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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/the-princess-bride).

**Craig Mazin:** We didn’t make this movie. You know that right?

**John August:** We’ll start this officially. Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

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

**John:** And we are here for a special discussion after watching The Princess Bride. So, on our show Scriptnotes every once and a while we’ll take a movie and sort of go through and do a deep dive on it and this was a unique opportunity to show the movie and do a deep dive on The Princess Bride.

All right, so this screening is part of a special month-long retrospective of the work of William Goldman, an acclaimed screenwriter. This is our last night doing this. But when we got the email about trying to do this we jumped on this movie because this was a movie that – we’ll talk about our priors here – you love this movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s very meaningful to me. And I love it and I watched it a thousand times.

**John:** I’ve watched it four times.

**Craig:** That’s 996 fewer.

**John:** Yeah. It’s fewer. So I saw this movie for the first time in late high school/early college and I don’t love it as much as you do. So, I do really admire the movie. I don’t love it as much as you do. But I would say weirdly it’s had a much bigger – there’s many more parallels in the work I’ve done to The Princess Bride than the work you’ve done.

**Craig:** Yeah. Probably because I just didn’t think I could ever do anything quite that good. No, I mean, the work that you do isn’t necessarily always going to match up. But there are things about this that I have taken in my own stuff, specifically this movie – it wasn’t anything that I specifically thought about when I watched it. It was just something that seemed evident. It was the first movie I remember seeing that would make me laugh and then – and not take itself or movies or storytelling particularly seriously. And then the next scene ask that I do take the character seriously. And then in fact I feel – should feel quite deeply about them and I did.

So, this sense of a broad tone kind of going back and forth with a rather moving, emotional tone, mushy comedy. That is something that I took to heart. And I think this movie does it about as well as anybody.

**John:** So as I look at this movie there’s so many echoes I see in Big Fish. There’s a giant. There’s a swamp. There’s a lot of things that are similar to it. And this sort of storybook quality where you have a narrator who is talking through stuff and we’re moving back and forth in time.

But also Aladdin, which you guys haven’t seen it. But Corpse Bride. That sense of this romance has to happen. That you’re only there if this romance can be fulfilled.

**Craig:** Yes. And obviously it reminds me a lot of Chernobyl.

**John:** Yeah. So, let’s talk about the history of this movie. This movie came from a book first written by William Goldman in 1973. So at that point he had already done Masquerade, Papillion, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a screenwriter. So 20th Century Fox bought the rights to the book and had Goldman do a script. That version never got made and then never happened. And so apparently Goldman bought the rights back from 20th Century Fox and his script. But then ultimately it was a Fox movie, so it went back there. But it went through a lot of directors. And we’ve both had projects that have gone through multiple directors.

At some point there was Francois Truffaut Redford, and Norman Jewison had all talked about directing this movie.

**Craig:** That would have been an interesting – the Redford version would have been interesting. I mean, I’m obviously very happy with the way it came out. There is a certain Borscht Belty thing going on throughout that Rob Reiner brought to it. And I always appreciate that. But what strikes me about the genesis of this is that William Goldman was just telling stories to his daughters, his young daughters, and these were kind of the stories he was telling them. He invented a princess named Buttercup. And this young farm lad that she was mean to, a farm boy named Westley. And he invented the ROUSes and the idea of a six-fingered man. A giant and a swordsman. These very broad Jungian archetypes. Very much a fairy tale thing.

And what I love about the way he talks about the creation of this is that when he decided to make it into a book he was really struggling, I imagine because he’s William Goldman and he’s sitting there thinking I know how a book should go. There’s all this stuff I have to do to make sense of this. And he said the thing that broke it open for him was coming up with the idea that he’s not writing it at all. That somebody named S. Morgenstern has written it. And that S. Morgenstern’s book is out of print and no one can find it. And so what’s he’s done is essentially put together an abridged version.

This story is only the best parts. And I love that because I think that ties in ultimately to what I love most about this movie which is that it is a movie about storytelling itself as an act of love.

**John:** And so part of the conceit is that he heard this story as a kid and that when he went back and found the actual book he realized it was like a big political tract and it was completely different than how he remembered. So he was using his childhood memory of the way he wished the story actually really went.

**Craig:** Which I actually had that real experience. When my kids were young I was like you know what I’m going to read you a book tonight. And they were like yay. And it’s one of my favorite books from childhood. You’re going to love this. It’s called A Wrinkle in Time. And then I started reading Wrinkle in Time and I’m like–

**John:** Yeah. So I worked on–

**Craig:** This is just a teen romance. When does the – like all the cool stuff is in the last 12 pages. I forgot.

**John:** Yeah. And you realize that many of the things that the missuses do so much of the work for the protagonist and it’s a frustrating adaptation. It was a hard movie to adapt. I tried it. It did not work.

So let’s talk about the frame story because this is actually part of the conceit. William Goldman had been telling the story to his daughters and the conceit in the book is that his father had told it to him. In this movie version, and I don’t know if it was always this way in the scripts but we have the Peter Falk, the grandfather character, telling the story to his grandson who is sick. It’s a pretty simple setup but we come back to it a lot.

And so the frame story gets us a lot. Let’s talk about why you do it and what’s helpful about it.

**Craig:** Well they’re letting you know right off the bat that the story that you’re seeing is a story. Usually when we tell a story on screen we want people to forget that it’s a story pretty quickly. Here they never let you forget. And in doing so they immediately excuse a lot of things that I think had they not done you would have said this is very true love. It’s so over the top. It’s over the top for a reason. Everything if you think about it, every emotion is pushed beyond to the edge. So, the true love is the truest of love. And the villains are the most hateful villains. The kiss at the end, there is the top five kisses of all time, and this one puts it to shame. So everything is taken to its extreme because it’s meant to be a fairy tale. And the actual story is the story of a grandfather and his son. Even though there’s these little tiny bits with Peter Falk and Fred Savage, to me that’s the movie.

**John:** Yeah. So obviously the frame story lets you jump forward. It lets you contextualize things. It lets you sort of fill in details that you wouldn’t have otherwise known and sort of skip past the boring parts. But let’s talk about this frame story just really quickly in terms of the progression of the relationship between Peter Falk and the Fred Savage character because it’s very simple but it’s really well sketched. And every time we come back to those things there needs to be progress. If we just came back and it was exactly the same situation it wouldn’t feel like you were moving forward. It would just feel like you were just repeating an old scene.

**Craig:** Peter Falk. Right? The perfect casting because he’s literally Colombo-ing his own grandson. You know? “OK, you know what, you don’t want to hear this. Never mind. Now you’re taking this very personally.” “No I’m not. No I’m not.” Right? So Fred Savage does a fantastic job playing like a regular – I think he’s a very regular kid there. They didn’t push it at all. Kids do get annoyed with that. They don’t want to hear about, at least in this case, you know, 1987 lovely gender stereotype of a boy that doesn’t want to hear about kissing. But I remember my son didn’t want to hear kissing stories. So that all felt very true.

But Peter Falk is playing a long con with this kid, repeatedly. “I told you.” “Yes, very good, shut up.” Wonderful. “You’re very smart.”

**John:** So let’s go into the actual story as it is being told. And so we really rush through the setup very quickly.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And it’s surprising even just watching it tonight to recognize how little backstory we know about our central characters. Buttercup, I guess she has a family. We never see them.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** She lives alone in a cabin I guess.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** She makes fun of this farmer boy.

**Craig:** It’s just the best parts. Right? So actually no one in this entire movie has a real character. No one. It’s just nice farm boy, nice slightly noble girl, a very smart Italian, a very big Greenlander, a very skilled Spaniard. And then the prince is just a dick, right? That’s his character.

**John:** But a very, very proficient dick. You also watch, it’s like, oh, he’s somehow really good at all these tracking things.

**Craig:** He’s an amazing tracker.

**John:** And so you think there’s going to be some payoff like–

**Craig:** There was a great duel.

**John:** Yes. And somehow he can smell the iocaine powder that is unsmellable.

**Craig:** Of course. Isn’t that the best? I love that.

**John:** Yeah. [Unintelligible] but sure.

**Craig:** It’s so great.

**John:** But obviously the performances are fantastic and without great performances you’d feel the artist, these little paper dolls moving throughout the story, and yet we so quickly setup who Buttercup is, the nature of sort of what the stakes of the movie are, which is basically this is the couple and we want this couple to be back together.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** That’s the whole storyline that you’re really going to get through. So no matter what happens it’s the two of them. But what’s also surprising and sort of frustrating if you’ve read a bunch of screenwriting books is your protagonist, your heroes, are not on screen a ton and they often don’t – they’re don’t have a lot of agency in their story.

**Craig:** Correct. Because they’re in a story. So you can see why Goldman felt so liberated by the technique of imagining that he’s only telling you parts of a story. Because he can literally just not do the stuff that is really annoying for us to do, to make people believe that what they’re watching is real. He doesn’t have to worry about that.

And so in a weird way the protagonist, I always think of the protagonist of this movie in the true sense of someone that has to make a choice is Fred Savage. Because those are the only two real people in the movie. And the mom.

**John:** Oh, the mom is a really crucial character there. Yeah, without that…

Also, you notice, you watch the movie, it starts with this long shot of a baseball game being played on a video screen.

**Craig:** Which thrills me.

**John:** Yeah, of course, yes. I mean, it does anchor it in a place in time, but it didn’t even need to be because it was contemporary. It’s just a really strange thing. It’s like you’re watching Stranger Things and they’re trying to say, oh no no we’re this–

**Craig:** Well they didn’t know. They thought that was the way it was always going to be.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** I thought baseball games would always look like that. But I guess they were probably trying to say look kids don’t read.

**John:** It’s true. They don’t.

**Craig:** Which continues to apply.

**John:** It does apply. So, back to Buttercup and back to her story. So, let’s track the movie from what we know of Buttercup. So somehow she goes from the farmhouse. She believes that Westley has died. And then suddenly she’s getting married to the king. We don’t know why.

**Craig:** It’s been years.

**John:** It’s been years. She’s a princess now for some reason because–

**Craig:** He had the right to choose his own bride, so one imagines that he rode through the countryside and said, “You. I want you.”

**John:** Picked the prettiest.

**Craig:** And that was it. And then, boo.

**John:** Boo.

**Craig:** God, that lady scared the hell out of me.

**John:** Absolutely. Her eyebrows alone.

**Craig:** Well, it’s the last shot. The last shot just is terrifying.

**John:** From her perspective, so the story from her perspective is I’m going to marry Humperdinck because – there’s just no alternatives.

**Craig:** She’s going to commit suicide. I mean, one of my favorite lines is, “Please consider me as an alternative to suicide.” It’s so great. So she’s never going to marry him. She doesn’t want to. Her heart was broken because she had true love, which is the ultimate magic here. So, no, she’s never going to marry him.

**John:** So let’s imagine the version of the story where we don’t have the framing device and we actually have to fill in these details.

**Craig:** Oh my god. Oh my god.

**John:** So then you have to create some stakes and reason for why she doesn’t do this then there’s some other thing that she’s going to lose–

**Craig:** How about this? Start with the fact that you have to see Westley the farm boy show up and be hired. She notices him. Or they’re both children and they grow up together. It’s like, blah, I already want to die.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** I mean, because everything that’s joyous about this–

**John:** Is that you don’t know.

**Craig:** It’s the best parts-ism of it. It’s that you don’t know and it doesn’t matter. She has no other wants. He has no other wants. No one – Inigo Montoya, his entire life is one want. His I Want song is one line long.

**John:** Yeah. That’s true.

**Craig:** Brilliant. And Fezzik has no wants.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** He just is happy.

**John:** He’s happy to be there.

**Craig:** He’s done. His character is complete.

**John:** Let us talk about the biggest character in the story who doesn’t actually appear on screen which is Dread Pirate Roberts. Which is actually a really fascinating running thing through it. It pays off nicely at the end. You know Montoya will be there. But it is a really interesting amount of screen time spent on Dread Pirate Roberts as a conceit, as a way through this. You feel like Dread Pirate Roberts is going to show up at some point as much time as we spend talking about it.

**Craig:** Somewhere among my many hundreds of viewings I lost that desire to see Dread, because in part once I understood that he was the Dread Pirate Roberts and he explains that the guy that took him wasn’t the Dread Pirate Roberts, it just becomes this very brilliant explanation. Again, you see Goldman just sort of waving his magic pen and saying you don’t have to worry about that. And you don’t have to worry about that. And you don’t have to worry about that. It’s just the way it is. It’s really simple.

And the Dread Pirate Roberts thing I have heard many times in my life used as an analogy for all sorts of things. It’s incredibly useful. The idea of something that isn’t a thing but creates its own mythology to be the thing. It’s quite lovely actually.

**John:** Absolutely. Well let’s talk about as screenwriters the ways that this is brought up, because I would say that one of the reasons I wanted to do this as our movie to talk about is it’s one of the most frequently mentioned movies that’s going to come up in a discussion, in an early pitch session, talking about how we are going to do something. And so the idea of a framing device, are we going to Princess Bride it? You’ll hear that as sort of like, OK, we’re going to wrap stuff around this to sort of show – to contextualize this as a story in it.

The Dread Pirate Roberts as an idea of like this thing that’s happening, this conceit about this is not really the person, or the person has actually died a long time ago, that gets brought up in meetings.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And then there’s this very classic structure that’s taken directly from Grimm and earlier, but it comes up a lot which is the notion of trials and tests. And it goes back to Greek mythology. But the idea of using this time in your first act, or whatever act, I hate acts anyway, but of encountering tests. And going through – one of my favorite things that happens in this entire movie is just the little exchange that Inigo Montoya has with the Man in Black when he’s hanging there on the edge of the Cliffs of Insanity. You know, “I’m waiting for you. I’m bored. Come on, I won’t kill you. I’m promise.” And he’s just bored. “I swear on the soul of my father that you will meet no harm. And throw me the rope right away.” And that’s such a great way to solve a little plot problem and a little story problem by also revealing something interesting about both characters at the same time.

This guy is not only a good guy and a good sport, but there’s something that matters a lot to him. And that guy is a sort of guy that knows when somebody is telling the truth about something that matters to them and can then invest trust in them. That’s brilliant. And that little bit of good sportsmanship and Fezzik’s bit of good sportsmanship at giving him a warning shot saves those two guys from the mindset we should have of them which is that they are hired murderers.

**John:** It’s true.

**Craig:** But that’s all. They’re good sports. We love them.

**John:** All right. But that idea that you have a person who is your opponent who ultimately becomes your friend, an ally, down the road after you go through a battle sequence we do see a lot. And I’m thinking Black Panther has that same sort of moment. The waterfall cliff moment. That’s an important moment that we need to see that both men are proficient, that they can do this thing, and then coming through this we’re going to get to a spot where they can be allies down the road. Because they have each other’s respect.

**Craig:** Correct. And it’s so wonderfully circular. You find out who these people are by the actions they take with the Man in Black. You find out how good he is. It’s so surprising that he’s better than both of them. Obviously Vizzini never has a moment of surprise because he gets the most surprises when he dies. Amazing. But through that we learn that this guy is great at everything, which again you cannot do. I mean, so Gary Sue, right, I mean, this is the classic character that’s just good at everything. And never loses. Even when he is murdered by a death machine he still doesn’t lose.

And what’s fascinating is that Goldman points to it through Fred Savage. Because when it seems like he’s lost Fred Savage gets upset, which I love. “You’re telling the story wrong.” Because he doesn’t get that he’s being misdirected. But the truth is that kid understands, even though he’s never heard this story, he understands how stories are supposed to go. And I love that.

**John:** So this movie hangs on a lantern on that sense of as a screenwriter you need to be aware of where your audience is at and what their expectations are. And so moments of Buttercup marrying Humperdinck. The dream of marrying Humperdinck, of Westley dying. Those are moments that as a screenwriter you have to be in the seat with the audience watching it and go like, oh no, no, that couldn’t possibly happen. Something is wrong or broken about this movie. And so in this movie we get to call that out. We actually have a character who can say like, uh-uh, that couldn’t possibly happen.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You would have to do these sequences very differently if you didn’t have that character.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you don’t have to be quite so misdirect-y about it. Because it’s a child that’s being misdirected. It’s a children’s story. Of course she doesn’t get married there. Of course something is going to happen. We don’t know what. Did she really get married? I mean, I remember because I wasn’t familiar with the specific rights of marriage as a 16-year-old, when he says, “Man and wife, say man and wife.” “Man and wife.” And she goes, “He didn’t come.” I’m like, how are they going to get out of this? Well apparently did you say I do, that works in Gilder I guess. Or Florin or wherever they are. I never remember which one. Thousands of screenings and I still can’t remember.

**John:** They’re in Florin.

**Craig:** They’re in Florin. Thank you. But I got fooled by that. And I find it – I mean, I also got – even when Christopher Guest throws the knife he looked like –

My dad used to tell me a story. When he was a kid he would go to the movies and before the movie would start there would be a Flash Gordon. And the Flash Gordon would always end in a cliffhanger. So he said, you know, you’d go there and then Flash Gordon would get captured by guys and they would lift him up and they would throw him into this big lava pool, right? And he would be in midair and they would freeze it. How will Flash – and he’s like I’ve got to get back next because how, that’s not possible.

And when you would get back next week they just started it again but a little earlier he beats the guys up and never gets thrown.

**John:** Oh that’s horrible.

**Craig:** it’s like a massive cheat. You could get away with that in the ‘50s apparently.

**John:** Because they couldn’t go back and find the old take.

**Craig:** Exactly. They couldn’t go back and find the old tape. But that kind of cheaty misdirect is kind of fascinating. And here he gets to do this cheaty misdirect all the time which I just thought was great.

**John:** Yeah. But let’s talk about the places where he’s not cheating and where he’s doing kind of very classic things you need to do in scripts. And so as I watching it tonight I was looking at the moments where characters talk about the plan. And characters do talk about their plans quite a lot. So, from the start like after she’s kidnapped it’s like I’m going to leave this thing here and this is going to be this and then we’re going to take her to the Cliffs of Insanity and that’s where we’re going to kill her. So you get a sense of what is supposed to be happening up ahead so that if you didn’t have that sense of what was going to happen up ahead it would just seem like a bunch of random events.

**Craig:** Yes. And because they’re not really people but just archetypes, they can just announce their plans. It’s a little clumsy when Chris Sarandon says to the guy that also knows the plan, without even giving him an “as you know.” “I will do this and then this and then this and then this and then this.” But Vizzini laying out the plan it’s almost like you people are stupid, let me just say it again.

And when they come up with the plan of how to break in that’s the one where they don’t tell you how it’s going to work because there’s this big surprise that shouldn’t work by the way. It’s kind of crazy how not real that looks.

One step back for a second. I think about this all the time. If they made this movie today and everybody was – we just moved those people through time so they were still alive and that age, what would they do about the Andre the Giant voice problem? Because he is borderline intelligible. And there are times when he says things that just aren’t correct at all.

**John:** I have no idea what that was, yeah.

**Craig:** How many times does Mandy Patinkin say, “My name is Inigo Montoya?” A lot. He calls him Inigo. Inigo. Right? Which must have been the best he could do. It appears that all of it has been looped and that was the best they could do. [laughs] I wonder what they would do now.

**John:** Well, let’s talk about what they would do now because I think it would be actually very hard to make this movie now. Because I can just imagine, you know, even with William Goldman’s fantastic screenplay there would not be confidence that an audience would be willing to just go along with this ride. And there would be a desire to have just more stuff painted in. And there’s some things which are in 2019 we would make some different choices. And so I think, you know, this movie doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. There’s no other female characters. You’d want to have just some other sense of who Buttercup is and have her do something, have her take some agency.

There’s a moment in the fire swamp where she just falls a lot. And it’s not her greatest moment. She picks up a stick–

**Craig:** Pokes at it, kind of.

**John:** But not especially convincingly.

**Craig:** Yeah. She seems anemic to me. Deeply anemic. And also let’s not forget the moment where Westley threatens to slap her across the face.

**John:** That’s not a good moment.

**Craig:** Doesn’t hold up. Problematic as the kids say. Also that is a moment that I never really bought. In other words Westley comes back to save her but he’s really angry at her because she wants to marry a guy, because she wasn’t loyal. But why would she be loyal? I mean, that makes no sense. His anger there makes no sense so it’s a bit of a false–

**John:** Yeah. It’s one of those situations where in a book where we can believe that she doesn’t really see who he is, but because we can see from the very first moment it’s like oh it’s him, he’s back.

**Craig:** Well, yeah. I mean, it’s a Clark Kent thing going on for sure. The mask does not hide.

**John:** Didn’t hide it so good.

**Craig:** The palpable gorgeousness of a young Cary Elwes. By the way, how beautiful are those two people?

**John:** I just want to slow motion walk–

**Craig:** I mean, the two of them, when they’re just looking at each other like on the farm. I’m like, oh my–

**John:** It’s crazy.

**Craig:** Are they the same species as I am? I mean, it seems like they’re from heaven, right?

**John:** They are. They are angels.

**Craig:** Just glowing angels. And they’re still both good-looking. I think people like that stay good-looking literally until they’re dead.

**John:** It’s out of spite.

**Craig:** But, yes, that thing does not work. And I think you’re right that in general this movie has a hard time getting made today because all movies have a hard time getting made today. And it wears its innocence on its sleeve. It wears its fairytale-ness on its sleeve. There’s no reason to cast a big movie star in it because the characters are unchallenging. It’s actually more like some of the spoof stuff I had to do. Had to do, like I was forced.

**John:** Indeed.

**Craig:** I was actually for some of them. But regardless, where the characters have no – what they say is exactly what they’re thinking. There’s no subtext ever to anything. Like there’s no guile ever. Even like when she says, “All your ships but your four fastest.” And he’s like, “Huh?” Like he forgot his own plan. And then she’s like, “But your four fastest.” And then he realizes his mistake and he still is like, oh. All you have to do is like, “Yeah, that’s what I meant. Of course.” But no one has any guile.

**John:** I do agree. You get the sense that there was nothing happening offstage. She walks in and she’s–

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** She’s been in like a box and then she walks out.

**Craig:** It’s very Westworld that way. Yeah.

**John:** It is. Oh, the Westworld version of this would be fantastic.

**Craig:** Cease all motor functions.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** For sure. But that’s kind of the joy of it. You know, I mean, I love that part. The moment for me other than the moment between the two human beings, Peter Falk and Fred Savage, there is one moment that is very human and very real and that is when Inigo Montoya gets his revenge. And that’s where the movie actually said, you know what, this is a real person. He has experienced – and Mandy Patinkin also just acts beautifully there. So does Christopher Guest who played an amazing villain. “Stop saying that.” Oh, it’s just wonderful.

And that’s a moment that a guy like William Goldman figured out how to do something like a simple revenge plot except he boiled it into this little rock of crack that has just gotten into our bloodstream. It is something everyone knows. Everyone knows this. The moment is–

**John:** Repetition is also a huge help of that. He says the line so many times that it just becomes a thing. And also he’s a character who clearly articulates his goal from the very, very start.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** So we know exactly what he’s after and we know that he’s probably going to get it at the end or he’s going to die trying to get that thing. He’s the only character other than Buttercup and Westley that we really have a sense of what they’re after. Even our villain, I don’t really kind of know what he wants. He wants a pretense for this war.

**Craig:** He wants a war. He wants a war.

**John:** But we don’t know why.

**Craig:** Why? Doesn’t matter.

**John:** Doesn’t matter.

**Craig:** I mean, and also if you want a war there are so many better ways.

**John:** Maybe start a war.

**Craig:** Start a war.

**John:** Yeah. That’s a thing you could do.

**Craig:** Fire upon them. Seems pretty easy to me. God, I love his – the dad, the king, so great.

**John:** One little kiss.

**Craig:** “Isn’t that kiss.”

**John:** “Isn’t that nice.”

**Craig:** “She kissed me.” Oh, god, I love that.

**John:** Let’s sort of wrap up this part by talking about sort of world-building and then sort of the future of The Princess Bride. So the world-building of this I thought was really interesting. So it would take place in fairytale land yet it’s also the real world. It’s weird for me when they reference Australia.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I mean, it feels like a bit of a reach. And when they talk about Greenland, great, that’s sort of in that little space.

**Craig:** “Unemployed in Greenland.” I mean, greatest.

**John:** It’s a great line. Australia feels like a weird reach.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s an interesting universe. And also we don’t know sort of how much magic there is in the world. There’s a tiny bit?

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s a tiny bit. So it’s this medieval version of our world. No one seems to be aware of anywhere in the world except for Vizzini who is aware of everything, including Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. “Morons.” And he knows Asia and why you should never get involved in a land war there. And he’s from Sicily. Right? So apparently this is in our world, it was just this little weird – it’s like Luxembourg, you know, it’s like this little area.

Magic wise it seems like there’s just minor, I mean, Miracle Max seems like just an early–

**John:** Like an alchemist.

**Craig:** Early pharmacist.

**John:** All right. So let’s talk about the future of this movie. So we talk about sort of its history. There was discussion of Buttercup’s baby.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. Right. That was William Goldman’s.

**John:** William Goldman. So William Goldman was writing a sequel book and never finished it.

**Craig:** Couldn’t do it. Couldn’t do it.

**John:** So he said, “I desperately want to write it and I sit there and nothing happens and I get pissed at myself. I got lucky with The Princess Bride the first time and I’d love to get lucky again.” So that was 2007, so there wasn’t one. There was a Broadway musical that was in development. A lot of it was written. It never happened. Apparently–

**Craig:** Royalty dispute or something like that.

**John:** Yeah, disputes behind that. So Disney Theatrical is apparently trying to do it again so there’s a new version.

**Craig:** Yes. And I think that that’s a fair way to approach this. Approach it as a musical because it does seem very adaptable as a musical to me. And that would not step on what exists here. There is beautiful music in this movie written by Mark Knopfler. One of my wishes for this, I wish that they would release a version where they took Knopfler’s score and recorded it with a proper orchestra instead of a synth which was I guess exciting at the time, but it just–

**John:** It feels a little thin.

**Craig:** Well, it diminishes the score and also it’s wrong. That place doesn’t have synth. You know, it’s just so weird. That makes me sad.

**John:** Oh, I’m sorry. We don’t want Craig to be sad. But I agree with you, I think the idea of doing a musical of it makes sense because it feels like these characters want to sing. So, they’re expressing such kind of simple true ideas that those feel like songs and that’s the way to get into these character’s heads. I’d be curious whether they keep the framing device of the grandfather and son. I don’t think you necessarily need it in the stage version. But you can keep it.

**Craig:** I bet they do.

**John:** I bet they do [crosstalk] simplicity.

**Craig:** And also the last line, why in god’s name Rob Reiner didn’t just fade out on Peter Falk after he says, “As you wish.” Why does he then go back and have him walk out of the room and close the door and just leave Fred Savage there alone? It’s the weirdest choice. Anyway.

**John:** We can find Rob and ask him.

**Craig:** Let’s. But that last line is the whole raison d’être of this thing. Which is you kid, just learned that love is a service that we do for others. That’s what this whole story was about. And me being here with you was my service to you. I love you. And you need that last line because that to me explains why we went through the exercise.

William Goldman effectively convinced I think everybody that reading a story, telling a story to somebody is in its own way an act of service and an act of love which is why he did it for his own kids. It is brilliant in its simplicity and I’m going to have to watch it for the 1,001th time clearly.

**John:** All right. Let us open it up to some questions. We have two stands in the aisle. If people have questions or things or comments they want to share. I guess we’ll allow comments. This is sort of a special, if someone has an observation–

**Craig:** I mean, we did not make this movie.

**John:** If people have other observations they want to share as well that’s cool, too, but we’ll sort of get your thought on this. We’ll start with you, sir.

**Male Audience Member:** Hey there. Just from the last few things you guys were saying about the synth tracks and the closing the door at the end, it occurs to me we’re not really seeing the story that’s on the paper. We’re seeing what Fred Savage is seeing. And we just saw him – we opened on him playing the video game with the synth track. And it kind of matches with what he might be imagining. And I kind of feel like that closes at the end of the movie, too, with the door closing. It’s him going to sleep. We’re not really following the book. We’re following Fred Savage in his head.

**Craig:** Right. That makes sense. I mean, I always identify with the old Jew, so that’s probably where my.

**John:** Yeah, but you’re actually raising a good point which is basically who’s POV is that whole sequence from. Is it from the grandfather’s POV or the–?

**Craig:** I always thought it was from the grandfather’s point of view personally.

**John:** You could make a good argument either way. But I think those choice of shots really matters here. I mean, an argument against it being from the grandfather’s point of view is that he walks into the scene.

**Craig:** Yes, but there are moments where Fred Savage is shocked and even says, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you said no kissing,” which makes me think that he isn’t watching the movie.

**Male Audience Member:** Well if I was going to turn it into a question the question would be you say you identify with the old Jew now, but the first time you saw it?

**Craig:** Oh, old Jew.

**John:** Craig has always been an old Jew.

**Craig:** I was born 80.

**Male Audience Member:** Hi, so weird seeing your guys’ faces move while I’m hearing your voice.

**Craig:** It’s weird for us, also.

**Male Audience Member:** I was into everything you were saying about not being able to make this movie today and the one kind of thing I wanted to bounce off of that is like in some ways I feel like I see this movie everywhere today, like everything that Phil Lord and Chris Miller do for example.

**Craig:** Yes.

**Male Audience Member:** So curious on your thoughts on like – because it seems to me know that meta-ness in movies is more endemic than it maybe was in 1987. So your thoughts on the state of that and the influence and doing it well versus doing it poorly and all that.

**Craig:** Yeah. I wrote something down here. You can just imagine young Chris Miller and Phil Lord watching this and absorbing the lessons of a gentle meta-comedy. And it is very gentle. I mean, they are very gentle about it, too. I think that’s why they’re so good at it. One of my favorite jokes ever in history is “Where am I? The pit of despair. Don’t bother trying to escape.” It’s wonderful. It is meta. It pokes fun at a trope. But it doesn’t break anything. And I think that’s wonderful.

I have to imagine that they love this movie the way I do, but you know what, we’ll ask them.

**John:** We’ll ask them.

**Craig:** We’ll ask those guys.

**John:** So I agree with you that you see the same things that this movie does reflected in other things. And there are some direct echoes. Like you don’t get to Once Upon a Deadpool without this movie. But I would suspect that like the meta-ness of our culture is just there no matter what, so without this movie we’d still have – we’d probably still have Phil Lord and Chris Miller making their stuff.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. I don’t think they would have perished or anything like that, but maybe they would have.

**John:** Yeah. And so no spoilers but in some of the work I’ve been doing recently, which you guys haven’t seen yet, there is that quality of like are we framing that this is a story within the world of how it’s being told. And it can be a very useful way of placing something within a larger world and a larger context. And so that meta-ness is I think you’re going to increasingly see.

**Craig:** Yeah. I like it.

**John:** Over here.

**Male Audience Member:** Well there was one hole which again you explain in the very beginning because it is a fantasy, nothing really supposed to make sense in a way. But the beginning when the Man in Black, the protagonist, follows him he just appears. How does he know she’s there?

**Craig:** Oh, there are bigger holes than that one. I mean, how about this one: Fezzik finds a drunken Inigo and he fills him in on everything including the six-fingered man. How did he know about that? Was he watching this movie, too? There’s huge holes. But you’re like, meh.

**Male Audience Member:** But then again if you watch the comic books, what we watch, the movies all the time there’s holes all over the place. Again, it’s a fantasy, so it’s a fantasy.

**Craig:** You get away with a lot. No question.

**John:** Also, I think it’s important about setting expectations. So this movie in contextualizing it as a story it gives you a lot of buy-in for genre conventions and just the ability to skip over some things that would otherwise feel like giant plot holes. You feel like maybe this story that Fred Savage is hearing actually has some of those things filled in and we’re skipping over those.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Let’s start over here.

**Male Audience Member:** Hi, do you feel that there is any benefit to the fact that characters like Buttercup and the other characters in the actual story we’re being told don’t grow as characters, they don’t change. If the story were made today, if this film were made today, is there any benefit to keeping Buttercup as a character that doesn’t really grow and start learning to defend herself in that way?

**Craig:** Well, it’s a fairytale and what we’ve started to do now is reevaluate fairytales and retell them in a modern way, or if you want to call it postmodern way. Disney is doing this quite a bit. You reimagine these stories and then you turn them on their ear. And you don’t just have a female be a damsel in distress.

For this movie, no one changes. None of those characters change because that’s how that story functions. The only person that changes is Fred Savage, which is why I think he’s the protagonist. But no, you can’t do that now because it won’t work. People won’t like it. And this is why it’s important to view movies in their context. And, yeah, there are moments where you go, uh, the kind of trope-iness of their characters is sort of a point. He’s telling a tropey story.

**John:** Disney’s Cinderella, the remake of Cinderella, the live action version, one of the things I really appreciate about it is it was the exact same story but they gave the characters human motivations rather than cartoon motivations. She’s a more fully fleshed-out character than she would ever be in the original animated film. And I think if you were to approach this – I don’t think you should remake this movie – but if you were to approach a remake of this movie you would be thinking from inside her point of view like how can she do some things to change her world around her. And sort of what is it unique and special about her other than just being incredible gorgeous that we’re going to really focus on.

**Craig:** So gorgeous.

**John:** So, so beautiful. Over here.

**Male Audience Member:** Sure. Just watching this, having reflected on recent episodes, it’s like if there’s a scene you’re dreading to write just don’t write that scene, just move past it and see what happens. And there’s so much of – the economy of that story works so well that it feels like it’s 60 minutes long. What’s the runtime on that? Anyone? It feels less than 90 minutes it is so quick. And have you – does anyone know how close that follows the book? Did Goldman cut a bunch of material from that?

**Craig:** There are serious differences. The book was, you know, the subtitle of that book I think was called A Hot Fairytale or something like that. It was a little more adult when he put it in book form. But the basics are all there. There’s not much new there that isn’t in the book. So, yeah, that was kind of how he wrote it, right? He just was able – it’s a great experiment to free yourself from having to write everything in the story and just write some of it.

**Male Audience Member:** So many details that don’t matter. Is it Florin, is it Gilder? Doesn’t matter, it’s sword land. Who cares?

**Craig:** Does not matter. It does not matter.

**John:** Yeah, so this takes out all the shoe leather basically. Characters aren’t walking from place to place. Basically they’re just suddenly showing up there and doing stuff and that can be a really great lesson. You’re not always going to be able to have this kind of economy for very good reasons. But it’s also a good lesson in why it’s important to have something to cut to.

So, if you were to do this without the framing device it would still be incredibly helpful to be able to cut away to the other characters doing something so that you can move both stories together.

**Male Audience Member:** Splitting the party.

**John:** Yeah. Otherwise you’d be walking through all of this with them. I’m doing the third Arlo Finch book right now and man there’s times I wish I could skip over the stuff.

**Craig:** You can.

**John:** You can sometimes. But sometimes you cannot. And so chapter breaks are really helpful but like you got to finish out a scene. You can’t just summarize it out.

**Craig:** You got to finish a scene. Yeah.

**Male Audience Member:** Are you guys waiting for all the characters in that – All the President’s Men?

**John:** Oh, no, no, no. We’re not staying after that. No.

**Craig:** No. Oh, I thought you meant they were coming. OK, sorry.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** So it feels to me very [spollen] because it’s very playful the whole conceit of it. And I tell a lot of stories to my grandkids and I can jump all over the place, you know, the little mouse suddenly ends up three stories down and he finds a cockroach that he rides and like they just go with it. So, I think even though we have over-institutionalized in a way storytelling through our big brains and trying to figure it out, in the end just having a playful spirit and sort of the logic seems like underneath less important than this sense of play. So I wanted you perhaps to address how play and creating from a sense of play can inform story, like using this as a great example.

**John:** Yeah.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** So often we can sort of imagine development notes and process on this and trying to answer all of the questions. And in trying to answer all the questions the notes will forget like, oh that’s right, it’s supposed to be fun. And so they will try to fix all the problems and not recognize what was actually great and working about it and would squash some of what was great and working about it. The lines that Craig quotes, they’re just weird fun moments that wouldn’t happen if you had spent all the time to fix all the mistakes.

**Craig:** Yeah, like no one ever tells you – it just says then assemble a Brute Squad. And we’re supposed to know what a Brute Squad is. You know? I’m going to call the Brute Squad. I’m the Brute Squad. You are the Brute Squad.

But I think that that is a great sign that it started the way it started. Because when you tell stories to your children within seconds you realize you better be entertaining. I mean, the attention span is short, but when you have them they give you more attention than any adult ever would. So it’s figuring out what are those things. And big swings and exciting things. It’s not enough to have, like OK, they fell down a hill. She just got hurt. The love of her life back. If we’re not telling that story to a child they sit down and they discuss. Not these two. They go into a swamp with huge rats. And fire. And the – and the – I mean, that’s the point.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** Swamp-eating fire.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. Love it. So good.

**John:** Over here.

**Male Audience Member:** One thing I noticed while watching the film this time is how good William Goldman is at that bad guys closing in tracking beat that he also does that great in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And I was just wondering on a craft level like how do you approach writing those kinds of beats. We see them in lots of films and I just feel like there’s this great comedic interplay between the two spaces when they’re there and when the bad guy runs in. How do you balance that beat?

**John:** I think it’s recognizing that you’re going to want that moment. That you’re going to need that moment to see that this is between the two. That you see the interplay between them. Because there can also be the instinct of just like we’re going to deal with these people and then we’ll have a separate scene where we’ll see these people over there. And we’re not going to contextualize where they are in relation to each other.

And if the screenwriter doesn’t recognize like, oh, that’s a thing I’m going to need or I’m going to need to see those things, that may not get shot and may not be a thing that you have in your movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that’s right. I mean, the key isn’t so much that you have that scene or not have that scene. It’s how you want it to be. What the meaning of it – do you want to see somebody looking at somebody in the distance that keeps coming while they’re standing there? Or do you want them to be surprised by it? But it is also a chance to be really funny.

I mean, one of my favorite versions of that is in Holy Grail. He’s running, running, and then he’s there. I love that. So you can play around with it. But you have to know what you want out of it. Yeah.

**Male Audience Member:** Thank you.

**John:** Over here.

**Male Audience Member:** I’m curious what you think is the target audience of the film when it first came out compared to nowadays. I think Craig you said you saw it when you were 16 and John like late high school/early college. But like you said there’s, you know, with the tropes and everything it’s kind of postmodern with the meta, you know, it almost has that idea of watch Star Wars when you’re younger because by the time you see it in your 20s how many times have you heard “I am your father” and that moment now has kind of lost its impact. So, just curious on – obviously it still lives up and the protagonist in your guys’ opinion is Fred Savage the child. So, even though you saw it kind of late adolescence has it kind of grown into a movie you should see and you should introduce to someone when they’re young, they’ll really appreciate it?

**Craig:** I think so. I think the movie is designed to speak to children of all ages as they say. Talking to you when you watch it now, I don’t care how old you are, it’s just all about the kid in you. There’s really nothing, I mean, there’s no – there’s not even a hint that reproduction occurs. Do you know what I mean? It’s about a kiss. Everything feels so broad the way a child would want it to be on purpose. And they keep making it broader, and broader, and broader. And the comedy is very physical. And I love that about it.

So to me who is this – this is one of those movies that anyone should be able to watch and hopefully enjoy. Anyone.

**John:** Yeah. So the movie was not a huge success. It did OK. But it was not a big blockbuster. Go to YouTube and look at the trailer. It is the worst trailer. It has the worst music. All trailers from that time are terrible, but this is a really bad trailer. So it’s hard to say who the target audience was, but like target audience is like anybody who would watch that trailer and actually show up at the theater and go in.

What I do want to address though, I feel like part of the reason why we’re talking about this movie and why this movie has had a cultural impact is because it came out on home video at a time where home video was incredibly important. Most people saw this a thousand times on home video. I didn’t. But also it got rereleased again and again on laser disc and better and better laser disc. So I felt like it really benefited from the rise of home video and the ability to see it again and again and become a family favorite.

**Craig:** Similar thing with Spinal Tap. I mean, look, every movie got that treatment, but this one captured people. It took a while. Because it’s also very hard to explain what it is. You have to kind of see it to get it. But it is so remarkably entertaining. And so it caught on. It was one of those movies where like “you have to see this movie, I love this movie.” And it wasn’t just your friend trying to push some art film on you. It was like moms were telling other moms, “You’ve got to see this movie.” It’s for everybody. Yeah, god, hard to solve. Geez.

**John:** Over here.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** So, I’m going to kick myself if I get this wrong but I’m pretty sure that the title of the book was A Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, the Good Parts, by William Goldman. Which leads to my question–

**Craig:** Nice. That is.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** I’m fairly familiar with the book.

**Craig:** Apparently.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** And I actually remember the first time the book was read to me. I don’t remember the first time I saw the movie but I had seen it many times beforehand. And I’m just curious from, you know, we’re super lucky that William Goldman got to adapt his own work and really polish up his own wonderful novel. Do you feel like there’s anything from the book that’s missing that you’d like to see in this? Or do you think he just clinched it perfectly tight?

**Craig:** Honestly, I mean, I don’t want to represent that I am sort of steeped in the novel as you are, but I’m good. This gets everything that I want. And it’s one of those things where over time a movie that you love just becomes unchangeable. Even its flaws. You come to love all of it. I mean, there is some editing in this thing that is just astonishingly horrible.

**John:** There’s some eye lines that are rough, too.

**Craig:** Eye lines are like, you know, Westley’s head is flopped this way and in the next shot he’s close up looking that way. No one gave a damn. But I love it. So, anyway I’m happy. I’m good.

**John:** So I have not read the book. But I will say just in general an adaptation is how do you tell the best story for the screen. And so we need to remember that he was a screenwriter, I don’t really want to say first, but he had written a lot of screenplays before he wrote this book. And so I think even if he wasn’t planning at the time to adapt this into a movie I think he had a cinematic sense to it. And so he wrote this book probably with a good idea of what this would be like on a screen. And so I think there’s a natural reason why a screenwriter wrote this book and why the novelist was the screenwriter who brought it to the end.

Over here.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** Hey, so I have a question. We talked a lot about holes and it’s kind of a follow up to that. If each of you had to fill in a hole or had to add something I would love to hear what that is, whether it’s another element of the fire swamp, or if we actually see the Dread Pirate Roberts. I’d love to hear what you have to say.

**Craig:** Oh that’s good. That’s a good question.

**John:** I would want some Buttercup stuff where we understand why Buttercup is marrying him at the start. I just feel like she needs somebody else to talk with. Because the character is incredibly silent throughout the movie, as if she was only contractually allowed to say like 200 lines. Because there are a lot times where there’s cuts to like she just nods at the end of a scene. It’s like, well, you could say something there.

I would love to just have a little – someone else she can talk to in the movie just so I can get a little bit more insight into her.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** The albino. The albino.

**John:** Sure. The albino. That would be great. We want some albino backstory as well.

**Craig:** The origin story of the albino?

**John:** Yeah, absolutely. Why is the albino there and sometimes nothing? No, yes.

**Craig:** Love that.

Fe**Male Audience Member:** He could be the confidante.

**Craig:** I’m good on the albino. I’m going to be honest with you. I feel pretty good about that. I would want maybe I would love to see a short little bit where Fezzik and Inigo are kind of floating out there unrooted and miserable because when we catch up with Inigo he’s drinking himself to death because he’s miserable and has failed. And obviously Fezzik has just been recruited for the Brute Squad. So I would love – maybe even just Inigo Montoya, one scene where you see that it’s all unraveled for him. I would love that.

**John:** It’s kind of weird that it feels like, you know, for Inigo and Fezzik that like six months have passed, but it could only have been like 10 days.

**Craig:** Right. And no one ever changes their shirt.

**John:** No. That’s accurate. That’s accurate to medieval times.

**Craig:** True.

**John:** Over here.

**Craig:** Jay Hogan?

**Male Audience Member:** Hey, how are you?

**Craig:** He’s famous you guys.

**Male Audience Member:** I’ve been dying to be a guest on your show, so this was the only way I could do it.

**Craig:** Oh no. If you want to be on the show you can be on the show.

**Male Audience Member:** OK. Well here I am.

**Craig:** Great.

**Male Audience Member:** I was watching this and thinking as I’m watching this as a writer I’d be afraid to write this movie. And the reason I’m afraid to write this movie is there are no stakes in this movie. People don’t die. When you think they die, they don’t die. They come back to life. True love is going to save the day. It’s stated at the very beginning and proved very quickly in act one he’s going to come back, he’s going to find her. For no reason he’s going to find her. They’re going to get together. The love story is going to work. Nobody you care about is going to die. And the protagonist in your story, the little boy, is quickly into this book, pretty quickly. And into his grandfather – you could tell pretty quickly that this relationship, this bonding happens quickly.

So we’re watching this story and not necessarily getting as involved as you need to be. It’s a fairytale so you’re separated. Your emotions are separated. But that frightens me as a writer.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, that’s the thing. It’s a fairytale. So the traditional tale of Cinderella, the stakes are she’ll just keep being treated poorly and she won’t be married to a guy. And that’s pretty common. In this case you’re absolutely right. I love the fact that, oh my god, if they fail there will be a war between Florin and Gilder. Who cares, right?

So I kind of love the fairytale-ness of it. And I guess that’s enough stakes for me is will this kid like his grandpa at the end. It’s so sweet.

**John:** So Jay, what I hear you talking about is there are stakes, I mean, like you know will these two lovers get back together. Will he die? He’s being tortured. Will he die? Will she kill herself? But you know that they’re false stakes.

**Male Audience Member:** The writers’ room calls it Schmuck Bait.

**John:** Schmuck Bait. Absolutely. And so I guess what I would say is even when you recognize that it’s schmuck bait I think you can sometimes lean into a film because you’re wondering like how can this actually end well. How can this actually–?

**Male Audience Member:** Yeah. Process is the alternative to stakes. It’s like what is the most interesting way to get there even though you know where you’re going.

**Craig:** And also there’s – the schmuck bait catches a schmuck. It’s the kid. He falls for it. Right? So that’s the point. They know they’re doing it. What you’re doing is you’re watching somebody falling in love with narrative. So I’m OK with that personally.

**John:** So, Jay, you did talk about like you’d be afraid to write this because you’re just worried that stakes are so low. And I think that’s actually really interesting and thank you for bringing up that point because you do worry about is this actually going to feel – is this actually going to have the weight that you would kind of want it to have? That there’s going to be enough real emotional resonance beyond just like a beautiful kiss at the end? And I think that’s a fair thing.

I think if you were to approach this movie now there would be an expectation of–

**Craig:** Yeah, there would.

**Male Audience Member:** I would even say that the highlight, the climax, is when Inigo Montoya gets his revenge.

**John:** Exactly.

**Male Audience Member:** And it’s not when the lovers kiss, better than the best five kisses–

**Craig:** Leaves them behind, right.

**Male Audience Member:** Right. Because that moment feels like, oh, well maybe he’s really going to die. For that one moment you thought maybe he’s done. And then when he comes back that feels good. That feels like a victory. As a writer, I think my audience is engaged in that moment. But everything after that is just, well, do-di-do, fun times.

**Craig:** There’s not that much after it. I mean, they land on horses and they ride away. And then there’s a kiss.

**John:** Jay, thank you.

**Male Audience Member:** Thank you.

**John:** And we have one more question. In the blue shirt. You get the final question of the evening.

**Male Audience Member:** All right. Hope it’s good. Just thinking about how this all started because he would tell the story to his kids and it eventually became the screenplay. As screenwriters yourselves and having kids yourselves have you ever found yourself in a similar situation where you would tell stories to your kids that you would make up and just think to yourself like, hmm, this could be a screenplay? Has that ever occurred to you?

**Craig:** I mean, never to me, because I need to get paid. I can’t do it – I just can’t. I can’t. It’s so hard to do it anyway that without my kids slipping me serious cash.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, you’d have to pay Jessie like a big allowance so she could pay you back.

**Craig:** It’s just too much.

**John:** I will confess that I find it really tedious to have to do that work of making up a story for my kid. And there have been times where like we’re on a long flight and I’m just trying to get her through something. Luckily we’re past all of that stuff. But I find it really tedious because I hate sort of falling back on those tropes. I hate falling back on sort of the “and then…” and she’ll try to introduce something. I never enjoyed that. And so I want to have control over the universe and the world. I want control over Craig.

**Craig:** See what I talk about? Know what I mean? [makes robot noises]

**John:** But thank you for the question. All right, that is our discussion.

**Craig:** Thank you guys.

**John:** I need to thank the Guild Screening Series, Ian Dietchman, Scott Alexander for doing this. Casey our projectionist. Marty and Brian for putting this whole logistics together. Megan McDonnell is our producer. And listen to Scriptnotes and this will be not Tuesday but a week from Tuesday.

**Craig:** Awesome. Thank you guys.

**John:** Thank you all.

**Craig:** Thank you.

Links:

* [The Seattle Live Show](https://nwsg.org/event/scriptnotes-live/?instance_id=523) is on February 6th!
* You can now [preorder Arlo Finch in the Lake of the Moon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/162672816X/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) or come to the [launch event](https://www.chevaliersbooks.com/john-august-2019) on February 9th.
* Submit entries for The Scriptnotes Pitch Session [here](https://johnaugust.com/pitch).
* The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure [novel](https://www.amazon.com/Princess-Bride-Morgensterns-Classic-Adventure/dp/0156035219)
* The Princess Bride [Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnkfVvZ9q_0)
* [The Dread Pirate Roberts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_Pirate_Roberts)
* [The Bechdel Test](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheBechdelTest)
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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2019/rules-and-plans).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 385 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’ll be talking about the plans your characters make and how to share them with the reader. Plus we’ll discuss rule-breakers, the techniques that absolutely no traditional screenwriting program will teach you but how they could elevate and invigorate your script.

But first, some reminders. Craig, we have a live show coming up.

**Craig:** Yes we do. In Seattle, the great city of Seattle and the great state of Washington. I’m very excited about this one. We’re going to be there February 6th at 7pm. John is going to fill you in on all these extra details. But what I’m really excited about is that we have one special guest, a very dear friend of mine, Emily Zulauf, who is a former development executive at Pixar. You may have heard of Pixar. They’re a small animation company.

**John:** Little upstart thing. They’re trying to use computer animation. We’ll see if it works.

**Craig:** And their deal is they at least claim to be good at story, so I suppose she might know something or another. And it’s going to be good. She’s a wonderful person. So I’m very excited to have Emily there. And you guys should – Seattle people come out and see us. Don’t leave us hanging. We’ve got a link. I guess it will be in the show notes. Is that right?

**John:** Yeah. The link will be in the show notes. So tickets we now know are $20 or $10 if you’re a member of the Northwest Screenwriters Guild, which apparently exists.

**Craig:** Oh.

**John:** Or The Film School. So, $20 or $10, but come see us. It is at the AMC Theater Pacific Place 11, I guess. We’re going to show up there and we’re going to have a great time. I’m going to be way deep into an Arlo Finch book tour. Craig is flying up just for the evening. It will be a really fun time.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** It’ll be sort of an intersectionality of Arlo Finch and Scriptnotes and Seattle. It should be a good time.

**Craig:** The Film School is the name of a film school.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** TheFilmSchool. All one word.

**John:** All one word.

**Craig:** All right. So, don’t think if you are at a film school–

**John:** Any film school–

**Craig:** You’re paying $20 if you’re at a film school.

**John:** But if you’re at The Film School.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Definite articles. Indefinite articles.

**Craig:** Hugely important.

**John:** Not every language has the distinction between them.

**Craig:** Interesting. Interesting. I love the distinction between those two things. And I will also say having been to Seattle many times, everything costs $20. Everything.

**John:** Oh, totally. Absolutely.

**Craig:** Looking at a fish costs $20. Just standing in that market, looking at a fish, $20.

**John:** Yeah. Pike Place Market, so expensive just to your eyes, everywhere they look.

**Craig:** Everywhere you look. $20. So you guys can afford it. Yeah. I love that place.

**John:** Craig, we need some photos of you catching some fish at the Pike Place Market, because otherwise people won’t believe you’re actually in Seattle.

**Craig:** I don’t think they let you catch the fish. The deal is you buy the fish and then they throw it to each other. Because otherwise, let’s face, there’s going to be fish everywhere. Have you seen the Gum Wall, John?

**John:** Oh, I’ve seen the Gum Wall. I have good photos of the Gum Wall.

**Craig:** I love the Gum Wall. I love it. Anyway, Seattle, one of my favorite places, so please buy some tickets. Come see us. We’re incredibly entertaining in person. You can’t even imagine how much fun we are. Like beyond.

**John:** We have to cut so much out of the episodes just because it would be too much joy.

**Craig:** Too much cheering.

**John:** Yeah. So, that’s February 6, but then on February 9 I will be back in Los Angeles for the Arlo Finch launch party. It’s at Chevalier’s, the bookstore on Larchmont. That’s 12:30 in the afternoon on February 9. So come see me there. I will be signing copies of Arlo Finch. It’s as simple as it can be. You come in, you buy your book, I sign it for you, I talk a little bit, I answer some questions. I think I’m going to have special cool little patches to hand out, so come see me if you want to on February 9.

But if you can’t make it on February 9, preorder the book because, good lord, I would love to hit the charts.

**Craig:** Wouldn’t that be nice?

**John:** That’s sort of how you hit the charts on a second book is by people buying it the first week.

**Craig:** They pre-buy, they load up.

**John:** They load up.

**Craig:** Don’t just do it for the patch, people.

**John:** Do it for – because you know if it does happen to cross over that threshold and show up on the bestsellers list you will know that you were the reason why it did.

**Craig:** You were the straw.

**John:** You were the straw that broke the–

**Craig:** Finch’s back.

**John:** Yeah. Something. We have a brand new feature that we are rolling out, so not in this episode but we have to prepare for it. This is a new idea that we’re going to try out. It’s called the Pitch Session. And way back in Episode 274 we had Eric Voss who I guess he pitched to you like two years ago at the Austin Film Festival. You thought it was great. You had him record the pitch and so we played it and we discussed it. And we’re going to try to do that again, but opening it up to all of our listeners.

What we’re looking for is a 60 to 90 second pitch. It can be for a TV show. It can be for a feature. But it’s 60 to 90 seconds that sort of sells the idea and you are going to send in an audio recording. We’re going to listen to the recording and put a couple of them up and then discuss them afterwards. So it’s a chance to kind of do what we do on the Three Page Challenge but with audio pitches.

**Craig:** Pitches. I love it. I think it’s going to be fun. I do this at Austin. I judge the big finals. I mean, I’m just blown away. People show up to this thing every year. It’s amazing. It’s in this big bar. They pack the place. Pack it.

**John:** Packed.

**Craig:** The thing about it that blows my mind is people are so respectful of the people that are pitching because you know how hard it is to get a roomful of people to just listen. Well, this place will quiet down and listen really well to every single pitch. I think there’s like 20 of them. So, it’s been fun to that and, yeah, I think it’s educational because like it or not sometimes pitches happen.

**John:** Yeah. So, I would say that the pitch form that we’re looking for, the 60 to 90 second pitch, that’s not the kind of thing that you’re usually going into sit down and really pitch to an executive. But it is the kind of casual thing that you would be doing at a party. It’s a little bit longer than an elevator pitch, but it’s that short distillation of the idea.

And so really we’re going to be responding to does this feel like a movie or a TV show idea. And did we get enough out of this that we can actually see what it is you’re describing that you’re going to be trying to write. So, that’s what we’re looking for. So if you have an idea like this that you want to try to pitch at us the URL you want is johnaugust.com/pitch. And there’s a whole little form you fill out. You click buttons that say that you’re submitting this of your own freewill. That you’re not going to try to sue us. And that this is all–

**Craig:** Don’t sue us.

**John:** This is not a contest. This is not a competition. This is just for the learns. So, depending on how it goes we might do it again. If it goes poorly we may deny this ever happened.

**Craig:** Correct. We erase it from the record.

**John:** Yep. Speaking of erasing things from the record–

**Craig:** Segue Man.

**John:** We have more follow up. So this is Brooke in Los Angeles and Craig can you read what Brooke wrote to us?

**Craig:** Yes, so we recently had I guess a rerun of our Raiders episode, which is one of my favorites. Here’s what Brooke wrote. “I do have two questions about your episode on Raiders of the Lost Ark. I share your enthusiasm for the movie. It’s one of my favorites. That said, now that I’ve read the screenplay my feelings are decidedly more mixed. I always assumed Marion was being hyperbolic when she angrily accused Indiana Jones of taking advantage of her when she was ‘just a child.’ I hope Karen Allen will forgive me when I say that through my younger eyes I thought she was older than the script reveals she is supposed to be, 26. Doing the math, it turns out Lucas, Kasdan, and Spielberg intended Indy to have sex with her when she was 16 and to be completely blasé about that when confronted with her justified outrage.

“Now at first I was inclined to chalk it up to the times were different. But then on your recommendation I listened to the recorded conversations of Lucas, Kasdan, and Spielberg. And I heard Lucas arguing in favor of making Marion younger, as young as 11 when Indy was to have had sex with her. He thought making her 11 would be it ‘more interesting’ than if she were 16 or 17. Frankly, I was shocked and disgusted. And then confused.

“Here are my questions. One, when you’re creating a character that’s supposed to be a hero, albeit flawed, why would you ever want to so far as to make him a pedophile as Lucas was advocating? Can you please help me understand why these renowned creators thought that audiences would accept that kind of character? Two, why didn’t you address this issue in your podcast? You too are so wonderfully outspoken regarding things you support and don’t. Why didn’t this make the cut?”

Oh boy. You know what, John, just answer this with a yes or a no.

**John:** [laughs] Oh yeah. Simple yes/no. I’ll answer question two first because it’s the simplest answer. I didn’t know any of that backstory. And so while I had seen parts of the interview and I’d watched the movie a bunch of times I had no idea that there was this issue of how old Marion was, how old she would have been 10 years ago. It never occurred to me and I hadn’t seen that discussion from the transcripts or from the recording from before.

**Craig:** When I read this question it jogged a memory, like oh yeah, I think I remember reading that. But I had read that thing a long time ago. So, when we did the podcast it was not at all on my internal memory radar.

**John:** Yeah. So, as to the first question there, I think it’s absurd – I’m horrified. I think it’s bizarre and weird to have a conversation in which the protagonist had sex with a person who was 11 years old. That’s just bizarre and horrifying and I can’t even fathom sort of how that happens. So I can’t answer that in any meaningful way.

What I will say is that I can imagine scenarios, this isn’t apparently how this all happened, but I can imagine scenarios in which you sort of accidentally end up at that place where you didn’t do the math right. And so they knew each other this time and you cast somebody who was a certain age which would have meant they knew each other at a certain time. That is a thing you probably could find in a lot of other movies. When you actually do the math you’re like, wait, that means that she was negative four years old. That happens.

But that doesn’t seem like it would happen here. It sounds like they actually had a conversation where it’s like, oh, she could have been 11. And that is just wrong. And there’s other movies where these problematic things happen. Animal House being an example where that is not cool what happens in Animal House. And in looking at the movies you have to acknowledge that this is a thing which is problematic about the movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. Obviously Brooke is correct to say that the times were different is a thing. It doesn’t mean that we have to accept anything now about it. But things do require some context of course. I think in this case the one thing I would push back on Brooke is when you say, “Can you help me understand why these three renowned creators thought that audiences would accept that kind of character?” From what I’m reading from your question, because I haven’t actually reviewed that transcript again, so I’m just taking it off of your recollection here, it does seem like Kasdan and Spielberg were not at all in favor of Marion being 11 and in fact advocated that she be 16 or 17, which even now we would consider to be too young but not necessarily in the zone of 11 which is horrifying.

So, really the question is what the hell was Lucas thinking. And the answer is I have no idea. The only thing I can guess is that he was such a total dork that he thought in his mind that that maybe was – I have no idea.

**John:** I don’t know either and I don’t want to sort of get into places where I’m speculating on his mindset.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Or what he was actually saying or that we’re actually understanding him properly here. The larger conversation I think we can have is when you dig back into how things came to be I think you need to be mindful that there’s the movie that finally was made and then there’s the process that led to the movie. And some of the process that led to the movie will have a bunch of false steps and blind alleys and things that were not reflected in the final work.

And so it’s fair to look at sort of where stuff come from and the history of stuff, but in looking at the history of stuff how much influence should that have on your perception of the final work. And that’s an artistic question that is fair to ask, but I think it’s also fair to – if you choose to not dig back into that history I think you’re allowed to not dig back into the history and look at the finished work as well. And not having seen the script to know that she was supposed to be 26 years old and this time factor, you can forgive a person for not doing that math or sort of exploring that.

**Craig:** Yeah. You’re completely right that the important thing is the choices that were made. Not the choices that were not made. I think that Brooke brings up a reasonable point that the suggestion here is so bizarre as to be disconcerting on its own. And this isn’t a comedy where, I mean, you know, when Todd Phillips and I sat in a room together and just riffed on ideas for the Hangover movies it was – terrible things were said. The point is those movies were transgressive. And of course the point being that you then make choices that you think will work, not choices that won’t or that are going to make people disgusted.

In this case that’s not that – I don’t get it and it’s not good at all. [laughs] I don’t like it.

**John:** But, so you think back to you and Todd Phillips had sort of your writers’ room of two people to talk through doing the Hangover movies. Every TV show has a writers’ room where they’re discussing how to make the show. And a lot of what they’re discussing is things that do not become the final show. And so–

**Craig:** 100 percent.

**John:** All those discussions are not – they’re not reflected in what the final thing was, but they probably had some horrible, terrible ideas or plans for like, you know, ultimately it’s going to be revealed that this was the connection and that wasn’t the thing. So that’s not canon. Like the stuff that happens in the writers’ room isn’t canon.

**Craig:** No, it’s not.

**John:** You want to be able to separate those things.

**Craig:** Absolutely. And I guess the only difference here is that if he’s saying that it’s cooler – I am – I hope that he was just maybe tripping on acid that day or something, because that’s just a crazy thing to say. So, I can’t explain it, Brooke. I can’t explain it. But, clearly by the time the movie was made all three of those guys were seeing Marion as the person that Karen Allen is.

**John:** Who is more of a peer to Harrison Ford’s character.

**Craig:** She’s a grown woman. And her age difference with Harrison Ford I don’t think was extraordinary at all. So, clearly cooler heads prevailed. Thank god.

**John:** So, while we’re talking about Indiana Jones, last week on the Slate Culture Gabfest David Plotz was talking about watching Raiders of the Lost Ark with his young kids and he said he found it really problematic racially. That there was a lot of sort of – you look at all of the non-white characters in the film and they are portrayed horribly. And that was not a thing I saw at all when I went back and watched it for this episode a couple of years ago. But I can totally see that. I can totally imagine that watching through it with that in your head you would recognize that like, oh, yeah, it is just a bunch of white people doing stuff and everyone who is not the white person in the movie does not fare well in it. And I think that’s a fair criticism to look at the actual finished work because you’re not looking back at the original intent of things.

**Craig:** Sure. I mean, at some point I – if we go way far back, every single movie – every single movie – will be problematic because society, it was in our lens of today problematic. Thoroughly. Top to bottom.

**John:** Yeah. Thoroughly.

**Craig:** I mean, so what’s the point of the exercise? Yes, the answer is yes. It’s all problematic.

**John:** Yes. And so I don’t want to sort of go back and remake Raiders of the Lost Ark to take care of that thing. But I think it’s worth noticing that about the movie so that if we’re trying to make a film in that spirit now to be mindful like, oh you know what, we can’t do that thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** If we’re making that movie in 2019 you can’t do that thing. And especially as we go into this era where we’re remaking everything there has to be a thought early on in the process is like, OK, just because we love this thing let’s also be aware of the things that just we cannot be doing in 2019 and beyond.

**Craig:** You know, maybe this is naïve but I feel like that conversation now is happening consistently across every single project in Hollywood. Am I naïve? Or do you think that it is?

**John:** You are not naïve. I would say it’s not every single project, but I would say most studio projects at an early stage are being mindful of that. And you and I both worked on some high profile ones where, yes, those conversations happened early on and frequently.

**Craig:** Yes. Which is good. And so the path of this stuff has been a somewhat promising one. Delayed, sure. Too long? Yes. But it is I think maybe a little easy to tee up some of these older movies and go, “Look, it doesn’t match our enlightened view of now.” Because that’s–

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Most movies before a certain age are going to have really, really problematic things. What I like about Brooke’s question is she was bringing up a specific thing from the script and from the conversations about stuff and thank you Brooke for writing in about it.

**Craig:** No question. And really specific answer to you Brooke about question number one. No, you would never want to go so far as to do that. I hate saying blanket things. If your character is a pedophile then we’re not going to like him ever. Period. The end.

**John:** Nope. Don’t do it.

That would be breaking a rule, wouldn’t it Craig?

**Craig:** Segue Man.

**John:** This is Craig’s topic. So, Craig, hit us off with these rule-breakers.

**Craig:** So I’m working on this script where because of the tone of what the project is it’s very carefree and wild. And lately it seems to me that culture is starting to get a little more comfortable with acknowledging that culture exists, not necessarily dipping into the meta because not everything needs to be meta. But as we write screenplays there’s a formality that we may not necessarily need all the time. And in fact breaking some of these stuffy rules can kind of help bring your script to life and convey your intentions in fun ways if it’s done well. If it’s done for a purpose.

**John:** So, Craig, are we talking about the stuff that a writer would do physically on the page or things that movies would do or both?

**Craig:** I’m talking really about the page. This is a super writey topic. I’m not really here to talk in a big way about margins and fonts and stuff like that, although we will get into that a little bit. I guess I want to start with freeing yourself however you want, because we know that, OK, you have been taught at home by your school, or a book, or a “guru”, or the Internet, or people on Reddit that there is a format; you must follow the format; if you don’t follow the format you will be ejected into space. And I’m here to tell you that that’s only true if your script is bad.

If your script is good and it starts being free it can actually be exciting to read. If you are a reader, you are reading the same kind of thing over and over and over and over and over. It must be fun, I would imagine, to suddenly get something that’s wild and great. So, for instance, let’s start with the easiest one: breaking the fourth wall. Talking to the reader in description. If it’s cutesy and annoying, it’s bad. But if you want to have some fun, if you want to play around with their expectations, if you want to say you thought it was this didn’t you, no. You can do these things if it’s that kind of tone that allows it.

Similarly, I think, you can use any page as you want. I believe that you could put one single word on a page if it was a great word and if it required that. I think that would be awesome.

**John:** All right. So let’s talk about situations where you might want to do these things. What I like about both of these suggestions is they really are about the writing and they’re about sort of what the experience is of reading the script and how the experience of reading the script is meant to match or mimic at least the experience of watching the scene happen on a big screen in front of you.

So, in breaking the fourth wall if you’re writing Deadpool, which is constantly breaking the fourth wall, having that sort of chit-chattiness in there could be good. The Shane Black scripts are notorious for having a lot of chit-chat in them, or talking to you. That can work and that can be fine. If it works right for the tone that’s fantastic.

The thing about having a single word on a page that might be exactly the right choice if you’re making A Quiet Place. If you’re making something that actually is all about how disorienting the experience is, great. If you’re making a fast-paced thriller, a single word on a page might not be the right choice.

**Craig:** That’s right. It’s a little bit of what poets do at times. And sometimes people interestingly that write books for children will be incredibly inventive with the page and the way words are laid out. Sometimes in our scripts we need to depict disorientation or madness or the voice of an all-powerful being. Well, you could just put it in 12-point Courier. Or not. You know? You have some choices. You aren’t locked into this very dry format that was created in the, what, ‘40s?

I mean, we live in a bit of a freer time. Set yourself free a little bit.

**John:** Yeah. So the quick history of screenplays is that they were originally just a shot list basically. They morphed into what we kind of think as the modern screenplay is around the Casablanca time where it’s not just a series of camera shots. It really has a better feel for what the movie actually is like. But they were all typed. And so the reason they were 12-point Courier is because they were all typed at a certain point. No one is typing them anymore.

We still use 12-point Courier because it is – Courier Prime if you’re fancy – we use Courier because – because it’s standard it sort of takes away distraction. And we sort of know what it’s like. We have sense of how much time it’s going to take because we’re used to it. But if you are doing something where you have a voice of god or something that is intruding and bold isn’t getting it there or italics isn’t getting it there, there could be a case to be made for using a different font for certain things.

I remember early on as I was doing lyrics in scripts I would put them in Verdana italic, partly so the lines wouldn’t break, but also so it would feel different because they were singing. In Courier Prime we added the special italics that look really cool and different largely for lyrics so you really can see that like, oh, this is a different feel. It kind of feels like it’s singing.

So, it is fine to mix it up somewhat. I remember reading a Gus Van Sant script maybe for My Own Private Idaho, or something else, where it was in a bunch of different fonts and colors. And it was annoying. I did not find it a joyful experience. But that’s not to say that you couldn’t make something great and joyful that way.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure. And listen one person’s excitement is another person’s annoyance. But I think that there is something that translates beyond the script if you do this in a way that is effective. By freeing yourself of the rigid formatting rules here and there you’re also allowing your mind to kind of be a little freer about what could possibly happen in this movie.

So, Pulp Fiction works like a regular movie. Yes, it plays around with time and all that, but other movies have played around with time. It’s basically a regular movie. Until at one point when Uma Thurman says, “Don’t be a…” and then she makes, well, weirdly a rectangle, not a square on screen. And a square appears on screen. Which is bizarre. But if I read that in a script and her dialogue said, “Don’t be a…” And then there was just a picture of a square. I’d be like, what the – ooh. This is somebody who is not necessarily bound by limitations. They’re thinking kind of wildly. The other thing that I am really enjoying doing is lying.

Because we have this thing where when we’re writing scripts our action description is telling you what you see on screen. But so much of what we try and do when we’re shooting is misdirect. It’s magic tricks. We are essentially visually lying to you and then revealing something else. There’s this – may I read a short paragraph from my favorite book Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad?

**John:** Go for it.

**Craig:** “The side of his head hit the wheel twice and the end of what appeared to be a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp stool. It looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody assure he had lost his balance in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away and we were clear of the snag and looking ahead I could see that in another 100 yards or so I would be free to sheer off, away from the bank, but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down. The man had rolled on his back and stared straight at me. Both his hands clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a spear that either thrown or lunged through the opening had caught him in the side just below the ribs.”

So, we have this wonderful impressionistic lying, because our eyes lie to us, and people lie to us. And in experiences somebody gets stabbed through the chest with a spear and what we see is a guy is holding a cane. And what is in fact a man bleeding to death we just feel warm wet on our feet. That’s wonderful.

You can lie to people in description. You can say this is what happened. And then somebody says something and then you can say in description, oh wait, no, it’s this. And that is an effective rule-breaking way to actually relay what is a very common and completely accepted cinematic technique.

**John:** Absolutely. So what you’re describing though is the case of is a movie supposed reality, like what you see is exactly what it is, or is it a subjective reality. And the nature of your script may lend itself to you don’t quite know. The movie Memento is full of that. You’re not quite sure how much to trust your narrator. And so the kinds of things you’re seeing in the script description would make sense for that, because you just don’t know how much to trust the narrator and therefore the script that you’re reading in terms of what’s really going on here.

So, again, the right kind of script that makes sense. And it’s a question we’ve answered before on the podcast about like should you reveal who somebody is in the script if they’re not going to be able to see who that person is in the movie?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I always think like remember that you are the person in the theater watching this. And so what is your experience watching this? If it is ambiguous to you, you can use that ambiguity on the page as long as it doesn’t feel like you’re cheating in a bad way. If you’re cheating in a good way like this description from Heart of Darkness, go for it.

**Craig:** Yeah. Will this help the people making the movie deliver what you want them to deliver? Simple as that.

**John:** So here is a complicated thing I did – this is way back on the first Charlie’s Angels. And so it was a sequence we didn’t end up shooting the way I wanted us to shoot. But here was the idea. So, in the final sort of castle fight Lucy Liu’s character is on one side of a gate and the Thin Man is on the other side of the gate and they are running in opposite directions. And we basically split screen and we see them running in opposite directions trying to get to each other. And so it’s done in sort of real time simultaneous. You’re trying to figure out where they are. And they will punch each other through openings in this castle wall as they’re doing it.

And it was really fun to do. But to try to do that normally on the page really wouldn’t have made sense, because it really wasn’t meant to be split-screened. So what I did is at the bottom page I said, “Now turn your script counterclockwise,” and I had two parallel blocks of text running on the next two pages that were talking through what was happening. And so these are the simultaneous actions.

It was really fun. It was really cool to read. It was really fun to write because just like you have dual dialogue and there can be reasons why dual dialogue is so effective, this was really a cool way to do it. It was torturous for the line producers. And I think they didn’t like it. But it really gave you the experience of why this was going to be a cool moment that you hadn’t seen before. And ultimately when they did get back together and they were both in the same frame it was exciting.

That’s the kind of thing that I think if you were to do that in a spec script people would notice. And if they were digging your script and they got to that it would pop out to them as like this person has an interesting idea and a cinematic eye for what is interesting and possible.

**Craig:** Totally. I love that. And you know what else? It immediately informs me that you care. You cared enough to say, you know what, I have a better way of doing this. And I don’t mind talking to you because I’m confident that my way is awesome. And that confidence is something that I think frankly helps people buy into your work.

**John:** Yeah. So, to wrap this up I would say an important thing to understand about rule-breaking is you can’t break rules if you don’t understand rules to begin with. And so I think having an understanding of what the screenplay format is is essential because otherwise you could just generate chaos that isn’t doing the basic jobs of what a screenplay needs to do.

But once you understand how screenplays basically work then to break the rules or bend the rules or do things that are unexpected can be great. It can be sort of provocative and make people lean in and be excited to see what you’re going to do next. Is that a fair assessment from you, Craig?

**Craig:** It absolutely is. The only caution I would put out there to our listeners: if you are a reader at a company, please do not email us complaining that you already get thousands of screenplays that are poorly formatted or the people that write them think they’re so damn clever and are doing all this crazy stuff. Because I don’t care about those people. They’re bad writers anyway. The format is irrelevant. They’re bad. You weren’t going to buy their script. You’re not not recommending this script because the formatting was weird. You’re not recommending it because it stank. So, just – I don’t care about that complaint. Keep that complaint to yourself. It is boring to me.

**John:** Yeah. And all the rule-breaking in the world will not help you if your writing is not fantastic.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** So the writing is still always paramount. We should ask our friend Kevin who is a reader how much of this he sees. How much he sees people doing clever, innovative things on the page.

**Craig:** You know what? We should have Kevin on the show.

**John:** I’ve asked Kevin and he said no.

**Craig:** Oh really? Interesting. Maybe because – well, first of all Kevin is not his real name. [laughs] His real name is–

**John:** Thaddeus.

**Craig:** Thaddeus. Because he is a working reader and perhaps that would violate some sort of thing.

**John:** Yeah. Maybe it would. So my topic for the week is planning. And I actually had this idea two weeks ago because I had a lunch with Ben Wittes who runs this great blog called Lawfare, which is all about federal policy and state security and does a lot of stuff about the Trump Administration and sort of the Russia stuff.

And I asked him a question and basically I wanted to know of all the people involved in this whole Russia mess who there do you think actually has a plan, actually sort of knows what’s going on and has a plan for what’s going to happen next. And how many of those people are just scrambling and just going one thing to the next thing to the next thing. And he said that he believed that almost everybody was scrambling.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Because nobody sort of knows enough to actually make a good plan. And so that same week I was also writing the third Arlo Finch and in the third Arlo Finch it starts with the characters having this plan. And I had to sort of reveal to the reader kind of what the plan was, but it got me thinking well how do you reveal the plan and how much plan does the reader really need to know. And how much can you hold back which is more exciting for the reader. So I thought we’d talk about characters and plans and motivation and how you share them with the reader.

**Craig:** Yeah. I would imagine that the first question you have to ask is is my character a planner or not, because there are some characters that their hallmark is that they move through the day in a kind of bizarre fashion. The Big Lebowski has no plan. Ever. And that’s part of why that character works. But if they do have a plan, then yeah, you need to figure out how much people need to know and specifically if it’s helpful to conceal part of the plan from them.

**John:** Yep. Absolutely. Sometimes you want to kind of pre-answer some questions that are naturally going to come up like why is this character doing this. What is their aim? What are they actually going after? Sometimes you need to just take away the questions. And so a script I just turned in I didn’t need a big plan for this thing, I just needed to know – the character would say, “No, I can get you in the club because my uncle is the manager.” That’s all I needed to know. I didn’t have to hear the whole plan or how we’re going to get there or what the whole set was going to be. As long as I knew you could get through the door and that everybody would believe they could get through the door that was enough. And the surprises that could come up because people didn’t really know the whole rest of the plan, that was fun.

So, it’s recognizing the minimum that an audience needs to know about the plan going forward. And by plan I don’t necessarily mean like here’s how we’re going to do the heist. It often is just the character says like, “We’ll be in Denver in two hours.” It’s like, OK, as long as I know a destination that’s great. Or, “Finals are next week.” Ok, great, you set a time and so I know that finals are a thing that’s out there. It’s kind of setting a framework for what’s going to happen in the next little bit of your story.

**Craig:** And it’s hopefully telling us a little bit about this character’s method of interacting with the world. Some people are incredibly cautious. Prudent. Methodical. Planning can become an interesting aspect of your personality. Over-planning is an aspect of a certain kind of personality, just as under-planning is. Sometimes your plans frustrate people. What you really want to avoid are situations where your character comes up with a plan. The plan is flawed. People point out the flaws. And the character says, “Don’t worry about it. It will be fine.” And then it kind of is. You think, well, was it just that you needed the character to do that and then you realized it was a flawed plan so you had somebody say it to take the curse off of it but you didn’t actually – it makes that character into an idiot. And we do not like that at all.

**John:** Yeah. The other crucial thing about showing the plan is so that the plan can go wrong. So if we as a reader, we as an audience don’t understand what they were trying to do, or sort of what the steps were they were attempting to do then when things go amiss we won’t know that they’re going amiss. And so if we don’t know the basic requirements of what they have to do to get into this facility then we won’t know that something has gone wrong. We won’t know what they’re waiting for. So by showing the overall plan, the overall goal, we can frustrate them and a lot of plotting is frustrating your hero’s plans.

**Craig:** Yeah. One of the best planning sequences ever is in Ocean’s 11, the 1990s version of Ocean’s 11, written by Ted Griffin. And it’s so wonderful because like most heist movies you get a chance to actually just stop and literally say, OK, here is the plan. I will announce the plan. I will take you step by step through the plan. And as Brad Pitt and George Clooney relay this plan step by step part of the way they tell it is to say every single thing we’re telling you we’re going to do there doesn’t seem to be a way to do it. And they keep listing one problem after another that makes this entire thing impossible.

And that is fascinating because everybody still agrees to do it. And when that happens you realize, OK, these people are a little crazy. They’re not like you and me. They kind of like the challenge of the impossible. And also they trust these two guys. They suspect that these two guys already do have the answers, they’re just not letting on yet. And that creates a wonderful expectation in us.

So, Ted managed to set up these beautiful obstacles. He created this lovely magic trick prelude. And then left us sitting in the seats going, well, OK, I know what their plan – how would I do the plan? I don’t see how this plan will ever work. Great. That’s exactly what you want to do with a spelled-out plan.

**John:** Agreed. So Craig, I’m curious about Chernobyl. Because Chernobyl obviously the overall plan would be for things not to go horribly wrong and for nuclear waste not to be spilling out every place. But I suspect throughout your story we are seeing characters like trying to deal with the situation. And we’re hearing what they’re trying to do. And seeing those things not work properly. Is that a fair assessment? Did I spoil too much about Chernobyl?

**Craig:** Well, clearly some things go wrong. That’s not a spoiler. There are levels of plans in a story like Chernobyl. There are the plans of what was supposed to happen on the night of the accident which clearly wasn’t an accident. That was not part of the plan at all. And that’s an interesting plan because you get to explain where a plan went wrong. And you get to show how people made certain assumptions or bad decisions that started to poke holes in this plan and make it fall apart.

But the other thing that happens quite a bit with a story like Chernobyl, and I think this is very common to any kind of telling of a historical disaster, is that no matter what you do to try and fix it after it happens there are unintended consequences. And that’s always fascinating to watch characters be confronted with the truth that there is no perfect plan. That the only way ahead is to create a plan that not very well might but certainly will backfire on you at some point. And then you’re going to have to deal with that problem and there’s no way out of it.

**John:** Yep. I mean, my movie Go was all about plans, simple plans, that go very, very awry. And sort of scrambling to fix the plan that went awry. But if we didn’t understand what the original plan was there would be no movie. So Ronna is going to try to pull off this very tiny drug deal and small things keep going wrong and keep going wrong and she has to scramble to keep ahead of it. And the sort of theme of the movie is that you can’t stop and really think about it. You just have to keep plowing forward. Everyone has to just go and move forward.

Same with the guys in Vegas. It’s just going to be a fun weekend in Vegas until one character just goes too far and the idea of how to get out of Vegas just keeps going wrong.

So, none of those storylines work though if we don’t understand what the characters want, what the characters are trying to achieve, and if they haven’t articulated a basic idea of what they’re going to try to do next. It goes back to sort of trust and confidence. Do we believe that the characters actually have a notion of what they’re going to try to do next? And that the characters around them would sign off on that plan?

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. And if you’re working on a story right now and you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, oh no, my characters don’t have a plan, I assure you they do. When there isn’t the presence of a clear identified plan usually the plan is better described as routine.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, very typical film noir story is woman shows up at a private detective’s office and says, “I think my husband has been cheating on me. Can you find out?” So the detective engages in his routine. That’s the deal. It’s not a plan. It’s your job. You stake the place out. You take the picture. You go inside. You check the thing. Except, oh, he’s dead.

So, your routine is disrupted. And now you are thrown off of your normal plan and you have to come up with a new plan on the fly. So don’t be afraid. You don’t necessarily need to start off with somebody going, “We’re going to A, B, C, D, and E.” Your story may just be one of a disrupted routine.

**John:** Yeah. So a great example of a disrupted routine would be Roma from this year. So your central character has no big plans. She’s not a classic protagonist who is like I’m going to achieve this thing. She’s just trying to keep normal life together and she can’t. And so she’s having to react to the stuff that’s happening around her. But the degree to which she has a plan is to keep things together. And you see her reacting to try to do that.

Compare that with Can You Ever Forgive Me? And so Melissa McCarthy’s character has to make a plan and so she sort of stumbles into this first bit of forgery, but then she has a plan for how she is going to keep it going and how she’s going to enlist other folks help her do this. It has to deal with the unintended consequences of this going a little too well.

And so characters are always making plans and they’re always – as an audience we’re always looking for what are they trying to do next. And if you don’t have a sense of that at a certain point you stop kind of following the movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. And one last thing to avoid. There are times when you may think the interesting way to tell a story is to have a character do a whole bunch of things without letting the audience in on it. Because you would think, well, if I tell you what I’m going to do before I do it while I’m doing it you will be bored. So what I’ll do is I’ll have the character do it and then afterwards someone will say, “How did you do that?” And then the character will say, “Well,” and – see not particularly effective unless what they’ve done is really amazing. Because it feels a little bit like, mm, they could have actually told us the plan, they just wouldn’t have had a very good movie if they had.

**John:** Yeah. I would also say as you get notes back from producers, from studio executives, sometimes they’re pushing for people to over-articulate the plan. Sometimes in TV, especially in TV dramas, you see people way over-articulate the plan. It’s about finding that balance. Giving the audience enough information that they are excited to see what happens next and they’re excited to see if things work out well.

Chris McQuarrie had a great piece that I linked to this last week called How Can This Possibly End Well? That in any action sequence you always know that somehow it’s going to resolve, but the question you should be asking is how can this possibly end well. And so there’s always this sense of like given enough information we can see like, OK, I get where this is going but I’m really curious to see if this is all going to fit properly.

**Craig:** And to bring it back to Raiders there’s that amazing scene where Indiana is trying to rescue Marion. She is trapped in a plane. The engines are spinning. The propellers are moving. The plane is moving in a circle. There is gasoline and fire moving toward the plane. And Indiana Jones has to fistfight an enormously muscular prize-fighting bald Nazi while ducking propellers and the gasoline is coming and Marion is stuck. How can that possibly end well?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s good stuff. All right, let’s get to some questions.

**Craig:** OK.

**John:** Do you want to take Dan in Sherman Oaks?

**Craig:** I do want to take Dan in Sherman Oaks. Hi Dan. Dan says, “I’ve written a pilot with three other friends of mine and as of right now we have it credited with all of our names on the page as Written by Person 1 and 2 & 3 & 4. We all had room sessions where we broke story and one of us physically wrote the script hence the and/ampersand designations. My question is would an agent or manager or producer balk at a title page with four writers’ names on it? Should we only say it’s written by one of us but created by the four of us?”

John, I see many problems. Layers of problems.

**John:** I see many problems. So the four of you writing together is really challenging. It may be fine. It may all work out great. But that is a challenging place to start things from. But that’s already been done.

But I want to urge people: title pages should be accurate. Title pages should accurately reflect who actually did the work. Because if they don’t then you have a document that is not sort of properly credited and it’s only going to add more heartbreak down the road.

I don’t think the agent is going to feel more scared, I guess, but yes it’s a lot of names on a title page. It’s a lot of names to be looking at. Craig, do you have solutions for Dan here?

**Craig:** I think so. First of all, Dan, you say that you had room sessions where all four of you broke story, but then one of you physically wrote the script. So–

**John:** Which I guess is Person 1.

**Craig:** Right. But then 2, and 3, and 4 actually write the screenplay, or were you just story? Because there’s story. I mean, you can say Story by and then Written by, or Teleplay by. Created by is a continuation credit that the Writers Guild awards to people that are credited with separated rights and the pilot. None of that matters. None of that matters.

If you want to get all four of your names on, sometimes what you can do is come up with a name for your crew. Just say the Blah-blah-blahs. The Duffer Brothers. There could be 20 Duffer Brothers as far as I know. I mean, it turns out there’s two of them and they’re clones. But, you can do that. And somewhere in the end you can say the Duffer Brothers are and then list your four names. And there’s ways around this sort of thing.

You can be creative because it ultimately doesn’t really matter. You’re not determining the credits.

Now, what you say you do here will be important. What you don’t want to end up with is a situation where down the line Person 1 asks for a WGA pre-arb because his point is, or her point is I wrote the screenplay. All they did with me, I mean, it’s not all they did, it’s an important thing, but they worked on the story. But I wrote the screenplay. Why are they saying they wrote the screenplay when they didn’t?

Stuff like that needs to be hammered out now.

**John:** Yeah, it does. I’m guessing that Dan in Sherman Oaks is Person 1. And Dan if you wrote this document and everybody else had story sessions and they talked about stuff, you’re going to be the writer because sitting around in a room chit-chatting isn’t probably going to get up to the stuff of having written something.

**Craig:** Yeah. Story is important. Give people credit for breaking the story. But then the screenplay is whoever wrote it.

**John:** Yep. Garrett writes in, “What do you make of the writing credits on the new High Life trailer,” which I haven’t seen but fortunately he’s listed them with us. “It says written by Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau with a collaboration of Geoff Cox and additional writing Andrew Litvak.” So this is not a WGA credit.

**Craig:** [laughs] No.

**John:** This is a foreign credit. And this is how credits work in lots of places in the world. It looks weird to us, but it’s not weird other places.

**Craig:** What I make of it is that the French – and I looked it up, too, just to make sure. But this appears to be a French production through and through. And so they don’t follow the Writers Guild of America credit guidelines. I don’t even think they have work-for-hire for instance over there anyway. So theoretically you should be able to put whatever you want on there unless there’s some kind of gentle folks agreement about these things, like a French Writers Guild or something like that.

So, what I think of it, what I make of it, is what I make of writing credits on all foreign films. That’s what they say the credits are. It’s the same thing I make of the credits on animated movies here in the United States.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** OK. That’s what you say they are. So, you know, cool.

**John:** As we talked about a lot on the show is that the WGA credits system has frustrations absolutely. But in looking at a credit on a WGA movie you have some sense of what those credits mean. I don’t know what “with the collaboration” means. I don’t know what Geoff Cox did on this. Additional writing by Andrew Litvak. OK, well Andrew Litvak I at least know must have written something because it says additional writing. But I don’t know what collaboration means. So, it is a little bit more confusing.

It’s just different. And so what do I make of it? I make of it as it’s a French film and that’s how they sometimes list credits.

**Craig:** You know, here’s the thing, Garrett, it’s France man.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s France.

**John:** It’s France. We call it the Royale with Cheese.

**Craig:** Ah.

**John:** All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a very, very simple game. It’s called the Domain Name Pricing Game by Martin O’Leary. And it’s a really simple stupid idea, but basically it takes two web domains that are up for sale and lists the two domains and you have to guess which one is more expensive. And it’s surprisingly addictive because who would buy this domain name, but you almost always get it right. You’re always like oh that one, no one would want that. And it’s like, you’re right, that’s $50. But you see the other one and it’s like, oh yeah, I bet somebody would pay $1,700 for that dumb name.

So, it’s just a complete waste of time but also just a fun demonstration of a little web technology.

**Craig:** Yeah. I liked it. I liked it. Cool.

**John:** Simple.

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing is an app that’s been out for quite a while but I’ve been making a lot of use of it lately. It is D&D Beyond. This is the official D&D companion app from Wizards of the Coast. And here’s why I love it so much. It really doesn’t do much beyond duplicate the material that’s in the hardcover books they sell. The Player’s Handbook. The Monster Manual. The Dungeon Master’s Guide. Etc. Etc. Etc.

But, as much as I love those books, the indexes, sorry, indices of those books are tragically awful. I think we’ve said it before. I think we even said it when we were on Greg Tito’s podcast. I’ll say it to anybody. Like whoever is in charge of the index department at Wizards of the Coast should be, again, ejected into space.

So, what’s great about these things is you have this material now on your iPad, your phone, your laptop and you are able to search through and index through yourself. You can create your own bookmarks. It works beautifully. It’s very quick. It has all the art. It’s just really useful, particularly if you’re DMing kind of the way that a lot of people do DM now with a laptop or an iPad.

So, one bummer is I don’t know – I think if you bought the Player Handbook I don’t know if you can just then get the Player Handbook into – because the idea is you download, you pay for the content. So they give you the structure of it and they give you some freebies, but the big stuff you have to pay for that content, so you may end up paying for things twice. But I’ve lived my entire life paying for things four times, because I forget about them. I have like seven copies of a certain book just because I keep forgetting. So, no big deal for me. For you it may be annoying.

But, if you are a DM or a player and you hate that index, and you should, check out D&D Beyond.

**John:** Yeah. So you only recently started using it and I was surprised, a little horrified, to see you sitting back there with your iPad. But it does make sense. And it is just much faster to be able to find that stuff in such a thing. So I don’t actually have it yet. You would think I’d be the first person to have used it and I’m not. But I probably will get there.

I enjoy reading my D&D books at night. And I try not to use screens after a certain hour. So, I may still buy the books and buy the additional copies because why not.

**Craig:** Yeah, why not? There are things where the book is actually a little bit easier, but when someone says, “OK,” this is so nerdy, “Sorry cool people, but some druid says ok I’m wild, I’m taking the wild shape of a grizzly bear,” whatever.

**John:** Get those stats.

**Craig:** What are the bear stats? Well, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip through the Monster Manual, because it turns out they’re in the back. They’re not under bear at all.

**John:** But some of them might actually be in the Player’s Handbook because they’re actually normal animals, they’re not special animals.

**Craig:** So, this way I just go “bear” and it comes up and it shows me. So, it’s much better. There you go. There you go, Dorks. Be like me. D&D Beyond.

**John:** Craig, while we’re talking about bears, something I just blogged about today. What is the difference between bear spray and pepper spray?

**Craig:** I don’t even know what bear spray is.

**John:** Oh, you’ve never heard of bear spray?

**Craig:** No, what’s bear spray?

**John:** Bear spray may be a very Colorado thing, but bear spray is for fending off grizzly bears who are about to attack you.

**Craig:** That makes sense.

**John:** It’s like a big can of stuff.

**Craig:** Well bear spray is maybe like mace? And pepper spray is made of peppers?

**John:** So, it turns out they’re the same thing. But which do you think is stronger?

**Craig:** Well, this feels like a trick question. But I’m not meta gaming this. I’m going to say pepper spray and here’s why. Many years ago my wife’s cousin, Joe, he was 14. Joe by the way lives in Seattle. Maybe he’ll come see us at our show.

**John:** So he’s still alive in this story?

**Craig:** Oh yeah. A little troublemaker he was. And we were all in his step-father’s house. It was a Christmas. And there were like all the leftover presents. And I think someone had gotten his stepmom a gift of pepper spray, kind of as a gag gift.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** But it was all sitting in a pile. And all the kids were sitting around, you know, the 14 to 28 year olds are sitting around, chatting. And suddenly one of them starts coughing and can’t stop coughing. And I think it’s pretty funny. It’s funny when people start coughing. But then Melissa started coughing. And then I started coughing. And I’m like something is terribly wrong here. And we looked around and there was Joe sitting there with this “ooh, damn” look on his face. And all he had done was one squirt into the air. Not even towards us. He just wanted to put it in the air and see what would happen.

And just a few particles kind of like wafted over. And we were in paroxysms from like the tiniest bit. Joe. So, is that right, is it pepper spray?

**John:** It is pepper spray. But it turns out they are the exact same ingredients. It’s just the dosage in the bear stuff is much, much lower because you use it for a very different purpose. So you spray this big wide cloud that sort of keeps the bear at bay and keeps the bear from charging. Versus pepper spray which you spray directly at somebody as a targeted thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s basically bears are smarter than humans. If you just sort of go, “Look bear, this is going to be slightly uncomfortable,” he’s like, eh, I’m good. I’ll go eat someone else. But humans are terrible. If you don’t incapacitate a bad person they’ll keep coming.

**John:** They will keep coming. That is our show for this week. As always it is produced by Megan McDonnell, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by James Launch and Jim Bond again. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. If you want to find us on Twitter Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe to podcasts, wherever you’re listening to this right now. If you leave us a rating that helps people find the show which is great.

People put us on lists of like best podcasts and–

**Craig:** Ooh.

**John:** That’s so lovely. Thank you for that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Ooh.

**John:** You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts. I talked to somebody this week who is deaf who reads all the transcripts and so it’s so great that we have a person who gets to experience the podcast that way. So, that’s awesome.

You can find back episodes of this show at Scriptnotes.net. You subscribe there and you can get all the back episodes, the bonus episodes, as well.

**Craig:** Cool.

**John:** Our next two shows will be live shows, so we’ll have the William Goldman The Princess Bride conversation and the live show in Seattle.

**Craig:** Awesome. I will see you at our next event. Bye.

**John:** Thanks, bye.

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