Search Results for: spaces after a period

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-summer-superhero-spectacular).

**Disclaimer**

**John August:** Today’s podcast contains explicit language. Also, there’s a Q&A at the end of the episode. We’re going to split that off as a second episode that will air a few days later. So, enjoy.

**Announcer:** In a world overrun with franchises, in a time of inexhaustible umbrage, one man must stand alone with another guy because it’s kind of a teamwork thing. To bring you the Scriptnotes Summer Superhero Spectacular.

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name is Craig Mazin. Oh, thank you.

**John:** Thank you. And this is The Scriptnotes Summer Superhero Spectacular.

**Craig:** Yes. I had no idea that that was going to happen.

**John:** This is all a surprise to Craig.

**Craig:** Everything is a constant surprise to me. I had no idea that was going to happen. I didn’t know how many chairs were going to be up here. I’m totally unprepared.

Oh, no, wait, I’m prepared today.

**John:** You printed out your Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** Woo! Printed out my Three Page Challenges. I have questions.

**John:** That’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Yeah. I hope those people showed up.

**John:** I think they did. We hope they showed up.

**Craig:** You don’t mind if I check my email?

**John:** Yeah. Check your phone. That’s good. We’re just doing a podcast here. It’s fine.

**Craig:** Oh. Hi!

**John:** Hello! So, we should explain to people listening at home that we are here at the Writers Guild Theater at an event sponsored by the Writers Guild Foundation. Let’s thank the Writers Guild Foundation for having us all here tonight.

So, Craig and I are up on stage by ourselves at this moment. We’re going to have some fantastic people up on stage to talk about superheroes, to talk about the pages that people sent in.

**Craig:** Yes. It’s a big time show.

**John:** It’s a live Three Page Challenge. It’s going to be a very big show.

Craig, tonight we’re talking about superheroes, but really most scripts have heroes of some kind. What makes a superhero different?

**Craig:** Well, superheroes — I’m just giving you the answer I think.

**John:** Sure. There’s no wrong answers, except that there are.

**Craig:** There are. [laughs] Superheroes are humans usually, but occasionally human-like aliens —

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Who wear costumes, and because they’re heroes not villains, they fight crime. And they are either — I know this because I played the Marvel role playing game, not that I was a dork or anything —

**John:** No, no. It’s well established. It’s canon that he was not a dork.

**Craig:** They’re either mutants. Or they’re altered humans. Or they’re aliens. Or they’re just obsessive, like Batman for instance, who is just mentally ill.

**John:** Yeah. He’s kind of crazy.

**Craig:** Right. That would be my definition.

**John:** So, your definition is a person who is, a hero who is more than just an ordinary person in a very special — there’s something about them that is special.

**Craig:** Like super.

**John:** Super. Super is a crucial part of it.

**Craig:** So, they’re a hero that’s super.

**John:** Okay, so more than an ordinary hero?

**Craig:** Super.

**John:** All right. Well established. But where did superheroes come from? Like if we go back through time how do we figure out where superheroes came from. We talked about archetypes on the last episode. So, what is the superhero archetype?

**Craig:** Well, we were talking about mythology the other day and I think that mythology is, you know, gods in the old days — like now God is just a concept or whatever Oprah says God is, or so on and so forth. But in the old days gods would actually — there were many of them and they would show up and talk to you and meddle in your affairs and help you out and give you advice.

And so those were probably the first templates, but there were also if you want to be really specific there were certain humans like Achilles or Hercules that were humans that were champions. Goliath. And the idea of a champion I think is probably where the superhero came.

**John:** Yeah. So, it’s a human but they’re more than just human. They’re touched —

**Craig:** They’re super.

**John:** Well, yes, they’re super. We’ve established that. But they’re touched by something god-like. So, if you talk about the Greek heroes, you talk about Hercules, he is literally like a half — he’s a demigod, he’s a half god.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, superheroes have been around for quite a time, they just haven’t always worn capes. They used to wear —

**Craig:** Thongs.

**John:** Sandals. Togas. Which brings us to our first guest because she’s actually writing one of those superheroes. Andrea Berloff is writing Conan —

**Craig:** Andrea Berloff.

**John:** Andrea Berloff, come up here.

**Craig:** Berloff. Here, I’ll move down.

**John:** Sit here.

**Craig:** Put you there. You can go there.

**Andrea Berloff:** Is this like between two ferns, it’s between two writers?

**Craig:** Andrea Berloff! Andrea Berloff.

**Andrea:** Hi.

**Craig:** You know what I’ve always wanted to say to you?

**Andrea:** No what?

**Craig:** Andrea Berloff, straight outta Compton. Crazy motherfucker named Berloff!

**Andrea:** Crazy motherfucker named Berloff. [laughs]

**John:** Andre Berloff, what is the deal with Conan? When someone says like, “Hey, do you want to write the Conan movie” and you’re like — ?

**Andrea:** Yeah!

**John:** Yeah.

**Andrea:** Hell yeah.

**John:** So tell us about that character. What is it about that character that makes you want to write him?

**Andrea:** You know, he’s just a guy who’s angry, he’s so angry, and so am I.

**John:** He’s a barbarian, in fact.

**Andrea:** He’s a barbarian and so am I. And I get to just be angry every day and get my foot — no, I’m kidding. But not really. He is who every little person wants to be. He wants to be the guy — he is the guy who is writing wrong, who is kicking ass, and who just doesn’t want to have a conversation about it. He’s just going to get the job done.

**John:** So, when you go in to talk about the Conan movie, first off, are you saying “Cone-in” or “Cone-an?”

**Andrea:** I say “Cone-an.”

**Craig:** Oh, it’s “Cone-an.” “Cone-in” is —

**Andrea:** “Cone-in” is O’Brien.

**John:** He hosts a talk show.

**Craig:** He’s that albino on TV. This is —

**John:** Yeah. He’s the one who sort of got screwed out of a late night talk show. Yeah.

**Craig:** Conan is Stuart’s real dad. Conan.

**John:** Oh, Conan.

**Craig:** Where is Stuart?

**John:** No, no, we’re going to establish Stuart later on.

**Craig:** Oh, okay, because I’ve got something to say about Stuart later.

**John:** All right. We’ve got a lot to say about Stuart. We have a Three Page Challenge here and Stuart is integral to the Three Page Challenge.

So, you go in to talk about doing a Conan movie, what are you saying? What is the thing that gets you that job in that room? What are you talking about?

**Andrea:** God if I know. I think, look, I think when you take on one of these iconic characters there is so much that you have to consider. You have to number one come up with a new story because it can’t just be, “Oh, I liked episode 47 from the 1978 series.” It’s got to be something exciting that’s both going to satisfy the fans and bring in tons of new people who don’t really know anything about this character. And why should I be watching this character.

So, I think for me it’s keying into the few sort of iconic things that the fans love, but then also bring in a lot of special sauce to it. And for me that’s really digging down deep in the character. And I don’t want to approach a superhero character any differently than I would approach any other character. They’ve got to have motivation and all the great elements that people who have MFAs know how to talk about better than I do. [laughs]

**John:** Well let’s talk about what are the iconic things that people expect in the Conan movie from your perspective. What are the things — if you don’t match this list then you’re not a Conan movie?

**Andrea:** It’s funny. I had things that I thought were iconic Conan things and then as I’ve been working on the project I get sort of feedback where I’m like people go, “He’s got to be punching a horse.”

**Craig:** He’s got to punch a horse. That was what I was going to say. You have to punch a horse.

**Andrea:** And a camel. Got to punch a —

**Craig:** Is he punching a horse?

**Andrea:** I can neither confirm nor deny about horse punching. However —

**Craig:** He should punch like an elephant. Like make it bigger.

**John:** How about a zebra? A zebra? Any other ideas or suggestions for animals he could punch?

**Craig:** You don’t punch a zebra. That’s horrible.

**Andrea:** A kitty cat. What if Conan — ?

**Craig:** No, no, you punch the horse.

**Andrea:** The horse. Right. So, my point is I feel like there are iconic things such as, you know —

**Craig:** Punching the horse.

**Andrea:** Punching a horse. Maybe spinning a wheel. That doesn’t mean that things are going to end up in the movie. I make no promises.

**Craig:** You mean that thing where he’s pushing the wheel like, “Argh.” Yeah, you got to push that wheel.

**Andrea:** Right. I make no promises however. But, you know, there are sort of these iconic moments, but more than that it’s a guy who just cannot stand people telling him what to do when he doesn’t —

**Craig:** Well, that’s the thing. Conan is an interesting character because, I mean, my memory of those movies and even reading some of the comics and stuff like that is that he’s not an angst-ridden character because Conan is set in a prehistoric time where there’s no angst. You know what I mean? Like Batman is super angsty. And we’re going to talk to David Goyer in a bit and Captain America gets really angsty about politics.

Conan doesn’t care about politics. Conan doesn’t vote, you know what I mean?

**Andrea:** No. No. There’s a right and a wrong and you do what’s right —

**Craig:** Conan really is just like that horse, like the camel spit at me, I’m punching the camel.

**Andrea:** Is in my way.

**Craig:** Right. So, what’s the — is it helpful in a way to kind of have a character whose motivations are simplified down to that sharp point of I want this, I’m angry at that?

**Andrea:** Yes.

**Craig:** That’s great.

**Andrea:** Yes. Anything to not have to come up with more stuff and be creative I will take. [laughs] You know, it’s really great to have, you know, when he reaches a fork in the road you know which fork he’s going to take. He’s going to take the fork that is the proper fork to take. There’s no like, “I don’t know, maybe I should take…” No.

**Craig:** There’s no angst.

**Andrea:** There’s no angst.

**Craig:** Conan’s not Jewish.

**Andrea:** Craig —

**Craig:** How did they pick you for this? I don’t understand. It’s so interesting. I’ve known you for such a long time. I know —

**Andrea:** I don’t know what your vision is of me, but I am a tough woman.

**Craig:** I just imagine you like Yenta from Fiddler on the Roof, just like, “What? Conan, what, Conan?”

**John:** Now, Craig, we established that she came in with special sauce.

**Craig:** Oh, she had special sauce.

**John:** So, talk about special sauce. Talk about like going into that room to talk about like this is why we make this Conan movie versus all of the other Conan movies. Are you talking about the main context of other superhero movies or what are you talking about?

**Andrea:** Yes, but again, you don’t want to just be derivative of everything else. You don’t want to point to everybody else’s successful superhero movie and say, “It’s got some of this and it’s got some of that.” For me it went back to, again, the character. Here’s why this character is special.

And I’ve been writing this for Arnold Schwarzenegger who is the embodiment of that role, so it’s not this abstract, you know, “It’s got to be a handsome guy who’s really strong.” No, it’s Arnold, and so you have to be able to write to Arnold and use his skills. And so I think it’s —

**John:** That can be incredibly helpful. As writers, to have a limitation like that, like it has to be this person. It’s like all those other choices just melt away because like those other choices don’t make sense with Arnold Schwarzenegger. These are the things that make sense.

**Andrea:** And, you know, there are limitations. He’s not a 20-year-old guy, so you’ve got to write for Arnold. The story has to be created around Arnold, so that has a whole —

**Craig:** But the idea of the aging hero.

**Andrea:** I love it. That’s what excited me.

**Craig:** It always works. I don’t know how you would do this movie today but, you know, like Chuck Bronson movies, he was just an old guy. He was like, I think, I guess his revenge genre, I mean, he was already in his 50s. He was small. [laughs]

**John:** But he was angry.

**Craig:** He was angry.

**John:** Anger is a thing that doesn’t diminish with age. Anger can actually harden.

**Andrea:** But it was also the era in which those movies were successful. People were angry. Feel disenfranchised.

**Craig:** They wanted that guy. Yeah, they wanted like Bernie Goetz. But, there is something about the Conan mythos that also speaks to a very primal, simple, masculine fantasy. And I’m kind of curious how you approached that. And I don’t like asking questions like “as a woman” because it’s all like as writers, so forget woman/man. But how do you approach the concept of masculinity when you’re writing a character like Conan and your writing in a tradition where you know the Frazetta paintings of the boobies and everything. Is that something you go for?

**Andrea:** Who doesn’t like boobies?

**Craig:** Well I love them. But do you go for that?

**Andrea:** Well, I don’t know that I’m going for boobies. I don’t know that that’s my goal. But —

**Craig:** Have you tried it?

**Andrea:** But…I thought there’s so many ways I can answer that and none of them are really funny in the end.

**Craig:** We don’t need funny, just interesting.

**Andrea:** Just true.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Andrea:** You know, I don’t like to approach it… — Look, I tend to write male-driven movies anyway. That’s just where I’m most comfortable. And I always say I like to write male-driven movies because I understand women too well. And just as you said, the superheroes that are more complicated in terms of, you know, oh, should I do this, should I do that — I’m not into that. And I find that women characters, and I’m not disparaging women, I love women —

**Craig:** Me too.

**Andrea:** Do that. Women, you know, women process things a lot more. There’s an article in the New York Times today that a new study came out that showed that women take a longer time to make a decision because they want more facts. And men are very comfortable making the decision without all the facts.

**Craig:** Totally.

**Andrea:** Which I found really interesting. I was like, of course.

**John:** Conan. Yeah.

**Andrea:** I don’t know that we needed or an article.

**Craig:** Yeah, sometimes you just, I’m like I decided to punch the camel in the face.

**Andrea:** Right. And when you’re a writer it’s really nice to have that black and white stuff when in real life life is not so black and white and not so easy. So, for me I kind of love the more hyper masculine, if you want to call it that quality I can go. I love it. It’s fun.

**John:** This seems like a great time to bring up other writers who are working on this image of masculinity in a black and white world and the complications of that. Can we bring up Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

**Craig:** Let’s do it.

**John:** Who write Captain America.

**Craig:** Let’s. Let’s bring them up. I’ll just keep moving people down. Hey, nice to meet you.

**John:** Thank you, sir. So, we’ve been talking about a barbarian. Is it safe to call Captain America a boy scout?

**Christopher Markus:** Hmm, I mean we rebel against it, but it’s the easy —

**John:** So, rebel, rebel, tell us. Tell us how you describe Captain America, because you’ve done two of these now. So, talk to us about —

**Christopher:** He’s the 90-pound man. Regardless of his body size, he’s a 90-pound boy who has been thwarted for a very long time. Well, about 23 years prior to his injection. And that he’s never had a chance to develop his insides, I don’t think. He’s a very nice boy. But he did not grow up as a handsome well built man. That makes a jerk. You know?

That’s a recipe —

**John:** Stephen McFeely, how do you feel about that?

**Christopher:** No, that’s a recipe for the bad guy in Revenge of the Nerds who, you know, wants to win the big ski race.

**Craig:** Did you say ski race?

**Christopher:** Ski race.

**Craig:** That wasn’t in Revenge of the Nerds.

**Christopher:** Maybe it was a yacht race?

**Craig:** No. But there was like an —

**John:** There have to be snow and mountains for a ski race. All right.

**Christopher:** It was a movie with a ski race. I’ve seen it.

**John:** So, you did the pitching, right, and he sort of just did the actual writing? [laughs] Stephen McFeely —

**Christopher:** I’m done here.

**John:** Stephen McFeely, talk to us about Captain.

**Stephen McFeely:** No, but the key to Captain, Chris is kind of right, that he was a hero before he was a hero. I mean, he was a hero before he was a hero. And he just needed his body to catch up to the spirit inside him. And it’s kind of…

— One of the things we figured out on Winter Soldier, the second movie, is that because of that tendency to think of him as a boy scout, the best way to get everyone on his side is to make him the underdog. And the easiest way to make him the underdog was to make the entire world corrupt that he lived in.

So, if you haven’t seen the movie, the idea is that everyone he knows and works with is a liar and is corrupt.

**Craig:** Kind of like screenwriting.

I want to ask you guys a question about politics. You know, screenwriting, I made that joke about Andrea Berloff being a crazy motherfucker straight outta Compton because she was one of the writers of Straight Outta Compton, the NWA story, which is as surprising as the idea that she’s writing Conan in a sense. [laughs]

Because, you know, Yenta. Fiddler on the roof.

**Andrea:** [laughs] Is there a point? Or you’re just going to make fun of me?

**Craig:** There’s a point.

**John:** He’s basically just going to nag on you for a long time before he gets to the question.

**Andrea:** And…?

**Craig:** I’m not just making fun of you. I’m making fun of you purposefully. You’ve thrown me off my complicated —

**Stephen:** Politics.

**Craig:** Yes, politics. So, the hip hop was, it happened and everybody thought —

**Christopher:** It’s just hip hop. It’s not “the hip hop.” I just wanted…

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Is it Captains America or is there just one?

**John:** is it Captain American?

**Christopher:** It’s the United States Man.

**Craig:** So, the hip hop started and people thought, okay, well this is cool but it’ll stop soon. And it didn’t stop. And the superhero genre in a way, the revival of the superhero genre has sort of reminded me of that because it came back with… — I mean, the Burton Batman kind of kicked off something for a while, but it wasn’t so great. And then I think Nolan came along and suddenly kaboom, everything went crazy. And it’s sort of here permanently.

And one of the things that’s happened with the superhero genre, because I do think it’s here to stay in some sort of permanent fashion, is that it has become, it seems to me, the predominant genre for screenwriters to talk about politics in America which seems kind of nuts. But it’s true. I think it’s true. And particularly with Captain America. How could it not be? It’s called Captain America, right?

So, my question for you guys is at what point as you’re now going through this and you’re writing the third one do you feel like, okay, this is actually something that we should be continuing with and going forward with, or is there any point in that genre where you feel like, “Um, can we now just do a Captain America movie that’s not about America?”

Do you know what I mean? Like do you feel jammed by that in any way?

**Christopher:** No, I could see like 12 movies in, because they clearly have in the comics occasionally, I think, just recently — it’s been a really long time on the Winter Soldier story and dredging up his past. And they brought a new writer on who sent him into another dimension with like dinosaurs. And it apparently works great, because he works — I don’t know how he explains his outfit in dinosaur world, like why are you wearing that?

**Craig:** To the dinosaurs you have to explain?

**Christopher:** Dinosaurs are not American.

**Craig:** Great point. Great point.

**Christopher:** But I think — we certainly don’t think of the politics first. It’s inevitable in the job he has and the clothes he wears and the friends he has that the politics will arise. But if we think of the politics first, the movie is going to suck.

**Stephen:** I mean, we’ve been down the polemic road before. We did the Chronicles of Narnia movies, and if you start with an agenda or a point of view.

**Christopher:** But it’s just a lion.

**Stephen:** It’s just a lion. You’re sunk. And so we start with character. Character, character, character. And in Cap’s case politics, particularly for the second movie, is the water in which he swims. And for the first movie we had to address why a guy would choose to have an American Flag outfit. That’s one of the reasons why we had to do a period movie because it made no sense for a guy to come out and go, “My first idea is put on a flag.”

**Craig:** I kind of love that guy, actually.

**Stephen:** He lives in a compound in Utah.

**Craig:** Yeah, cool guy.

**John:** So, I have a question for you guys. You guys write the Captain America movies which is fantastic. Congratulations on them. But there’s also this other movie that came in the middle called Avengers, which your character had a big role in. And so what does it feel like or what is the process by which like, “Okay, now we’re going to make your movie and all that stuff happened and you have to acknowledge it happened, but don’t acknowledge it too much.”

**Stephen:** Right. It’s like he’s cheating on you.

**John:** Tell us what that process is because it’s so different than any other process out there.

**Stephen:** It’s weird. We’re part of a larger machine that has a number of drivers up there, individual pods. You know, we read the scripts first, early, or as early as we’re allowed. And so we know it’s almost always Joss, like what has he done and where has he left him.

And invariably because you only call the Avengers together when you have a really big problem and the characters all meld together, but they’re not necessarily big arcs for each individual character. So, like we know where Cap ends up in Avengers 1 and then now Avengers 2. And it’s perfectly reasonable and we can use him going forward in Cap 3. And he hasn’t done anything that violates anything we’ve done.

**Christopher:** But it worked great actually on Winter Soldier because it stuck him into shield, which was exactly where it turned out was the most fertile for the character. Had The Avengers not happened and they just thawed him out, we would have had to probably deal with all the stuff we didn’t really want to deal with. Skirts are so short. What are these microwaves? It kind of allowed us to jump all the crap.

**John:** So, you guys are dealing with a character who exists in a world of many other heroes and it’s complicated and there are other things going on.

Our next guest is also dealing with that. Let’s bring up David Goyer. David Goyer, writer of Batman, and Superman, and lots of other characters. Constantine. Thank you, sir.

**Craig:** Just take a moment to look at David Goyer’s awesome Jewish Yakuza arms. Look at them. Look at them. Oh, yeah!

**John:** For listeners at home, they are covered in tattoos from the wrist on up. So, you can wear a shirt that buttons down and no one will know that you have a tremendous number of tattoos on your arm.

**David Goyer:** Well, that’s the deal with the, I mean, these aren’t Yakuza tattoos, but with Japanese sleeves you can wear a longs-sleeve shirt and be presentable to your grandmother.

**John:** Very nice. So, these guys have had to deal with a Marvel universe that is complicated and ongoing. You are in the middle of an increasingly complicated DC universe. Is it exciting, or terrifying, or both? What does it feel like to be in the middle of that process?

****David:**** Both. It was nice to do four movies that didn’t have that headache, you know. It’s complicated. And they very eloquently… — I’m limited in what I can talk about because none of the kind of combined —

**Craig:** Just tell us how it ends.

**David:** Yeah. None of the combined stuff has come out yet.

**John:** So, does Batman beat up Superman? Does he have kryptonite? Tell us all the secrets.

**Craig:** Just tell us who wins.

**David:** My situation is a little different because The Dark Knight films were their own universe completely. And I mean it changed the kind of perception amongst Warner Brothers in terms of how those films would be made. And I’m not the first person to comment on it. It’s kind of interesting, like when we were growing up — I presume you guys are somewhat the same age as I am — the Marvel comic books were slightly more realistically than the DC comic books.

And it’s weird that they, like in terms of the movie world until the Winter Soldier, they kind of flipped. It’s just a weird thing that happened.

**Craig:** That’s right. Well, it’s that character. I mean, I’m not a huge DC fan, but Batman is my favorite character. So, I’ve always gravitated towards — I mean, I’m a big X-Men, I loved the X-Men when I was a kid especially, but Batman I always thought was the coolest character because he’s actually just psychotic. He’s mentally ill. He’s not an altered human. He’s not an alien.

**John:** Well, but that was a deliberate choice. Because the classic character isn’t mentally ill. It was a very deliberate shift to make that, yeah.

**Craig:** No, for sure. I mean, Batman, like early Batman was just ridiculous. I mean, Vincent Price was the egg head. It was nonsense. And we would run around on the playground, [hums Batman theme], and that was silly Batman. But obviously everything changed with Frank Miller.

**David:** Yeah. Frank was, I think, the first one to really say this guy is fucking nuts. Can we swear?

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, fuck yeah.

**John:** Apparently it’s going to be one of those dirty podcasts. So, yeah, there will be a little E in iTunes.

**Craig:** I mean, I called her motherfucker like three times.

**David:** I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

But, anyway, I was just taking back to the… — Because of The Dark Knight films, those were separate but right or wrong Warner Brothers then sort of decided, well, we’re going to do these films but they’re going to be more grounded. And so that kind of led into Man of Steel and what not. But I don’t have quite the headache that these guys have had to deal with.

**Craig:** Well, that coordination of the Marvel pieces is really — it’s remarkable actually how well it works because all of us who have worked in Hollywood have watched —

**David:** But it also works because Marvel has true autonomy.

**Craig:** Well, that’s right. But, if you think about it the people that run any studio, at some level there’s autonomy there. Somebody has autonomy there. Somebody has autonomy, right? I have to give Marvel credit for balancing all those pieces.

**David:** Huge credit. Huge credit. And almost flawlessly matched together.

**Craig:** Almost flawlessly. I mean, I haven’t seen the flaw yet. But I have an interesting question for you, because so you were there at the birth of this new era. So, you and Chris Nolan and, it was just the two of you on the first movie?

**David:** The first one was just the two of us.

**Craig:** Just the two of you.

**David:** And Jonah came in on the second one.

**Craig:** Right. And you guys really began this thing. I give you guys full credit for that. There is this phenomenon now where you compress the amount of time required to remake something.

**David:** To reboot, yeah.

**Craig:** So, I don’t how many Spider-Mans we’re up to. I think we’re on the 19th Spider-Man of the last four months.

**David:** No, the windows are getting shorter and shorter. It used to be that it was like, okay, there needs to be, I mean, ten years in between reboots.

**Craig:** Yeah, or something, right? I mean, so like you had Keaton as Batman in like, what, ’85 or ’86?

**David:** Yeah, between the last Schumacher Batman and Batman Begins, I believe it was eight years.

**Craig:** That was a really good one, that last Schumacher one. That one was good.

[Audience laughs]

**Craig:** What?

**David:** That was eight years.

**Craig:** “Everybody freeze!” Good line. Because he was cold.

**John:** Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger. You can use that again. You can make a recall on that. He’s done.

**David:** Was that the one that also had inline skating?

**Craig:** Yes.

**David:** So? That was cool.

**Craig:** Yes it was.

**John:** I sort of have a question for the whole panel, though.

**Craig:** Wait, hold on, he’s got to answer this question first. He’s got to answer this question.

**John:** Ask your question first so he can answer it.

**Craig:** What is the — I did ask it already.

**David:** Wait, what was the question? What’s the acceptable amount of time before you can reboot?

**Craig:** No. How do you deal with the fact that you’re remaking a character you just made? Right? There’s a new guy playing this part.

**David:** Oh, I guess that I’m one of the few people that have to do that. That was weird.

**Craig:** It’s weird, right? It’s not like, they did this with Bond.

**David:** I’ll tell you the one reason why it wasn’t as weird for me. Because I’ve actually written DC comic books. Like, I actually wrote Justice Society for four years with Jeff Johns. And so one of the things that they do in comic books all the time is reboot shit. And Crisis on Infinite Earths was like the first time they really rebooted the universe.

**Craig:** It was cool. I liked that.

**David:** But now they just in comic books seem to reboot Marvel every few years. And so in writing comic books I’d seen creators, whether it be people like John Byrne or Neal Adams or these people that do different interpretations of the same hero.

**Craig:** So it’s kind of that move?

**David:** Yeah. It wasn’t that weird to me. So, it wasn’t that weird to me to say, “Okay, this is a completely different take.” Like, if Batman Begins was a sort of fusion of Frank Miller and the kind of Denny O’Neil, Neal Adams’ Batman, it’s like the new Batman was — I’m just making this up, I’m not saying this is what it is.

**Craig:** Because you would get sued, of course.

**David:** Yes. But was like the Jim Lee Batman. Do you know what I mean? It was like a different take.

**Craig:** I do know what you mean. I get it. I get it.

**David:** Batman as done by Neil Gaiman is going to be a very different vibe than Batman —

**Craig:** That would be pretty cool.

**David:** Well, you know, Gaiman did do Batman.

**Craig:** Oh, he did?

**David:** Yeah. But I’m just saying, if there’s that — and I’m sorry. This is super geek. If I know I’m going into a movie running the Jack Kirby Batman versus the Neil Gaiman Batman, it’s going to be a completely —

**Craig:** You should put both those in the same movie and then we compress this down even more. Like now there are three Batmans and —

**David:** Grant Morrison would write that.

**Craig:** Okay. Very cool.

**David:** Like from different universes.

**Stephen:** I have no idea what you’re talking about.

**Craig:** What did you have for lunch?

**John:** So on the topic of reboots, and we have six writers up here, we’re going to reboot some franchises. So, I have six cards here and I’m going to hand them out. And you’re going to draw a card and you’re going to reboot a franchise. So, pick anyone you want. Anyone you want.

**Andrea:** Can we trade if we don’t like our franchise?

**Craig:** You know I’m chaotic. I’m chaotic.

**David:** Chaotic neutral.

**Craig:** No, not neutral.

**Andrea:** Was this planned?

**Craig:** No, chaotic evil.

**John:** This event was planned. Yes. We actually sold tickets. People bought tickets.

**David:** This isn’t a reboot. This hasn’t been done before.

**Craig:** So that’s a boot.

**John:** So, that’s good. It’s a boot. You’re going to boot.

So, randomly people got cards. You’re going to read this. And so I think what we need to do is we need to figure out what is the modern version of this. What is the movie version of the character that you got? And also probably who is the villain or the antagonist, depending on you have? Who are they facing off against in the movie version that you’re doing?

Can you go first? So, read your person and tell us about it.

**Stephen:** I have Spider-Man.

**Craig:** Oh, thank god.

**John:** Congratulations, Stephen McFeely.

**Stephen:** Can I just mail this in?

**John:** You can book Spider-Man. That’s awesome. So, tell us, what’s your Spider-Man about?

**Stephen:** Holy crap. I’d have to know the first thing about Spider-Man.

**Craig:** There’s been 14 Spider-Men.

**Stephen:** Half-spider, half-man.

**John:** He’s half-spider, half-man. Tell us what he’s going to do.

**Stephen:** And go! Oh my god. Oh, geez.

**John:** You’ve got a writing partner.

**Christopher:** This is how it works.

**Stephen:** Also like Captain America was a weakling before his powers.

**John:** True, absolutely.

**Stephen:** Didn’t grow up a stud.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Stephen:** But, I mean, I just don’t want to do that.

**Craig:** Use spider.

**Andrea:** He’s already done it.

**John:** So, reboot it. So reboot it.

**Stephen:** Alternate Spider-Man.

**Christopher:** But what is that? He’s Miles Morales, right?

**Stephen:** First of all, I would absolutely make him Latino, or African-American, or something.

**Christopher:** A chick.

**John:** Yeah.

**Andrea:** How about Spider-Girl?

**Stephen:** And then explore that. I mean, and see if you can’t, you know, the phrase I use a lot, make the water you swim in, you know, that kind of thing.

**John:** Oh, the water he swims in? I like that.

**Stephen:** Yeah, you know, well, so that the idea that he is —

**Craig:** Do spiders swim?

**Stephen:** Yeah.

**John:** On top of water, yeah.

**Stephen:** But, I mean, I’ve seen the, I mean, I just don’t — I’ve seen the high school kid who gets bit by a spider. So, yeah, fine. But like give me the different version.

**Craig:** Oh, like maybe like an old person gets bitten?

**Stephen:** Well, but seriously, Miles Morales would do it for me. That would be interesting.

**John:** What if it was like, you know, he was like the old, like he’s been Spider-Man for, like he’s 80 years old and he’s been Spider-Man the whole time.

**Stephen:** Oh, this is the Frank Miller Spider-Man.

**Christopher:** The Unforgiven, Unforgiven Spider-Man.

**John:** Unforgiven Spider-Man.

**Craig:** Unforgiven Spider-Man would be awesome.

**Stephen:** Yeah. And the venom is killing him, you know, so there’s a ticking clock.

**Christopher:** Took a long time to die.

**Stephen:** Yeah.

**Christopher:** He’s basically dying of old age.

**Stephen:** He never gave up his Symbiote.

**Christopher:** The spider is bitten by a high school kid.

**Craig:** The poison —

**Christopher:** And the spider gradually develops the powers of a high school kid.

**John:** Seth Rogan. Seth Rogan eats a spider. Yeah. They share a symbiotic relationship. It’s sort of like Fire Storm kind of thing? Yeah, it’s going to be good.

**Craig:** I like it.

**John:** Christopher Markus, who did you draw?

**Christopher:** I oddly drew the Hulk.

**John:** The Hulk. So he exists in your world.

**Christopher:** He exists in my world.

**John:** Yeah, so have you written anything for Hulk?

**Christopher:** I have never written any — I’ve never touched the Hulk. I swear. [laughs] I would have Edward Norton, he exposes himself to gamma rays. He gets turned into Mark Ruffalo. And then he has to fight Eric Bana. And whoever wins wins.

**John:** That’s not at all a good movie. Let’s help him out here.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s pretty bad.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, Hulk is tough because Hulk is sort of Conan in some ways. He’s just …smash.

**Andrea:** Smash.

**Craig:** What about like a Flowers for Algernon kind of Hulk thing.

**Christopher:** That’s the whole problem.

Andrea. He has a gentle little mouse friend?

**Craig:** Like Hulk gets smart and stupid.

**Christopher:** The whole problem with The Hulk is that he, you know, everyone else becomes smarter and more interesting when they become a superhero. He becomes mentally deficient and —

**Craig:** Right.

**Andrea:** But why is he so angry?

**David:** Well, Hulk traditionally was Jekyll and Hyde.

**Christopher:** So it’s more like you expect him to sort of like crap his pants. It’s just, The Hulk. Maybe that’s what I do. He’s not angry, he’s just sort of incontinent and fat.

**Craig:** You’re not getting this job at all.

**Christopher:** He’s like, Hulk let himself go. He’s at a home. You know, he has to take the short bus. And then he makes a friend. And it’s over.

**Andrea:** Sounds great.

**John:** A thing that occurs to me —

**Christopher:** A bomb like all the other Hulk movies.

**John:** It occurs to me as we’re talking about reboots is that you have to sort of honor expectations for the character. You have to mostly do what you expect it to do. And you sort of change one thing in the world. And so Superman and The Dark Knight, he’s like a do-gooder, but he’s actually like a tool of the government and in a way that was really fascinating.

So, you take the world and you just change the one thing in it. So, what if he doesn’t become stupid?

**Christopher:** That’s true. But they’ve done that in the comics where —

**Craig:** I like smart Hulk. Smart Hulk was cool.

**David:** Peter David Hulk.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly.

**Christopher:** It’s difficult.

**John:** It’s like Ocean’s 11 but with Hulk.

**Christopher:** Well, it’s a little hard to slip into a casino unnoticed. “Hi. I’m Mr. Jones. I’m just checking into my room.”

**John:** One of my very first jobs, I was working as an assistant for these two producers and they were trying to do She-Hulk. And She-Hulk is like the most fascinating messed up creature because she’s Hulk the whole time. She never changes out of it, which I think is kind of great. She’s just big and green.

**Stephen:** But she’s smart, right?

**John:** She’s smart. She’s normal. She’s like a lawyer.

**Christopher:** She has the worst, most demeaning character name possible.

**Craig:** It is honestly —

**Christopher:** You’re just the female version of the —

**Craig:** She-Hulk, the real name for She-Hulk was Slut Hulk. That was the whole point was like, “Let’s just make a green chick with enormous boobs,” and she’s Hulk strong but not Hulk massive, so like Hulk’s muscle tone —

**John:** Well, she does Pilates. She gets the strength without the —

**Craig:** Yeah, she’s real lean, stringy, and just hot.

**David:** She’s still pretty chunky. I mean, she was like Chyna from the WWE.

**Craig:** No, she wasn’t like — you put her against an R. Crumb girl and the R. Crumb girl has got bigger booty. No. She-Hulk was —

**Christopher:** What was it about we’re just not women or men, we’re just writers.

**Craig:** No, the She-Hulk, the whole point of She-Hulk was just to appeal sexistly to 10-year-old boys. It worked on me.

**Andrea:** As opposed to the other superhero comic books through all eternity.

**Christopher:** Boys were already sort of aroused by The Hulk but they were feeling weird about it.

**David:** Well, that’s where I’m going.

**Christopher:** Let’s give them a female one. It will take some of the pressure off this adolescent.

**David:** I have a theory about She-Hulk, which was created by a man, right? And at the time in particular I think 95% of comic book readers were men and certainly almost all of the comic book writers were men. So, The Hulk was this classic male power fantasy. It’s like most of the people reading comic books were these people like me who were just these little kids who were getting the shit beaten out of them every day, and they’re like what if I became a giant and could clap my hands and create a sonic boom? And so then they created She-Hulk, right, who was still smart. So it was like I think She-Hulk is the chick that you could fuck if you were Hulk. You know what I’m saying?

**Craig:** Right. No.

**David:** No, I’m just saying She-Hulk was the extension of the male power fantasy. So, it’s like if I’m going to be this geek that becomes The Hulk, then let’s create a giant green porn star that only The Hulk could fuck.

**Craig:** Yeah…or me.

**David:** If you were pretending you were The Hulk. Do you see what I’m saying?

**Craig:** What if I’m not The Hulk? Can I still?

**John:** No. No.

**David:** Then you would get destroyed. Your hips would break when you had sex.

**John:** Stuart Friedel’s whole family is here, including his grandparents, so thank you so much Friedel family for joining us.

**David:** Sorry.

**John:** We’re going to move onto our next person.

**David:** You said we could swear.

**John:** We can, yes. But we don’t need to go into like the long pornographic history of The Hulk.

Our next character? I got Storm from X-Men. And so Storm, so Storm is a really interesting character and I’m not quite sure what to do with her.

I do think that you keep her in Africa and I think you maybe start her young and you maybe do a period. So, it’s sort of like, you know, you can do something about either it’s — it could be about slavery. It could be about injustice now in Africa. But keeping it a young character. And honestly restraining her power down into like a Carrie level could be actually really fascinating.

So, you have this young woman who has incredibly control over the elements, but really can’t control her own thing could be cool. I don’t know. What else could we do with Storm?

**Christopher:** She has very positive power, you know, if you’re in a drought-stricken country.

**John:** Yeah. Well, she’s also sort of a god. We talked about in the origin story, she was worshipped as a god in some of the books.

**Craig:** I mean, we could have used her today, honestly. This was brutal.

**John:** Yeah. We’re calling out for a storm.

**Andrea:** I’d like to give her a nice stable relationship.

**John:** Ooh, I like that. Who does Storm date?

**Andrea:** Who does Storm date? Maybe Hulk? Maybe she’s the one who needs to stabilize Hulk. But, I mean, she’s a little stormy, right, she’s a little — and so is Hulk. And maybe together they can calm down.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** See, I was right about her, right? That’s very Yenta. She’s doing it.

**John:** The romantic comedy version of Storm and the fella could be really fascinating, too. I don’t know who the villain is in that story, but it could be the —

**Craig:** Divorce.

**John:** Divorce. Divorce is the villain. Yeah.

Andrea Berloff, who did you draw?

**Andrea:** I mean, it’s like ridiculous. I got Wonder Woman.

**John:** Oh, how did you get Wonder Woman?

**Andrea:** I don’t know. That’s why I asked you if it was planted.

**John:** I’m sorry. It wasn’t planned at all. So, Wonder Woman?

**Andrea:** So, Wonder Woman…I feel like there’s a few ways this could go. She’s Amazonian, right? She’s got to be upset about the degradation of the rain forests, I would say.

**John:** Now it’s sort of — it’s sort of more Greek Isles, but that’s fine.

**Andrea:** I know, but, right. So, I first thought maybe she’s going to fight like, you know, some deforestation sort of… — That said, maybe her —

**Stephen:** Fight some loggers.

**Andrea:** Fight some loggers. [laughs]

**Stephen:** But you need a super power.

**Andrea:** In my version I would like to be able to pass the Bechdel test, so I would have her maybe — like there’s an Amazonian mama that she has to report to and she has a lot of sisters. And together as a band they fight evil. And then she’s left alone in the modern world, and she doesn’t belong there, and she has to get back to the women that she belongs with. And, I don’t know where that’s going.

**Craig:** That sounds pretty good.

**Stephen:** I don’t know why — you could just do a whole movie in — what’ s the name of the place?

**John:** Themyscira?

**David:** In the past?

**Craig:** The Amazonian Island, Shangri La?

**Stephen:** The Amazon ladies.

**Andrea:** I don’t know. What’s it called?

**John:** I’ve said it like three times. Themyscira.

**Stephen:** “It’s only my damn podcast.”

**Andrea:** I can’t even hear you anymore, John.

**Stephen:** Honestly, I just heard the word and I’m like, I don’t know what he just said.

**Andrea:** Yeah, that can’t be correct. What is he saying?

**Craig:** Is that a restaurant?

**John:** The island is good — it’s one of those — they made the DC animated movies and in the Wonder Woman one the animated one is pretty good.

**David:** Why are you gesturing to me?

**John:** Because you’re a DC person. Because you have her in your movie.

**Craig:** Yeah, you did it.

**Andrea:** Is it Atlantis?

**David:** I’ve also done Blade though.

**John:** You have done Blade. That’s true.

**Craig:** I love Blade.

**John:** Blade is good. He’s a vampire.

**Christopher:** And Nick Fury.

**John:** Yeah.

**David:** I don’t take credit for that one.

**John:** David Goyer, who did you draw?

**David:** Martian Manhunter.

**John:** Ooh, you have the challenging one.

**Craig:** Overpowered. Overpowered.

**David:** How many people in the audience have heard of Martian Manhunter.

**John:** This is a good audience.

**Craig:** He knows he’s overpowered.

**David:** How many people that raised their hands have ever been laid?:

**John:** 100% of the audience.

**David:** Oof, well he hasn’t been rebooted, but he’s a mainstay in the Justice League.

**Stephen:** Is he going to be rebooted?

**David:** I’m not saying shit.

**Stephen:** Is he going to be booted?

**David:** Well, he can’t be fucking called the Martian Manhunter because that’s goofy. He can be called Manhunter.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** They have those.

**Stephen:** I rented that movie.

**David:** Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing, the whole deal with Martian Manhunter is he’s an alien living amongst us.

**John:** Is there another one of those in the DC universe?

**David:** Well, he came out in the ’50s and he had basically all the powers of Superman.

**Craig:** Overpowered.

**David:** Except he didn’t like fire.

**Craig:** Right. Oh god.

**David:** And he could read your mind. So, here’s the best part: he comes down to earth and decides, unlike Super man who already exists in the world now, that he’s just going to be a homicide detective and pretend to be a human homicide guy.

**Stephen:** But he’s green.

**David:** Yeah. But, no, he can change his shape. Instead of using super powers and mind-reading and like, oh, I could figure out if the president is lying or whatever, he just decides to disguise himself as a human homicide detective. Dare to dream.

**Craig:** That’s pretty dismal.

**David:** I don’t know. I would say — I wouldn’t call him Manhunter. I would set up a Day After Tomorrow and we discovered one of those Earth-like planets, you know, with Kepler or something like that. And you know how they’re talking about Scientific American like DNA faxing, where they can basically break down DNA and fax that information? So, maybe like —

**Craig:** Yeah. We send it there to that planet?

**David:** Well, no, we get the DNA code from that planet and then grow them in a Petri dish here.

**Craig:** We grow a dude here to solve our crimes.

**David:** No, but he’s like in Area 51 or something. And we’re just —

**Craig:** Just sitting there doing word searches and stuff?

**David:** Yeah, doing biopsies on him. And then he gets out and he’s really angry.

**Craig:** He’s pissed.

**David:** And then he fucks She-Hulk. He’s green! And he’s super-powered.

**Stephen:** That’s right. Because green people can only date green people.

**Christopher:** Goddamnit. I thought we’d come further.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** That’s one area where we’re just not ready. Appropriately I got Lex Luther.

**John:** Ooh!

**Craig:** So, Lex Luther, who’s not obviously a superhero, unless you’re me and then he is, I think if you were to do a Lex Luther movie the temptation would be to sort of, “Oh, I’m going to feel bad for Lex Luther and I’m going to make Superman a dick and all that.”

I don’t want to do that. I love that Lex Luther is bad. I think that’s the best part of him. But also the bald thing, it’s so iconic, you do want something more — yes, I’m like the hairiest I’ve ever felt in my life up here by the way.

**Andrea:** Look at this stage. Look at this stage.

**Christopher:** How are your treatments going?

**Craig:** I mean, I feel like, wow. Shampoo has been working. No, I think that Lex Luther, young Lex Luther is bald because… — You guys know the story of like Phineas Gage? Have you ever heard that story, Phineas Gage? So, love that story. If you haven’t heard, there’s a guy in the 1800s, he was working on a railroad and basically there was a mishap and there was an explosion and a steel rod went here and out through his head and he survived. But it blew through his limbic system and this guy, Phineas Gage, who was by all accounts a really nice family man turned into a total asshole.

He was just a drunk and he was mean and violent. And he stayed that way for many, many years until he died. So, I like the idea of maybe this kid who gets a tumor or something, or is injured, and it blows out the part of your brain that basically gives you any kind of moral conscience and turns into like a perfect sociopath.

But he’s brilliant.

**David:** So, he’s a studio executive?

**Craig:** Right. So, you now have unleashed something that is truly terrifying, because even Lex Luther in all the Superman movies, he’s still a human. There’s something there. The fact, if you’re motivated by like money, for instance, that means you’re a human being. This guy is a monster.

**Stephen:** That’s cool.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s do that. Let’s make that — that’s so much better than what the fuck with your Hulk. He was shitting. He was just sitting there.

**Christopher:** It’s Lars von Trier’s Hulk.

**John:** [laughs] So I would like to thank our amazing panelists to talk about superheroes. Thank you guys so very much.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**Andrea:** Thank you. Thank you . Thank you.

**John:** Get off our stage. All right. So, now is the time where we get to the Three Page Challenge. So, I want a show of hands in the audience — who here has read all of the entries to the Three Page Challenge?

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Wow. You people are almost as good as Stuart Friedel who has to read them every week.

Now, who here in the audience has a Three Page Challenge that they submitted that was one of those up there?

Oh my god. Thank you very much. Let’s have a round of applause to everyone who like sent in a script. That’s amazing.

**Craig:** Well done. Well done.

**John:** On the topic of Stuart Friedel, I think it’s important that we actually have Stuart — yeah, if we can have the actors playing Stuart Friedel stand up. The actors playing Stuart Friedel, where are you? There they are. There they are. Stuart Friedel, everyone.

**Craig:** Stuart Two. Stuart Friedel.

**John:** Stuart One and Stuart Two. Thank you very much.

**Craig:** So, you know, I met Stuart’s dad. Stuart’s dad, where are you man?

**John:** He’s over here.

**Craig:** Hey, Stuart’s dad! So, Stuart’s dad is so great. He comes up to me and he goes, “I just want to thank you so much for what you’ve done for Stuart.”

And I’m like, “Oh, that’s, you know, John, he does it, man. He’s done…”

He goes, “No, really thank you for what you’ve done. It’s just so nice what you’ve done for Stuart.”

And he kept saying that like Stuart is a drug addict or disabled in some serious way. You know, like you took him in when everyone else was like throwing their hands up, like we can’t handle this kid.

**John:** Yeah. I hired him away from a dangerous life at the Disney Channel. It was all like crack and hookers.

Tonight we have three Three Page Challenge entries which is always fun when we do them on the show. But we have the actual writers here, which is amazing as well. Plus, we have perhaps the most superlative person we could ever have to come up here and be a judge with us. Susannah Grant everybody.

**Craig:** Susannah Grant.

**John:** Hello. Here, you sit by me.

**Susannah Grant:** I’m not checking my email. I have them on here.

**John:** Oh, look at her, she’s got them on the iPad. So, let’s start with a superhero themed script. Let’s bring Bucky Knaebel up here to talk about The Clock Strikes Three!!! Bucky, come up here.

**Craig:** Hey Bucky.

**John:** Bucky, tell us about The Clock Strikes Three!!! So, usually we would do a synopsis, but tell us what — if someone is listening here and doesn’t have the script in front of them, what would they have read?

**Bucky Knaebel:** So, The Clock Strikes Three!!! starts off with three superheroes sitting in a diner, just BSing about their past exploits and all of the sudden a super villain, “super villain,” jumps in and sends them back into time. And they’re left back in the ’70s to try and figure out a way back home.

**John:** Fantastic. Is this a whole script, or did you just write these three pages for this —

**Bucky:** Whole script. It’s a short film that I plan on filming at some point, maybe. It depends on what you guys say.

**John:** No pressure whatsoever.

**Craig:** Well, let’s crush some dreams tonight. Let’s save somebody some credit card debt.

**John:** [laughs] Craig Mazin, start us off.

**Craig:** Okay. Well, you know, I think you’ve got a very promising concept here. I did a movie a long time ago called The Specials, 14 years ago, that was very much about superheroes sitting around in a diner talking. And so I think that that’s fertile territory and now more than ever.

But I’m going to — there’s like a couple little things here that I’m going to sort of not bother with. I’m going to talk about the big thing. And the big thing, I think, for any comedy, but particularly a comedy like this that’s a high concept and sort of broad comedy I think is that you have to ground the comedy in a world that’s real, or make the world crazy and make the job mundane, right?

So, in Anchorman the world is insane, but they’re doing a mundane job. Here they are something that is insane, essentially, and the world around them doesn’t seem quite right either. They’re not interacting in a way that feels grounded to their situation.

This is also a case of going too fast. You have a superhero, so here’s one concept: a team of superheroes that are kind of bored and sit around diners and don’t take their villains very seriously and kind of quippy. You have another concept: modern day superheroes go back in time to the classic era, or what I would call the classic era of ’70s superheroes. Those are two totally different concepts. And they’re happening literally within two pages of each other, so it’s very confusing.

I’m also a little concerned that it won’t be as funny as you want because to me if I send like David’s Batman going back in time and hanging out with like the jazzy cool cats of the ’70s with their skintight moose-knuckle bikini pants, that’s funny. Like, “What are you people doing?” And they’re like, “Hey, it’s cool man.” That’s funny.

But these quippy guys going back in time just seems like — I’m looking for what to hold onto and play the comedy off of. So, I’m going to leave it to these guys to sort of get into other things, but I wanted to lay that out there because I think that tonally it’s not going to work unless you figure out how to find that contrast.

**Bucky:** Right. Makes sense.

**John:** Susannah Grant?

**Susannah:** So, of those two options, which one are you going for?

**Bucky:** Well, in the story they don’t encounter any heroes in the past whatsoever. They actually just kind of solve their problems by inaction.

**Susannah:** [laughs] Okay. So, I’m going to talk about something that is valid for any movie, superheroes, non-superheroes, and that’s character motivation. It’s a really basic thing. You have a character I assume is the villain of the piece, the guy who walks in and sends them, creates the problem, sends them back to the ’70s. And this is sort of the going too fast thing. He’s only given two lines.

**Bucky:** Right.

**Susannah:** And I don’t know how — there’s a hint of resentment because they kind of belittle him, but for that character to make that big a choice that we’re going to watch an entire movie about the problem he creates, I need to be intrigued by him. I need to lean in and say, “Ooh, he’s mad,” and why is he mad? Take time.

It does feel rushed. And I know everybody is always saying about writing — economy, economy, economy — you’ve got to be fast. I personally think you’ve got to be long before you can be fast. You’ve got to take the time to find out what you’re saying and really like dig into who this guy is. And that might take five pages. And then you say, “Oh, that’s who he is. I found it on the fifth page.” And you get rid of the first four. But you’ve really got to take the time to sink in to who this villain is, why he’s doing what he’s doing, and why I should care about him.

**Bucky:** Right.

**John:** To me, I was reading this thinking like if this was the third episode of a series about these guys, that would be awesome.

**Bucky:** The clock actually shows up in the second, so he’s established.

**John:** So, he’s established. Do you perceive this as being part of a longer franchise?

**Bucky:** Like, a web series.

**John:** I think in those ways it could actually work. If we already knew who those characters were when they were sitting in the diner, then the guy could just walk in and we can start the whole plot. But as I was reading this just cold I didn’t know what is the relationship between these three people, like Pecos Pete sort of seems annoyed by this person, so why are they all at the diner together. I was having all of these questions. I was wondering what the world was like and it was harder for me to sort of — and suddenly there’s a plot happening. And now we’re in the past. And I didn’t know what the world was like before we went to the past.

**Craig:** This is the third episode of something.

**Bucky:** Ideally. Like written as a web series.

**Craig:** Okay. That would have changed everything.

**Susannah:** Forget what I said.

**John:** Make it really clever on those things.

**Craig:** Needed to know that, yeah.

**John:** But let’s talk some of the words on the page, because you do some things which work great and some things which don’t work so great.

Right at the very start, “We are outside looking in at what one might say is an exact replica of Hopper’s Nighthawks. Instead of Bogart-esque type characters, we see three superheroes at the counter.”

I love “we are,” I love “we see,” but we didn’t need them at all here.

**Bucky:** Okay.

**John:** Just tell us what’s there and we’re good and we’re going. And because this was the first time I was experiencing any of these characters, I really wanted more time spent on who those people are. Like tell me really what kind of people they are, not just what they’re wearing, but sort of who they are and sort of what their deal is. And it’s probably — when you shotgun three characters at us at once we have a hard time knowing how to sort them out.

Other stuff about what we saw on the page?

**Susannah:** Yeah, you know, what can be easier is if you give them something specific, to be working out, or arguing about. You have hints where you want their characters to be, but you haven’t given yourself the tools to really make something, make a meal of the scene with these guys. If they’re actually arguing about something specific, or trying to get something specific done. You’ll just have a lot more opportunity, a lot more tools there to show who these guys are.

And then the other question I had is I wasn’t clear if, I guess what you were saying, their relationship. Nighthawks is very specific and it’s lonely and middle of the night and melancholy. And then I didn’t feel how that was relating to the story you were telling. So, I just would say think really carefully about the environment you’re creating and make sure the choices you make are really specific to that.

**Craig:** Let’s capitalize our characters when we meet them. It just helps us to know that they’re there. I think regaling, maybe I’m wrong, but “is regaling his tale to two obviously,” I think it’s just regaling to obviously bored superheroes. I think that’s how that works.

Commander Alpha is blathering on and he’s boasting. And these other two are bored, Pecos Pete and Mauve Moth are bored. When two other people are bored I don’t need them to say things to indicate that they’re bored. I think actually there’s an opportunity for the two of them to be doing something else entirely because they’re just not paying attention to him. And they occasionally look up and nod, but maybe they’re in the middle of something. Are they into each other? Is one of them just trying to get somebody’s attention and not — I mean, there’s something interesting about a superhero that can’t flag a waiter down.

You know, there are opportunities for you to kind of —

**Bucky:** Make it funny.

**Craig:** Layer things in. Because this stuff is, you know, like one of the things that David Zucker taught me when I started doing spoof movies with him is that this stuff is wonderful because it allows you to do jokes. But the jokes have nothing to do with what the people are saying. That’s just talking that fills space. So, use that.

**John:** If she’s checking her email while he’s going on with this whole story then that’s something we can relate to, like, “Oh, this person won’t shut up.”

An example at the bottom of page one, The Clock bursts in and he goes, “Sup’ bitches. It’s time for your beatdown!”

And right now Pecos Pete says, “Oh no, are you here to slow down time? You realize that all that does is stretch out the span of us whooping on you.”

That second phrase is actually really good, but I wondered if that first phrase is delivered to the other superheroes at the bar. So, he’s going to slow down time. He’s going to slow down time. Maybe it’s like I’ve seen him before, he’s going to slow down time.

You realize — there’s a chance to actually get a real joke, sort of break that into two jokes and really let that land.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, that character, one thing about that is I don’t know if he’s real or not. You know, when somebody like that shows up, because I’m still learning the rules of the show or the movie or whatever it is. Like, you know, in one of the Batmans, I think it was in the second one, there’s a Batman but then it turns out it’s not really Batman. It’s a guy that’s pretending to be Batman. He’s pathetic. This guy seems like that, like what are you doing? Where did you get that? What’s wrong with you?

**Bucky:** Well, you know, heroes are somewhat pathetic I think.

**Craig:** Well, that’s fine, too. But you have to help me get there. Because what I know walking in and what you’re using frankly for comedy is that heroes aren’t pathetic. So, I need to be taught now how this works so when this guy shows up we need to be taught that he’s an actual villain. Like, dude, we beat you up last week. We beat you up last night. He should have a black eye. You know what I mean? What is wrong with you? This isn’t even about — what is this about? You like getting beaten up, don’t you? I mean, like, something — we need to get a sense that he’s actually legitimately real or else we’re like what’s going on here?

**Bucky:** Okay.

**John:** I would leave this at I was really curious to see episode one of this. Because I feel like you actually, in your head you know who those three characters are and you know what their relationship is. There is a reason why those three people are together — that first episode where we’re seeing why they’re together and sort of what that deal is. And sort of like The Tick or those universes could be great and this just felt like it was too soon for me to get a complicated plot change. It’s too early for us to go back into the past when I didn’t know what the present really felt like.

Bucky Knaebel. So, I should say, Craig, you don’t realize this but Bucky actually asked a question on the show many years — how long, a year ago?

**Bucky:** Roughly, yes, a year ago.

**John:** So, he was the person who asked about sort of like I’m moving to Los Angeles with my family. Where should I live? And we actually had a long conversation on the show about where he should live.

**Craig:** Where did you end up?

**Susannah:** Where do you live?

**Craig:** Straight outta Compton!

**Bucky:** It was a total help, too.

**Craig:** Oh good.

**Bucky:** We live in the Valley now.

**Craig:** In the Valley?

**Bucky:** yeah.

**Craig:** Somewhere out there. Yeah, don’t get specific. We’ve got some weirdos out here.

**John:** You’ve got a whole audience of people who may want to steal your stuff.

**Craig:** They will find you.

**Bucky:** So, thank you for that. Thank you for this.

**John:** Thank you very much for sending in these pages.

**Bucky:** Please, thank you so much.

**Susannah:** Thanks a lot.

**John:** Awesome. Bucky Knaebel.

**Craig:** Good luck.

**Bucky:** Thank you, Craig.

**Craig:** My pleasure. Stick with it. Stick with it. All right.

**John:** All right. Our next Three Page Challenge comes from Michelle Burleson with Kimchi Rhinestone.

Michelle, where are you? I see Michelle. Hooray!

**Craig:** Yay!

**John:** So, some backstory. I had Stuart email everybody who was, well, all the winners, but everyone who submitted to say, like just make sure they’re actually coming.

**Michelle Burleson:** Very nice to meet you.

**John:** And, Michelle, you emailed from like the side of a road. You like pulled off at a car — come on, grab your microphone. Where were you driving from?

**Michelle:** Santa Cruz.

**John:** Santa Cruz, all right. So, same state. Yeah, it’s not too far.

**Michelle:** Somewhat. Different country, same state.

**John:** All right. Thank you for coming.

**Michelle:** Thank you for having me. Be gentle.

**Susannah:** Oh, yeah, absolutely.

**Michelle:** I’m just a girl.

**Craig:** Absolutely not.

**Michelle:** I’ll go She-Hulk on you.

**John:** Ah! She’s already wearing green.

**Craig:** This is all I ever wanted.

**John:** Your script is called Kimchi Rhinestone. So, Kimchi I know is Korean.

**Michelle:** Yes.

**John:** Rhinestone, I think of sort of like cowboy something. So, I’m reading that as a thing, so it’s going to be something-something about that. As your script starts, talk us through the three pages that people are going to be reading if they were reading this at home.

**Michelle:** Okay. She’s actually a character I created at the Second City and just decided to take her a little further. But she’s being abandoned, and this happens a lot. A GI impregnated a Korean girl, so that’s taboo. So, the mother is abandoning her at the Amerasian orphanage, which does exist, and abandons her in her father’s guitar case.

Then we go to, she’s busking on the street, she’s out of the orphanage. And their — the Halfies — I call them Halfies, because I’m one.

**Craig:** Yeah, you can get away with that.

**Susannah:** We won’t be calling them Halfies.

**Michelle:** Yeah. They’re citizens of no country. I’m not an orphan, but they’re citizens of no country. So, she’s busking. She thinks, you know, if I get to America everything will be better and she has this thing on her head about if I can just get to America. And then it goes to this American Idol type country show called America’s Honky Tonk Angel.

**John:** And that’s the end of our three pages is in the middle of this I’m going to rip open the envelope and we cut to commercial.

So, as I started to read this, I was sort of in three different worlds and I had a hard time grasping sort of what to expect to happen next. And that was the challenge I was facing. And I probably would have read page four and five and six, but I was really like, I felt the gears kind of grinding. It was hard for me to grasp what was really going to happen here. Because you say Honky Tonk Angel, I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what to even expect in my head.

And so I sort of think it’s country, but I was sort of confused. How did you guys approach these three pages as you were reading them? Susannah?

**Susannah:** I just wanted so much more breath in this. I was interested in everything you told me, but just now, just your saying that she has a dream that she’s going to go to America — put that in. Even the woman dropping her at the orphanage in the beginning, I was just like well where is she going, and who opens the door? There’s room to breathe in this.

And it doesn’t have to be long. Just give us a bunch of tiny little details that really tell us where we are and what we’re dealing with. And the same thing when she — you cut to her right on the street, right? But I was like, wait, where is she living? Is she living alone? Is she living with someone? Is this guitar case the guitar case?

And you have room for that. I said it before, but this idea that you need to be efficient seems to sometimes rob people of the — giving themselves the room to be really specific and flesh it out. Because I really want to know what’s happened to her, and what she wants, how she’s going about getting it and what the obstacles are.

You know, a kid dropped at an orphanage. But I just want to know everything. Everything around her.

**Michelle:** Okay.

**Susannah:** And I think you have tons of room to do it. Like what you did in three pages I think could take ten, you know, or eight. You have a lot more room and you need to tell me more so I’ll care.

**Michelle:** Okay. Thank you.

**Craig:** You said you build this character at Second City?

**Michelle:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, this is not a comedy though?

**Michelle:** No, the first draft was just a bunch of my sketches I kind of just all threw together.

**Craig:** Right, but from these pages I take it this is —

**Michelle:** She’s matured a bit.

**Craig:** It’s sort of an inspirational underdog story. Okay. So, I completely agree with Susannah and I don’t know what’s going on where people are hitting the gas so hard. Do we see her mother again?

**Michelle:** No.

**Craig:** One theory is we never see the mother. And that there is a… — This is why I like thinking about credit sequences in movies like this, too. That you begin with somebody coming across a guitar case in front of an orphanage, like the people that work at the orphanage just see a guitar case there and like, “What the hell?”

And then the guitar case goes donk, and they open it up and there’s a baby in there. And then you see images of what’s happening — because the other thing is the time that passes is not time you can afford to ignore. You need to educate people what it means to be Amerasian in Seoul in the ’70s and ’80s. They need to know.

So, that’s a big part of this. And it also — I need to know how she learned guitar. I need to see the moment when she picks it up for the first time. It’s the only possession, the guitar she has isn’t the guitar, because there was no guitar, right? Or there was a guitar? I can’t remember.

**Michelle:** There was a guitar. She kind of set it — the mother set it out and replaced her with it.

**Craig:** Okay. Got it. So, you see a closed guitar case and a guitar. That’s a cool opening image. Why is a guitar out of a guitar case. And then you open the guitar case and see a baby in there. That’s the only thing she owns in her life. And I want to see a little seven-year-old kid sitting there with the guitar and just going poink, poink, and then I want to see her at 13 going, [guitar sounds], right, and listening to music. I want to see something happening there. That’s what your story is about, you know?

So that by the time, oh, and then I definitely — here is what I definitely do not want to see.

**Susannah:** I know what you’re going to say.

**Craig:** On page three I do not want to see her so good, like boom and there she is, she’s awesome. No. I want to see her suffering, right? She’s literally out there for two seconds playing one song that by the way is too lyrically on the nose.

**Susannah:** Right.

**John:** Yeah. We all wrote on the nose, I think.

**Susannah:** But aside from that, it’s a wasted opportunity because we know this already. She’s singing about what we know. If you ever sing about something we don’t know, then you’re broadening our understanding of her.

**Craig:** I want to see that, look, the movie is about people that try and become professional artists. Follow a formula, which you can choose to follow or not, but I feel like you kind of want to here. And there’s that scene where they are being pelted. Nobody is listening to them. Nobody likes them. They are poor and they are hungry. And they’re being kicked around. And you’re suffering with them and they’re about to give up and then something happens.

And that something that happens is page 10 at the earliest, I think. It feels more like 15, or 20, and then suddenly your world explodes because that’s kind of the narrative that we have in our hearts, right? So, it’s all just racing here far too fast, because you have an interesting story to tell.

We will be always more interested in the human than we are in the circumstances. So, I would also just — my last little bit of advice, you’re inventing a show that doesn’t exist.

**Michelle:** Correct.

**Craig:** And does not exist because nobody would watch that show. Right? So, my suggestion is to think about basically being true to people’s experience. There are talent shows now where anybody can go on. Any kind — even if you’re not a musician. You’re a dancer, whatever, like America’s Got Talent or something like that. But that becomes even harder. Now you’re going up against the best of everything. And you’re just this kid from Seoul with no parents, but you’ve got soul, you know.

I mean, it’s cool, right? So, I would just say slow it down, tell the human story, let those beats happen as they need to. And you know what they are. You’ve seen the movies. And stay true to what you think people will go, “Oh yeah, that feels like my experience.” Because you’ve got so much potential here, you know.

**John:** There are some moments I really loved. So, we were talking about the America’s Honky Tonk Angel stage. At two and half pages in we cut to this stage and we’re just seeing that this guy doing the open. But I want to read a little bit aloud because I liked some of what you did here. “A center stage spotlight shines on two barely legal BLONDE SOUTHERN BELLES. They cross fingers. Hold hands. Fidget. Left foot. Right foot. Please God, please.”

Really nicely done. I know exactly what that is. I know what that feels like. You put us in the perspective of those characters. Really nicely done.

“Every mini rip into the envelope an eternity. Sweet torture. The Emcee flashes a salesman smile.” I know exactly what that is. But if that moment were happening and then as we pull back we see that we’re actually in Seoul and that’s happening on like a satellite TV screen —

**Michelle:** Mind reader.

**John:** I suspected we weren’t really in Tennessee at that point. That could be a really great moment. But right now it’s happening on page three and there’s like, well, I know exactly what’s going to happen in your movie. What we’re saying is the gas was just hit way too hard, way too fast.

**Michelle:** Gotcha.

**John:** And that may be part of the problem with what we do, Craig, honestly. I think sometimes this Three Page Challenge makes people feel like, “Well, we’ve got to cram so much into three pages.”

**Craig:** Yeah, no. No, no, no, no, no.

**John:** We just want to see really great writing. We want to be intrigued about the three pages. We don’t need to know what everything is.

**Susannah:** It’s just a tease. It’s a seduction. Think of the beginning of The Godfather. I mean, the beginnings of great movies just have you going, “What?!” I don’t know anything; I want to know everything.

**Craig:** Right. There’s mystery involved. And you create the spaces that you want to create. Emotions need space. And it’s interesting because John’s right. Look, you can write. There’s no question. This moment is really well written. But you’ve created all that space for these two characters that won’t be important on a show that isn’t connected to the thing I care about. And you haven’t created enough space for what it means to be a hungry kid with no parents and no identity. Right?

But you know that. I know you have that, clearly. So, that’s what I want you to do. I want you to just go and kick that ass.

**Michelle:** Thank you. I appreciate that.

**Craig:** My pleasure.

**Susannah:** There’s one other point I’d make which is that you’re writing a character who is trying to do something really, really hard in life. And there’s always a reason somebody is trying to do something really hard in life, so keep that in mind. That you need to know that and you need to communicate that somehow.

**Michelle:** Thank you very much.

**John:** Michelle, thank you so much for coming.

**Michelle:** Thank you. I appreciate it.

**Craig:** Good work. Good job. Good work. All right.

**John:** Our final script of the night, so people could vote on this. This is the first time in the Three Page Challenge where we posted all the three page entries. And how many people voted on their favorites in this audience. Show of hands who votes? Oh, actually a lot of people voted.

**Craig:** That’s a good amount of voting.

**John:** Great. Thank you for voting. Some people voted a lot. And, our winning entry got 32% of the vote. So, let’s meet the man who wrote that script.

**Craig:** And voted a lot for himself?

**John:** Perhaps. Mr. Paul Yoshida, come on down.

**Craig:** Come on down.

**John:** Paul, thank you very much for being here. Your script is called Zombie With a Gun.

**Paul Yoshida:** I did vote for myself a lot.

**John:** That’s fine. It’s absolutely fine.

**Paul:** Sorry everybody.

**John:** We totally didn’t really kind of block in any sort of meaningful way. Like you could get it around it. I was curious what was going to happen. How many times do you think you voted for yourself?

**Paul:** I don’t even want to say.

**John:** We’ll let Ryan and Nima run some numbers and figure that out. But, congratulations, and we enjoyed your script.

**Paul:** Thanks.

**John:** So, Zombie With a Gun, what’s Zombie With a Gun about?

**Paul:** Well, the three pages, it opens with this scumbag named Lou. He’s doing blow with a hooker in a motel. And they’re doing their thing. And then this mysterious guy shows up banging on the door. He has a hood on. You can’t see who he is. And then they kind of dismiss him as some crazy guy. And then the hooded guy gets back in his car and then just drives the car through the wall and then confronts Lou, the scumbag, and it turns out that the guy with the hood on is actually a zombie who has come back from life to kill the gangsters who killed him and his family.

**John:** Great. And this a script, is it all written, or just these three pages?

**Paul:** Yeah. It’s on the Black List website in case anyone is interested.

**John:** Nice. Franklin Leonard of the Black List is here tonight.

**Craig:** Hey Franklin, can he vote for himself on the Black List?

**Paul:** I already tried. It doesn’t work.

**Craig:** I like it, by the way. That’s a real Jersey move. I like that.

**John:** So, Paul, when we were up here talking before about superhero movies is that idea of one thing changed. And this very much felt like a one thing changed. It felt like the movie that Billy Bob Thornton could be in, except that like there’s a zombie. And you told us from the start that there is going to be a zombie because it’s called Zombie With a Gun. And I thought that was actually kind of cool.

It’s a genre movie. It’s actually sort of two genre movies simultaneously and sort of seems to honor both of those expectations of what those genre movies are. Susannah?

**Susannah:** Yeah. I love that, too. I think that’s a great idea. My biggest thought is that you’ve just got to get a little more specific with Lou, or a little more — just pull him out of, I mean, the blow and the Asian, it feels familiar. And Lou can be a great character. And he can be fucking whores, and he can be doing all the blow, but give me something about him that shows me that he’s a unique person on the planet. A unique tattoo. Maybe there’s something particular about his hooker that tells us what he’s into. You know, something. Just something that makes you say, “Oh, you’re not just run of the mill scumbag. You’re that scumbag.”

And then I’ll lean in, you know. I’ll want to know.

**John:** On the second line of actual action, “The owner of the truck, a scum-bag with “WHITE POWER” tattooed on his neck, INHALES a line of coke off a hand-mirror.” So, you said scumbag, and honestly then you titled the whole thing for us. I’m never going to think that this could be the hero of the story because you said he’s a scumbag. So, if you backed off that and found some little interesting details we might think like, oh, maybe he’s a good guy somewhere down the road.

**Craig:** Yeah, White Power. I get it.

**Susannah:** You know, a lot of people who have goodness in them can end up in a motel room with a hooker doing blow off a mirror.

**John:** If we thought it was Louie, then yes.

**Susannah:** Something landed him there. Something interesting landed him there.

**Craig:** I mean, Lou is not going to survive much longer, is he?

**Paul:** No. This is actually a flash forward. So, he kills him.

**Craig:** He kills him right?

**Paul:** Yeah. He’s one of the henchmen kind of.

**Craig:** It’s funny that you said, John, that you called out scumbag because I wrote don’t chew my food for me. I know how to put two and two together. If you say white power, and coke, and a whore…scumbag. I get it. I know.

**Susannah:** I’ll do the math.

**Craig:** You don’t need to tell me scumbag.

**John:** We’ve seen one or two movies.

**Paul:** I knew you would know.

**Craig:** But Susannah is right that every character has — this character is in the movie because he’s going to lead you to this very cool reveal. And the last thing that you want to do when you have a cool reveal back here is then just jab weakly setting up this big obvious thing. I want to be, like Lou should be cool enough where I could have a whole Rosencrantz and Guildenstern movie with Lou. Every character should be unique. You never want to go just Central Casting Thug, because this guy is doing really Central Casting Thug stuff.

I had one thought for you about the ending of the three pages. Oh, first of all, just little logic things. When a car crashes a motel room, you don’t have time to dive behind a bed for cover. The car is going fast.

**Paul:** Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

**Craig:** The car would have to be like [sound of car chugging slowly]. And then dive, right? So, it just misses them basically, you know? But, you have this really cool reveal that this guy with the hood shows him this picture and he goes, “I didn’t murder nobody.” “Yeah, you did, Lou.” And then he pulls his thing and it’s him in the picture, right?

**Paul:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** But I was looking, and maybe it’s on the next page, but I was looking for that line where the guy is like, “Who are you?” Like he’s like, “You murdered Sean Walker.” “Who are you?” “I’m Sean Walker.”

**John:** Is that the next line?

**Paul:** Well, no, he’s more like in shock of like, “Oh, you’re dead.”

**Craig:** You want that. I mean, the whole person is basically like —

**Paul:** Right.

**John:** Craig, would you do an exercise with me?

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** I think it could help if we read it aloud. If we read just the dialogue aloud?

**Craig:** Okay. Can I be the hooker?

**Susannah:** I want to be the hooker!

**Craig:** Oh, Susannah wants to be the hooker.

**Susannah:** No one ever asks me to be the hooker.

**Craig:** Well, one of us can be Lou, one of us can be the hooker, and one of us can be Man in Hood.

**John:** I’ll be Man in Hood.

**Craig:** Okay. I’ll be Lou.

**John:** And…

**Craig:** I will get physical, by the way.

**Susannah:** Oh, it’s one.

**John:** Begin.

**Susannah:** Oh, we’re just reading lines?

**John:** Just lines.

Savannah: You save me some?

**Craig:** This is comin’ out of your pay, you know…

**Susannah:** …Prick.

**Craig:** Alright, let’s fuck.

**Susannah:** Loud pounding. Who’s that?

**Craig:** Fuckin’ Christ…

**Susannah:** Is it the cops?

**Craig:** Wrong room, asshole! Now, where were we?

**Susannah:** Yeah! Yeah! Right there! [grunts.] Oh, Don’t stop! Don’t — !

**John:** The car smashes through the wall.

**Susannah:** P-please, don’t hurt me!

**John:** Leave.

**Craig:** What the fuck is this?

**John:** You pigs murdered them. Shot ’em dead in their home.

**Craig:** Bullshit. I didn’t murder nobody.

**John:** Yeah, you did, Lou…

Scene. So, you won’t get the finale on the podcast.

**Paul:** That was amazing. That was hot.

**John:** Part of the exercise there, no criticism of your performance.

**Susannah:** Oh, it was brilliant. I know that.

**John:** Yeah, we all acknowledge that Susannah Grant is who you should cast as Asian Hooker in your films. But I kind of thought that every line the Asian Hooker said was a little not awesome. And she was just saying things that Asian hookers kind of say in this movie. And maybe she should say other things. Or maybe not say anything. Because if you took off all her lines, you could —

**Susannah:** Maybe she’s a really weird hooker. I want to see a really weirdo hooker.

**John:** That also makes it more interesting for Lou if like there’s something interesting about her.

**Craig:** I mean, in general right it goes back to this whole Central Casting thing. You’re a hooker. You’re banging some dude for coke in a shitty motel and there’s a knock on the door. You don’t care. You don’t care about anything, right? You’re a hooker. You’re just like la, la, la, and he’s like, “Ugh, what?” And bonk, bonk, bonk.

**Susannah:** And you also don’t care if they stop or not.

**Craig:** Yeah, you don’t care. Nobody cares.

**John:** They don’t care if it’s good.

**Susannah:** I also want to talk about the knock on the door, which is the guy who drives the car through the door, I mean, through the wall is not usually the same guy who knocks. And if you want to show us the guy is coming, just show us he’s coming. Just go outside the motel, see the car pull up.

**Paul:** Yeah, that’s cool.

**Susannah:** See the hooded guy get out. And they have no idea. Because the knocking and then driving, I don’t know what he’s — he’s polite, and then he’s —

**John:** I thought he was doing it to make sure that he really was in the room. So, he’s hearing a voice.

**Susannah:** Oh, okay.

**John:** And so there may be a way to acknowledge that he knocks on the door to make sure he heard the voice, and then he walked off.

**Craig:** Yeah, but then at that point I’m wondering why drive the car through there? Why not just kick the door open. You have a gun.

**Susannah:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But, what you could do, for instance, is you’ve got Lou and this woman and then the Trans-Am pulls into the lot and then you see like that sad old guy that’s working behind the desk. And the door goes jingle-jingle. And the guy looks up.

The next thing that we see after another little bit of Lou is that car going through the door. We’ll know, okay, he got the name from the guy.

**Paul:** Oh, yeah, that’s cool.

**Craig:** You know, something like that.

**John:** Cool. Thank you, Paul, so much for submitting.

**Craig:** Good job.

**Paul:** Yeah, I’m a super big fan.

**John:** Thank you very much.

**Craig:** Nice work.

**John:** And that’s it. Susannah Grant, thank you very much.

**Craig:** Thank you, Susannah. Great job.

**John:** Craig, this was a long show. We needed to really warn the affiliates that we were running a little bit long. But this was really, really fun.

**Craig:** No, it was great. Yeah, hopefully we didn’t preempt whatever comes after us on the network.

**John:** Yeah, there’s hopefully not another thing happening. We need to think Aline Brosh McKenna for sponsoring our cocktail party, which was lovely. We need to thank Christopher Kartje and the Writers Guild Foundation for putting this event on. That was amazing.

**Craig:** Yes. Fantastic job as always.

**John:** And Matthew Chilelli edits all these episodes. He also did the intro music, which was a surprise to Craig.

**Craig:** Yeah, like everything is a surprise to me.

**John:** Yeah, so it was a surprise for Craig. And I especially want to thank everybody who submitted those pages.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Because everyone is brave for doing them, but thank you again for putting your work out there in the world. It’s amazing.

**Craig:** Thank you guys. And thank all of you guys for listening and all of your very kind words in supporting us. We promise we’ll keep doing this long after you lose interest, I assure you.

**John:** And one last thanks to Milt and Rich, our sound and our lights, and everybody else who made this all work.

**Craig:** Thanks folks back there.

**John:** And thank you guys so much for coming.

**Craig:** Thanks for coming.

Links:

* [The Writers Guild Foundation](http://wgfoundation.org)
* [Andrea Berloff](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0075696/) on IMDb, and [Deadline’s Conan announcement](http://www.deadline.com/2013/10/legend-of-conan-lands-andrea-berloff-to-script-arnold-schwarzenegger-epic-reprise/)
* [Christopher Markus](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1321655/) & [Stephen McFeely](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1321656/) on IMDb, and [their interview on LA Times Hero Complex](http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/captain-america-winter-soldier-writers-revel-in-marvel-universe/#/0)
* [David Goyer](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0333060/) on IMDb, and [his BAFTA Screenwriters Lecture](http://www.bafta.org/film/features/david-s-goyer-delivers-his-bafta-screenwriters-lecture,3931,BA.html)
* [David Goyer’s arms](http://cdn.wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/13049.jpg)
* [Spider-Man](http://marvel.wikia.com/Spider-Man), [Hulk](http://marvel.wikia.com/Hulk), [Martian Manhunter](http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Martian_Manhunter), [Wonder Woman](http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Wonder_Woman), [Lex Luthor](http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Lex_Luthor) and [Storm](http://marvel.wikia.com/Ororo_Munroe_(Earth-616))
* [Susannah Grant](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0335666/) on IMDb, and a [feature on her from Salon](http://www.salon.com/2000/04/13/grant/)
* The three [Three Page Challenge entries](http://johnaugust.com/umbrage), and [all 57 that were submitted](http://johnaugust.com/threepagelive)
* [Intro/Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes editor Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/world-building).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Hey, my name is Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 135 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, how are you?

**Craig:** I’m all sexy, John.

**John:** Oh, no, you cannot keep doing that voice. That voice has to stop right now.

**Craig:** Because it’s making you uncomfortable?

**John:** Yes. Even through Skype it’s just making me really uncomfortable. Can you imagine if people did that to you in like real life?

**Craig:** I think it would be spectacular. And I’m kind of puzzled why people don’t do it more often to me.

**John:** There’s a lot of things that puzzle me. But we won’t solve all those questions today, but we will talk about some things that are good for us to talk about. Craig, we’re going to finally talk about True Detective.

**Craig:** Yes. Finally we can because the finale aired and we can’t get yelled out.

**John:** Exactly. So, we’re going to do that at the end of the show, so it’ll be the last topic so you can — if you’ve not seen True Detective and you don’t want to listen to us talk about True Detective we will get to that point and we will say, “Now we will start talking about True Detective,” and you can just stop listening. And then you won’t be spoiled for anything we’re going to say, because we’re going to spoil everything.

**Craig:** Everything.

**John:** But also today we’re going to talk about the situation where you have written something and then you see it in a movie and it’s like, wow, that is so much like the movie I just wrote. We’re going to talk about that and specifically how it’s often not related at all. Sometimes just ideas are out there and there’s a good example that just came across our desk.

And you also wanted to talk about world-building, didn’t you?

**Craig:** Yeah. That was something that someone brought up on Twitter and I thought, wow, that’s a really good topic and one that I think I can kind of quiz you about because I think just based on the movies you’ve done you’ve had more experience with that than I have.

**John:** Cool. So, we’ll talk about all those things.

First off, though, we have a bit of news. I will be hosting a panel on Saturday July 12 at the Writers Guild Foundation — for the Writers Guild Foundation and the Austin Film Festival. Our own Kelly Marcel will be with me and Linda Woolverton and we’re going to be talking about moving from the first draft to the final feature film, that whole how do you get from inception to a completed thing. This is part of one of those whole day WGF things they do. I think when you and I did that Three Page Challenge thing.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** It’s that same kind of event. So, it’s a whole day where you’re buying a ticket for the whole big thing, so you can’t just buy one little section. You have to buy the whole thing. But if you would like to come see me, and Kelly, and Linda Woolverton on July 12 you can do that. There will be a link to that in the show notes.

My second bit of news is that Weekend Read just came out as we’re recording this, so it’s out in the App Store right now, and among the other things it includes is all the scripts to Rian Johnson’s films. So, he was nice enough to give us all his scripts.

We have the entire first season of Hannibal. Plus, we have the transcripts to every episode of Scriptnotes is now inside Weekend Read.

**Craig:** Whoa!

**John:** So, if you have not gotten Weekend Read, if you have not upgraded to Weekend Read do so now because it’s free and it’s in the App Store.

**Craig:** Great deal.

**John:** Great deal.

**Craig:** Great deal.

**John:** You had some follow up I saw in the notes.

**Craig:** I did. Yeah. We had a discussion I think in our last podcast when we were answering lots of questions. And we had a question from one listener about — well, actually, I don’t even recall what the question was that led me to the answer I gave. But we got a follow up question or response actually from one of our listeners named David Maguire.

And we will get these very nice letters every now and again, but this one I thought actually was worth sharing with everybody because one of the things that I’m always trying to put out there in the world is that your individual problems as a screenwriter are not in fact uncommon. Most of us share them, if not all of us. And I like this letter so much I thought I would read it. And so David gave us permission to go ahead and read it.

And he wrote, “Hey John and Craig, I’m an avid listener of your podcast and love that content you provide. Being an aspiring screenwriter your words are weighted for me and provide guidance for how I should move forward. Gushing aside,” and, now this is me — feel free to gush as long as you want. You know, when you guys write in, do it. Just gush.

**John:** Just paragraphs. Just gush.

**Craig:** “Hey, how you doing, I’m Craig Mazin.”

**John:** Craig’s a gusher.

**Craig:** Oh, so gross.

“Gushing aside, I wanted to comment on what Craig said during your last episode, Lots of Questions. He was answering a letter from a screenwriter who had just had surgery,” oh that’s right, now I remember. This was the very tragic question that we got.

“The screenwriter just had surgery, lost a relationship, and was deciding to focus on his screenplay and have that be his golden ticket. Craig said that you shouldn’t put all of your hopes in one script as it creates — and I am paraphrasing — an unrealistic expectation and stress. I found this bit of advice to be really what I need.

“Recently I found myself going to a pitch slam down in LA.” John, you’re familiar with these pitch slams?

**John:** Yes. I love a pitch slam, don’t you?

**Craig:** I mean, I super love it. [laughs]

**John:** I don’t love it at all.

**Craig:** No, me neither.

**John:** My sarcasm might not be coming through. I find them incredibly frustrating. But, maybe they’re helpful for some people, so keep reading.

**Craig:** For those of you out there, you show up at these things and you pitch stuff really fast, just lines of people, and it’s kind of like speed dating for screenwriting, and frankly I find the whole thing very disturbing.

“So, having no real idea of what that experience would be like, I went down there with an idea, no complete script, and a hope that my charm would wow them. Sadly, that did not work. The first session I watched said unless you have a near finalized script you shouldn’t be here. At that point I felt about two feet tall and foolish, but wanting to have the full experience I sucked it up and went to the pitch slam only to be rejected at every table except for one.

“A small production company told me that they didn’t want my half-realized drama and that they did action movies or horror movies, or even family-friendly action movies as they were more profitable. He gave me a card and said call him. I get home and I start trying to pull a story together under the idea that they are interested and want to work with me. So, I need to make this script a reality.

“After quickly outlining I got to start writing and I can’t — I just can’t seem to be happy with the script. That discourages me. And then that discourages me even further that I can’t get something out and I feel like this opportunity is slipping away. But Craig’s advice helps alleviate that stress and worry. And I suddenly realized that I like to write not so that I can make buckets of money, but because I like to tell stories. So, while it may be awhile before I get the action story figured out to a point where I feel comfortable with it, at least I’ll know I’m writing it for me and not for money.

“I’m sorry to drone on,” well, that’s never stopped me or John. “I’m sorry to drone on but I just wanted to say how appreciative I am for you guys and your show. Thanks, David Maguire from San Jose, California.”

And thank you, David, for writing. What a brave thing for you to write. And, also, pinpoint something that never goes away. It doesn’t matter where you are at any stage of the game. And that is this feeling like you have to write something to make somebody else happy so that you’ll be a writer, so that you’ll feel better about yourself. And unfortunately down that pathway is much danger and trouble. Trouble, I think. What do you think, John?

**John:** Yeah. I think that’s also a classic example of putting your self-esteem in the hands of somebody else. In this case the “somebody else” being that person you’re pitching to, or this person who expressed some interest in your idea and said like we’ll do it this other kind of way and then we might like it.

The minute you sort of hand off how you feel about yourself to somebody else, you’ve really weakened your position. You’re unlikely to have good outcome if you are putting how you feel about yourself in somebody else’s hands. And that’s a good lesson for work, but it’s also a good lesson for life. I think a lot of times in our personal relationships we tend to put way too much pressure ourselves and other people for how we’re going to perceive ourselves. And that’s not helpful and it’s not good.

**Craig:** Yeah. Well put. You really don’t want to give anybody that gun. And they will play the game where obviously it’s to their advantage in some ways to have some sort of power over you. I think what a lot of buyers don’t realize is that by doing that they have probably made the person they want work from that much worse of a writer.

It’s very hard to write for somebody else. We have to find a way to find common ground and an agreement with somebody else and then we write for ourselves. There’s no way around it.

**John:** And what I would stress is that you never really outgrow this. You may become more aware of when you’re doing it, but you won’t stop doing it. And that’s both as being the person who is putting yourself in these positions where you are fixated on what someone else is going to think. That still happens to me. It happens to me every — not every day, but every week. And especially the stuff I’m working on because I really want people to love it. And there are certain people who I want to love it.

Sometimes I’m just more aware now of not trying to please the people who kind of don’t matter in a strange way. So, to me that’s like I’m not going to knock myself out to please this junior executive on something because while she may be lovely she’s not the real opinion leader in this situation.

But I also find it, and tell me if you find this also, Craig, is that now more people are sort of working with you and for you, sometimes you recognize they’re trying to please you. And I don’t ever want to make someone feel like pleasing me should be their end all goal in life.

And so as we work on stuff there may be times where people are bringing us things and I try to always stress to them that like this isn’t working for me here right now, or this isn’t quite what I’m looking for. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. That doesn’t mean you did bad work. It’s just not what I need right now.

And that’s a useful thing I’ve tried to do more of as I’ve been working with other folks is to make sure that they understand that in no way should this reflect how I think of them as a person. It’s just like this is not what I need right here at this moment.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m the same way. I have no problem saying, listen, I don’t want to spend the time writing that because I don’t know how to write it or my heart is not in it. Somebody else’s heart will be in it and they’ll do something great.

You know, every time I pass on something I say, “I’ll see you at the Oscars with this,” [laughs] because I always feel that I passed on it, someone else is going to do it. They’re going to do it brilliantly and I’ll watch them at the Oscars. And I’ll be happy with it because it wasn’t for me. We can’t be everything to all people, nor should people feel the same towards us.

I will say that when it comes to listening to people, I don’t really — I never really concern myself with who matters. I only concern myself with who is right. If somebody — I don’t care who it is. If the lunch lady gives me an insight that I think is going to help me make my script better, I’m going to take it.

So, what I’ve done is I’ve tried to just tune out the fact that these are all people that I should somehow be pleasing and tune in just the content of what they’re saying. And then making decisions on the content, as if I were receiving these things over the wire as anonymous messages — what about this? What about this? What about this? And I go, well, no to that, no to that, yes to this, no to that, no to that.

**John:** Absolutely a great point. And you have to consider — when I’m saying like which notes I’m sort of I feel fine ignoring form sometimes a junior executive at this point in my career, it’s that there are sometimes you get feedback that you’re going to have to do something with even if it’s just to reject it. For certain other stuff I just let it sort of roll past and I don’t even sort of pay attention to it as much anymore. Because I’m always aware of the end of this is to get to something — to get to a great movie. And so if that note is helping me get to a great movie, I’m delighted to hear it.

If it’s going to be a note that’s going to get in my way of making a great movie, unless it’s from somebody who I really need to worry about, I don’t worry about it so much. And in people’s normal life, before they’re dealing with that, it may just be your friend who read the script who just didn’t get this one thing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And it’s good to listen to it, but that doesn’t mean you have to address everything that everybody says.

**Craig:** That’s right. In the end you have to be the one doing it and this is — I’m sure you’ve had the experience of writing something where you realized at some point I am not writing this for me anymore. I’m writing this either to make somebody stop yelling at me or to make somebody else happy, but not me. And it’s gross.

**John:** It’s gross and yet sometimes it’s necessary, because sometimes you recognize that you are link in the chain and you are not the final arbiter of what’s going to happen. And you have to make those decisions about whether to keep working on this in that capacity.

**Craig:** Right. Great.

**John:** Well, one thing we’re going to work on in a small capacity, in a five-minute capacity, we talked on the last show about this idea of what would a screenwriting format look like if we were to start from scratch, if we weren’t beholden to everything that had come before and wanted to do something from the ground zero. What would it be like?

And so you and I emailed back and forth this week, but you proposed like let’s just talk about it on the air. And I think it’s a great thing to talk about on the air, yet I don’t want it to take over the entire show. So, my proposal is that we will talk about it for exactly five minutes and then we will stop.

**Craig:** What if we don’t take up the whole five minutes? [laughs]

**John:** If we don’t take up the whole five minutes then everybody wins.

**Craig:** Then we vamp.

**John:** All right, so tell me when to start.

**Craig:** Start.

**John:** Go.

**Craig:** Okay. So, one thing that we’ve been talking about is getting away from the idea of pagination entirely. Thank you Final Draft. You inspired us. The idea being that until you are actually on set and handing out sides, which is something that happens at the tail end of a minority of development projects, everybody is reading the screenplay on some sort of device: a laptop, or a tablet, or a phone in this case.

So, one thing we wanted to do was get away from pagination because it’s irrelevant to that. We wanted to get away from pagination because it sort of is an old school physical object thing that no longer has meaning on a computer. We wanted to get away from pagination because the rule of one-page per one-minute is nonsense. And everybody knows it’s nonsense. Even if you think it’s real, you’re still stuck between screenplays that run roughly between 90 to 130 pages, which means that the page length is pointless anyway.

And we wanted to find something that is more useful in terms of how to actually break a screenplay up into pieces that matter, not 8.5 x 11 pieces, but purposeful pieces. John?

**John:** So, when we’re talking about breaking into purposeful pieces, the natural breaks would seem to be sequences and scenes. So, a sequence is a collection of scenes that tell a certain portion of a story. And a lot of times when we’re talking about a sequence sometimes they’re comprised of very short little scenes. So, if it’s just a few lines — a scene header and a few lines — it’s not really a scene in and of itself. And so sequences may be a good logical way of thinking about the breaking down of stuff.

The goal would be that even if you’re writing the document all as one flowing thing it can easily be broken apart into these pieces. And so as stuff gets moved around it can be recompiled into a full document again if someone wants to look at it as a full, more like a conventional script.

**Craig:** Right. So, the idea of the sequence is that we get away from orienting the screenplay around scenes based on locations. The reason that that happens is because in production people need to know is this inside or outside. Am I building something? Am I waiting for the sun to go up or down? And all the rest of it.

But in development that’s not quite as important. What is important is sequences. That’s actually the building block of storytelling, not whether I’m in a house and then I walk outside. If it’s all one motion and it’s all one sequence, narrative sequence, then that really is the building block. So, we want to get away from scenes in a weird way. We don’t have a problem with the idea of locations, but the word scene isn’t serving us as well as we think sequence would.

We also want to be able to deliver a format that is modern. So, music cues are clickable and playable while you’re reading. Sound effects are clickable and playable. Locations are clickable and visible. We want to be able to give people who are reading the context that they need.

If you describe something and there’s a great YouTube video that explains it perfectly, click it. And show it and watch it.

**John:** Yeah. So, what we’re ultimately describing here I think is a database that consists of the text elements of what the written screenplay is like, but also keyed up to each of these scenes or sequences can be additional information. And that already kind of exists.

As a film goes into production it is broken down. It is literally broken down into little strips, little bits of scenes that you would shoot. And that kind of information is stored along with that. So, it’s a different person that comes in and does all that work, usually the first AD and the line producer do all that work of breaking it down into these are the key components of what happens in this sequence and then storyboards are generated off of that based on those scene numbers.

That kind of stuff is there. It would be a way of here’s the text part of it and you can also flow through and see everything else that goes with it. And there should be a smart way to do that. If you are not bound by paper, that’s a thing you could very easily do.

**Craig:** How much time do we have left?

**John:** We have one minute.

**Craig:** Okay, great. One last thing. People are going to get freaked out by this get rid of pages thing. And I understand why.

First of all, we’ll have a solution for production. We understand how to do that because we work in production. But putting that aside for now, what people get scared about is how long is the script — what does that even mean? It doesn’t matter how long the script is. All that matters is how long the movie is.

Let’s first accept that, A, we don’t know how long the movie is going to be based on the script. We see that all the time when we turn in 100-page scripts and we hear that it’s actually a two-hour movie. Or when you turn 130-page scripts and we hear that it’s actually an hour and a half.

So, don’t worry about that. And also, I have to say, I think that we now have an inherent understanding of how long a movie is going to be based on just reading it. We get it. We have an internal clock running of our own. What matters is not some arbitrary number length, but how our interest is held. As such, by getting rid of pages we can also start doing things like using better fonts instead of stupid Courier.

**John:** Yeah. Which gets into the actual formatting on the page, which can be part of our next conversation because we’re down to 10, 9, 8…oh, we also have a way to do logical pages so we can still calculate page length if we have to. And 2…and…

**Craig:** And better revision marks. Excellent.

**John:** And we’re done.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** That was five minutes.

**Craig:** Terrific.

**John:** So, Craig, let’s get onto our new topics for this week.

Now, I had a blog post that was up about two weeks ago where it was actually a first person post. And a guy wrote in saying about his experience where he lives in China someplace and he had watched a trailer for a movie and went, “Oh my god, that’s the premise of this movie I wrote.” A script he’d written that had never gotten any traction. He sent it around by never got any traction.

So, he watched this trailer and is like, “Oh my god, what am I going to do?” And he was writing to me really with the question of should I watch this movie? What do I do? I’m freaked out. And so in the time between when he saw the trailer and I answered his letter he watched the movie and said, “It was bizarre watching it because it was the same premise but like kind of every choice they made along the way was vastly different.”

And so this thing where he originally thought like, I’m going to sue, he realized like, well, that’s crazy town. So, a thing came up this week that I thought was really fascinating so I wanted to read some things aloud. So, I’m going to read you the premise of two TV shows.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** And I want you to try to keep them straight. So, TV show number one: “This series follows the residents of a small town whose lives are upended when their loved ones return from the dead, un-aged since their deaths. Among the returned is Jacob Langston, an 8-year-old boy who drowned 32 years earlier. Having somehow been found alive in China, he is brought back to America by an immigration agent. His surprise return inspires the local sheriff, whose wife presumably drowned trying to rescue Jacob to learn more about this mystery.”

That is the first TV show.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** So, having heard that —

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** A second TV show: “In a small mountain town many dead people reappear, apparently alive and normal. Teenage road accident victim Camille, suicidal bridegroom Simon, a small boy named Victor who was murdered by burglars, and Serge, a serial killer. They try to resume their lives as strange phenomena occur. Amongst recurring power outages, the water level of the reservoir mysteriously lowers revealing the presence of dead animals and a church steeple. And strange marks appear on the bodies of the living and the dead.”

Two separate TV shows. Do you recognize either of these premises?

**Craig:** Well, to me, I immediately think of Pet Sematary.

**John:** Yes, oh yeah, Pet Sematary, the great Stephen King.

So, these are two TV shows that are currently on the air, which is what’s crazy.

**Craig:** Oh, I don’t watch TV, so —

**John:** One of them is called Resurrection and it’s on ABC. The other one is called Les Revenants, it was a French show that is now being aired on Sundance as The Returned. I dare anybody from a distance to tell those two shows apart. They sound really similar, don’t they?

**Craig:** With the exception of the occult baked into the second one? Yeah, I mean, basically it’s a small town where dead people are returning.

**John:** Yes. There’s water imagery in both. There’s a returned kid in both.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, here’s what’s crazy — the French show, Les Revenants, is based on a 2004 French film, so that’s back from 2004. They made a TV series that was based on this old French film. Resurrection, the show on ABC, is based on a book called, confusingly enough, The Returned, which is by Jason Mott, which is what the Sundance show version of the French show is called.

**Craig:** Okay. That is confusing. They’re sharing titles now.

**John:** So not only are they similar premises, but the title of one book is actually the title of the other series in English.

I bring this up because if you were to look at these from a distance you would say like, “Well, clearly one is based on the other.” They’re largely the same idea, and yet they’re not at all the same idea. Like there’s no lawsuit happening between these two because they’re actually separate ideas, and yet they’re so incredibly similar.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Well, as always, the idea itself you can’t sue over anyway, so the question is what is unique about how they spool out. And this doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. In the slightest.

**John:** And yet every time I see one of these things about somebody is suing Tom Cruise for Mission Impossible 3, that’s exactly my idea. Well, like, was your idea as specific as the dead returning to life in a small town and everyone is freaked out by their loved ones coming back? That’s a pretty specific idea. And then you add in like, oh, these people drowned, there’s water imagery, and the same kind of sheriff. And that seems incredibly specific and it seems like, well, no two people in a vacuum could have come up with the same idea, but they did.

And you even said it. The first thing you thought of was Pet Sematary.

**Craig:** Yeah, of course. If you want to go back further, let’s go back to the bible when Jesus comes back from the dead. Coming back from the dead is not special. Coming back from the dead is a deep-seeded old, old animal-brain desire of humans.

Death is confusing to us. It is a repudiation of the logical sense of the world. It is absurd. Naturally people have sought to cheat death forever, and so the theme of the dead walk again has been done billions of times in so many different ways. And you just start looking down a list of things and you realize not only is it common, it’s like you can’t get rid of it. Frankenstein. And every ghost story. People are constantly coming back from the dead. Reincarnated, and da-da-da-da.

It’s natural. You write something. Writing something is an act of — an extraordinary act of ego. I dare to create something and put it in the world, create something unique. It is my expression. And it is therefore somewhat expected that the person would allow that ego to slop over to, “And nobody else could have possibly done it.”

**John:** Well, here’s the thing, it was an original idea to you.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It was the first time you’d ever had that idea.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so in our solipsism it always seems like, well, it’s the first time I ever thought of that idea, so it must be the first time anyone ever thought of that idea. And even if we kind of know that’s logically unlikely, it still feels kind of right because we can only have our own experience.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** There’s a Slate article that I’ll also link to in the show notes that they talk though the other shows that is surprisingly very much like.

There’s a 2002 Japanese film called Yomigaeri where the dead are mysteriously resurrected in the city of Aso and then investigated by a representative from the Japanese Ministry of Welfare as they attempt to reintegrate into society.

There’s also In The Flesh, a BBC 3 series in the fictional village of Roarton, Lancashire.

And there’s Babylon Fields, which is a CBS pilot a few years ago that now NBC is doing a pilot that is a similar kind of idea.

So, that’s just an idea that’s out there. It’s like an asteroid hitting the planet idea. It’s going to keep recurring.

My frustration over New Girl and that whole crazy lawsuit, like, “Oh my god, it’s a girl and there’s three guy roommates.”

**Craig:** That was the worst.

**John:** It just drives me crazy. And I just thought this was a great demonstration of sort of how the same idea can occur multiple times.

**Craig:** Not only in what we do, but in science. I’m trying to think, it was Newton and I think it was, was it Leibniz? Two people separately at the same time came up with calculus.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Which is insane.

**John:** Which is crazy.

**Craig:** It’s crazy.

**John:** It happens.

**Craig:** It happens. Look at what happened at the beginning of the AIDS crisis. The French team and the American team both working on trying to isolate the cause of AIDS and both sort of oddly simultaneously in a weird way coming up with HIV. Granted, that’s a complicated story, but these things happen. There’s a time for ideas to come forth. They are affected by all sorts of things. We don’t walk around in isolation. We pick up cues from the world.

But more importantly I want to single in on something that you said which is you having an original idea doesn’t make it the only possibility that someone else can have that idea. If two people think of something apart from each other, in isolation from each other, it is original to them. And that can happen. And we shouldn’t think that our idea is so — do you know how hard it is to come up with an idea that not one of the other, I don’t know how many humans have lived, 80 billion humans. I mean, really?

**John:** Well, it’s misleading because while it’s entirely possibly to come up with an original sentence, the pure number of possible sentences in the world is essentially infinite. Like you could come up with an original sentence, but an idea is both so amorphous and so specific.

The elements of this thing, like I’m going to combine these elements in a way that no one else will ever think of — well, no you’re not. I mean, it may be that no one else has published that idea yet, but someone else has sort of come up with those building blocks.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** A good example is let’s take baby names. Because what’s always so surprising to people is like how did that name become so popular, like where did that come from? And if you ask any individual parent they’re like, oh, it just suddenly came to me. Like I have no idea why that name came to me, but like why is it now in the top ten of all names?

Well, it’s because it was out there in the universe. It was going to happen. That’s why suddenly there are Madisons. There weren’t Madisons before. Why did it show up? Because it showed up. It’s the thing that it snowballed and it happened.

**Craig:** Splash.

**John:** Well, Splash, that’s actually a bad example because Madison is probably coming from Splash.

**Craig:** Yeah, but then again, it’s like, okay, so they named her Madison because he looked at the sign for Madison Avenue and then people pick up on that. But a lot of people who name their kid Madison, they’re just naming their kid Madison because they might have heard somebody named Madison somewhere who then is derived from Splash and so on and so forth.

And it’s okay. I mean —

**John:** It’s fine.

**Craig:** Honestly, if you’re going to come up with an idea that is interesting to millions of humans, it needs to be universal. It needs to have some piece of borrowed tradition. I mean, look, this particular example, you’re talking about dead people coming back to life. Perverting and overcoming death, right off the bat — you just start with death. Okay, well, there’s 14 million ideas. All right, well what about people that used to be dead but now they’re back. Now you’re down to like four million ideas. It’s just so — it’s such a typical area for drama because it’s dramatic.

Death is dramatic. Sex is dramatic. Violence is dramatic. Love is dramatic. Children are dramatic. Parents are dramatic. How could we possibly ever come up with one of these things and think to ourselves and no one has ever thought of this before? The idea isn’t what matters anyway. It’s what you do with it.

**John:** I agree. And really what this comes down to is your premise is based on the world is normal except for one thing, which is really what this premise is. You’re going to find a lot of overlap.

And I think that’s a great segue to our second topic which is world-building, which is how do you build the universe in which your story takes place, whether there is one thing that’s different or everything is different like some of these shows have happened.

Some of these shows create these universes that are so amazing and different and detailed and complex. And yet they have to have some grounding in our understandable emotional reality or they don’t make any sense at all. You can’t make heads or tails of them.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, let’s talk about some world-building.

**Craig:** Well, what interests me about the phrase — I think first of all let’s define our term if we can. Every time you sit down and you write a screenplay you’re world-building. You are — even if you’re telling the most mundane mumblecore story of two people in Brooklyn having a series of discussions over coffee, you’re building a world. You’re populating it with people. And you’re picking where you want to go.

But, where I think the term is typically used and where it’s valuable is in a story where you are creating a world that is not like ours. You are — it is a fantasy world or it is a science fiction world, a vision of the future, or a vision of long, long ago. So, part of the value for the person watching the movie is that they are entering a world that is not like ours. That even the mundane things in this world like buildings and language and weaponry and religion have changed dramatically, or are dramatically different from ours, and that’s part of the fun of it.

So, for instance, if you were to write Lord of the Rings, or if you were to write Star Wars, or if you were to write Her, you’re world-building. And that’s something that you’ve done because I know you did Titan A.E., which was science fiction and world-building, right?

**John:** Yeah. Absolutely. And pretty much all the Tim Burton movies have a huge world-building component.

**Craig:** Exactly. Right. All the Tim Burton. Because Tim Burton likes to basically say come into the world of Tim Burton.

**John:** Exactly. And even to some degree I would say the Charlie’s Angels movies, they take place in this heightened sort of it’s always sunny, shiny California universe that is very specific. And there are things that can fit into a Charlie’s Angels universe and things that can’t fit into a Charlie’s Angels universe, the same way certain things can fit into a Lego universe or Muppet universe and couldn’t in other universes.

So, yes, anything that doesn’t take place in a really readily identifiable place, there’s going to be some component of world-building.

**Craig:** And so when you sit down, John, and you know that you’re telling a story in a world that you have to build, my guess is you have at least some basic understanding of what the dramatics of the story are. They will involve human beings who have problems — problems are really built. Problems are problems we’re all familiar with. But when you think about designing this and building this world, how do you go about doing it?

**John:** I think it starts with a visual ideal of what it would look like to be inside that world. And what it would look like both with your eyes, but what it would feel like to be inside that world. And with the changes from a normal world to this world, how would everything else flow out of that? And so if you are in a universe where Corpse Bride, where you’re in the land of the dead, and everything is incredibly colorful, everything is sort of the opposite of sort of what you think death is supposed to be like. What is a restaurant like there and what would they serve.

You’re having to figure out all these details. And you start — that’s actually the most fun part of any screenwriting for me is all that figuring out what the world is like. The challenge is that you figure out these details and most of them you’re never going to use. Most of them are things that are just over on the edges and you will never actually see any of those things, because really the experience can only be what could our hero encounter or interact with.

If you’re in WALL-E you’re going to see everything from WALL-E’s point of view. So, WALL-E is interacting with trash. And, well what is the trash? Where does trash come from? What is the world like? What does WALL-E do when he’s not working? Answering all of those questions is letting you build your character’s story, but also define the limits of what we’re going to see about the world and the universe.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that when I watch a movie that has built a world sometimes it’s the small unremarked upon details that bring me the most joy. I remember when I saw Star Wars as a kid, when they go to the Cantina in Mos Eisley, just the way the drinks looked and everything, the glassware, you know. That there were these little things and world-building really is a — when they talk about film being a collaborative medium, it’s not as collaborative as people think. I always think that really it’s a directed medium. That people — the writer and the director — create a set of marching orders. And then it is an executed medium where people serve that.

But when you talk about world-building, everybody gets to kind of pitch in and design things from costumes, to hairstyles, to — I mean, everybody noticed the pants in Her. That is a nice built detail that nobody ever says, “Boy, I really like the way these pants turned out in the year 2040.”

**John:** To me an even more specific detail in her that was just so spot-on terrific is that Joaquin Phoenix is walking around with Scarlett Johansson’s character in his pocket, the little camera in his pocket. And so that she can see he has a little safety pin in his pocket, in his shirt pocket so that the camera is up high enough so that she can actually look and see what he’s seeing. It’s such a small little detail, but it’s so terrific and important. It’s not remarked upon in any way by the movie, but you say like, “Well why does he have a safety pin there?” It’s like, oh, so that the phone is high enough that she can see. It’s such a smart little detail.

**Craig:** Yeah, which also goes to the notion that you don’t want to overkill it. That when you build a world you are asking people to enjoy the things that are different, but not to the extent where nothing is the same. You can start to fall into a silly place where forks don’t look like forks anymore. And doors don’t work like doors. And you realize that the movie has just become obsessed with the notion that everything will be changed in the future.

Her went the other direction and said actually, no, you’re still going to open your mailbox with a key. And if you want to do something in your pocket, you’re not going to put a magneto Levitron phone lifter. You’re just going to use a safety pin. That didn’t change, you know?

**John:** I remember there was an episode of Buck Rogers and the 25th Century with Gil Gerard and they were eating food. And they have like little magnetic forks to eat their food.

**Craig:** Ugh, bingo.

**John:** It’s like that’s not an improvement. It’s clear like that didn’t make anything better the way you’re doing that right now.

**Craig:** Yeah. That would be the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” syndrome. It’s a good way to approach the future. And you see it sometimes where people just go nuts, you know. I mean, the fact that, look, in the future doors can go whoosh — or they can just open. And if you think about it, opened doors just swinging unhinged, it’s really useful.

Or, if you needed to save space and you were on a spaceship, just sliding the door like a pocket door would also be very useful.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But why would you have this incredibly complicated system where doors go whoosh, whoosh.

**John:** Yeah. Unfortunately on radio I don’t think people are seeing probably how you’re moving your hands for that.

**Craig:** You know I’m going whoosh, whoosh. [laughs] Yeah, you know what I’m doing. Everybody knows what I’m doing.

**John:** I know what you’re doing. The way that it’s not like a pocket door but it’s actually moving past each other in a really complicated —

**Craig:** And on its own and it’s electronic and you know that it’s a guy like, “Oh my god, the door on deck seven, the whoosh door, it’s not swishing.” “Oh, okay, well we got to get the guy to come and he’s got a backlog, so it’s going to be a few days, so you’re going to just stay in there.”

**John:** Obviously when we talk about big fantasy or sci-fi films, there’s an aspect of world-building which is going to be a conversation between the director and all the different designers, from costume, production designer. All those things are going to be influenced by it.

But since we’re mostly a podcast about screenwriting, let’s talk about what it’s like to be building a world on a page, because where you see this going wrong sometimes is where those first five pages are incredibly dense with like all these details crammed at you about sort of what this world is like.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And the ones that have done it well, to my reading, have introduced you slowly to what this world feels like. So that the world starts in a way that lets you know the general sense of where this movie is going, what kind of universe we’re in, but it’s not hammering you with details. And so lots of readily identifiable behaviors, readily identifiable characters from the start. And then if they need to show you a big thing about how the world is different, they might not do that on page one. They might give that to you a little bit along the way.

Even The Matrix, which is about as complicated and confusing of a world that you could find, it starts in a more grounded way as you’re first meeting Neo, so you understand that there’s some basis of reality underneath all of this.

**Craig:** That’s right. And similarly when you have movies that take place entirely in a built world, like say Star Wars, there are points of reference, because you’re shooting here on this planet. Okay, Tatooine is a desert. It’s a small oasis town in a desert. Very good.

What’s happened now is we can make anything because of computers. So, there is a tendency I think sometimes for people to just go nuts and describe everything because their minds are blowing up with all of these interesting ideas.

I agree with you. You have to parcel it out carefully and meaningfully so that people don’t think they’re just reading a brochure for some house you’re trying to sell them, or a city you’re trying to get them to move to.

I have to say this is also frankly where a change in format would be enormously helpful. Text is a very clumsy way to describe a picture, which I believe has been calculated to be worth 1,000 words. It would be nice to just be able to click something and go, okay, I understand what they’re going for here. That would be useful.

**John:** I feel Frank Herbert’s Dune, I mean, Dune is a dense book and there’s a lot in Dune that is sort of world-building. It’s establishing this complicated world, the complicated rules, and the environments and all this stuff. A challenging thing to do as a screenplay because you’re going to have to be efficient about how you’re getting through this.

And so you want the audience to be able to make some leaps with you about sort of what world this is. Tatooine is a great example from Star Wars, because it’s mostly kind of like a little small tiny desert town. You can use a lot of your expectations about what a little desert town would be like, or a little desert dwelling would be like. And you don’t have to be introduced to every single new little thing.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** And they’re not choking you with all the details.

The other thing I think writers are especially responsible for is figuring out what the character’s voice in your created world is going to be. And you may not specify that people are speaking with some sort of Irish brogue, but you’re making word choices about the ways people speak within your world. And that can be a crucial thing, too.

If you’re making a Lord of the Rings-y kind of movie, there’s an expectation that characters are going to speak in that sort of kind of English way. That sort of almost like received pronunciation Shakespeare kind of way. You kind of get that for free if you want that. If you don’t want that you’re going to have to make a deliberate choice that it’s not that and deal with the sort of reader pushback that you’re going to find from that decision.

**Craig:** Yeah. The other thing I’ll mention is for those of us who write comedies, there are times when you need to world-build in a comedy. And in comedies you tend to not get quite as much credit for building some elaborate “original world,” in part because we like funny things to be in contrast to ordinary things. It’s harder to laugh when the world around you is so outlandish and creative.

I’ve never seen Pluto Nash, but just from the trailer I thought I’m not sure how any of this is going to be funny in this elaborate space station. It’s just too fancy and frankly kind of ambitious of a setting, no matter how well or not well it was executed for me to be laughing at the mundane things that happen inside of it.

With that in mind, one great example of comedy world-building is Defending Your Life by Albert Brooks. And he was building heaven, which is something that other movies have done. And his choice was to build that world against the expectation and just set it basically as kind of a lovely hotel resort for middle aged to senior citizen type people, you know, with buffets and lounge acts. It was kind of like a mid-level Vegas hotel, which was brilliant.

**John:** Yeah. You’re bringing up Pluto Nash. The funny sci-fi film I can point to is Galaxy Quest. And what Galaxy Quest so smartly did is it didn’t rely on sort of what real science fiction would be like. It relied on what we already knew about what a science fiction TV show should be like. And so therefore it could work with all this stuff that we already had in our database for like this is what a TV show version of what a starship show should be like. And it could push back off of that.

**Craig:** That’s exactly right. In fact, Galaxy Quest, among its many brilliant choices, Bob Gordon wrote a fantastic screenplay there, among the many brilliant choices was that when the aliens come to abduct or choose the heroes of the movie who played these characters on a Star Trek like show, the spaceship, their actual spaceship, they built it to the specifications of the show.

So, it wasn’t a built world. In fact, it was a very familiar world to us that was designed to look exactly like something that was fake. So, they could react to that and we didn’t feel like they were in a fancy ship, because they weren’t. They were actually in a very silly looking ship that was essentially created by tropes with which we’re all familiar.

**John:** Comedy is essentially expectation and then surprise. So, in comedy you have to have expectation about what’s going to happen next, and then a surprise that either something was said that wasn’t what you expected, or an event happens that isn’t what you expected.

If everything is brand new you kind of can’t have expectation. And therefore you kind of can’t be surprised in a way that’s funny. And that’s usually a huge problem with science fiction comedies.

**Craig:** Yeah. The word grounded comes up constantly when you’re making comedies. And even when we did spoof movies, when I did spoof movies with David Zucker one of the things that he was very adamant about and properly so is that if you’re going to spoof a scene from a movie the set needs to look just like that movie. It doesn’t need to be some funny version of that set. It needs to be just that set. And then funny things happen in it. You need to be grounded.

**John:** So, as you talk about sets, as we sort of wrap up this world-building thing: in general if I’m doing something that is a complicated production that is existing in a very different world than what I’m normally in, I will spend some time, you know, a couple days, although you can fall down deep k-holes and just go far too far with it. And just look up the imagery of the kind of thing I want these worlds to be like. And so you get to have a sense of style. Like this is the kind of universe this takes place in.

So, for Big Fish I did have some of that visual imagery of this is what this kind of fantasy nostalgic south of the past would be like. For other projects I’ve put together kind of a look book of this is the universe of what this world is like. And that’s incredibly helpful for you as the writer to be able to remember like, okay, that’s what I was going for there.

And even if you see that imagery, you can then start to think like what words would I use to describe what I’m seeing, because those are going to be the same kinds of words you’re going to use on the page to evoke this feeling for the person reading the script ultimately.

**Craig:** No question. Until you and I revolutionize screenplay format.

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** Which we’re going to do, by the way. We’re doing it.

**John:** We are. But first we should talk about a show that has done a great job of world-building this last season on HBO. And this is the time in the podcast where we’re going to talk about True Detective. So, fair warning, we’re going to spoil everything if you’ve not seen the show.

So, True Detective, Craig, I thought it was just a terrific show. How about you?

**Craig:** Yeah, it was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. The execution of it was not quite like anything I had seen before. And going back to our discussion of originality of ideas, two odd couple — odd couple detectives on the trail of a serial killer. Oh, you know, I don’t know —

**John:** Yeah, that’s tropey, tropey, tropey.

**Craig:** I mean, good lord. And they’re in the south. And I think I’ve seen that a bunch of times. And then there’s infidelity and, yup, yup, seen it, seen it, seen it, seen it. Even the notion that what’s behind it is a large conspiracy of powerful people and satanic rituals — done, done, done, done, done.

But what this show did better than any other, I thought, was create these two characters and let you — give you license to care more about those characters and where they were in their lives and the choices they were making than you did about the mystery itself.

Granted, I think some people didn’t. I think some people were just obsessed over the mystery to the point where the show could have not possibly satisfied them.

I thought that Nic Pizzolatto — Pizzolatto? Am I saying it right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Pizzolatto. And Cary Fukunaga made an amazing team. Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, brilliant performances. Best I’ve ever seen from them. Just a beautiful, beautiful show to watch. And as a student of Nietzsche, which I know you hate, I saw Nietzsche throughout the whole thing. I mean, this Nic Pizzolatto clearly a student of Nietzsche. No question. No question. And a smart student.

**John:** So, I was late to the show and sort of caught up. And so by the time we got to episode five or six I was watching it in real time. And I found it just fascinating. And fascinating in the sense of like when I first saw the promos for it I’m like I don’t know why I would watch this show, because I don’t watch procedurals, and it’s basically it felt like — from a distance it felt like a cop procedural staring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, both of whom I like but I’m not going to go racing to go see, set in Louisiana which I’m just so sick of Louisiana. I have no desire to see Louisiana again. And it felt tropey, tropey, tropey, trope.

And so it wasn’t until everyone told me like, “No, no, it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant. It’s brilliant. It’s brilliant.” And it’s really when people talked about the — when I decided I had to watch it was when people talked about the big shootout sequence, the sort of incredibly long tracking cam shot — the tracking shot that does all that that I know I had to catch up. Because I refuse to let this be another Breaking Bad where I’m behind everybody else on it.

So, what’s fascinating though is let’s go back to the reason I didn’t want to watch it is because on an idea level I’m like that doesn’t sound interesting to me at all. And where True Detective succeeds is in execution. Execution in acting. Execution in directing. But especially execution in storytelling, so I really want to focus on the decision to have the start of the show, at least the best parts of the show, the first six episodes, with the framing device of the interview.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** As we come into the show we’re seeing this murder investigation happen where there’s a dead woman, and there’s a tree, and there’s a crown and all that stuff. We’re seeing the same detectives interviewed and we’re not quite sure if it’s even about the same case. We literally see the video camera footage. Like what is happening here? And we start to piece together that these two detectives are being interviewed years later about these events and that they are going to be essentially narrating the story of their own solving of this case, or their own investigation to this case, which was just genius. And it was just so incredibly well done.

Every time we cut from the present day storyline — which was the interviews — to the past and back, the show gained narrative speed. And we did the show where we talked about long takes, I remember there was a blog post I did about long takes. There’s an amazing amount of scene-setting and world-building you can do when you have these very long takes, but there’s also a tremendous amount of power in cutting. And this show knew exactly when to cut and when to pass the baton between the past and the future. That tension between the past and the future was as much a narrative theme as anything else in the show.

**Craig:** I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone do it quite the way they did it on True Detective, so maybe exclusively until now movies would start with people and they’re remembering something and you flash back and you see it all happen and then you come back again to present day and they finish up and it’s a nice conclusion to the whole thing. And that’s fine. And that can work really well.

What was so terrific about the way they did it here where they kept it going through six episodes is that they were short-circuiting something that we’re all accustomed to watching and pulling out of narrative which is character development. They were showing you the end. They were saying this is how it ends. This guy is a drunk and a mess. And this guy is without a wife and a bit of a stopped up unfulfilled man. And that allowed them to play around with things in the past in a way that made it a little more meaningful. If I know that Matthew McConaughey ends up as a mess, watching him walk around perfectly shaven and coiffed and in complete control of his environment is far more interesting now. And I also don’t have to watch the breakdown. I just understand that I’m watching it now.

I’m seeing it and he doesn’t, which is great. Love that.

**John:** So, one of the key things to understand about True Detective is, again, at its best it maintained very vigilant POV, so every scene is not only involved but is driven either by Matthew McConaughey or Woody Harrelson’s character. You don’t get any scenes that don’t have them in it with very, very rare exception.

But by having the past and the future there’s really essentially four characters. There is the characters in the past and the characters in the present day, or the near present day, who are being interviewed. And it is the tension between the older and the younger versions of themselves is often as fascinating as anything else. The things that you see them promising in the past and how those promises are unfulfilled in the present are so rewarding, because your brain kicks into gear and tries to fill in all the missing pieces about how these things could possibly relate. And you see in the present day storyline during the interviews there is narrative tension within those scenes, too.

It’s not just that they’re narrating story. They’re trying to figure out information from the people who are asking them questions about what’s really going on.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** You start to realize like these interviews aren’t happening simultaneously. They’re trying to find out information about each other in the present day storyline as they’re talking to these interviewers.

**Craig:** Yeah. And where it got, I think, where the series hit its dramatic climax and the climax I guess of its efficacy was in the episode where they finally got to the shootout in the woods. This was something that they had been talking about for some time, even early in the episodes both detective that are being interviewed keep asking the ones interviewing them — I assume you just want to ask us about the shootout in the woods. It’s the biggest thing that ever happened to them in their lives. And they’re not asking about it. “Not just yet. We’ll get to that.”

So, we know there is some crazy shootout in the woods. Where they finally got to juice all of the power out of their two-timeline structure is when we finally see the shootout in the woods and we hear present day McConaughey and Harrelson narrating past-day McConaughey and Harrelson and we realize that the story that they’re telling these guys is not at all what we’re watching. In fact, we’re watching something completely different.

**John:** It’s a complete fabrication. And it’s a fabrication they agreed to tell the same way so that they could keep their story straight.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** And it was an ingenious way of sort of getting us through that moment because it was a moment that had enough narrative tension stakes anyway. It’s the first time people are actually shooting at them, and yet you’re also fascinated by the present day storyline where they’re telling these conflicting versions and you want to see if they can actually keep their stories straight.

**Craig:** Exactly. Because we’re learning, even as we’re watching this incredibly entertaining thing and this incredibly dramatic thing that also includes plot points, we are learning that these two men — separated by time and some enmity we don’t yet understand because of the incident in 2002 — they have each other’s backs still to this day, separate and apart from each other. That’s fascinating information that we’ll finally understand.

In that sequence, every now and then you watch something and it makes you feel something beyond just an emotion but rather you feel an intense narrative satisfaction. And for me it was when I was watching that and they’re describing it and I certainly had no idea what was coming. And I had no idea that they were going to be lying. And they start describing it and what I’m watching isn’t what’s happening, but in a very subtle way. Just like, “Well he went this way and I went that way,” but they’re not quite going that way.

And I, for a second I think did they make a mistake? And then four seconds later it locks in and I go, “Oh, oh, this is going to be good.”

**John:** Yeah. And it was good! It was great.

**Craig:** And I knew it was going to be good because as soon as I realized what was happening I thought, A, it’s great that they’re lying and not narrating what actually happened. But also it’s going to be good because whatever does happen is something they have to lie about.

**John:** Well, I also remember once I realized that the lie was happening you start watching that sequence again thinking like, but wait, they’re going to say there was a shootout but like no one actually fired a shot. How are they going to deal with that? And then you see in real time like McConaughey has the idea of basically staging the whole crime scene so that it looks like there was a shootout even though there wasn’t a shootout. It was all terrific.

Now, let’s talk about satisfaction because I think I was one of those people who wasn’t entirely satisfied by how the show ended. And I think it raises a whole question of like in some ways it didn’t used to matter how shows ended. We didn’t even used to have a sense that a series was supposed to end. But this is a rare case where everyone knew that this was going to be just a one-off thing, at least with these two characters. This was going to end.

And I think our degree of satisfaction was weirdly influenced by the way that this was released. So, this was released in a more conventional sense here in the US that it’s once per week. And so the expectation or build up from the Sunday to the next Sunday about like, oh, what did this episode mean, what is going to happen in this next thing, who is the Yellow King, which is never really resolved, is Rust really behind these murders. All these theories could percolate which sort of revved up the excitement and probably certainly revved up the ratings.

And you like in some ways I think lessened the likelihood that most people would be happy with it. If this were a Netflix show where they put all eight episodes in one block that wouldn’t have happened.

**Craig:** You might be right. The show became a victim of its own success, to some extent, because people began to obsess in between episodes about what everything went. And it reminded me of Lost mania where the numbers showed up and people were finding references and going crazy. It was a very similar thing when people quickly seized on references to the book, The Yellow King, or The King in Yellow, I should say. And everybody just wanted to hyper drive about this, as if this show would somehow give us an insight into the cosmology of our universe that we weren’t capable of understanding ourselves, which is insane.

I actually think that the show did show us the Yellow King. Maybe I’m the only one, but in the end when our detectives are going up against the ultimate bad guy, Lawnmower Man, in that room — or near that room — there was this kind of a statue or diorama made of skeletons and wings and it looked like he had built himself a god. And it was yellow. The skulls were yellow. And I just thought the Yellow King is this creation of a mad man. And my guess is that he wasn’t the one that created. It was created a long time ago. That they had built an idol to worship.

**John:** Yeah. And that’s a totally reasonable expectation and I think it would have been easier for most people to come to that if they’d seen the whole thing without that build up from week, to week, to week. That build up from week to week to week is what made it a phenomenon. I think if it had come as a chunk like Netflix would have people would have still loved it and it would still be absolutely as good of a show, but I don’t think it would have become the phenomenon it became with that week, after week, after week.

**Craig:** You might be right. I mean, some of the conjecture out there was mind-boggling to me. Obviously simple, sort of Shyamalan twist style guesses that Rust Cohle is the killer. Or one writer I know kept insisting to me that they were the same person and that we would find out they’re the same person. Like that’s simple not possible.

**John:** The Fight Club? Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not a Fight Club. They didn’t do it. And then there were deeper ones. People who — and I love the internet because people are like, “You’re all stupid. You don’t understand this, and this, and this, and see the stars on the beer cans and…and the girl with the dolls.” And, you know, again, anybody that was hoping for this show — and it’s funny, the show even comments on it that we have this need to find stories to give us meaning to the secrets and mysteries of the world. And the show kept telling us, don’t — you’re not going to find that in the bible. You’re not going to find it in books, you’re not going to find it in culture. We try and impose the order of narrative on the world and the world continues to defy it.

Now, was the ending brilliant? No, but I only think it wasn’t brilliant because it didn’t have enough episodes to be brilliant. You know, the ending of Breaking Bad is brilliant because no matter what anyone’s quibbles are about it, and few people had some, in the end it connected us to an emotion. And the emotion was earned between Walter White and the only thing he ever created that made him feel like he had been alive. This was his work of genius. This was his masterpiece, his imprint on the world, blue crystal meth. And he did it.

And that relationship was something that we needed to have five years invested in for us to give a damn about it. This show, eight hours of TV. And I thought very smartly they ended the show with these two men and finally showing the strongest of them, the one who never cried, the one who seemed to understand everything not understanding anything. I thought it did a fine job. It simply could not deliver what I think people suddenly wanted. I loved it.

**John:** I think that’s a fair perspective on it. It’s so hard not to play the “I wish they would have” with it where you sort of play the game like if they’d known what they actually had before they started shooting the whole thing, I think there’s a way they could have reminded us about the relationship between those two characters and their young versions. Basically I really missed the young versions in those last two episodes.

And that the tension between the past and the present was essentially all kind of forgotten. Or the times we tried to reference it, it was just two characters talking and not talking about especially interesting things. Whereas we used to be able to see it. And so I would have loved to have had some more moments — a reason to have some more moments with the younger versions of those characters to remind us of the journey that we went on with them. That we saw them from these younger selves to where they are now.

I feel like the realization that McConaughey’s character comes to at the end, which is basically like he thought he had the answers in the sense of there not being any answers and now he’s not even sure of that could have come home even more if I’d seen the younger version of him.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The confident younger version of himself.

**Craig:** I agree. Once the show lost the past and situated itself entirely in the present it gained an immediacy that demanded, you know, it demanded more than those guys just talking. We didn’t mind watching them talk and drive around in the past because we understood that it was in the past and things were going to happen and the past doesn’t recall itself on our time schedule.

But once they were in the future I got very antsy with them in the car. Like shut up. Go. Do something. [laughs] You know?

**John:** Also it was the only time in the series where for an extended period of time we broke POV and stayed with the killer’s perspective. And while it was terrific, it wasn’t the best thing we’ve ever seen. And it wasn’t our two guys. And so I honestly felt like we did a better job — the show did a better job of that arriving at the farm with him in episode four or five, or whatever it was, that shootout worked better because we didn’t know what we were getting into. Versus just breaking all the POV and just going in there and seeing what Lawnmower Man’s life was like.

**Craig:** That said, it did give us I believe the greatest euphemism for weird, creepy incest ever. “I’m going to make flowers on you.”

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Wow. “Don’t you want to make flowers on me?” Oh, that’s just great. Yes I do. Yes I do.

**John:** They’re making flowers. So, anyway, that ends our talk about True Detective. It really was an amazing accomplishment and congratulations to everybody involved in making True Detective.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And so my criticisms are only because it was just remarkably good and I feel so lucky to be able to have television like that.

**Craig:** Yeah. I have no criticisms. I take it as it is. I thank you for it as it was. And can’t wait for season two.

**John:** Cool.

Craig, it’s time for our One Cool Things.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So, my One Cool Thing is actually something a listener sent in and we had been talking about, you and I were playing Dungeon World, which was a great sort of non-traditional role-playing game, or a stripped down role-playing game. Someone wrote in — I forgot who wrote in — but someone wrote in to suggest this thing called Fiasco by Jason Morningstar.

And Fiasco is like a role-playing game but without a DM or GM. There’s no one leading it. It’s just the rules are all in the book about how you do it. But it’s a narrative storytelling game where three or four people get together and rolling dice and following these sort of rules and orders you create a story that’s kind of like a Coen Brothers movie, it’s all about like sort of small time capers gone bad. And so it can be in a small southern town or at a station in the Antarctic or in the Old West. But it’s all about sort of like things going wrong. And it looks like an incredibly fun game.

So, I’ve not actually played the game through with other people, but I’ve read through the book and sort of seen what I can do. And it’s a very ingenious idea and it makes really smart choices about how you set up a world — very applicable to our discussion today — and how you create complications for your characters. And so I really recommend it to anybody who is telling stories to sort of see how this is doing it. I mean, this is being done with dice and yet it creates some really interesting situations and conflicts.

It’s called Fiasco.

**Craig:** Maybe we should do it. Should we do it?

**John:** We should absolutely play it. So, my fantasy would be to get Kelly Marcel over here and play it some afternoon.

**Craig:** Kelly Marcel is the spirit of Fiasco.

**John:** Yes. She’d be fantastic.

**Craig:** “This is a total fiasco.”

**John:** “It’s a fiasco.”

**Craig:** “It’s a fiasco.”

**John:** Yeah, we could do something in London. It could involve — it could just be like a Guy Ritchie movie.

**Craig:** Ooh, I like Guy Ritchie movies. Hmm, all right.

Well, mine is far more mundane. I am in love with this new Mac OS email client called Airmail. Did you use Sparrow like I did?

**John:** So, I use Sparrow for all the questions that come in. I use it for certain accounts. So like all the ask@johnaugust accounts, I look at those in Sparrow. The rest of the stuff I use normal Mac Mail for.

**Craig:** Yeah. Mac Mail is fine. Mail.App is fine, except that lately it’s been annoying. It has certain behaviors I don’t like, one of which is occasionally it’s just glitch. I mean, there’s an acknowledged issue with receiving mail sometimes and sending mail. Sometimes you have to quit and restart to get it to do what you want. Also, I really don’t like that the delete key defaults to trashing emails as opposed to archiving it, which I think for IMAP it’s better to archive.

And so I used Sparrow for awhile, but then Sparrow got bought by Gmail or Google I guess technically, because I guess Google just wants to eat its guts and put it into its own system. But as such it just stopped getting developed and it’s never a good thing to use deprecated software. And then along comes this app called Airmail which is essentially they’ve taken Sparrow and just spiffed it up and started redeveloping it. And it looks great, it works great. Delete does in fact send mail to archive.

Setting up accounts was really easy and it’s gorgeous. It’s just well-designed. And lo and behold it’s available in the App Store for $2. What?!

**John:** That’s nuts.

**Craig:** $2. So, it’s kind of a no-brainer. They have a Twitter account at @airmailer, because I assume Airmail was taken, so they’re @airmailer. But the app is called Airmail. I love it.

**John:** Cool. Great. Well, that’s our show for this week. So, you can find the links to the things we talked about in our show notes which are at johnaugust.com/scriptnotes. It’s also where you can find transcripts for all of our back episodes.

You can listen to all of the back episodes there or through our apps. So, we have a Scriptnotes app for iOS and for Android, so just check your applicable app store and find us there.

Scriptnotes is produced by Stuart Friedel. Yay Stuart. And edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Blake Kuehn. And if you’d like to write us an outro we’re actually kind of running low on outros, so send it to us. So, you send it to ask@johnaugust.com. And we love links from SoundCloud which is great for us. Just make sure it’s publicly available and that we can download it and tag it as Scriptnotes.

But we’ve gotten some great ones even when I put up the call yesterday for it we’ve gotten some great new outros. So, thank you for that.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** If you have a question for Craig, he is @clmazin on Twitter. I am @johnaugust on Twitter. Longer questions or things like what we read from the guy at the start of the show you can write to ask@johnaugust.com. And that is it.

Craig, thank you so much for a good show.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. [creepy voice] Hey, John, hey, thanks man.

**John:** You’re making me very uncomfortable.

**Craig:** Yeah, hey. How you doing? [laughs]

**John:** All right. Cut.

LINKS:

* Get tickets now for John’s [WGF panel](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/first-draft-feature/), From First Draft to Feature
* [Weekend Read](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8) 1.0.2 is in the App Store now
* Slate on [Resurrection vs. The Returned](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/03/07/resurrection_the_returned_and_they_came_back_what_s_the_difference_video.html)
* [True Detective](http://www.hbo.com/true-detective) on HBO
* [Fiasco](http://www.bullypulpitgames.com/games/fiasco/) by Jason Morningstar
* [Airmail](http://airmailapp.com/) for OSX
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Blake Kuehn ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2014/the-contract-between-writers-and-readers).

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

**Craig Mazin:** I am Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 132 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

So, Craig, as we’re recording this on a Friday afternoon there are still tickets left for the great Nerdist Writers Panel/Scriptnotes crossover episode, which is taping live on April 13. And I don’t know how I feel about this.

**Craig:** Mm. I mean, I’m a little shocked.

**John:** Yeah. Because usually we sell out incredibly quickly. So, I don’t want to put all the blame on Ben Blacker and the Nerdist Writers Panel people, because it’s possibly that they’re just slower on the uptake. Or maybe because April is actually a ways away — there’s not the urgency.

**Craig:** But, I mean, we are the Jon Bon Jovi of the podcast world. And when Jon Bon Jovi doesn’t immediately sell out he throws a tantrum. I will throw a tantrum.

**John:** You don’t want to see Craig hulk out.

**Craig:** I will go crazy. I will go nuts.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a cross between Bruce Banner and Jon Bon Jovi…

**Craig:** And Patti Lupone.

**John:** Throwing a tantrum. And it’s just —

**Craig:** It’s Patti Lupone.

**John:** It’s Patti Lupone.

**Craig:** When she — have you ever heard that audio of Patti Lupone singing and then she’s interrupted by the sound of a cell phone ringing in the audience? And she goes bonkers?

**John:** Yeah. There’s another Patti Lupone story where she believes that someone is taking her photo and it’s actually the photographer who is supposed to be taking the photo.

**Craig:** Gorgeous.

**John:** There’s basically a lot of Patti Lupone stories it comes down to it.

**Craig:** This one is great. I guess it’s the second podcast in a row where I’m talking about celebrities going nuts on audio. And she just goes, “How dare you! Who do you think you are?” And what’s so great about Patti Lupone, among other things, is that even when she’s yelling who do you think you are, it’s in great voice. It’s just a wonderful belted full-chested wonderful tone. “Who do you think you are?”

**John:** I love it.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, anyway, that’s what I’m going to do. If people don’t buy these tickets I’m going to go full Lupone. Boy!

**John:** Yeah, but see, Craig, people are going to be wanting you to go full Lupone because it just seems so incredibly amusing that they may actually delay just so they can read the stories of Craig going full Lupone.

**Craig:** Can I just say again —

**John:** Well, actually maybe we’ll find some way to antagonize you there at the actual event.

**Craig:** I hope so!

**John:** Therefore everyone will get to see it. Oh, I think we should invite back some of our favorite guests, favorite recent guests, like people who have come from a company to visit.

**Craig:** Oh right! [laughs], so I can go full Lupone.

**John:** That could be great. A live version of that.

**Craig:** John. If people didn’t know and you just said, “Listen to a bunch of our podcasts and then tell us which one of us is gay,” [laughs], how many votes — I think I actually — I think I would win. I would get 70% gay.

**John:** You might.

**Craig:** I mean, just Patti Lupone. The Patti Lupone reference alone. Wow. I got to rethink stuff.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a lot.

**Craig:** I’m this close to going…

**John:** I think you’re perfectly happy in your life and your wife and all that stuff is good.

**Craig:** [laughs] Oh wow!

**John:** Today on the show —

**Craig:** Wow. That’s mean. [laughs]

**John:** The contract formed between writers and audiences. Basically sort of what is the deal you are making with the reader as the person sits down to read the script and ultimately when the audience is going to sit down to watch the film.

And we’re going to talk about three Three Page Challenges. Brand new Three Page Challenges, which I’m very excited about.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** And we’re going to start off with a question. So, should we just start?

**Craig:** Yeah, why don’t we just roll right in.

**John:** First question. Sleepless in Los Angeles writes, “So, I’m a fairly new writer who was hired to do a studio rewrite, which I recently delivered on. It was the usual route. Producers first, then to the studio. My reps have seemed beyond gobsmacked the producers didn’t have any notes for me to do at the producer’s pass before it went to the studio. It’s now been with the studio for almost two months. I haven’t been paid for delivery. And when I inquire about this the general thinking is that the studio is going to want to have a meeting, give notes, and since I didn’t do a producer’s pass they’ll more than likely want me to do some extra (free) work before the delivery check.

“Sorry for the preamble. Here’s the question. Is this how it works? And if not, what can I do about it? The whole don’t rock the boat, this is how it is thing that my reps are laying on me seems absolutely crazy as well as unhelpful.

“I know free work and late payments are in issue with the WGA, so I’d like to be part of the solution, not part of the problem here. But what is the solution? Dig my heels in? Play the diva? Start burning bridges? Hardly seems like a good option at this stage in my career.

“I’m assuming more established writers like you guys aren’t put through this process, but I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that you’ll have some advice. Any and all bits of advice are welcome. I’m feeling pretty powerless.”

Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m a bit puzzled by your agents. I’m as puzzled by your agents as you are, I suppose, question-asker.

**John:** I’m angry at a lot of people in this situation actually.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I’m angry at almost everybody other than Sleepless, and I’m actually a little bit angry with angry with him or her as well.

**Craig:** Well, I understand. This is a mess. But it’s a mess that doesn’t even need to happen. We work in a business where messes occur every day. So, you try and avoid the ones that don’t have to happen. This one just makes no sense. It’s really simple. The script was turned into the person that’s listen in your contract. That’s it. Invoice. Period. The end. No discussion. Just invoice.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** There’s really no explanation — asking to be paid for the work you’ve done is not rocking the boat. What agency is this? I mean, that’s embarrassing.

**John:** It’s really embarrassing. This is late payment. This is what we talk about when we’re talking about late payment which is essentially you’ve turned in the work and they have not cut you a check.

Now, you haven’t asked for the check. Or, maybe your agency hasn’t actually invoiced, but they should have invoiced because you turned in the work. You did the work. The agency also wants to get paid as well. So, there’s no reason why this hasn’t been invoiced. So, I think your first step is to talk to your agency and say like, “Have you invoiced for this work?”

If the answer is no, I think you need to have a serious conversation with your agency about why not. Why have you not sort of asked for the money that I’m owed for this thing? And really listen to their answer. And if their answer is sort of Namby Pamby, “we don’t want to rock the boat,” well, it’s sort of their job to rock the boat. It’s their job to get you paid, for starters.

Second off, if there’s any problem with — any more heel-dragging about getting paid, the WGA has a late payments desk. You can call them and say, “I’m delivered this thing. I’m supposed to be paid.” And they can start harassing on your behalf. You’re not, ugh, this is maddening.

And also the setup for this in the preamble, this is a studio rewrite. So, this wasn’t like, you know, a pitch that they sort of barely bought and things were still sort of getting sorted out, or there were contracts. This was a project that you probably had to compete with other people on to get. You got it. You delivered it. Be done with this.

**Craig:** Yeah. To give people context, there are legal hoops that we have to jump through to get paid. It didn’t used to be that way, but then there was this big WGA arbitration about free rewriting and all the rest of it. And what came back to us was this: in our contracts there is a person called the delivery agent. They oftentimes are somebody that’s very highly placed at the studio and it’s always a studio executive.

Until you deliver the script to them, you haven’t delivered it. So, you could write five drafts for the producer and everybody assumes — what you’re really doing is just working on your first draft. And that creates plenty of opportunity for abuse. In this case, you’ve actually jumped through all the hurdles, the people that needed to get the script for you to be paid got it. That’s it.

Now, we’re living in, what, some new lunatic era where jumping through all the hoops doesn’t qualify as jumping through all the hoops anymore? I mean, it’s ridiculous. They have to pay you. They’re legally obligated to pay you. It’s done. It’s done.

**John:** I have a hunch that Sleepless’ producers delivered the script to the junior executive who was not actually the person listed on the contract. And so therefore the technical person you’re supposed to deliver to hasn’t gotten the script or there’s been some sort of delay. Or, we’ll pretend that they have not gotten the script. Whatever.

You can deliver it to the executive directly yourself. Your agency can make sure that the executive got the script. This is not your fault. It’s only Sleepless’ fault to the degree that like two months is a long time. And for them to like not be even acknowledging they owe you money is crazy. Because essentially here’s what’s happened is whatever studio this is, they have taken a loan from you as the writer. They’re taking it as basically a zero interest loan, even though they’re supposed to be paying interest. They’re taking a zero interest loan from a broke writer when they’re making $60 billion. That’s crazy.

**Craig:** Right. Yeah. This is also a circumstance where we’ll tell you all that really matters under this is the quality of the script.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** If you’ve written a script that nobody likes, none of this matters. They’re going to eventually pay you, but there’s no amount of good boy behavior that’s going to mitigate that. Similarly, if you’ve written a good script that everybody likes, then demanding to be paid now isn’t going to ding you at all.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If anything, they’re going t be happy to pay you and frightened and upset that they’ve upset you because they want to keep you on the project.

So, with that in mind, you’re not powerless. You are powerful. You’re just behaving in a powerless way out of fear, which I understand, and a desire to try and control the outcome. The only thing that’s going to control the outcome is the quality of the script.

Today, pick up the phone, call your agent, and say — and your lawyer, if the agent won’t do it, and say, “Submit this script to the executive. It’s been two months. Get me paid. And that’s that. And if they like it, I’m excited to keep working. And if they don’t, well I guess we’re all moving on.

**John:** So, let’s talk about the buried subject here as well which is the free pass. So, essentially “my reps were gobsmacked that I wasn’t asked to do a producer’s pass.” The producer’s pass means —

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** You have finished the script, you gave it to your producers, the producers read the script, loved some things, had questions about some things, and therefore went back to you and told you to do more, asked you to do more work.

That is troubling but actually fairly common. And it’s up to you as a writer to decide to what degree are you going to take some of these producer’s notes and incorporate them. That’s great. But, the studio doesn’t get that free work. It shouldn’t be getting that free work.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** The deal is that when it gets to the studio that is you delivering the draft. Now, you may choose to do little tiny things, that could be your choice, but you shouldn’t be waiting around writing draft after draft in hopes that at some point they’ll just say, “Oh, this is the real draft and now we will pay you.” That’s crazy time. And that’s, unfortunately, all too common. And by putting up with it for this period of time, or honestly like just sitting around waiting for them to ask you for free work is incredibly self-defeating.

**Craig:** It’s bizarre. Yeah, that the agents are gobsmacked that their client wasn’t abused. “Huh? That’s weird. Well, what can we do to get you abused? I know, let’s do nothing.” It’s so strange. I would be very angry at my agents right now.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Very, very, very angry. And, you know, my big advice about agents.

**John:** To fire your agent.

**Craig:** Fire your agent. Yeah. Fire your agent. [laughs]

**John:** Here’s the good news. Sleepless got this assignment. And probably did an okay job.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I mean, likely there’s nothing wrong with the script itself. It’s likely the reason why the next step hasn’t happened has nothing to do with the actual script you turned in. It’s because it became a much lower priority at the studio. And everything else became a higher priority and they just haven’t focused on it. Well, that’s not your fault.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** It’s just the nature of what’s actually happened. If it’s two months ago then it’s entirely possible that the holidays came and then there was new stuff after the holidays and they’ve kind of forgotten about you. But they shouldn’t forget to pay you. And maybe asking to get paid will remind somebody like, “Oh, that’s right, this thing exists and we need to do something with it.”

**Craig:** This is something that I’ve been talking a lot about. When I go as part of the WGA Screenwriter Rights Committee group and I go with Billy Ray and Damon Lindelof and we visit the heads of studios. What I try and impart to them is, look, if you’re paying a writer a million dollars, let’s all agree that this is a very lovely affair in which people are being well taken care of. And there’s no need to stand on ceremony.

But if you’re paying somebody anywhere near scale or, you know, $100,000 or $200,000 for what will amount to a year’s work, here’s the reality of the money they actually get in their pocket. Here’s the reality of how that money comes to them. Here’s the reality of how much work they’re having to do for that. Please don’t treat them like this.

And this sounds like this may be, that our question-asker is early on in his or her career, so I’m going to guess this isn’t a million dollar situation.

**John:** Exactly. And by delaying this payment two months now, they’re making it much more difficult for this person to actually make a living as a screenwriter.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, this person probably I’m assuming this person got scale or somewhere near scale for what this assignment is. It’s actually not a lot of money.

**Craig:** Nope.

**John:** And I worry that we’re overall by trying to sort of nickel and dime these moments and stretch out this process, we are going to make it essentially impossible for a person to have a living wage as the entry level screenwriter. It’s going to have to be sort of your part time job. And like this person is going to have to have a job somewhere else that actually has regular paychecks because he or she can’t count on getting paid by the studio when they actually deliver their work.

**Craig:** That’s right. And then the studios will get what they paid for, which are temps. And the other thing I’ve said to a number of studio heads is why would anyone that is very, very smart and has the potential to earn a lot of money many different ways opt for this very difficult career if they’re going to be mistreated in this way, in a way that is profound and much worse than when you and I started. They just won’t do it. They’ll just do something else. They’ll become lawyers. I don’t know.

**John:** Yeah. They’ll become lawyers or they’ll write for television which is, I think, part of the reason why you see a generation of writers who at first I think were sort of splitting their time between features and television, but ultimately like television at least pays regularly.

There’s a lot of problems in television. There are problems of exclusivity and options and there’s structural problems in television, too. But, you’re more likely to get paid. This writer wouldn’t be waiting for a long time to get a check from ABC Studios.

**Craig:** That’s right. They’ll have a job. They can plan their lives. I mean, we’re talking about young writers who are generally in their twenties. These are people starting their lives and trying to create a career path. And we’re starving the farm system. We’re beating up the rookies. It’s just really bad management. Bad management and bizarrely bad management because, frankly, if you’re paying somebody $100,000 for a rewrite and you’ve given them $50,000 of that for commencement, the $50,000 for the delivery is cushion change at a major studio. It’s irrelevant. Just give it. Pay it.

**John:** Pay it.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, look, first call — agents. And draw a picture of balls for them, scan it, and email it. And then just say, “Remember what these look like?” Jerks.

**John:** Yes. Jerks. If you don’t have a scanner you can just take a photo with your iPhone and just send them that. Just text them a photo of balls and then they’ll have some balls.

**Craig:** [laughs] You should make an app for that.

**John:** Ha-ha. That would be very good.

So, Craig, I should have actually had a discussion with you, but I’ve turned down employment on our behalf.

**Craig:** Oh?

**John:** So, in these last two weeks I was hosting the Film Independent Director’s Close-Up Series. And so I got to do a Q&A with Alfonso Cuarón, and I got to do a Q&A with Julie Delpy, Bob Nelson, and Scott Neustadter talking about their movies.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** And I love doing Q&As. I love moderating things. And so before the second one a guy from a TV network said like, “Hey, have you ever considered just doing this on a TV show, a sit down TV show. Like maybe you and Craig could do like a Scriptnotes thing with like cameras.” And I said, no. I was really flattered for the offer, but I didn’t really see myself doing that. I didn’t see myself doing a television show.

I enjoy doing our podcast, which we have control over. So, I hope I didn’t speak out of turn and I didn’t ruin your dreams of hosting a show on a minor cable channel.

**Craig:** No, no, you preserved my dream of keeping my face away from people.

Look the one thing I’m super comfortable with and happy about is that neither you or I, neither you nor I are doing this for fame. [laughs]

**John:** Neither — neither… — Oh yeah, you are right. I was going to say neither you nor me, but you actually were using it as the subject of the sentence.

**Craig:** Yes, correct.

**John:** I almost corrected you and now I feel embarrassed.

**Craig:** Good. This is the sort of — boy, this would be great TV.

**John:** Yeah. This is [laughs].

**Craig:** Neither you nor I are in this for fame. And neither you nor I need this to be anything more than it is. I think that’s part of the charm of our little podcast is that we get to have a conversation once a week and it’s simple, and it’s easy, except for Stuart. And, yeah, you know, because here’s what happens: television just, you know, then television is about, inevitably, oh, it’s that thing where they make the end of year lists of the best screenwriters and most of them are actors because that’s what people are interested in. And suddenly, you know, nobody wants a guest that’s not famous or something. I don’t know.

**John:** And as I was doing some introspection on sort of why I was saying no, I realized that as much as I enjoy sort of moderating these panels, I don’t kind of want to be a panel moderator. I want to be the guy who is like being asked the questions on the panels. I sort of want to be the filmmaker who gets asked questions sometimes, too. And I don’t want to be just the guy who asks questions.

So, in getting to host this last session with Julie Delpy, and Scott, and Bob Nelson, one of the things I wanted to talk about was the nature of the contract you make between you as the writer, the filmmaker, and the reader/audience about what kind of film this is. Because I thought all three of those films were incredibly smart about saying this is what our movie is and this is how our movie is going to work.

And right from the start they felt very confident in what the edges of the movie could be and sort of what journey you were going to take.

So, you look at Nebraska, right from the very start you see this is the nature of the world. It’s essentially funny but it’s not like hilariously funny. And you know that it’s essentially going to be the story about a father and a son.

You look at The Spectacular Now and you see that this is going to be a love story of a boy and a girl. It’s going to do high school movie type things but not do them in a high school movie kind of way.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Or you look at Before Midnight, Julie Delpy’s film, and it’s going to be a lengthy exploration of — or long conversations about the future of a relationship.

And so in all of these movies quite early on you establish the kinds of things that can happen in the world and the kinds of things that can’t. You’re not going to have aliens or terrorists invade. Someone is not going to suddenly die. Someone is not going to pull out a gun. It’s not those kinds of movies.

And so I want to talk about the contract you form with a reader, with an audience, and sort of how we establish that on the page.

**Craig:** Well, when we talk about, this is why I’m glad that when we do our Three Page Challenges, even though we’ve never requested or insisted that they be the first three pages, those often are the best three pages to send because those are the pages that are establishing the contract. And when we talk about that we mean the rules of the movie and we mean the tone of the movie I think more than anything. Those two things. Rules and tone.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And it’s why people tend to go along with the first ten minutes of any movie. I don’t care what it is. Every — I’ve been in god knows how many test screenings of comedies that I’ve worked on and when the movies get to the place where they’re working all the way through, people laugh all the way through.

But early on, typically your first test screening, what you’ll see is the first five to ten minutes just absolutely kill, people are laughing all the way through it. And then trouble. Because the audience psychologically comes in, sits down, and says I’m going to roughly give you five to ten minutes to teach me what this movie, how this movie works. And I’m with you on it. But then, if anything should stray from what you’ve taught me, I’m going to start to get annoyed. I’m going to get confused. Because there’s an inconsistency — I want you to take me by the hand and lead me out of your world and into yours.

So, like the first day of school, everything is new, I assume any discomfort of disorientation is my fault. But by the second day or the fifth day or the 20th day, if it changes again at school, this school is weird.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So, that to me is so much a part of that contract is understanding that you have a limited amount of time to scramble the audience’s mind as you wish, but then that time ends and you have to stick with what you’ve done.

**John:** I would sort of phrase the contract this way. As the writer I’m asking you, the reader, to give me an hour and a half of your time. And I’m asking for all of your attention reading this script. And I will take you on a journey. And you will be rewarded for your careful attention to this script that you’re about to read and I’ll get you to a good place.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to get you to a happy ending, but I will establish questions in your mind and those questions that I establish in your mine I will address and answer down the road. I may surprise you sometimes, but they’ll be surprises that you’ll be delighted about because they fit and they feel correct within the universe of our movie.

The same thing happens as you go from the page to the actual film. And sometimes when films falter, when you read a great script and you watch the movie it’s like, “Ah! That didn’t quite work,” is something changed in the nature of filming it that that same contract was not established. There was a lack of — the audience lost faith. The audience lost confidence in how the story was going to be told.

Sometimes it’s like those initial images. That’s why as we go through cuts of films and as we even work on our first couple pages, we’ll change those a lot because you’re trying to establish what the expectation is for the audience. And example I have is Charlie’s Angels, the first Charlie’s Angels, which was notoriously a really challenging shoot. Other writers came in. Every day was sort of a scramble. There were really good moments, but as we you put the first cut together and we’re seeing what it was, it didn’t feel — it didn’t land.

And so one of the things I was able to do was go in with McG and with the editors and we built an opening title sequence that sort of showed this is the nature of the world. This is how we’re going to move from place to place. This is who the girls are. This is what it feels like. This is what Charlie’s Angels feels like.

And as long as we were consistent there everything stuck together. But if that opening title sequence hadn’t worked we wouldn’t be in the right place.

**Craig:** It’s interesting that you mention title sequence because I got into a little bit of a debate over at Done Deal Pro, which I occasionally stop into. It’s like my three times a year stop in.

And somebody was asking a question about writing, it was a simple formatting question really. When you write a credit sequence at the beginning of your movie, how do de-notate it. And for me it’s as simple as begin credits and then when you’re done with that part, end credits.

Somewhat predictably a few less than fully informed individuals said, “That’s not your job. Your job isn’t to talk about credit sequences. Your job is just to write the movie. That’s the director’s job. That’s somebody else’s job. Nobody cares what you think about the credits.” And I totally disagreed.

Because to me while it is not — certainly a valid choice to not write a credit sequence and perhaps more often than not I don’t — it’s just as valid a choice to do it. And, in fact, for this very reason that a good credit sequence, which must be written as a credit sequence — it’s hard to covert a non-credit sequence into a credit sequence — a good credit sequence does precisely what you’re talking about: teaching the audience how this movie works. And by credit sequence I don’t mean just the titles. I mean to say action and movie occurring while titles are going across it.

That’s one way. It’s far from the only way, but one important tool that we have in our bag to help instruct the audience.

**John:** Some of the best title sequences are just showing you imagery that indicates what the universe of the movie is. And so a long time ago I wrote an adaptation of Tarzan. And the adaptation I did for Warner Bros. was modern day Africa. And so there’s some old sort of mythic Africa in it, but there’s also sort of modern day Africa. And the juxtaposition of those two was really important.

So, the title sequence I wrote for it made it really clear that we’re in present day but there’s all this sort of relic Africanized is still an important part of it. And it was teaching you how to watch the movie. It was teaching you what the movie was going to feel like and foreshadowing some of the things that were going to happen ahead. Even the Spider-Man movies, which are just imagery and noise and rock-n-roll, that’s also telling you what the movie is going to feel like.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The David Fincher sequences for Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, none of the stuff that you see there is specifically referenced later on in the movie, but it feels dirty sex in a way that is important for you to understand as you start to watch the movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. James Bond sequences also do this. There’s the prologue, which won’t have credits, the cold open as it were. And then when they go to their very famous traditional credit sequence, you will start to get glimpses of things. And I call these overtures. Just as in old Broadway you would get a good overture at length where you’d get little snippets of all the songs and all the melodies and then the show would begin. Sometimes a credit sequence can do that as well.

But this contract and the negotiation where the audience gives you this grace period where you’re allowed to basically build a world for them does require enormous attention. And it’s why I said a number of times I will spend twice as long on the first ten pages as I do on the last ten pages. The first ten are enormously important because they are teaching you so much.

I mean, the script that I just finished up for Universal is a very — it’s got a very high concept that is adapted from a graphic novel. And it involves a hero who has a certain mental illness. And how his mental illness manifests is cinematically disorienting.

And so much of the first pages is about how to reveal this and then once you reveal it how to do so in a way that lets the audience feel comfortable with it as it plays out over the course of the rest of the script. You’re building that contract so that they don’t feel that you switched the rules around.

See, why — constantly, you’ll hear this all the time, very common studio note: what are the rules, what are the rules? Well, why is it so important that we stick to the rules? What’s that about? In some movies it’s not that important. Some movies you’re not dealing with a traditional narrative and violating rules is part of the fun. But, for a traditional narrative the reason that we get so worried about breaking the rules is because when you do the audience, whether consciously or subconsciously, calculates that you’ve done so because it was convenient for you.

And if it’s convenient for you then it’s no longer that impressive, is it? It’s a little bit like you want a guy to fall into a vat of whipped cream. Well, you can get him up the ladder in an interesting way, or you can just have him say, “Huh, this ladder doesn’t look that study. I think I should test it out.” Well, you’re just cheating. You know? And that’s what you’ve got to watch out for.

**John:** Yes. There’s a longer talk I do sometimes on expectation. And it’s really that same idea which is that an audience approaches a film with expectation. So, if you have a western, the audience comes in with e expectations of a western. And that’s largely very helpful, because you get a lot of things for free. You don’t have to explain how horses work or how gunfights work or how a lot of that kind of stuff works.

If you’re going to change some things about how the Old West is, that’s awesome, but you have to do that pretty early on so we understand that, okay, it’s everything we know about western but change these variables in this movie.

If you were to try to change those variables quite late in the movie, we would be flustered, the same way like a vampire movie. In a vampire movie we have expectations about what happens in vampire movies. We know enough about vampires so you don’t have to explain everything to us. But if you are Twilight and the vampires can be out in the daylight and they’re radiant and beautiful, you have to establish that quite early on because if you were to save that for three-quarters of the way through the movie we’d be going, “What? That’s not vampires. You’re just making stuff up.”

**Craig:** You’re just making stuff up. [Crosstalk] Yup.

**John:** Exactly. You would have lost confidence in the filmmaker. You’ve lost confidence in the screenwriter whose script you’re hopefully going to finish.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because the natural psychological consequence of that feeling that they’re making stuff up is that, well, I guess what I see next is just something that they’re going to make up. I don’t feel — because in my world things aren’t just made up. There are actions and consequences and they’re knitted together logically.

So, again, you are allowed to bring somebody to a completely different planet that they don’t understand, but once you’ve given them enough time to understand — and you don’t get that much — you can’t violate their natural human sense that the universe is ordered to some extent.

**John:** So, what I should stress is this does not preclude surprise. And surprise is still wonderful and amazing. And if your movie is firing on all cylinders, some surprises are great, and good, and you should look for them.

A mild spoiler here for Spectacular Now, so if you haven’t seen Spectacular Now, close your ears for about 30 seconds while I talk about this one little moment. So, in Spectacular Now the hero of the story is a drinker, he’s a drunk, and he is driving all the time. So, we have this expectation like he is going to crash. He’s going to crash and the girl is going to get hurt and it’s going to be terrible.

What actually happens in the film is he pulls off to the side of the road, they have a fight, she gets out of the car and gets hit by another car. Something that was not his fault — he wasn’t sitting at the wheel. And so we, as an audience, are taken by tremendous surprise like, oh my god, I didn’t see that happening. I can’t believe that just happened. But it’s in the universe of possibility for a movie. It’s a genuine surprise but it’s not breaking the rules of our world.

And they could do it only because we had invested so much in the reality of these characters. If they had tried to do that quite early in the story it wouldn’t have had an impact.

**Craig:** That’s right. This is not only do you not want to shy away from surprise and subversion. You want to move towards it. You’re constantly looking for those things.

And what you’ve just described there is the difference between improbably and illogical. Improbable is okay. Illogical, not so much. And improbable is okay, particularly if the audience understood that they got fooled. Because they will understand that they were in your control. They want to know that the person telling the movie is in control of the story and not just lashing out at stuff to happen because it would be convenient for it to happen, that that was a careful choice.

Similarly, there are movies with twists that recontextualize the entire world of the movie and turn all the rules that you thought you understood upside down. That’s also great. As long as when you do it the movie retroactively makes sense in the re-contextualization.

**John:** Yeah. I would also stress the movies that are going to pull the rug out from under you and re-contextualize everything, it only works if you are along for the ride in the first version of it. So, if you’re watching The Sixth Sense and you are with it from all the way through and you’re completely accepting it on its own surface level, then the twist and surprise is meaningful and helpful. But, if you bailed on the journey before then you’re just going to be annoyed by the twist.

**Craig:** Well, it’s interesting. One of my favorite films is Fight Club. And the first time I saw Fight Club I was a little annoyed. I was annoyed. Fight Club is an example of a movie where it’s, for me, it was difficult to enjoy it the first time through because I did not understand the twist. And then the second time I watched it it was awesome. But I couldn’t get to that second time without experiencing the first time.

But, now we’re talking about a high degree of difficulty here. [laughs]

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** And, look, you know, like The Sixth Sense is a movie that I actually did enjoy all the way through and the twist was great and it was extra, you know. But it’s always a risk. When you do a big twist movie there’s always a risk that people are going to be just too confused and too detached from what’s going on to connect with it that first time through.

**John:** Yup. Well, let’s talk about how movies start right now, because we’re going to look at some Three Page Challenges.

**Craig:** Oh yeah!

**John:** I thought we would start with Blake Armstrong if we could.

**Craig:** We can.

**John:** So, Blake Armstrong, by the way, so Stuart picked this script randomly, but Blake Armstrong is actually a person who works on Chicago Fire/Chicago PD. He works on the Chicago shows that Derek Haas does.

**Craig:** He works on —

**John:** He’s a gaffer.

**Craig:** I think he’s a gaffer or grip. He’s a crew person who works for the Chicago Empire. And what that means is he spends a lot of nights freezing in sub-zero temperatures while actors are being warmed in their tents.

**John:** Before we get into the script, we should really talk about Derek Haas’s Chicago Empire. Because I know the next spinoff is, I think, Chicago Municipal Services, which is basically the people who like fix traffic lights and stuff like that. There really seems to be no limit to what they’re able to do in Chicago.

**Craig:** Chicago Board of Ed. Yeah, Chicago Sanitation.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Chicago DMV.

**John:** Yeah. They were going to go for Chicago Parks & Rec, but they thought that would be too confusing with the NBC show called Parks & Rec.

**Craig:** Eh, you know what? I think they’ll do it anyway. [laughs]

**John:** They’ll do it. They we’re going to do a hospital show called Chicago Hope, but it turns out there already was a Chicago hospital show called Chicago Hope.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** At some point they’ll reach a barrier, but it’s sort of like, you know, the limits of what they’re going to — the limit is pretty high, so there’s only a certain number of hours in the day, but people will watch whatever shows they want to set in Chicago apparently.

**Craig:** The one show, Chicago Chicago, which is going to be —

**John:** Perfect. It’s about the Chicago production — the city of Chicago putting on a show of Chicago, the musical. And it’s sort of a behind the scenes thing. It’s going to be great. It’s like Smash, but in Chicago.

**Craig:** Yup. They also have Chicago Smash.

**John:** That’s going to get confusing. I think they just crossed the line there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let me recap Blake’s script here. So, these are three pages by Blake Armstrong. We don’t know the title of this script, so we’ll just say Blake’s script.

We open on a glossy white spaceship leaving a planet. There’s chunks of busted ships and debris surrounding it. In the captain’s quarters we meet Specialist Kat Powell. She’s in her late 20s. She’s naked under the sheets.

The captain is Ben Drake, mid-30s. We see him in the bathroom with a ring box. He’s going back and forth about — back and forth dialogue about should they quit, should they get out of this game.

Ben is trying to work up the nerve to ask her to marry him, that’s what seems to be happening. Kat gets paged by the doctor, Rachel Galvin, to go the med bay. She’s gone before Ben has a chance to ask her.

In the bridge, Drake gets an urgent message from mission command where Director Ayers tells him that the mission is over. Ceres can be tera-formed faster than they thought, so they need him there now to lay claim. He’s got 20 days. And that’s what’s happened at the end of our three pages.

Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, I like the opening here. I thought we had a good opening. I like this contrast. We begin with an image we’ve seen a number of times in movies, a spaceship in space, but I did like that the spaceship was moving past a lot of junk. So, there was a nice view — a little more realistic view of what space looks like, which is full of all this junk. Obviously we’re in the future because there’s lots of ships out there, including this one.

And obviously I always get excited, Patti Lupone aside, about seeing a naked woman lying on a bed. That was great. Quick — we’ve got some typos in here. For instance, “Glimpses of her skin peak out.” You want P-E-E-K, not P-E-A-K. But, I enjoyed the contrast of —

**John:** If it was a boob, maybe one of the boobs is sort of — I just talked over you. If it was a boob I would say the boob could be like a peak, a mountain peak, peak out.

**Craig:** I don’t know how to say this without sounding weird. Boobs don’t really work, [laughs], they tend to not go upwards. You know, when you’re lying on your back…

**John:** Well, if they’re fake boobs. And maybe that’s really what he’s going for her.

**Craig:** Really fake. Like those hard —

**John:** Really fake.

**Craig:** Like bolted on. Yeah.

**John:** Nice hard Pamela Anderson boobs.

**Craig:** Right. Like, yeah, god, poor Pam. Anyway, but I enjoyed —

**John:** I think that’s really what Blake was going for.

**Craig:** Yeah, probably. But I enjoyed the contrast of junkie space to this presumably beautiful woman lying naked in a bed. It was an interesting contrast. And I also like the way that we got into this conversation with her and her lover who is off-screen. It’s sort of a mid-conversation thing. “Let’s quit.” We’re not really sure what they’re trying to quit. But that’s always good. I always like little bits of mystery here.

When we catch up with this guy who’s in this connected bathroom, he’s looking at this ring in this box that clearly is an engagement ring. Couple of things. One, I’m just going to put aside the fact that even in the future people are still spending two month’s salary on rings at some intergalactic Robins Brothers. But more importantly, this just goes on too long.

This is one of those things where the audience gets it immediately. You see a man privately looking at a ring and not quite sure what to do. We know everything. So, we don’t necessarily want to have him open it, close it, open it, close it. We’re just going to get annoyed, I think.

And, frankly, what’s easily — perhaps more interesting way to go about this is to have him talking back with her. He seems occupied, preoccupied, or nervous. And then at the very end reveal that there is this ring on the counter. And then he’s about to pick it up when she’s called away. It’s just one of those things you want to hold back, I think.

She gets called away by — it’s, by the way, I-T-‘-S, it’s the crew doctor, Rachel Galvin who is on a filter saying, “Paging Specialist Kat Powell. I need you at the med bay, now.”

Eh, we don’t want to talk like that. Nobody talks like that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It doesn’t seem — unless Rachel is also a robot, that’s not — I think if we just heard, you know, “Kat, I need you at Med Bay now,” that would enough.

**John:** It’s always dangerous when someone calls out with like their job title. I never kind of believe it.

**Craig:** Exactly. It felt very forced. Similarly, I didn’t — I don’t think it’s satisfying when you have a man with a ring and he’s considering whether or not to propose and make a commitment to this woman, and it’s interrupted because she has to get up, put her pants on, and leave. I would much rather see him make that choice. I think it’s just more powerful. I don’t want to take my choices away from these guys.

Let’s talk about what we’re teaching people about our movies. So, what did I learn from this moment that she walks out and as it says here on the pages, “Like a whirlwind, she’s gone and he’s missed his chance.” Well, the movie has taught me that this is the kind of movie where somebody can be stopped from proposing to somebody because somebody else is putting their pants on and walking out a door.

**John:** She didn’t go that far, I don’t think. They’re on a ship.

**Craig:** They’re on a ship. And you could just as easily say, “Wait, hold on.” [laughs] So, I don’t want to lose the choice.

We now go into the bridge and we have some syntax errors here. “Two walls displays instruments, meters, data, etc. taper into a V…” There’s typos and missing words here. Similarly, “The screens fade to black and white text blinks across them.” Something is missing there as well.

These pages have, for me, I have a very low threshold for this kind of character cheating where you describe a character, we meet them for the first time, and you tell us about how their personality works even though there’s no evidence for it. I know that you have a little bit more of a tolerance for it, but there’s a lot of it in here. Everybody is getting it at this point.

Drake, for instance, I presume our hero: “He’s really easy going for a guy in charge. He can’t help it that he sees the crew as friends, not subordinates.” I mean, I’d love to see that instead of having you announce it. And then he gets a message, “Urgent message from corporate mission command.” No, that’s pretty cheesy I think. It doesn’t feel like this movie is lived in. It feels like that is just a — that feels very contrived to me. He says, “Answer call,” and then we have his boss who very brusquely begins, “Mission’s over, Drake.”

And Drake says, “But — ,” when I think probably the appropriate response to that would be, “What?” Or nothing. And then he says a bunch of stuff here and then he says a bunch of stuff that’s science fiction-y stuff.

So, I think there was good contrast in the beginning. I’m intrigued by the promise of the mystery of this romance between these two. I generally advice people to clean their pages up before they send them to us so there’s not a lot of errors. A little concerned about some of the on-the-nose stuff. What did you think?

**John:** I share almost all of your concerns and your praises. So, a few things right from the start. In terms of the typos, obviously, the pages that blank sent through had a blank title page on them with like “Name of Project, Name of First Writer,” like basically the Final Draft title page thing but not filled in.

Again, that’s just like open the PDF before you send anything to somebody and make sure it’s actually what you want to send. Because basically he forgot to take the tick box off for include title page. And so it’s just one of those things where it made me from the very start realize like he never actually opened this PDF or else he would have gotten rid of that first page.

Getting into it, I agree with you. I like the contrast between space and then we’re in a sexual situation. But that space shot, I was missing, I had no — by the end of these three pages I didn’t have a sense of, am I on the Starship Enterprise or am I on the Millennium Falcon? I have no sense of the scale of the ship that I’m on. We’re talking about a crew but I’m not seeing anybody else. I’m just seeing these two people. And then when we get to the bridge, I didn’t know if he was alone on the bridge or if there were other people on the bridge, too.

When he described the V of screens it sort of focused on his chair. It’s like, oh, maybe it’s like a one-person command thing. Maybe it’s more like Serenity, like the Joss Whedon show. All of these are good, I just don’t know what universe I’m in in terms of the ship. And clearly the ship is very, very important.

I, too, really like the idea of going from space to a bed. Can be good, but like a girl in bed and talking to a guy who is out of the room, if you’re going to get to a sexual situation I would love to have them be in bed and just let that be the moment. Because if it’s about the relationship, I’d love to see them together. Not just like talking in different rooms.

The wedding ring to me just feels like the tropiest, tropiest, trope.

**Craig:** It’s pretty tropey.

**John:** Yeah. And it’s like, so a guy looking at a wedding ring, trying to decide whether to propose, it just feels — we just know what that is too much and too well. And it doesn’t feel interesting.

I actually like Blake’s description of sort of who these people are. I think they are going to be interesting characters. I just wasn’t seeing them do anything that would tell me that. So, like, facts not in evidence. It’s there on the page, but they’re not actually doing anything that would let me know that this is who these people are. Their dialogue isn’t telling me that. They’re not taking actions that let me see sort of who they are. I just see them being kind of annoyed to being called out to do their jobs. And that’s not giving me a lot of confidence.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s interesting that this is following our discussion about the contract. Because your point about the nature of the ship is dead on. Typically when you do enter a new environment, one that’s not natural to our world, you want to give the audience, you want to give them a tour. The opening of Serenity, in fact, does this brilliantly. You know, a good tracking shot where one guy is moving through the ship and doing stuff. You start to learn — you see faces of people. You learn the scale of the ship. It is junkie, is it smooth, is it high tech, is it low tech? Size? And also the way that these people interact with each other. All that stuff comes out. You want to build, I think, for a science fiction movie, these pages feel a little bit more like maybe they would happen on page five and that pages one through four would be a little more of an exciting — we’re inside a freaking spaceship and here’s what it’s like.

**John:** So, I point us back to the start of Alien. If you look at how Alien begins, it doesn’t start with an alien. It starts with a bunch of people waking up and just establishing normal life on the ship. And these characters believe that they’re in a movie called Space Truckers. They have no sense that they’re in a movie called Aliens. And they’re just going through their normal life. They’re going through the normal stuff that sort of happens.

And we get little snippets of conversation. But we get a sense of who the people are in the world, what’s going on, and that it’s a very working class ship. And I’d love to see better evidence of sort of what kind of ship we’re on right from the start here. Because right now I don’t have a sense of like are there three people on the ship? Are there 300 people on the ship?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I don’t really have a good sense. And when we get to the later section, like the mission is over, like they were on a mission? I don’t know what their mission was. So, that mission is over — I’m confused not in a good way. So, I was excited to see that there’s a place that they’re going to be going to and by the end of page three a good thing I will say here is I did have a sense of what to expect next.

As we talk about a contract between the writer and the reader, the bottom of page three, like you’re going to go to this planet and start tera-forming, or get there and stake your claim. Ah, okay, so that is a thing to look for. And so I should be looking for them going to this planet and I will be basing my expectations around this journey to this planet or being at that planet.

**Craig:** Yeah. Absolutely. And in the discussion between our woman and our man, whether you have them separated or together, that is also an opportunity, I think, to get a little bit more character and conflict out of it. It was a little — there are times in movies where you can have a kind of a lazier conversation. But this wouldn’t be one of them. I think in the beginning you want to really try and pack a lot of dramatic information in. I don’t mean spell out a bunch of exposition. I mean, even if it’s looks, or somebody is slightly thrown off by something the other person says, you just want to get a sense of — a little bit more of an emotional sense rather than a circumstantial sense of the conflict between these people.

**John:** Yeah. Remember, you’ve got to hook us. And so I just feel like you have a beautiful woman in bed. I think you can do a better job hooking us in there and making us really invest in the nature of these two people.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Mm-hmm. What shall we do we next? Do you want to do Hearts and Minds or Brood?

**Craig:** Well, Brood is kind of fun. Can I summarize Brood?

**John:** Summarize Brood for us.

**Craig:** Brood is by Sandra Lee Slotboom.

**John:** What a great name, by the way. I’m not sure I believe it, but it’s a great name.

**Craig:** I absolutely believe it. You don’t fake that. You don’t fake Slotboom.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** Slotboom. Fantastic name. Brood by Sandra Lee Slotboom.

Okay, so, we open in the woods at night. There’s a primitive log cabin hidden sort of in the forest and inside we hear a grunting and then a slap and then the wail of an infant, obviously newly born. A man, a bearded middle aged man, emerges. He’s dressed in 19th Century garb, so we’re at some point in the 1800s. And he walks out with a candle lantern. He has blood up to his elbows and he’s carrying a swaddled baby.

Inside a young woman is screaming, “No, Papa, come back. Not our baby.” He carries this newborn into the woods. He digs a hole. He puts the baby in the hole. Shovels dirt on the baby until the crying stops. Oof. And then he lifts the lantern above his head and we see that, in fact, he is in a vast cemetery littered with hundreds of unmarked graves.

Okay, so that’s our cold open. Now, we’re in the Ozark forest. It’s modern times. And a young couple, Lisa and Aaron, are hiking together with their dog. She has to go pee. She wanders off behind a shrub. A twig snaps somewhere behind her. Her dog growls.

We now cut to the inside of an upscale kitchen and a woman named Sloane Robertson is bathing her infant, Christopher, in the sink. And she’s cooing to him, but then she opens up the hot water tap and this scalding water comes out and she drowns her baby. And then the baby — apparently not dead — reaches up with arms, grabs her around the throat. She wakes up. It was a nightmare. She’s there with her husband, Michael, in the middle of the night and there is an infant, in fact, very alive in another room crying. Michael says he’ll take care of it.

And before he goes to leave the room he says to her, “You can do anything, Sloane. You always have. It’s who you are.” She cries. And she cries.

Sandra Lee Slotboom! Baby killer.

**John:** So, I loved the opening image.

**Craig:** [whispers] Baby killer.

Baby Killer is not a better title, by the way. Brood is a good title.

**John:** Brood is a good title. So, I loved this opening image. I loved the opening little moment. The guy burying a baby. Horrifying. That’s great.

I liked the second opening. Not quite as much, but that’s fine. Hikers in the woods. A twig snaps. By the time I got to the third opening of the movie, which was this fake out — it was a nightmare. I drowned my baby — I lost some faith in this movie. And so as an example of, I thought actually the writing line by line was pretty good. But we had three openings in three pages. And I started to get a little bit unsure of the journey that I was going to be going on.

Because am I going on — I could take a cold open that takes place in the past. Great. I’m totally down and good for it. But when we get to the Ozarks and we’re hiking, okay, great. So, we’re in this world now. Oh, a twig snaps, the dog growls, oh, it’s that kind of thing. It’s that kind of movie? Great. I’m totally good.

But when we cut to the upscale kitchen I’m like I cannot make that leap to make those two pieces connect. And I started to — I didn’t have enough time with those hikers to know what degree I’m supposed to be investing in them. And then that jump to another present day thing was just bizarre to me. And to be jumping to a present day thing that’s actually in a dream felt really strange to me.

How about you, Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah. Look, the first — the prologue — is awesome. That’s the kind of scene that people will read it, put the script down, and say, “Come in here. You’ve got to read this.” Great opening. Terrifying. Ballsy. And it also had — not only did it have this terrible image of a man burying his incest baby alive. I presume it’s his incest baby.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** But then there’s a kicker on top of it that this has happened hundreds of times, which is just like what’s going on here. It’s really dramatic. It’s really well described. The only mistake I think that occurs, frankly, in that prologue is the young woman inside her dialogue is too on-the-nose. I would have just preferred, “Papa, no!” I think we can actually start to let our gears move on our own to figure that stuff out. People screaming and in pain are never quite this expository.

But, wonderful opening. And like you, I’m now great with, okay, I’m in the Ozark forest. I presume this is — we’ve jumped ahead in time, but maybe the same place. Wasn’t thrilled with this dialogue between Lisa and Aaron. It was very cutesy. It felt fakey to me.

And then —

**John:** Oh, she said — the dialogue here, for people who don’t have these pages in front of them, Lisa is like, “Mr. Kovachavich?”

And he says, “Yes, Mrs. Kovachavich?”

“I have to pee.”

“God, I love it when you talk dirty.”

And, it’s only okay. And it’s the first things these people are going to say. They could say anything. They should say something better than that.

**Craig:** Yeah. It doesn’t work. They don’t seem like actual people. This isn’t a conversation that two people have. She goes to pee and he for some reason says to her, as she’s wandering off, “Lisa, stay close.” I don’t know why. They’re just hiking and it’s not like — they’re in a trail. It seemed like a… — If we’re in a horror movie, you know, people are supposed to be a little less cautious than the average person.

There’s an uncomfortable expository moment here. Once again, we have the trope diamond, from trope jewelers. As she’s peeing she holds out her left hand to admire her diamond wedding band glinting off her finger, which I just felt was — we just had the two of them tell each other that they’re married. And now she’s looking at how they’re married. I get it. They’re married. And, frankly, I’m not sure how any of that matters now.

Her dog growls. Something is in the tree behind her. Okay. Fine. Then we cut. This cut is unacceptable. It is absolutely unacceptable. And you will rarely hear either John or I be this firm about something. You cannot cut away now into this dream sequence. We will not know where the hell we are. We won’t know why you’ve cut away from that scene at that moment. It makes no sense. You’ve drawn our attention to something and now you’ve pulled it away bizarrely.

That said, terrifying dream. Gorgeously written. It’s like I feel like there’s two different people writing this. Because the horror moments are really well put together. And this, again, you have this terrible baby and I was really shocked. I thought, by the way, I didn’t realize it was a dream until the very end. I actually thought she was killing her baby. And then this baby has eyes like black marbles.

Ooh, good, it’s creepy, creepy, creepy. Okay, it was a nightmare. Fine. We see this frequently. That’s okay.

Then, we have this moment now with her and her husband. It’s the middle of the night, so now I’m really confused. Now we jumped ahead to night from day. And he says the following. “Sloane?” She’s listening to the baby. The baby is crying. “I’ll take care of it, darling. Go back to sleep.” No. I’ve been there a number of times with both of my kids. We don’t call each other darling at that moment.

And then, before he leave he says, “You can do anything, Sloane. You always have. It’s who you are.” What?

**John:** Yeah. I have no idea. I assume that was something to do with like maybe she has postpartum depression or something. He’s basically saying it’s going to be okay, we’re going to work through this, it’ll be okay. But, that’s not what he said. He said this thing about you can do anything. You always have.

And it’s like, what?

**Craig:** No one ever says that. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. You would say that maybe on page 100 if you’re Mr. Miyagi and it’s the big moment before the fight. But certainly not now. If you’re portraying a woman with postpartum depression I would think that just a helpless look from her husband and maybe he just gives her a squeeze, but she turns away, and he kind of gives up we would understand. But this was a fascinating — these were among the most fascinating pages I’ve read in all the time we’ve been doing this because it was such a Tale of Two Cities. Two really, really frightening, well written scenes. And then two clunky scenes. And the order was just kooky. Kooky McCuckoo.

**John:** I had a theory that I’m not sure is accurate or not accurate. But perhaps these were longer scenes and then she compressed them down so she could fit more into three pages. Because I feel like I could imagine the longer version of that Ozark thing actually making sense and actually building to something in a way that was useful or meaningful and that we’re ultimately going to find out that the hiker girl who dies or whatever is somehow related to these people. There’s something going on here that makes this all meaningful.

And maybe Sandra Lee Slotboom compressed these down to sort of try to get more in. But it wasn’t a compression that was helpful at all. It was just jarring. And I would read the next page, and maybe the page after, but I got — I have a lot of concerns because I don’t know whose movie I’m watching at all.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that in a moment where a woman in a horror movie, putatively a horror movie, wanders off the trail to pee. And there’s a snapping twig behind her and her dog is growling. We need to see something happen. Even if it’s here turning, seeing something, and screaming, and then we cut, we need to know that something happens.

**John:** Yeah. Even if you were to do something crazy like recontextualize what that was, and then you realize like, oh, that’s actually a scene that’s happening on a monitor. This is actually a soundstage or something else, you could move to other stuff, but you have to address that thing that just happened or else we’re going to be going, “Huh? Did that happen? Did the reels get mixed up?” It doesn’t feel connected.

**Craig:** Exactly. What we’ve been presented is a scene that absolutely has no story purpose. None. It has given us no information. It’s given us information about characters, but no information about story whatsoever. And, yet, there’s story elements in it. So, it’s beyond confusing.

But, look, that said, those are fixable. What’s not fixable is an inability to write, and I think that Slotboom — BOOM — wrote a great cold open. Is onto a very chilling, very frightening topic that I’ve never really seen before. It’s risky as hell. And this is one of those areas where some people will just put the script down. They’ll make it halfway down page one and go, “Oh my god. I can’t watch a movie where babies are being buried alive.” But, I’ve been waiting my whole life for that.

So, I think that she can write. And she can do this. And she seems very comfortable writing in horror moments. Not so comfortable writing dialogue. Not so comfortable writing moments that aren’t horror. So, those are some areas to work on.

**John:** I think she has a great title. I think that title fits very well with that opening image.

**Craig:** Agreed.

**John:** Because what I got from that title and that opening image is like, okay, these undead babies are going to come back and seek vengeance. And they could be like an undead baby ghost movie. I love it.

**Craig:** No question. Yeah. And I’ve always wanted to see babies kick ass.

**John:** Yeah. Our third script is called Hearts and Mind by James Stubenrauch. And I’ll summarize this.

We start with a male voice asking, “So, you wanna go save the world?” And then what’s labeled as a flashback we are at an army recruiting office where Bree Foster, 19, is talking to a military recruiter. The recruiter changes tactics. Maybe she doesn’t want to go save the world but rather get a paid job. Seems more like it.

As they’re talking, Bree is watching this homeless man though the window. She ultimately grabs the recruiter’s cigarette’s and gives them to the homeless man who asks her if she’s joining the military to run away. She says, “It can’t be worse than here.”

We cut to the present time, or 2011, where a snow-like ash is falling. There’s explosions. We are in Kabul, Afghanistan. We move through streets and alleys to a blown up apartment building. We see Humvees, US soldiers, and Bree is among them. She’s in a medic’s uniform. She’s scared to death but hiding it. She’s very much a rookie in this world.

And that’s the end of our three pages.

**Craig:** Hey, James. James, guess what? You’re a pretty good writer. I think you did a really good job here. I have some comments and some thoughts for you. Most of them occur on page two.

But, let me tell you what I really liked. You built me a character. And you built me a character without cheating. Here’s what I see: “Bree Foster (19): a woman with nothing to lose.” Okay, that’s cheating. Except —

**John:** That’s cheating.

**Craig:** Except it’s not. It’s almost not cheating because she’s sitting in an Army recruitment office. And if you’re sitting in an Army recruiting office my guess is probably, you know, something interesting has happened to you, particularly if you are a 19 year old girl with “long dyed black hair. Black on black thrift store clothes, a homemade nose piercing… something both hard and innocent about her.”

You’re built an interesting — I can see her. And there’s no substitute for suddenly being able to see somebody. Not only can I see her. I’m starting to think of actresses. That’s a human being that you described and I love that.

And this guy is talking and she’s not paying attention. Instead she’s looking outside through the window and we see this Midwestern main street and this old homeless man reaching for a cigarette pack in the gutter. And she’s watching this guy, while this recruiter rambles on with all this nonsense about serving your country and being all you can be, we’re watching this homeless person finally, finally get the cigarette pack only to find out that it’s empty inside.

And I don’t think you can really teach stuff like this. People just have an understanding that you can create a small moment that is instructive in a metaphoric way and without being — slam you over the head. And I really liked it. I thought it was nice. It was calmly, quietly poetic.

My issues with what’s going on page one and two really have more to do with the cocky recruiter, because he goes off the rails pretty quickly. He’s just too broad. And, again, let’s talk about it as we’ve discussed — we’re world building here and we’re setting a tone and instructing the audience. He’s too “funny.” He is a recruiter. He may be cocky. He may have a patter. But at some point it gets off the rails.

He says to her, “Married? No? Awesome. What about babies?” Babies is a weird one. I would think children would be a better word there. She tightens up at this and he says, “Babies? Yes? No? It’s not a trick question. Yay or nay on rug-rats?” That’s quippy. It’s not real. That’s not how anybody in that position would talk. Not only is it not how anybody in that position would talk. It’s cutting against his job which is to get her to sign on the line that is dotted, right? It’s just bad salesmanship.

She says, “No.”

“Even better. You’re ready to be all you can be,” which is, again, it’s too — he’s getting too jokey. “Now the most important question.” He holds up two brochures — Soldier and Medic. “Wanna give shots, or get shot at.”

No. No, no, no military recruiter is going to tell you you’re getting shot at. [laughs] And give you a choice about it. It makes absolutely no sense.

So, that character I really think needs to be brought into the world that Bree’s character is in, and the homeless character is in. It’s fine to have him droning on. It’s fine to have him be canned and to be following the copy of a Department of Defense mandated script. It’s not okay to have him go that awry.

I love that she steals his cigarettes. And I love that she gives them to this homeless guy. And where I really got excited — although I wasn’t happy that he burns the cigarette down in one drag and tosses it into the gutter, because that’s not how smoking works, unless it’s a cartoon.

But where I was really happy was at the rest of page three, when we jumped ahead to present time. I thought, James, that you did a beautiful job of painting a picture here. Where a lot of people would have just said, “Chaos. We’re inside a building. It’s blown up. There are people…” You, you gave us a transition. You brought us in with sound. You brought us in with image of ash, which was quite beautiful. You had some terrific descriptions in here.

“We follow the ash toward its source — TRACKING through narrow, filthy ALLEYS. No signs of life. Only ghosts tonight.” I love that.

“A BLOWN-UP APARTMENT COMPLEX. Its insides disemboweled into a BLAST CRATER.” Great. So, I could see all of this. You are telling me a story. You are guiding me. I was watching a movie. And that is why I think you can write.

So, I would fix that cocky recruiter character, but very encouraged by this. What did you think, John?

**John:** I agree that once we get to Kabul, that scene setting, that painting of the world is really terrific. I had more problems with these first two pages than you did in that I didn’t get to see anything that Bree did. Basically all I got was a description of what she’s wearing and then this really annoying guy was talking the whole time. And I didn’t really get to see her. I got to see — the first two pages were basically being driven by a cocky recruiter we’ll hopefully never see again and a nameless homeless man. And that wasn’t a rewarding way for us to start.

Even if you have a character who is essentially passive, let’s see her be doing something even in her passivity. So, rather than being talked at by this recruiter, she’s like trying to fill out this form. Get us further into this process because I didn’t believe — like you, I didn’t believe that this guy was real. I didn’t believe that this was really her signing up.

It can be just about the paperwork. But let her speak something in here because she’s going to be our main character. So, let her try to explain herself at least to some degree to this guy. And if it’s even about a very small thing, like “When do I get my first paycheck? How does this all work?” We can understand her perspective on this more than what we’re getting from right here, which is basically canned spiel from a guy who I don’t want to see again.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think that what I would suggest — I get the idea that Bree is a little dead inside here. And I’m okay with that tone. If the more grounded, realer recruiter said, “Now, do you have questions? I’m sure you have questions about salary.”

And she said, “No.”

“All right, well, do you have any questions at all?”

“No.”

Then I would know something about her. So, there are ways to show passivity in an active way. I did think that —

**John:** I would also say —

**Craig:** Yeah. I was going to say I thought that her thing with the cigarettes was — she was doing something during the scene. So, I give her a little more credit there than I think you are. But I agree that we need a little bit — I think fixing that guy is going to fix her.

**John:** Yeah. I think she has to drive the scene, though, ultimately. Even if there’s another guy who is asking the questions, we have to believe that she is essentially in charge of the scene. I would love to see her try to be giving an answer but really she’s paying more attention to the homeless guy up the street. And like that, I think, is an interesting dynamic where we see her start to talk or start to form an answer, but she’s really more paying attention to what that guy is doing.

I agree that the homeless man doing the pack of cigarettes stuff is interesting. It’s a good visual image that helps establish our world. And ultimately when she makes a choice to go out and see him, it’s great. But I didn’t really believe the moment of her grabbing the cigarettes and sort of walking out the door. I was like, well, did she leave the recruiter’s office not doing it, signing up? I more wanted to see her sign on the dotted line and then as he’s filing the paper, whatever, then she takes the pack of cigarettes. Some completion on an action, because right now I didn’t necessarily really believe that she had joined the military.

**Craig:** I agree with that. I think that’s right. The part of this that isn’t working is essentially the nuts and bolts part, which is her signing up for the military. But, the mood of somebody that’s a little dead inside, answering questions and doing something that is an enormously radical thing for somebody to do and a big life choice for somebody, and yet doing it in a way that seems distracted and sort of dead inside and misplaced focus. That’s all great. You just have to take care of the nuts and bolts end of it a little bit better.

But that said, I thought, again, that James understands how to write a movie. And that is a very encouraging thing to see from three pages.

**John:** I would agree.

**Craig:** Yeah. Great.

**John:** So, again, thank you to all of the people who submitted pages this week and every week to the Three Page Challenge. If you would like to follow along with these examples, or any of the other ones, for every podcast we do a Three Page Challenge in the show notes we’ll have links to the PDFs for those three pages, so you can follow along.

If you would like to submit your own three pages, it’s at johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out, and there’s little rules there about sort of how you send stuff in and what you should put in your email and what you should not put in your email.

And we’ve been getting a lot of them. So, Stuart goes through the pile and sorts them out and finds some really good ones for us to look at. And, again, thank you to Blake, and James, and Sandra Lee for sending them through to us this week.

**Craig:** Slotboom!

**John:** Craig, do you have a One Cool Thing?

**Craig:** Yeah I do. Do you want to hear it?

**John:** Go for it. I want to hear it so much.

**Craig:** So, I feel like I only have three categories of One Cool Things and one of them is medical stuff. Very interesting invention that is currently being tested out and is on the verge of being manufactured. It’s called the XStat syringe. And it’s an example of how modern thinking is changing the way we approach problems. It just seems like such a modern solution to a thing.

Bullet wounds. Incredibly common wound to deal with, not only on the battlefield but also any municipal hospital in a city is dealing with bullet wounds all the time in trauma. And the immediate problem with bullet wounds is bleeding. And basically the way you’re taught when you’re dealing with first response to a bullet wound, and a bleeder as they often are, is to basically shove a bunch of gauze into it, which is what they were doing in the 1800s. Shove gauze in there. The gauze gets quickly soaked. The blood keeps coming out. And then you also have to pull all the gauze out, which can be very painful. Shoving the gauze in is very painful. It doesn’t really do what it’s supposed to do.

So, this is so brilliant, this company called RevMedx has come up with what looks like basically a syringe. It’s a plastic syringe shaped a bit like — it’s kind of like basically a tampon. It’s like a big tampon applicator. And it’s got a silicon tip at one end and a plunger at the other and it’s filled with tiny compressed cotton balls.

And they look like, you know like Smarties, the candy Smarties? Like little — did you get those in Colorado?

**John:** Yeah. I know — yeah, absolutely.

**Craig:** Yeah. Smarties. So, they look like little pills, like little aspirin pills, but they’re just compressed sponges. And so you stick this plunger into the open bullet wound and you push in these little tiny sponges which fill the space and then the blood essentially makes them expand and they seal the wound up, almost instantly, which is pretty remarkable.

There’s some issues with it. You’ve got to pull all those things out later. But by that point theoretically somebody will be stabilized and anesthetized and so forth.

But, it’s just one of those things where you look at it and you’re like, oh yeah, I guess —

**John:** Yeah. We could do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like I guess we just sort of gave up on bullet wounds for awhile, like for 300 years, and now we realize maybe it would be a good thing to kind of fix that. Because the other option is tourniqueting which causes all sorts of problems. It’s a last resort. You can damage a lot of healthy tissue with a tourniquet. And tourniquets are incredibly painful.

So, hopefully this ends up being cleared by the FDA. The syringes themselves are $100 each, which is a huge deal, because that means that they will be available not just for first world use but all world use. And hopefully they save some lives…of good people.

**John:** That would be great.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** When you said syringe I assumed it was going to be something like an epoxy, like an epoxy polymer that you would squeeze in that would actually seal the thing. But, that’s maybe chemically not wise to stick epoxy into people’s open wounds.

**Craig:** Yeah. You don’t want that in the bloodstream. That’s probably a bad idea.

**John:** They do — they use super glue though for cuts and that does work.

**Craig:** Yeah. They have some surgical adhesives and things like that, but an open wound where you’re injecting it pretty deep in and sometimes even into an organ, epoxy also hardens and then it’s a — yeah, that would be a problem.

**John:** As always, we like to give a lot of medical advice in our podcast because we are experts on so many topics.

**Craig:** I am.

**John:** You are. Craig is.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is just a simple game that you will download on your iPhone and waste a lot of time with, because it’s great, called Threes! Have you played Threes! yet, Craig?

**Craig:** No!

**John:** Threes! is really good. It’s really straightforward and simple. And it goes to your basic need to sort of neaten and straighten things.

**Craig:** Oh, no, I have that need.

**John:** So, essentially you’re given a grid of numbers and you are trying to add up — merge these numbers and you’ll have a tile with a three and a tile with a three. You merge them, they become a six. And you’re trying to build up to bigger and bigger numbers. But, of course, there’s limited space on the board, so you’d have to plan strategically for how you’re going to combine these numbers and therefore not fill the grid. And the game is over when you fill the grid.

It’s just a very well thought out game with terrific little mechanics. It’s just smart enough. It’s just cute enough. It’s a good game to play and a terrific time-waster for playing for 30 seconds or for six minutes, but a really good game.

**Craig:** I just bought it.

**John:** On the App Store right now.

**Craig:** I just bought it.

**John:** Done!

**Craig:** I bought it while you were talking.

**John:** That’s how good it is.

So, our show is now complete. If you would like to know more about the topics we talked about, Craig’s medical syringes, my game, any of the Three Page Challenges, you can find the Show Notes at johnaugust.com/podcast.

You can subscribe to us on iTunes. We are there. Look for Scriptnotes. And you can leave us a comment while you’re subscribing there.

If you’re on iTunes you can also find the Scriptnotes app which is for sale. Not for sale there — it’s free there. You can download the app to your phone or other iOS device. Through that app you can access all the back episodes, which is fun and good for you to do.

Weekend Read, the app I make for reading screenplays on your iPhone is also there, so you can download that for free.

We will be back next week with more things to talk about. And if you have questions for Craig, he’s @clmazin on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Longer questions like the one we got about late payments go to ask@johnaugust.com.

And that’s our show.

**Craig:** Slotboom!

**John:** Done. Thanks Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

Links:

* Get your tickets now for the [Scriptnotes/Nerdist Live Crossover episode](https://www.nerdmeltla.com/tickets2/index.php?event_id=791/) on April 13th at Nerdmelt, with proceeds benefiting [826LA](https://826la.org/)
* Patti Lupone [interrupted](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WruzPfJ9Rys)
* Film Independent’s [Directors Close-Up series](http://www.filmindependent.org/event/directors-close-up-2014/#.UwuxjkJdVxo)
* [Chicago Fire](http://www.nbc.com/chicago-fire) and [Chicago P.D.](http://www.nbc.com/chicago-pd)
* Three Pages by [Blake Armstrong](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/BlakeArmstrong.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Sandra Lee Slotboom](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/SandraLeeSlotboom.pdf)
* Three Pages by [James Stubenrauch](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/JamesStubenrauch.pdf)
* [How to submit your Three Pages](http://johnaugust.com/threepage), and [Stuart’s post on lessons learned from the early batches](http://johnaugust.com/2012/learning-from-the-three-page-challenge)
* The [XStat syringe](http://www.revmedx.com/#!xstat-dressing/c2500) by RevMedx
* [Threes!](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/threes!/id779157948?mt=8) on the App Store
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Betty Spinks