have seen it. But it is

**Craig:** He is dropping Haneke on us.

**Phil:** I’m dropping some Haneke guys. It’s Haneke, I don’t know. I’m undercutting myself by probably a horrible pronunciation. Your Austrian listeners will

**Craig:** No. I think it is. I’ve always laughed at it because it reminds me of Jewish Christmas.

**Phil:** But that movie is a critique of thrillers and horror movies. While and of Hitchcockian suspense and like it’s what it does to you as an audience member while being an incredibly good version of that. It plays just as thrilling as anything you could, while doing that at the same time.

**Craig:** Lord and Miller do this a lot. The, you know, Lego Movie is a, in its one sense, is a critique of the very rigid Joseph Campbell storytelling mode and on the other hand does that.

**Phil:** Yeah, right.

**Craig:** Filmmakers are smart in ways that I think that sometimes, again, I don’t mean to beat up studios, but a lot of times, they just don’t see things we see. For instance, if I said to you guys I’m going to have a character who is a superhero. He’s going to have a love story. There’s going to be a revenge story. He’s got a tragedy. We’re going to care.

He’s also going to talk to the audience and break the fourth wall all the time. You might go, “Well” and I go “But, when he’s talking to the audience, he’s in a mask and you can’t see his face. What do you think now?”

**Phil:** About that?

**Craig:** Yeah. You’re like, “Yeah got it, different. It’s different,” you know. And it is different.

**Phil:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We see these things and I think that’s why I mean, the truth is I don’t know if there’s like a requel thing happening. I just want more words for the people we work with to have so they can go, “Oh you guys are doing a blankity-blank.”

**Phil:** Definitely.

**John:** I think that is really useful because I think otherwise if you don’t have this kind of word, then people keep trying to fit it into one category.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Or another category. It’s like, “Oh but it doesn’t fit in either one of these categories.” It’s like, well, we’re going to make a new category for this thing that we’re doing and

**Craig:** Yeah. Like and you can’t come up with a new category. That freaks them out.

**Matt:** But the requel thing is, it is a good thing to have in your mind because I think that’s where some of the reboots go a little wrong is they just it’s an admirable thing to want to make it your own and do something different. But when you ignore what made it

**Craig:** Right.

**Matt:** Great in the first place, you know

**Phil:** Well that’s the thing I mean, I referenced Star Wars, which again, they did so right, the feeling of Star Wars and transmitted it. I watched as my 9-year-old son had the 9-year-old boy experience of entering the world of Star Wars. And it’s tremendously powerful and it requires a tremendous amount of skill to do that.

And I think that the feeling of that’s the thing that I was like what’s the feeling of that thing. And it’s not about the and maybe it just betrays my proclivities toward this kind of storytelling. I’m just I want to know what the like feeling of that universe is as opposed to what’s the most clever development of the story the plotting of how that world gets expanded.

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** It’s how do you capture that ineffable thing.

**Matt:** You know when I knew we were in good hands with Star Wars was when they go out into the hangar for the first time after they’re on the planet, they go in the hangar and just in like the middle background, that little shoebox robot guy.

**Craig:** Yeah, the little the little mouse droid.

**Matt:** Remember that one? It was from the first one. And only just like on your seventh viewing, you came to appreciate that robot in Star Wars.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Matt:** And he just cruises through moment one or she, I don’t know.

**Craig:** Yeah. No. It was or it. It was absolutely pushing every nostalgia button possible. It’s funny from, you know, I’m the movie I’m looking forward to is the next one. I enjoyed Force Awakens because it gave me the feeling. But I also now, I’m like, “Good. You’ve you kind of lifted me up out of bed with nostalgia, now give me new.”

**Phil:** Yeah, and I’m thrilled to be unmoored not knowing what to expect.

**Craig:** Right.

**Phil:** And that

**Craig:** Because I know yeah, like oh, yeah, I’m in a safe place now. Now, you can give me new.

**Phil:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So I think this next one which our friend Rian Johnson is directing is going to be

**John:** Yeah, he’s an Indie director who made good.

**Phil:** Yes.

**John:** So yeah.

**Craig:** He is an indie director, exactly. Karyn Kusama is the next Rian Johnson.

**John:** I think so.

**Phil:** Both of those kids got moxie.

**John:** Yeah, they got moxie.

**Phil:** They got moxie.

**John:** We have two listener questions which I thought we’d throw to you guys because you could answer them as easily as we could. Joel writes

**Craig:** Let’s see if that’s true.

**Phil:** Well, yeah.

**John:** Does height matter in a Hollywood environment?

**Craig:** That is really is one of the easiest questions.

**Phil:** This is tough because I’m a towering figure. I top out at 7’2″, Gheorghe Muresan height.

**John:** Joel writes, “I am currently 5’4″, around Martin Scorsese height, but I built myself up to be more than my height, but it still concerns me.”

And I should say Joel is the editor of his high school newspaper. So what should we tell Joel, who’s 5’4″, editor of his high school newspaper.

**Craig:** 5’4″ is not, I mean

**Matt:** 5’4″ is

**Craig:** It’s short but it’s not like, “What the oh, my god.”

**Phil:** Yeah. No, that seems

**Matt:** Look at look at what Prince did.

**Craig:** Look at what

**Phil:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Look I mean, who runs, Brad Gray, who runs Paramount. He’s probably 5’5″ or something like that or 5’6″.

**Phil:** I would say that

**Matt:** It does not matter.

**Phil:** It does not matter.

**John:** I don’t think it matters at all.

**Matt:** Even at all.

**Phil:** Not at all.

**Craig:** Not the slightest.

**Phil:** However, it’s great to be extremely handsome like John August. That’s very helpful, guys.

**Matt:** If I can just correct you, the first spec script we sent out, we got inquiries back from the studio about how tall we were.

**Craig:** Right. I know. That’s a rough one. Obviously, we do, you know, face that.

**Matt:** Right.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Phil:** I think there’s a serious question in there though about like how you present yourself and about self-confidence

**Matt:** Yeah, yeah.

**Phil:** And I think, you know, one way to say it would I think what we’re trying to get at is if you are confident and you are in yourself, you’ll seem great.

**John:** Absolutely. And if you lean into you height so that it’s just not is a thing that is worrying you that at all sets you apart, that’s fantastic. But I will say like, once you’re sitting on that couch drinking your bottled water and having that meeting, your height does not matter whatsoever.

**Matt:** Also, once you’ve gotten yourself in the door with your writing

**John:** Yes.

**Matt:** You know, it’s very easy to format your script correctly.

**John:** Yes.

**Matt:** And then you can just do what you want.

**Craig:** How much do you get paid for formatting your script correctly on the market?

**Matt:** It’s about 85% of our salary. [laughs]

**John:** You know what? The writing wasn’t just so good, but the formatting was fantastic.

**Phil:** It’s more tip-based, that part of it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Phil:** We’re very low base, but

**Craig:** I wasn’t going to take this meeting, but we ran it through our computer and I got to tell you, the numbers were shocking, 98% guys. [laughs]

**Matt:** Who would you say are the top formatters in the industry? [laughs]

**Craig:** Scott Frank, of course.

**Phil:** He’s out for everything, yeah. [laughs]

**John:** The dialogue was a little stilted by the margins were fantastic.

**Matt:** Oh, my god. Absolutely.

**Phil:** We got a caliper out. [laughs]

**Craig:** We got a Vernier caliper.

**John:** The other thing I’ll tell Joel as well is the reason that you can be more confident about what your script looks like and how you present yourself is by just reading a bunch of scripts.

**Phil:** Yeah.

**John:** And so the answer for like why you know how to format that quote over black is by reading a bunch of scripts and seeing how other people do it in scripts that sell.

**Phil:** And I I mean, and to yeah, again, to be a little serious, I very much empathize with and respect the idea of wanting to do it right. If you don’t know and you haven’t done it a million times, you don’t want to get disregarded by, you know, a faux pas, you know. But I do think

**Craig:** Unfortunately they’re being told constantly by the screenwriting guru industry.

**Phil:** Yes.

**Craig:** That this because that’s what screenwriting gurus know. So they’re always like, “Don’t do that.”

**Phil:** Yeah. And I think that what we’re saying is and you’ve said many times you guys on the show, which I think is true is that really doesn’t matter. But you know, it has to feel right, it has to it just it has to tell the story in a way that is

**Matt:** No, but it sticks in your head, you know, like early on someone said like, “Don’t put a music queue in there.”

**Craig:** Right.

**Matt:** And then

**Craig:** That voice

**Matt:** Sometimes you need a music, sometimes you need some Halen in there.

**Craig:** Sometimes you do whatever you want.

**Phil:** Sometimes you got to throw a little Halen in there.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Matt:** But if it works if your story needs it, do it.

**Phil:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Always.

**John:** Always. It’s time for One Cool Thing. Craig, tell us a One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** So this week they’ve announced a blood test for concussions. This actually has a chance of legitimately changing the way professional sports work and also college sports and even sports in high school. Obviously, we have all been following the story about the NFL, they, in particular, have a huge concussion problem and then a resulting CTI and

**John:** Well, essentially

**Craig:** Players that are killing themselves because of this chronic brain injury.

**John:** Yeah. So if you a concussion is bad for you, but a series of concussions, again and again and again will

**Craig:** They now say even one concussion, literally one, it increases the chance that you’re going to have this chronic CTE, I should say. It’s a disaster.

Part of the other problem is diagnosing concussions is a little bit of an art up until this point. So they would say things like, “Well, are the pupils are uneven. Are you puking? Do you have a really bad headache for week?” But by that point, they’re just sending back guys back in the game.

So this blood test now can tell them, I think, within hours. Because when you have a proper concussion, there’s a release of a certain kind of protein from the brain itself. Now they can within a couple of hours and then treat you accordingly. And really what that means is you can’t play for a while.

Look, I’m just fascinated by where the NFL is going to go in general because of this stuff. But I am I’m hoping that this test becomes widely available and is used particularly in high school sports.

**Matt:** Well, you’re not reliant on the player and the you know, to say

**Craig:** Yeah, the player is just like, “Oh, yeah. I got my bell rung but I’m okay,” and

**Matt:** There’s the whole thing about fake you know, taking your baseline test and kind of flunking it.

**Craig:** Right. So that-

**Matt:** So that if you have a concussion

**Craig:** Oh, yeah.

**Matt:** You test out clear.

**Craig:** Yeah. And then, you know, that’s for guys that are making their money playing, and then for high school kids who aren’t, sometimes their coaches just don’t care.

**Matt:** Right.

**Craig:** They just want to win.

**John:** Yeah. So I think the gambit here is you have to have your buddy hit you really hard so you get a concussion and you take your baseline test and then and then if you get hit again exactly. [laughs] So like, “You know, Bob, I need you to hit me with this shovel as hard as you can.”

**Phil:** Great advice from the Scriptnotes podcast.

**Craig:** I got to say that guy, CTE is not his biggest problem.

**John:** No, it’s not.

**Craig:** Whether he gets it or not, it’s not going to go well for him.

**John:** Yeah, his life is not going to be a delight. My One Cool Thing is an article by William Power in The Wall Street Journal, it’s called the Difficult, Delicate Untangling of Our Parents’ Financial Lives. So I don’t know if any of you guys have had to face this yet, but part of my spring break was dealing with the challenge of parents who can no longer really be on top of their finances and that the whole process of sort of taking over some control over their finances and really seeing doing the forensic work to discover where money actually is and isn’t and stuff like that. So

**Matt:** I mean, it’s incredibly complicated.

**John:** Yeah.

**Matt:** My father passed away this year and he took care of things for my mom, but he was the one who handled it and it’s

**Craig:** Right.

**Matt:** Even when you take care of things, the transfers and all this stuff is so complicated, it’s so

**Phil:** And happening at a time

**Matt:** And happening at a time when you’re not you don’t want to deal with that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So one I don’t know if they mention it in the article, but we have a trust. So Melissa and I are both trustees of our family trust and then we can name executors and things. So if I get bumped off because I’m never going to die, you know, naturally, but I will be murdered. [laughs] I mean, it’s going to be Murder on the Orient Express. [laughs]

**John:** Someone’s going to take over your Tesla controls.

**Phil:** Which one of these people doesn’t have a motive? [laughs]

**Craig:** That’s sadly my life. But it’s a way to kind of avoid the hassle of the transferring because it never transfers, it’s always in the trust.

**John:** Right.

**Craig:** And the trust can independently assign new

**Matt:** Sure.

**Craig:** Look at us. Normally we talk about female reproductive health, but this is this is a new topic for us.

**John:** Yeah. Death and aging.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So I’ll say that like a trust is a fantastic solution for sort of well-off individuals who are planning now, the process of like going in and dealing with someone’s finances that are already set up could be really complicated. And the things you think would be so straightforward for you to explain to somebody are so hard to explain when you’re losing your ability to

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Be on top of things. So I just I pass this along out of sympathy for everyone who has to go through it.

Do you guys have One Cool Things? Did you come with two of these?

**Phil:** We do. I mean, I have one but it is it’s really in the context of these

**Matt:** Yeah, mine’s on the lighter side.

**Matt:** Incredibly important

**John:** We like light ones.

**Craig:** No, no. We do light ones all the time.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** No, we don’t. Go ahead guys.

**Matt:** I have one

**Craig:** Show your show your shallowness.

**Phil:** Yeah. Exactly.

**Matt:** Watch and learn.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Phil:** I have one which is a record club that I belong to.

**Craig:** Columbia Record House?

**Phil:** I wish it was.

**Matt:** How many do you have to buy?

**Craig:** One penny. [laughs]

**Phil:** Last month I got 500. [laughs]

**Matt:** 500 of his greatest hits.

**John:** A lot of Phil Collins.

**Phil:** Yeah, copies of Asia by Steely Dan.

**Craig:** They pay me $80 and I take all of their CDs off their hands.

**Phil:** I think I’ve assume their global debt. So I don’t think the Santana records are going to help this one. [laughs] But it is it’s called Vinyl Me Please and it is a really cool record club. You get a record every month and they select it. They’re really smart, interesting people with eclectic taste. And they’re not all going to be ones you love, but they send it to you and it’s everything from they’ll press a record from an unsigned band and put it out. They’ll reissue they do a special reissue of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid on purple vinyl and you’ll have that. It’s just a very fun way to get a little once a month

**Craig:** Vinyl

**Phil:** Random record.

**Craig:** Me Please. And what because my son is into music production now and he has a turntable because he loves vinyl and he loves kind of bringing that stuff in. What would it cost an individual for Vinyl Me Please?

**Phil:** I think it’s something like I can’t say for sure, but it’s a 20ó

**John:** $10,000 a year.

**Phil:** Yeah, it’s like $10,000 a year. No, it’s like 25 bucks a month or something like that.

**Craig:** $25 a month.

**Matt:** You get a record.

**Craig:** I got to talk to the people that run my trust. [laughs] That’s a lot.

**John:** For a kid, yeah.

**Phil:** But you know, when you think of what it costs you to buy so also you get like a little piece of art that somebody’s made to go with the record and it just feels it feels special.

**Craig:** I’m down. I’m joining.

**Phil:** And it is literally One Cool Thing.

**Craig:** Well, there’s no way that what Matt says can top that.

**Phil:** Nope. I can’t imagine

**Matt:** But I’m always fascinated like what the internet can provide you. And I was thinking my first concert was Devo. I went and saw Devo

**Craig:** Nice.

**Matt:** From the, Oh, No! It’s Devo tour.

**Craig:** Nice.

**Matt:** And I was like, god, that was a great shirt. I wonder if I could find a reproduction of that shirt. I Google it, there’s a dude with a site, he’s selling a reproduction of that shirt and two Buzzcocks shirts.

**Craig:** Wow.

**Matt:** That’s his entire business.

**Craig:** That’s it. That’s his business.

**Matt:** That’s it. It’s gone now.

**Craig:** Okay.

**Matt:** So today

**Craig:** Weird.

**Phil:** Because he didn’t pay a dime to the surviving members of Devo.

**Matt:** But it’s inspiring that someone’s out there doing that for you.

**Craig:** Right.

**Matt:** While I’m talking to you. Today, someone, our friend, Ted, reminded us that Bad News Bears is going to be 40.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Matt:** One of my favorite movies. And so I needed no further excuse than to like, “God, you know, someone should make a hat. Someone should reproduce the hat from Bad News Bears.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Matt:** Someone has.

**Craig:** Of course they have.

**Matt:** Ideal Cap Company.

**Craig:** Nice.

**Matt:** And they do fictional baseball caps.

**Craig:** That’s brilliant.

**Phil:** From, you know, the New York Knights, the team from

**Craig:** Wow.

**Phil:** A League of Their Own and, you know, they do the the requisites.

**Craig:** The Atlanta Peaches or something like that or

**Phil:** I’m feverishly ordering hats the second we are done with this.

**Matt:** The requisite, you know, minor league ball caps

**Craig:** Sure.

**Matt:** Old timey stuff.

**Craig:** Of course. Oh, that’s brilliant. I love that. So they just do and they do so mostly fictional I mean, that’s

**Matt:** Pretty cool. It’s pretty cool.

**Craig:** Somebody got me once, they got two t-shirts. One was these Paper Street Soap Company.

**Matt:** Oh, yeah.

**Craig:** From Fight Club and the other was like a tourist gift shop shirt

**Matt:** Yeah.

**Craig:** From the Overlook Hotel.

**Matt:** Last exit to nowhere.

**Craig:** Yeah. Those guys are awesome.

**Matt:** Looks like they have the shirt from the diner that Dirty Harry goes into .

**Phil:** Or like the shirt Harry Dean Stanton’s character Brett from Alien is wearing underneath his Hawaiian shirt.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Matt:** I’m such a geek for those things.

**Craig:** Yeah. That is One Cool Thing.

**Matt:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Who know that, those were Four Cool Things.

**John:** Well done.

**Phil:** Those are four cool things. We really we painted a

**Craig:** Well, that was our first hour guys. We have four more to go.

**Phil:** That’s great.

**John:** Yeah, Craig, I think we may have been wrong. We were predicting this to be a dismal episode with terrible guests, and I

**Craig:** No, I think we were right.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It was terrible. [laughs]

**Matt:** I understand.

**Phil:** You caught us at our absolute height guys. So

**Craig:** Exactly. The best of them is still terrible.

**John:** And that’s our show for this week. As always, our show is produced by Stuart Friedel, it is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Adam Last Name, we still don’t know his last name but he writes these great outtros and so we’ll include another one on this one.

**Craig:** It’s Lastname, but fine.

**John:** You think it’s actually Lastname?

**Phil:** Lastname.

**John:** Yeah. Very nice. If you have a question for Craig Mazin, you should write to him @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust on Twitter. Do you have guys have Twitter handles? Do you write on Twitter?

**Phil:** I got one that’s used occasionally, it’s @phillycarly.

**John:** All right.

**Matt:** I’m @MattRManfredi.

**John:** Nice.

**Phil:** It’s just like. It could be a

**John:** A little flare.

**Craig:** A lawyer.

**Matt:** Middle manager.

**Phil:** Yeah, middle manager.

**John:** There’s no chance you’ll be figure out their Twitter handles. But fortunately, in our show notes, you’d be able to find links to most of the things we talked about including their Twitter handles.

Their film is out on April 8th, it’s called The Invitation. You should see it on a big screen. But if you don’t have it in a big screen in your city, you should see it on iTunes.

**Craig:** iTunes.

**John:** And pay-per-view right on Direct TV.

**Matt:** Yes.

**Phil:** Yes. Exactly. And if you are in Los Angeles, you should come out to the ArcLight on April 8th, 9th, or 10th and we will have a bunch of special Q&As where Matt, Karyn, and I will be and Logan Marshall Green.

**Craig:** Oh, great.

**Phil:** And one of our wonderful Q&A people will be John August.

**John:** I will be hosting the Q&A.

**Craig:** Oh, you’ll be hosting the Q&A.

**John:** On the April 8th screening, I believe.

**Phil:** The 10th.

**John:** April 10th screening, I’ll be hosting it.

**Phil:** Thank god, we worked that out.

**John:** Yeah, very nice.

**Matt:** Maybe he’s not available now.

**John:** Yeah. Thank you guys so much for being here.

**Phil:** Thank you guys. It was fun.

**Craig:** Thanks boys.

**John:** And good luck with your film.

**Matt:** Thanks.

**Phil:** Thank you.

Links:

* Subscribe to the premium feed at [scriptnotes.net](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* Phil Hay on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006534/), [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Hay_(screenwriter)) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/phillycarly)
* Matt Manfredi on [IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0542062/), [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Manfredi) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/MattRManfredi)
* [The Invitation](http://drafthousefilms.com/film/the-invitation), on [Rotten Tomatoes](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_invitation/) and the [Arclight Q+As](https://www.arclightcinemas.com/en/news/the-invitation-qa)
* Pamela McClintock [on “requels”](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/batman-v-superman-star-wars-879197)
* [The blood test that could change the way we diagnose concussions](http://www.morningticker.com/2016/03/breakthrough-miracle-blood-test-could-revolutionize-sports-injuries/)
* William Powers on [The Difficult, Delicate Untangling of Our Parents’ Financial Lives](http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-difficult-delicate-untangling-of-our-parents-financial-lives-1459130770)
* [Vinyl Me, Please](http://vinylmeplease.com/)
* [Ideal Cap Company](http://www.idealcapco.com/)
* [Last Exit To Nowhere](https://www.lastexittonowhere.com/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Adam Lastname ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))