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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/creating-a-visual-language).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. So today’s episode was recorded way back in January, pre-pandemic. I sat down with writer-director Lorene Scafaria and costume designer Mitchell Travers to talk about their collaboration on Hustlers and how to think visually about story. In this conversation we discuss locations, production design, cinematography, choreography, and some major focus on preproduction and the role of the writer.

We had a great audience with great questions. And I am suddenly so nostalgic for being in a room with strangers. So, listen to this conversation. I think you’ll really enjoy it and you’ll get a lot out of it. Craig would get a lot out of it because he’s always such a big fan of visual description of characters and really thinking visually about what you’re writing.

Now, Premium members stick around after the credits because I Skype with Mitchell seven months after the fact to answer a few more question that didn’t get answered that night, really about how screenwriters should be thinking about what their characters are wearing and the things he notices in scripts as a costume designer that drive him crazy. Just what research you need to do, what stuff you should not include. So I thought it’s a really good addendum to the conversation we had with Mitchell and Lorene.

So, that’s our show. I hope you enjoy it. It was a great conversation. Lorene is fantastic. Mitchell was a great find. And we’ll be back next week with a normal episode. Enjoy.

Hi everyone and welcome. It’s so exciting to be here. Lorene, I saw you right before the holidays because we talked about your amazing movie Hustlers on Scriptnotes, the holiday show. So we talked about the origin of the movie. We talked about how you got it all made. Let’s do the quickest recap for folks who didn’t listen to that episode. The quick recap of how Hustlers came to be as a movie.

**Lorene Scafaria:** It was a writing assignment. So I was sent the article the summer of 2016. Went in and gave my spiel for how I would adapt it to the screen. I was told to stop talking about wanting to direct it so I could get the writing job, so I tried. And then worked on a few drafts of the script. Then kind of waited patiently while they sent the script to a lot of other people. And I think it took 10 months to just get the meeting to put myself out there to direct it.

Got that. Then worked to get Jennifer Lopez on board. The movie kind of fell apart a number of times. We had a home, we lost a home. We brought it around town the week of the Kavanaugh hearings. And that was hard. And then STX, they were kind of the only place that got it, and stepped up and kind of saved the day. And then I still worked on a few more drafts of the script, kind of page one rewrites.

And then they green lit in mid-January 2019. And I had to move to New York and that was it.

**John:** You’re off to the races. So, you are a phenomenal screenwriter and people can read the screenplay that you wrote and they should read the screenplay you wrote because you wrote a phenomenal screenplay. We’re not going to talk anymore about that really tonight. This is not a night about talking about you as a screenwriter. This is a night about talking about you as a director. Because in our previous conversations we’ve talked about sort of origin and story and character and these points – and these are all things that a director would care about. But I really want to talk about the visual language of this movie and sort of how you marshalled all these talents together to create the movie that we’re watching, the movie that we’re seeing.

And I want to start with Mitchell and sort of how you came on board in this process. How did you find him? What was the connection here?

**Lorene:** Eighth Grade. Mitchell was working on that. I know the guy who made it. And so I sort of just told Mitchell I’m so sorry you’re doing this movie that I’m going to someday actually see made, Hustlers, so you had no choice. I’m so sorry.

**Mitchell Travers:** I never did.

**Lorene:** And that was it. I just loved his work. I thought he made these pieces in that film so iconic, that green bathing suit, and so many little moments of like girl culture. And, yeah, that was the origin really.

**Mitchell:** I remember we were on the set of Eighth Grade and I had had a wonderful conversation with Lorene. And moments later Bo came up and he was like, “So you’re doing Lorene’s movie?” And I was like, what? No one had ever talked to me about a movie and he was like, “Oh, it’s a stripper movie. She said you’re doing it.” And I just went along with it and I figured why not. I’ve never seen a stripper movie like this, so yeah, let’s go.

**John:** So what are the initial conversations? Did you send him the script? How do you start a conversation with a costume designer about sort of what the wardrobe look of a movie is going to be?

**Lorene:** Yeah, I sent him the script. And I mean it really is a movie told through wardrobe. It really is kind of the essential partner in storytelling honestly with this film. So, there were a lot of lines in the script about Destiny’s jewelry making noise in order to show her anxiety or nervousness or how uncomfortable she is during a scene. So, there were things in there that I think Mitchell picked up on right away. And, yeah, the sort of fun of this very recent period piece. I think that was a lot of what we talked about.

**Mitchell:** We share a love for or a nostalgia for this time and it can be looked down upon and it can be sort of trashy and unglamorous. But there was something about it that we just kept loving. And I would send her pictures of like Kim Kardashian with the ugliest handbag in the world, with just like heart emojis. And she would get it instantly.

And we sort of always had that shared joy about these amazing mistakes that we all made as a culture. You all did it. So, it was just a love letter to that time in our lives and these women’s lives.

**John:** So, both of you had to do a tremendous amount of research obviously to figure out time wise, because your memory fails you. You have to be able to do the research to figure out what was the look, what was happening in culture at this time. Lorene, what was your research process for figuring out what those specific time periods were like? Because there’s really two time frames we’re looking at. There’s a forward in time from when Destiny starts working at the club, but then we’re jumping forward to when she’s talking to the journalist. So, how do you approach those timelines?

**Lorene:** Well, my eyebrows never grew back from this era. So it started with making sure that Constance Wu was comfortable with tweezing her eyebrows into oblivion. Yeah, I mean, the research is certainly looking at old photographs. I think we forget what we were wearing in that time period. I think the style icons who were around during that time period. That’s part of the fun of having Jennifer Lopez even in this movie is taking like that–

**John:** She was probably taking cues – that character was taking cues from what Jennifer Lopez was wearing in the real world.

**Lorene:** That was her style icon for sure was Jennifer Lopez. But we had others in the mix. Miley Cyrus.

**Mitchell:** Miley Cyrus. Nicole Richie is like a goddess to me. And there were just really embarrassing things that happened between Paris and Nicole that I found a kinship to that relationship pretty early on. And then once you start it’s like a black hole that you can’t get out of because there’s Tila Tequila. There’s Flavor of Love. There’s early Beyoncé. And it’s just like this wealth of imagery.

**John:** So you have this imagery. What is the process of sharing this imagery? We’re trying to be really concrete in these things. Is it a Dropbox folder that you’re sharing? How are you getting this information back and forth between the two of you?

**Mitchell:** I use a website and it’s password protected and I have it for anybody that I’m collaborating with. And I also use it for my team as well, so that if you can’t get me or if somebody remembers an image that I showed them they can access it. I find that the idea of having boards is lovely, but the way we make movies, and especially the way we made this movie it was happening at such a pace that it had to be in your pocket at all times.

So I would put different boards together for each character. And update them – I would start to include the fitting photos in the research so that they sort of meld and you keep the ideas consistent.

**John:** Make sure we all know what fitting photos are of the actual actor in that wardrobe?

**Mitchell:** Correct. I outfitted out fitting room with Girls Girls Girls signs and these neon lights to try to create an atmosphere, to get the girls comfortable. So all of our fitting photos were done in that romantic light that we ended up using. But all of the fitting photos are just no hair, no makeup, just costumes, and trying to get people into the bones of these characters.

**Lorene:** And that’s a lot of it is making sure that obviously they feel comfortable in what they’re wearing, but also I mean these outfits are anything but comfortable. So much of the costume is the skin itself. But he’s right about the pace. It really was crazy. You certainly had some people there to fit them ahead of time and others not necessarily. A lot of lead up to it.

But it was one of those things where in order to control the color palette even a little bit, I said to Mitchell early on it might be good to have an obstruction, like what if there’s no green in this movie other than money. And I think we stuck to that.

**Mitchell:** We did.

**Lorene:** There’s some jade in there. I don’t know how you got it in there.

**Mitchell:** It’s the one dress. It’s the one dress.

**John:** So talk to me about obstructions. Because this is a conversation – this is a thing you’ll see in many movies, now that we’ve put this in your head you’re going to watch them and you realize a color is missing, or there’s this specific color palette for this past time period or this present time period. How early did you make some of those decisions? And was it just you? Is there a production designer who is involved? Who else is involved in those decisions?

**Lorene:** Yeah, it’s all of us. It’s the production designer, DP, Mitchell, costume designer, certainly that’s the main group who is deciding the look of it. I think early on I kind of had said to everybody it felt like the production design needed to be as grounded as possible. And the wardrobe felt like an opportunity to be a little more heightened. And that the camera felt like depending on a moment could dip between the two.

So we kind of started there. Color palette, again it’s kind of difficult. The truth is the richer you get the more color drains from your body.

**John:** Tell me more about that. What do you mean by that?

**Lorene:** I mean, I think if you go into those spaces, I mean, there’s certainly a contrast with Wall Street and the men and what they’re wearing. You got your blues and, you know. And I think that we have a progression of wealth for the women as well.

**John:** When we see Constance Wu in the future timeline she’s drained and she’s white and she’s in a white suit.

**Lorene:** She’s presenting herself as good as she can in this very clean environment.

**Mitchell:** That actually comes from Lindsay Lohan at court.

**John:** Nice.

**Mitchell:** And it’s true. And another day we fell down the rabbit hole and we started looking at what these women were wearing to their court appearances, because they were frequent at this time. And it was, you know, we found that there was this projection of innocence all the time where it was the days of Just Jared and Perez Hilton. So you could track the timestamps. The night before you would see a mesh top with the bra sticking out and the next morning you would see an all-white ensemble. And we just loved this idea that you can project the idea that you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, even though those photos of the night before.

**Lorene:** The sobering reality of it, too. I mean, the contrast obviously throughout the film, but then it kind of catches up to itself. And by the end of the film I think the women, too, are in much more subdued colors.

**John:** You have Mitchell on board. How are you assembling the rest of your team? So I’m talking sort of your DP, your production designer, your art director. How are you putting these people together and what are the conversations you’re having with them and are they having with each other? How do you foster that teamwork?

**Lorene:** I met with so many DPs and talent and this position just kind of didn’t necessarily line up. And I remember I was about to pull the trigger on hiring someone, the nicest, most talented person that I had come across. Because the shorthand is so important and the relationship is so important. And it’s often contentious. And it doesn’t have to be.

And so I remember I was on the phone with Mitchell. It was actually our first like official conversation. So we probably should have been diving into a lot of things. I think we did a little bit. But that day after I had thought I was going to pull the trigger on someone I saw that Janelle Monáe video Make Me Feel and I was like who the hell shot this. And who is she? And her name was Todd Banhazl. But I was–

**John:** Why did you assume she was a woman?

**Lorene:** I don’t know. Just the aesthetic of it. The way that he shot women and their relationships and their bodies. I don’t know. I mean, that’s limited of me. Men can make great things. So sorry.

So I was on the phone with Mitchell and he said who is going to shoot this and I was like, ehhh, and then you said you have to meet Todd. He just happened to say it.

**Mitchell:** I had done a film with Todd. It was a very small film. But it was shot so romantically, even though the subject didn’t ask that of it. And frankly I hadn’t even really seen him since, but his work stayed with me from that film. And as I read Hustlers I just kept thinking like this is Todd. This is Todd’s movie. We were trying to figure out what was going to happen with this and I just felt that she didn’t feel like she had it yet. I was like this is my shot. It’s got to be Todd. Maybe he’s working. Maybe he doesn’t remember me. But this is his movie.

**Lorene:** You don’t understand. I had already called to say tell blah-blah-blah, you know, he’s hired. And so Mitchell said Todd and then I realized it was the same person whose music video I was like fawning over earlier that day. And I was like I’ve got to go. I have to hang up the phone—

**Mitchell:** She literally did.

**Lorene:** Stop the presses.

**Mitchell:** I was like she did Janelle Monáe’s video. And she was like, “I’ll call you back.”

**John:** So we’re going to talk first off about the DP relationship and what shooting and camera and all that stuff. So Todd couldn’t come tonight, but we’re going to talk through as if Todd were here and really look at that. But this idea of this being a romance is something I want to get into tonight and talk about. Because in many ways this does feel like a romance. It feels like Destiny and Ramona and their complicated relationship and yearning for approval and affection. In the writing and in how you were shooting it was that informing your choices?

**Lorene:** Yeah. It’s a love story. I think it informed so many drafts along the way. It was something that I think was discovered. I think the article paints the relationship between the women much more of like a business type relationship, more like partners. The minute I met Constance I thought there was going to be a really interesting dynamic between her and Jennifer, this sort of mentor/mentee relationship, but also mother/daughter, but also falling in love.

Yeah. I think as the process went along there was a point where I sort of felt like I needed to smash the script on the ground and so I opened up the title page and wrote Destiny and Ramona in its place. And kind of went from there. And that draft wasn’t what we ended up with, but so many scenes, the training sequences, little things that happen between them, how much of their relationship unfolded in that love story came from that.

So, yeah, and through the editing process it just became more and more clear that everything – certainly if it wasn’t about money and all the other things, the capitalism, everything else that it’s about, it really was grounded so much by this relationship and that longing and that want and that thing, that intimacy that women have. And how you lose one of those relationships it’s kind of worse than a divorce.

**John:** All right. We’re going to take our first clip and we’re actually going to go out of order. We’re going to look at clip two. This is where Destiny first sees Ramona at the club and sort of first sparks – this is how they begin. This is about page eight I think on your screenplay. But before we actually play it, let me read you what you actually wrote in the screenplay.

So if you were to read her screenplay–

**Lorene:** Yikes. What draft is this?

**John:** “Destiny turns to see Ramona, ten years older than Destiny, take the main stage like a boxer entering the ring. Ramona dances, commanding the room. The crowd is wild, throwing money until the stage is covered. Destiny is mesmerized.

“Ramona finishes her routine with one final flourish, smacks an armful of money to her chest, then steps offstage. Destiny watches in awe as Ramona crosses the room. All different guys reaching out. Ramona looks them in the eyes, whispers in their ears, and glides away with cash in hand.

“Destiny can’t look away as Ramona walks by and turns to her. ‘Doesn’t money make you horny?’ Destiny goes to respond, but Ramona is already gone. Off Destiny’s face we cut to the rooftop.

“Ramona sits against a skylight in her fur coat smoking. The club noise is drowned out by the silence of the city.”

Film is a visual medium. And I love doing a podcast, but I can’t talk about – that scene is not a podcast scene. That is a visual scene. Just remarkable. And that was the moment where I watched this movie and I was so happy and excited that I was watching this movie. Because it’s so terrific. And then we cut to the rooftop and she’s wearing the fur coat and it’s just amazing. An iconic moment.

But talk to me about the decisions that lead up to what we just watched. And so I want to start with just the design of the club. Because she’s backlit by the lights. How do you design that club? Is it a set? Is it a practical? What are we watching there when we’re inside the club?

**Lorene:** It’s a real strip club. It’s a real strip club in Long Island City. We could never have gotten the scope of that. We could never have afforded to build anything even close to that.

So we found a real place that had a layout that helped for an earlier scene, the first scene in the film where we’re following Destiny from the locker room out onto the floor.

**John:** That long Steadicam-ish shot.

**Lorene:** Yes. A one-take. Much like 1917, if you’ve seen that.

**John:** [laughs] It is basically 1917.

**Lorene:** It’s basically that. Very similar. War like. We actually did talk about it as a war film. I’m not kidding. So that’s how we chose this club. It had that incredible wall of that panel of LED lights behind it.

**John:** Oh, so you didn’t build that?

**Lorene:** No, no. That we didn’t build. But we did extend the stage. We turned that into that sort of big round. It was kind of just a little square at the end there. I’m trying to remember.

**John:** When is the conversation about you doing this? Is it a production designer?

**Lorene:** Mm-hmm. It’s all of us.

**John:** It’s everyone together.

**Lorene:** It’s mostly production design and our DP. I’m trying to figure out what we need. How can we best light her body to highlight the athleticism of it, to show the fantasy of it? For me there’s a theme of control that runs through the movie. So we just supplied that to the camera as well. And so a scene like that was one where Ramona is in control of where the camera is.

**John:** So you’re not watching Ramona. She is making you see her.

**Lorene:** Yes. That’s right.

**John:** It’s very much an active control of this. And so what is your conversation with Todd about lenses on her and sort of what it’s all like? Because the coverage of Destiny is pretty straightforward. We’re doing the push-ins and we’re seeing her point of view. But what is the conversation about how you’re focusing on Ramona?

**Lorene:** Well, so I have to back up. The thing that you read was probably even a later draft, like our shooting script once we knew that we were stepping out that scene. Because I really did write it like she sees Ramona up on stage doing one final flourish, and then it was more about watching her walk across the room like Goodfellas when Henry Hill is watching De Niro’s character for the first time, sort of tipping everybody out as he’s walking through the room. And instead Ramona is taking money as she walks through.

And so I thought it was much more about Destiny seeing those interactions. And I wasn’t relying on oh god the actor we get is going to be a dancer for three decades and she’s going to pole train for six weeks and do this incredible routine. So that was not the plan. This was not the plan at all. And then Jennifer said, you know, “I want to do it. I think it’s a really important thing to see this moment.” And she was not wrong.

And so Todd and I didn’t see that dance until two weeks before we had to shoot it, which was like the last week of our shoot. So we were at midpoint, right when you’re just sweating and like are we going to finish this on time. And so we saw that routine. She had worked with our pole choreographer, Johanna Sapakie. The song was one of those things that was–

**John:** I’ve actually watched the YouTube video where they talk through the training of it all and it’s remarkable. So she starts from kind of not being able to do the movements and puts it together, but she is an athlete. And so she’s able to do it.

**Lorene:** Well, she’s Jennifer Lopez. So, I don’t know, she’s in better shape than any human person. And she throws herself fully into this and really felt committed to what this scene was. But, still, you know, you don’t know how important is this? Are we really going to watch a two-minute dance? I was actually a little bit worried about the narrative and are we losing the narrative at this point.

And so that was one of those things that then once we saw it and we got our jaws off the ground we were like oh my god how we do pull this off and shoot it like the stunt that it is, but also like the live even that it was. Because that’s Jennifer Lopez stripping in front of 300 extras who we had to vet and make sure they’re good guys and everyone has got their phones in their pockets and stuff.

But no one even spoke about it. It was actually the most respectful group of people ever.

**John:** So we say strip, but she’s wearing an outfit. She’s wearing the outfit that you designed for her. So this is the first time that we’re going to see her do this thing. What is the conversation you have with Lorene, with the actor about what this moment is going to look like?

**Mitchell:** It was always like the costume that we’re all like what is that going to be. You know, how do we match what she’s doing with a costume? The beginning of the film sets up the locker room to be this place that is sort of a cacophony of costumes and the answer as it usually is is just less. And so when we got to the Ramona of it all it was like what can be no color, very few straps. How can I take this thing to be almost nonexistent?

There is an amazing photo of Jennifer in 2007 and she has about 1,500 silver bangles on her body and earrings the size of her face and I love it. And I found that one image as we were looking for Ramona influences and I was like it’s silver. It has to be this silver. And I tried a million different shapes on her, different things. Where are we going to cut the body? Where is it most appealing? What makes you feel best? What makes you feel safe? All things like that you have to ask of this costume.

And I couldn’t find it. It didn’t really exist. I had ideas of other costumes, where I would take the fringe of something or the neckline of something else and I was like, OK, we’re going to build this thing. And so I drew on a piece of people on my tailor’s table. We got it together. It fits in my hand. I showed it to Jennifer at the one fitting. We had sort of saved the club wear fitting until the end until we were really good with one another. And so she walked in and I’m holding this string. And I said I really believe in this. I really think that this is the answer.

And so she said, “OK, baby, let’s see.” And she put it on, she turned to me, and she just kind of looked at me like “let’s go.” And there was a boldness to it. There was a confidence to it. There was a movement to it. And it kind of just answered a lot of the questions I had been asking myself for weeks. I had this amazing fitting photo that I mentioned. And I just sent it to Lorene and I was like I just have to let her know. Because she’s either going to be obsessed with it or hate it instantly. And I got a pretty quick reaction out of Lorene, so I was like, OK, it works. That’s it.

**Lorene:** Yeah, I died. I don’t know. I couldn’t believe it. And I thought the coat and the hat, it was a really great little throwback to—

**Mitchell:** The Pussycat Dolls.

**Lorene:** Yes, exactly.

**John:** So a choice in a movie that is about stripping, a natural instinct would be sort of like take clothes off as the movie goes along, and you sort of do the opposite. She appears onscreen in sort of the least we’re ever going to see her in, and that is the height of her power. And the rest of the movie more things are being added as the relationship becomes deeper. Did you know that from the start or how do you get to those?

**Lorene:** Yeah, I mean, we certainly had so many approaches to it. It was the kind of thing where I thought we should see the most – I mean, this is a topless club in theory. We should see the most nudity back in the locker room where it’s really mundane frankly. I feel like we don’t see that kind of regular old nudity very often and so I was really interested in that and seeing how the girls interact with each other and their comfort levels with their bodies. And then the show of it and then the spectacle of it. What amount of it is out on the floor? What amount of it is out on the stage? What amount of it is back in the champagne rooms?

And so, yeah, again the theme of control. How much is someone in their bodies and the interaction – there’s other scenes where Ramona and Destiny are working in a champagne room together and–

**John:** That’s the most sexualized moment between the two of them.

**Lorene:** Yeah. And you see that they’re using it against him, really. So, a lot of that, we talked about the weaponization of it. What you wear for other people. What you wear for yourself. What you wear for each other. And how you influence each other.

**Mitchell:** We actively worked at something which I hope registers for some audience members, but sometimes when you see women wearing the least is when they’re putting on their clothes to go home. So we would work at someone putting on a pair of sweatpants, and then their bra, their jacket, their coat. And then living. So it wasn’t about revealing for somebody else. It was about finishing your job and going home.

**John:** So let’s take a look at another clip. And in this one I want to talk about the relationship between the two of them, as it goes from this initial sort of flush of the love story to a second level. We talk about weaponizing what they’re doing. This is literally creating a weapon, creating a drug, and a whole new plan for how they’re going to make money off of this. The hustle takes a new turn.

So, first, let’s take a look at this, and then I really want to dive deep into what we’re seeing onscreen. I want to start with the scene in the bar, the restaurant there. And your conversations with your DP, Todd, about this moment and sort of what you’re looking for. And I want to get really concrete and detail in terms of your setups.

So you’re in this place. It’s a practical location. It’s not a set.

**Lorene:** Yeah.

**John:** And so why did you choose to cover it the way you did and let’s talk through what the actual shots and angles are that you used to get that scene.

**Lorene:** I talked to Todd how I felt like this is actually the tightest we are on them, at least up until this point in the film. This sounds very strange. We referenced First Man. I would talk about being inside the ship. And this is one of those inside the ship moments where I felt like it was very important that we were inside the table with them. We were on kind of long lenses.

**John:** So there’s very shallow backgrounds there. You’re shooting into glass so you have to make sure that you’re not getting reflections and other weird stuff that you could see the outside and see the inside.

**Lorene:** We’re controlling the foot traffic outside but nothing else really. It was tough in a way because I just think this was the acting – this was the way to showcase their–

**John:** There’s nothing to hide there.

**Lorene:** That’s it.

**John:** A question for you, Mitchell. We’re so tight here. Do you save a great outfit because you know you’re not going to see all of it in a shot like this?

**Mitchell:** I actually had something completely different planned for this. And I will always go and just check the shot before as I start to get people dressed. And when I realized this is really a jewelry shot and it’s a shoulder shot. And Todd, like most DPs, loves wet pavement. Loves it. There was a conversation once where we were going to be able to see that out the window and Todd was really excited about that and just getting in there that day it was not going to happen. And so I was like I have that coat which does that which Todd wants in the scene, and I love it.

And if I can just get even the glint of that. The imagery that he was trying to use, I can do that for him with just a coat.

**Lorene:** Costume wet down.

**John:** So earrings are you. So you are responsible for earrings. I always get confused sort of the breakdown of hair and makeup.

**Lorene:** So did we.

**John:** So Jennifer Lopez’s stud here is makeup.

**Mitchell:** Correct.

**John:** So it’s complicated. Where the piercing is depends on whose department it is.

**Mitchell:** Correct.

**John:** So you know you’re in tight. And are you telling the actors at the start of the day how you’re planning to shoot it? What is your approach?

**Lorene:** I would always for the most part text if there’s not time for me to go to a trailer and talk to anybody in person. I would often text and say what the plan was for the day and what the sequence of events would be. So there were no surprises.

The truth is we shot this whole movie in 29 days so there just really wasn’t any time. Todd and I shot-listed everything, but still wanted to be spontaneous and leave room for things. And we certainly would adjust things. So that is what this scene really is. There’s something very human about how we’re seeing them. We’re seeing them close up. We’re seeing the makeup from earlier.

**John:** Yeah. The goal is really to see makeup. Because so often in films you’re not supposed to be able to notice the makeup. You’re so close here that you can’t help but see–

**Lorene:** You want to. I mean, I was desperate to see that. And, I mean, Jennifer looks 30 years old so it’s really hard to even make her look her age. And this was that kind of gritty moment for her. A very real moment for this character. But sort of wild-eyed. She needs to make a lot of sense even when she’s not making a lot of sense. So, yeah, we tried to keep it really grounded like that moment with the waitress coming in. Obviously there’s no reason to see this waitress–

**John:** So you’re dirty singles so that people can move into shots so you get a sense that they really are across from each other.

**Lorene:** That’s right.

**John:** Now, the contrast between that and we’re suddenly in the bar and it’s all happy and kind of a fantasy thing and you’re going for sort of the joke of the whip pan to reveal the other women that is such a contrast of tone deliberately. You know that you’re starting a whole kind of heist adventure when you move there.

**Lorene:** That bar, that was a big fight with Todd and Jane Muskey, the production designer. I think they fell in love with this other bar for other reasons and this place for me was just all of it. It was all about the blocking. It was all about that runway, that sort of tarmac for the women to land in from the front door. This corner of this bar where this man can sit in the corner and be surrounded by them. Then we used a dance floor instead of a track. You know, we’re on a dolly but we were able to kind of float around and kind of – even though we’re not going all the way around them it was still giving that kind of boozy quality and letting Gary kind of feel surrounded by these women and distracted enough while Ramona is doing her thing.

So, yeah.

**John:** Great. So without sound we’re able to follow what this conversation kind of is. We see that this woman is bullying and trying to convince her into something. The other woman is – if I were watching this on a plane and didn’t have my headphones in I could figure out kind of what was happening here and what the pressure was. And that’s because of the shots you picked and you how you shot this.

**Lorene:** Yeah. And I think moments like that, the waitress breaking it up, allowing for this intimacy, to see two characters interacting with someone differently. It’s all about their proximity. At this point, again, earlier in the movie we saw the diner itself. So we knew the lay of the land. And at this point it just doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but being in there with them, with this private conversation.

**John:** Mitchell, great work on the earrings and on the jacket shoulder. We’re noticing the wet pavement aspect.

**Mitchell:** One is formed under intense pressure and the other wants to take off.

**John:** Mitchell, you talked before about wardrobe having a heightened sort of fantasy quality. So, the clothes that they’re wearing is a little beyond what they might be able to afford. And so we’re seeing the women walk into the bar, is that an example of that? Where they’re dressed up a little bit more than they might be able to afford? What was your decision there?

**Mitchell:** In conversations with Lorene it was important to remember that this is the way that someone is telling a story versus the way that things happened. So, in moment like this where we knew that any man that they’re taking on would kind of be looking all over and trying to suss up what’s happening to them. I tried to use dresses that had metal hardware all over them and odd straps and things that would just catch your eye so you’re distracted. You’re a little disoriented. It feels gorgeous, but you’re not really sure of what you’re seeing.

And the same thing works with the nails on the face. All of the trappings of feminine dress that can be distracting and can also be used as tools in this scene.

**Lorene:** I feel like her snake earrings at the beginning is very Garden of Eden. I don’t know. Maybe.

**Mitchell:** Yes.

**John:** Yes. Deliberate choice. I’ll always say like, yes, that was the exact thinking behind those earrings.

**Lorene:** [laughs] That was exactly it.

**Mitchell:** Honestly the snake earrings came from a photo of Ashanti that I just always treasure.

**Lorene:** Garden of Eden.

**Mitchell:** And, again, that’s one of those moments, I always wear a coat on set. It’s like my lab coat basically. And I’ll have rings, earrings, clear bra straps, things like that on this movie. And so I’ll go in and I’ll dress to the shot because I know that that’s the way that Lorene makes a movie.

**John:** Can you talk to me about your team. Because this movie is shot in New York. You work in New York and Los Angeles. You work wherever. How do you assemble the team who is going to be able to help you do this? Because you may have a vision but you have to have a lot of people there to help you do things. What does your team look like?

**Mitchell:** Definitely. No costume designer can do what they do on their own. And a lot of times we get the credit for a group of like 35 people’s work, so it’s important to say things like this. On this movie I had three assistant designers who worked with me. I had a wardrobe supervisor who handles the continuity and the maintenance of the clothes. We don’t see everything, but you feel everything. And Lorene and I really fought to dress every single person in the club so that you felt – just you caught little pops of Ed Hardy. You caught little pops of terrible jeans with rhinestones on the back pockets and things like that.

So while you may not remember every part of it, you’ll feel like you were there and you remember all of those bad things. So, on this movie one of my assistants was completely in charge of background. You know, dress shoes had square toes. All those little things that add up. And the way that Lorene and Todd shoot a movie you then have shoes the size of a billboard, which we’re all dissecting here at this conversation.

So it all matters and I need to rely heavily on my team to make sure that if I can’t look at every toe on every dress shoe somebody is, because it all counts.

**John:** How much of this movie are you shopping and how much of the movie are you sewing?

**Mitchell:** I always start with what’s out there. And the weird thing about this movie is you can’t go to a rental house in LA. There’s no 2007 aisle. It’s not in a thrift store because it’s at this weird moment that no one really cared about at the time that I was making it. Now Zara is doing this. But at the time that we were doing it it was really difficult to find. And so I found it in the extremes. I found things at Burlington Coat Factory. I found things in people’s closets. Or I found things from vintage dealers who were prepping their stock for a few years from now.

And so I was going to them like I need the multi-color Louis Vuitton speedy that’s this size. And they were like, “Why? Who has that?” And I’m like please ask. I need it. I really do need it. So it came from all over the place, all of the shop stuff.

And there are only so many clothes in the world. There is a different costume in every scene of this movie. I did my first breakdown on a plane and I texted Lorene when I landed and I was like, Jesus, Lorene, there’s like thousands of costumes in this movie. And she was like, I know, it’s part of it. And at some point I ran out of clothes and I would have to say, OK, then we’re going to dye this dress. We’re going to add straps to this. We’re going to add hardware. This is now a skirt. You know, you just have to make enough clothing to dress Lorene’s women.

**John:** So let’s talk about Lorene’s women in the locker room. So this club you picked had a locker room which you could actually do a continuous shot from. Early on and later on in the show we’re seeing the women backstage. And so it’s the moment where we have the most sort of casual nudity, but also just so many women together. And as I watched it you’re shooting into mirrors. There’s a bunch of women, there’s a lot of stuff happening.

Lorene, how many women are in that locker room?

**Lorene:** I don’t know. I feel like it’s 15 speaking roles, but maybe I’m exaggerating.

**John:** It’s a lot of people in a small space. And no one is wearing green. So you kept the green out of there. Thank you very much for that.

**Lorene:** Thank you.

**John:** Talk to me about your motivation going into that and also the blocking and the planning for that because you have so many moving bodies. You want it to feel natural. But you’re also shooting into mirrors. There’s a lot happening there. So talk to me about–

**Lorene:** Yeah, it was chaos. And, I mean, we were four days in the club. So this was I think our last day in the club. Our Cardi day. Our Lizzo day.

**Mitchell:** This was the most insane day of my life to this date. We shot – like the biggest chunk of the movie. The Usher sequence. We shot this that day. We shot that long shot where she goes from the locker room all the way through the club. So we had like a few hundred extras. We had all of this talent on set. And the call sheet was like terrifying. And we all just took it one step at a time.

**Lorene:** This was one of those scenes, too, where we knew we wanted to capture something alive and real and let the women talk over each other. When I watch it it’s miraculous how much of that is scripted to be totally honest. I mean, I want to give them full credit for lines they made their own and there’s certainly some improvisations in there. But actually to their credit, to people’s credit, like Cardi and Lizzo, they’re also really delivering scripted lines.

But, yes, making it their own. We had two cameras going. It was sheer chaos. When I say that part of – like some of the things are the only time we got that line on camera. Some of those moments are like that was it. And I’m glad that it feels the way that it does and I was certainly checking things off as I was going and knowing, OK, we got that, we got that.

But in a way it was like how do we capture this thing. So we had the cameras rolling before anyone started to deliver the lines, before Jennifer entered. And we had two boom guys, because we didn’t have lavs on anyone.

**John:** Well, where are you going to hide a lav?

**Mitchell:** Exactly. I met the sound guy once.

**Lorene:** They were running around like crazy trying to hide. Everyone is trying to hide themselves.

**John:** And you must have blocked some – like some people are standing in front of mirrors deliberately so we can’t see the camera.

**Lorene:** There’s a rack or two that are used because they sell the clothes, the house moms often sell clothes backstage. So we were able to use some racks and there’s some piled up clothes and different things like that. Bodies positioned in certain places. But also we painted out our camera guys.

**John:** In post?

**Lorene:** Yeah.

**John:** After you went through the cut you realized like, OK, this is the shot I need and we have to get rid of–

**Lorene:** Yeah. We had to get rid of some bodies. Well, you know, some guys in black clothes. [laughs] Yeah. And there would be like a mic on the counter that now it looks like a makeup brush. So, visual effects, it’s wonderful. I learned a lot. I learned that you can do that. I mean, we couldn’t afford much of that obviously, so had to be careful, but it was the kind of thing where, oh, if we just – I just wish we got even more of it and weren’t trying to jump out of our own way.

And so, yeah, the chaos of wrangling all that. The blocking that I did was sort of the position of where everybody is and how she enters and who says hello and who they pass and where Diamond is in the room and where Ramona ends up and who sits and who stands. And so we wanted to keep that fluorescent vibe. That really like almost ugly mist of it. Again, a real strip club.

They had painted in there. It was Tiffany Blue. The manager said so that the girls felt expensive. So there was a big written thing on there that said, “Smile and look expensive.” But we painted that, you know, we got rid of that. And still added a lot of, I mean, there’s a lot of markings and writing on the mirror and everything.

**John:** On a day like that which was so busy and so technical and so challenging, how did you remind yourself about what was important in a scene? Because in that scene what is actually crucially important, much more so than even the jokes, is the role of the house mother and Jennifer Lopez telling them like “No, you have to eat some cake” because she made the cake. How do you remind yourself of what’s important?

**Lorene:** By the way, that cake was like 50 pounds.

**Mitchell:** It was crazy.

**Lorene:** It was one of the hardest things to do. I was like I’m so sorry Mercedes Ruehl to make you carry this gigantic cake. I don’t know. I mean, I think we just knew that it was an opportunity to capture the most camaraderie, the most – at this point in the movie we’ve seen Destiny be alone and stripping life can be a solo sport or a team sport. And so Destiny was living the solo sport version of it. And this is the locker room and this is the team and this is that sports movie.

So, we talked about it that way and talked about it League of their Own to The Wrestler. Various movies that kind of capture that spirit between people. And it’s also about girls getting ready. It reminds of my friends and I hanging out in the bathroom, putting on makeup, trying to psyche each other up to go out for the night. I haven’t done that in 20 years, but someday, at some point I remember that.

**John:** But are those conversations you’re having with your principal actors and the other actresses before the cameras start shooting to sort of get that vibe in there? How are you talking through that?

**Lorene:** Yeah. I mean, every time I met an actor to cast them we spoke about all the themes of the movie and why it felt important and what these scenes were trying to represent. So, yes, I’d speak to them about that.

But it was also about capturing that electricity and a lot of it is casting. A lot of it is Jennifer Lopez is Ramona and is like the sun just walked into the room. And how people interact and meet with her. And how sweet Trace Lysette is. And there are real strippers in that scene. Not just background, you know, principals. And standup comedians. And obviously singers, musicians who I think just have that natural timing.

And, you know, Cardi was nervous, obviously. And so it was just about warming everybody up and making sure everybody felt like let’s keep it loose. And so there’s plenty that didn’t make it in there obviously. I wish I could have made an 18-minute version of that scene. But, yeah, there’s plenty that didn’t make it in there.

**John:** This is the time of the evening where we open it up to questions. So, repeating the question, Lorene, do you feel that being a female director changed your ability to get the amazing performances you got out of these women? And did they ever bring that up to you?

**Lorene:** I mean, we had a really balanced set. It was a really wonderful mix of women and men who made this film. We have men and women department heads and lots of men and women on set creating this vibe. Incredibly respectful, wonderful New York crew.

We had things that maybe were added as a result of just me being aware of certain things. Things like a comfort consultant. She was our stripper consultant and also our comfort consultant. She played Jackie. So, I mean, she was invaluable. She was always there for the women to call on to say, you know, what would I do, how would I react to some bad behavior in a club. How would I react if Usher came in the club?

And so Jack was just an incredible source for what to do with your body, what to say, how to slink away from someone maybe or how to use something against someone.

And so things like that maybe were different as a result. I was just highly aware of everyone’s comfort level. But so was our first AD, Colin, who we had so many strippers as background and he was always telling them to put their clothes back and because they were fine and completely comfortable and he was just such a lovely, just respectful person who really like led this incredible team.

To be honest, there’s some fear going into it in a way. An all-female cast. You have so much hair and makeup and wardrobe to contend with. I think people maybe heard bad things about what that environment could be like. And we ended up having just such a lovely group of people.

**John:** You’re also a very experienced director. You probably would have had a very different experience had this been your first movie to direct. You have movies under your belt and you sort of know – you can go into it sort of anticipating what some of the challenges were. This is also a much bigger movie than the other ones you made. We were talking backstage just the size of the cast, the size of all the departments was bigger. What were your conversations with department heads and producers about how to wrangle? Did you get advice from folks who had done bigger movies as well?

**Lorene:** No. No. Honestly, I don’t know, that part of it wasn’t that daunting. It wasn’t as daunting as the hours in the day. As big a budget as it was, it still felt like we were scraping the floor for what was possible in New York City and for a movie that covers this much time and just needs this much stuff. So it was really nice to have toys. I mean, my last movie I was told what day would you like Steadicam. So, you know, this was different than that.

So, you know, toys are nice. And, yeah, and getting to capture New York City the way that we did and getting into these incredible locations and this wardrobe. But my first film was I think maybe $9 million. My second one was like two point something. And this one was like $20 million. So it was different but, you know, all the same.

**John:** You’re still scraping to make that thing happen.

**Lorene:** Yeah. I mean, in a way the whole movie is just an out of control train, you know, and it’s moving, it’s been moving for thousands of years before this one girl’s story begins. And so in a way it was the entire movie was a sequence to us. And so as much as we were able to break it up and think about each scene and, again, that theme of control like you said which we could apply to Ramona in one moment and Destiny’s lack of control in another moment.

So, yeah, it was sort of like a bullet. And we wanted to treat it like that. So we shot-listed everything from beginning to end.

**John:** Well in advance of production you and Todd went through these are our dream shots that we would try to get on the day to tell the story.

**Lorene:** Yes.

**John:** What percentage of those shots did you actually end up making most days?

**Lorene:** Almost all of them.

**John:** All of them, great.

**Lorene:** We just knew we didn’t want to hose down TV coverage constantly. We knew there wasn’t any reason to see it in a way that wasn’t what our protagonists were feeling. So, you know, a scene like that diner scene it wasn’t like we had so many different sizes of those shots. It wasn’t like we had a million different, you know, yes we had a wide that is in the earlier scene in the diner. But then like a nice 50/50 with them. But that was it. We just knew we needed to be precise. We knew that there’s a driving scene where Ramona is driving and it doesn’t feel comfortable. Ramona has her hands on the wheel and it does feel out of control.

And so it was a scene where we had minutes to shoot it before the sun came up. And it was like all that really matters is Destiny’s POV of Ramona really not looking at her in the passenger seat. And us in the back of the car looking at Destiny in the passenger seat. And so we did like two runs, one where the camera is where Destiny is and one where we have a stunt driver driving and so they weren’t even in that scene together.

So there were so many moments where it was like we just have to get exactly what we need. And other moments like the locker room where we were like let’s be a little more loose. We’re handheld. We’ve got two cameras. We’re just trying to capture what we can and move off of people and really feel the fluidity of it. And other moments where the rigidity of it is what we want to express.

**John:** You had a question. So the question is the amazing J-Lo scene that we saw. So what was the coverage on J-Lo’s major dance number?

**Lorene:** We had three cameras. We had a wide right in front of the stage. And then two cameras that were kind of like roving on either side. That was just for the perspective of really looking at her up on the stage. Then we did let’s say two or three takes of that. And I would say two and change basically. If she missed a move we would get it again. You know, if the heel clack was something we’d do it again.

But otherwise then it was about jumping up on stage and being with her. And, again, two cameras I think at that point dancing around each other in order to capture her movement and the spirit of the club. And then setups on Constance.

Yeah, maybe five times? Maybe five times? I did a really cool walkthrough of it to show the guys when they were going to be throwing their money, because it really – I mean, when I say like live event, it really was about when she gets there this room is ready because obviously it was an incredibly vulnerable thing that she was doing. And she also needed to feel the energy coming back to her. I mean, she’s obviously a performer and she needed that. So it wasn’t about just keeping everything quiet so she could do her moves. It was very different from that.

So I did a walkthrough and then was like you’re throwing money, now you’re throwing money. And then our pole choreographer ran through it a couple of times so that our cameras were set up and ready. I think on that first run, was that when that outfit almost snapped off?

**Mitchell:** Sure was.

**Lorene:** I was looking across the room and I was like this is time of death. [laughs]

**Mitchell:** I left my body. I had my team ready with needles and thread because there was a possibility of that happening. There’s only so many points that you can anchor. But, yeah, the first time two strings went flying across the stage and she had to hold on.

**Lorene:** It was a trip. It was my birthday.

**Mitchell:** Sure was.

**John:** Happy Birthday, Lorene.

**Lorene:** Thank you. And the movie fell apart a year earlier on my birthday, so that was nice.

**John:** I saw you shortly after that, yeah.

**Lorene:** You saw me then. Not pretty.

**John:** Back right there. Yes, you. So the question is about obstructions and do you look for obstructions? Are they a helpful thing that you’re seeking out?

**Lorene:** I think for something like this that we knew, I mean, control is the theme of my life as well. So I think for something like this where there was only so much control we could have an actor could try on something and absolutely hate it in that moment and reach for the next thing. And maybe the color palette could have been thrown in that moment. So, and I’m taking it from that movie Five Obstructions, you know, so I’m just using words. Hopefully that means what I think it means.

But, yeah, I think for this it was a way to try to control something that felt almost like it could be out of our control if, again, so many characters in very tiny clothing, you know, wanting to look good but it’s a period piece but it’s all of the above. So, yeah.

**John:** Mitchell, is that a thing you commonly encounter with other directors where they will have a specific mandate of like we’re not going to see this thing, or it has to be this or there’s a structure to how they want things to happen?

**Mitchell:** I feel like every director that I work with is just so different and their process comes from such a different place. The thing I can say about Lorene is that there is a trust with the people that she surrounds herself with, both cast and crew. And so there’s a security in that when you have a director who says like, “We have it,” and all of us feel like then we have it. No one feels like they have one more take or we don’t want to change anything because we believe in her because she believes in us.

**John:** Did you have any rules with Todd in terms of lenses or things the camera was going to be able to do or not be able to do? Did you put any boundaries on what was permissible with the camera or how you were shooting it?

**Lorene:** I don’t think we did. I think, you know, when you’re picking the color palette of a club like this it’s easy to think that pinks and blues are so cliché, but they’re just there. And so there were things like well let’s make that pink like cotton candy pink. And let’s make that blue like aquarium blue. So there are scenes in the private area which are so well designed by Jane Muskey, I can’t even take it. Because we shot in that real club but the champagne room and the private area we built on a stage. So we had a lot of control there and they just frankly didn’t have that at that club.

Yeah, the private area we said this space, I want to see men like fish in an aquarium. And that’s what we did to the lights and what we did to the color in the space. There were obviously moments that are more about realism and more about walking in someone’s shoes. And then there are other moments where it’s about we’re soldiers and we’re dialed in.

So it was always different. It was always different. When we picked these lenses and how we manipulated them, I think that did a lot to establishing that look. And then, yeah, then we just tried to lean into what was Scores [unintelligible]. What was Scores like in that era and without actually taking cues from Scores, you know, what’s the vibe of this scope like.

And so, yeah, there were those kinds of rules where it’s like we’re going to do a lot of things that are true to the environment but we want to shoot them differently. We want to cover them differently. I never wanted a scene to be about an actor’s body unless the character wanted it to be. I felt like it was very easy to just tell a story from this person’s point of view and automatically see this space in a way that we hadn’t seen in other movies, just by focusing on the people who are usually in the periphery.

**John:** There, you right there. Yes, you. Two hands up. So the question is how did each of you talk with your actors about making themselves feel safe as they were not wearing a lot of clothes? What were the conversations like? You talked about Jennifer Lopez, you waited – or actually all your actors you waited late for the club wear. But what was your conversation with actors about what they’d be wearing and their bodies?

**Lorene:** I certainly asked everyone and so did you what anyone is comfortable revealing. I mean, the truth is some girls would be like the left one but not the right. And I get it. And others would say under is cool. Or I like my butt and I’m fine with that. It really was as crass as that where it’s just asking people what they’re OK showing and moving in a lot of them.

What we did with background actors as well as everyone else was we said the women were in charge. And as they are. But in our club the girls picked out the guys and then we kind of did some musical chairs. So all the women were comfortable with who they were having physical contact with and we certainly vetted all of these guys that our actors had physical contact with. So I know on set, again, our comfort consultant did a lot of that, too.

But, yeah, how’d you do it?

**Mitchell:** For me, something that I do with all projects, this one most significantly, is I start to understand what somebody is seeing in a mirror that I’m not. Because everybody sees something in the mirror that – I always track someone’s eye movement, right? Because the first thing that they’re going to look for in a mirror is what they don’t like. Because they’re either going to tell me about that or they’re going to feel like it’s solved.

So I always try to watch that and watch body language. And I’m just really into that. I kind of treat my fittings a little bit like therapy. I’ll get to know somebody’s history, what they’re excited about that’s not this movie, and just try to understand them as an human being so that I can dress that human being who is playing a part. Because if that human being is not comfortable that character is not comfortable and this movie certainly demanded that.

**Lorene:** But it’s also not about revealing clothing either, because someone like G-Eazy who is in the movie was surprised at how much we were going to lean into the 2007 fashion and then came fully onboard, thank you Mitchell.

**Mitchell:** I would have to warn them. There is a celebration going on with this movie about this time period. Because it is in such recent memory it feels horrible. But you need to eliminate that and recognize that everyone here is playing the same game. So your earrings couldn’t be big enough. This is the game. Let’s win.

**John:** Let’s all win. Another question, there in the middle. Yes, I see you. So the question is about the casting process and how much pressure did you feel to cast star names. What was the casting process like? I don’t know who cast your film, so talk to me about this.

**Lorene:** Oh, Gail Keller was our casting director who had her hands full. I can’t believe what she pulled off with this with so many speaking roles. I began with chasing Jennifer. I mean, I didn’t write the script with her in mind, but as soon as I reopened the script to try to think of who it was it was so obvious that it was Jennifer Lopez. So I bee-lined toward her and sent the script to her producing partner who fortunately loved it and sent it to her, fortunately loved it, and then we met at her house. And, you know, it’s Jennifer Lopez and I thought of what to wear for 72 hours. But, yeah, we were really excited about all the same themes and what the movie was speaking to and capitalism and this time in very recent history.

And so once she was onboard it certainly made it a lot easier to get other people. I had been chasing Lizzo for a year, Cardi for two years on Instagram. And I would DM Cardi and then get like a cellphone number back and then text that number and then get another number. So I have two numbers in my phone that are Cardi that I don’t think either are Cardi. And Lizzo, same, I just thought they were so exciting for this, so I wrote those roles for them.

There’s an opera singing burlesque dancer who I wrote that part for. Jack the stripper, I wrote that part for Trace Lysette. She reached out to me on Twitter because she had worked at this club in 2006 and we met maybe a year before the movie and just hit it off, so I wrote her the role. And it was a lot like that. You know, Keke Palmer was someone I was just obsessed with. Just her whole personality, her whole way. I want to see that onscreen so bad. And I think Mercedes is the character who makes Ramona laugh, so who is that person. Lili Reinhart was someone who I watched some indie movies that she was in and thought my god this girl is so good. And I thought about the four of them. I thought about the locker room.

I made so many collages of sort of my dream team and then they happened. It was crazy. Constance was someone who it was so hard to figure out who Destiny was. That was really the toughest journey, but the second thing we needed to do was find our Destiny once we found Ramona. So I met with over 100 actors and met with Constance and just thought she was so deep and was equally interested in a story about loneliness. That’s something I talk about a lot in my work and I was really excited about her bringing that into this character, that vulnerability, the sensitivity, that intelligence, and that dynamic that the two of them might have.

So I didn’t get to see them together until the camera test when Jennifer was in the fur coat for the first time and they were in full hair and makeup. And she put her arm around Constance and I was like, yeah.

**John:** Done.

**Lorene:** That’s it. That was what we were hoping for. So, yeah.

**John:** Lorene, what was the audition scenes you used for Destiny? Were they things that are in the movie or were they different things you wrote just for auditions?

**Lorene:** Oh, well definitely scenes from the movie. But they’re probably like things that aren’t in the movie anymore if I think about it. There was a lot of voiceover in the movie, more so than there is. And so I think they had a very awkward scene to audition with to be honest.

For the most part I met with girls. Gail had so many girls come in and audition. So, I had great tapes to watch. But then–

**John:** You were also in the room in many cases?

**Lorene:** Then I could be there. Yeah.

**John:** That’s where you discovered.

**Lorene:** Exactly.

**John:** We have time for two more questions. Let’s try, yes, you. So the question is how did you get the job of directing this movie? What was the process to get there?

**Lorene:** I wanted it from the beginning. But I really did feel like I had to tell the story, even if I didn’t get to direct it. So once I handed in two drafts of the script and it became that time for them to decide who was going to direct it, they sent it to Scorsese first. He passed. I don’t think he read it. You know, I don’t think it reached him. So, they sent it to him first. And then sent it to everyone, people I knew.

I just had my hand raised that whole time. It was a very weird timeline in America also, you know, from the Summer of 2016, in which I thought I was making like a subversive Spring Breakers type movie that it kind of became a little bit more real as time went on. So, I would say how I got the job during that ten month stretch where it was being sent to kind of everyone in town I was editing a lot of footage of strippers and stripteases to Chopin which is sort of the score of the film. And different sequences in the movie. There’s a car crash. Different things as a proof of concept really.

And then my editor, Kayla Emter, who had edited my last film, we/she put together this sizzle reel that really became the piece that I was able to show as sort of, you know, it makes sense from the director of The Meddler. Maybe people wouldn’t necessarily understand the leap that it might take. So I was OK trying to really audition for it, obviously.

But that sizzle reel I think was really what got me the job, got Kayla the job ultimately. I put up collages of different movies of kind of female friendship type movies. Mean Girls and Bridesmaids and then pictures of strippers in locker rooms just to say like, you know, what’s the difference and why can’t there be a movie about that dynamic but in this space.

**John:** Our last question. So the question is she loves the ending, but were there ever choices to do a different ending or a reconciliation or some other – what were the other thoughts about the ending of the film as you were writing it or working on it?

**Lorene:** Not for me. You know, I mean, I never saw it that way. I’m sure I had to do a draft or two in which I delivered some kind of happy ending that I probably tried to make bad on paper on purpose. Yeah. I think I always saw it as this bittersweet ending.

But even when we were testing the movie and trying to figure it out it really was – it’s hard. It’s one of those things where you want that hope that maybe they will call each other without seeing it really happen. So, I think that that was always the hope.

How it ends, though, there were so many different versions of that speech that Ramona gives in the office. I was never sure about that. I really wasn’t. I really was like I don’t know, this feels on the nose and stuff. So there were like things that kind of got massaged into place. I realized like, oh, we had this incredible B-roll from our club where all those images at the end of the movie where you’re sort of seeing the men and women interacting with each other. That felt very real because they just were interacting with each other. And our camera was just catching them.

And so I think once Kayla and I landed on that, that that imagery was really important to bring back. That life goes on. That everything is up and running and maybe some stuff has changed but not a lot. And so we discovered how important that was. And then, you know, Ramona and all of that. But the friendship, yeah, no, you know, love doesn’t, I don’t know. [laughs]

I’ll end on love doesn’t, I don’t know.

**John:** Love doesn’t…Lorene Scafaria. Lorene, congratulations on your film. Mitchell, congratulations on what you were able to bring to the film. Thank you all very much. Thank you guys for coming.

**Lorene:** Thank you. Thank you so much.

**John:** Have a great night.

And that’s our show. Thanks to Paul Cowling and everybody at Film Independent for putting on the panel and letting us use the audio from it. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Caden Brown. 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.

Short questions on Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

Premium members, stick around after the credits because I Skype with Mitchell to see what he’s doing now and answer some more questions about screenwriting and costume design. You can sign up to become a Premium member at Scriptnotes.net. Thanks and we’ll see you next week.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** Hey Mitchell, how are you?

**Mitchell:** Good. It’s nice to hear from you.

**John:** It’s good to hear from you. I’ve wanted to talk with more because I just felt like we got through so much in that panel but I was curious what’s happened since that time and also I had follow up questions. So thanks for getting on the blur with me.

**Mitchell:** Absolutely.

**John:** So question, a lot of what we talked about in that discussion was how you work with the director to figure out the visual language for the movie, how you work with the actors to figure out what clothes make sense for the character. But I wanted to wind back and ask what should screenwriters be thinking about in terms of the clothes that characters are wearing. What’s useful for screenwriters to come into a script with? As you’re flipping through pages what are signs that are like, oh, this writer knows what he or she is talking about when it comes to characters and clothes? What are you looking for?

**Mitchell:** You know, I’ve never been asked that question and I think it’s such an interesting topic because it’s funny there are certain scripts that you read that you can the person who is writing is very much thinking about the character from a visual point. They’ll mention the color or that it’s a sweater or they’ll put in even brands. I’ve read some scripts where it’s like brands are listed by the screenwriter. And I’m always so fascinated by that because I feel like it is so premature because, you know, a costume designer hasn’t weighed in, and actor hasn’t weighed in. And of course those are going to be the loudest voices when it comes to the clothes.

But I don’t mind it because I think it’s a really nice way of getting into the headspace of the character from the writer’s point of view. When it gets really frequent and you feel like almost every outfit is described it can be a little bit – it’s kind of a little bit of a turnoff because it feels like some of the work is being done for you. And then of course the rebel in both the actor and the costume designer wants to do like, well, you wrote sweater so we’re not doing a sweater.

You know, like we all want to put our own spin on everything. But ultimately I do find it helps me know where we’re starting from. And of course we’re going to take it further and we’re going to find different meaning in things in the fitting room that wouldn’t really come up in the writing process. But I do enjoy it. And I think for me it’s like as soon as I can meet the writer I feel like I have a kindred spirit in that person because they’ve obviously done the work to think about the clothes. So then I think it fleshes out the conversation.

But for me it’s just a jumping point. It’s definitely not, you know, the truth.

**John:** I’m trying to think back about the times I’ve used specific clothing descriptions in scripts, and it’s mostly just to give a sense of the general direction of a character and not sort of what they’re wearing in that moment. Or try to prescribe what they have to be wearing. I was thinking back to my script for Go we meet Melissa McCarthy about two-thirds of the way through the movie and she only has one scene. And they’ve knocked on the door, she opens the door, she has a big bowl of popcorn, and she’s described as wearing sweats.

And ultimately she was not wearing sweats. She was wearing stuff that was more comfortable for her. But she was wearing her version of what sweats would be. And it started a whole conversation. But I only described her outfit because it was important for us to understand that she was not expecting to be going out that night. She was sort of dressed down for the evening. She was in her retiring clothes.

Or in Aladdin, you know, the only kind of dress that I mention in Aladdin are the stunning first reveal of Jasmine when she’s coming down the steps to meet the suitor. I’m not going to describe every dress along the way.

**Mitchell:** I designed In the Heights. There was in that script, which was written by Quiara, she wrote one description of clothing which I actually loved and I was like this totally helps. For one of the characters she talked about how the shoes had been worn down in the back heel like they’re so beloved that they have that permanent crease in the heel. That was one of those little details where I was like that helps me so much, because I understand – you know, I can see this person’s apartment. I bet there are other shoes that look like that piled on top of each other. And I can sort of understand how this person gets dressed.

So I do enjoy when it’s a description that helps me understand the totality of a person, rather than just “she walks in in Armani.” It’s like why? You know, is there a promo deal? What is the reason behind that?

**John:** So it sounds like what you’re describing is that over specificity can be a problem if it sort of feels like it’s locking you in to something. But something like that metaphorical description of how her shoes were being worn down, that gives you a pathway for figuring out like, OK, if her shoes are that way then I can think about the rest of her outfit in ways that is going to speak to the same character. So trying to–

**Mitchell:** Exactly.

**John:** Put everybody on the right path rather than sort of say it has to be exactly this one thing that I’m describing.

**Mitchell:** There’s something funny with some actors, too. They treat the script like the bible. So if something is written they want to adhere to that. And I find there are certain, like the Julliard actor, like they are really text-based and they really adhere to the script and it’s part of their process. I’ve worked with some before where it’s like, “Well in the script it says that I’m wearing a turtleneck.” And it’s like would the character wear a turtleneck? Let’s start there and then we might not have to use the turtleneck. But for some people it can really lock them into this idea which, you know, it depends. Sometimes that’s limiting and sometimes that’s where you start.

**John:** Yeah. And so that’s an example of like “he’s the kind of guy who seems like he’s in a turtleneck even when he’s not.” I mean, in that description you describe the type of outfit that he’s wearing, not necessarily limiting to exactly the thing he has to be wearing unless there’s a reason why the turtleneck becomes a big joke point. There’s a reason why it has to be a turtleneck. Instead just give a sense of the class of outfit that you’re looking for.

**Mitchell:** Yes. Do you know I truly hope I never read a script again where it is written that the girl takes off her shoes, breaks off the heel, and is running in flats. I have read that in a script like nine times. And it is such an impossibility for any shoe ever. But it seems to be this thing that is in every script. Oh, she’s running, she breaks off her heels and now she’s in flats. I’m like, no, now she’s running on a metal spike on the bottom of her foot. It’s incredibly dangerous and painful.

**John:** Yeah. And I’m sure that is one of the situations where that came up because somebody saw it in a movie and they assumed it must be real and so therefore they just put it in other scripts. And no one has actually tried to do it in real life. Because I don’t know anyone who has ever done that in actual life. I know people who have broken heels, but not like that.

**Mitchell:** Right. And then you limp home with dirty feet. That’s how that happens.

**John:** Great. Any other red flags? Things you see in scripts about clothing that maybe we should be more mindful of?

**Mitchell:** There are certain times where I will go to the writer and if they are mentioning specific changes and things like that where, you know, my job is to break this down into reasonable costumes. And I’m personally as a designer I find that you can reach a fatigue point with too many costume changes in a movie where you kind of stop remembering what the person is wearing because they’re wearing them so frequently.

So sometimes I’ll have to say to a writer or director, sometimes it’s the same person, OK, in this scene it’s written that she’s in a dress, but then in this scene it’s written that she’s now in a pair of skinny jeans, or whatever. And from a storytelling perspective it would just all make sense in one day. So, is the change motivated because this character wants to be perceived differently? Is the change motivated by something else? And oftentimes it’s that scripts go through so many drafts that that’s one of those things that’s just kind of layers.

But that’s another thing that can sometimes happen when clothing gets described in a script is you’re like, OK, you know she’s now changed four times before lunch. Let’s think about this a little bit.

**John:** Now, Mitchell, I don’t know how much you’ve worked on periods, so obviously Hustlers was period, but it wasn’t super deep period. If we’re working on something that is a costume drama from turn of the century or you’re working on Hulu’s show The Great, how important is it for the writer to know what all those pieces of clothing are called and how much is it helpful to call that stuff out versus just giving a general description of the type of clothing or sort of what time of day clothing this is? How helpful is it for period stories like that?

**Mitchell:** I think it’s very important. And it should be part of the research process for a writer in the same way you would make sure that a character wasn’t using something that hadn’t been invented. I think the same should be true for clothes. It can be in a script where she removes her bra and it’s like, well, no one was wearing those yet. So she doesn’t.

I think it should be as important to the process as every other part that’s researched.

**John:** I think you make a very good case for that. So yes. Mitchell, thank you so much for this follow up. This is really helpful.

**Mitchell:** Absolutely.

**John:** It was a great conversation before and you’ve gotten me thinking more about sort of how I’m describing clothes in my scripts and how I’ll be talking about them as a director. So, thank you for that. Congratulations on the move.

**Mitchell:** Thanks.

**John:** Thanks Mitchell.

**Mitchell:** Be well.

**John:** All right. Bye.

Links:

* [Directors Close-Up: Tacky Fashion and the Visual Language of ‘Hustlers’ – Film Independent](https://www.filmindependent.org/blog/directors-close-up-tacky-fashion-and-the-visual-language-of-hustlers/)
* [Hustlers](https://www.hustlers.movie/)
* [Lorene Scafaria](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1032521/) and on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/lorenescafaria?lang=en)
* [Mitchell Travers](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4095618/) and on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/_mitchelltravers_/?hl=en)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Caden Brown ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/464standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can now be found [here.](https://johnaugust.com/2020/internationaltelevision)

**John August:** Bonjour et bienvenue. Je m’appelle John August. Et voici Scriptnotes, un podcast sur l’écriture pour le cinéma et des choses qui intéressent les scénaristes. We are speaking French because we are supposed to be in Fontainebleau as part of Serie Series, and annual conference billed as “the meeting place for European series and their creators designed by those who make them. So, the scoop is that Craig Mazin and I, we had our plane tickets. We were planning to go. But then there was a pandemic. So, like all things it moved online to Zoom. So I thought we would take advantage of being on Zoom to reach out to some showrunners, some creators, we couldn’t have otherwise gotten.

So, we are talking to the creators of two of my favorite series. And since Craig doesn’t watch any TV I drafted another creator of another series to be me co-host. That’s you, Aline.

**Aline Brosh McKenna:** Je m’appelle Aline Brosh McKenna.

**John:** Now, I feel so often Aline like you’re just always the extra person on the show. We don’t talk about your amazing credits. So, I’m going to take a moment here to acknowledge your credits. Aline Brosh McKenna is best known for adapting the novel The Devil Wears Prada and co-creating and showrunning the Emmy-award-winning comedy series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Aline also directed the final episodes of all four seasons. Her feature film credits include 27 Dresses, Morning Glory, We Bought a Zoo. She has a production company. She’s busy doing a thousand things. Aline, it’s a pleasure having you here always.

**Aline:** Good morning. And this week I will be the Joan Rivers to Scriptnotes.

**John:** So it is 7am as we’re recording this here in Los Angeles. But our guests are scattered throughout the world. Let us welcome the first. Anna Winger is an American writer and producer who lives in Berlin, Germany. She’s creator of the television drama Deutschland 83, Deutschland 86, and the acclaimed Netflix series Unorthodox, which I recently watched and loved.

**Anna Winger:** Hello.

**John:** Hi.

**Anna:** So nice to be here.

**John:** Anna, now what time is it there?

**Anna:** It is 4pm.

**John:** Let us also welcome our next guest. Tony McNamara who is an Australian writer for film and TV. His credits include the medical drama Doctor Doctor and The Favourite which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. His limited series The Great debuted in May on Hulu in the US and in other channels in other markets which I am so fascinated to talk about. Tony McNamara, welcome to the discussion.

**Tony McNamara:** Hi. It’s a pleasure to be here.

**John:** And what time is it in Perth, Western Australian?

**Tony:** It is about 10:15pm.

**John:** Wow. So thank you for staying up late for us.

**Tony:** That’s OK. It’s a pleasure.

**Aline:** Wow.

**John:** So, Anna and Tony, both of you had shows that debuted kind of in the pandemic window. And so let’s just start with that. So, you’ve made this project which has taken months and years to sort of put all together. You have this plan for how it’s going to launch and then suddenly the world stops. Tony, what was it like for you launching The Great in this space?

**Tony:** Well, I mean, it was strange because we were even post – like we didn’t finish shooting till – I think we were shooting in Italy on February 23rd or something. So, we were sort of doing post as it all started up until – I mean, we delivered like two weeks before we dropped. So it was strange not knowing. I mean, it was strange because I was supposed to do post-production in London and then, you know, my family, we all decided we’d go back to Australia. So then we were doing post at night remotely from London and in the morning.

So it was all weird because there were a lot of big Zoom calls with composers in LA and, you know, editors in London. So that was the strangest part. And then by the time it went out the world was so strange, nothing seemed strange, you know.

**John:** Yeah. Anna, what was your experience putting the show out? Because was the show all finished and ready to go by the time everything locked down?

**Anna:** We delivered it in the middle of January. So by the time it came out it sort of coincided exactly with the first couple of weeks of lockdown. The realization like all these events we had planned, all the travel, blah-blah-blah, all of it was canceled. And everybody was at home. And then the show came out, which it launched on March 26th on Netflix. And it was – I have to say it was an amazing experience because the other show that I make is on around the world, but it’s on at different times, like it’s not the same channel. But because this is on Netflix it just kind of dropped in 190-something countries at once. And since everybody was at home there was then not only this global drop but this kind of global conversation on social media about what people were watching. And that was kind of a miraculous experience I have to say.

And, you know, of course I’m sitting there on the WhatsApp chat with the actors and my collaborators and we’re all trading things we’ve seen on social media. And everyone has all this time to kind of talk about it. It was a different kind of collective experience than it is to sit around and drank champagne together at a festival. But it was also kind of strangely intimate, I guess.

**Aline:** It was one of the first things that I binged. I think I binged it in the first – like as soon as it came out I binged it. And I will forever associate it with that feeling of like being stuck and also confused. You know, we were still trying to figure out how everything works and how are we getting food. And they’re out of Corn Flakes at the market. And it was a scary time. And to be watching a show about someone’s liberation and freedom and search for those things was kind of a perfect – and then it was really like a period of a couple weeks there where every single person I knew was watching it and talking about it.

**Anna:** That’s very nice. I mean, you can imagine we made a show in Yiddish. So, we were also like no one is going to watch it. There was a moment of incredible panic when we thought – I felt like I had to travel around the world and kind of push it into people’s – you know, you just don’t know how these things are going to go, right?

And it was already challenging because it’s not dubbed in any language, so it’s always on Netflix in Yiddish and the English is dubbed but not the Yiddish. So it was, you know, we just thought what if no one watches it with subtitles? But if nobody can deal with the Yiddish or whatever. So it was an amazing and unexpected experience that so many people kind of got into it.

**John:** Now, one of the reasons why I want to have both of you on together is because weirdly you made similar shows. If we want to take it from the perspective of they’re both shows about young brides who are caught in situations beyond their control who are trying to figure out how to find authority and voice. Yes. To try to figure out how do I take control of the situation. They work very, very differently, but it’s still that same vibe of like, you know, a teen bride coming into her own power.

Tony, I was reading some of the backstory on this. It sounds like you had studied sort of Catherine the Great before. You had thought about her as a character but what was the genesis of this particular series? When did you know that, OK, I really want to focus on her story and fictionalize parts around it? What was the start of that?

**Tony:** I guess I [a random] play about her, which was sort of the start of her coming to Russia and then it was also about her when she’s much older. And then I think sort of dabbled with that thinking it could be a feature. And then eventually I just was working in TV a bit and I really was like – I think my wife went this should be ten hours, or 20, or 30, or whatever we hope it’s going to be. And then, of course, my wife is always right about such things.

So I sort of looked at it and I thought about her and coming to Russia and, you know, waking up and thinking who have I married and I’m in a foreign country. And somehow you’re the character who then goes what I’ll do is I’ll take that country over, even though I don’t speak the language. She seemed like an amazing character and it seemed like a fun – you know, and I felt like I had a good sort of fun way to tell it, I suppose.

**Aline:** When you have an idea do you know this is a movie, this is play, this is a TV show? Does it come to you in its form? Or does it come to you as a story and then you figure out the form?

**Tony:** More and more it seems instinctive, but because I’ve worked in theater and used to always everything started as a play. Now I sort of instinctively can tell how big the story is. But not always. Like this I thought of as a feature for a long time. And it was as soon as I then thought about TV I was like how dumb I’ve been to not see that.

But sometimes you just see the story and you’re sort of like – you know, someone optioned it as a feature when it was a play, so it became a feature. And I think once I put my head into it and thought what do I think it is it was much more like, oh, well it just makes sense. It’s a TV – it’s a story that takes place over a long period of time and she changes massively. And it didn’t seem to do her justice to do a feature.

**John:** Now, Anna, your story could have easily worked as a feature. I mean, it’s short as a series goes. So when did you decide that this needs to be a series rather than try to make it as a feature?

**Anna:** I would say I actually worked back the other direction which is that because Deutschland 83 was my first series, I previously was a photographer actually. I had a totally different career. So, the thing is I think that originally we thought maybe we’ll make it a longer series. And then I made the decision that I wanted it to be shorter. And that’s – I have never written a movie, so that’s not something, you know, I’ve only written a series. And once I wrote a novel.

Yeah, I would say now it’s kind of a hybrid because I come to it as a series writer. I think I think in chapters. You know, writing a novel is a lot like writing a series. Whereas I think writing a movie is a lot more like writing a short story. And, you know, when you have that kind of long view of the story and how it divides up in kind of propulsive for lack – I know that’s a really TV word – but you know chapter storytelling. I think that when I looked at this material I felt like – and we invented a lot of it. You know, we had the source material which was wonderful but it wasn’t really activated because it’s a memoir. It’s in someone’s head.

And then we made up I would say 70% of it kind of around these characters from the book. And, yeah, I don’t know. Somehow I hit on the idea of four hours. And I don’t know how to explain that except to say that it seemed like fun to sort of milk it for like maximum emotional tension in a sort of short-long period of time.

Because had we spread it out over ten hours this particular story, I just didn’t think we needed that much space. And even though – it’s funny, because it’s a very unpopular thing to suggest. Like, everyone is like, “Well why not make more?” Netflix is like, “Why not make more?” And I was like, no, no, I think it’s four hours. But a movie would have been too short, or it would have been a bloated movie.

I think it’s important that it’s episodic, but again it’s really like the length of The Irishman, do you know what I mean?

**John:** Yeah.

**Anna:** I guess it’s a hybrid. But now I think everything should be four hours, because it was really sort of delicious to write and make it and to have this deep dive into material in a way that was like one year. You know? It wasn’t like writing a series over many years. And it wasn’t – so I actually – I’m thinking about form. I’m not like Tony. Tony has written so many plays and so many amazing things. I’m new as a writer. I come to this, as I said, from visual work. So it’s fun to think about how you tell stories in different forms and which stories lend themselves to different forms. I like to think about that now.

**John:** Also just even this past week I’ve been out pitching on a series and that conversation about how long it is, which used to be like, oh, it could be 22 episodes, it could be 13 episodes, in this last week I’ve been able to say like it’s between like four and six hours long. It’s an exciting thing to be able to pitch because it does change your relationship to the amount of work. The amount of work that I myself personally could do versus having a writing staff and having the whole assembly.

Now, Aline, you come from doing longer series. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was four seasons of 20 episodes each?

**Aline:** It ended up being 62 episodes. Which is not a ton for television, sort of average in a way. I mean, if you can get to be a continuing series. I never intended to that. I mean, we had no intention of doing that. We were going to do four seasons of eight to ten, something like that. But then when we got on a regular broadcast network that’s what, you know, we needed – we did two seasons of 13 and two seasons of 18. But I’d always written movies and so I think what’s a lot of the exciting things that have happened in television have been pioneered by the writers, not the business people.

And so the idea that you would tell one story over a long series, one unified story, that doesn’t resolve every week is something that really comes from writers wanting to do that. And it’s Dickensian. It’s those long, long novels. Breaking Bad, or–

**John:** The Sopranos.

**Aline:** You know, Sopranos. That sort of got the audience used to that. What’s exciting to me now is I haven’t seen a lot of four-episode series and it comes from you, it comes from the creator, and it breaks ground for other people to say, “You know what? I really think it’s this.” John and I came up in a Hollywood that was very specific about formats. And because of streaming and cable and international productions you really get to say, “No, this is what I think this story is.” And look at Unorthodox. And then look at shows that have done 100. You know, you can design it. And it’s the creators that have brought the pieces to what they need to be because the creators are driving the business process so much more.

**John:** Tony, can I talk to you about the format of The Great? Because I’m watching it in the US on Hulu, so I’m streaming it, it’s all available, all the time. But as I watch the shows they seem to have act breaks.

**Aline:** Yeah.

**John:** And as I look it’s playing on different networks in different countries. Does the show have commercials in some markets?

**Tony:** Yeah, it does. Even on Hulu in the states. We had to turn in five act breaks. They weren’t prescriptive about – because I’ve worked on shows where it was very prescriptive. You know, the old network kind of model where it was like the minute, you know, you were down to the minute it had to be in. It was much more like we just need five breaks. And that was simple as us going, you know, literally like we’d write the script and then just throw in five breaks even nine or 11 pages. Oh, about then.

But I never thought of that too much, except occasionally I’d think [unintelligible] any good those breaks. But I felt like it was OK. I think it was just because it’s serving a big marketplace with a lot of different platforms and, you know, some places have ads and some places don’t. You sort of have to do it and hope that it doesn’t impact the show too much, I guess.

**John:** With that show, with that model, you have financiers and you’re selling to different markets and so all that stuff had to happen ahead of time. So you had outside money and then you have Hulu as one of your buyers, one of the places that it was going to end up.

**Tony:** Yeah. Hulu was our original plan, who I sold it to originally. I had the pilot and then I took it out with Alan. Hulu is where, you know, they really loved it and I really thought they were great. So that was the start. And from there we go to studio. I sort of did it the other way around. I didn’t have a studio until after I’d sold it. And then I sort of looked for a studio who could sort of take some of the costs with it and take it out internationally.

And that was where MRC came on. And then they sort of started selling it I think while we were making it really.

**John:** OK. And Anna at what point did Netflix come onboard with this project? And had you had other places you were thinking about taking it? Or was it always a Netflix or die kind of?

**Anna:** You know, I pitched it to Netflix and then they bought it and then I never really pitched it to anyone else. But that was also partially because I’m in Germany, right. So, I’m in a slightly different conversation. I’m writing in English. I’m here. And Netflix had sort of rolled out recently in Germany at the time. And we had met many times about doing something together. And we make Deutschland 83 actually for Hulu also. And we also have act breaks. It’s funny to hear that.

I actually find it kind of useful. In the writer’s room in particular I find it really easy to talk about things in terms of act.

**John:** Yeah. In terms of like how things are hanging together and how you’re getting through stuff. It’s great.

**Anna:** I mean, I know it’s uncool, but it makes it a lot easier. If you know there’s no act three how do you talk about in a group about a bunch of scripts without, anyway, I’m used to it. But we write it with act breaks but it’s on basically different broadcasters all over the world. And so it’s on, I don’t know, 150 countries and almost none the same – a couple of them are Amazon, but that’s it. Otherwise it’s really like local broadcasters.

I thought it would be kind of interesting to try the sort of one – a different experience. Because we also, even the first season we had different logos in different territories. It really predated the era of streaming. So, it was like sometimes people even weren’t sure it was the same show. So, in a way I liked the idea of trying to work with Netflix and seeing like, OK, what is it like to make a show and distribute it and that’s it. And there isn’t these sort of separate relationships or separate press relationships or rollouts.

So, you know, for me it was an interesting experiment because we made it with Netflix Germany, even though it has very little German language in it.

**John:** That’s great. Well, let’s talk about language. Because Tony one of the things I find so fascinating comparing your two shows is that Anna’s show is characters speaking all these different languages and what language people speak is a very important part of the plot. And you made the decision that everyone is speaking English and we’re not going to sort of acknowledge that people are speaking different languages. At what point in the process did you decide, OK, we’re just going to kind of ignore language in our world?

**Tony:** It was pretty early. I think during casting. It was down to like casting agents going what do you want them to do when they cast. Do you want them to speak with Russian accents? And I was sure I didn’t want that. I guess I just wanted – in the end I was just looking for a uniformity so that everyone felt like they were in the same world. So we went with the sort of [RP] English accent. Because it was also about rhythm. Because the comedy in the show is very – like the way I write is very rhythm driven. So I was very aware of everyone having the same accent and it being easy. And it just had to work for the ear. So once I heard a few things, [Nicholas] kept going, “I just think I should be the only one who does the Russian accent.” And, you know, so we thought of that.

And then, you know, someone pitched why don’t we do Hunt for Red October the way basically they’re talking Russian and you push in on Sean Connery and slowly it morphs into thick Scottish brogue.

But in the end it was more rhythm and just how do I create – I’m creating a world that’s not historically accurate. I just wanted to make it so that all the comedy would work.

**Aline:** That worked as a stylistic choice for me because it was almost like looking at a beautiful miniature in a museum glass box thing. It sort of had an aspect of being just a little bit stylized, like a beautiful cuckoo clock or something where you can sort of look at all the little pieces. So, having it be unified aesthetically in one respect sort of creates a baseline of unity that you can embroider all these other things that you’re doing, especially visually and production wise.

**Tony:** It was a unifying point to the thing. And the tone of the show. And so it was all for those reasons I guess.

**Anna:** It also elevates it in a way out of heritage drama or any kind of—

**Tony:** Yeah.

**Anna:** In a way that for me was really satisfying. I mean, it’s funny because I live in Germany, right, so everyone is like, “But Catherine the Great is German. Why isn’t she speaking German?” And I didn’t even think about that. I felt like it was part of the flavor of the piece and the creation of it and the kind of artistry of it was that you had made it your own language. That’s what I loved about The Favourite, too, which is of course that is England, but it wasn’t England heritage drama. You know, it was your version of England. It was its own place. So, the language, I hear you.

**Aline:** Also the royals live in, especially in that time when you’d be sort of plucked from one country and say, “Well you’re Catherine of Aragon. Welcome to England and Henry the VIII. Good luck.” And she’s dislocated and they sort of have a common language, the royalty. I mean, I wonder if they still do. But there is sort of a common language. Certain courtly languages that you would be assumed to speak.

**John:** Now, let’s talk about the actual productions behind these because, you know, Anna I know you had a complicated production where you went to Williamsburg to shoot the New York exteriors and then everything else came back to Berlin. And Tony I’m curious how much you were shooting episode by episode versus block shooting parts and sections. So, Tony, let’s start with you. The decision that you have these ten episodes. I assume you had ten episodes written before you started production, or was there still writing while you were in production?

**Tony:** Yeah, there was still writing while we were in. I mean, we shot a pilot as a sort of proof of concept. Then I came in, we had nine to do. And I think I always wanted to do – I didn’t want to write all of it. So, I think we had maybe six or seven written. And I wanted to leave the last two till quite late. Because I just wanted to see – often you’re not sure what’s going to happen, what dynamics are really going to work. There’s 12 main cast, so I wasn’t 100% sure. I started roughly knowing how I wanted to end the season. And roughly knew what was going to happen. So I felt like I knew enough. And then it was just like I’ll wait and see what happens and then I’ll quickly write the last two, hoping I’m not too tired to do so.

**Aline:** Who financed the pilot?

**Tony:** Hulu.

**Aline:** Oh, Hulu. OK, so you came in meaning – I thought you – so when you say you came to Hulu with a pilot you had a script?

**Tony:** Yeah, a pilot script. And then sort of green lit the pilot and then we delivered that. And then they green lit the show.

**Aline:** Got it. You’ve never been through that pilot process?

**Anna:** I’ve only ever written like the whole thing and then shot the whole thing like a movie. With Deutschland we do that, too. We’re working with really small budgets, so it’s a very different production process than in the United States. We write the whole thing and then we divide it all up and then we shoot it by location. And that’s true with everything I’ve ever – I mean, that makes it sound like so much, but everything I’ve done so far we’ve always done it like that. So that wasn’t even something – we’ve never been writing while shooting and we’ve never shot in blocks. So that’s – I’ve never done anything like that. So, it’s a different way of looking at it.

I guess in that sense we always produce as if it were a movie. And in terms of, it’s true, we shot in New York at the very end of Unorthodox. Like we shot all the interiors in Berlin and then we went to New York for three days and shot exteriors. But that’s no different from how we shoot Deutschland. We just shoot by location.

**John:** In your case, Anna, you have the whole thing already done. And you have one director who is going to be shooting the entire project. Unorthodox was one director for the whole thing, correct?

**Anna:** Yeah. Because it was only four. With Deutschland we always have multiple. But yeah.

**John:** And Tony you had more classically a series of directors, different people doing different things. You needed to have tone meetings. You had to make sure that everyone was shooting the same kind of show. How early in the process did you know what your main sets were going to be, what you were going to build versus what was going to be practical? Tony, for you what was that decision?

**Tony:** Once we had the pilot green lit – we didn’t build anything for the pilot obviously because they were expensive builds. So, once we were green lit then I think I had two months with Francesca di Mottola, production designer, and then we had studios. So we shot like 70 – most of the interiors are our place in the East End of London. Next to Tesco. So it’s kind of like weird, terrible Dickensian falling down studio and then you walk in and it’s this beautiful Russian palace everywhere.

So we had a couple of months of pre-building, working out, you know, and writing scripts, thinking ahead about visually how I wanted the show to move. Because you’ve got no director at that point. So it sort of her and I deciding how, you know, I wanted the show to move in a certain way and the camera to be able to move. And so we ended up building in these massive spaces that would let us build rooms into rooms into other rooms so it felt a bit less like a set. Because we weren’t going to move much. We just shot there and in Naples. We shot a lot of exteriors at a palace.

**Aline:** It was beautiful.

**John:** It was because you were Netflix-Germany that you were probably doing all of your interiors in Germany. But what was the decision process for what was going to be shot practical versus things you were going to build? How early in the process were you figuring that out?

**Anna:** Pretty early because we knew we were going to shoot it in Germany, so the question was we went to New York a couple of times and picked all the exteriors. And then built the interiors in New York to match them. So that was relatively straightforward. We did a season of Deutschland where we shot in South Africa and in Germany, so we had done that before. So that was sort of – in a weird way that was kind of similar. And I think really visually I guess because as I said I come to writing as a photographer. So I often can really see it before I can write it. You know, a lot of storytelling is also through how it looks. And I usually work with kind of visual formalists who are cinematographers and directors, or I choose to work with people like that.

So, I would say the imagining how to execute it in this case, but in every case, was a big part of writing it actually. That’s maybe why I find it very strange to write without any perspective on when we’re going to shoot it, because I guess the difference between writing a novel and writing a screenplay is the execution of it. And I like that part of it, too. It’s like when Tony was just describing, doing the scripts and imagining how the camera is going to move through the sets. That’s a huge part of writing it, too, you know.

**John:** Yeah. Some of my favorite writing has happened when I’ve been on a set, where I physically have the space. It’s like, OK, I can imagine. Here this doorway is going to be fascinating. It’s a great opportunity for this moment to happen because of the actual space that I’m in. As a person who mostly writes features rarely do I know what those locations are going to be. But the times that I have done TV or had standing sets to know that I can go back to this thing, or this is an opportunity, or could literally imagine – rewriting this scene while I’m sitting on this set is great.

Aline, I mean, you obviously – something like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend you know exactly what your sets are and you know what your pattern is going to be. You can plan for those moments.

**Aline:** Well, I was just thinking, Anna, how often do you write things that don’t get shot?

**Anna:** Haven’t done that yet. But that’s only because I’ve only been doing this [unintelligible – crosstalk – echo]. You can give me some therapy later. But it’s this feeling now where it’s like, oh, we just didn’t write all [unintelligible – echo].

**Aline:** Well that’s, I mean, the reason I’m saying that is welcome to Hollywood. I mean, it took me seven years to get my first movie made. And my husband used to say, “You’re so frustrated with the document production business.” Because a lot of Hollywood is producing documents, putting brads in them, and then stacking them on a shelf. You know? Or that used to be. Now you just put the PDF in a file. You know? And so just to hear somebody say like “Oh, I’m always writing thinking of how it’s being produced” is like what a wonderful thing, what a wonderful sphere to be in because so much of Hollywood is building prototypes that are – and I just recently – there’s a script that I wrote with someone else actually ten years ago. And we went back and reread it and we were like this is pretty good.

And every executive, every executive that had worked on it was gone except for one. And who had been more junior at the time. And she sort of reread it and we relaunched it. And it’s like Toy Story. You know, it’s this poor little thing that was sitting on a shelf and then it got – you know, it was waiting and waiting for somebody to try and pull it out.

And, you know what, it might get thrown back in the bin. And that will be so sad. But I think one of the things about international productions is they produce, that’s what I’ve noticed. My friends who are like – they don’t – we have so much R&D in the American system. There are so many unmade scripts. And especially in the television business where, you know, they’ll commission 100, shoot 20, and then if those don’t get picked up they’re garbage. They’re just garbage, never to be seen again. And it actually – it really kills me.

I think you could do an entire season of television development where you just went to the executives and said, “Give me the five favorite un-shot things.” And they would be glorious. You know?

So this cycle that we have in America where we just, you know, just the garbage-ification of scripts I find heartbreaking. And I don’t think they do it in other countries because it’s expensive.

**Anna:** Yeah. Something I think about a lot actually is just kind of the difference in the way we do things. Because of course it’s nice to be paid a lot of money for what you do. And, I mean, I’m not arguing against that and to have a lot of money to work with in production. But there’s also maybe a give and take around that. Because if you’re working with lower budgets and you’re kind of a little bit nimbler on your feet then it’s easier in a way to push something through.

So there is, I mean, like the Yiddish. Now everyone is like, “Oh my god, I have like six new ideas in Yiddish.” It’s like, believe me, nobody was going to make this show. You know?

**Aline:** Well that’s what makes me laugh is I have talked to so many executives who are like, “Oh my god, are you watching Unorthodox? I’m obsessed. It’s my favorite show. I want something just like Unorthodox.” I was like, “You do this week.”

**John:** [laughs]

**Aline:** I would love to have seen anyone a month ago going, “Four episodes. Yiddish. It’s kind of heartbreaking/sad in a very specific sub-culture. Shot in Berlin.” I mean, many years ago I went to have a meeting with a producer and a huge Adam Sandler movie, Water Boy, had just opened. And I sat down, which is nothing like anything I write, and I sat down and he said, “What I really want from you is another Water Boy.” [laughs] And I was like, “Go see it. It’s there. You don’t need another one.”

But it’s funny how people retroactively say, it’s the same with The Favourite. I hear a lot of people citing that as something and I think, OK, I’m sure there was a heated bidding – I mean, I don’t know the commercial circumstances. But that’s another great thing is you’ve set a template for other people in terms of the scale, the language, and that’s wonderful.

**Anna:** Well I’m looking forward to the sequel that you’re going to make now about the downfall of The Devil Wears Prada. I mean, just in the strange news cycle we’re in, I bet you a lot of people are rewatching that movie right now.

**Aline:** Well, publishing is completely different. I think we caught the last wave of – not the last wave – but those were the waning years of print. You know. And I love movies about newspapers, magazines, and all that stuff. But when was the last time that you bought a physical magazine? Or a physical paper?? I mean, I read the paper but even I only get it three days a week now. So that sense of that’s your object, which was so much of what that movie was about in a way, the transfer of the object—

**Anna:** But I watched it recently with my 16-year-old. I mean, it’s so good. And she absolutely loved it. I mean, the crazy part was she wanted to go work at Vogue tomorrow. It’s so bizarre, right? It’s like, wait, it makes you want to work there? But just given all the press now about Conde Nast is just going through a big tumultuous period. It’s interesting to think about what the addendum to that film would look like.

You know, it’s another era, right? It’s the end of something. I don’t know if you ever read a book called The Imperfectionists.

**Aline:** No.

**Anna:** It was about the end of a news – it’s by Tom Rachman. It’s about the end of a newspaper in Europe. And it’s so good. That’s something I would have loved to write as a series but it always seemed to have been optioned by somebody else. But it’s so good. And the end of basically the Herald Tribune but as told through all the many different people working there. And it’s really funny and very tragic. And really great.

**John:** Well that’s a good segue into – let’s talk about POV. Because you’re saying that The Imperfectionists has multiple people who have storytelling power. The choice of who has storytelling power in both of your series is so fascinating.

So, obviously with yours you have Etsy who is sort of the center of it, but you make the choice that other people can drive story. In The Great it’s Catherine’s story. It’s Peter’s story. But making the choice about which characters can actually drive story is so crucial. Who can have scenes that are just by themselves? Tony, how early on in the process did you know that, OK, well it’s centered around Catherine’s story and her journey that these other characters can drive things? Was that right from the very start?

**Tony:** A little bit. I knew in the first episode no one could drive – the choice was no one could drive story except her. And I had a rule for myself, it was like unless every scene – even if she’s not in the scene the scene is about her. And the scene exists because of her. And I held onto that. Sort of as we got into episode two and three I started to run Nick’s own story. And then as that happened and I sort of slowly branched out to some of the others. So it became sort of a cascading thing where as we got to the midpoint of the season you start to get, you know, Aunt Elizabeth. You get these other characters that are actually – they’re sort of running their own tiny stories.

But whenever I board it it’s – I’m always very, very conscious of her and that almost – but that was always the rule is generally there are stories that aren’t about here, even if they look like they aren’t, they will be, you know.

**John:** Now, are you boarding a second series for this now? Are you boarding another season for this? I don’t know where you’re at in the process for The Great?

**Tony:** We’re just waiting to hear if we get another one. I mean, I’ve got a sort of rough shape and I’ve got some – you know, it’s like whenever you do a first season of something you end up with a lot of, oh, that would be good for season two. So, you know, I’m just starting to reread those pages and going, boy, we’re really mental. Why did we think that was good?

**John:** Stop me if I’m asking questions that you don’t sort of know or shouldn’t say, but is the decision entirely a Hulu-based decision? Because since you have other markets and other people who are buying in other markets. I don’t even know if you’ve debuted in all of the different markets yet. So how would that decision come about?

**Tony:** I mean, at the moment [unintelligible – echo]. Yeah, we have debuted in almost probably, I don’t know, 100 countries maybe. So I know it’s out in most territories at the moment. So I’m just waiting on Hulu really to see if they want to do it again. It’s sort of that thing where you’re roughly boarding it and you don’t want to do too much in case it doesn’t happen.

**John:** Yeah. I was on book tour in Scandinavia two years ago and I was out with some of my publishers there and this young woman who worked at the publishing company was talking about The Haunting of Hill House, which was on Netflix, and how much she loved Haunting of Hill House. And it struck me as being so unusual that this is a series that had just come out at that moment, but it had come out worldwide in everyone’s native language. And so the whole world was having the same experience of watching one show, one piece of entertainment.

And you have some of that through Hulu, but you don’t have the same like on one day all around the world people are watching exactly the same show. Whereas Anna you do have that. Like that’s so exciting about debuting on Netflix where it’s just one place that everyone could see the thing at the same time.

What is it like getting that feedback sort of all together as one thing?

**Anna:** They bring their own experience into it. And actually the thing that has been most moving for all of us who made it has been the way it’s crossed borders of faith and culture. Like it’s been really popular in Latin America, among the Catholic world. In India in the Hindu world. In the Muslim world, Saudi Arabia, Turkey. We’re really proud of that, you know, because it’s a very sort of Jewish made show. It’s sort of Jewish from inside out in every way. And everyone involved was kind of on the spectrum of the Jewish diaspora, if I’m on one end and Esty is on the other, then there were sort of everybody in the middle. And we had a really lively conversation about sort of Jewishness, about our sort of extended international culture and all of that on set and also in the writer’s room.

And it’s just been so satisfying actually that it connected with people who have no contact with Jewish culture. You know, it’s one thing that’s popular in New York and with my mom’s friends, etc. But it’s something else to hear from people in, I don’t know, Saudi or Turkey or India who wrote us these amazing notes about how they identify with it, how they see themselves in it. Men. Women. It’s like not just women.

You know, at a time when we’re all alone at home on our sofas, right, a lot of people identified with it coming from really different places. Maybe that was also, I’m sure, it was also partially to do with the lockdown. But it was still a really pleasant surprise. Maybe part of the Netflix – maybe everybody who makes a show for Netflix experiences that. I just had never been in that situation before.

**John:** I know of some people who have made shows for Netflix and felt like the show came out and no one saw it and it didn’t make a ripple at all. And so that’s always one of the things I’ve been worried about with trying to make a show for Netflix is that I could come out and just no one sort of sees it or knows it. It doesn’t click the way your show did and it doesn’t create a conversation the way yours does. It just sort of disappears and it never shows up in people’s home screens. And it never sort of – it doesn’t land for people.

So, I’m so happy it did for Unorthodox.

**Anna:** I don’t know how to explain it.

**Aline:** In my case it was Shtisel. Because I loved Shtisel and every time I watched Shtisel Netflix was like, “You’re going to love Unorthodox. Just trust me. Trust me. No, trust me. The second you’re done here, just go right over there.”

**John:** The algorithm didn’t have to work very hard to get you from Shtisel to Unorthodox.

**Aline:** No.

**Anna:** Still in our sort of core audience. But is Shtisel popular in India? I have no idea. You know, they don’t share that much data. So it’s not – like we’re all sort of reading between the lines about that. Can I ask Aline a question about music?

**Aline:** Sure.

**Anna:** I wanted to know how involved you were in the musical numbers and what that’s like as a writer to sort of write songs.

**Aline:** Well that was part of the whole fabric of the show. So the writing of the series and the episodes kind of drove the music. So we had parallel writer’s room, one big one and one little one. And we had the one that was writing scripts, which informed and spoke to the songs, and then Rachel who starred in the show was also in the writer’s room when she could be. And one of our writers, Jack, was also one of the songwriters. So we had three songwriters, two of whom were in the writer’s room with me. And then I was sort of the – I mean, I contributed to maybe 20, 25 songs or something as a lyricist, but I’m not a musical person.

But I sort of supervised the integration of the music into the – well, we all did, really. So the story has to drive the songs. We almost never had a song and then jammed it into a story. It was like – so there are songs that are on the dust heap because with the old scripts, there’s a little Toy Story of dead songs. Because the story changed and so we couldn’t use the songs anymore.

So like there was a scene that had been written where the character comes in and says, “I’m taking antidepressants and I don’t feel great.” And she feels stigmatized a little bit. And then everybody in the café says, “I’m on antidepressants. So am I. So am I. So am I.” And the script went to Rachel and she looked at it and she goes, “Well thank you. This is a song.” And, you know, they went off and wrote the song.

So, sometimes it was very clear. The story gave you a song. And sometimes there were ideas for songs, like we did a song called Don’t Be a Lawyer, which I had been begging them to do some version of that for a long time. But since I can’t write songs, it was kind of a fun, interesting – I was the songwriting Doula I used to say. So we had three songwriters and I would sort of – we would need them to go into production you know. So I would walk around going, “Come on, you can do it, it’s right there. Do you need a back rub? A soda?”

And the worst thing I could do would be to try and write some lyrics for them and then it would really be like, no, no, no, no. Sometimes giving something to someone that they can say no, no, no to is a great way to, you know, “Oh, just let me do it.”

It was part of the fun of the process. And we happened to have these three incredible songwriters all of whom had other jobs on the show. Rachel was acting, working on the scripts with me. Jack was in the writer’s room. And Adam was also producing all the music.

**Anna:** What an amazing achievement. I mean, that just sounds so hard.

**Aline:** Thank you. You know, we have a lot of institutional memory for something that no one will ever do again. That’s what’s interesting about it. I know how to do that. We all figured it out eventually how to smooth out the process. But it’s not relevant to anything else. To do that exact thing. But it was fun for me because I’m a music fan and then they were very kind to me about my notes being like, “This sounds a little crunchy and a little sour.” [laughs]

I was sort of describing it like it was my dinner. And I think in some ways that was less annoying than if I had been trying to pretend I knew musical terms. I think it’s sometimes the same on set. You know, I’ve noticed a lot of directors who want to have a lot of swagger about going to the department heads and pretending that they know the jargon as well or better. And in some ways I think it’s annoying when you’re the person who is the expert to have a director come over and sort of – you know, as opposed to saying what you want it to feel like or making suggestions that are more of a feel thing. And then allowing the person who has the expertise to say, “Yeah, you want this.”

I’ve noticed that I think sometimes when you do that it’s out of your own insecurities slightly that you feel like, oh, I’ve studied up and I want this exact… – You know, they probably have a better sense of the new, whatever the new thing that came out that’s going to be able to give you the effect that you want. So, sometimes when you’re creating something just having kind of a language which is a more general creative language can be – is part of your job and can be quite helpful.

**Tony:** I find that with composers a lot on shows.

**Anna:** Yes!

**Tony:** Because that’s just like so far from me that now I just come clean really fast and go, “I don’t know how to talk about music and I don’t know anything. All I’ll be able to tell you is what I want it to feel like.” And it is an easier conversation because then they don’t feel like you’re in their patch. You’re just trying to get across as ineptly as you can and then they feel sad for you that he’s so inept. And so, you know, it kind of works–

**Aline:** How annoying would it be if you didn’t really know, but you were saying, “I feel a descending A.” You know? And they would be like, “This jackass showed up and asked for the wrong thing.” And I feel like one of the things that holds people back, particularly women, from directing is feeling like they’re not going to be able to open the lens case and pick out, you know. But you don’t have to. There’s somebody there who wants you to get your mitt out of that anyway and wants you to come over and say, “This is what I’m feeling. Let’s look at this together. What do you think is best? What’s the newest thing?” And giving people confidence to speak in that more general feeling sometimes is the most helpful thing you can do for your collaborators.

It’s sort of like you don’t need to give people line readings, writ large.

**John:** Now, one of the most important collaborations you’re going to have as a creator/showrunner is with director. A director or a series of directors. Can we talk a bit about what that collaboration should look like and best practices? But also some tips for making sure that relationship works well. Tony, as you’re talking with a director for The Great what are those conversations like? Obviously a pilot director is going to be one conversation maybe. But then later directors. How do you find that balance between this is what I, Tony, want from this scene versus what the director might be approaching a scene with?

**Tony:** I think it’s like – I mean, it’s sort of a harder thing because they’re sort of there for the least amount of time out of every one who is working on the show. You know, they’re dropping in and everyone is up and running. So, it’s kind of – like on our show, particularly like just and [unintelligible] just do it as much as possible where I was coming from and what the world of the show was. And the pitch of it. As long as it was truthful was our thing. It’s like comic truth/dramatic truth. Just don’t reach.

So I think it’s a lot of – like in the end it became rolling conversations. It wasn’t like we’ll have a tone meeting then and in two weeks. It was much more like – I was just like let’s just talk all the time. I don’t mind if we talk every day. So there was a lot of – so I tried to spend time talking about the script.

And it depended how much the director needs. Like you start to read how fast people are getting it, or how experienced they are. Like Colin Bucksey did three eps for us and he’s done everything. He did Miami Vice. And he won an Emmy for Breaking Bad. So, you know, he picks it up really fast. And he’s a lovely guy. So, it just depends. You’re just trying to get – showrunners, it’s like you’re trying to dip another human’s brain in your brain and hope when you pull them out they’ve got some of it so that they get it.

So it was also they can be their creative best without feeling – like I never want to feel too on top of directors. I just want them to understand what we’re doing. And I let them go direct. I don’t want to direct it.

So, for us it’s like just lots of conversations and lots of checking in about where they’re at with things. And also heads of departments often feedback if they feel like the directors aren’t quite on the same page as us. Though I really trusted them, so they would occasionally go, “I don’t think we’re on the same page. This isn’t sort of the show but that’s what’s being asked for.” And so then it’s just a conversation of that’s not the show, this is the show. Particularly first seasons where people haven’t really got anything much to look at, you know.

**John:** Anna, what was your experience with directors? Obviously you have one director for all of Unorthodox, but on Deutschland you’ve had multiple directors. What is that collaboration like?

**Anna:** I love that collaboration. Because, again, I don’t want to be a director. It’s funny because people ask me that all the time because I was a photographer. They think it’s like a natural progression. But to me I feel like I already kind of did that for so long. And I think it makes it richer. I like the conversation. There’s certain things that really matter, like choosing someone who has the same taste. And taste is a big thing. It’s like a big blob. It’s not just what it looks like, although I think that is sort of a visual form or visual style, an attraction to a kind of – you have to agree on something and both see it on how it looks.

That’s also, of course, the cinematographer, gaffer, all that. But it’s also a question of subtlety. You know, with Unorthodox for example there would have been many different ways to execute the sex scenes. Let me just give you one example. It was very important that we had – I think there was a lot of things about the humor that we had to really talk through. We had cultural things we had to unpack in order for Maria to understand what it was that we wanted out of certain scenes and what are intentions were in the script. We talked those things through a lot.

But at the end of the day I think we had a common taste and an idea about restraint in the way you were going to show some of the things. It could have been different. We could have approached the whole thing in a different way. And Maria is the star of my other show. Did you know that?

**John:** I did not know that.

**Anna:** We have a collaboration that’s really intense anyway. So then she directed Unorthodox but she’s not in it. I knew already from working with her as an actress how good she was with other actors. That part of it was very clear. Because she even elevates other actors in her performance in the scenes in Deutschland. Do you know what I mean? Like I’ve seen how–

**Aline:** Yeah.

**Anna:** Yeah. But she had made a movie in between the first two seasons of Deutschland. She made an art house film about the life of Stefan Zweig who committed suicide in Brazil in the ‘40s when he left Europe. It’s called Farewell to Europe. It’s really beautiful. And I loved the look and feel of it. So it wasn’t just Maria, it was also the cinematographer and production designer for that film. Like the three of them who have a really close working relationship all worked on Unorthodox.

**John:** You’re bringing a team back in who knows.

**Aline:** One thing I can suggest, and this may not be necessary on some show, but we would sometimes have people show up who hadn’t seen – I mean, the first season we had some directors who had really not seen much of the show. And, you know, people are busy and they may not have seen every single episode of your show. So we created a look book just, you know, stills from the show laminated and broken down into the types of coverage we favor and the types of things that have worked well for us. So there was a reference thing that you can put on the prepping director’s desk, you know, right when they get there so that they have a sense of like the kind of things you favor and have worked well for you and that you feel like are important ingredients.

I think that’s more important in regular series television where you have people who are kind of winding in and out of things that have long standing and maybe they’ve not seen every single episode. But it’s helpful to have – I found that helpful to have that as a jumping off point.

**John:** Well, Aline, it sounds sort of like you were coming from making almost like kind of factory television. There was so much that had to be done. You had to be able to slot people in to do stuff.

**Aline:** Right.

**John:** And some of the shows we’re talking about now are a little bit more artisanal where they are–

**Aline:** Right. That’s why I’m saying, but it still might be helpful to – you can even have your editor cut together a little reel that says like, OK, here’s our–

**John:** This is what it feels like.

**Aline:** It is the difference between artisanal cheese and–

**John:** And fantastic Kraft.

**Aline:** It is helpful to have. In comedies sometimes people came in with ideas for funny shots. And that was death for us because we had these musical numbers that were really pushed comedically. So we couldn’t really push anything comedically in our real world. It had to be very simple. So we developed a bunch of – just a visual language that would orient people. But I would think people who are showing up to direct The Great have by and large seen the series. But you never know.

**Anna:** It is kind of amazing that they hadn’t watched the show before they directed it. How can that be?

**Aline:** Sometimes – there were people who had seen – I mean, in the beginning especially when we had not aired. But also, you know, people are busy. They see one or two and they think “I got it.”

**John:** Well, also, the classic broadcast directors would just hop from show to show to show to show. So like last week they were doing a CSI. Now they’re doing Aline’s show. And that’s a thing that’s just so different how classic American television was made.

Now, usually on Scriptnotes we would do a One Cool Thing where we recommend something to the audience, but I’m not sure whether you guys all got the memo about One Cool Thing. Does everyone have a One Cool Thing, something to recommend to people?

**Anna:** I have a One Cool Thing, but it’s extremely random.

**John:** That is exactly what a One Cool Thing should be. Anna, what is your random One Cool Thing?

**Anna:** I mean, I actually thought it was something to watch.

**John:** Watch is great as well.

**Aline:** Yeah, it’s great.

**Anna:** Well it’s this documentary, at least it’s on Netflix here, I’m assuming it’s on all over. But you can check. It’s about the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight. And it’s about how it was written by this guy in South Africa and it was then sort of stolen from him and traveled around the world. I mean, the story is ultimately about how his children were paid for it. But it is an amazing, I mean, if you’re interested in music it’s an amazing story about how a melody that is very specific, right, was misunderstood. Like the lyrics were completely misunderstood. It was about something completely different. It was misunderstood when it was translated. But the song, the melody is the same melody. It’s about post-colonialism. It’s about apartheid. It’s about the music industry. It’s about many things.

**John:** That’s amazing.

**Anna:** It’s one of those deep dives into something where you’re just like, whoa, that was so interesting. And, I don’t know, I like watching stuff like that. So, I was thinking it’s something maybe people wouldn’t think to watch, but it’s very good.

**John:** Excellent. Tony, do you have a One Cool Thing to share?

**Tony:** At the moment all I care about is swimming in the ocean. That’s my One Cool Thing.

**Anna:** Isn’t it winter?

**Tony:** It is winter. That’s what it’s sort of cool, because I’m the only one in there not in a wet suit.

**Aline:** Oh my god.

**Tony:** My relatives who – I don’t live in Perth usually. I’m like some weird eastern state person. So whenever I come here I have to swim in the Indian Ocean. Because I grew up near the Pacific Ocean, but I like the Indian Ocean. So I guess my One Cool Thing is the Indian Ocean.

**John:** The Indian Ocean.

**Aline:** Wow.

**John:** It’s the biggest One Cool Thing we’ve ever had.

**Aline:** I have something, so I mean, I know we’re kind of past this phase of the pandemic, but you know everybody was baking these amazing loaves of bread with the yeast and the rising and the whole thing. And it’s just too hard. And especially now that we’ve moved out of that. But we’re still pretty much confined in the states.

There’s a recipe for beer bread. Do you know this John? OK. In the New York Times there’s a recipe for beer bread. And it’s really cool because it just has – all you need is flour, baking powder, salt, a little bit of sugar, and a beer, and some butter. It’s got five ingredients. And a little bit of cornmeal for the pan. It’s really fast. It’s really easy. And it’s really delicious. And allows you to make bread with beer, which is fun. It’s on the New York Times cooking site. And it will allow you to say to people that you baked a fabulous loaf of bread. Which right now I think given the state of what we’re processing in the world I think bread Instagram has receded. But if you want to take pictures of it, feel cool, feel like you baked a loaf of bread. There’s something very primal about having baked a loaf of bread.

**John:** Definitely. My One Cool Thing is – we’ve all seen the deep fake videos where they take one actor’s face and swap it with another actor’s face. And those are really remarkable. But the same computer techniques that do that kind of stuff can be trained not just on faces but on anything. And so my link is to Algonuts. It’s by Eric Drass who is an artist. And what he did is he took 18,000 Peanuts comic strips and trained the computer on those. And so it can now generate its own Peanuts comic strips, like algorithmically. And so I’ll put a link in the show notes to this, but it looks like Peanuts but it doesn’t make any sense. And Snoopy will have two faces and yet it looks exactly like a Charles Schultz Peanuts.

So I always find it fascinating when computers will try to create art and it feels like just a good, creepy, sort of mid place of a–

**Aline:** Does it come with weed?

**John:** It should come with weed or some sort of dissolving acid tab for your tongue.

**Aline:** Yeah. Just a gummy. They mail you a gummy. The right gummy.

**John:** The right gummy and it will all make sense. But it was so weird how you could sort of feel the DNA of Peanuts in it even though it’s not clearly Peanuts. And raises all the issues of like what is copyrightable and what is not copyrightable. And is the feeling of Peanuts copyrightable?

So, I’ll put a link in the show notes to that because it’s cool and strange.

This was delightful to have this conversation. I want to thank you both for joining us at such strange times of day for everybody. We need to thank our actual conference who we’re theoretically at. We need to thank Marie Barraco, Marie Cordier, Louise Deveaux for helping us put this together. We would love to do this in person next year, if next year happens, or whenever people can gather together as groups to do this kind of thing.

**Aline:** I think we do this and then we go in the ocean.

**John:** That’s what we do. We just dive. We dive right in.

**Aline:** From here to the ocean.

**John:** Scriptnotes is produced every week by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Eric Pearson. You can send in your outros and your questions to ask@johnaugust.com.

On Twitter, I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. Aline, you’re on Twitter now.

**Aline:** @alinebmckenna.

**John:** Anna or Tony, are you on Twitter? Do you want a social media handle for people to reach out to you?

**Anna:** I’m not very good at Twitter, but I am @annawinger.

**John:** Tony do you check the Twitter?

**Tony:** No. I’m not on the Twitter.

**John:** So smart. Such a good choice you’ve made there in Perth. You can find all the back episodes of Scriptnotes at johnaugust.com. We also have the Premium episodes with bonus segments at Scriptnotes.net.

And that is our show for this week. I want to thank you both very, very much for joining us. It’s an absolute pleasure and thank you for making the shows you’ve made. They really brightened up some dark weeks here during this lockdown period. So thank you for that. And we cannot wait to see what you guys do next. Thank you so much.

**Aline:** Thank you so much. Great to meet you both.

**John:** Thanks.

**Aline:** Bye.

Links:

* Check out [Serie Series](https://www.serieseries.fr/en/) and also find the video recording of the session here!
* [Unorthodox](https://www.netflix.com/title/81019069)
* [The Great](https://www.hulu.com/series/the-great-238db0d4-c476-47ed-9bee-d326fd302f7d)
* [Algonuts](http://www.shardcore.org/shardpress2019/2020/06/17/algonuts/) by Eric Drass
* [Beer Bread](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/2766-beer-bread)
* [Remastered: The Lion’s Share](https://www.netflix.com/title/80191050)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Anna Winger](https://twitter.com/annawinger?lang=en) on Twitter
* [Tony McNamara](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1110111/)
* [Aline Brosh McKenna](https://twitter.com/alinebmckenna?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Eric Pearson ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/459.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2020/too-much-at-once).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Hi ya’ll. My name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 456 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the program we’ll be following up on a bunch of topics we’ve been discussing, include police on screen, assistant pay, short seasons, and restarting production. We’ll also be answering some listener questions assuming we have time because we’ve got a lot on the Workflowy here, Craig.

**Craig:** Let’s just mulch through this. Let’s go with expedience.

**John:** We will speed with heed. But no matter what happens in our bonus segment we will be talking about computers. I’m curious what Craig’s initial experience was with computers, what he’s using right now, and what he wishes to use in the future.

**Craig:** Yeah, sure. I love listening to a computer talk about computers. [laughs]

**John:** Ah, it’s good stuff.

**Craig:** Beep-boop-boop.

**John:** Boop-boop-boop-boop.

**Craig:** Beep-boop-boop-boop-boop.

**John:** Last week on this program we were talking mostly about police on screen, police on TV. And we covered a lot, but a thing we didn’t talk very much about was some of the shows that are doing an interesting or better job of depicting police on screen.

**Craig:** Yeah. Which is always good to call out people that are doing well.

**John:** Yeah. So I’ll link to an article by Bethonie Butler in the Washington Post where she singles out some shows that had good approaches to it. Some of them are not classically police shows. But she mentions Atlanta, Blackish, New Girl. Obviously people talk about The Wire, which wasn’t focused exclusively on police but sort of everyone around the community.

Craig, you did a whole podcast on Watchmen with Damon Lindelof. I thought that was a fascinating depiction of police and policing.

**Craig:** Yup. Very much so. I mean, it’s interesting. Every show that will touch on policing and the community and any issues regarding police brutality and specifically as it interfaces with the Black community is going to be scrutinized. And I think that’s fair. When you make – let’s call it, I think sometimes people misuse the word brave when it comes to culture. We’re not actually going in and facing down bullets or anything. We’re making shows and things. But when you are being let’s just call it creatively ambitious you’re going to open yourself up to scrutiny.

And it was interesting watching over the last couple of weeks as some people attacked Watchmen, which was curious to me because I thought they actually did quite a brilliant job. But then again that’s how things go. I mean, everybody kind of looks at things from different points of view. I thought that one of the things that was great about Watchmen, at least I thought, was that quite a number of the writers were people of color. So, you at least felt like you were getting this accurate representation of different viewpoints as opposed to just the standard Hollywood “and now white people explain everything” kind of point of view.

So, big fan of that show, and all shows, but you know, I think we should all be aware that as we tackle these issues that there’s going to be pushback all the time. And that’s healthy.

**John:** Yeah. And I also want to acknowledge that we probably aren’t talking about a lot of shows that really did try to some of these things and just never caught on. Like public defender shows or other things that were trying to take a very different approach and didn’t work because they got drowned out by police procedurals. And I’m sure there are a tremendous number of conversations happening in executive suites and writer’s rooms around town as these shows start up for another season about like can they change, will they change.

And it’s just really difficult based on how a one-hour procedural is set up to imagine what the better version of that show could be. Because as we talked about it’s a problem-solving show. And because it’s a problem-solving show you want to end the episode with a success. And you want things to happen, not not-happen. You don’t want to have interventions that mean that there is no gun fight.

**Craig:** Whereas of course in reality the problem doesn’t end. It is not solved. And all of these – anyone making a show, I think, especially if they’re in any kind of procedural format is going to also face a reasonable suspicion that they’re doing it cynically. No one wants to imagine that anyone is going to try and capitalize off of something. And yet, you know, Hollywood makes culture and it follows culture. So, it’s a tricky one.

You want to try and now make art that addresses the way we’re thinking about policing and how police function in our communities, but you don’t want to be seen as somebody that’s just doing it because it’s “the hot thing.” And I have to say I don’t have a lot of faith that that won’t happen. I think that is going to happen. And I think it will be interesting to watch people react.

**John:** In a strange way I feel like American culture in the last two weeks to a month as the discussion has focused on what do we actually really want the police to do, so this discussion of defund the police, or sort of how we’re going to change and reform how policing works is that I think Americans would like to see police actually do the kinds of things that they are sort of limited to doing on their on screen depictions. Which is to solve crimes. To stop murders. To protect people who are about to be killed by some outside force, and not do all of the other things which we sort of put on the police to be responsible for.

**Craig:** Well, you know, much like as is the case with the medical profession, what we see on television is not what the average day in a medical professional’s life is. And that’s because we wouldn’t want to watch that. It’s boring.

Reality and I would argue responsible, good, careful, thoughtful policing in a community should be boring. Meaning it’s not exciting to watch. It’s not titillating. You’re not eating popcorn. You’re not leaning forward. It’s supposed to have a different function. It’s not supposed to be dramatic. So when we make drama out of these things we are hashing it up a bit automatically. It’s an interesting – this is an interesting conversation that we are just starting to have which is how our culture interfaces with reality to make things either better or worse. Hollywood tends to over-emphasize or imagine how much impact it could have on the world in terms of good.

I think it under-emphasizes how much impact it can have in terms of bad. And I’m going to be watching this discussion carefully. This is an interesting one. And a necessary one.

**John:** Absolutely. So policing is only the first part of the criminal justice system. We got a letter in from a listener who works in the second half of the criminal justice system. Do you want to read what Lisa Steele wrote?

**Craig:** Yeah. Lisa writes, “I’m a special public defender for Massachusetts and Connecticut working in appeals. Yes, the public defender offices are busy. And, yes, most cases are resolved by plea, not trial. But if a client says “I didn’t do it” or “I want a trial” their attorney will do their damnedest to get them a fair trial. There are huge institutional roadblocks to overcome. But I’d be hard-pressed to see a public defender unhappy about taking a case to trial if there’s any hope of success. The ones with no hope, yes, we’ll try to persuade the client that trial is a bad idea.

“I’d love to see a dramatic series with an ethical public defender or a criminal defense attorney at the center. Better Call Saul is entertaining but does perpetuate the sleazy lawyer trope.”

So, what do you think about that, John?

**John:** Well, I think we have many listeners who could rise to this challenge. So it’s the question of what does the show centered around a public defender look like? And I know there have probably been shows every season developed along this line. Different pilots that have been shot. Some things that have gone to series and I have not seen them, so I apologize to listeners who said like, “I had that show.” But this does feel like a moment at which the right show, the smart show that did this could break out. And so it’s the way that Scandal broke out. The way that you have a show that this is your central character but there’s something else there so that it’s on a weekly basis. We’re not tuning in just for the public defender of it all, but for who these characters are.

**Craig:** Yeah. I have no doubt that Ms. Steele is correct about where she is working. One thing to be aware of is that our country does not have any kind of unified or therefore equitable justice code across the United States. Obviously that is true for federal statutes. But local, state-level, different laws. Different functions. Different ways of administering justice.

So for instance there’s a story in the third season of the Serial podcast about a public defender whose client is innocent. He knows she’s innocent. She knows she’s innocent. She wants to go to trial. And the DA is saying, “No.” And the DA offers a plea bargain and the public defender in one of those rare moments says, “No. She didn’t do it and we’re going to trial.” Just as Ms. Steele is describing here.

But in Cleveland, where this occurs, public defenders receive their assignments and therefore their salaries from the judges. So a case comes in, the public defender charges somebody, the judge assigns a public defender. And if you want to go to trial you’re going to have to answer to the judge who does not want to conduct a trial, because it’s too much work. So, what happens in that case? The public defender says, “I want a trial,” and one of the bailiffs comes to him and says, “The judge wants to see you.”

And the judge basically says, “What are you doing. Just, no.” [laughs] “Don’t do this.” And it’s not that you can’t, it’s more like quietly implied if you do maybe I just won’t be picking your name out of the hat anymore. And there goes your salary. There goes your livelihood.

Well, that’s insane.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s just a terrible system. So, we have problems. Something like that I think is just an easy one. Like we should get rid of that. But easier said than done as our entire nation is fragmented into 50 different codes. And then within those 50 codes lots of other different codes.

So, I think Lisa is right. And I also think that in other places what she’s saying is not exactly as clean as that.

**John:** Yeah. And you’ve listened to the Serial podcast which is based on True Stories, I can imagine though if this were put into a fictional context we would not necessarily believe it. Like I feel like it’s only television true story that would get me to take any action to say that that is outrageous and that has to change. If I just saw it happening in a TV show I don’t know if I would believe it in a way.

**Craig:** You need it to be based on facts, right.

**John:** Yeah. Dramatizing it is just not enough.

**Craig:** Dramatizing it is not enough. We just presume that drama is drama. And we presume that because the characters that we’re seeing are not real people. So, obviously nothing that happens to Jimmy on Better Call Saul is real because Jimmy is not real. It is a great show, though. I do love the show.

**John:** Cool. Now, Craig, I just want to remind you and remind our listeners that behind the scenes of all of this there’s still Coronavirus. There’s still a pandemic raging.

**Craig:** Oh boy is there ever. Yeah.

**John:** There is. So as we’re recoding this, middle of June, LA is reporting its highest number of cases ever. Deaths are up. And, yet, we’re opening up the town. We’re doing new stuff. So, it’s a challenging time.

So, personal news here. I got my first coronavirus test and antibody test this past week. This was the classic swab up the nose for the coronavirus and the antibody test is a finger prick. The antibody test, right there they can give you preliminary results, and then the afternoon, like a couple hours later, they give you the official results. So I did not have antibodies for coronavirus. I thought it unlikely but possible because I was in Korea for Big Fish right as the outbreak was happening. And my husband and daughter did get sick while we were there. So, that seemed possible. But all of us did not get coronavirus. So, we are like most Americans, did not get coronavirus.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, so good and bad news. You can still get it. Although, of course, people who have gotten it can also still get it. We’re not quite sure how long that immunity lasts. It appears that our country in its absolute vacuum of leadership has just said, “Meh, I guess people are just going to keep dying.” Because we are selfish. I don’t know how else to put it. We’re selfish. And we want what we want. We meaning the general public seems to just want to do what they want to do. And they’re selfish. And also they’re not thinking straight.

And people are going to die. So, the numbers are going to go back up. The numbers were going to go back up anyway in the fall. So this is already bad news. And there’s no question that the size of the protests and the lack of social distancing between protestors is going to exacerbate the problem. In no way am I saying that we shouldn’t have been protesting, but that’s just – you know what shouldn’t have happened was police murdering a guy. That would have been preferable.

So, it’s bad. And it’s going to get worse. No question.

**John:** So, when we first talked about this topic it was a bonus segment if you can remember that. Like way back in the day. That’s a bonus topic. We’ll talk about the coronavirus, this thing that could potentially happen.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it’s funny going back to think through what my assumptions were then. So I wanted to record some of my assumptions right now just so six months from now I can listen back and say like, oh my god, I was so incredibly wrong. So, the assumptions going into this epidemic was that handwashing was super important. We all learned to wash our hands for 20 seconds. To maintain six-feet of social distancing. To be scrupulous about wiping down surfaces. And some people were doing like mail quarantines and all this stuff. And eventually the instruction came out like, oh, we said don’t worry about masks but, yeah, now do wear a mask. Masks are good.

I would say my assumptions right now, and this is again middle of June 2020, I think we’re going to find out that masks are actually incredibly important. And that we should have done those from the start and that that is probably more important than the other things I’ve put on my list in terms of keeping this thing from spreading. I think we’re figuring out that it’s more of a thing that is spreading through the air rather than you pick it up off of things.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But that’s my guess. That’s my guess right now.

**Craig:** I think that is – we can upgrade that from a guess to an educated guess. And I think in part we were told so much about handwashing and wiping down surfaces simply because there were no masks to give. So, I’m fairly certain that people like Dr. Fauci looked around and said, “OK, the number one thing we should do is the number one thing they’re doing in Asia already which is wear masks to prevent airborne transmission.” And then someone said to him, “We don’t have any. And the few that we do have we desperately need to conserve for medical professionals.” At which point we were told other things. Part of – and then we get frustrated. Why are we being told “yes mask, no mask, no mask, yes?” Because we screwed up.

Because we didn’t have this. We should have a national stockpile of personal protective equipment. Of course we should. We spend billions of dollars on a single jetfighter. And we don’t have masks to give people? God, we’re stupid right now.

So, I think you’re absolutely right. Now that masks are plentiful they will be crucial. If you wear a mask and other people wear a mask your chances of contracting COVID do reduce dramatically.

**John:** Yeah. And it just basically makes sense. The simplest description I’ve seen of this is the someone pissing description. So, if two people are standing next to each other and they’re naked and one of them starts urinating the other person will get sprayed by urine. If that person who is not pissing has pants on they’re less likely to get wet. But if the person who is pissing is wearing pants that urine is not going anywhere. And that’s really the simplest description of why you wear a mask. It stops it from getting out of your body so easily.

**Craig:** I would have used the example of someone – it’s like if someone were sneezing as opposed to somebody sneezing with a mask. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah, but I think pissing is more fun.

**Craig:** Listen, the fact that we started with two nude people–

**John:** Yeah, got to start with two nude people.

**Craig:** You start with two nude people and then one of them is just like, “Here we go. It’s happening.” I love it.

**John:** It’s going to happen. So, again, the backdrop for why we’re talking about this on this podcast is the entire production of film and TV has shut down because of coronavirus and now there’s – well, Craig, it’s all back.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** The governor put out guidelines this past week.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And I’ll just read you the guidelines. “Music, TV, and film production may resume in California recommended no sooner than June 12, 2020,” a couple days ago, “and subject to approval by county public health officers within jurisdictions of operations following the review of local epidemiological data, including cases per 100,000 population, rate of test positivity, and local preparedness to support a healthcare surge, vulnerable populations, contract tracing, and testing.” Wow, that was a long sentence. I can’t believe I got through it.

**Craig:** The government tends to not truncate their clauses.

**John:** No. “To reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, productions, cast, crew and other industry workers should abide by safety protocols agreed by labor and management which may be further enhanced by county public health officers. Back office staff and management should adhere to office workspace guidelines published by the California Department of Public Health and the California Department of Industrial Relations to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”

That just says not a whole hell of a lot. The interesting part here is you should work with safety protocols agreed to by labor and management, so let’s talk about labor and management and safety protocols and what we know.

**Craig:** Well, to start with the fact that the state government is saying you can resume film production doesn’t mean that it’s going to. And the biggest concern of course is with actors. Everyone on a set can be – people on a set can wear a hazmat suit if they want, except for the actors, who can’t even wear a facemask, or gloves, or keep any kind of social distancing. In fact, they may need to kiss each other.

This is a huge issue for them and they are going to drive this. There is a whitepaper – I’m still stuck on your peeing guys – so there’s a whitepaper from the AMPTP that was done in conjunction with every union except the Writers Guild here in town. And it’s about how to do this all safely. Of course, writers will also be required to be on set for televised work. It’s going to be driven almost entirely I think again by the actors. When the actors agree to do this it will be done. This also may start happening ad hoc. In other words the actors union is likely to say, if they haven’t already, “It’s up to the cast.” And then it’s about the cast.

Now, that’s tricky because this is people’s livelihood. This is their income. And when you start to say to people are you willing to trade your safety for your livelihood that puts them in a difficult spot. Especially when they aren’t what we think of – when we think of actors we think of George Clooney, or Meryl Streep. But in fact, you know, most working actors are making a living wage. Meaning they need the wage to live.

**John:** Yeah. When you’re number 13 on the call sheet you don’t have a lot of leverage there.

**Craig:** No. And so you may be willing to put yourself in danger. That’s difficult. And I sympathize with the position that SAG/AFTRA is in. Because on the one hand they don’t want their members to feel jammed into trading safety for employment. On the other hand if they ban it entirely they are also then curtailing the economic welfare of their own members in a way that may be just as detrimental.

This is a tough one. And I think probably one of those situations where there is not a perfect answer at all.

**John:** No. So let’s talk about the solutions that are being proposed and sort of what the general areas of discussion are. So we’ll link to the AMPTP paper. We’ll link to Lionsgate put out their guidelines. And it largely tracks with what our friends who are showrunners are discussing with their production entities about how to get back into production. So, it’s a lot of testing. It is a recognition that actors are masked until they can’t be masked and then you are keeping as few people on set as possible. You are maintaining social distance.

We’ve talked before on the podcast about French hours which is a limited timeframe. It also skips over lunch. There’s different ways to do that kind of limited timeframe. But that feels like a good idea to get rid of that break where everyone is congregating together. And also just get you off that set sooner.

Some of these things are just kind of frustratingly bullet pointy. The lines get things a little bit more of a template, a little bit more of a this is how we’re going to do it. But it’s really difficult. One of the things I found fascinating about the Lionsgate document was talking about what to do when you’re on location. And like if you’re going to a set that’s a practical location how do you know that that set itself is actually safe on a COVID level. It’s really complicated.

So the shows that can film on a soundstage that would normally be sitcoms but you just don’t bring in the audience, that feels much more controllable. It’s the things that do need to be out there in the world that are going to be challenging.

**Craig:** Yeah. And there are about six of those left? So most stuff is going to be done in a way that is challenging. And, by the way, even a sitcom set, all you need is one person to just start coughing and that’s it. And, again, all of this, no matter how much ink is spilled and no matter how many bullet points are dashed off and whitepapers are printed out, the virus doesn’t give a damn and will do what it does. And we are living with it now and like you and I said I think this is pretty safe to say this is going to get worse before it gets better. I do feel like we are in for some more trouble.

And until there is a reliable safe and effective vaccine this is kind of how it’s going to be.

**John:** Yeah. Before we close out this topic I do want to circle back to this idea of protests and sort of mass gathering. I, too, was really nervous when I saw a bunch of people together. What gave me some heartening was that when I saw these mass protests I saw a bunch of people in masks. And that made me feel better about that than a bunch of folks not wearing masks and sort of protesting against wearing masks in other parts of the country. So, including Orange County which is right next door.

**Craig:** Orange County, they are nuts.

**John:** So, it will be hard to suss out exactly to what degree protests were involved versus the general easing of restrictions. But individually I think we need to be really thoughtful about – like the description of a risk budget. How much risk is it appropriate for you to take given your circumstance and who is around you? And really figure out ways to mitigate that risk and not spend that risk budget when you don’t need to.

**Craig:** I don’t know if you saw this video. There’s an amazing video of a Karen in Orange County. I don’t know how else to say it. She’s a Karen. She gets up at some sort of city hall meeting where they were talking about imposing a requirement for masks in public spaces, which they should. And her argument against it was that god, so this is already great, god had given her the ability to remove carbon dioxide from her body by breathing out. And a mask would make her breathe the carbon dioxide back in.

And I thought it’s rare that someone could say something and every part of it is wrong. Every single part.

**John:** If she were to write it down the punctuation would be wrong. That’s just how wrong it is.

**Craig:** Everything. It’s just like, god? God? I mean…

**John:** All right, Craig, I think we deserve some good news. So let’s move onto our next bit of follow up. A few episodes back we asked our listeners, hey, if you were a previous Three Page Challenge entrant who we talked about your entry on the show we’re curious what’s up with you. So write in and give us an update. And so we had an update this week from Ashley Sanders. Let’s take a listen.

**Ashley Sanders:** Hi John. Hi Craig. I’ve just listened to Episode 449 of the podcast. I’m a few weeks behind because of lockdown. And you were asking about any follow up from people who had been on the Three Page Challenge. My TV pilot 419 was on the challenge about three years ago and you were both ludicrously nice about it.

After you discussed it on the show I got some [unintelligible] from TV companies over in the States. I’m in the UK. Sent it over and then panicked. I realized I didn’t know what I was doing and suddenly thought I might need someone to protect my interests. So it gave me the kick in the pants I needed to call an agency.

An agent read the script and [unintelligible] signed me. The most wonderful agent has been so proactive. My career has since – I couldn’t wish for a better agent. And I wouldn’t have made that phone call if it wasn’t for Scriptnotes and the Three Page Challenge. I’m now writing a couple of movies I wouldn’t be writing if I hadn’t made that call off the back of being on the challenge. 419 got optioned by a great UK indie super smart, developed it further, and ended up with an absolutely killer product.

Unfortunately we failed to find a home for it in the UK as the show is a little high concept. It’s currently joined with a US company and will hopefully get made.

So, really your challenge was responsible for giving me the shot in the arm to jumpstart my career. So, thank you. I can’t thank you guys enough. From me and everyone else out there like me please keep doing what you’re doing. It’s unbelievable.

**John:** Well hooray. Congratulations Ashely. We are looking forward to seeing this project and other projects. Listen, I am glad that your being on Scriptnotes gave you some exposure. I don’t want to claim any more credit than that. You clearly were a good writer. You were a good writer when we read you. Someone else would have discovered that you are a good writer as well.

It sounds like you’re doing the right things to keep moving forward. And even when you have setbacks in the UK figuring out a way to do that same project here is good. So, again, it sounds like this one thing you wrote is attracting some attention. But you’re also focused on what else you could write and how to get hired writing other things. That’s exactly what you should be doing.

**Craig:** Yeah. I feel like at best what we’re doing is maybe speeding along something that would have happened anyway. That’s the most credit I’m willing to give us. But we do love hearing this because, you know, we’re doing this pointlessly. [laughs] I mean, most of the time I must admit I’m just doing it pointlessly. But then again sometimes every now and again you’ll see like, oh yes, there is in fact a point that you are impacting people. And even if while we’re talking to – how many people listen to our show now?

**John:** Oh, like 50,000 a week.

**Craig:** 50,000 people a week. Even if five of those 50,000 people a week are going to end up being professional screenwriters, I’m glad that we’re talking to those five. Even more glad I hope that we’re bringing in some other people that may have not considered doing it and now are. So that’s always lovely to think.

So, I guess the point is that Ashley Sanders has proven that we guarantee success for you. [laughs]

**John:** Oh my, yes.

**Craig:** Statistics.

**John:** Yeah, statistics.

**Craig:** 100% of people that wrote us about this have gotten jobs.

**John:** Oh, good stuff. One core constituency of our listenership are assistants. Assistants in the film and television industry. And over the last year we’ve been talking a lot about assistants and particularly assistant pay in this town and how low it is. And how it needs to improve. And we made some progress on that. We actually got some major employers to raise their rates and actually start conversations about how to be paid better and really what people should be thinking about as their minimums. And then a pandemic hit. And so a lot has changed.

So, to explain a little bit about sort of how assistants work here and the different kinds of assistants, on set we talk about PAs. PAs generally have no union, but they’re often reporting to the AD which does have a union at the DGA. But in writer’s rooms and people who are just working for a writer like a showrunner we’re really talking about sort of classically two jobs. There’s the assistant who is taking notes in the room and a PA type who is running and getting the lunch order. And we talked a lot about the lunch order on the show and people not paying the PA back for lunch order orders and stuff. Those are classically two functions you would need to have happen.

One of the strange things about this pandemic is as all of the writer’s room stuff have become virtual those writer PAs who were getting the lunch order, there’s no lunch order anymore. Like that’s a whole big part of the job gone. But there’s still a lot of need for someone to be taking notes and sort of organizing things. And so that’s been a challenge. And a lot of the virtual rooms that I’m hearing from, they basically just got rid of one job entirely and now they just have the one person taking notes.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like many segments of the population assistants have been impacted significantly and very negatively by the shutdown. It does seem like when these things happen unfairly it’s the folks at the bottom of the earning pyramid who take the biggest hit.

I have heard and seen with my own two eyes honorable, decent, good people at the top of the pyramid who have gone out of their way and made personal sacrifices to ensure the health and welfare of the people at the bottom of that economic pyramid. I like seeing that. It does happen. I don’t want people to think that this is just a town where rich people mouth slogans and then give nobody a dime. That’s not what’s happening. People are being gracious. Sometimes. [laughs]

There are some people who are not. And it would be great if the multinational corporations with hundreds of billions of dollars in market value did it anyway. But they don’t.

**John:** Now, Craig, as I introduce the topic this is how long we’ve been in this state of emergency that I forgot that at the very start of the pandemic you and I helped raise like a half million dollars to pay support staff.

**Craig:** We did do that.

**John:** I completely forgot that was a thing we did. And so–

**Craig:** We did that.

**John:** Those checks went out and those people got paid a little bit more. They’ve been getting unemployment insurance in many cases which is fantastic, which is great. But now stuff is starting up again and it’s challenging for these assistants, many of whom are aspiring writers, to be employed properly. So, I had Megana reach out to her assistant boards and her contacts to sort of get some feedback about what’s actually happening. Do you want to start with this first one, anonymous, who wrote in?

**Craig:** Sure. Anonymous writes, “There’s been some chatter among assistants that even though the bulk of writer’s rooms plan on working remotely indefinitely, some are planning on meeting in person now that production is starting back. I’ve seen a few posts in which assistants are being put in a position where they must weigh the risk of going back to work, especially PAs, who will have to expose themselves while picking up lunch and groceries.

“I’ve also seen job postings looking for drivers and personal assistants. One of the posters even commented that their boss was ‘breaking away from social distancing’ as they start preproduction and are scouting locations. With studios and production companies impacted by the shutdown, they’re offering assistants even less pay while asking assistants to potentially risk their lives.”

Well, I certainly don’t like the less pay part. I mean, if you’re going to ask people to risk their lives you’ve got to at least give them what they were being paid before. Good lord.

**John:** Yeah. There’s so many elements at play here. So part of that is I think a thing that’s been happening since the pandemic began which is that we offload our individual risk onto someone else. It’s like someone else who is delivering our food to us is taking the risk for us. And that’s a whole complicated set of issues. And I think the change here is that these assistants who were staying home are now sort of being put into that role of being the person who goes out and gets the thing and brings it to a place and is absorbing some of that risk for the showrunner, for the other writers in that room.

But really you can generalize this second part of like, OK, if we are going to start getting together in person that is going to increase our risk overall. And that risk may be disproportionate for different people in that room because some people might be immunocompromised or have someone in their family who is immunocompromised. And it’s a bigger gamble for certain people than others and it’s really uncomfortable to say that in a room.

And just as we said 13th on the call sheet for actors, there’s going to naturally be kind of a hierarchy of writers in that room. And some people who would be confident speaking out if they were the co-EP wouldn’t speak out if they were the staff writer or story editor.

**Craig:** This has always been the situation, right? And we’re as an industry trying to improve things. Assistants and people who are entry level who are struggling to either get or keep these very small number of desirable jobs have always been put in these situations where they were exploited.

And there’s different kinds of exploitation. And as an industry we are trying to improve kinds of exploitation. I mean, the fact that everybody used to say the phrase “casting couch” like it was a goof and now we understand that just the words themselves are referring to a very serious crime is a sign of how we are improving, one would hope.

But then there’s stuff like this, which is new. This was not a problem. Hollywood in the ‘60s didn’t have a COVID problem where PAs were coughing and dying because idiots made them get lunch in ways that were unsafe. So, we have this new avenue of potential exploitation that we have to struggle with and we have to come to grips with. And, again, this is not going to be easily solved until there is a vaccine. It’s just not.

**John:** Now thinking through this, that assistant who is running out to get the lunch order every day, like they were assuming some risk because they were driving in LA traffic. There was some risk that was naturally there. It was lower than what we’re talking about with COVID-19, but there was some risk there. And I guess we really weren’t thinking about that risk that that assistant was taking.

I do feel like we’re getting closer to understanding what the risks are for going to a place and picking up a thing and leaving a place that is pretty secure the way that our food handling has seemed to have gotten. So, I’m concerned for that person who has to do it, but I’m more concerned about sort of the novel situations, or the situations where like well because Chris is already doing that thing and picking up the lunch order we can also send him to do this or to do that or to do this third thing and just increase his exposure and increase his risk. That’s troubling for me.

**Craig:** Yeah. And there’s a continued possibility of risk shifting, so if the PAs on a show say we’re not comfortable going to get these lunches then the show will say, great, we’ll just use Grub Hub. And so those people will now be getting lunches. Some humans will be getting the lunches. And, yeah. So it’s going to be trouble. There’s going to be trouble for a while. And I think the least that we could do, that we must do, is if we cannot solve the state of safety because the world is inherently unsafe, we have to at least compensate people fairly and decently, or we are compounding the problem. We have to. We can’t offer assistants less pay. That’s insane.

**John:** Yeah. So, Megana also added to our Workflowy a list of other questions and concerns that she was hearing from assistants as she was talking with them. So, I’ll just sort of read through these.

Is everyone getting tested prior to showing up to work?

Are people isolating outside of work?

Will assistants get hazard pay?

How will safety protocols be enforced?

How are we communicating about sick leave?

What are the daily systems in place to check how everyone is feeling on set or in the room?

Will someone be taking people’s temperatures?

If someone isn’t feeling well how should they communicate that? Are we still paying that person?

Are we requiring everyone to wear masks and gloves? What about people who are already choosing not to? How will this be enforced?

And, finally, many assistants don’t have insurance. Most of the people are not 871 script coordinators. So, are we paying them some sort of healthcare stipend because of the situation?

**Craig:** Well, in terms of that last one they already should be paying them that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** These are great questions. And much as we were referring earlier to the United States which has this uniform federal code and then four billion different state and county and municipal regulations, so too are our businesses fragmented among various networks, studios, and then inside of those, shows, and production companies, all of which are going to probably be approaching things in their own way. There is no simple answer to this. I mean, ideally you answer these questions moving the dial as far to the right as you can on the safety-ometer. Yes, everyone should.

I mean, I’m not sure about gloves because there’s an argument that gloves actually make things worse.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But masks – I mean, if it were me, if I were running a writer’s room, I would require masks. If we’re all sitting around the table talking at each other for hours, yes, I would require masks. Yes. I think taking temperatures in the morning, checking in with a thermometer is a great idea. Yes, if people got sick they should get sick pay. Yes, everyone working in your office should have health insurance. Those all seem like good policies to put in place.

**John:** Yeah. Also I feel like we’re in California. You can be outside. Try not to be in a room for a super long period of time with people if you can possibly do that.

**Craig:** Now everyone has skin cancer, so good job.

**John:** Tents. Tents. They’ll have tents.

**Craig:** Ah, tents, yes.

**John:** Finally, Charlie asks, “Are there any resources that can help people navigate working remotely? I think a lot of what’s happening is that writers don’t like the online boards. We all bought laptops so now one has a monitor that can see what’s actually happening in the room. So what software are rooms using and liking and can we share best tips and practices?”

This is a request out for if you’re listening to this right now and your room is working really well because of something you’ve discovered that’s working great, write in to us and let Megana know what you’re using and we’ll share this on the next episode or the episode after. Because different rooms are trying different things in terms of duplicating the experience of what would be on the whiteboard, what would be cards, how stuff is working. Some people are using Zoom. Some people are using other stuff. So next week or the week after we’ll do a segment where we talk about what writer’s rooms are using and liking because we’ve got to share this information.

**Craig:** Yup. No question.

**John:** Cool. So next up is equity and inclusion. Every year the Writers Guild publishes a report that shows who is working in town in terms of writers and the demographics of those writers who are working. And so we’ve talked about this I think every year of the podcast. The report came out this last week. It got overshadowed because of everything else happening in the world. But there was some interesting stuff in here. Craig, have you had a chance to take a look?

**Craig:** Yeah. This is what I have traditionally called the Bad News Report where we read it and go, yup, more bad news. But it’s not all bad news this time. There is clearly a positive trend going on. So, we’ll just sort of do the top line stuff here. The most encouraging statistics are along the axis of gender. So currently television writers for the 2019/2020 TV season, so reflecting what we just had, it broke down 44% women, 56% men. Is that parity? No. Women, however, are up 5%. And those numbers were not anywhere near 44% ten years ago. This is a really encouraging trend. I think we’re doing excellent work there. And I have no reason to think that that trend won’t continue. We should be able to get to gender parity in rooms.

Let’s talk about race. People of color at 35% and white at 65%. That’s also not disastrous given the actual racial demographics of the United States of America. It’s not perfect by any stretch. Good news though. Up, again, 5%.

And this is an area where I think we can actually do better than the demographics of the United States because we’ve done so much worse than the demographics of the United States. So, I think this is an area where we do need to aggressively not worry about the scale per se and matching. I think it would be nice to see that number actually also at 50%.

**John:** Absolutely. And we will link to this whole report. But if I’m talking about a page number it’s from this PDF which will be linked here. Page 11 talks about TV writers by level and that’s where you can see where there are still some glaring disparities, particularly in race in terms of as you move up the ranks from staff writer to showrunner the percentage of people of color in those different roles drops. Drops after like supervising producer. It starts to slip a lot.

Some of this is just the climbing the ladder issue. It’s a number of years and credits that sort of move you up that ladder. But as we’ve talked about on the show before sometimes the ladder in the pipeline is kind of broken. So there’s a real question of like with time would this get fixed? Or is there something more fundamental that needs to happen to make sure that writers of color can move all the way up to the top of showrunners?

**Craig:** I’m sure it’s a combination of both. So, on the one hand you would expect this that there’s going to be a lagging effect because as people enter the industry they enter at entry levels. And so over time in theory if the advancement scheme is fair then those numbers will improve. If it is not fair, those numbers will not improve. Or we’ll be lagging behind the process in the entry level stuff. So we’ve got to keep any eye on it. In general we know that the more people of color in positions of leadership the more likely it is that more people of color will then be promoted to positions of leadership.

We’ve always had a vicious cycle that’s been downwards, and now we’re hoping for sort of a positive spiral going upwards.

**John:** A virtuous cycle.

**Craig:** A virtuous cycle. Now, all of that applies to television. However, in the screenwriting business, so features AKA the Bad News Business. Not good. So, OK, plus side of things, 4% more women employed as screenwriters in 2019. 2% more people of color employed as screenwriters in 2019.

Bad part. 27% of screenwriters were women. Only 27%. And only 20% of hired screenwriters were people of color.

Now, some things to think about, aside from the fact that that’s horrendous. The job market in screenwriting, of course, continues to sort of be retract-y and regressive. And not as attractive honestly as the television business. So, one consideration is that when there is an unfair system people who are traditionally discriminated against are going to go to the avenues where they are being less discriminated against. So there is some sort of natural movement there.

It is only, therefore, more evidence that the way people are hired in the feature business is just not good. It’s just not good. And I don’t know why it has gone up slightly. I can’t get too excited about it because when you look at the numbers of employment, I mean, these percentages are a little bit of a lie. When we say 2% more people of color were hired as screenwriters in 2019 that 2% is applied against a very small number compared to the 5% increase of people of color in television, where the base is much bigger.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, just in sheer numbers that 2% more people of color could mean four people. It’s just not great.

**John:** Now so one thing I do want to single out here, we have a perception that the feature business is falling and that few people are working in feature, but that’s actually not the case. There’s more writers employed in features this past year than the year before. There is actually an uptick because even as the studios have sort of compressed Netflix and Amazon and other people have come online. So there’s been more folks working in features than before.

But you look at sort of the work that you’re actually doing and our own experience we’ve talked about so much on this podcast is that it is structurally not very appealing to work in features. And if you are a young writer of color who is making a choice between like do I want to work on this TV show, or do I want to work on this feature given that I’m going to be doing so much free work on this feature. I’m going to be – I don’t know when I’m going to get paid for this feature.

**Craig:** It’s also certainly true that there are writers of color who want to work only in the feature business and who are struggling and one of the institutional issues you have with the screenwriting business is that it’s not room-based. It’s individual-based. And when it’s individual-based the compounding factor of experience dramatically multiplies.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So you and I have written dozens and dozens of screenplay. We have been hired many, many times over the course of 20 years. So, when someone is looking for somebody to write a screenplay, at the very least they know that you and I have done it a whole lot. And the experience gap is enormous because there is no room. There is no entry-level position. There is no ladder. There’s nothing to climb.

They will continue – even as they increase the number of jobs available the pool of people that are experienced will dwindle. And so you have a lot of repeat business among a narrowing group of people and that will always, given the way that the businesses function, benefit white men. So, there has to essentially be an overt effort to get people experienced. And I was talking about this the other day here in the office. And it’s interesting you have to give people the right to stumble and fail. You’re not going to be able to get experienced writers of color in the feature business if you don’t give them the same right to stumble and fail that the feature business has always given white guys.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It just needs to happen. You just need to absorb it. Because you’ll hear people, “Oh well we tried, you know, we tried hiring but then this person didn’t do a great job because they’ve never done it before.” And I’m like, mm-hmm.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Do it again. Do it again.

**John:** As we’ve talked about on the show the first thing I was hired to write I got through three official drafts on it. So the movie never happened, but I got to actually get paid for multiple drafts in ways that new writers never get these days. And so one-step deals and the lack of a guaranteed second step creates this impossible situation where that writer is never going to be able to deliver the thing that makes everyone happy, that everyone has a good experience with. They’re not going to get the experience of how to do multiple drafts and how to sort of work through a feature in development.

**Craig:** That’s such a good point. And that’s exactly why we need to get this clause through negotiations and the companies need to do this. Give writers earning under a certain small multiple of scale a guaranteed second step. You need to. It’s the only way you’re going to learn. You can’t learn writing one script and then rewriting that script for some dopey producer who has no clue. You work for the studio and the need the ability to be trained through experience. It’s the only job in Hollywood where most people who do it have never actually done the other half of it. The first half is writing a script. The second half is writing a script that gets turned into a movie. And working on the movie as it’s in production.

We need to get more people who are not just white men into those slots and the only way to do it is to increase the on-the-job training. Because there’s no room to follow.

**John:** I agree. All right. So that is our quick look at the equity and inclusion report. But there’s actually a lot more in here, so do follow through the link in the show notes to see sort of what’s there and where progress has been made, but where progress is sorely lacking.

We’re going to skip over our little bit here about short seasons. I will say that short seasons are related to the problem of experience and sort of developing experience in television. A writer I follow on Twitter was saying that like by the time he was running his own show he had worked on 100 episodes of TV. And no one can work on 100 episodes of TV easily these days with so many short seasons, or get the longevity of things. So, I feel like short seasons are a related factor to sort of the challenge of equity and inclusion in the TV business.

**Craig:** Yeah. And they’re not going anywhere. And they will become the new norm because also creatively speaking I would argue that creatively short seasons are why television is producing the best work it has ever produced. But, yeah, there are costs.

**John:** So one thing I do have some hope about is that as I see people who have big deals at streamers and other places, I’m thinking of the Berlantis and the Ryan Murphys, those writers do tend to hop from show to show, same with Shonda Rhimes. Those writers do tend to hop from show to show within that little ecosphere and I feel like even if these shows have short seasons I hope that those writers are getting an ongoing experience of making a bunch of stuff because that’s really what they need.

**Craig:** Yeah. I absolutely agree. And they do have an opportunity – I mean, Greg Berlanti is kind of his own network. So, Greg and Ryan and Shonda, these folks are continuations of this like what used to be the old school, like a Stephen J. Cannell where there was like a producer who had tons of shows. And so they’re still there. They still exist. And they become their own networks. And they are uniquely positioned to advance these causes and improve the diversity of the workplace. And I think that they do. It doesn’t hurt that Greg and Ryan and Shonda are all people that are in traditionally underrepresented categories in the business.

So, it’s good to see and you have to hope that it will continue that way.

**John:** Yeah. All right. Two last little bits of news. This Saturday I’m doing a local author event at Chevalier’s which is the bookstore in my neighborhood. It was originally supposed to be a couple weeks ago but then sort of the world happened and it was not an appropriate time for a happy discussion of kids’ books and local authors. So that is happening on Zoom this Saturday at 2pm. So, join us. So, Aline will be there. Derek Haas will be there. A bunch of local authors. Some of them are kids and middle grade authors. Some are grown up authors. We’re talking about our favorite books. We’re talking about summer reading lists and things we’d recommend people read.

There’s a link in the show notes. You can see my summer reading list, but also other authors about what they are recommending.

Finally, David Koepp, was a guest on Episode 418. We talked about his book a little bit on that episode, but I hadn’t really read it yet. I finished it this last week. It’s really, really good. I started reading it and worried it was going to be a pandemic book because there’s an outbreak of a thing, but it’s actually not. It’s a thriller. If you can imagine Jurassic Park but in an underground storage unit. It was really well done. So, check that out. And check out his movie, You Should Have Left, which is based on a book that I really liked, a German book I really liked. And that was supposed to come out theatrically. Now it’s coming out on video everywhere June 18. So check out his movie. The trailer looks terrific.

**Craig:** Fantastic. Love that David Koepp.

**John:** Craig, One Cool Thing time. What do you got?

**Craig:** Oh. This one is easy this week. My One Cool Thing is The Last of Us Part 2. It is a masterpiece. Obviously I’m a big fan of The Last of Us. I think that much is clear by now. I have had a chance to play The Last of Us Part 2. I’m in my second play through now. It’s a shattering, brilliant piece of art. And in the videogame business reviews are essential. Nobody really cares about television reviews. They sort of care about movie reviews. But I made a career of movies that critics didn’t like but people did.

So you can get away with that. It’s not a necessary aspect. But in the videogame business it’s huge. And specifically Metacritic. That’s what everybody looks at. Metacritic compiles, aggregates all the videogame reviews. Calculates them on a scale of zero to 100 and gives you an aggregate number. To get really good games I think you’re talking about the high 80s. Excellent games you hit a 90. The Last of Us clocks in at 96.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** And it deserves it. It is a spectacular game. And it is a thought-provoking challenge to what we understand to be the function of heroism and villainy in narrative. I can’t say enough about it. I hope to god that Neil and I do a good enough job on the TV side of things to be able to tell that part of the story. Because it’s something else. I don’t think you’re a big PlayStation guy, but–

**John:** I’ll definitely get it. So I downloaded The Last of Us Part 1.

**Craig:** Oh great.

**John:** I guess it wasn’t Part 1 because they didn’t know there was going to be a Part 2. I downloaded that this past week and I haven’t started playing it yet, but I will. So I’m looking forward to checking it out.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Cool. My One Cool Thing is an episode of Decoder Ring. It’s a podcast hosted by Willa Paskin and written by Willa Paskin. And this episode I loved so much was about the Metrosexual and sort of the branding and a discovery and creation of this concept of the metrosexual. This man who cared about fashion and taste and seemed gay in a lot of ways but was not gay in other ways. And the birth of Details Magazine.

It was just a great time capsule of this little moment that happened. And the importance of how applying a word to it defines a space. And without the word metrosexual all that stuff would have been there but it wouldn’t have coalesced the way that it happened at its moment. So a terrific podcast, but especially this episode on metrosexual I thought was great.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Cool. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao.

**Craig:** Ka-boom.

**John:** It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Joey Hillenbrand. If you have an outro you can send us a link to it at ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust.

We have t-shirts. And they’re great. So go to Cotton Bureau and look for them, or just there’s a link in the show notes for them.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts.

You can sign up to become a Premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you can also get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record. Also, you can gift memberships to Scriptnotes. And so a lot of people have been doing that this last week for whatever reason.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** So if you want to give a gift for that there is a link in the show notes for giving a gift of Scriptnotes to somebody if you’d like to give them something for a birthday or some other celebration.

**Craig:** Mm. Spectacular.

**John:** Nice. Craig, thanks for a fun show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right, Craig, let’s talk computers. What was the first personal computer that you used?

**Craig:** Excluding like goofing around on a friend’s Atari 400 with the membrane keyboard and the tape recorder storage, my father and I went into Manhattan in I want to say 1983 and we purchased a Franklin Ace 1000.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** Which was a clone of the Apple 2. Franklin then was quickly sued. I believe the price was $1,400, which for my family was a lot. But, you know, it was just something that my dad really wanted. But I was the only one that used it. And I used it every day. I have one, by the way, in my office.

**John:** Oh that’s great.

**Craig:** Yeah. I went online years ago on eBay and was like I’m going to get myself a Franklin Ace 1000. It won’t turn on or anything. I’m just going to stick it in a corner. And I bought it for $1. Yeah.

**John:** $1,400 to $1. My first computer was an Atari 800. So no the membrane keyboard, but the one that actually had a keyboard-keyboard. And what younger listeners probably don’t understand is that those computers actually hooked up to TVs. And so you’d wire it into your TV. Rather than having a separate monitor they hooked up to the TV. And the picture wasn’t great. None of it was great.

We originally didn’t even have the tape drive to save stuff on. So basically we would type up programs from the magazine and watch them run. Or play the game and then we’d turn off the computer we would have to retype the whole program. That’s how it all worked for us. Fast forward to a couple different Ataris along the way. That’s what I did my first early writing on.

Then my first Macintosh which was in high school using it for my school newspaper. And that was just a revelation. It was the first computer that just truly adored using on a daily basis.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** When did you get your first Mac?

**Craig:** Let’s see. I think I got my first Mac actually for college. So, I was using – I can’t quite remember what version of Apple I was using at home with like a daisy wheel printer to clackety-clack out the term papers and things. But when I went to college, so that was 1988, I got a Mac SE20.

**John:** I had the same computer.

**Craig:** Pretty standard.

**John:** And did you have a hard drive or two floppies?

**Craig:** Oh god, no, no, no. Floppies. No hard drive.

**John:** I sprang for the hard drive.

**Craig:** Actually, I take it back. That’s what the 20 was. The 20 was a hard drive. I think it was a 20 megabyte hard drive.

**John:** Yeah. That’s what it was.

**Craig:** Which would now hold one file of – it would a PDF.

**John:** It would not hold this episode of Scriptnotes.

**Craig:** Good lord, no.

**John:** No. What’s crazy is I remember I ended up buying that at a University of Colorado bookstore, or the computer shop at the bookstore, and my had come with a check for me to buy it, like a cashier’s check or something. And it was like $3,000. It was so expensive to buy it and yet it was worth every penny of it. Because just the amount of writing and stuff that I got done on that computer was remarkable.

**Craig:** Hugely necessary. Do you remember when – because when I bought it I believed I got a little bit of extra memory? They were running a deal for students. To get the memory in there they had to use a special tool to crack the case open. They had a special Mac case-cracker. Like a Slim Jim for a car. And then they would pop the whole thing off. It was quite a process to do any of that stuff. Now, of course, you can’t actually do any of that at all. When you buy a laptop it’s sealed.

**John:** Yeah. Things tend to be sealed now. So, what got me thinking about early computers is I put in an order for a new Macintosh because my iMac that I’m recording on right now is like four years old, maybe five years old. It’s pre-Paris that I had this computer. And it’s a little bit old. As we’re playing Dungeons & Dragons on this there have been times where it’s sort of spun out a bit. Like, OK, I think it’s time for this computer to move on.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So I put in an order for a new iMac and then it became clear that, oh, you know what there’s actually going to be a whole new iMac coming because they’re switching to a new processor so I canceled that order and now I’m waiting to see what the next Macintosh will be. And I’m kind of excited about it. What I find so fascinating is that the Apple hardware and Apple chips and the iPhones and iPads they really are more powerful than many of the Macintoshes we’ve become accustomed to. So I’m curious what’s going to happen once I can get this into my computer.

**Craig:** I mean, if you have an iMac that’s four years old whether you get an iMac today or whatever the next gen is that they release in a couple of months it will be – OK, this one is 1,000 times better and this one is 1,500 times better. The difference is going to be vast. I don’t have an iMac. I have a MacBook Pro. So I run everything on that. And it is pretty astonishing what it can do and how fast it can handle things. I mean, we used to have concerns about like speed and memory. When was the last time, well, I mean, you have an old iMac, so maybe you do. But I never think about speed or memory ever.

**John:** And honestly I don’t think about it that often. It was a rare case where like the Dungeons & Dragons stuff was overloading the system here. And truthfully, listen, my company makes Highland and Highland runs incredibly smoothly on my computer. There’s very little that I’m encountering with my iMac that makes me feel like, oh, this thing is too slow. It’s a dinosaur. Partly because I have an SSD in it. So, that’s making everything feel a lot faster.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Weirdly a thing I have noticed though is that the front-facing camera in it is pretty terrible. And so it’s a small thing, but well it was a small thing until the pandemic and now that I’m using this a lot for video camera stuff it’s not good.

**Craig:** I mean, most front-facing cameras suck. But, yeah, the older ones really suck. That is an area where when my son was born in 2001, you know, I was like I better go get a camera. Got to take pictures of my kid. So I went and got myself like a Casio 3 megapixel. That’s what we would do. And had a little digital card inside of it. And over time they have essentially made that camera but ten times better and the size of my thumbnail. It’s incredible. Absolutely incredibly the way that that technology has evolved. So, yeah, the four-year difference on camera will be pretty remarkable.

**John:** Yeah, I saw on Twitter this week a 1 terabyte SD card and that’s like the little mini SD card, but it’s one terabyte. The amount that we can cram into these small spaces.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. Awesome.

**John:** So, lastly, the other thing I’ve been working on a lot is the new version of Highland, internally we have a version of Highland for the iPad. And it’s been fascinating to look at making this app that I use every day and making it work on an iPad just because you really recognize how differently you work on devices based on whether it’s an iPad or like a MacBook.

And so even like I got the iPad that has the new laptop-y kind of style keyboard. It folds together. It’s really a terrific–

**Craig:** It’s cool. I like it.

**John:** It’s a really good system. I think it’s great. But it’s still not the same as a MacBook. And there’s things just do work differently and your expectations about files and not having menus, it does such a brilliant job with the cursor. It’s just remarkable how clever they figured out how to make the cursor work. And yet still figuring out where to put certain things that would normally be in menus has been a real challenge design wise.

**Craig:** Yeah. I am reliant on the finder. I like finder.

**John:** Yeah. I do, too. Because we grew up in the finder.

**Craig:** Yeah. We grew up with finder. I mean, there’s files on the iPad, but that’s really just like your cloud storage. If they could make finder that would be nice.

**John:** Yeah. That’s what we want. We want a finder.

**Craig:** Yeah man.

**John:** We solved it all. Craig, thanks.

**Craig:** Thanks John. See you next week.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Chevalier’s Local Author Event, Saturday June 20th at 2pm](https://www.chevaliersbooks.com/local-authors-060620)
* [Police officers are often glorified on TV shows. Here’s what it looks like when they aren’t.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/06/10/police-officers-tv-episodes/) by Bethonie Butler
* [WGA Inclusion and Equity](https://www.wga.org/uploadedfiles/the-guild/inclusion-and-equity/WGAW_Inclusion_Report_20.pdf)
* [Shorter and Fewer Seasons, Is TV Sabotaging Itself?](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/is-tv-sabotaging-itself)
* [The Metrosexual episode of Decoder Ring by Willa Paskin](https://slate.com/podcasts/decoder-ring/2020/06/the-metrosexual-craze-david-beckham-queer-eye)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Joey Hillenbrand ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/456standard.mp3).