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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/whats-next).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 111, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

So, this is an odd episode because you are right across from me. We are sitting in the same room at the same table.

**Craig:** With no buffer guest.

**John:** Absolutely, which is rare. So, occasionally you and I have been in the same room but there’s always been a third person to sort of break it up, yeah.

**Craig:** Break up a fight.

**John:** But, no, I’m looking directly at you as we record this podcast.

**Craig:** Right. And the other fun thing is because it’s just you and me, [laughs], I wish you people could see this. So, John has the headphones on, you know, just to make sure that the audio is okay, but I don’t need headphones because there’s just the two of us here. And he looks like I believe the guy’s name is Lobot, the guy from Empire Strikes Back. You now, Lando Calrissian’s dude, because you have this like apparatus around your head and ears. You look awesome. You look very Sci-Fi.

**John:** Well, very good, I’ll be sure to take a photo and tweet it.

**Craig:** Please do.

**John:** When the episode comes out.

**Craig:** Please do.

**John:** So, we are in New York City. Your bags are packed. You are flying back to Los Angeles, but we thought we’d cram in one episode before we go. We’re recording this on Friday afternoon at 1:15 in the afternoon. And you’re catching me at a really strange moment because as of today the show is frozen. Big Fish is frozen. So, for the first time in nine years I’m not writing Big Fish, which is weird.

**Craig:** And you can’t anymore.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** You can’t write it ever again.

**John:** Not entirely true. I’ll have to rewrite some stuff for the cast album, sort of to get those pesky talking bits minimized.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And then god-willing we do well and we tour at some point, we’ll have to change some stuff for the tour. But, for all intents and purposes, I’m done. And that feels really strange. That’s a thing I would actually like to talk to Dr. Craig Mazin about is that feeling of post-partum separation and all that.

**Craig:** It’s a very real thing. Before we get into that, a little bit of — what do we call it — what do you call it, business?

**John:** Follow up.

**Craig:** Follow up? Housecleaning.

**John:** Housekeeping.

**Craig:** Housekeeping. I like cleaning, housecleaning.

At one point apparently a few podcasts ago I mentioned that Sony Pictures Classics was, I maybe even used the word “moribund” because I was under the impression that they weren’t really open for business. And it turns out that’s totally wrong. They’re apparently incredibly open for business and put out more movies than a lot of movie studios do, so I’m really sorry about getting that wrong. It happens from time to time. So, here come the cops to take me away.

Sorry Sony Pictures Classic. You are the opposite of moribund. You are full of life. You are vivacious.

**John:** Indeed. And Craig is wrong sometimes.

**Craig:** It actually happens.

**John:** It’s great to acknowledge when you are wrong.

**Craig:** And sometimes spectacularly wrong. So, yes, in this case wildly wrong. Sorry. Sorry. Okay.

**John:** There are two bits of new things that came up, so let’s just sort of crank through those first. First off, people sent me this link to this new fund called Gamechanger. And the idea behind it is — we’ve talked on the podcast several times about how there are a notorious lack of women directors. And so this fund is designed to help make movies in the $1 million to $5 million range with female directors to hopefully balance some things out. The numbers that this article that we’ll link to cited showed that women make up about 50% of film school graduates but women only direct 7% of the top 250 movies in a given year. And that’s sort of wildly out of proportion.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Craig, what’s your thought about this kind of fund? Do you think it will have an impact? What do you think is possible or probable?

**Craig:** Well, certainly its heart is in the right place. The idea is that this group is going to fund, they’re saying up to 10 narrative feature films. And they’re making a distinction between narrative feature films and documentaries, because women seem to be fairly well represented in documentaries.

So, to finance up to ten of these narrative feature films in budgets going from the $1 million to $5 million range in all genres. And the idea is that I guess they want to use it to both employ women to direct movies but also to sort of show off to the business that there are women who can direct movies and essentially use this as almost advertising and maybe a launching pad for some of these women.

I think these things are always at the crossroads of intention and effect. I don’t know why this would work. And I guess the reason I say that is because I don’t know why it is the case that only 7% of these 250 movies are directed by women in the first place. Why are women well represented in documentary but not narrative feature? And, you know, at some point someone here says, let’s see, Impact co-founder Dan Cogan says, “There’s an unconscious prejudice in which people just don’t feel confident giving their money to women filmmakers and getting their money back.”

I don’t know if that’s quite true. It’s very hard to pin down an unconscious prejudice anyway.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Women are very prominent in our business. You know, Amy Pascal runs Sony.

**John:** Yeah. And it’s not like she’s the only — we have Amy Pascal, we have Stacey Snyder —

**Craig:** Emma Watts at Fox.

**John:** Tremendous representation of women in those higher echelon power ranks.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, it is interesting that we don’t use women to direct these feature films of a certain size. And so maybe this will have impact. But I think in some ways it’s not going to have the same impact as if Marvel stepped up and had a woman direct one of the Marvel movies.

**Craig:** No question. Yeah, it’s a bit like — and I don’t mean to ding these guys, but they’re sort of saying, “Look, we have a problem where women are a little ghettoized in feature films, so let’s give them feature films to direct that are of the sort that kind of define what it means to be ghettoized,” living in the $1 million to $5 million range. I mean, there are episodes of TV that cost more than that. And that’s sort of a struggling space. It’s hard for those movies to find audiences anyway.

And I also have to say I always get worried when they put these things out and say, “Look, this is to back women alone,” because inevitably you also start to get that backlash of, “Oh, well she’s doing a movie there because they need women to do their movies.” But, believe me, if somebody else wanted to do the movie, wouldn’t a woman rather just go with the marketplace and the biggest numbers?

So, I guess my question for you is why do you think this is the case?

**John:** Why do I think there are fewer women directors?

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I don’t know. And I wish there were a simple thing you could point to, but I don’t know that it’s s systematic structural bias. I think it’s more likely that there’s a chicken and the egg problem. And actually interestingly one of the production companies in here is called Chicken and the Egg. Until you actually have — you don’t get to be Kathryn Bigelow directing these big movies until you’ve directed small movies. And if you don’t get to direct those small movies it doesn’t sort of work its way up.

Although, I will say that I feel like I see male writers getting that shot to direct their movies maybe a little bit more often than I see the equivalent woman getting the chance to direct that movie. And maybe that’s a thing that this kind of fund could help.

**Craig:** Do you perceive that there is any difference in the desire — and when I say desire I mean unfettered fully fueled desire to direct between the genders?

**John:** I don’t know that there is, but I think you can point to the larger question of women in the workforce. And there are lots of books written about sort of is there something that happens at a certain, it’s not even a glass ceiling anymore, but it’s the choice you make whether you’re going to give yourself wholly over to a career or if you’re going to have a family.

And structurally in American society it does seem that women who would reach the certain point in their career where they could be directing a film, or it could be running a company, have to make that choice between a family and a career. And sometimes they will choose a family.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s not only women who face that thing, but women face it with a stronger degree of urgency than men face it. That’s a possibility.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m kind of with you in the sense that when I see this stuff I throw out my hands and say, “I don’t know why.” Now, that in and of itself can be viewed as somewhat of a radical position. Sometimes just denying that there’s an overt prejudicial bias makes you suspect in some people’s eyes. I just don’t’ know that the evidence is there that it’s the case.

And there are too many strange things like, for instance, the fact that so much of Hollywood is run by women that makes me think it’s probably not the case. But, I can’t say it is. I can’t say it isn’t. I wish these people luck.

Listen, here’s how I look at it as a movie-going fan. If they find a director who otherwise would not have been able to make her movie, and she makes a great movie, and I love her movie, and then she makes more movies because of that, then I think Gamechanger Films has done a great thing.

**John:** Fantastic. I would agree with you. If they make 10 movies and two of those films break out and those directors get a chance to make more movies after that, then we’re in a very good situation.

Catherine Hardwicke is an example of a director who got a chance to make little small movies and then got to make Twilight and got to make bigger movies after that.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** If they can keep doing that, that’s fantastic. So, what I did like about sort of how their approach is, it’s not like it’s an open call for submissions. They’re not sort of doing the Amazon Studios way where like all the people who have been overlooked — they’re definitely targeting agents and managers, tell us these people who are tremendously talented who for whatever reason cannot get their movies made, let’s try to get those movies made.

**Craig:** And in that regard, it’s kind of a brilliant strategy on their part because my guess is that there’s quite a talent pool there that is… — By the way, pick any segment and there is an underserved talent pool.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** 49 year olds. There are some great 49 year olds out there.

So, well, good luck to Gamechanger Films. I hope you change the game. [laughs]

**John:** Ah-ha. Second bit of new business was the new announcement that Gill Garcetti, is it Gill Garcetti?

**Craig:** Gill Garcetti.

**John:** Gill Garcetti, our new Los Angeles Mayor —

**Craig:** Not Eric Garcetti?

**John:** Oh, it’s Eric Garcetti, isn’t it?

**Craig:** Isn’t Gill his dad?

**John:** Yeah, I get confused who’s who.

**Craig:** If he’s listening to this he’s like, “I’m the mayor and they’re still doing it to me! God!”

**John:** Mayor Garcetti..

**Craig:** Well done. Yes.

**John:** …has announced that he has appointed a new Film Czar for Los Angeles. We talked earlier on the podcast about runaway production which is the idea that so many of our movies are written in Los Angeles by LA-based film studios and yet they shoot in other states for tax reasons and for other reasons and don’t film in Los Angeles.

And one of Garcetti’s proposals was we needed to figure out why these movies are going away and try to find ways to keep these movies shooting in Los Angeles. He has appointed a Film Czar by the name of Tom Sherak.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Who’s a very familiar name to oversee this operation, this goal of trying to get more movies shooting in Los Angeles and more film production and television production happening in Los Angeles.

So, Tom Sherak, I thought, was a really interested choice for it, because Tom Sherak is former president of the Motion Picture Academy, former chairman of Fox, and many other titles throughout there. And he really knows the film and TV business. So, it seems like he would be a good person to be able to lobby to his peers who are running these studios to say, “No, no, shoot your movie here and let’s try to find a way to make it make sense to shoot your movie here.”

**Craig:** Yes. He is a great choice. He is exactly the right kind of person for this. The problem is I don’t know what there is to do. You know, he, Tom Sherak, more than anyone understands that you can’t sit down in an office across from somebody who is doing the job he once did and say, “Shoot your movie here even though it costs $8 million more just ’cause.” It’s not going to work.

And in the end I’m not sure what else there is to do. Maybe these guys know of something creative that we don’t know about. All we hear about on our end of things is you can — “Here’s how much money we’re spending. You can shoot it here or you can shoot it here. If you shoot it in LA you get 8 fewer days and you can’t have that cast or that song. And if you shoot it there you can.”

Well, everybody always picks the movie. Everybody. So, I don’t know what he’s going to do. I’m concerned that this is window dressing designed to satisfy political contributors to whom promises were made. But, we’ll see.

**John:** We’ll see. What was promised in the article was Tom Sherak will lead sort of the lobbying effort in California to try to get in Sacramento to try to get funds to do this. As we talked about on the podcast before, it becomes one of these sort of race to the bottoms where everyone is starting to throw tax money at this thing which isn’t really a sustainable goal.

There are certain things about shooting in a city which can make life easier and harder. And one of the things that New York City did was try to make it vastly easier to shoot in this city by cutting away the red tape and trying to make it simpler to permit, and shoot, and sort of get it all working out. And that might be a thing that a Film Czar could really step in and help if it has the mayor’s support to do that.

**Craig:** Yes. And certainly any kind of elimination of red tape, and this is where the other constituencies in LA start to get angry when you shut down commercial streets or things like that and people get angry. And so there’s always interests bumping into each other, but the truth is in the final analysis the reason that productions have left LA isn’t because of the Film Office or red tape. It’s because of tax breaks.

So, they have the lottery system now in California where a number of movies can get tax breaks up to a certain amount. And you’ll see this, also Massachusetts I think is a similar situation, but it is a race to the bottom. That’s the problem. It’s a race to the bottom. And it’s disturbing. I don’t know the answer. It’s one of the, [laughs], this is one of those areas where not just being one state like one country but actually 50 independent municipalities can hurt us.

**John:** Agreed. Although I think if we were one country and we were France, then there’s always the thing of like, “Oh, no, they’re going to shoot in Belgium because Belgium has a tax incentive.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** This is the podcast that there are no good answers.

**Craig:** I know. It’s true. Because, in fact, also then if there’s only one state and your France, then they say, “Okay, you know what? We’re taxing you. We’re taxing you. And people can only work 30 hours a week.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah, so…

**John:** Challenging.

**Craig:** And then everything, everything dies. [sighs]

**John:** Oh, sigh.

**Craig:** Maybe we can fix your problem today.

**John:** Let’s focus on things that are easily achievable — what’s wrong with John.

**Craig:** Before we talk about wrong with you, let’s talk about what’s right with you.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** So, I saw the show, Scott Frank and I went to go see Big Fish a couple a nights ago, a few nights ago. You were right there with us, sitting right next to me, and I really enjoyed it. I think the show is terrific. And I think that it’s a hit. I personally do.

I don’t know, it just has that “hit” feel to it. It’s very accessible. I think it’s really great for families. I don’t know how you’re targeting it or marketing it, but I don’t know, if it were me I would just think I’d love to take my kids. It’s a great spectacle.

It’s not overly long. I mean, Broadway shows tend to be long. Musicals tend to be long. The first act I thought really moved great. And there is some terrific stuff that happens in the second act. It’s very emotional. I just have a really good feeling about it. And I’m — I can’t change the world with my predictions. That is even too much for me to believe. But I still feel like I’m right a lot…

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** …despite the Sony Pictures Classic thing, so I’ve got a really good feeling. Plus, it seems like you guys are selling the place out in previews anyway.

**John:** Which has been great. So, it definitely has felt like, you know, as you go through life you sort of feel the universe forking and sometimes you end up in the fork where things go really well and sometimes you end at the fork where things go really badly. And I do feel very lucky that I feel like we ended up in the fork where things went really well with the show. And so creatively I’m really happy with it. And we’re selling a lot of tickets, which has been fantastic. So that is really amazing.

It was great to have the two of you guys there at the show to see what this has turned out to be, and, of course, to get a drink afterwards. And to witness me just strangle the woman —

**Craig:** That was great. You know, [laughs], so here’s what happened.

**John:** Because actually I’m fascinated to hear your account of it, because I’ve actually recounted this story to a bunch of people but I feel like I just exaggerated it in my head. So, please tell me your opinion of what actually happened.

**Craig:** I don’t think you’re capable of such things. So, during the show, in the very beginning I noticed this man showed up late as I think the music was beginning. I think it was the same guy. There was a just a problem with these two people that were about three rows ahead of us. So, we were in Row G in the orchestra which is essentially, what, the sixth row? Is that right? A, B, C, D, E, F, G…oh, 7.

So, they’re like in the fifth row. It’s a man in his thirties and his girlfriend who I assume is, you know, a similar age. And they’re just annoying. They get in kind of late. Then he leaves at one point. Plus, you can get drinks delivered to you at your seat, which I think is weird, by the way.

**John:** Not in this theater.

**Craig:** Oh, what was that?

**John:** At Scriptnotes you could. But did someone actually — ?

**Craig:** No, yeah, some lady came by. Oh, no, that’s right. There was like an usher that came by at some point to help him. He was carrying his drinks. That’s right. She was helping him get back into his seat. My feeling is she should help him leave — at that point he’s late.

Then after the intermission he came back again. Now, here’s what I didn’t — and he did it again — here’s what I did not notice. I did not notice that this woman was holding her phone up and taking pictures constantly throughout the show, which is a super big no-no. It’s the very thing that got a man screamed at by Patti Lupone. And we should put a link to that amazing — it’s just such a great. Because, okay, Patti Lupone, she’s in Gypsy. She’s paying Mama, Mama Rose, right?

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** And she’s singing, I can’t remember what she’s singing.

**John:** Was it her big song?

**Craig:** I think it might have been Here’s Rose or whatever. And some ding-a-ling is taking pictures and you just hear Patti Lupone go, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” And everyone stops. And she just goes crazy on this guy in such a, like diva, “How dare you! Who do you think you are?!” in like full Broadway voice. And everyone is applauding. It’s great.

Anyway, the guy gets kicked out. Well, this girl is doing the same thing. I don’t notice that. All I notice is that at one point when the usher brings that guy back, you lean across me to the usher and you point at that lady. And you point. And I thought, “Oh, he’s angry because they’re annoying, [laughs], because I didn’t realize. But I was like, aw, but then the usher I think didn’t understand what you were saying and just kind of gave up. Plus, did she even know who you were?

**John:** She did know who I was.

**Craig:** She knew who you were. Okay. So, she just didn’t know what was going on. So, she took the coward’s way out which is just to nod pointlessly and then disappear.

At the end of the show you said, “I’ve got to talk to those people. That woman was taking pictures throughout the entire thing.” And I went, “Oh, that’s not good.” So, Scott and I get out of our seats. We walk up to the stage. And you wait for those two people to come out and when I turn around I just see you heatedly — and I catch little bits like, “You absolutely cannot do that. That is unacceptable. You cannot take photos during a show. It is totally not cool. You can’t do it.”

And then she’s like, “I wasn’t doing…”

“You were! I saw you. I saw you. I saw you do it. Get out your phone. Take out your phone.”

And her boyfriend is like a pretty big dude. And she’s kind of like, “Eh, she’s got that “eh” face. You know? But you made them take out the phone and then you made her go through the photos and you made them — and then the last thing we heard was you saying, “Great, good, fine. I don’t care. Yeah, you too. Don’t care. You too. Whatever. Don’t care.”

And then they left. And then you told us that in fact that exchange was…[laughs]

**John:** And it came — so this guy — basically the girl was so drunk that I kind of couldn’t really deal with her, so I could only deal with idiot boyfriend.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And he was at first sort of like, “How dare you talk to my girl that way.” And then when I said like, “She took photos. She cannot take photos.”

And then he asked, “So, do you work here?”

And I’m like, “I wrote the effing show.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And I was really just rage-filled. It’s one of those things where like almost like Fight Club, like I kind of wanted him to hit me. I kept thinking like just hit me. I would love a black eye right now because I am so incredibly incenses right now.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** But so anyway, he weirdly sort of backed down and he’s like, “Oh, give me your phone.” So, she couldn’t even find her phone. She opened up her purse and all she had in there was like confetti that she stuffed in there from like the end of Red, White, and True.

And it’s like, “Where’s my phone? Oh, it’s in my…”

It was in her bra. So, she pulls out her phone.

**Craig:** Oh boy. Okay.

**John:** Figures out how to unlock it. She already had iOS 7.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** So, she’s capable enough to upgrade her phone.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Or maybe Apple has made it too simple to upgrade your phone. [laughs]

**Craig:** It appears so. It appears that they’ve crossed into Idiotville.

**John:** So, he deletes off the photos. And I wanted the photos deleted, but I mostly wanted him to understand that like you cannot do this. You cannot take photos in a Broadway show.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because not only could all the actors on stage see. I checked later and like they all saw it.

**Craig:** Yeah, the mermaid tweeted that they were all like, “Who the hell is that girl?”

**John:** The worst thing about taking photos in this day and age is you’re holding up a glowing iPhone.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Everyone behind Row E could see that and could not — and they’re attention is being pulled down there rather than what was on the stage.

**Craig:** Obviously it’s a no-no. And they all know it’s a no-no. But let’s back up for a second. You know what else is a no-no? Getting drunk in the middle of a Broadway musical.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Can’t you wait? I mean, it’s not cheap. It’s not like you’re going to see a movie for 12 bucks. It’s a show. And it’s over and it’s gone forever. You can’t catch it again on HBO tomorrow.

**John:** Those were expensive seats. Those were like $150 seats.

**Craig:** Really expensive. They’re dead center fifth row. I don’t know if somebody gave them that or they’re just the kind of people that just don’t care.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** They didn’t look like swells, you know?

**John:** No. I think they were just douchebags. Douchebags with some money.

**Craig:** Douchebags. That’s what he kept brining was beer, I think, so they were drinking beer.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Something, also, don’t drink beer in the middle of a show. They shouldn’t allow that at the theater.

**John:** They should stop the bar during the show.

**Craig:** They should stop the bar during the show.

**John:** I think that will be discussed.

**Craig:** It’s not like a ballgame.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** In fact, and then they stop beer at the ballgame after the seventh inning so that people don’t beat each other up in the parking lot the way they used to when I was a kid.

**John:** Oh, back in the day.

**Craig:** Back in the day.

**John:** So, no blows were thrown at Big Fish, even though I sort of wanted to get hit. What I recognized, and I ended up apologizing to the theater manager because he came over to see what was going on.

**Craig:** I saw that, yeah.

**John:** And so the usher had recognized that she was taking photos but couldn’t figure out which one it was. And because she was in the middle of the row they couldn’t pull her out.

**Craig:** There was no way to get to her, right, without stopping the show. It’s a really tough spot to be in in theater maintenance.

**John:** Yeah. And so then I sort of was putting him in a bad spot because he knew who I was, the theater manager knew who I was, and if it had come to blows then it would have been a terrible situation for him and for everybody involved.

**Craig:** It would have been bad. Plus, also, I find it interesting that your wish was not to beat him up but rather for him to beat you up. [laughs] That was your fervent wish.

**John:** Yeah, I kind of wanted to get hit.

**Craig:** “I was so angry I wanted him to beat me up.”

**John:** It’s odd. It tells a lot about me.

**Craig:** All right. Now let’s get into your real problems.

**John:** My real issue right now at this moment is for the first time in nine years I’m basically done writing Big Fish and it’s been a very long haul. And literally today I’m turning in the last two pages of like small corrections to the show that’s on, because we have to freeze at a certain point so that next week we are running the exact same show the whole week.

**Craig:** One week prior to your official opening.

**John:** Because critics actually come this next week. The critics don’t come to opening night. Critics come the week —

**Craig:** Of course, so they have time to write their nonsense.

**John:** So that… [laughs]

**Craig:** Sorry, don’t take that out on John.

**John:** That was Craig Mazin who said that.

**Craig:** That’s Craig Mazin. I believe that it’s all nonsense. I’ve already decided the show is good. Who needs to know what you think.

**John:** Craig Mazin has rendered his opinion. So, it’s this weird feeling of — it’s like the end of college to a degree, where you’re packing up your room and you’re like, “Oh my god, I’m so sad to leave all these people.” But it’s also weirdly like dropping your kid off at college, because it will still be running there and I will get on a plane the day after opening and fly back to Los Angeles and it will keep going without me.

**Craig:** Right. Night after night without you.

**John:** Which is a strange thing for me to feel.

**Craig:** Very bizarre. But the strangest thing I would imagine is just that feeling that we all get when it’s over.

**John:** So let’s talk about like when it’s over, because when I was first writing scripts my ritual when I would finish a draft and be done with that — I think I’ve told this on the show — I would treat myself and I would let myself go to Panda Express at Century City and spend the $10 to get like the extra — including egg roll.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Which was like a lot of money for me to spend back then. And that was my ritual for the end of a draft. But it’s a different thing when a movie is finished. When like production has stopped, or really this is like picture lock essentially where there’s no more creative changes you can make. You can just tweak lights on things. It’s a strange thing when that huge portion of your life is just in the rearview mirror.

**Craig:** Right. I know. There’s a bunch of sadnesses that occur and a bunch of anxieties that occur along the way. Sometimes when we’re writing in a very childish way we think, “Oh, this is the worst of times.” But it’s certainly not. It’s actually the best of times.

When you’re done writing something and they say, okay, now we’re going to shoot it or we’re going to mount it as a production there is a certain death that occurs. Now, it’s the death of letting go of an enormous amount of control and getting into the world of sharing with everyone. And so whether you have your director and your choreography, or you’re now on set and the director is directing, or you’re the director, and that’s rough.

But I find actually that the period you’re in right now is the roughest of them all. It’s the period where you’ve lost all control because it’s done. You can’t change it anymore. This is picture lock in film. It’s show freeze on Broadway. But the accountability has yet to come.

**John:** Yes!

**Craig:** It’s a very scary time. So, I remember I was talking with Todd Phillips and he said the only thing he thinks about once that happens is how can I jump ahead in time to after the movie has come out, done what’s it done, and then gone. That’s what I want to get to.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Because that’s the time when you go, “Ah…” I’m not talking, because look, here’s what’s coming up. You’ve got a ton of press you’re going to have to do. You’re going to have the hullabaloo and the reporting and the critics and the business. And the this, and the that, and the finance, and the crowds. And all of that is what people dream about when they’re kids and you get there and you realize, that’s the worst, worst of it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You just want that to be done. So, really what I guess I should say to you is in four months I think you’ll be there.

**John:** Yeah, I think so. And four months, time will pass. If we’re still running and award stuff is coming up, then I’ll have to sort of reengage with it. I think —

**Craig:** But that will be like dessert. That’s fine.

**John:** It’ll be dessert. It’ll be fine. It should be good stuff.

What is exciting about this time right now is I suddenly have so much free brain space where like I don’t have to keep running the show over and over and over in my head. Because really for the last nine years, sometimes intensely, and sometimes less intensely, I’ve had the Bloom family and the Bloom family house in my head. And I had to keep it running in sort of a continuous loop so that that reality sort of exists.

And I won’t have to do that. And so all of the brain cycles that are taking to keep that alternate reality existing I can free up to do other stuff.

Then comes the sort of paradox of choice. There’s a lot of things I could write. And I have to decide what I want to write.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And so, Craig, if you would permit me, I’m going to actually talk through some of the things I’m thinking about writing in a general sense.

**Craig:** And then can I say what I think you should do?

**John:** Yes!

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** All right. So, let me talk you through the possibilities of what I’d be writing in the next six months. So, there is a book adaptation of a book that hasn’t come out yet. It’s a YA title that could potentially be huge. It could be like a big breakout title.

**Craig:** Hunger Games-y kind of thing?

**John:** Yes. As I’ve talked before, I’m not sure if I was officially offered the Hunger Games, but I did pass on it because like, “No, I don’t want to see a movie about kids killing each other.”

**Craig:** Uh…

**John:** I was wrong.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, I would have totally done that. I like those books.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You should ask me about these things on the podcast before you make that decision.

**John:** Well, I should have asked you. This was a good couple years ago. Time machine.

**Craig:** Yeah, time machine.

**John:** And I wrote The Hunger Games. So, there’s this big YA title. And it might happen, it might not happen. So, it’s one of those situations where it could come together or it could not come together. I really like the project. But, it’s another book adaptation, so it’s not wholly mine. There’s a possibility.

There is an adaptation of another existing property that has — it’s hard for me to describe in — it’s an existing IP property that’s not a book that could be adapted and could be a thing. I have less of a clear idea right now what it is as a movie. And I also can already recognize all of the obstacles in its way of getting it to be a movie.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** And so it’s people I would love to work with. It’s a question of whether we could get the everything of it to work.

**Craig:** Understood. Got it. Okay. That’s option two.

**John:** That’s option two. Option three is to buckle down and write the thing for myself to direct in 2014.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** So, this would be a follow up to The Nines. Not related to The Nines at all, but with many familiar faces of people who I love who I’ve worked with before. So, that is —

**Craig:** That’s option three.

**John:** A third, option three.

**Craig:** Option for?

**John:** Option four — I would say those are the only strong contender writing projects for me. I have a lot of other stuff.

**Craig:** Stuff, right.

**John:** And so there’s a lot of app stuff that’s going on which I’ve been able to keep going on in a better way. There are some physical goods that we’re talking about making late this year which would also be fun and exciting.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** But writing wise, those three are the top contenders.

**Craig:** I have my strong feeling —

**John:** Life Coach, Craig Mazin, talk to me.

**Craig:** I have a strong feeling. Let’s get rid of option number two because it sounds like there’s trouble involved in option number two. And the trouble — the one thing you don’t need right now is trouble. You’ve had a lot of trouble. Not bad trouble, but it’s been a war to mount a musical. So, what I’m thinking is I’m always looking to kind of like rotate the fields, rotate the crops, right?

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** You plant corn, you plant wheat. Da, da, da. Then you go pot.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And then do pod peas. Because you’ve just done this, and because this is such an expression of what you wanted to do, and it was really the will to power of John August and Andrew Lippa, my feeling is your thing that you want to direct for you, you can do that, and you’re going to do that, but why not have a nice almost — how should I put it — let yourself be carried along a little bit by something that’s a little easier.

Give yourself a nice easy thing to do. It’s an adaptation. It’s a book. There’s a narrative. There’s stuff there. Maybe take a warm bath of a project for a little bit, you know what I mean?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Make a little money. Chill out. Don’t feel like your life blood must be squeezed out of you for this thing to work, because that’s what a movie is, right?

**John:** That it is.

**Craig:** And you want to make your own thing. So, you’ve been doing that. You’ve been kind of squeezing your life blood out into something. Maybe you just eat the bag of Funyuns instead of something a little more challenging.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Then you can have your sushi. So, my advice is option number one just for mental —

**John:** Yeah, okay, you make good points there. Some of those which I’ll parse out. Making some money would be a really good idea.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** Just because I’ve been in this world for so long and have passed on other writing things that would pay me money, which would be a lovely thing to have is a little bit of money.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s something simpler that I can invest all of my words in but not have to invest my heart and soul and self-esteem into would be probably a very useful choice. And something shorter. Something shorter and faster because what makes me nervous about immediately going into the directing project is I know that’s a marathon.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And just finishing, I call this a migration, it’s more than even a marathon. I’ve just been walking for so long that I should probably focus on something small. There’s even like a short film that I was thinking about going off and directing just to sort of stretch those muscles but not, you know.

**Craig:** I think varying things as much as possible helps us stay excited.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, you and are married men. We’re married to one person. So, we don’t have that excitement.

**John:** People are going to be so confused that we’re married to the same girl. [laughs]

**Craig:** We’re married to one, yeah, to one guy and girl. But, you know, we don’t have the excitement of, you know, there’s the new love excitement. We get our new love excitement from what we’re doing, from what we’re working on. And I do feel it all the time. And I find that if I’m doing three of the same kind of things in a row it just gets diminished. If I’m doing three of the same efforts, three of the same lengths. Anything that’s the same, I start to feel… — I mean, listen, I got stuck doing spoof movies for a long time. I loved doing the first one. The second one I was like, “Okay…”

But, you know, and then by the time I got to the third one I was just on fumes.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And I had lost sort of any passion. It’s just samey, samey, samey. And it was also the same length, and it was the same amount of effort, and it was the same people.

So, I go for different every time. So, I say change it up.

**John:** That does sound like a good idea. So, on the writing musicals side, there are two projects that are coming, and some of it I do kind of need to start because this was nine years for Big Fish. I think five years is sort of the minimum I’ve seen that a musical actually really comes together. So, if I wait too long I can’t start on that. But I am choosing things that are — I don’t have to drive everything along which could be a useful thing, too.

**Craig:** Yes. Very much so. It takes a lot out of you. People — this is their lives. You know, musical theater, there are people that just mount these productions and they just do it. And you look at Sondheim and you look at Andrew Lloyd Webber and you think, okay, well that’s all they do. They don’t write movies. They don’t direct things. They don’t do podcasts.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** You know, I’m not even sure they have kids.

**John:** Yeah, most of them don’t.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is it. This is what they do. And you can’t keep that kind of pace with them, nor do you have to. It’s not what it’s about anyway.

**John:** Yeah, it’s not a race.

**Craig:** It’s not a race. I know you keep telling yourself that because it’s true. It’s true. It’s not.

So, anyway, I say option number one. Whoever is producing option number one you may send your check to me. Oh, I’m going to move the thing. Yeah, I want money. The point is I deserve money every time you make money.

**John:** [laughs] As life coach and adviser.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Let’s wrap this up. That was very helpful.

**Craig:** Great. I’m glad I could help.

**John:** So, I have a One Cool Thing this week which is this very cool video on Vimeo. It’s called Box. And in Big Fish we use projections to sort of change our set around. And the projections were incredibly difficult to get working right, but are incredibly rewarding in the actual presentation we’re doing.

**Craig:** They’re very cool. Yeah.

**John:** This video that I saw called Box uses projections but in a very clever and innovative way. So, projections are happening onto this white surface, but that white surface is mounted on a mechanical arm that is robotically controlled and precisely robotically controlled. And so the projections know exactly where it is in space and time. And because it can match it up it can do some really amazing things.

And there’s a guy who looks like he’s actually pushing the thing around, but of course he’s actually just — he’s a dancer who carefully makes it look.

**Craig:** Got it.

**John:** But it creates the illusion of three dimensions and impossible things through really, really good projections. So, I’ve learned so much about projection in this, in making Big Fish. This has me really excited about the possibilities of what projection can do next to create space. Something that you’re experiencing live and in person in front of you.

So, it’s not post-production. It’s projections that are happening right there in space and time.

**Craig:** That’s interesting. I’d like to — I’m going to see that.

**John:** A movie that did it actually really well this last time was Oblivion. Did you ever see Oblivion?

**Craig:** I didn’t see Oblivion.

**John:** I didn’t love the movie but I did love some of the environments that they created in it. And one of them is this house that the Tom Cruise character is in. It’s sort of this lookout post. And it’s sort of like the Chemosphere, that sort of famous house in Los Angeles that’s round, all glass on all sides. And it’s beautiful every way that you look.

And so I assumed originally that they shot that with the normal green screens and then they just stripped in the sky afterwards. But then I read the American Cinematography article and they actually did it all with projections. And so literally if you were standing on that set it looked like you saw the sky around you at all times.

**Craig:** Wow. Cool.

**John:** And because they could do it that way they had this freedom of being able to look in any direction and have it make sense. And they can essentially light with the sky outside which was brilliant.

**Craig:** It’s kind of a return to the old school way of doing things.

**John:** Absolutely. It was false sun, but it was terrific. It was exactly, I think, the right way to do this movie. And with the prep they were able to sort of, you know, they color the sky in the certain way and they could animate the clouds in a certain way. That was really, really rewarding for that movie.

So, I recommend Box as not only sort of something that’s really cool now but as inspiration for other great filmmaking techniques.

**Craig:** I have to say that I love it. I kind of want projection and rear screen projection and all that stuff to come back. It used to be so clunky, obviously, but now if they’re getting it done and making it awesome. I hate green screen. I hate it. I mean, it’s useful but —

**John:** Everyone hates green screen. There’s not an actor or director. No one on earth other than people who make their living in post-production really like green screen because it’s so hard to know what a moment feels like.

**Craig:** There’s a sequence at the end of Hangover III where John Goodman has met up with the guys on this little cliff overlooking Las Vegas. They’re out in the dessert and it’s basically dawn. And it’s really hard to shoot at dawn, because you get about 10 usable minutes of dawn.

And to shoot this scene with all these characters, I mean, first of all it was a long scene. It was like six pages. And everybody was talking.

**John:** There are like 12 people in that scene, too, so any kind of coverage is going to kill you.

**Craig:** Exactly. It’s crazy, right? But we wanted dawn. Todd and our DP, Larry Sher, came up with this plan and basically it was that we would shoot at dusk for dawn. We would shoot all night. And then we would shoot dawn for dawn. And once the sun got out of the way, the green screens went up. So, we shot plates. So, so much of that stuff is actually green screen. A bunch of it is live and a bunch of it is green screen.

And in the end, the green screen is remarkable. You just don’t know that any of it is green screen. But, shooting at three in the morning with people floating in front of space-less green is so disorienting. It is so hard to believe what you’re seeing because the frame has no context. You know you’re framed correctly because you have your references. It’s just psychologically really difficult.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Everyone, you’re right, everyone hates it. It’s a tough thing to do. The only area where it makes life wonderful is when you’re shooting cars because inside a car is just like — driving the process car up and down the road is the worst.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Can’t talk to — and then it’s easier. You can talk to the actors. You can adjust and all the rest.

Well, that’s very cool. And Big Fish did have some terrific projections. Really cools stuff. I love the way that the sort of wood slats moved up and around. I mean, technically it’s a remarkable production.

**John:** Yes, it was very, very difficult. But one of the goals behind it, and Julian Crouch was our designer. And he brought us these reference photos of this old barn he’d found. And like the sun was blasting through this old barn and he’s like, “Well that’s terrific.” So it makes this really warm thing. But then by projecting onto it we can create the other spaces we need to create.

And the challenge has always been when to do enough and not do too much. And we’ve had to sort of be very careful about, you know, when you have those tool boxes where you can do anything, the expectation to do everything.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** And we had to stop that. An example would be in the second act there’s a moment where we go to visit this woman who has a house. And we illustrate sort of — there’s a very specific plan around how we animate in the other houses and the trees. That was terrific. But, I had to say like the clouds can’t move. Because the clouds were originally moving and they were so beautiful that I could not pay any attention to the scene because the clouds were incredibly beautiful.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, we had to sort of take it back a step so that you see that. Yet, later in that scene there’s an animation that shows time passing, and so this tree that’s a certain size grows to a full size.

**Craig:** Yes. And everybody goes, “Ooh-ah,” when it happens.

**John:** Yeah. There’s a gasp.

**Craig:** Which is funny because it’s the animation you could see on like a Saturday morning show.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** But there’s something about being in the theater where like, “Oh my god! Look at that!”

**John:** It’s absolutely true.

**Craig:** Yeah. People really liked it.

**John:** That’s been a rewarding scene to see.

**Craig:** Well, you know, I had a One Cool Thing. I’m going to call an audible and change it. Because in a larger sense my One Cool Thing is Big Fish, but really specifically there’s one guy in the show that listens to our podcast, Ryan Andes.

**John:** He’s the best. I gave Ryan Andes a giant hug yesterday because he literally saved — he emotionally saved my life at a very difficult juncture.

**Craig:** He did?

**John:** Yeah. We put in a change yesterday that would not have worked if he had not just been a grounded, amazing person.

**Craig:** Really?

**John:** And he got two big hugs because I wouldn’t be here without him.

**Craig:** Wow, well you’ll have to tell me what the changes are.

**John:** After the show I’ll tell you what the changes were.

**Craig:** So, Ryan Andes plays Karl the Giant.

**John:** Yeah, Karl with a K. You said C in the tweet.

**Craig:** Oh, I did?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Sorry.

**John:** Because Cs aren’t funny. Ks are funny.

**Craig:** But I didn’t know if he was an American. He seemed American and not a German Karl.

**John:** But a giant should always be a K.

**Craig:** Perhaps a giant should always be, yeah. He’s great in the show. He’s my favorite character in the show, not including the main character, but of all the menagerie of larger than life characters in the show he’s my favorite.

He’s sweet. He’s adorable. And he was the guy who says the thing that finally got me to tear up in the show, that finally squeezed tears out of my miserable dark heart, full of umbrage. Roiling pit of resentment.

**John:** Karl made Craig cry.

**Craig:** Yes, Karl was really good. And it turns out, so I’m walking out I’m like, god, that Karl, I told you , is the one who made me cry. And you’re like, “Well, you know, he listens to the podcast.”

And I’m like no way! So, we walk outside, you know, the little stage exit where all the people are there to get their autographs and so forth and there’s Karl. And Karl seemed more excited to meet me, [laughs], and I just thought it was like you have to stop, it’s freaking me out. It’s weird. All I did was sit there and watch it. Karl I loved. He was such a great guy.

Ryan Andes is such a great guy. And he’s so good in the show. Kids will love him.

**John:** Kids do love him.

**Craig:** Everyone is going to want a Karl doll.

**John:** That’s what we need to sell. We’re still working on our merch, so maybe we’ll get a —

**Craig:** Karl doll obviously in the squirrel fur suit.

**John:** Exactly. Yeah, Karl has a couple different wardrobe changes, but it really is original.

**Craig:** Yeah. You want to go for the long hair, giant face, giant beard, crazy Karl.

**John:** Crazy Karl.

**Craig:** Cave Karl.

**John:** Cave Karl is what you want.

**Craig:** Cave Karl is the toy.

**John:** He actually sort of has a Captain Caveman feel. Captain Caveman, the animated character, and just stretched him to —

**Craig:** Elongated. Correct. He was great and he’s such a good guy. So, Ryan, thank you for listening all this time. You were terrific. I was far more excited to meet you than you were to meet me, I promise you.

**John:** Hooray. Standard housekeeping. Here’s stuff at the end. If you are listening to us on a device, you probably subscribe to us through iTunes, but if you didn’t you should subscribe to us through iTunes. Just search for Scriptnotes and we’re there. And we love comments. So, if you want to leave a comment that’s great.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** On iTunes you will see the most recent 20 episodes. If you wanted to go back into the archives, those are available. So, at johnaugust.com/scriptnotes you will see all 111 episodes are available there. The most recent 20 are free for anybody.

**Craig:** Free.

**John:** Free. The further back episodes you can subscribe. It’s $1.99 a month for all you can eat, all the episodes.

**Craig:** Forever.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** Forever! Two bucks a month.

**John:** Two bucks a month.

**Craig:** Come on!

**John:** You can save a child’s life or you could listen to Craig… [laughs]

**Craig:** You actually can’t save a child’s life on $2 a month.

**John:** No, you really can’t. You can’t do anything

**Craig:** I feel like people lie about that.

**John:** I don’t know. Maybe you could blow a kid’s nose for $2 a month.

**Craig:** For $2 a month you could probably send them $1 month. [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] So, that’s an option if you want to listen to those old episodes.

**Craig:** And when we do our next podcast together will you be back in Los Angeles?

**John:** Wow, I think I might be. This is a Friday. I’m bad at time math. No, I think we’re going to do one more where I’m on Skype.

**Craig:** Okay.

**John:** I should also say if you would like all of those episodes in one handy package…

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** …we are making more of those USB drives that have all 100 of our first episodes.

**Craig:** That’s the way to go.

**John:** That’s a simple way to go.

**Craig:** It’s like buying the first few seasons of Breaking Bad. And then we’ll do another thumb drive for the second 100. Then we’ll do some mega — by the time we get to 500, it’ll just be brain drive.

**John:** Totally. There won’t be USB drives anymore.

**Craig:** You know, brain drive is right up there with flying car. We’re going to keep talking about piping things directly into people’s brains and flying cars, neither will happen.

**John:** I think there will be some sort of embeddable device that lets you reference things.

**Craig:** Not going to happen.

**John:** Because they already have those things where you can see on your tongue. They can map a camera to your tongue. And so like blind people can actually use a video camera to see which is nutso. So, there’s going to be ways to —

**Craig:** Wait a second. You mean they can…?

**John:** So, essentially they put a little sensor on your tongue, this little white square strip.

**Craig:** So, it’s pushing on your tongue.

**John:** No, it’s actually electrically —

**Craig:** Sending an image. To what?

**John:** To the receptors on your tongue. And your tongue is actually sensitive enough that it starts to be able to see, just a black and white image, but like blind people can navigate with these little video cameras and that could be next week’s One Cool Thing. We’ll send you the link.

**Craig:** Does it work with porn? [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] That would be so awesome. The soldier is like, “I can finally watch porn!”

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly.

**John:** It would be like one of those terrible GIF kind of porn things. But, yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, you know, any technology, within minutes, porn.

**John:** It would seem like magic. Any technology —

**Craig:** Adam Carolla once said, it was so funny, he said, “Just the fact within 15 minutes of something new being invested, some new physical thing being invented, within 15 minutes someone is putting it up their butt.” [laughs]

**John:** [laughs] Very likely.

**Craig:** I think he’s right.

**John:** Yeah. And that is or show this week. So, if you have a question for me or Craig, you can write into ask@johnaugust.com and we occasionally go through those questions and try to answer them on the air. You can talk to Craig @clmazin.

**Craig:** @clmazin.

**John:** On Twitter. I am @johnaugust. And, Craig, thank you for coming to New York.

**Craig:** Thank you for having me. Great show. And I’ll see you on Skype.

**John:** Awesome. Bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [Lobot](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lobot)
* LA Times on the [Gamechanger Film Fund](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-film-fund-gamechanger-female-directors-20130926,0,4152777,full.story)
* LA Times on [LA’s new Film Czar](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-garcetti-appoints-sherak-film-czar-20130926,0,6798783.story)
* [Patti Lupone stops the show to yell at a photographer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WruzPfJ9Rys) on YouTube
* [Box](http://www.botndolly.com/box) by Bot & Dolly
* [Rear projection effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear_projection_effect) on Wikipedia
* Big Fish production designer [Julian Crouch](http://juliancrouch.com/portfolio/Welcome.html)
* Big Fish’s [Ryan Andes](http://ryanandes.com/), and [on Twitter @AndesRyan](https://twitter.com/AndesRyan)
* [Blind soldier uses tongue device to ‘see’](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/mar/15/blind-soldier-tongue-sight) at The Guardian
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Scriptnotes listener Matthew Chilelli

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/adventures-in-semi-colons).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 105 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Yeah, I really miss Moviefone guy.

**Craig:** Moviefone guy was awesome. He was enthusiastic about anything, didn’t matter what. “You have selected Care Bears at 9:40am.”

**John:** [laughs] I think if someone is going to a Care Bears movie at 9:40pm, it’s really troubling. That’s an example — I haven’t even thought about Moviefone, but an example of like technology replacing something. Like who would use Moviefone now?

**Craig:** Moviefone, there must be a word for technology that in and of itself was revolutionary but only occupied a very thin wedge of time before it washed away by even more revolutionary technology.

**John:** Revolutionary obsolescence. So, that tiniest little sliver of time which was very, very important. You had actually sent me a long time ago the David Fincher directed You Will commercials.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Which we’ll find a link to those. They’re so amazing. So, basically this is 1993, I think. AT&T hired David Fincher to direct these commercials about like how in the future these amazing things will happen and AT&T will be the company that will provide them for you.

And the truth is AT&T didn’t really provide almost any of the stuff that they say in the commercials, but a lot of it is almost exactly right. And so like video calling, except they’re using a phone booth and it’s like, what? Or you’ll send a fax from the beach and it’s like, well, you’ll send email; that’s better than a fax.

**Craig:** Right. You’ll send a PDF.

**John:** And I love seeing a young Jenna Elfman tucking her baby into bed on the little video phone.

**Craig:** That’s right. Normally futurists get it completely wrong. In this case they were spot on.

**John:** They were spot on except that David Fincher foresaw a future in which everyone was living inside Blade Runner. And it didn’t happen quite that way.

**Craig:** No. Turns out we just don’t want that.

**John:** No. It turns out we basically want to stare at our iPhones the whole day.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But we’re not going to do that right now because we have a lot to talk about.

**Craig:** So much.

**John:** We’re going to do three Three Page Challenges today. But first off we need to like not bury the lead and there is going to be a New York City live show coming up.

**Craig:** Ah yeah!

**John:** There were legends and rumors about it on the last podcast, but it’s actually really happening now.

**Craig:** I’m going back home, to my hometown. We’re gonna do it!

**John:** [laughs] It’ll be Monday, September 23, at 8pm. It’s going to be at the New World Stages on 50th. It’s just amazing that it’s actually all worked out. And so I think we’re going to be selling tickets starting tomorrow. So, if you’re listening to this podcast on the day it comes out, on Tuesday, I think on that Wednesday we’ll be selling tickets.

But, if not, then Craig or I will tweet about it. And so you will see like, ooh, this is the date that they’re actually selling tickets.

**Craig:** Where could we get the tickets?

**John:** You can follow the link that will be on johnaugust.com that will take you to the right place. And so we’ll have the actual click-through code to do that. It’s a Telecharge theater, so we have to sell them through Telecharge. So, tickets are actually $10 rather than the $5 I would love them to be, which was LA, but it’s also New York, so everything is more expensive.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But for your $10 you’re not only getting me, and Craig, and a live show, and sort of the other surprises that come with that; you’re getting actually Andrew Lippa who is the lyricist and composer for Big Fish who I’ve been talking about on the podcast for forever. And there will be a piano there, so I think there’s going to be some singing.

**Craig:** Ahh!

**John:** I think Craig is going to have to do some singing.

**Craig:** [sings] I don’t have to.

**John:** It’s always been rumored that Craig will sing on the show and this time it’ll happen.

**Craig:** Well, just, I mean, if I’m going to be on a Broadway stage.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** A Broadway-ish stage.

**John:** Did I tell you what stage we’re actually going to be on?

**Craig:** You mentioned that this is the stage where people here songs like, “Everyone’s a little racist, today.”

**John:** Well, see, that’s the amazing thing. So, we’re in this theater complex that is also hosting Avenue Q, a pretty amazing show. Peter and the Starcatcher, another show I love. But, those shows actually have shows that night, so we couldn’t be on one of their stages, so we needed to find a stage that was going to be available on Monday at 8pm. And it turns out to be Gazillion Bubble Show.

**Craig:** Ooh, I don’t know the Gazillion Bubble Show.

**John:** The Gazillion Bubble Show is a popular family entertainment that is designed for people with young kids who should not be going to a show at 8pm. The people who should be going to a show at 8pm on Monday September 23 are screenwriters and people who are interested in things that screenwriters are interested in.

**Craig:** Great. I am super excited. Just so excited. I really am. I mean, it’s a big deal to see my peeps and your peeps. Hopefully given that it’s a city of 14 billion people on a small island, that people will show up.

**John:** Yeah, you’re exaggerating a little bit, but I think people will be able to come. Los Angeles we sold out in four minutes. I really don’t think we’re going to sell out in four minutes, but I would say that it would be useful to follow Craig or I on Twitter so that we can tell you if there’s something, there’s a reason to move quickly on tickets, because we just don’t know. We have no idea how many people are coming to that show.

**Craig:** If we sold out in LA in four minutes, I think it’s fair to say that we might sell out in New York in eight minutes.

**John:** I would hope that just for everyone wanting to be able to come that everyone can come who wants to come, but I do want people to be able to come who want to see it. Plus Andrew Lippa has like a bunch of people who want to see him for Broadway reasons, so that’s going to create seat competition too.

**Craig:** I would like to make one request: No weirdos.

**John:** Yeah. No weirdos.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know what I mean, I don’t mean quirky. I mean, if people just don’t like you, don’t come.

**John:** So, there won’t be a bar in our actual facility, but there will be a cash bar down the hallway. And so you can go and hang out and see people who saw Avenue Q at the same time, too. And so we’ll go down there and it’ll be fun.

**Craig:** Neat.

**John:** Like all things, it will be tighter and more packed because it’s New York City, but it should be a good time.

**Craig:** Tighter and more packed. More expensive. The usual.

**John:** Usually. Sometimes.

**Craig:** More Jewish.

**John:** Speaking of things that are small and packed full of value, those USB Scriptnotes drives — I’m desperate for segues at all points. That’s really a defining characteristic. I’m always looking for the segue to get me out of this talking competition.

**Craig:** I gave you one. I said more Jewish. There’s so many ways you could have gone with that.

**John:** How could I go from Jewish to a USB drive, Craig Mazin?

**Craig:** So, for those of you looking to save money or perhaps if you’re looking for a good deal… — Oh, you can’t do that; that’s racist.

**John:** I can’t do that.

**Craig:** But you know what? [sings] Everyone’s a little bit racist, today.

**John:** If you’re being specifically anti-Semitic, is that racist in general?

**Craig:** It is. Because, the Jewish people are both people of religion and they are also an ethnic group.

**John:** Okay.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And I can’t argue with you because you’re Jewish.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s right. Ha!

**John:** Trump card thrown.

**Craig:** Finally! It’s the upside. Uh…

**John:** So, can you hear the sirens on my side?

**Craig:** You bet. Oh, and it feels good, man. It feels good.

**John:** Yeah. I’m above a fire station here, which has usually actually not been so bad at all, except for all the tourists who want to like get their photo taken in front of the New York Fire Station. It’s like, I kind of get it, but at the same time, get out of my way.

**Craig:** Right. Well, you are officially becoming a New Yorker.

**John:** Yeah. That’s really what it has come down to is I’m annoyed by all these things. I think I may have already told this on the podcast but for someone who doesn’t live in New York, I live in New York a lot now. And I remember thinking when I was here for rehearsals this last time, “Who should I vote for for mayor?” And then I realized, oh, I don’t live here.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can’t vote.

**John:** I can’t vote. But what I will do, and can do, is tell you that the USB drives that hold the first 100 episodes of Scriptnotes, a bunch of people bought them which is fantastic and we’re so glad you bought them. They’re being made now. And they will be in the mail soon. We hope to get them out the door this coming week. I don’t know that we’re going to quite hit that date, but they’ll be coming out really soon.

And so after we said this is the cutoff and we’re not making any more of them, we really aren’t going to make any more of them, but we made enough that I think we’re going to have some left over. So, at a certain point we’ll reopen the store and sell some more of those ones, because I know that people keep joining the show late and the USB drives are a helpful way for people to catch up on 100 episodes of Craig.

**Craig:** Yeah. Of awesomeness. Sheer awesome.

**John:** Of awesomeness.

**Craig:** Pure awesome.

**John:** You had news, too. Is that correct?

**Craig:** Yeah, a little housekeeping of my own. Last podcast we were discussing the Olympics in one of our little side trips. And I mentioned that the Olympics were started in Greece, cradle of civilization. How strange then that they should be taking place in Russia where they’re strangely being uncivilized towards our LGBT — am I leaving one out? LGBT, yeah, that group.

**John:** That’s the group.

**Craig:** Friends. And Lexi Alexander, a Twitter follower of ours, pointed out in fact I was an ignoramus, [laughs] because while the games did, of course, originate in Greece, when they originated they were religious in nature. They were for men only. The men competed in the nude. And women were barred from watching. And if, in fact, they were caught watching they were put to death.

So, on the one hand, yes, Lexi is absolutely correct — my view that the Olympics were somehow borne of enlightened civilization. No, they were not. On the other hand, the Olympics are even gayer than I thought.

**John:** Yeah, they’re gayer and more horrible than you ever thought. [Crosstalk]

**Craig:** [laughs] Exactly. So, really, Russia, if you want to be true to the Olympic spirit, which was borne from nude men wrestling, I don’t know, rethink your dumb decisions.

**John:** Oh Russia.

**Craig:** Oh Russia!

**John:** But it’s not like we can even point to like this is a time where Russia was fantastic and like go back to that time. No, there have been problems kind of from the start.

**Craig:** Yeah. They’re consistently wrong about stuff. Consistently.

**John:** Yeah. I feel like the US has had some really good strong golden periods where you could point to significant flaws and sort of how some stuff was working, but the overall spirit was really good, like, “Oh, that’s a promising country.” And rarely can you say, “Wow, Russia is where I really want to be.”

**Craig:** They haven’t had their Golden Age, have they? [laughs] It’s been one awful situation after another. And vodka seems to make the pain go away.

**John:** Yeah. I think it was a Simpsons line. “Oh alcohol. The cause of and solution to most of life’s problems.”

**Craig:** “All of life’s problems.” Yeah.

**John:** All of those problems.

**Craig:** In Russia [crosstalk].

**John:** Today we have — did you have more to do business, or can we get to the Three Page Challenges?

**Craig:** Should I come up with something? Nah, whatever. Let’s do it. Let’s just go ahead and let’s do it.

**John:** Stuart did us right this week. And I thought we have interesting things to talk about.

**Craig:** We do.

**John:** So, should we start with Oblivion?

**Craig:** Why not?

**John:** Or Bury My Heart? Let’s start with Oblivion.

**Craig:** Do you want to summarize, or shall I?

**John:** I will summarize this one.

**Craig:** Very good.

**John:** This is An Oblivion Prolonged. It’s by Keith Alan Eiler. As always, we need to thank, and I feel like sometimes we don’t — this has gotten to be so routine that we’re not acknowledging and thanking people for their bravery and courage in sending in these three pages of their scripts to us.

**Craig:** Indeed.

**John:** Because that’s really kind of amazing that they’re trusting that we’re going to talk about their work on the air and hopefully get productive feedback, but also let the whole rest of the world see what they wrote. Anyway, so thank you Keith for sending this in.

So, story starts, exterior the Mars Space Station. And so this is a space station that is above the planet, but we’re actually inside a psychologist’s office. And Dr. Anderson is doing a consultation and a meeting with a guy named David Troxler, who is 40. And they’re talking about Troxler’s relationship with his wife and just other difficulties on the station. And clearly something is going not great but not terribly. They wouldn’t want to end up like Perkins.

And so Perkins is actually a guy we see running frantically down the space station hallway. We’re watching him from the security camera’s point of view. He’s dressed in pajama bottoms. Like, he’s freaking out.

We’re also meeting some other people on the space station, Jake Martell, who is watching this footage, and Perkins is talking about himself and sort of what he did in the past. “It’s weird just to be watching, seeing it all outside myself through different eyes.” It’s basically near the end of one of their rotations on the station and it’s clearly time to consider whether to re-up or not re-up. And that is about as much as we know of the situation on the station at the end of page three.

**Craig:** I detected that you were struggling a bit to summarize this. [laughs]

**John:** Yes, you did. It’s not just because I read it this morning and now we’re late at night.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** It was hard to grab onto specific memorable story details from these three pages.

**Craig:** Yeah. There was, actually all three of the Three Pages that we’re going to discuss today tied back somewhat neatly to our discussion last week about confusing the audience and finding that line between mystery and confusion. And here I think we fall pretty rapidly into confusion territory.

On the one hand I commend our author, Keith, for being ambitious here in the way he’s presenting this. And it is an interesting situation. We’re looking at a space station and then when we go inside the space station we see that there’s a therapy session going on. It reminded me a little bit of the opening scene of Blade Runner where the replicant is being interviewed and it was somewhat disturbing.

But a couple of things sort of jumped out that kept stopping me. A small thing — we don’t use “pre-lap” generally in feature films. We use “off-screen” usually.

**John:** I use pre-lap all the time.

**Craig:** Oh, you say pre-lap? It’s the first time I’ve seen it in a script, but that’s fine. Then it’s a choice. It’s no big deal.

Dr. Anderson, I mean, and the descriptions of things are interesting and well written. I thought the dialogue was interesting. But I couldn’t quite follow what was going on here in this discussion. It seems that Troxler is having issues with his wife, Ellen. He refers to the Kepler problem, which Dr. Anderson doesn’t understand, nor did I.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Dr. Anderson is uncomfortable. I’m not sure why. He brings it back to a discussion of the wife. Troxler, “a smirk briefly plays on Troxler’s lips, then fades.” Not sure why. And then Dr. Anderson starts talking about a conversation that he’s had with Troxler’s wife, which also sort of surprised me because generally therapists don’t do that.

Bu then Troxler sort of laughs at the thought that she’s starting to lose it. And now Dr. Anderson is comfortable and now all the weirdness has gone away. I’m not sure why. And then they refer to Perkins. When we go to Perkins, what we’re seeing actually is a video of Perkins freaking out. And then we reveal that he’s in a sick bay room with Jake Martell, possibly a doctor, I’m not sure, or an assistant or so forth. And he’s watching this video with Perkins and Perkins is talking about, “I guess I won’t be joining you out there.

He says, “I bet it turns out to be a latchup with that five series.” I just don’t know what’s happening or what’s going on.

So, by the end of page three I was confused both by the circumstances, I was confused by some of the in jokes that I think I was supposed to get but didn’t. And I was confused mostly about the emotional state of a bunch of these people. So, I’m not sure what to think.

I mean, it could be that by page four through eight everything clicks in and I get it. But, I don’t know, what about you.

**John:** So, yes, clearly I share a lot of your concern that I had a hard time knowing what was going on. And our mutual friend, Rawson Thurber, he has this term which I trot out every once and awhile, is “obscurity for death,” which is like I don’t understand what’s happening and sometimes I worry that this writer is using our confusion as sort of like a smokescreen so we think that more is happening than is really happening.

Some basics, some fundamental things I was confused about, which is just from a writing perspective: how big is this space station? If you’re going to show us an exterior of the spaces station, give us a sense of size and scale because after these three pages I don’t know if there’s 100 people on the station or 1,000 or ten. And so I have a very limited sense of what this is.

I’m thinking it’s a pretty big space station if they have a separate psychologist’s office. And if someone has like — one of them has like a living room. So, it’s like, well, if you’re big enough to have — or Troxler has a dining room. If you’re in a station that is big enough that you actually have a dining room, like not a dining hall, but a private dining room, that’s a pretty big thing.

I didn’t have a good sense of what kind of world I was in. And that was frustrating to me.

All that said, this guy could be Shane Carruth. This guy could be a guy who makes Primer or Upstream Color, both of which are like really hard to follow at the start, but are actually genius.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so I want to fully acknowledge that this could be just terrific and it’s just very hard to follow in this Three Page little sample.

Looking at some specific things on the page, though. First off, Craig is right, and pre-lap is not the right word for Troxler on page one. Pre-lap is if a person is going to start talking before the cut, and it’s sort of important that they’re talking before the cut. But that would mean that he would have to be the first person talking after the cut, and that’s not happening here. So, it’s really off-screen is what you’d want there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** “EXT. MARS SPACE STATION — SPACE.” Eh, we’re in space twice. To me, I say you can get rid of the day and night kind of thing when you’re in space. You’re in space.

Let’s look at the very first sentence: “We see a faintly lit space station over the desolate surface of Mars.” Well, here’s a case where we don’t need “we see.” It’s just, “A faintly lit space station over the desolate surface of Mars.” We need no subject. We need no verb. Just give us that fragment because that’s what we need. It’s just sort of the noun phrase explaining what this is.

**Craig:** And also say “The faintly lit.” It’s a small thing, but if you’ve established that Mars Space Station exists in the slug line, then I would go to “the.”

**John:** Yeah, “the.” Or, you might just give us space and then reveal. Like, why don’t you be a little bit more cinematic in that very first moment of like how you’re showing what this is? And give us a sense of the size, because right now I don’t know what I’m looking at. And that’s frustrating for the reader who is starting this thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** We may title this episode Adventures in Semi-Colons, because semi-colons prop up as a problem here.

**Craig:** Yeah, I noticed this.

**John:** The same first paragraph. “Round and round, never stopping; providing artificial gravity to its inhabitants.” Okay, a semi-colon is almost never the right choice. They’re a very powerful tool but they’re almost never kind of the right thing you want to use, especially in screenwriting.

First off, it’s not even the right grammatical form here because that should be an independent phrase after the semi-colon.

**Craig:** Two independent clauses. The second somehow commenting on the first.

**John:** Yes. That’s not happening here.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** A comma would work here.

**Craig:** Or a dash, or an ellipses.

**John:** Yes. Or, most cases where I’ve seen people try to join thoughts together with a semi-colon, a period would have been a much better friend. Screenwriting is about short sentences. So, keep those sentences short.

We’re inside the psychologist’s office. “This is a practical square room with tile carpeting, plain walls, and an airtight hatch for an entrance.” That’s D&D description. That’s very much like, you know, you’ve entered into a 40 foot by 40 foot room with a pit on the far side. It’s not painting the world in a special way. And so this is not a terrific way to start a block.

**Craig:** I agree. But, I’ll also qualify the criticism a little bit by saying this may be the style of this movie. In other words, this movie may be a kind of very antiseptic, cold sort of thing.

If you notice — Keith, I assume this is intentional. I hope it is, otherwise I’m angry — Keith is constantly commenting on the colors of things.

So, I just wonder if this is part of the vibe. Because everyone seems sort of oddly Valiumed and even the descriptions of the rooms are Valiumed. So, maybe that’s part of the style of it. But, I agree, and unfortunately it makes for a very challenging first three pages.

**John:** It does. And I haven’t read the script for Moon. I really liked the movie Moon. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the very first pages of Moon kind of felt like this, because it’s just like people plotting through a normal routine.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But then again you have to be able to get people to read page four. And so there’s always that issue. I agree with you on the Kepler problem. It’s really a challenge when you’re starting off a movie by referring to someone who is not even on screen and like are we supposed to get it, are we not supposed to get it? Now I’m confused. Should I be looking back ahead to see if I’ve missed something? That’s a frustration is when you’re referring to something we have no idea of what you’re actually taking about. And then when the character is in the world, or ambiguous about how they’re responding to it, it’s not going to be your best friend.

On a general character sense, I have a hard time believing this doctor/patient relationship. Now, maybe it actually all makes sense. Maybe there’s a really good reason why these things are this way. And later on in the film I will understand what was actually happening, but in the moment I saw it I didn’t believe it. And so much of screenwriting is maintaining the reader’s trust. And that being confident in the writer’s ability to get me to the next point. Like my placing my faith in you is merited and when I don’t believe this thing that seems like it’s a psychologist/patient relationship, then I’m a little suspicious as I go onto the next page, and the next page.

**Craig:** Yeah. This is a tough one. It may be mumblecore in space. And it may be awesome, like you said. These are challenging pages. They’re challenging to the reader. That’s not always a bad thing, but I would say I guess to Keith hopefully that was your intention. Because if it wasn’t, then we have a problem. If it was, well, you’re there. And then you understand that you’ve made your bed a certain way and you’re going to lie in it. And some people are going to be into it and some people are just going to check out and it’s not going to be for them.

But as long as this is what you intended, I would have to say you’ve achieved it.

**John:** Yeah. One thing I actually really liked, on page three, was I really Perkins’ line, “I bet it turns out to be latchup with that five series.” That’s the kind of, like, it’s something that’s out there in the world I sort of believe that they’re talking about. It’s when characters talk about football and I don’t really know what they’re talking about, but I believe they know what they’re talking about. So, like “latchup” is a strange word, but I believe it’s a word that exists in their world.

I’d much rather have that kind of, like I don’t know what they’re talking about, because I believe they know what they’re talking about, than referencing some character who is not there and I need to start thinking about them.

**Craig:** You know, it’s funny. I know what you mean, but I didn’t like it here because it felt a little precious, it felt a little forced. Look at me, I’m using lingo that they don’t understand, especially because even what he was saying, to me this was the part where the dialogue got a little chunky. “Guess I won’t be joining you out there tonight, Jake.”

That’s just not a very good line.

**John:** No, it’s not.

**Craig:** And then, “I bet it turns out to be…” Why are you saying what you bet it turns out to be? You’re not joining him out there. You’re upset. You just watched yourself freaking out. It seemed like a weird moment to do that. But, you know, then again, this is… — Clearly there’s a very specific tone here and this is one of those areas where I don’t want to criticize something because I might not like the movie, because other people might love it.

This isn’t a question of the writing that much. It’s just the tone. So, I do know that the “dining room/kitchen area is basic white, but with pale red, blue and yellow accents to give it some color.” That better be intentional. Keith, just let us know that the color thing is something you’re doing on purpose.

**John:** Yeah. I would hope so.

**Craig:** I mean, different colored jumpsuits and everything has a color.

**John:** Aren’t you always — I think I’m just now by default suspicious of anything set in a space/science-fiction thing that’s all going to be some kind of weird dream. This is called An Oblivion Prolonged, but then I saw Oblivion and it’s like I went through that whole movie like, okay, well I’m going to figure out what the twist of this is because there’s clearly a twist, and clearly people are like not talking about something they should be talking about.

I think we need to do something about that. I feel like we need to stop making that movie or figure out a way to get around that.

**Craig:** Moratorium on scary nightmarish space stations. Well, I mean, it’s a good analogy for alienation and existential dread.

**John:** And the police state, I guess, too.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** The sense of constant surveillance.

**Craig:** Yeah. Hell is other people. I mean, yeah, there’s something useful about it, but you’re right, we have seen it and it can verge on pretentious occasionally, hurtling over the line into full pretentiousness. But hopefully this works out.

**John:** Cool. Let’s do Bury My Heart next.

**Craig:** Bury My Heart, written by Minhal Baig. I’m hoping I’m pronouncing that right. Minhal Baig.

**John:** That’s how I would do it.

**Craig:** Okay. Fantastic. So, we open, we’re inside a hotel room. Someone is changing their clothes inside, but we just hear that, and we’re looking at stacks of cash piled inside of an open briefcase as well as a gun and bullets. Then we move away from there. Now we’re outside of a strip club at the same time. A black Mercedes is parked across the street from the strip club as its closing up and the performers are leaving.

Inside the car we meet Max in his 40s. He’s a stoic type. And he’s looking in his rearview mirror, watching women passing by. And here comes Rachel, 20s, texting. She sees the car, stops, and then keeps moving. And then a different girl, also in 20s, a little sloppy and drunk perhaps, leans over the open passenger window and basically sort of propositions Max.

He asks her to get in the car. She sits down. He gives her a black duffle bag. She opens it up and it is full of cash. $50,000 to be precise. She wants to know what’s the catch, why is he giving her this money. He takes out a gun, puts her hands around it, puts the gun against his chest, and essentially is asking her to kill him. She’s scared, leaves, and he seems upset about that.

And this is Bury My Heart. Minhal Baig.

**John:** Bury My Heart. So, let’s talk about — before we get into the specifics of the writing, let’s talk about if this were the first three minutes of a movie, that’s interesting. I mean, I’m curious what his deal is. I didn’t necessarily believe how it happened here, but I think that provocative act of like trying to get a stranger to kill you in the start of your movie is interesting.

So, I think it’s an interesting way to start a story. Is it the right way to start your story? Who knows. But I thought it was an interesting way to start the story.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I had a hard time reading these three pages and sort of getting the through thread of what was important, what was not important. And I think the specific words on the page were not helping Minhal to create this provocative image. Because I got confused a lot and had to sort of keep backtracking to make sure I was actually following what I was supposed to be following.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let’s dig in on that. Right from the very start. We’re in a hotel room. “An empty bedroom, but clearly lived-in. The light from the bathroom streams in.” So, if you’re in a hotel room, are you in a bedroom? Well, it’s a bedroom if there’s a separate sort of room, but then it’s a more fancy thing. Like weirdly bedroom right in the first sentence through me. Because you think of a bedroom being in a house or a bigger place, but it’s just an empty room if we’re in a hotel room.

Or just be in hotel room and then we don’t have to say anything more in that first sentence.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** The second block stopped me, too. “There is the sound of someone changing their clothes inside.” We’re in the bathroom. “There is the sound of someone changing their clothes inside.” I don’t know what that sounds like.

**Craig:** I don’t know what it sounds like, either. I’m not sure, inside what? Inside the bathroom?

**John:** Inside the bathroom. “The light from the bathroom streams in. There is the sound of someone changing their clothes inside.” But it didn’t —

**Craig:** No. We could hear zippers. We can hear, maybe, you know, or shuffling around, the sound of somebody shuffling around in the bathroom.

**John:** Then we go to “EXT. STRIP CLUB — SAME.” But is it really the same? I think it’s actually meant to be later that night. I think it’s meant to be that same night.

**Craig:** Well, that’s the thing. I was already really super confused because I’m not sure why we even watched this bedroom — not bedroom — hotel room scene.

**John:** Yup. Well, I don’t know either because, so, in this bedroom we see stacks of cash piled inside an open briefcase.

**Craig:** But, no, but it’s not. Because he gives her a duffle bag later. I actually went back to check. It seems like there are two things of cash. So, already I’m just puzzled. And not in a good way.

**John:** Not in a fascinated way.

**Craig:** Right. Grumpy.

**John:** As we get to the strip club, “As the club closes up, its PERFORMERS file out and AD-LIB good-byes to each other. The bouncers lock up.” Well that’s just under-written. First off, the performers, like performers — I had to think, like, oh, we’re at a strip club, so it’s not like Cirque du Soleil. If they’re strippers then say their strippers, or dancers. Performers felt like a weird word for that.

I think asking for ad-libs in the second block of stuff is not ideal. And so if it’s meant to be small chat, whatever, but just don’t say the word ad-lib because I feel like —

**Craig:** I’ve never written “ad-lib” in 18 years.

**John:** Yeah. I think ad-lib is not your friend. It’s certainly not your friend on page one.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** So, some line from somebody. Like just let us know who is important. Or, if nobody is important just let them file out and don’t sort of give them non-words to say right there.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** “MAX, 40s, having mastered cold, emotionless reservation, sits at the wheel.” I don’t know what reservation is. If it’s meant to give us a sense that I guess he’s reserved, but reserved isn’t really reservation. They’re not really the same word.

**Craig:** And, also, he’s mastered it? I don’t even know what that means. Meaning that — we’ll never know that. I guess the point is you can just as easily say, “Max, 40, sits at the wheel, grim, or flat affect, or cold, distant.” But I just hate this sort of like, oh, here’s a backstory that we haven’t earned.

**John:** I mean, just like he’s Ryan Gosling in Drive, but older. I’m of the school that I’m fine cheating a line of description on an important character the first time we meet them because it — someone who’s watching a movie gets to see an actual real person there and gets to make their generalizations about them through that. Because we don’t have an actual person in front of us, I’m okay cheating a line of dialogue that gives you a little bit more than you could actually see or hear. I’m fine with that.

But this didn’t do it for me.

And, the next block we have our adventure in semi-colon there. “From his rearview mirror, he sees a few DRUNKEN WOMEN pass by; one talks loudly on her phone, another walks in a helpless zigzag on the sidewalk.” That semi-colon should be a period. There’s no reason to — the second clause is not commenting on the first clause. They’re separate thoughts.

**Craig:** Also, we’re writing movies, so we don’t say things like, “from his rearview mirror he sees…” We say, “In the rearview mirror, drunken women pass by. Max eyes them.” Or, “Max checks his rearview mirror. In the mirror…” Make it visual. Let’s not get prosy about this sort of thing.

Also, I should also add, shooting things in a rearview mirror is annoying. It’s not just annoying to shoot, because you’re now spending time lining up extras to hit a mirror reflection, it’s also annoying for the audience because a rearview mirror is tiny. A lot of times they’ll take the rearview mirror out of the car anyway because when they’re shooting through the front they don’t want a rearview mirror in front of people’s faces. So, just be aware of that, also. Imagine this in your mind and imagine an audience watching it.

**John:** Yeah. The bigger challenge we have sort of in this page is like Minhal needs is INT/EXT Car, because basically we’re moving back and forth from perspective of being inside the car and watching what’s outside the car. You can make the argument like once we’re inside the car we stay inside the car, once we’re outside the car we stay outside the car. I think INT/EXT Car would be more helpful for him, where he’s actually split the scene header. You describe we’re going to be moving freely back and forth inside and outside the car, especially because on page two someone comes up to the window.

And right now he has it as “INT. CAR — CONTINUOUS.” But really that girl has come up to the car and is outside the car. That is your friend is INT/EXT Car.

**Craig:** Right. He jumps to “EXT. CAR — CONTINUOUS.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I can’t let you go past, “RACHEL, 20s, fresh-faced, sharp and prurient.”

**John:** I circled prurient, too.

**Craig:** Prurient is the wrong word, sir. You do not mean prurient.

**John:** What do you think he meant? Do you think he meant prudent?

**Craig:** I do not know. I know that he didn’t mean prurient because that’s impossible based on what she’s — so prurient means sort of sexually licentious.

**John:** And I don’t think of a person being prurient.

**Craig:** No. It’s an attitude.

**John:** Thoughts being prurient thoughts.

**Craig:** Right. Prurient attitude, prurient thoughts, prurient display. But she’s texting on her phone. There’s nothing prurient about it. I just think he doesn’t know —

**John:** [laughs] You don’t know what she’s texting. She’s texting some really dirty stuff on her phone.

**Craig:** It’s not the right word. It can’t possibly be the right word. Again, all this happening in the rearview mirror.

And, of course, Rachel — who is called out in all caps, so she’s somebody that we’re supposed to care about — just is texting, stops, she’s caught like a dear in the headlights, but he’s looking at her in the rearview mirror so she’s behind the car.

Really, just I’m so confused.

**John:** She’s caught in the taillights, Craig.

**Craig:** [laughs] She’s caught in the taillights, I just… — And then she moves on, so I guess she, what does that even mean? Why? What is she caught by? She’s just behind a car. There’s nothing to catch her attention at all.

**John:** Yeah. So, I get what Minhal is going for here, it’s just it’s hard to follow on the page. Essentially, like, so she recognizes that car, she recognizes who must be in that car, and goes the other way. But that’s not what we actually got on the paper here. And that’s not good.

**Craig:** No. And we need to shift to her perspective for that. We’re not going to see that from his perspective of her. We need to see her approaching the car, see something off with it, stop —

**John:** Stops. React.

**Craig:** And then move away in fear.

**John:** And you know what would really help us know that Rachel is an important character is if she said something to anybody in these first couple of paragraphs.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** Because she clearly just left this club, so let her say something to somebody so we actually establish like, oh, she’s an important character who has a voice and is not like all the other people who are here. But then it’s frustrating because the one who actually is doing the work in this next scene is just called “Girl.”

**Craig:** Girl.

**John:** And it’s like, but she has lines? And so really if a character has more than two lines they should never just be generic. They should never be girl.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** For many reasons. First, like for reader’s clarity, this is an important enough character that this person should have a name. But also think about casting this person. Like, “Oh, I’m going up for Girl.” It’s like, well that sounds like you’re an extra, but no, you actually need someone who can act in this moment because it’s going to be a weird thing where like this guy is giving you money to kill him.

This isn’t an extra. This isn’t somebody you’re spending a week trying to cast. And you’re not going to find the right person by trying to go after Girl.

**Craig:** And my impression was that she’s a prostitute and she’s getting into a car with a man because she presumes he’s out there looking for a hooker. They have a sort of interesting chitchat.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** Although she seems a little oblivious to the fact that he’s creep, which generally isn’t — hookers are sort of good at noticing creepy.

**John:** Good radar.

**Craig:** Yeah, because they deal with this sort of thing all the time.

**John:** But, not this girl because she is “full of youthful sloppiness.”

**Craig:** Ah-ha.

**John:** That’s her line of description.

**Craig:** By the way, all kidding aside, Minhal might have intended that she’s not a hooker and that in fact she’s just a girl who is sort of interested in this guy in a car. But I have no reason to believe that. I mean, he’s in his 40s and she’s in her 20s and it’s night outside of a strip club and he’s alone, grimly, in a car.

So, one way or another this stuff isn’t matching up, and I’m not sure which is intended.

**John:** Yeah. So, what you’re referring to on page two, which is actually my favorite part of the whole thing, is she’s looking at the empty passenger seat and she says, “That taken?” He unlocks the door for her in reply. She opens the door and sits down next to him.

Great. That was an interesting way to get her into the car. And so I liked that moment. I wished the whole thing had moments like that because that would be awesome.

And I didn’t buy, on page three, I liked it up until the point where there’s the gun. “He takes out his gun and clasps her hands around it.” And she says, “Gunplay, huh? I like that.”

**Craig:** No she doesn’t. She’s scared out of her mind. First of all —

**John:** Who would say that?

**Craig:** Before he pulls out the gun, where a normal person would start peeing, he puts a bag on her lap. And her, “What’s this?” That’s all. This is a weird guy you’ve never met and he’s put a black duffel bag on your lap and her response is, “What’s this?”

**John:** You were expecting that there would be a head inside, weren’t you? Weren’t you expecting body parts inside?

**Craig:** Well, no matter what I’m expecting, I don’t think the girl would say anything at all. I think she would be puzzled. And I think then Max would say, “It’s yours. Open it.” And now she would be concerned. But maybe I should open it because I’m scared, and she opens it, and there’s all this money. And I don’t think she would say, “Jesus Christ, there must be like,” I mean, she’s like, “Good golly gee.”

No, I don’t think she’s going to say anything here. This is an example of a scene where you really have to think about the notion of who’s in charge of the scene, who’s driving it, who has power, who is afraid, who is not. Because this is potentially good stuff here, but she’s just yapping away throughout the whole thing here.

And then when she finally gets to “Gunplay, huh? I like that,” we’re like, well, this is not a human.

**John:** Yeah. So, let’s envision together the scene I kind of think that Minhal set out to write, which could be actually really kind of cool. And I think that would actually start with there’s a guy parked outside a strip club, women are coming out, at the end of the night they’re doing their normal stuff. Probably a little chitchat between them in a way that’s actually meaningful so we have some sense of who they are, a little bit of the reality of the world.

One woman knows not to go to that car and goes the other way, but another girl who we’ve established a little bit before she got to the car does go to the car. And in that car something like this scene happens where this guy puts the gun to his chest and basically wants to die.

**Craig:** Yeah. If I were doing a quick rewrite I would actually not start with the car at all. I would start with the strip club, it’s closing, and strippers are coming out. And I would give them little bits of bye-bye dialogue. And I would be following Rachel, who is the person we’re supposed to care about. And I would have her walking and texting. And then I would have her stop and notice the back of a car parked there on its own. And then something about that, she turns and walks the other way, a little frightened.

Then, I would show another girl, one of the other girls who is chitchatting or smoking or something, seeing that car, and sort of walking over to it curiously. And that’s when we would meet Max.

**John:** Yeah. I agree with you. I think it’s a much better way. Because your characters are taking you to the source of danger and you’re not splitting your focus. You’re focusing on one thing and letting that thing that you’re focusing on carry you to the next thing.

**Craig:** Right. And it’s just also a way for, when we have — let’s rename girl. Let’s call her —

**John:** Veronica.

**Craig:** Veronica. Veronica, by seeing the car, and seeing the man, and making a choice to walk over, tells me a ton about Veronica. Before she ever opens her mouth I know that she’s smart, calculating, a hooker, making a decision about a guy, could probably use the money, weighing things and, “Eh, screw it, let’s do it.” But, this is a business transaction for her. The other way is just some girl I don’t know who goes, “Hey Mister. What you doing out here?” [laughs] Well who the hell are you? And why?

So, multiple issues here for Minhal. But, you’re right, the story bones here are promising. So, I think Minhal, man or woman, not sure, either way, Minhal, you have a good idea here for how to open a movie, which is a man propositioning a hooker not for sex but to kill him. And that’s an interesting mystery to start with, why, and all the rest of it.

Not so sure that the plan is very well thought through. I’m not sure what hooker would actually go along with it. But that aside, the issues that we have really are issues of structuring and introduction and revelation and staging.

**John:** I agree.

Let’s go onto our third one for today which is from Brie Williams. We don’t have a title but we know it’s from Brie Williams. So, Brie Williams, thank you for sending it through.

I’ll synopsize here.

We start exterior of Tolly’s BBQ Drive-Thru. And there’s a big plastic pig and a car is there to place an order apparently. And the woman’s voice inside says, “Two rapes and a murder.” And the drive-thru speaker person is confused. “Can you repeat?” “And grand theft auto.”

And then we actually come around to see that Claiborne is the person inside. It says, “BUNNY CLAIBORNE (40s), dark flyaway curls and a white button-down shirt.” And she’s on a car speaker phone. So, she’s talking about two rapes and a murder. She’s not trying to order two rapes and a murder. She’s talking about a grand theft auto charge and talking stuff down. Making some jokes. And then she finally orders a small rib bucket.

In the car she’s actually gotten the BBQ, she’s gotten it on her shirt, she’s gotten it on her bra. She’s like taking the shirt off as she’s going through apparently to work, which is at the exterior of the Harris County Criminal Courthouse where we find her. Establishing shots where we get then to a voiceover which is really truly a pre-lap, where she talks through the defense of her client.

And she makes the point that this guy is clearly squirmy and not a guy you’d want to have around, but just not being the kind of guy you want to have around doesn’t make — is not a reason to send someone to the death house.

Leaving that Claiborne has conversations with a guy named Lonnie, the armed guard, about his wife and her skin disease. And that’s the end of our three pages.

Craig, what did you think?

**Craig:** Well, this was trying to be interesting and it was trying to be funny and I’m afraid I wasn’t very interested and I didn’t laugh.

Now, I want to talk about some of the mistakes that I think happened sort of tonally and some structural mistakes, because I have no idea where this is going to go, but not a big fan here.

Some issues right off the top. I had a real, real problem with the first page, just figuring out what the hell was going on. And once I understood what was going on, it would still be very difficult to actually execute. The idea is that we’re opening on the drive-thru window speaker and we’re hearing Claiborne and then in parenthesis underneath, (OS — from inside car), which is a no-no, “Two rapes and a murder.” And the drive-thru speaker says, “Excuse me? Two apple pies?”

That was, I felt good at that moment. [laughs] I thought, okay, that’s actually quite clever. I like where this is so far. And then it went kind of downhill because then we go inside the car, we meet Bunny Claiborne, the drive-thru speaker is inside her car now saying, “Could you repeat?” Then a phone voice says, “And grand theft auto.” And I’m like, wait, oh, and now she’s on the phone. She’s having a discussion with this guy on the phone.

Her discussion, her character is revealed in this little paragraph, and I’m going to read it: “Oh please, the grand theft charge is bullshit. He moved the car to transport the body. It’s not like he killed her for the car. I mean, have you seen the car? (laughing),” on the same line. “It’s a fucking Dodge Dart.”

Now, am I supposed to hate her? [laughs] Because I hate her now. I find this to be false bravado. It’s very put-offish. And so I’m finding her icky. And also, frankly, the staging of this, again, doesn’t work because people don’t do this.

If they pull up to a window they put the person on hold. They say, “Hold on one sec.” Blah, blah, blah, and a blah, blah, blah, and then they go back to their conversation. They don’t keep talking while the drive-thru speaker guy is talking. It just doesn’t work. I didn’t buy it.

Now we’re heading down, we’re in her car, we do a bit of physical business where she’s unbuttoning her shirt because it’s got BBQ stains on it. She’s swerving around. Okay, so she’s a bit of a mess, I get it. And then we get to the courthouse and over an exterior shot establishing the courtyard plaza of Harris County we have this endless pre-lap.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Generally speaking, you get a sentence in. This has three sentences, the second of which is quite long. So, you have an eight-line long dialogue brick that is meant to be read off-screen.

And then we go inside and we have her delivering the rest of this speech, which frankly I didn’t find very good. I wasn’t — I thought she was making a point that wasn’t particularly sharp. And what was concerning to me was that clearly the movie means for us to believe that this is a sharp, smart argument that she’s making. But all she’s really saying is, “He’s a squiggly guy, but it’s your job to look at the evidence.” You’ll see that everything the prosecution has presented doesn’t amount to capital murder, it amounts to Zacharia Lee is a bad guy.

Now, but surely they presented something else. [laughs] It couldn’t just be that. This is not a great defense she’s mounting. And then people laugh at her line, “Being squiggly.” It just seems like everybody is kind of broad and goofy here. And we finish with this conversation where we spend half of our precious page three chitchatting with Lonnie the armed guard, even though she’s walking on her out, they have this eight-line long exchange that doesn’t particularly go anywhere.

And we do have a — you will point out the completely incorrect semi-colon on the third line as well, but I just couldn’t get a handle on this. What about you?

**John:** Craig, I don’t know how many Three Page Challenges we’ve done — maybe 60 do you think?

**Craig:** A lot, yeah.

**John:** A lot. I’ve never heard you be more wrong about three pages.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** In the entire history of our podcast. If this were a video podcast people would see me being dumbfounded at your responses.

**Craig:** Really? Exciting!

**John:** Yes. I thought these were incredibly promising pages. And so all the technical things you pointed out are actually true. And so parentheticals don’t belong within the block of things. And parentheticals with character names belong up on the line with the character name. Those are simple, basic things that Brie should know and embrace and it will take her five minutes to internalize and she’ll never make those mistakes again.

I thought the first bit was funny. Not like hilariously funny, but here’s what it was: It was funny in exactly the kind of way of like a Kyra Sedgwick TBS show kind of way, where she’s like a tough Texas defense attorney who has a messed up personal life. And I thought for what that was, and I got what that vibe was, I thought it was actually a pretty good job. And so the squiggly thing that you thought was terrible, I actually marked, I wrote in my little erasable pen I wrote, “Terrific. I really liked it.” Except I scratched that “Scattered LAUGHTER in the courtroom,” because it’s not true and it shouldn’t be there.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Because it’s not there. It should be cut.

And, I agree with you, again, about sort of, this felt like a walking into the courtroom conversation rather than a walking out of the courtroom conversation. Because if you’re leaving a building you’re not going to have a long conversation with somebody.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** But if you’re going through security and have to like put your stuff through the bag stuff.

**Craig:** Right. You’re slowly dealing with the nonsense of putting your crap through the thing.

**John:** Then four-eighths of a page on that I totally believe if its helping establish what this is. I thought like here’s the dialogue in this:

I get what she’s going for there. It’s just like that guy who’s like over-engaging, over-sharing information. This feels like it’s a comedy/drama designed for TNT. That’s what I was getting out of this, or an adaptation of one of those detective novels that I would never read.

**Craig:** Okay. [laughs] I…

**John:** You disagree?

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** Which is fine.

**Craig:** I’m sorry. And, l mean, listen Brie, the good news is that you got one of us here for sure. I get sent things like this a lot. There is something off about the way the character is being presented. It doesn’t — it feels a little forced. It feels a little fakey somehow. There is a fake brassiness to it.

I mean, I could see Melissa McCarthy playing Claiborne, but not like this. Yeah…

**John:** Yeah. I think this is like Erin Brockovich as a defense kind of attorney, or that kind of idea. And that’s a reasonable idea. It’s not going to be to Craig Mazin’s taste. But, I thought —

**Craig:** Which we all know is horrendous. [laughs]. I mean, look, yeah, I don’t know. The technical issues that I have, that you have as well, and those are all technical issues, really my issue is I just didn’t like it. And that’s not really, I mean, in the end that’s not why we do these. So, I have to say, Brie, not everybody will like it. Or maybe just I won’t. [laughs] No.

**John:** Because here’s the thing: I bet if we read the rest of this script, and I’m really curious now at this point whether it’s designed as a one-hour or designed as a feature, because I could see either way out of these three pages what’s going to happen here. But my hunch is that if it’s all this quality and actually has a story with a structure, if she can really tell a tale with this character, not just like have this character enter into situations, I suspect it will interesting. Doesn’t mean that it gets made, but it has some kind of voice to it which was nice.

**Craig:** Yeah, I agree with you. There is a clear voice here and I actually think that this could be — I could like this, actually.

**John:** Also, my hunch is given the obvious technical mistakes here that Brie may be new to screenwriting and may be learning sort of how it all works.

**Craig:** And also to be fair to Brie, I sort of write things like this, vaguely like this, so sometimes I think — we rarely get this kind of sort of R-rated character-driven comedy kind of thing for Three Pages, so I may just be harder on it because —

**John:** It’s in your ballpark.

**Craig:** Maybe because I’m hard on myself, so when I read things and I go, okay, well, there’s no way that she would be having this discussion while the drive-thru speaker guy was there. That’s psychotic. Nobody does that. So, then I’m just grumpy about that and I’m not really paying attention to the fact that actually you could probably fix that very, very easily.

**John:** Yeah. And I think when I was listening to your critiques I was like, well yes, but those are really easy things to fix. And so it doesn’t mean that they’re not actual problems, because you’re not wrong about sort of these technical things, but they were in no way the deal killers that they were for me that they were for you.

**Craig:** Yeah, it may be that I just get fussier about this kind of screenplay stuff.

**John:** I get it.

**Craig:** Sorry Brie.

**John:** I hope Brie knows that one of us loves her.

**Craig:** I do. [laughs] Yeah. I do.

**John:** [laughs] It is time for One Cool Things. I’ll start.

This is a book that’s structured as a website. So, you can either look at it as like an e-book or you can look at it as just a website that you go to. Regardless, I think it’s worth literally almost everybody going to.

It’s called Practical Typography. It is by this guy named Matthew Butterick who is a typeface designer. And this website/book advertises itself as typography in ten minutes. Basically if you just read this little page, it will take you ten minutes to read, you will do a much better job than 90 percent of people who work with type because it has very simple guidelines for like do this, don’t do that, really straight forward things about like this is how long a line of text should be. And if it’s going to be longer than this it’s going to be very hard to read, which is absolutely true, and so much of what we do in print and on the web would be improved if everyone just followed some of these guidelines.

So, it is a simple website that you can go to, click right through, and follow the links. And I think everyone will benefit from it.

**Craig:** Neat.

**John:** Neat.

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing this week was a recommendation from one of our Twitter followers and it’s a game called Gone Home. It’s by an independent game company called the Fullbright Company, I believe, and not only is it a good game, and it’s available for — it’s not a mobile game. It’s for PC or for Mac. And I think it costs $20.

And it’s a game that you could probably play in two or three hours. Theoretically you could blow throw it in an hour if you want. Very simple set up. You are a girl who is coming home from a trip overseas to your family’s new home that they just moved into and no one is there.

And you start to move through the house and it is creepy and scary, but I will tell you the following things without spoiling anything. It’s never what you think it’s about until sort of two-thirds of the way when you realize what it’s about. There is no shooting. It is a discovery. The game is a discovery. And it’s beautifully done. Beautifully done.

And it struck me when I finished playing it that for the first time I thought to myself there could be a real future in this as just a genre. The genre of a story, like an episode of television, or a movie that you walk through and discover as a game.

Because we’ve always struggled with the notion of interactive movies, or interactive entertainment because it’s authorial. We’re presenting a story to a passive audience. And I believe that. And similarly games struggle with it, sort of famously BioShock, the existence of BioShock is to provide a commentary on how you who play games think you’re engaging in an interactive narrative. You’re really on rails being forced to do what the game demands you to do.

What this really surprised me with was its ability to just let you, in your own way, experience a story. Let you walk around and find it and uncover it like a detective, almost like if you’d imagine piecing together… — And, you know, naturally it’s contained in a house. But, I thought, you know, I could see people actually making movies like this where you walk through the movie on your own.

And so I was very inspired by it. I thought it was really well done. And if you have twenty bucks lying around and feel like trying this game out, please do. It’s called Gone Home and we’ll throw a link on for you.

**John:** Fantastic. Now, Craig, while you’re in New York City for the live Scriptnotes taping, have you already seen Sleep No More?

**Craig:** Last time I was in New York I tried to go see Sleep No More and it was sold out, so I’ve made — I’ve got to figure out what night I’m going to go, what night I’m free when I’m there and jump on tickets early, because, yes, it’s life-changing from everyone’s review.

**John:** Your description of Gone Home really reminds me of Sleep No More in the sense that you are just wandering through a space and you can sort of construct the story that you want to construct based on what you discover. And you can open books, and read things, and piece together what’s really, well, maybe what’s really going on. These scenes will just sort of like drift through and you can see them. I think you will dig it.

**Craig:** Awesome. Yeah. I’m going to go for sure.

**John:** Great. So, recaps and reminders for this episode. There will be a live Scriptnotes on September 23 at 8pm here in New York. Tickets will be going on sale probably tomorrow. We’re positing this on Tuesday, so they should be up for sale on Wednesday. But follow me, I’m @johnaugust on Twitter, or Craig, who is @clmazin on Twitter, and if there are differences or new details we will tell you about them on that.

If you have a question that you would like us to address on the show, you can write to ask@johnaugust.com and Stuart will filter it appropriately. If you have a Three Page Challenge of your own that you would like to submit there are instructions for how to file a Three Page Challenge. Go to johnaugust.com/threepage, all spelled out, and you’ll see the instructions there. There is boilerplate language we ask you to put on there so you will not sue us and not be angry if we don’t get to your submission, or don’t like your submission, or whatever.

But, that’s it, I think. Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you. See you next time.

**John:** All right, bye.

**Craig:** Bye.

LINKS:

* David Fincher’s 1993 AT&T [You Will ads](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TZb0avfQme8), and on [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will)
* Follow [@johnaugust](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) and [@clmazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) for Live from New York details
* [Andrew Lippa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Lippa) on Wikipedia
* Screenwriting.io on [pre-laps](http://screenwriting.io/what-is-a-pre-lap/)
* The Oatmeal on [semicolons](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon)
* Three Pages by [Keith Alan Eiler](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/KeithAlanEiler.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Minhal Baig](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/MinhalBaig.pdf)
* Three Pages by [Brie Williams](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/BrieWilliams.pdf)
* Matthew Butterick’s [Practical Typography](http://practicaltypography.com/)
* [Gone Home](http://thefullbrightcompany.com/gonehome/), from the Fullbright Company
* [Sleep No More](http://sleepnomorenyc.com/)
* Outro by Scriptnotes listener Stephen Moore

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/50-random-questions).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Mera naam hai Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Episode 90 of Scriptnotes, a podcast this week not so much about screenwriting, but things that could be interesting to screenwriters.

Craig, how are you?

**Craig:** I’m fine. I have to tell you that I just spoke Hindi and you didn’t even — you didn’t care.

**John:** Yeah. I just accept that you’re going to do weird things every week, so I just…

**Craig:** I spoke Hindi, per a listener’s request.

**John:** That’s pretty great.

**Craig:** Yeah! I feel good about it.

**John:** You should feel good about it.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** I’m sorry. I should acknowledge when you jump out of your comfort zone.

**Craig:** [laughs] Because it doesn’t happen very frequently.

**John:** I should tell listeners that I offered to let you actually do the intro today, and you said, “No, no, no.” And now I know the reason why you didn’t want to do the whole intro is because you’d already practiced how you were going to do your Hindi for just your one thing. And that’s why you didn’t want to do the whole “Welcome to Scriptnotes.”

**Craig:** Allow me to embarrass myself. I didn’t even think that through.

**John:** Okay. [laughs]

**Craig:** [laughs] I really just think, you’re right, I mean, in retrospect that’s a good point. But more than anything I’m just becoming Rain Man-ish, and I don’t like change.

**John:** Yes. So, last night I hosted this thing at The Academy and it was tremendously fun. And we had like a thousand people there, which was great and nuts, and so I want to thank everyone for coming.

**Craig:** Awesome.

**John:** People came up afterwards. But, it struck me — I knew I would need to start off the evening, and I just wanted to get through the first three sentences without messing up. And so I was going to start like, “Hello and good evening on behalf — my name is John August — on behalf of The Academy it is my pleasure to welcome you.”

But because I always start the podcast as, “Hello and welcome,” it was so hard to break myself of that. And so before I was going up on stage I was just in a loop going, “Hello and good evening. Hello and good evening. Hello and good evening.” But I got through it!

**Craig:** You got through it, buddy. I’m super proud of you.

**John:** Oh, thank you so much. And it made me think about our live episodes of Scriptnotes coming up this summer and how excited I am about those.

The one for the Writers Guild Foundation is a lock. And that is definitely going to happen. The second one in July, dates could be shifting a little bit, but there’s going to be something in July to celebrate our hundredth anniversary. So, I look forward to seeing more of our people in person then.

**Craig:** Yes, our people.

**John:** Our people.

**Craig:** Come to us, our people.

**John:** Craig, you had two items for the agenda before we get to all of these great questions that listeners have submitted. So, let’s talk through the agenda items first.

**Craig:** Yeah, real quick, because we have so much to talk about today. So many questions to answer. Two topics. One, Zach Braff redux. And, two, what’s going on with E! and the Fashion Police strike.

So, real quick on Zach Braff. There was kind of a weird thing that happened over the last couple of days where The Hollywood Reporter basically said, “Hey look, this other film financier came in and gave him a whole big bunch of money, like another $8 million or whatever.” So, he is, according to that article, he is funding his movie with traditional funding and all of you people that gave him $2 million, why? Why would you have done that?

Turns out that’s not exactly the case. Really what’s going on is that it’s gap financing. And Zach Braff had always said in his Kickstarter, “Look, I’m going to fund this movie through Kickstarter and foreign presales.” And foreign presales kind of work in such a way that you sell the movie to people before you make it based on who’s in it. And they say, “Okay, we’ll buy it for this.”

But you need to make the movie now. That’s money is not showing up for awhile. So, these gap financiers come in and say, “We’ll loan you that money, because we have the collateral of all these people who have agreed to pay you the money.” And so that’s kind of how that works.

However, I should just add, I don’t think people really understood how foreign financing presales work and, frankly, the truth is even though he told you this from the start, he was really saying, “Look, I’m going to finance this movie half traditionally for people that get something for what they give, and half not traditionally — you get nothing for what you give.” So, I’m not surprised that people are confused. This is going to come up and up again.

**John:** I didn’t follow it all that closely, but it seemed like there was backlash. And there was backlash-backlash, and it just becomes this big cycle of whatever. It’s very common — what you’re talking about with gap financing — is actually very, very common. It’s how a lot of indies get made. And so there’s nothing wrong with that. It just gets swirled into all of this crowd sourced excitement and enthusiasm and it just becomes weird.

So, I can understand everyone’s perspective on why they’re frustrated.

**Craig:** Right. Normally this isn’t an issue because films are financed by financiers who are in it for profit and not for joy and pro-social activity. Now, we’ve kind of — it’s a strange thing to fund an enterprise with both charity and traditional profit investment.

**John:** Now, while I know almost nothing about the Zach Braff situation, I know even less about this E! Fashion Police thing, so catch me up to speed on that.

**Craig:** So, Fashion Police, I don’t know if you ever watch it.

**John:** No. I don’t. I never actually turn on E! — like for years I haven’t seen E!. So, tell me about it. It’s a Joan Rivers show?

**Craig:** It’s a Joan Rivers show. So, it’s a panel show, Joan Rivers, and Kelly Osbourne, and a very thin woman, and a very funny fashion guy, they critique red carpet fashion. And it’s just a super gay catty show and it’s really, really funny. My wife watches it religiously, so I kind of absorb it. You know, she has her thing of Fashion Police and then The Soup. And it’s actually really, really funny. I mean, Joan Rivers is still super, duper funny.

But, the problem is that the writers of that show just haven’t been paid very well. And they essentially want to be unionized. They want it to be a WGA show. A lot of them are WGA writers, which kind of drives me crazy a little bit, because if you’re a WGA writer you’re not allowed to write on shows that are not WGA shows if there is a contract that exists to cover that show, or that could cover it. You know what I mean?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s one of our rules. And it kind of makes me nuts, but I guess it’s so widespread you can’t do anything about it. Long story short, they walked off and basically said, “Look, we want a union deal.”

And E! said, “Um, yeah, listen, um, all you have to is vote. If you just have an official union election governed by the NLRB then we’ll let you be WGA.”

And I just wanted to tell people following along at home, if you’ve read that, that’s basically baloney. The deal is the writers have already expressed that they want t be union. The great majority of them want to be union. E! has the ability to just say, “Oh, okay, you all want to be union, or a great majority of you want to be union. Poof. Let’s just start negotiating a union deal.”

The reason they’re insisting on an official NLRB election process is because that drags it out, it gives them a lot more control over the process. They have the potential to try and fire some people, even though that’s illegal they do it all the time. They also have the ability to put a lot of pressure on the writers to not vote. They get a chance to make their case very strongly. It’s essentially a union-busty kind of thing.

But the fact is all they have to do, when they’re like, “Just vote.” They don’t need to vote. Everybody that understands how unions work knows what they’re doing, so anyway, what I’m really saying is, hey, E!, come on. They want to be Writers Guild. It’s the right thing to do. It’s a funny show. I’m sure you guys make a lot of money on it. Please, just come on.

**John:** Yeah. In previous situations we’ve talked about reality shows and it’s a question of like is that really writing, what are they really doing, and there was a whole controversy when the WGA was trying to cover these shows. There was a real question of is that the kind of thing that should really be covered.

But here, this is writing…

**Craig:** Oh, clearly.

**John:** You’re writing material that’s being performed on the show.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a comedy variety show. So, come on, E!. Enough with the, “Oh, we need an election.” Gee, golly, if only they would just vote.” Yeah, come on, please. Too smart for you.

Okay. So, those were my follow ups.

**John:** Hooray. My only bit of news that I will launch before we go into our big questions is Highland Version 1.0.2 is in the Mac App Store right now, so if people are using Highland they can download the new version. The new version has a really cool way of making things uppercase. You can hit shift-return and it makes that line uppercase, which is incredibly useful in Fountain.

And it has lyrics, because I needed people to sing. So, this is completely scratching my own itch. I needed lyrics, and now there are lyrics.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Hooray.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** But our podcast today, I’m so excited, is all about things other than screenwriting. That will be the last screenwriting thing we’ll mention today, because for now on it’s just John and Craig talking about stuff we are probably not really qualified to talk about, but we’re going to talk about anyway. We’re going to answer these questions.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** So, people wrote in. We had 90 questions or something. We had a tremendous amount of questions. We culled the list down a little bit. People wrote in at ask@johnaugust.com. They sent us Twitter questions. They went on our Facebook page and asked questions. So, let’s hit it.

**Craig:** Let’s do it.

**John:** Maybe we’ll alternate, so I’ll start with the first question which is from a guy named Jason. “If I someday have the opportunity to be uploaded into a robot body, should I do it?”

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** I say yes also. And, obviously, the topic of mortality and sort of what it means to be alive are valid questions. They’re good philosophical questions. They’re good questions for a movie. But, if I had the opportunity to like not die, and be a robot, I’m okay with that.

**Craig:** Yeah. You definitely want to do this, because you are just your brain. I’m assuming when you say “uploaded into” you mean your brain as exists uploaded in.

I’ve often wondered what happens if — I guess it doesn’t matter — you upload your brain, you make a copy of your brain into a robot. Now, you and your robot friend are kind of in that moment the same, but now it’s just that your robot friend who is you just diverges from that point because of their different experiences.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But, it would be fun to know that person.

**John:** It’s like the software has forked and it’s gone in different directions. It comes down to the question of software and hardware. And is the person the hardware, is the person the software? I am a software person. I think the person is the code that’s running. And if that code can run without your physical body, I’m cool with that.

**Craig:** Totally. Now, the key for me is if you upload me into robot body, I kind of actually want you to kill my other self. [laughs] Because there can only be one.

Next question. Do we say who wrote in, or no?

**John:** Yes, we’ll say the person, but not the last name. But you can say Vancouver.

**Craig:** Yeah, Sarah in Vancouver. “This year I decided to stop coloring my hair and let my natural dusky silver grow in. Seeing as you’re both the same vintage as me, and the kind of men I’d be attracted to…”

**John:** Mmm.

**Craig:** Oh, hmmm…”I’m wondering what your thoughts are on the attractiveness and sex appeal of women with gray hair. I seem to be the only one excited about being natural again. People either find it amusing or disturbing. Am I alone out here? What should I do?”

**John:** Yeah. She didn’t include a photo, so we don’t know whether she’s a woman who looks amazing with gray or silver hair.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Look, I think natural can be awesome. And I think if you like being natural the way your hair is, that’s great. The most important thing about being attractive is being confident. And if being natural gives you confidence there, that’s terrific.

**Craig:** Yeah. I basically agree. I mean, definitely what happens is your physical appearance is the thing that kind of starts the ball rolling with men, but those of us who are into women, a lot of it then is what happens after. So much of it is what happens after. What happens when you open your mouth and you start talking? Are you interesting? Are you fascinating? Are you funny? Are you cool?

It’s a fact that biologically men are programmed to be attracted to youth. It just comes down to the whole spread your genetic material around pregnancy, animal behavior theory of sex and sexual attraction. So, it will probably stop a few guys in their tracks. It may make it a little more difficult for some guys.

But, you know, whatever. Who cares? If you’re cool and you’re awesome, I don’t really think it’s going to stop anyone.

**John:** I would agree. Next question comes from Ben in San Angelo, Texas. “If you had to start from scratch, let’s say your current mind got zapped to your teenage body, would you do it all over again?”

**Craig:** Interesting theme that keeps emerging. Well, yeah, I would do it all over again because I love my life, and I love all of it, even the parts that are terrible.

**John:** Yeah. I thought about this a lot. And if I could go back and sort of do junior high and high school, all that stuff over again, I would because there was stuff I definitely enjoyed, but there is stuff I know I would enjoy differently knowing what I know now.

**Craig:** Oh, wait, you know what you know now?

**John:** Yeah. That’s the trick of the question — do you get to take your current experience with you back to the past?

**Craig:** Oh, no, I don’t want to do that. I just want to basically do everything that’s happened already again. I want to rewatch the episode.

**John:** Yeah, I don’t know that I want to do everything that’s happened again. I mean, I’ve had…

**Craig:** So, you don’t want to meet Mike? You’re going to meet some other guy. You might not have a kid. You get run over, [laughs], by a cart.

**John:** Yeah. There’s a Sliding Doors quality of like if you got to live your life again would stuff necessarily turn out better for having the information. Maybe not.

**Craig:** All right.

**John:** All right. Cool.

**Craig:** So, finally a difference there. Justin from Arlington, Virginia with a great question. “Croissant, English muffin, or biscuit?”

**John:** I think they’re all excellent choices. I can enjoy any one of those things. I find that a great biscuit at the right moment with a little butter, a little honey, there’s maybe nothing better.

**Craig:** I find biscuits to be big handfuls of glue and croissants are too greasy for me. I’m an English muffin guy.

**John:** English muffin for a hamburger, by the way, a fantastic choice.

**Craig:** Yeah, I do it all the time. Whole wheat English muffin. Hard to beat.

**John:** Ed writes, this is a question for you, “What E-cigarette brand do you recommend? Any cons to e-cigging?”

**Craig:** Interesting that this question comes up because I quit smoking those things.

**John:** I’m so glad, Craig.

**Craig:** You know, you don’t have to be that glad. It’s not that big of a deal, although I have to say it’s — ugh, quitting nicotine is the worst. What it does to your brain? Ugh, anyway. It’s been a weird week. You can imagine.

So, look, what I recommend is just not starting, but if you’re smoking regular cigarettes, definitely. And you don’t want to deal with cold turkey. Definitely switching over to e-cigarettes is good. I recommend just generically using the Boge Cartomizer. That’s B-O-G-E.

And you can get standard — there are these standard batteries. I can’t remember the model number, but they’re sort of skinny black batteries with either blue or red tips at the end. If you go to — there’s a cool website called Cignot. Cignot.com. They sell all that stuff.

And then in terms of the liquid, I recommend Johnson Creek because they are made here and it is actually looked over by people that seem to care as opposed to, I don’t know, a Chinese factory somewhere just dumping spare melamine and liquid lead into a vat. [laughs]

Yeah, the cons of e-cigging: incredibly addictive and when you quit those it will suck.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Did I tell you that we were at Disneyland, and so we were on the Silly Symphony which is those swings that spin around? There’s never a line because it’s never actually all that fun.

**Craig:** I know those, yeah.

**John:** But my kid likes it. So, there’s this woman in front of me and she had something glowing in her hand. I’m like, oh my god, she has an eCig and she’s like using her eCig while she’s on that swing.

**Craig:** Cool lady. I mean, she just doesn’t care. [crosstalk] Yeah, I like it.

Here’s a question for you, [laughs], from…

**John:** I think it’s really a question for you.

**Craig:** I know, it’s really a question for both of us, I think. It’s from our friend TS and he wants to know, “Should I seduce a married man?”

I’m pretty sure we have the same answer.

**John:** I would say probably not.

**Craig:** No. No.

**John:** Yeah, here’s the question — are you wrong to go into, not knowing what somebody’s marital situation is. You know, somebody could be married but they could be separated, or they could have an open relationship. There could be reasons why you’re not a terrible person for going into that situation. You’re not a morally terrible person.

Are you going to be emotionally hurt trying to seduce a married man? Yeah, very likely. So, I think you’re better off sticking with people who are actually available.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s the word “seduce” that’s the problem.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, “sleep with,” if the guy is living a closeted life and he’s into you, whatever. But “seduce” is sort of, that’s a tougher one.

**John:** Yeah. Should you seduce anyone? Well, yeah, I guess you can seduce a single person.

**Craig:** Yeah, no of course. Yeah, sure. But seducing married people is kind of — don’t do that.

**John:** Yeah. It’s kind of crappy.

**Craig:** That’s not nice.

**John:** Clint asks, “I’m considering replacing my lawn with Buffalo grass. If memory serves, John August made the change a while back. How is that working out? Is it worth the expense and effort? Anything you’d do differently?”

So, yes, and I’m actually looking at the Buffalo grass that is growing in our backyard right at this moment. And it was pretty good.

So, the deal with Buffalo grass is unlike normal grass where you can put out a seed or you can roll out the big long strips of it, Buffalo grass actually has much, much deeper roots, and so you have to plant little plugs. It’s sort of like you are getting a hair transplant and they’re putting those little plugs into the dirt.

And that’s a hassle and it just took a tremendous amount of work. And the crows came after the plugs and pulled them out, so we had to scare away the crows and redo it. But, once it grew in it’s been really, really solid. And you kind of don’t have to water it much at all. And it looks pretty good. So, I would do it again.

We used UC Verde Buffalo Grass. It was the type that they figured it… It was the UC System that studied all the kinds of Buffalo grass and this is the one that actually works well on lawns.

It’s been really solid. And if you have dogs or cats or whatever, they won’t burn holes in the lawn they way they can with normal grass. So, that’s a good thing.

**Craig:** Nice. That would be — maybe I should think about that.

So, Patrick here in Los Angeles writes, “What’s your favorite weeknight meal to cook for your families?”

**John:** Do you cook, Craig?

**Craig:** I do. I love cooking. But when I cook it’s either like a big, adventuresome cooking thing, or I tend to do little smaller things like on-the-spot breakfasts or lunches. So, I don’t have a routine weeknight meal that I cook. But my daughter does love my famous grilled cheese sandwich. I like making a nice grilled cheese with a little tomato soup. But when I cook I go crazy and I just go nuts.

I like making desserts.

**John:** Yeah. So, I am by nature more of a baker rather than a cook. So, for a long time I would make like a lot of desserts. And I’d bake cakes, and cookies, and all that kind of stuff. And now I don’t do that very much anymore because we don’t eat that kind of stuff anymore.

My husband does most of the daily cooking, but when I do do cooking, turkey meatloaf is sort of a good staple for us. We have a really good turkey meatloaf that we like. Mini turkey meatloaf — that’s the crucial thing. When you make that giant meatloaf, only the little outside of it gets browned. But if you make little small meatloafs, then it all gets good and brown.

**Craig:** Like in little ramekins?

**John:** No, you actually do it on a baking sheet, flat on a baking sheet.

**Craig:** Oh, okay. You just make like little mounds on it.

**John:** Little mounds. And the key I have learned is to sort of mound them up like a shark fin, because they will sort of soften down a bit as it bakes, but it will end up with a nice shape if it’s sort of pointy at the start. And every little bit gets a little more ketchup. So, that plus roasted cauliflower and maybe some spinach or something else, that’s a really good weeknight meal.

**Craig:** That’s good. I’m still kind of into making desserts. I like making pies from scratch, crusts from scratch.

**John:** I like pie crust, too.

**Craig:** Chocolate mousse. I like chocolate mousse. I like making complicated things. I feel like I like the chemistry a little.

**John:** And people are always intimidated by like a Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Turkey is one of the easiest things you could possibly ever make.

**Craig:** Brine.

**John:** Well, yes, we’ve talked about the brine. But essentially, you know what you do? You clean the bird and you stick it in a hot oven. People make too much of a deal of it.

**Craig:** Brine it, stick it, don’t put stuffing in it like a dope.

All right, so what do we have next?

**John:** Billie Jean asks, “What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve done in front of an idol, or a celebrity, or a mentor?”

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, I can remember mine. It’s so stupid. So, it was — I’m going to say it was 1993. And I was sitting with a friend. We were by Johnny Rockets at the Beverly Connection. And we look over, it’s like around 10pm actually. And we look over and there’s Jerry Seinfeld talking with a friend.

Oh my god. Jerry Seinfeld. You know, it’s 1993; Jerry Seinfeld is the king of the world. And I’m like, “I got to go, I got to go say hi to Jerry Seinfeld. I’ve got to shake his hand or do something.” And he’s like, well, do it.

So, as we’re leaving, I start walking, I’m parallel to Jerry Seinfeld. I’m too scared. I’m now a step past him and I’m like, no, no, no, I can’t not do it. So then I just whirl around and I go, “Mr. Seinfeld, it’s really nice to meet you.”

And he was like, “What?” Because he really thought that I was going to stab him. Because that’s the motion I made. It was the motion of a guy walking past somebody and then suddenly flinging themselves into their personal space and then saying, “It’s really nice to meet you.” But he hasn’t met me. There’s just a man suddenly in his face. It was terrible.

**John:** That’s pretty bad.

**Craig:** It was so stupid.

**John:** Mine is not embarrassing as much as just like really, really awkward, and especially awkward because there’s a photo of it that my husband insists on keeping because it’s just so awkward.

So, this is at the opening of the USC Film School. They had this big gala event where they had celebrities and famous people there. And so I was downstairs touring the post-production area and Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise are there. And so I know Katie Holmes but I hadn’t seen her in years. And so, they’re like, oh, say hi to Tom and Katie. Like, oh great.

So, we’re in this really narrow space, and so I’m shaking hands with Katie. And it’s like, “Hey, how are you?” Trying to talk about her kid, because we have a kid about the same age. And I meet Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise, anyone who has met Tom Cruise, he sort of like locks eyes on you. And it’s just this weird sort of like tractor beam thing that Tom Cruise does.

And so there’s this photo of us having this really awkward meeting in this narrow hallway from this angle, and I look bizarre in it. I look like I’m some sort of Martian who is talking to people from Venus. And it was incredibly awkward because of just…and then of course the whole Tom and Katie of it all, because this is right when, you know, their sort of sudden relationship and what all that was.

**Craig:** Yeah. That does sound weird.

**John:** That’s an odd thing.

**Craig:** That is odd.

**John:** One thing I should say about meeting a celebrity is it’s also that always awkward thing of like, you know, “Hi, I’m this person,” and they’ll say their name back. It’s like, well, of course you’re that person because you’re Tom Cruise.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** So, when they say like, “Hi, I’m Tom,” it’s like, yeah, I know you’re Tom Cruise.

**Craig:** Isn’t that funny? There’s like a weird contract that you have with famous people that they’re going to tell you their name and you’re going to go, “Hi, I’m Craig,” like, I did not know that. This is a normal meeting. You’re not famous.

**John:** What I found, like even last night at The Academy thing, when someone is coming up, and there was a little bit of a receiving line kind of quality that happens, the next person that comes up, I’ll just say, “Hi, I’m John,” because it just starts the conversation. So, it’s natural that we do it.

**Craig:** Maybe that’s why these people do these things. I find it easier to deal with celebrities and famous people now because I think once you hit 40 you start to realize you’re older than a lot of them.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** You know? I’m older than Bradley Cooper. It’s kind of weird.

**John:** It is weird.

**Craig:** But I am, because I don’t know, he seems like a man. He is a man.

Here’s a question from JD. “You’re both in love and in some states both married.” I think you’re just married. “Do you think it’s important to have more common interests than not with a significant other? Or, are opposite interests okay as long your personalities and respect for one another’s wants and needs remain constant?”

**John:** I would say that shared interests are very, very useful so that you have something to talk about. And I think it’s going to be hard to get very far in a relationship if you don’t have some good overlap in things that you are interested in other than sort of like kind of generally digging the person. But you don’t need to have that 100 percent match. And there should be things that one person loves and obsesses over and the other person couldn’t care less about, as long as they don’t openly mock. That’s good and fine.

But you want to be able to go places and do things and have some reason to be able to go out to certain events at nighttime. If one person hates the theater, that’s fine. You’ll always find other people to go to the theater with. But, if that person hates theater, and movies, and concerts, and everything else, and you like those things, then it’s not going to work out well.

**Craig:** I tend to shade a little bit more to saying opposite interests are actually a great thing. And what keeps us together as bonded pairs is our intangible love and assistance for each other. And the things that are going around outside of us are so much less important. And, frankly, it’s nice to be able to get away from my wife and do things I like doing that she doesn’t care about and vice versa.

It’s so hard to find someone, I mean, of course, if really there is no common interests it is unlikely that the two people will fall in love anyway. But, I think that sometimes people make too much of “we both like doing the same thing.” Uh, yeah. It’s that we do something for each other that we like.

**John:** Absolutely. I mean, the ideal spouse is somebody who is always on your side, is like always on your team. And that’s a really crucial thing. It doesn’t mean you have to have 100 percent alignment on everything.

I’m always amazed though by the mixed marriages where people have radically different beliefs and somehow they make it work. And that I just don’t know how they do it.

**Craig:** I get it. Because, the truth is for those people they’re getting something from the other person that’s so much more valuable than agreement on a topic. You know, there are things that go to our survival, our sense of safety and security and feeling loved.

You know what? Look at children and their parents. So many children have different political views than their parents. The still love their parents. The parents still love the kids, you know?

**John:** Well, that’s a central theme of Big Fish, though, is that throughout your entire life you get to pick your relationships, you get to pick the people who are going to be your friends, you get to pick the people you are going to marry, but parents are just sort of assigned to you. It’s just like a big lottery and you end up with these people. And you’re supposed to have this amazing relationship with these people.

But, you didn’t pick them. They didn’t pick you. And somehow you’re supposed to get along on everything. I think sometimes we put unrealistic expectations on what that relationship is supposed to be, “Because he’s your father, how could you not love him?”

“Well, I didn’t pick him.”

**Craig:** Yeah, you don’t have to get me started on that topic.

**John:** Ah-ha.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, I totally agree with you on that one.

**John:** Kristen in Seattle writes, “I would like to know if you guys like cats. And if you know why of all the animals in the animal kingdom cats purr?”

**Craig:** Well, a two part question. No, I don’t like cats. I find them annoying. I love dogs. Actually, I once talked to a veterinarian about this whole purring thing, and the truth is they don’t really know. I mean, there’s like some cockamamie theory that purring helps healing because there’s like some vibration thing that happens. I don’t believe that.

I think it’s probably just something they do.

**John:** Yeah. Because I think big cats purr, too. So, it’s not something that we kind of bred into cats. I think it’s a natural thing that cats do. But, it’s like there’s lot of other animals that do weird things, just they’re not around us all the time so we don’t notice it.

I like cats. And I did not grow up with cats. And I’ve always been very allergic to cats. But I learned to love cats because my friend, Elizabeth, had cats. And so I would talk to her on the phone, this is sort of pre-internet, so we would just talk to each other on the phone for like an hour a night. And so I would hear all about her cats. And so I knew all these details about her cats.

And then in our house here we don’t have cats because I’m allergic to cats, but in Los Angeles people should understand that there are cats everywhere. Los Angeles is just full of cats. And so there are some feral cats, but also some house cats that sort of just wander through our yard. And they’re really cool. And like one of them is actually Patricia Arquette’s cat wanders through our yard.

**Craig:** Is her name Patricia Arcat?

**John:** Wouldn’t that be amazing? I never even thought of that. That’s why you’re the comedy writer.

**Craig:** Yeah, that was a really good joke, man. [laughs]

**John:** That’s a great joke. You could get fifty bucks for that on Fashion Police.

**Craig:** At least.

**John:** [laughs] Rollie is just the best cat in the world. So, we eat lunch outside — Stuart, Ryan, and I eat lunch outside — and Rollie will just come over and hang out. Just the best cat in the world. But I like cats that are sort of like dogs, and that’s why I like Rollie so much.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, cats don’t do it for me.

**John:** Cats are great.

Next up is Victor from Pittsburgh.

**Craig:** Victor, yeah. Are you reading this one? I’m reading this one?

**John:** Go.

**Craig:** Okay, this guy is moving, and Victor is “moving into an apartment that for the first time is all [his] own, a real home to call [his] own.” I guess he’s been living in dorms and things like that. “It’s a blank slate coming with no furniture. As the hip artsy fellows that you are, I’m sure your lovely LA homes are decked out with only the finest in furniture and decor. What do you suggest for a first time home renter? Goodwill, IKEA, or anything else? Standing desk? Specific recommendations? First time apartment stories worth sharing?”

**John:** I think IKEA gets a bad rap. I think some stuff from IKEA is absolutely fine. And, I mean, that’s the motto for IKEA: For now it’s fine. That should just be their tag line. I give it to them for free.

Because there’s decent stuff you can get that will work okay in your apartment for a while. So, IKEA or CB2 or sort of the lower rent brands for sort of the big furniture companies, they’re absolutely fine. I would say you’re not going to have a lot of stuff, so sort of embrace a nice minimalism that looks good.

The best thing you can do for your apartment to look nice is to clean it and to not let it be a mess.

**Craig:** Yeah. I totally agree. Don’t get cluttery with it. Apartments are small. In general, small spaces look best when they are minimally appointed, because they can’t handle a lot of clutter, they can’t handle a lot of different heights, and shapes, and things. Low, sleek, simple, small. I totally agree on IKEA as far as, you know, look, your job at this point is to succeed and move on save your money. Don’t spend money on furniture now, that’s crazy.

So, yeah, sure, go to IKEA. Get disposable Swedish furniture. Enjoy putting it together yourself. There are some nice tasteful things that they have there. And just do it.

There are people that really get into, “Ooh, look at my cool vintage sofa that I found at Goodwill, that’s full of bed bugs or smells.” Eh, you know, you’re going to have to move it, you know? You’re not living in this apartment the rest of your life. Think about that, too.

**John:** One of my favorite pieces of apartment furniture was something I found in the dumpster of the apartment building. It was this big green dresser. And it had these really handles on it, so I took them off and I put like cool handles on it. And that was my dresser for six years.

And that stuff is fine and good, too. Yeah, don’t worry about it too much.

**Craig:** Do not.

**John:** Steve asks, “How much can you guys bench press?”

**Craig:** Hmm, good question. Well, I haven’t been to the gym lately, and you know, my maximum bench press, I was never that strong. I think like one time, like one up and down, I think maybe like — I don’t know — probably I could do 200 pounds or something like that.

**John:** I did 205 for eight.

**Craig:** Nice.

**John:** Yeah, so I was checking with my trainer today, because I asked him. And he said, “Oh, that’s what you can do.” So, that’s great. I actually probably couldn’t do that right now because I’ve been in Chicago and I haven’t had a trainer for awhile, but that’s what I could theoretically do.

**Craig:** Yeah, I was more, I like dumbbells. So, I like to do multiples with like two-50s. You know, not 250s, but two individual 50-pounds dumbbells and do like twelve reps or something like that.

**John:** Yeah, I do find that dumbbells, I don’t have that fear of dying, because there’s not going to be that bar that’s going to crush me.

**Craig:** Right!

**John:** That’s the thing about bench pressing is that fear of like you’re actually going to be trapped underneath this forever. At least I could also like drop free weights.

**Craig:** And dumbbells are harder because you have to individually steer and balance, you know, whereas the bar of a bench press bar helps kind of stabilize.

Kyle from Salt Lake City says, “If you could have any super power, what would it be and why?”

**John:** I would choose flight, the two-handed arms pointed out at the sky flight.

**Craig:** I would go with invisibility. Super useful.

**John:** Yeah, that one is really useful.

**Craig:** Super useful. Flying, though, would be great though.

**John:** Yeah. Lawrence from New York City asks, for me, I guess, “Are you spoken to in a different manor because you are gay/straight??? Do they expect more or less of you because of your sexuality??? Do they believe you should be better at melodrama and weepy stuff, and sports films or action??? How does sexuality affect your career??? Does it???” All of these questions end with three question marks, which…stop doing that.

Lawrence, stop asking questions with three question marks.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** So, Lawrence’s basic question is has being gay impacted my career at all in Hollywood. I don’t think it’s had a huge impact. I think, yes, I don’t get considered for sports movies as much. That’s not a huge tragedy in my life. But John Logan who’s gay, he wrote Any Given Sunday.

**Craig:** Yeah, I don’t think that’s because you’re gay.

**John:** No. I think it’s because I don’t give a rat’s ass about sports.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But I write action movies and people call me in for that. I don’t think that it ever comes up that much. I will say that when I was writing the first TV show I did, D.C., it was the only situation in my whole Hollywood time where I walked into a room and I felt like “faggot” had just been said, because it was this weird energy that had happened.

And I’m not sure who it was, or what was going on, but it was really, really uncomfortable. But that’s kind of been it.

And so a lot of times I will, they’ll ask me like, “Hey, do you want to become a bigger part of the Writers Guild Gay Writers Group?” I’m just like I don’t know that I need it. I don’t know that we need it. I don’t know that it’s actually a hue problem. It hasn’t been a huge problem for me, so I don’t relate to it.

**Craig:** Now there are so many gay producers, so many gay executives. It’s just, I don’t know. Yeah.

**John:** I think it would be much harder to be homophobic in this town than to be gay.

**Craig:** Openly homophobic? Oh, yeah, good luck. [laughs] I don’t think that can work. No.

**John:** It’s not going to go well.

**Craig:** I don’t think that would work. And, frankly, you’re just in the wrong business. I mean, if you don’t enjoy gay people and you don’t enjoy the expression of gay culture and gay humor and gay aesthetic, you’re just in the wrong business.

Earling writes, “Can either of you actually sing? Which musical production do you wish you could have had the chance to experience in person? And which musical to film do you think has resulted in the greatest or poorest film adaptation?”

**John:** Great. So, we’ve established that Craig can sing, because Craig sang on an earlier podcast.

**Craig:** Yeah, come on Earling.

**John:** Yeah, go back and do your research.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I can sing well enough to get the point of a song across. And so I’ve gotten to be a better singer through Big Fish. So, I can sing a little bit. I can’t sing the way that the actors can sing in Big Fish, but I can sing well enough that I’m not scared to sing.

Which musical production do you wish you could have seen in person? I don’t know.

**Craig:** Good question.

**John:** I mean, I’ve never actually seen any production of Funny Girl, but Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl was probably awesome.

**Craig:** It probably was awesome. Yeah. I’d probably go with Fiddler on the Roof. The original Fiddler on the Roof. I just love that show. And I just think that would have been amazing to see that. Every song is just so great.

And what do you think about this musical to film, up and down?

**John:** I loved Chicago. And I love Chicago as a stage play, but I love it as a movie, too. And I think it was just a really, really smart version that captured the stuff I loved about the stage version and made it a movie.

**Craig:** It did. That’s a very good choice. I would probably go with West Side Story only because it may be the best musical ever and it also happens to be a great, great film, too. So, that’s a very high risk/high reward kind of thing to go from something that’s truly brilliant, take it to film, and not blow it.

Poorest, you know, I hate doing this, but The Producers, because The Producers was a great movie, and then they surprised everybody by doing a terrific musical of it. But the movie of the musical of the movie just didn’t work.

**John:** I have not seen it.

**Craig:** It just didn’t work. And I love everybody in it. And, yeah, it didn’t work. Plus, they cut out the best song, King of All Broadway.

Anyway, those are our answers.

**John:** Cool.

CC from Calabasas asks, “I love to hear about your solar panels and your electric cars. What are some other fun high end toys or home improvements that you recommend?”

**Craig:** Well, there’s one thing that I’ve signed up for, you know, when they make a big splashy thing, “Look, we have this new product coming but it’s not ready yet,” so you put your email on it and they tell you when it’s ready. And it’s called Kevo and it’s basically a lockset for your door that fits right in the regular deadbolt that locks that thing, but it’s controlled by your phone.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** And I think it’s as simple as like a Bluetooth thing. So, you walk up to your door and it unlocks.

**John:** That would be great.

I like our Nest Thermostats. They’ve been really useful for us.

**Craig:** Love those.

**John:** I love that I can on my iPhone app see like, is the air conditioner running? I will turn it on. Or, I can turn it on like when I’m at the restaurant saying like let’s get it cooled down before I get home. That’s been awesome and great.

My husband has also been really good about sort of switching out all of our light bulbs to LEDs and energy efficient lights. So, throughout the whole house we’re all that way, and that’s part of the reason why we’re able to generate so much power and sell so much power back to the City of Los Angeles. We actually use very little power now which has been terrific.

**Craig:** Excellent.

**John:** Next question, John Ligget asks, “Hey, I think you should talk about food on your podcast and your favorite restaurants.”

Favorite restaurants in Los Angeles. I love Mozza. I love — both Osteria Mozza and the Pizzeria Mozza are fantastic. What are your favorite restaurants in Los Angeles?

**Craig:** You know, I’m not like a favorite restaurant guy. I guess if I had to say one, I really love Sasabune.

**John:** Okay. I don’t know what that is.

**Craig:** Sushi place on the west side. And Sushi Nozawa and Sugarfish. I like really, really good sushi. But I’ll go to any restaurant. I’m pretty easygoing about restaurants. I’m not really a foodie. I love interesting food. I love the food that foodies eat, I just don’t love obsessing about food, and the trucks, and, oh, this new spot, and this guy used to own this place, and opens that place. And when people start having that discussion my eyes roll back in my head and I lose consciousness.

**John:** Yeah. I like to go to dinner with friends, but I’d much rather go to a mediocre restaurant with good friends than a great restaurant with people I don’t like.

**Craig:** 100 percent.

**John:** Next up.

**Craig:** All right, next up we’ve got Hanu Carl. [laughs] Hanu Carl — so cute, in the Valley, question mark, exclamation point, exclamation point. “Kwanzaa or Diwali? Which of the non-Christmas holidays is cooler? Feel free to address history, music, fashion, and food.” My answer is none of them. The only cool holiday around Christmastime is Christmas. Sorry.

**John:** I’m 100 percent Diwali. I love Diwali. I love kind of everything Indian and I love Indian food. Come on, Diwali for me.

**Craig:** I love Indian food, too. I love everything Indian. I’m a big fan of the culture. I don’t need to celebrate Diwali though, or Kwanzaa. Frankly, I don’t even celebrate Christmas. Here’s the truth: I’m the Grinch and I don’t like celebrations. But I do love Indian food.

**John:** You’ll love the hundredth episode of Scriptnotes celebration, though. That’s a celebration you’ll endorse?

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not a holiday, you know?

**John:** I heard they’re actually going to shut down the town, though. I mean, everyone is going to take the day off and it’s going to be big deal.

**Craig:** Fantastic!

**John:** Carmen in Missouri asks, “What are your thoughts on bacon? What are your thoughts on bacon in desserts?”

**Craig:** Yeah. Bacon is very good, it’s very tasty. I don’t care for the ridiculous internet obsession with bacon. You know, this is the worst of the internet. Take something that’s perfectly good but a little downscale and then turn it into like a meta, quasi-ironic worship thing. Yeah, it’s bacon, whatever. Isn’t there other stuff to talk about?

I do think that bacon in desserts is perfectly fine in the sense that savory plus sweet can be a nice thing. But, the whole bacon thing, it drives me nuts.

**John:** I’m glad to hear you say, because it drives me nuts, too.

**Craig:** What is that, John?

**John:** I don’t know. It’s the obsession over things that you don’t need to worry about being obsessed with. So, I don’t eat normal bacon, because I don’t eat beef, or pork, or mammals. So, I eat turkey bacon. And so I obviously like suspect because I eat turkey bacon which is not really a thing and I should be shunned for eating turkey bacon.

But I like turkey bacon just fine.

**Craig:** Turkey bacon is good. I like turkey bacon.

**John:** It’s delicious. And so whatever you want to do with bacon, great, go for it. But don’t push it at me.

**Craig:** Yeah. And like stop inventing fake obsessions, the point of which is that obsessions are silly but yet cool. All right, hipsters, go ahead with your bacon.

Ooh, Fabrizio from Italy. “If your podcasts weren’t about screenwriting or anything related to filmmaking, what would it be about?” Huh? What?

**John:** Mine would be yet another tech podcast, another sort of Mac Geekery podcast. And so I guest on some of those podcasts at times and I enjoy talking about that stuff, but really we don’t need another one, so I shouldn’t do it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think I would talk about anything else. I’m just simply not qualified. I’m barely qualified to talk about this. Let’s put it that way.

**John:** Chris Han in East LA writes, “What lessons do you have for nerds for a successful marriage?”

**Craig:** Uh, I don’t know. Because they’re nerds?

**John:** Or for anybody.

**Craig:** You know, okay, here’s my big lessons — these are not shocking. Be faithful to your spouse. Don’t be afraid to spend a little bit of time on your own. Don’t be afraid if they spend a little bit of time on their own. Don’t be contemptuous of your spouse. And, you know, avoid things like violence. I mean, it’s not really — I’ll tell you the number one, the number one thing. Honestly, everybody’s going to give you a bunch of platitudes. Number one thing: Be faithful. Be faithful. There you go.

**John:** I think all your points are very good. The other thing I would say is to always understand that your spouse is his or her own person and to always keep in mind what do they want or what do they need to do. And to figure out how you can be supportive to what they want or what they need to do, because their needs and wants may not immediately line up with what your needs and wants are. But you need to be aware of what they are so you can together both get to places you want to get to.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, part of that is respect, but that’s also understanding that it’s not just about the two of you. It’s also about you as individuals.

**Craig:** Correct.

Oh, look at this, Robert…

**John:** Robert James Cross asks…

**Craig:** Robert is, yeah, he’s going for this question we’ve kind of trotted all over, kind of gone over this a little bit. “Where’s the best place for sushi or pizza in Los Angeles?”

**John:** Yeah, so when I was in Chicago we had the conversation about Chicago pizza and New York pizza. Honestly, the pizza I love the most is Los Angeles pizza. It is at Pizzeria Mozza. I think it’s just the best pizza you’re going to find.

**Craig:** That pizza is not what I call pizza, but that’s sort of what I call Italian fancy pizza. And that is excellent Italian fancy pizza. No question.

For traditional pizza, the kind of pizza that comes from New York, there are a couple places in and around there. There’s a Joe’s, I think, in Santa Monica now which is a transplant from New York. And there’s actually a little booth in The Americana on Brand in Glendale that sells pretty good pizza.

Sushi wise, like I said, Sasabune. Big fan of that. Nozawa. Sugarfish.

**John:** So, I go to Nobu and I like Nobu quite a lot. I’ve been to Nobus in many different countries, but the Nobu in Los Angeles is lovely, as is Matsuhisa.

But my favorite sushi, actually Sushi Azami which closed, but the owner Niki has opened up another restaurant on the west side which is amazing, but it’s always omakase, and it’s like a three-hour thing to eat dinner there. It’s completely worth it, it’s just that you have to plan for three-hours to do it. So, I’ll have a link to her restaurant.

**Craig:** That’s interesting that it’s three hours long, because Sasabune is the same thing, it’s omakase, but it doesn’t take that long.

**John:** Yeah. I was with Josh Friedman and we drank a lot of wine, so maybe that’s why it took three hours.

**Craig:** Maybe you thought it was three hours, it was 20 minutes.

**John:** Ha. We actually had to walk around the block just a few time just to, you know, settle your stomach and feel like you could actually move in a car again.

**Craig:** I like it.

**John:** “You’re on the first passenger flight to the moon,” oh, this is a question from Jessup, I love Jessup, from Vacaville. “You’re on the first passenger flight to the moon. Because of carryon restrictions you only get to bring one book, one snack, one beverage. What are they?”

**Craig:** I don’t care.

**John:** I have answers for all of this. My book would be Pride & Prejudice, because I just love Pride & Prejudice. I could just read it again and again. One snack would be almond butter. And it would specifically be Whole Foods Almond Butter, the one that you can actually get from the grinder. Like fresh ground almond butter is one of the best substances on earth. And one beverage, I suppose if I’m going to go…well, it’s a question, do you go for the alcohol? You’re flying to the moon…

**Craig:** You’re going to the moon. This is what I don’t understand about this question. You’re going to the moon and you’re reading? My eyes are glued. I’m like, I want to just watch the trip entirely. I don’t care what my snack is. I’m going to the moon!

**John:** Yeah, the moon.

**Craig:** You know what I’ll have, moon snack. Whatever moon plane gives me. I feel so simple.

**John:** I will say one of the things I miss most about Chicago is a chain called Protein Bar. And Protein Bar is this sort of healthy fast food that is all over Chicago, and I haven’t seen here, and I really which were here. But they have these amazing smoothies. And they have like a peanut butter/chocolate chip smoothie that’s actually kind of healthy that’s really great. So that would be my beverage.

**Craig:** That sounds good.

Josh from San Luis Obispo. “If you had the option to either own a real life light saber, or an actual working hover board from Back to the Future, which would you choose and why?”

**John:** I’m full on light saber. I would love to have a light saber.

**Craig:** Yeah, of course. That’s not even a good question.

**John:** It’s not a good question at all.

**Craig:** No, it’s not a fair question.

**John:** It’s a light saber. How can you not pick light saber?

**Craig:** Yeah, working hover board? Who cares?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** “Oh, look at me, I’m on my hover board. Whoop-de-do.” All right. Or, you can just go get a Segway and also look like a dork.

Or, you can have a light saber. Come on, Josh. [laughs] I’m getting angry.

**John:** Mark Thorson writes, “Now that even Rush Limbaugh has admitted the gay marriage issue is lost, what’s the next milestone for gay rights? The only thing I can think of is the first gay president. Is anything more important that happens earlier?”

Uh, yeah, I think marriage is happening really quickly, and I’m delighted that it’s happening so quickly, and delighted that just last week we picked up another giant state. And whatever the Supreme Court decision is, it will be incredibly useful. And I’m excited to be able to get off of planes and be married in more states. That’s a wonderful thing.

I talk to the people who run these organizations and one of the things I say when I talk to these people is it’s fantastic that gay and lesbian couples can have the rights they need, I think the next frontier is going to be to make sure that people who don’t fit into nice categories, transgendered people, get the same rights that everyone else does. And I think that’s one of the things where, you know, we talk about gay people as minorities. Those people are super minorities. And making sure that they have full and inclusive rights to things that every American should have.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, ultimately the most meaningful milestone beyond this one is that there’s no longer a topic because it’s just nobody cares and everything is equal and fine and it’s just not an issue.

I think that employment rights are probably where I would look if I were running one of these organizations, because there are going to be states soon, I think, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of federal gay marriage — there are going to be states where it is legally possible for two men to get married but also legally possible for both of them to be fired from their jobs because they’re gay. That’s bizarre.

**John:** Yeah. That is bizarre.

**Craig:** So, I mean, it’s bizarre right now, obviously. So, that’s where I would probably — that’s where I would load up my ammo.

Let’s see, we have Brian from Tampa, “Morally speaking, what’s the worst thing you’ve done to get out of some type of obligation?”

**John:** I will say personally I feel good that I’ve never used my kid as an excuse. I’ve never pretended that it was like my kid that was why I couldn’t do something. But I have, I feel like I’m coming down with something, I have done that. And I feel terrible when I do it. And sometimes I get sort of the symptomatic cold that I imagined from doing that. But, I’ve feigned some illness to get out of a meeting or to reschedule something.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m sure I’ve done that, too. I mean, it’s hard to quarrel with somebody who’s telling you that they just threw up. Even if you think they’re lying, even if you think there’s a 90 percent chance they’re lying, that means there’s a 10 percent chance that you’re forcing somebody to show up in your office and they might throw up.

**John:** Yeah. You don’t want to do that.

**Craig:** Near you. Yeah.

**John:** Malibu Jack asks, “If the universe is infinite, how can it be expanding? And if space is mostly empty, how can it be warped by gravity?”

**Craig:** I can’t answer the first question, because I don’t know. The second question I think misunderstands gravity and space time. But, I’m not smart enough to explain why. I just know that in my head I’m looking at that diagram in A Brief History of Time and Thinking. No, that’s not a good question.

**John:** I think it’s a reasonable question, but it’s not a good question in the sense that we are not — as human beings we’re not well set up to deal with things at a giant, giant, giant scale, or at a really tiny scale. We’re used to being able to deal with things at a scale that we can see.

Our whole mind is set up for like there’s that bison over there. I will throw this rock and hit this bison. And so our minds work really well for that scale of thing. And so scale of things we can see and scale of things we can do.

And so we have this tendency to try to use our understanding of that kind of world and apply it to much bigger things, and it actually just doesn’t hold up very well. And so we say the universe is expanding, but it’s infinite. Well, that makes sense at the giant levels that we’re talking about. And, you know, say, “Well what is this expanding into?” It’s like, well, that’s actually not meaningful in a way that you sort of want it to make sense. This is because we think in very physical, relatable terms that aren’t actually accurate to how the big universe works or how the tiny universe works.

**Craig:** Yeah. Or, spice.

**John:** The spice. The spice explains it all.

**Craig:** The worm. The spice. What is the connection?

**John:** Exactly.

**Craig:** That’s my favorite line from a movie ever. “The connection is that the worm is the spice.”

**John:** The worm is the spice.

**Craig:** And then he just kept asking the question. “It’s got to have something…the worm and the spice. What is it?” [laughs] “They’re the same. They’re the same thing.”

**John:** Let’s skip this next question because another one down the list asks the same thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Agreed.

**John:** Ferdinand from Constantinople asks, “If Craig and John did a life swap, who would be better at being the other?”

**Craig:** I think I’m good at impressions, so I think I could actually convince some people that I was you.

**John:** Yeah. I think you’d actually do a pretty good job with my life. And my life is not that difficult. I think I would have a harder time being you because I don’t care anything about baseball and I would not be able to coach your son’s baseball team.

**Craig:** Yeah. But there are lot of dads that also can’t coach their kid’s baseball teams. And, you know, you would just watch.

**John:** But I could love your woman. There’s no question.

**Craig:** [laughs] I’d like to see you try!

**John:** [laughs] Gary from Orlando, Florida asks, “Craig, how’s the Tesla been so far?”

**Craig:** Awesome! Greatest car in the world. And it was terrific to see that Consumer Reports, which is very fussy, super nerdy guys — one thing I like about Consumer Reports, when they review cars they don’t get a car from the factory. They have somebody go and buy a car anonymously. So, it’s actually just a random car and they put it through ridiculous paces. And it got a 99 out of 100. Only one other car in history has every gotten that. It was a Lexus from 10 years ago.

And they said essentially, “This may be the best car we’ve ever tested.”

**John:** Oh, fantastic.

**Craig:** It’s an awesome car. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

**John:** Hooray. And for the record, I still love my Leaf. It’s been a great car, too.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Doug Jay asks, “What are your thoughts on automobile safety ratings? Would a bad safety rating be a deal breaker for you?”

**Craig:** It would for me. Absolutely.

**John:** It would for me, too.

**Craig:** Yeah, this guy mentions that the Camry rated poor in the IHS Small Offset Crash Test. Well, it turns out that most crashes are offset. I mean, very few people just slam into each other headlight to headlight. And if a car structurally is doing very poorly in a test like that, well, yeah, of course it’s a deal breaker. What, like a Camry is so awesome that I need to overlook the fact that it could possibly be a death trap? It’s a Camry.

**John:** I honestly feel the same way about motorcycles. Because, you know what, no motorcycle survives a crash well.

**Craig:** That’s right. No, motorcycles are just dumb. And, listen, if you ride a motorcycle, I get it, and that’s cool. I understand. My wife has this whole theory — you deserve to die. It’s the whole “you deserve to die theory.” That she just can’t muster sympathy for people who die doing things that are kind of safe but just generally not safe. Like it’s kind of safe to go skydiving. But not really. So, if you die skydiving, screw you. [laughs] That’s basically her theory. So, I don’t do a lot of — I used to go diving in the ocean. Don’t do that as much anymore. No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** Bryce from LA wonders, “What were both of your drinking habits before you made it and while you were rising the echelons of the industry? Perhaps to a lesser degree, what are they now? And would you mind speaking to Hollywood’s atmosphere of rejection in conjunction with the drunken writer stereotype?”

**John:** Yeah, so I think, you know, we have this stereotype that like writers are drunks who, you know, are functioning alcoholics and that kind of thing. And there are some. I don’t think there’s very many. And you won’t meet a lot of drunks and you won’t meet a lot of drug addicts who are actually working in the industry. That’s been my experience.

**Craig:** Yeah, people go through their phases, like everybody else. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with alcohol, at all. I’ve had a problem with nicotine, food, wanking. I don’t have any problems with drinking. I am that guy who can have one or two glasses and then just drop, in fact, prefers to stop.

You know, it’s funny — I often think, sometimes my wife will buy like a cake. And the cake will sit there for four days in the fridge. And I’ll think, “How is she buying the cake and not eating it?” Like if I buy a cake it’s to eat it. Do you know what I mean? So, she’ll just buy a cake and just leave it there. And then I think, but wait a second, that’s the way I am with alcohol. Like I’ll buy a bottle of wine or a fancy bottle of scotch or something. I won’t open it for a year. I don’t care. So, there you go.

**John:** Yeah. I feel like I’ve been pretty lucky, too. So, I will have a glass of wine or two, and that’s been fine, and great, and good. And I was never much of a drinker-drinker. So, you go through your periods of your 20s, and those are going to be those times when you’re out drinking with friends and you’re going out to much and drinking too much with people. But you sort of grow out of it, and I just grew out of it. And I was happy and lucky.

So, there is some sort of going out with the gang to do stuff, or that sort of social drinking, that happens. But it’s not awful. I would also say that my husband when he went to get his MBA, that crew would drink so much. And they would drink all the time that it was really surprising and kind of crazy to me that they were able to sustain a graduate school program.

**Craig:** You know, I live in La Cañada, this little town, and it’s not a Hollywood town. It’s very kind of finance and law and accounting and so forth. Good god people drink in my town. I mean, I go to these parties, [laughs], and people get wasted. And they’re adults. I don’t get it.

**John:** I want to fall back on a piece of advice I gave on the blog a long time ago, but I would say if you’re out drinking, my basic rule is alternate with water. So, if you don’t want to get drunk, you don’t want to be problematically drinking, you have a drink, great. Have a full equal glass of water before you get your next drink, and that will slow you down. It doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t be — it doesn’t mean you’re safe to drive, but it means that you’re not going to make a horrible decision if you were to stick to that plan.

**Craig:** Good idea.

**John:** Josh asks a series of questions that we’re going to get to really quickly. “How much weight, if any, do you give to conspiracy theories about the new world order, water fluoridation, 9/11, JFK assassination, etc?”

**Craig:** I give negative weight to those.

**John:** I give negative weight. And anyone who believes them, I have a hard time taking seriously.

**Craig:** Yeah. I just don’t like you. I think you’re an idiot.

**John:** “Do you believe in reincarnation?”

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. I think you die, you die.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** “How have your feelings about money changed throughout your life?”

**Craig:** They haven’t.

**John:** I would say they really haven’t. I’ve always been like hold on to as much money as it makes sense to hold onto.

**Craig:** Save.

**John:** Save.

**Craig:** Save. Yeah. Don’t spend a lot. Don’t need to.

**John:** “Do you believe we are alone in the universe?”

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No, there have to be other civilizations. Here’s the thing — I don’t think the Earth is actually all that special. I think we’re going to find that there’s actually a lot of earth-like planets and it’s going — other planets will have life that has existed or will exist. Will we be able to talk to those other civilizations? I don’t know.

**Craig:** Not any time soon. [laughs] No, that’s narcissism to believe that we happen to live in the time…

**John:** The best of all possible worlds.

**Craig:** Yeah, exactly. No, no, they’re out there, but they’re way out there.

**John:** Yeah. “What’s the secret to a close and comfortable shave?”

**Craig:** Get yourself in the shower, get a nice hot shower going. Get your face nice and steamed out. And then shave with the grain, not against the grain. And then after you’re done shaving with the grain, which changes depending on what part of your face your shaving, then go against the grain.

**John:** Yeah. Shave in the shower. That’s where you should do it.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** David in Wellington, New Zealand asks, “I’m ready to propose for marriage next month.” I love that he says “propose for marriage.” That’s not how we would say it in the US.

**Craig:** Yeah. Propose for…

**John:** “Can you give some creative ideas on how to ask the big question. Cheers. Please no Hobbit jokes.”

**Craig:** Well, Gimli, oh no, he was a dwarf, sorry. No, no Hobbit jokes whatsoever. I like people from New Zealand. They’re very cool people. They’re good people.

I can only tell you how I did it. I had kind of a cool idea. And that was I like cold places. So, I surprised my then girlfriend by flying us to Alaska. And, by the way, I wasn’t rich. I had no money, but it just seemed funny. I saved my money and then I flew us to Alaska. And I went all the way out to the middle of Alaska in Fairbanks, and it was around the beginning of April. And I had sort of timed it because I knew that the Northern Lights were super, duper active around that time.

And so we went outside at night under the Northern Lights and I proposed to her.

**John:** That’s beautiful.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Nice. But she kind of had the idea that you were going to propose if you were…

**Craig:** Oh, for sure.

**John:** So, I didn’t have the proper proposal because essentially we always talked like, oh, whenever marriage becomes possible let’s get married. He’s like, so of course. And so suddenly the California Supreme Court decision came down saying that yes they have to have marriage. And so suddenly it just could happen.

So, I was in Arrowhead writing on something. And so Mike called. He’s like, “Oh, it went through. Great. So, let’s get married.” And like we literally picked a date. But neither one of us asked the other person. It just happened.

**Craig:** Right. You guys actually kind of got saved. I mean, the truth is that men don’t really care about any of this stuff. We just want to jump to the conclusion. Women care.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** So, even if this hadn’t been shortchanged by legal maneuvering, my guess is that you probably would have been like, “Marriage? Yeah, cool.”

**John:** Yeah.

Bin Le asks, “When can we hear Stuart’s voice on the podcast?”

**Craig:** I don’t know. I mean, we could just keep him like Maris, Niles’s wife on Frasier. [laughs] Just sort of a presence.

**John:** Yeah. So people last night, Stuart was there, and people would ask, “Is Stuart…?” And I was like, yeah, I pointed, “That’s Stuart. He’s a real person. He’s not Snuffleupagus. He’s a real live little boy.”

**Craig:** And you pointed to an empty space in the room.

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And everyone slowly backed away from you.

**John:** Indeed. It’s like in Fight Club the whole time through. I’ve actually been Stuart the whole time through.

**Craig:** Hercules Rockefeller the Third, certainly his real name, asks, “How can someone stop falling for the wrong woman and/or man?” Answer, you can’t.

**John:** You can’t. The heart wants what it wants.

**Craig:** That’s why they call it falling. If you can stop falling, that would be great. But, eh, I don’t think so.

**John:** But, going back to an earlier topic, you know, maybe don’t fall for married people.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** That’s a good choice. And so look for what your type is and find your type in a type that is actually available. Because maybe your type is unavailable people because you don’t actually want that commitment of a relationship. And then you need to have some therapy and deal with your issues.

**Craig:** Yeah. Deal with your issues, Hercules.

Who’s next, Hector?

**John:** Hector from Canada writes, “Serious question here, perhaps life’s most serious question. How do you cope with mortality? Does the inevitable prospect of death borrow you? If not, why not? If so, how do you cope, or do you?”

**Craig:** It bother me now, but I know that when I am — assuming that I don’t die an untimely death — I’ve talked to enough elderly people to know that you, your mind starts to prepare you for death as you get older. And you get to a point, frankly, where you’re not afraid of it at all. It’s just a natural thing. It’s almost like, well, this is what all my friends are doing. Might as well do it, too. It’s cool. It’s okay.

You don’t get scared anymore. I asked my grandmother. She was 94. And she said, “No, somewhere around like 82 or 83 you totally stop caring.”

**John:** Maybe so. I’m afraid of death, but not in a weird way. Not so much the fear of like well I will stop existing, because I don’t believe in an afterlife necessarily, but just having a family and a young kid, that’s what I think about, sort of most afraid of sort of mortality wise. And you want your kid to be able to get to a place in life where they are stable and they don’t need you as much.

**Craig:** Sure.

**John:** But, the truth is, they always kind of need you. And as I face sort of my own parent’s mortality, that’s, you know, it’s tough.

**Craig:** It is, but the truth is, let’s say you’re 85. You’re daughter will be 40-something I assume, or something like that, right? She’s an adult. She’s your age now.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** She’ll be fine. She’ll have her own kids, you know.

**John:** Yeah.

Clint Williams asks…

**Craig:** Good question. Yeah, Clint Williams.

**John:** “Adoption of the designated hitter by the National League? Idle chatter? Good for the game? Umbrage?”

**Craig:** I think it’s idle chatter. I don’t think it’s good for the game. I don’t have any umbrage about it. I’m a Yankee fan, so I grew up in the American League. So, the designate hitter isn’t a matter of religious objection to me. But, you know, we’ve changed so much about baseball in the last ten years. You know the wild card, and the expansion of playoffs, and teams bouncing around from national, to interleague play. All this stuff. Yeah, leave it. Leave it the way it is. No DH in the National League. No DH.

**John:** I barely understood a word you said.

**Craig:** Fantastic. You’ll understand this. John from Albany, New York, says, “Should I buy my 16-year-old son condoms now that he has a steady girlfriend? And at what age did you lose your virginity? Full disclosure: I was 16. So, that’s why I ask question number one above.”

**John:** So, number one question, yes, you should buy your 16-year-old son condoms. And you should have those frank conversations. People freak out way too much about having the conversations about sex and they shouldn’t. Just have the conversations. It’s awkward at the start, but then it’s fine.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** It’s better that you have the conversations. And don’t be intrusive but just make sure they know that it’s an option there and it’s there and you want them to be around.

**Craig:** Yeah, he could also buy his own condoms. That’s what I did. [laughs] I mean, he doesn’t have to have daddy go buy him condoms. There’s no condom law, is there?

**John:** Yeah, there’s no condom law. But, I think it’s a good first gesture to buy condoms for your son.

**Craig:** I totally agree. And at what age, and certainly you should not just let him go condom-less. At what age did you lose your virginity, John?

**John:** If we were going to define virginity in a sense of the activity that I was engaged in if I was engaging with a woman could have led to a baby…so, like, it’s a question of virginity. Like, what’s fooling around and what’s more than fooling around?

**Craig:** I would say penetrative sex is virginity.

**John:** Penetrative sex — 23.

**Craig:** I was 16. I was a man-whore, obviously. [laughs]

Kevin Williamson, for real.

**John:** The real Kevin Williamson?

**Craig:** The real Kevin Williamson, creator of Scream and so many other wonderful television shows, Dawson’s Creek and so forth, his simple question, “Zoloft or Lexapro?”

**John:** I’m on neither anti-depressant, but I think they’re both good choices for people who need an anti-depressant.

**Craig:** Neither am I. I’m not on anti-depressants. And I suspect that they don’t work as well as people think. But, you know what does work? Kevin Williamson.

**John:** Yeah. He works hard.

**Craig:** Best guy ever.

**John:** Nima, the actual Nima, wrote in to ask, “I want Bride & Prejudice,” which is apparently a movie. “iTunes has it in SD to buy and HD to rent. Should I buy SD or wait for HD?”

So, I would say you should never wait. I think waiting for almost anything that’s going to cost $3 or $4 or $5 is never a good idea, because the world could end tomorrow. So, if you want to watch this movie, do whatever it takes to watch this movie now and don’t wait another second.

**Craig:** Yeah. Totally. Just rent it. Yeah, of course. I mean, how many times really are you going to watch this thing? Also, I should say that we do better on residuals when you rent things.

**John:** Yeah. Rent it.

**Craig:** Matthew Kingshot wants to know, “Where does the podcast’s opening musical riff come from?”

**John:** So, that actually is something I wrote and it is from The Remnants, which was a web pilot that I did during the strike, so 2008. And I needed some opening little jingle, so I wrote that opening little jingle. And I liked it and I needed something for the podcast, and so I put it there.

So, if you go back to really early episodes of the podcast, I would use sort of super hero or cartoon music for the thing, and I just got really tired of looking for new stuff every week.

**Craig:** Finding new ones, yeah.

**John:** Yeah, so I went to [hums opening]. And that’s what it is.

**Craig:** [hums opening] What’s next? We’ve got David Wells. David Wells, great picture.

**John:** Yes. He writes, “What surprised you about being a father?”

**Craig:** I think the — when I had my son and I became a parent I was surprised by the amount of innate violence that had been in my bloodstream and I didn’t realize it was there. I’m not a violent person. I’ve never been in a fistfight. I don’t believe in hitting. I don’t hit my kids. I don’t spank them or do any of that stuff. I’m not a violent person.

But, I remember somebody accidentally waking my baby up and I wanted to kill them. Not like, ha-ha, I want to kill them; I mean, I actually wanted to kill them. It’s powerful stuff.

**John:** I would say that I was not prepared for sort of how, I would say sort of like your violence — how primal it feels when you have a newborn kid who you are protecting. And how you are — it’s like this beautiful jailor who has like locked you to care of them. And how day becomes night, night becomes day, and you’re just in this weird dreamed fugue state of taking care of the newborn.

And eventually you sort of pass through that thing. But, because of that intensity you feel this tremendous connection to this kid. So, like any scratch on the kid becomes an affront to you.

**Craig:** Yeah. It is intense. Indeed intense.

**John:** Jeff Orrig writes, “How would Craig redesign Kickstarter?”

**Craig:** You know, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t redesign Kickstarter. I would just simply say to the people who are participating on Kickstarter to Kickstarter Emptor, you know. Oh, I’m sorry, Caveat Kickstarter. I got it totally backwards.

Just really think critically before you toss your money out there. Kickstarter can be a good thing. Kickstarter appeals to your most pro-social noble instincts. That doesn’t mean that the people appealing to you are pro-social or noble themselves. So, just be skeptical, be cautious, and if somebody is asking you for money that you think ought to just be asking a traditional investment community for money, don’t give them money. There’s other things you can do with your cash. That’s all.

**John:** Sounds fair.

**Craig:** Yeah. Let’s see, we got Mike Bowman in LA saying, “We often hear about the crazy things athletes and actors do with their money or fame once they have it, what was the craziest thing you did once you became a working screenwriter simply because you had the money or recognition to do it?”

**John:** So, this wasn’t right when I first became successful, but I really liked the movie Lost in Translation a lot. And so we got the idea, my husband and some friends and I, like let’s just go to Tokyo for 48 hours. And so we did. And it was kind of amazing. So, we flew to Tokyo. We stayed at the Park Hyatt, the same hotel they used in there. I swam in that same pool they shot. And we had like a Lost in Translation weekend. And it was kind of amazing.

And we sang at karaoke bars. And we went to the Imperial Palace, which happened to be open that day. And it was kind of great. So, it was a lot of money to blow, but it was also a really great time and a great experience.

**Craig:** I haven’t done really crazy things with money. I mean…

**John:** Tesla.

**Craig:** Well, is that really crazy? I mean, it’s a car and people have cars and people have expensive cars. I don’t know if that’s that crazy. You know, it’s okay. Does that count? Okay, Tesla.

**John:** I think it counts.

**Craig:** Okay. That’s it. Cool.

**John:** Hawke from Berlin, Germany writes…

**Craig:** [How-ka].

**John:** [Ho-ka], sorry, I should have put the E in there. “I always feel guilty for the Holocaust. I am 30-years-old and I had nothing to do with the war, or the Holocaust, or anything. Even my father was born in 1947 when the war was already over, but I want to apologize as soon as I meet a Jewish person. Do you think that a person should carry the weight of the most horrible crime ever, or let it die after my grandfather left this world?”

**Craig:** Hawke, you are adorable. No, Hawke, you should stop. That’s ridiculous. You don’t — first of all, don’t apologize as soon as you meet a Jewish person. As a Jewish person, that would probably be the only thing you could do to me that would make me feel kind of awkward and weird.

You didn’t do anything! And your dad didn’t do anything. And, frankly, people who were alive during the war, a lot of them didn’t do anything. A lot of them did, but a lot of them didn’t. And a lot of them were just kids, you know.

And the truth is that it was a terrible thing that happened but I don’t believe collective guilt. I don’t believe in sins of the fathers. And, no, you should just stop. You should just stop and breathe easy and be a good person. And you’ll be fine.

**John:** Yeah. Sins of the father just drives me crazy in that sense of like things carry over past a generation. You didn’t choose to be born to that person, so why should you inherit any of their guilt for things? That’s nuts.

And so we have the equivalent in America, it would be slavery. And so slavery was a terrible thing that we can look at, learn from. We can recognize, are there aspects of what happened there that are still happening in society now. But we can focus on what is the present tense and not focus on that thing that happened back then, or of feeling culpable as a modern day human being for what that was then.

We can acknowledge what happened and try to avoid that sort of situation happening again. But, we shouldn’t feel guilt about it.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not about you, basically. You know what I mean? It’s not. You don’t have to feel this personal connection to that because you’re not personally connected to it. And that’s just a fact.

Let’s see, Tim says, “Describes your home entertainment setup and talk your tech in general perfected platform/gamers. Outside of movies, what’s the first thing you read or seek information about each day?”

**John:** That was too much. Let’s just talk about home entertainment center.

**Craig:** Home entertainment center. Done. What do you got?

**John:** Our main TV, our DVR is just the standard Time Warner, no, I’m sorry, it’s the DirecTV box, which is actually just fine. It’s the DirecTV DVR.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s what I have.

**John:** It’s just fine. And I was for a long time holding onto my TiVo but then I got this thing. And you know what? It’s just fine. So, we use that and then we use a Mac Mini that we use as both our DVD player and to watch things off Hulu or Netflix or anything else with that. So, we just switch between the two. It’s fine, it’s painless, it’s easy.

Our old house had a projector and all that stuff, and we never used it because it was a giant hassle. Some people love the projector stuff, but I honestly believe in a TV that you can turn on, you can watch, and it sounds good.

**Craig:** Yeah, we have TVs and we have the DVRs for DirecTV. And then we have a couple of nice setups with surround sound, which I like. Surround sound things are — one particular super cool surround soundy thing which I like a lot. But, yeah, you know, nothing crazy.

**John:** I think people will spend way too much time and money tweaking and adapting their situations which they shouldn’t.

**Craig:** Well, and that entire industry is based on a fastidiousness that simply doesn’t apply. It just doesn’t apply. It’s ridiculous.

**John:** Treat asks, “So, how do you and Craig feel about marijuana? Have you ever smoked before writing? Do you know other screenwriters who do this, or on an occasional or regular basis?”

**Craig:** I mean, I don’t care about marijuana. I had my get high a lot in senior year of high school phase, and then I smoked a little bit in college but not that much. The truth is I don’t smoke marijuana. I don’t get high ever really anymore just because I kind of don’t want to. Again, it’s sort of the alcohol thing, frankly.

And the other issue with marijuana is the dosage concept, because I know exactly how much alcohol is in a glass of wine, or in three fingers of scotch. I just don’t know if I’m smoking marijuana, what is it, how much — how intense is it? There are so many different kinds.

No, I wouldn’t smoke before writing. I just think that that’s crazy. I don’t drink before writing, either. I just think that would be dumb.

**John:** Yeah. I don’t smoke pot. I smoked pot in college some, and a little bit since then. But, the problem with pot for me is I’m really stupid the next day. It just lingers with me for a while in a way that’s not helpful or useful. So, I think it should be legalized. I think we should tax and regulate it and treat it much the same way we treat alcohol, but it’s not a useful thing to me.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m with you on that one.

**John:** Next question.

**Craig:** Oh, Hugo von Giggle-Bottom.

**John:** Ha. Hugo von Giggle-Bottom writes, “I’m interested in your opinions on baldness, John more than Craig, because you are winning the race to hairlessness. Do you care? Does it affect your confidence?” And related questions.

So, here’s my hair situation. I started to lose my hair in my early 20s. And at a certain point, my friend Tom Hoffman says, “You know, if you ever want to just shave all your hair off, I’ll totally do that.”

And I was like, “You know, we should do that, and we should do it as a public event.”

So, I was at my friend Jen’s house and it was sort of like a white trash party and we were watching Miss America. And it was like, yeah, shave my head. And so we shaved it. And I don’t regret it at all. I never looked back.

The weirdest thing about shaving your head though for the first time is I would catch my reflection in a mirror or even just like walking by a window it was like, “Ah, who is that?” I did not recognize myself for a while. But, then, god, my life is just so much easier not having to think about hair.

**Craig:** Yeah. I would totally shave my head, I guess, but my wife doesn’t want me to. She just likes a very close-cropped balding look. The one thing I won’t do is anything to delay the balding. I don’t put any medicine in there. I don’t put any of that stuff. I don’t take the pills.

I know guys that are injecting stuff directly into their scalp. I don’t do anything. I don’t care. This Dr. von Giggle-Bottom, who is German nobility, apparently, says he’s been struggling with hair loss for years and “I just can’t seem to get comfortable with being a bald guy.”

Dude, you’re not a bald guy. You’re a guy. No one cares.

**John:** No one cares.

**Craig:** No one cares. Honestly. It’s just hair. It’s hair.

Let’s see, Jessie asks, “Did Craig ever get to read the rest of the script for that three-page challenge he likes so much? Did he like it?”

I did. And I did. It turned out that it was actually a short. It was about 10 pages, so I got super lucky. Because, you know, you ask to read something, you’re like, oh boy.

It was a very fun read. And when I read it I thought it felt very — it felt like a script for something animated which didn’t come through necessarily when we read it as just three pages. And it was a little reminiscent of Paper Man, the Oscar award-winning animated short. So, I’m actually hooking up the writer with somebody at Pixar who is going to read the script as a writing sample.

**John:** Great. That’s a perfect choice for that.

**Craig:** Yeah. I would think so.

**John:** Matthew from California writes, “I have a hard time waking up in the mornings, no matter what I do, no matter how much sleep I’ve gotten, I cannot seem to rise when my alarm says it’s time to start the day. Part of me thinks it’s a habit ingrained to me after a long period of depression, but regardless of its origins it’s really messing with my ability to get stuff done. Any advice?”

I would say that you are not a morning person and you should somehow rearrange your life so that you don’t have to be a morning person. I think it’s honestly kind of maybe okay that you’re not a morning person. Just take night shifts or something.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s possible. There are a couple things that you generally ask in a situation like this. What is your caffeine intake? Try stopping all caffeine after noon. Don’t smoke. Exercise a little bit more. And then just try for three or four days to wake up when your alarm says wake up, let’s say 8 o’clock. So, don’t get crazy and say, “I’m waking up at 6:30.” 8 o’clock. Give that a shot. Do that for three or four days in a row and see if you don’t start to get super tired around midnight.

And then you may be able to adjust, if it’s important to you.

**John:** I will say the 11 weeks I was gone in New York and Chicago, that whole time I did not have to set my alarm once, and I could just wake up when I woke up, and I was so much happier for it.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure.

**John:** Jonathan writes, “Two questions because I’m a greedy bastard. What was the clichéd love at first sight when dating? Or was there a clichéd love at first sight meeting? And since you guys are fairly popular, what would you say is the proper etiquette for people to come up and say hi?”

**Craig:** You walk past them two steps and then turn around, thrust yourself at them.

**John:** And say, “So good to meet you Jerry Seinfeld.”

**Craig:** “So good to meet you.” And then walk away.

**John:** So, let’s handle the second question first. It’s fine to say hi if we’re not clearly engaged in some other conversation or place. It’s situational, but I was at a restaurant and the server recognized who I was and could say, “Oh, I’m a big fan of your podcast.” That’s lovely. That’s great. If I’m in the middle of doing something, or if I’m sort of like doing stuff with my kid, that’s the only time it gets kind of weird, because I’m busy doing other stuff here and there isn’t a great time for me to talk with you.

But, our fans are super cool, so I’m never scared about that.

**Craig:** Yeah, it’s a good rule of thumb to not approach any famous people or people that you don’t know when they’re with their children for the aforementioned reason that parents get — they’re like bears with cubs. They just get weird about that. I mean, the people that have said things to me that I’ve met about the podcast have been very nice.

And, look, the truth is there’s not a great reward. There’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of meeting me. I just go, “Oh, that’s nice, good to hear.” And then I just move on. But, yeah, just don’t trust yourself into my personal space, because that’s the sort of thing an idiot does to Jerry Seinfeld.

**John:** Yeah. Don’t be an idiot like Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** Don’t be an idiot like Craig Mazin.

For me and my wife it was not love at first sight. It wasn’t not love at first sight. It was interest at first sight. I don’t know if there is a love at first sight. I’m suspicious of that sort of thing.

**John:** Yeah. I think there’s lust at first sight. And so we weren’t love at first sight, either. We were like, this is good. This is great. And then three dates became four dates, became ten dates, became, you know, everything else. So, I think sometimes we’re guilty in movies of creating this situation of love at first sight and it becomes the expectation about how love is supposed to work. And that’s not how love usually works.

**Craig:** That is exactly right. It is not.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** So many books just are lies. The world is a huge blanket woven from threads of lies. We just cover ourselves in it.

**John:** Craig, that was actually our last question.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** That’s so anticlimactic, but that was love at first sight, so that’s a good way to end a podcast.

**Craig:** Why not?

**John:** Why not? So, I have no One Cool Thing, because I thought that was about 90 Cool Things.

**Craig:** Oh my god, yeah, no, we can’t keep talking. That would be ridiculous.

**John:** But thank you everyone who sent in these questions. I’m looking at the list now. There were 106 questions. We answered maybe like 50 of them. That was a lot of questions.

**Craig:** We answered a lot of questions. I think we answered them well. We didn’t fight.

**John:** No, we didn’t really fight. We didn’t even disagree. I would say our answers lined up much more than I would have guessed they would.

**Craig:** Well, because, here’s the truth — the two of us are right.

**John:** That’s the thing.

**Craig:** We’re right. And I wish people would just stop fighting it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Just let us be right.

**John:** Cool.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** Craig, thank you for another fun podcast.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Standard boiler plate language here: If you like the show, find us on iTunes, give us a rating, tell people that you like the show. And if you have questions about screenwriting, which is mostly what we talk about here, you can send them to ask@johnaugust.com. And you can follow me on Twitter. I’m @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. And thank you very much and we will talk to you guys next week.

**Craig:** [hums opening] See you later.

**John:** Thanks, bye.

LINKS:

* The Writers Guild Foundation presents [The Screenwriter’s Craft: Finding Your Voice](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/the-screenwriters-craft-finding-your-voice/) featuring Scriptnotes Live
* [Zach Braff’s response](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869987317/wish-i-was-here-1/posts/482298) to [The Hollywood Reporter’s article](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-zach-braffs-kickstarter-film-523352) on his film’s gap financer
* The Hollywood Reporter on [E!’s Fashion Police writers strike](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fashion-police-writers-strike-begins-441421)
* [Highland v 1.0.2](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland/) brings shift + return caps, lyrics and various minor bug fixes
* Try [Cignot.com](http://www.cignot.com/Default.asp) for all your eCig needs
* Thumbs up for [UC Verde Buffalo Grass](http://ucverdebuffalograss.com/)
* [Kevo](http://www.kwikset.com/Kevo/default.aspx) is on its way
* The [Nest Thermostat](http://nest.com/) is fantastic
* For LA pizza, check out [Pizzeria Mozza](http://www.pizzeriamozza.com/), [Joe’s Pizza](http://www.joespizza.com/Tel_310_395-9222.html) in Santa Monica or the pizza kiosk at [The Americana](http://www.americanaatbrand.com/)
* And for LA sushi, we like [Nobu](http://www.noburestaurants.com/) and [Matsuhisa](http://www.nobumatsuhisa.com/), [Sugarfish](http://sugarfishsushi.com/) and the former [Nozawa](http://sushinozawa.com/), [Sasabune](http://www.trustmesushi.com) and [Chef Niki Nakayama](http://www.n-naka.com/about/chef/)’s n/naka
* If you’re in Chicago (or Washington D.C.), try [Protein Bar](http://www.theproteinbar.com/)
* Craig still loves his [Tesla](http://www.teslamotors.com/) and John still loves his [Leaf](http://www.nissanusa.com/electric-cars/leaf/)
* [Alternate with water](http://johnaugust.com/2009/alternate-with-water) when you’re drinking
* OUTRO: George Michael’s [Father Figure](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_EGdiS2PEE) covered by Cantaloop

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2013/rhythm-and-blues).

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

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

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, Episode 80, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Episode 80! That’s just a lot of episodes.

**Craig:** A lot of talking. I don’t know about you; I was sure that by episode 5 it would just be awkward silences punctuated by an occasional cough.

**John:** I would say actually the early episodes had the biggest number of awkward silences because it took awhile — I think, honestly, especially for me — to find a rhythm for us talking. But, we’ve made it to 80, so if we made it 80, I think there’s a very good chance that we’ll make it to 100. And we need to start thinking about what we’re going to do for our hundredth episode.

**Craig:** So funny that you bring that up. Because I was in the car the other day, pondering this very topic. And you and I had talked about maybe doing a live podcast here in Los Angeles. Hopefully you’ll be back by then. It’s 20 weeks from now.

**John:** Yes. It is this summer. So, actually in our staff meeting — I have staff meetings now.

**Craig:** Whoa!

**John:** Yeah, I know. I don’t want to blow your mind, but with Stuart and Ryan, there’s actually enough stuff that we actually have a weekly staff meeting. And even while I’ve been here in New York we do staff meetings via iChat or Skype or whatever.

And we were talking about it in the staff meeting, and so I asked Siri, “Siri, what is 20 weeks from today?” And she told me it was this summer, like July 23 or something, which is a time that I’m going to be in Los Angeles. So, yes, I think we should do a hundredth episode live. I’m going to say it right here on the air: I think we need to do a live episode.

**Craig:** I think so, too. And it’s going to be a celebration. We finally get to look upon all of the dorky faces of the people that listen to us. They can look upon our dorky faces. It will be a massive dork out.

**John:** Listeners should know that we are starting to talk with venues and finding a good place for us to do this, preferably a place where people could actually drink alcohol if they chose to drink alcohol and make a little party out of it.

**Craig:** Yeah! It will be the best podcast ever.

**John:** Best podcast, by far.

Now, Craig, I am still in New York, but tomorrow I’m so excited because I get to fly home for just a long weekend, which is so blessed. Because, I don’t know if you know this about me, but I get really, really homesick. It’s just one of my things — I get really homesick.

And I was describing to a friend that I think homesickness is actually not something that you accumulate. It’s like you have a reservoir of non-homesickness, and it depletes. And eventually it just runs dry and then you’re just insanely homesick.

**Craig:** When you say homesick, homesick for Los Angeles or homesick for your family?

**John:** Homesick for my family. I miss Los Angeles, but I really miss my family. And seeing them on the computer is just not the same.

**Craig:** It’s not. I am with you 100%. And we’ll sort of actually talk about a related topic shortly in this whole — you know, we moved to Los Angeles to be in the movie business, and then they keep sending us places. And, of course, you’ve made a choice to do this other business that is naturally somewhere else. But, it’s very hard for me to be away from my family.

Two weeks, I start to go a little crazy. I don’t know what your threshold is.

**John:** Yeah. Two weeks is where it really kicked in for me.

**Craig:** Plus, also, I mean, I don’t know if you get these calls. There’s the, “You have to talk to your son,” call. And so then you’re doing this parenting and you can already detect the resentment that you’re not there from your spouse. “Why did you leave me to deal with this?” [laughs] No good comes of it. None.

**John:** So, hopefully the only good thing that will come of this long protracted period is Big Fish, which is actually about a father’s issues with his child, and all of those sorts of family issues. So, hopefully that will be the good thing that does come out of this protracted time. And today we were actually staging through the end of the show which is one of the weepiest things I’ve ever encountered in my life.

And so I’ve spent the last two days crying, which is not helping to stop up that homesickness thing.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I get to get on a plane and go home tomorrow and I’m so excited.

**Craig:** Well, I’m very glad. One of the cruel ironies of our business is that — any storytelling business — is that the theme of the father who does not spend enough time with his wife, husband, or children crops up constantly. And all of those stories are put together and produced by people who are not spending time with their spouses or their children while they do it.

**John:** Indeed. And one of the things that I mentioned on Twitter this week is I get to show this Big Fish finally to people in Chicago. And I asked people like, “Hey, do you want to come see this thing I’ve been working on?” And people said yes. And I asked, again, like, “If I could get you a special discount promo code so that you could come to those first early performances, would you come?” And people said yes enthusiastically.

So, I have good news. People can actually come see this show of fathers on the road, and sons, and dysfunction, and come see me in Chicago because I would love to see you. And I would feel less homesick if I knew that my listeners were out there in the audience.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**John:** So, here’s the actual deal. There will be a link at the show notes at johnaugust.com. But, it’s honesty simpler if I just tell you to Google “Ticketmaster Big Fish.” The first thing that’s going to come up is tickets for Big Fish in Chicago.

So, here’s the deal I made with producers. The first four previews, which is a Tuesday through Friday, April 2 through April 5 at 7pm, if you use the promo code “Script” as you’re checking out, you can get tickets for $30 rather than $100.

**Craig:** Whoa! Nice.

**John:** It’s $70 off. So, that’s pretty great just for being a Scriptnotes listener. So, if you would like to come join me in Chicago to see Big Fish, I would love to see you. I genuinely honestly would love to see you. I’m going to be there at least through opening. If you do come, whether you’re coming on those first four days and you’re using special promo codes, or if you’re just coming some other time, or group tickets, or whatever, if you know you’re coming to the show and you want to tell me that you’re coming to the show, just send me a tweet @johnaugust and let me know what show you’re coming to, what seat you’re in.

And if the world isn’t crashing down and I’m not needed to do something to fix something, I’ll come say hi because I’m just going to be in Chicago and I’ll just come say hi.

**Craig:** And that is priceless.

**John:** That’s the kind of personal service you’re not going to get from, I don’t know, the Nerdist Writers Podcast.

**Craig:** Or any podcast, let’s face it.

**John:** Let’s face it. So, anyway, if you want to come join me in Chicago, it’s an open invitation to listeners. And to you, Craig, if you find yourself in Chicago. Derek Haas is going to be there. Derek has to come see Big Fish.

**Craig:** I know. He’s shooting his wonderful show Chicago Fire there. You know, I ran into your producer, Dan Jinks — your wonderful producer Dan Jinks — at a party a couple weeks ago. And he also extended a lovely invitation to me. And I would love to go. I just don’t know how I’m going to get away to Chicago at that time. But, I will try.

I know that in the back of my mind what I know is that it’s going to be successful, it’s going to be on Broadway no matter what. So, I’m going to see it.

It’s interesting — it’s a challenge — I mean, I actually can see you running into it. We’re in the movie business, we’re in the television business. We never have to worry about people seeing it. You know, it’s like just go down the street, you’ll see it. Or, walk into the room and you’ll see it. But this is tough. It’s like a destination entertainment thing. And so I have to plan it.

**John:** One of the things I’ve noticed this week is I was trying to describe the process to people who come from the movie business. And it’s like we’re in preproduction, production, and post all simultaneously on the same thing. And so we’re in preproduction in the sense that we’re using temporary props and we’re sort of blocking things and getting things to work, but we’re also in production because we really are finishing up numbers and literally getting every foot stepped down to exactly where it is.

But this last week we started doing the orchestrations. And so it was very much like the experience of like film spotting, where you’re trying to figure out where the music is going to go, or like color timing. You’re doing these really technical things.

And when we get to Chicago, it gets even more technical because there’s like lighting and tech and all that stuff. And, so, it’s a whole new world for me, but it’s also all these things happen simultaneously.

What’s most honestly genuinely terrifying to me is all of the variables that I can’t control, which is literally like that tech thing that doesn’t work right. Or, the audience is live there in the theater. And so what happens when that guy has the heart attack, or just weird stuff happens?

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That’s exciting, but it’s also just terrifying to me. Because the worst thing that can happen when we have a movie released is like, oh well, a print can break. But then they fix the print and they just keep going. It’s not, you know… — Things are finished in a way that they can just never be finished in theater. And it’s lovely but also frightening to me.

**Craig:** There’s also this other thing that I think about with live theater and that is film, when it’s finished, that is the film that every single person who sees the movie will experience. But every night is a different performance. Every night, sometimes the performers will have a great night. Sometimes one of them will be off. One of them is sick. That whole thing is just fascinating to me.

You know, every time you invite somebody to see a show you must be wondering in the back of your head, “I hope tonight will be a good version of the show.” Crazy.

**John:** Yeah. So, for every role in Big Fish we have understudies and we also have the swings. And their responsibility is to be able to fill in for these certain tracks of roles. And so if that person is out, this person can slide in, and there’s this whole logic math problem about, like, how you can cover every role in the show so that the curtain can go up?

So, as I’m watching the show with the people who I’m expecting to be there, also in the wings — and sometimes swapping-in in front of me — are swings who are going to take over for that part. Or, we’re also teaching the understudies every line so that they can do the show. It’s just a completely different thing that doesn’t exist in the movie business.

**Craig:** Wow. I love it.

**John:** Great. So, let’s get to our real business today which is I wanted to talk first off about the challenges of the visual effects industry. And Rhythm & Hues, which is going bankrupt, so we’re going to talk through that. I also want to talk about some reader questions because we’ve gotten a whole bunch and it’s been a long time since we’ve gone through the viewer mailbag. So, this time we’re going to actually share it a little bit and you’ll read some questions so it’s not just me…

**Craig:** I feel like you have an illness and you’re not telling me. And so you’re like a dad that runs a store and you keep giving your son more and more responsibility. And he’s so excited, but other people are sort of nodding sadly at him, like, “Yeah, it’s good that you know how to do the cash register now.”

And I think, “Well, it is good, of course. I’m a big boy.” And then I hear you coughing and I don’t get it.

**John:** I cough a little bit, and there’s a little blood in my handkerchief?

**Craig:** Yeah. The little blood in your handkerchief and you pat me on the shoulder and say, “You’re going to do fine.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I will do fine.” And the old lady that does the books is crying and everything is so confusing to me. But, I feel like a big boy.

**John:** Yeah. I saw Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last night, and Big Daddy, that’s the state he’s sort of in. It’s sort of the opposite — everyone knows that Big Daddy is dying, and big daddy doesn’t know that he’s dying, so everyone is treating him strangely and he catches wind of, “That’s right, I’m dying.”

But, let’s get started. Let’s start with visual effects, because I sort of saw during the Oscars there was controversy over Life of Pi and the guy accepting the award for the visual effects of Life of Pi got cut off during that time. And it started this sort of firestorm. And I’ve noticed people’s twitter badges were green suddenly. And I’m like, “Wait, is it Iran again?” I didn’t know sort of what was going on.

And I saw the YouTube video, it went kind of viral, of what big movies that you have seen would look like without visual effects, and of course they look terrible.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But I want to talk through that because the issues are actually really complicated. And it’s not a thing you can sort of boil down to one thing, but it’s difficult to make a living as a visual effects artist for certain reasons. It’s difficult for an American company to stay in business. And all the stuff that’s happening in visual effects could happen in other parts of the industry, including what writers do.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s a tough situation. Let’s just wind back to the Oscars. The gentleman who was part of the team that won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, his speech was too long, and they — I thought it was very funny that the play-off music this time was the theme from Jaws. I thought that was hysterical. But, he got cut off just as he was about to talk about the loss — or potential loss — of this company Rhythm and Hues which has been around forever. Well, at least as long as I’ve been in the business.

And they recently filed for bankruptcy and they’re in real trouble. And this is one of the A-list top visual effects houses. First, I just want to say any controversy about the fact that the guy got cut off is ridiculous. Everybody who goes to the Oscars is told you have this much time. So, if it’s really important for you to make a statement about Rhythm and Hues, you know, plan and time your speech — just a thought — because frankly it’s kind of obnoxious to go over time. I really do think so.

Okay, that aside, here’s what’s going on: Rhythm and Hues is a visual effects house. So, movies and television shows, when they do visual effects shooting the production itself doesn’t complete the work. 9 times out of 10 what we’re talking about is green screen stuff. Green screen has become the most common visual effect, maybe I guess second only to like wire removal and stuff like that. These are somewhat simple things, except that they’re not simple. And the take time to do right.

And so outside companies like Rhythm and Hues do all of that work. Some of it is rote and some of it is not at all rote. When you talk about creating visual effects, for instance the Tiger in Life of Pi, that’s a big deal. Now you’re talking about true artistry; you’re not talking about rote work.

What’s happened to the visual effects industry, just as it has happened to general production, is that movie studios and other visual effects supervisors have basically been outsourcing it to overseas because it’s cheaper. And when we say overseas I think people immediately jump to the notion of a sweatshop full of kids in China that are painting out wires.

But it’s actually — Canada is a huge problem for us here in the United States in that regard. And the way it works is pretty simple. There are two ways that we get outbid by international companies. Their labor tends to be cheaper. And they offer tax incentives. And the tax incentives come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but it’s always some version of this: If you hire people here in Canada they get a salary here in Canada. Part of their salary, of course, goes to tax here in Canada. We will collect that tax and we will not keep that tax. We will send it back to you in the form of a rebate. So, you get to write that part off of your overall bill.

And even though we’re not as a state profiting off of the work through taxes, the fact that these people are being employed, they’ll spend money and it will help improve the economy. That’s the whole theory.

**John:** Let me pause right there. Because what you’re generally saying about tax incentives also applies to actual feature production or to television production. That’s one of the draws. That’s one of the reasons why you shoot shows in certain parts of Canada, or you shoot in certain states is because either that state or the country provides tax incentives that makes it really attractive to shoot in New Mexico, or Michigan, or…

**Craig:** Atlanta.

**John:** …whatever the state is that has that kind of thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, Georgia is a big one now.

**John:** Georgia is a big one. And so that happens in movies and television overall, but there’s also some special things that are kind of unique about the visual effects situation, which is that because it’s not right during the middle of production, it’s this thing that goes on afterwards, different companies are bidding against each other to try to do the visual effects for this project. And some companies have the advantage of the tax rebates. Some of them have other advantages of being overseas. And it’s a crazy situation of a race for the bottom to see who can submit the lowest price to do that work.

**Craig:** Everybody is racing to the bottom. The companies are racing to the bottom. And curiously the people who are providing these tax benefits and lower labor costs are also racing to the bottom.

And this is the trick: Nobody seems to really be sure if these tax rebates are actually beneficial to the people that offer them. It does seem that certain states try them and then go, “Whoa, we lost money.” And then they stop them. And, of course, you always have an issue with the quality of the labor you’re getting.

Let’s pick a state. North Dakota could suddenly decide we’re going to have the best rebates in the business. But, are there crews there? Because that’s part of the deal; you’ve got to hire local crews, otherwise it makes no sense for North Dakota.

So, we’re dealing with the stuff. Here’s where it gets rough — really rough — with visual effects. When we’re talking about the artistry that we think of, the creation of that tiger, the movement of the tiger, the installation of emotion into the eyes, these things that truly are amazing — we think of highly talented visual artists who combine technology and craft to create something wonderful on screen.

But then there are times when the visual effects are a man in a car parked in front of a green screen, and somebody goes and shoots plates, and then they comp the plates behind that man. But the man has long hair, and so fifty people in South Korea spend a week going frame by frame roto’ing individual hairs against the plates.

And, frankly, that’s not artistry. That is labor. I mean, there’s some craft to it, but it’s the kind of thing where suddenly companies are like, “I could do that for $8,000 in a week, or I could spend $30,000 here. I think I should probably spend the $8,000, because the work ultimately will be similar enough.

Those are the choices that are being made. And it’s tough because, you know, I want all movies to be made in Southern California, frankly, and I want all production to be here. I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m frustrated from a writing point of view that when I write movies half the time they tell me, “And it will be shot in Georgia.” Then everything looks like it’s in Georgia all of a sudden. It’s a bummer.

Identity Thief is a road trip that takes place entirely in the state of Georgia. It makes me nuts. You know? I had this whole nice road trip planned out state by state with a map that went from Boston to Portland. That was the first thing that got torn up. I had to argue so that it wouldn’t be just Miami to Atlanta which is a four-hour drive.

**John:** Yeah. A four-hour drive that has to take the entire movie.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** I share your frustration here. So, let’s talk about this situation in visual effects and how it applies to things that are listeners may be doing, which is screenwriting.

We talked about the difference between artistry and craft. And one of the lucky things about screenwriters, at least as its perceived right now, is it is still falling in the artistry camp, and that it’s a — what I can write is going to be different than what you can write, which is what that third person is going to be able to write.

So, there’s some unique special benefit to hiring this person versus hiring that person, which is not applicable to this wire removal technician versus that wire removal technician. That’s very much you are doing one specific kind of job. The same way like I think back to the old Disney, they’re painting in the cells. There was a person who had to draw everything. That was remarkable artistry. The person who was painting in the in-between cells, that took real talent, but it wasn’t the artistry in the same way that the other jobs were.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, right now we cannot be replaced by international labor. We can’t — they could hire Canadian writers to do things, but they’re not finding the quality of Canadian writers that can do what we can do. So, for now that’s really good.

What can happen even in the absence of that though is a race to the bottom. And what keeps us from hitting all the way to the bottom is scale, is that we are organized as a labor union, and because of that no writer is able to say, “Well, I’ll do it for less than that amount of money.” That’s one of the lucky things we have for feature films in the US right now.

**Craig:** Yeah. And that is why the things that worry me the most from a writing standpoint are any of the cultural shifts that threaten that. For instance, we talk a lot about the toxic combination of one-step drafts and producer-steps and free drafts. Because, what happens is — and I’ve said this directly to the heads of two studios now — if you’re paying somebody $1 million for a single draft, and you’re not happy and you want four more weeks of work, eh, what am I going to do, stamp my feet here? Okay.

If you’re paying somebody scale for one step, or close to scale for one step, and then you ask them for another four weeks of work, you’ve obliterated scale. Now it’s half scale. And the more that that becomes entrenched, the more that ground beneath us loosens. If we lose scale, everybody suffers and it truly is a race to the bottom. The one thing I know about screenwriting is there are, I’m going to guess, 500,000 people in the United States alone that would like to be professional screenwriters. And if you said, “Warner Bros. will hire you to write a screenplay for $5,000,” 490,000 of them would say, “Great!” Possibly all of them would say great.

And that’s super bad. Super bad for the professional status of screenwriters and it injures the value of what we do. Not super bad that people want to do it, but the potential for that is super bad, that the economics would shift on us like that.

So, the Writers Guild, for all the stuff that they panic over, that’s really the only thing they should be panicking over in features as far as I’m concerned. So much more than over residual formulas or anything like that. It is protecting our scale.

**John:** The other way in which our scale can be threatened is by reclassifying the job that we normally would do in features, or in television, as a different kind of job that doesn’t need to be covered. And that’s one of the things were always eternally vigilant that writing sort of a proposal or a treatment, that they’re not going to ask you to do other kind of work that’s actually really functionally a screenwriter’s work and not pay you screenwriter money for that.

So, not just extra drafts, but like saying, “Oh, you’re writing this for our digital division. It is a promo thing for this,” and trying to find a way to create things that don’t have to fall under the WGA auspices.

**Craig:** Yeah. And something funny — television and screenwriting developed along two different tracks. And it’s kind of fascinating to see how they divided.

In television, what they did with writers was they said basically, “Look, we’re going to pay all of you roughly scale for things. We’ll even base your residuals on minimums. But what we’ll also do for those of you who are the primary writers of shows, the creators, the showrunners, we’ll make you producers. We’ll pay you all the money that you would expect to be paid as a producer. You won’t pay dues on that,” which is great for them, “and also we will give you access to the big prize which is sharing in the true profits, not the fake profits, but the true profits of the work.”

So, somebody like Chuck Lorre who creates hit television shows is worth more than any screenwriter will ever be. Period. The end. He makes more in a month than any screenwriter probably makes in 10 years.

Now, on the other side you have screenwriters who at the highest levels get paid so much more for a script than any television writer does, but don’t have any access to that big profit number. And, frankly, that’s why success in television has always been so much brighter and sparklier, but success in screenwriting seems to be a little bit more accessible in some way.

Now, if they successfully erode scale for screenwriters, the way that they have successfully eroded scale for visual effects, we lose the only good part of being screenwriters. [laughs] And then we got nothing. And that’s scary.

**John:** The other danger is to look at — and so far Netflix seems to be a largely good thing in terms of creating more opportunities for more people, but if a Netflix-like model of you’re doing a show for Netflix, or you’re doing a show for Amazon that is not sort of a networky kind of show, it’s not even a cable show, when you’re in that Wild West territory you could theoretically be writing something that sort of feels like a television show but they don’t have to pay you any of the money that they would normally have to pay you for a television show.

And, if that model were to really take off then that could sort of explode what we are counting on for getting paid in television. So, that’s the other thing to always be truly vigilant about. I’m genuinely optimistic about Netflix or Amazon or the other people who are trying to do television-like things. I’m just worried that their business model isn’t going to include paying writers.

**Craig:** I am genuinely pessimistic. I think that the instinct of any new business arriving into the content creation industry is to not get hung on the hook that the studios are “hung on,” which is to pay this kind of scale and residuals and all the rest of it.

When the Writers Guild…uh…umbrage…umbrage is coming. It’s been awhile. It’s been awhile, John, so let me just uncork for a second here: One thing that makes me nuts about the Writers Guild is that in its anti-corporate zeal, and I get it, I get it that the Writers Guild does not like these companies. The companies negotiate with them every three years and they stick it to them. And the companies do stuff that’s just wrong.

And so the Writers Guild gets angry, angry, angry. And then you combine that with the fact that the constituency of the Writers Guild tends to be very liberal and progressive and very anti-corporatistic, and I understand that, too. What that creates unfortunately is this knee jerk reaction that anybody who is going to hurt the companies is our friend. No!

This is ridiculous. That is such a mistake. To look at these guys out there like Google and say, “Well, we should help Google compete with these companies because then we’ll have another buyer. And that will stick it to the man and make more money for us.” No! No. No, no, no.

It will be a race to the bottom. When these companies come in, they will dig out that floor. They will try and go below it. I guarantee it. I guarantee it. Look at the way they run their business. Look how they pay their coders. Open your eyes. I love saying stuff like “open your eyes,” because now I sound like a lunatic, but that’s okay.

I’m a pretty sober person, normally, but now I’m saying, “Open your eyes.” And once they do that, these competitors that we are cheerleading, “Come on in, come on in,” well, then the studios will go, “Well, now we’ve got to compete with these guys.” Generally speaking, I would say 7 times out of 10 the Writers Guild ends up shooting itself in the foot. I’m just going to ballpark it at 70%. Whatever the name is for the rule of unintended consequences — I don’t know if there’s a Moore’s Law type of name for it — they should chisel into the concrete facade of that building so that everyone who works there and sets the policy at that place has to read it every day when they arrive.

**John:** In no way trying to diminish your umbrage or actually re-stoke the fires of umbrage, but what I will say is that the ground is changing regardless. So, no matter what the Writers Guild were to try to do, that kind of stuff is going to change. And Netflixy business models will kick in. And so while I agree that we don’t want to sort of burn the house down just to burn the house down, we have to recognize that this stuff is going to happen and try to be as smart as we can about shifting our strategies to deal with how this is going to be.

Because our current business model probably can’t be directly applied to it. It’s just a different thing. And we need to figure out how to do that.

**Craig:** You’re right. And I guess my point is that we should, as much as it pains us, just to look at the person that keeps poking us in the eye and say, “You may be the best friend I have. Maybe we should consider it.” Because, the people that keep poking us in our eye aren’t slapping us in the face, and there are a bunch of face-slappers out there waiting.

And I would encourage as best as we can as an organization — I would encourage the health of these five companies because they pay us the most.

**John:** Yeah. I would also say the other people, we can’t even go on strike against them.

**Craig:** Yeah!

**John:** We can’t go on strike against YouTube.

**Craig:** Oh, they would love that.

**John:** They would love that.

**Craig:** Oh, please, “Good, go on strike.” Yeah, what do they care? Do you know how many unions there are at Google? Zero. They don’t have unions. They don’t believe in it.

Have you noticed that Pixar is non-union? That’s the culture up there. They don’t believe in it. Period. The end. Umbrage.

**John:** Done. Let’s get to some listener questions.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** So, we have a bunch, and it’s been awhile since we’ve done this, so let me start with the first one. This is from Alexander in Los Angeles. And I’m going to start and stop because there’s a few things along the way.

“Way back in 2008 I wrote into the blog at johnaugust.com to ask for some advice on taking phone meetings, back when I was a fledgling writer living outside of Los Angeles. Since then I landed a manager from my Nicholl placement and relocated to LA, writing, shooting, and networking as much as possible.”

Well, congratulations Alexander. Good for you.

“Over the past few months a spec script of mine started getting some traction. I had a shop around agreement with a pair of well respected producers.”

And I’m going to pause here and define a shop around agreement. What does that mean to you?

**Craig:** You know, I think it means basically that you’re giving the producers the exclusive right to take it to places. It’s kind of an option, isn’t it the same thing?

**John:** Yeah. It’s kind of like a handshake option. It’s like, “Yeah, you control it, at least for these places.” And it’s pretty common with specs where if you were officially sort of going out on the town you might say like, “Okay, Producer X, you can have it for Paramount, and you have it for these certain places where I know you have relationships and that’s great.”

And so when Go went out as a spec we assigned it to certain places and Paul Rosenberg who ended up taking it to Banner, that was one of the few places that we sort of gave it to him, but he had a shopping agreement that he could take it there.

A shop around agreement could also mean like for a certain period of time it’s okay to expose it to certain places, just sort of negotiate it on the fly as it came out.

So, he had a shop around agreement with a pair of well respected producers. “And we were going after directors. One director in particular really connected with the material and he flew in from Europe to discuss his vision for the story and necessary rewrites to shoot in his home country. And now, after meeting with the producers and the director, a studio exec is interested in the project, which is awesome. But, there’s a downside.

“The studio exec doesn’t feel the script is quite in the right place. The director is flying back to LA for a week so we can all sit down and discuss what needs to happen to the script for the studio to take the next step. In short, I’m kind of freaking out. Basically I’ve been told to come into the room and just ‘be brilliant.’ And this particular exec I’m pitching to is notorious for having a huge slate of projects in development, with his attention constantly divided between all of them. So, there’s that. No big deal.

“Any advice you guys would like to share with me and your other listeners in this situation?”

**Craig:** Well, yeah, I have a bit of advice. When people tell you in advance of a meeting that you have to achieve a certain thing specifically like that, “be brilliant,” “impress this person,” “make them feel this,” “do this,” please tell yourself that they don’t know what they’re talking about, because they don’t know what they’re talking about. Because the truth is nobody — there is no magic formula. There’s no “be brilliant.” There’s none of that.

Half the time they are trying to control something they have no control over. And the currency of people who don’t create things is to appear in control. That’s their currency, to appear as if they have some sort of knowledge or inside track on the future, which of course, they do not.

Agencies are famous for this. “Nobody’s buying this kind of thing,” until they do and, okay. “Be brilliant in the room.” They don’t even know what that means. I don’t know what it means. Go into the room and be confident and present yourself and be a grownup and listen and see if you have a connection with the person.

**John:** I would say that “be brilliant” is a useful codeword sometimes to say, “This is a really flexible situation and we just kind of don’t know how this is going to go, so you need to be ready to go in a lot of different directions.” And it may be worth having some pre-meeting to talk about what are the range of flexibilities you’re willing to talk about for this movie or for this take or how you’re going to do it. And who’s going to be responsible for following the lead of the exec if the exec starts to go in a certain direction.

I can recall some of my earlier meetings where I went in and I pitched one executive on a project I really wanted. I’d already met with the producer. We went in there. And he was sort of notoriously sort of hard to please and hard to sort of peg down. But, I went into the room and he showed me like, “Oh here, I’ve got to show you this.” And he showed me this trailer for this movie that he had coming out. He’s like, “That’s coming out the same weekend as your movie Go. We’re going to crush you.”

And I’m like, “Well, that seems like a great movie, and this is getting off to a really terrific start.” That’s a brilliant way to start a meeting.

**Craig:** [laughs] Well, I mean…

**John:** When they say “be brilliant,” it’s basically like be ready to be quick on your feet and negotiate some difficult turns there, but since you already have a director on board, make sure that there’s a range of options that you’re all willing to go to or talk about. Or, have language that you’ve already figured out in terms of, “Yeah, we’ll think about that.”

**Craig:** Yeah, but here’s my problem: That’s always the case. You should always be brilliant. Sure, it’s like this advice is along the lines of “be good and achieve your goal.” It’s not advice. And all it really serves to do is freak you out, which mission accomplished, apparently.

And the worst possible outcome is that you cease to be your natural self and attempt to orchestrate this meeting towards some sort of synthetic brilliance. And I guess really I just want you to calm down. There’s a part of the script that you love that is worth protecting. And if the vibe in the room is we-would-all-like-to-bargain-that-away, and you don’t want to bargain it away, don’t.

Hard advice to swallow, but don’t. On the other hand, be open to the thought that perhaps there is another way that you could succeed at and also be pleased with. Always be on the lookout for somebody else’s suggestion that could turn into something that you would not only be able to do, but would do so well that that would be the new thing you want to protect.

But, just take a breath and relax. In the end these people are just people. This man who’s very, very powerful is meeting with you because he needs movies. So, you have a power, too. Be aware of it. Be humble. Be nice. Be charming. Be confident. Look him in the eye. Remember, nobody wants to hire somebody that seems sweaty, shaky, and scared. They want to hire somebody who seems confident, in control, and pleasant to work with. The rest is up to you.

**John:** So, one last bit of advice I can offer in terms of being brilliant is sometimes if you need to stall or think through something, because sometimes they’ll make a suggestion and you have to sort of ripple through your head all the stuff that it’s going to do to your script if they actually were to take this thing, and sometimes you just need some time.

Two options. First off is to ask sort of a clarifying question. A question that sort of seems like I really am listening to what you’re saying and here is a smart, clarifying question that will buy me another 30 seconds so I can think of a better answer for that.

The second thing to do is to talk about what’s important to you. And phrase what’s important to you in what’s obviously very important to them. And so I will do this in meetings where what’s important to me is that we can really track this character through from the start and what the character wants and walks into, and it sounds really obvious and sort of pedantic, but you’re making it clear to the person you’re talking with that your priorities are also their priorities.

And if you can be smart and specific about it, you can at least sort of get them on the same way. It’s like sort of mimicking somebody’s body language. You’re saying back to them the things that they are saying to you.

**Craig:** Yeah. And the last bit of advice I’ll impart to you — because that’s excellent advice — is to talk about the movie as much as possible as opposed to the script. They’re not thinking about a script. They can’t sell tickets to a script. So, talk about the movie. And when they talk about things, and when you talk about things, never get trapped in the position of defending a printed document. Always defend the movie. Talk about the audience.

It will put you in the same goal state as these people in the room.

**John:** Definitely. So, why don’t you take our next question?

**Craig:** Yeah, very good. Dad, are you okay? Are you okay, dad?

**John:** [laughs] I’m doing just fine. I just want to make sure that — I think you’re ready now. And so I think…

**Craig:** Gee, thanks Dad.

**John:** You’ve learned how to do a lot of things, and I’ve taught you how to load the gun, and we talked about some reasons why you might need to fire the gun, but many reasons not to fire the gun.

**Craig:** [laughs] Why is mama crying? Okay. Gosh, dad’s cough is getting worse. I hope he’ll be okay.

All right, this is from Nick from Long Island. [New York accent] Hey, Nick, how you doing?

“The script I’m writing deals with a kid hanging with rock bands backstage during a festival. He attaches himself to one band throughout. The kid also lingers around with three other bands who have lines but are few and far between. Currently I have the band members’ names such as Beating Hearts Number 1, Beating Hearts Number 2, etc, and the Uninspired Number 1, the Uninspired Number 2.” I assume those are the names of the different bands.

“I know it is best to not give true names to these characters, 12 of them in total, so there isn’t an overload of names to remember. I was considering writing each band name and a trait to go with it, for instance, Beating Hearts Number 1 (Mohawk); Beating Hearts Number 2 (Grumpy), and so on.

“I would like the band name to stick in order to group certain characters together, but I’d also like to differentiate them in some form rather than using a bland Number 1, Number 2 type setup up.” John, how would you address this conundrum?

**John:** Nick is definitely thinking along the right lines. If you can possibly avoid it — which really honestly you can always avoid it — don’t do Number 1 and Number 2, because it doesn’t help anything or anybody. Some sort of descriptor to go with these minor characters is really helpful, so some adjective that separates this person out from every other person in the script.

The parenthesis is going to get really tiring, to sort of like say like Band Name (Grumpy), but if the band were The Dwarves, for example, then like Grumpy Dwarf, Tall Dwarf. Then that would be a natural way to do it. I think two-word descriptor names for these kinds of characters are fantastic.

Most of my scripts have a couple characters who are just like Hot-Blooded Shotgun Toter. And that tells you everything you need to know about that character. And next time you see that person come back in the script, well it’s funny, because like, “Oh, I remember that from before.” And so it gives you a visual. You don’t have to do anymore work on it. So, that’s my suggestion for band members.

**Craig:** Yeah. That’s right in line with what I’m going to say. I will, however, caution you that when it comes time to make your movie, the first thing that the producer is going to do is come back to you and say, “Uh, is there any way we could not have 12 people say one line a piece?” Because every time someone opens their mouth on screen they cost more.

And if they are not key characters in the movie, then ideally you’d be able to get away with maybe, say there’s the Bleeding Hearts band, maybe it’s just the guitarist that does the talking and the other guys are just sitting around. Is that possible? So, really think about: is there a way for me to consolidate some of these things down, not only for looking at it to production, but just for the reader so that they’re not constantly trying to… — Every time you introduce a character, subconsciously or not, the reader will attempt to visualize that person in their head. And that’s actual mental exercise. And you’re just going to tire people out by the 12th person.

And when you have 12 such individuals in a compact temporal space, the trick of Grumpy, Sneezy, Dopey, etc, is going to start to wear thin. It’s actually going to get annoying.

One thing you can do is just use the natural discrimination that exists here, and that is to just go by instrument. If it’s really just one line, Beating Hearts Guitarist, “Who is this kid?” would be fine. It depends on the context and if they really are so specific in their characterization then I think you definitely want to think about limiting how many of them are actually talking.

**John:** Yeah. We’ve talked before in a podcast about when you have groups of people. And there’s a certain number of people in a scene that just becomes too many to really handle. I think we do sort of like a mental tally of like who’s spoken, who hasn’t spoken. And you can do that a little bit on the page, but when you actually see it on the screen it’s like, oh my god, there’s just too many people who could potentially speak.

So, I think Nick’s instinct was right to try to keep the bands lumped together. But your instinct is probably more helpful in that if there are a couple of funny things to say, make sure it’s the same person in that band saying them each time so that’s the actual mouthpiece of that band and that that’s the only person we have to sort of put any mental energy into following and tracking through the scene and from scene to scene.

**Craig:** There you go. All right, next question.

**John:** Next up, Gabe. I’ll start with this because it’s my turn.

“The good news, I just got a short film accepted to play at the Aspen Film Festival.” Yay, Gabe. “The bad news: I have been asked to provide a short bio. I’ve had to write bios for myself before. I’ve always leaned towards being funny or absurd, not taking myself seriously. I can’t bring myself to do that again. But writing a straight bio about one’s self feels icky, like being a door-to-door salesman. What have you guys done in the past?”

**Craig:** That’s a really good question. I have to congratulate you, Gabe, on feeling icky about it. It’s a sign that you are a normal human who isn’t a sociopath. Sometimes I come across these Wikipedia entries or IMDb bio entries that are so clearly written by the person and they’re the most grandiose, epic, multi-paragraph pans to their amazingness, and that is icky to read.

Yeah, it does feel icky. I generally recommend however that you just bite the icky bullet and do it, because funny bios are never funny. I have never laughed at a funny bio. Frankly, they themselves feel a little icky because it’s like, “Look, I’m too cool to be just normal.” Just write a real short simple sweet bio and be done with it. That’s my advice.

**John:** So, I agree with you. And I actually just went through this again because I had to do my Playbill bio. For Playbill, which will come when you sit down with your seat for Big Fish, I had to write the little bio for that. So, this is what I wrote, and I decided not to go funny. So:

John August (book) received a 2004 BAFTA nomination for his screenplay for Big Fish. His other credits include Go, Titan A.E., Charlie’s Angels, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Corpse Bride, The Nines, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for which he received a 2006 Grammy nomination for lyrics. His most recent film is the Oscar-nominated Frankenweenie, for which he wrote the screenplay and lyrics. He is a graduate of Drake University and USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. On Twitter @johnaugust.

So, they gave me a certain number of words that I was allowed to use to fit in, and I had to decide, you know, am I going to thank god? Am I going to thank Mike? Who am I going to thank? Am I going to dedicate this to my father? And I decided to go sort of straight with it, but also it’s definitely a bio written for a theater listing rather than something else. And so I lead with BAFTA nomination for Big Fish because that’s what we’re sitting down to do.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s the show.

**John:** I put the Grammy nomination, which I wouldn’t normally do, but just to tell people like I’m not kind of new to music and stuff like that. I put in Frankenweenie because it’s recent.

So, I would say, in general I’ve kept like a bio, a relatively well updated bio that’s always sort of sitting in Dropbox which I can sort of throw at places, but I kind of always have to keep redoing it.

The same way like if you had a resume, like if you were in a kind of job that has a resume, you don’t send the same resume out to different people. You should always kind of customize that resume for what the situation is.

**Craig:** Agreed. Yeah. I mean, I have a bio that the PR firm that I’ve used a couple times has put together for me. And then I tweak it depending on what’s happened. So, for instance, Identity Thief came out, it’s a big hit, that goes in the bio.

But, what I liked about your bio was that it was short, sweet, dispassionate. It’s just facts. “Just the facts, ma’am,” you know?

**John:** Yeah. A great bio, depending on what the audience is for, it can feel good that it sounds like it was written by somebody else rather than written by you.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I mean, if you’re doing a bio that’s going to be intended for like a workshop or for like, you know, into the Sundance Film Festival, like not the festival part but for like the labs where you’re going to be seeing these people, that’s a great time to be like a little funny or be a little more personal or get into that kind of stuff.

If it’s just sort of going out into the world in a general sense, you have to think about, like, this is a person who’s sitting down in a theater seat reading this — what do they want to see?

**Craig:** Right. Exactly.

All right, well, next question is from Gustavo in Jersey City. [Jersey accent] Yah, I got all my guys back home writing in. They got questions. No problem, Gustavo. I got ya.

[laughs] This is how we talk.

**John:** Evidently this is how you talk.

**Craig:** This is how you talk if you’re in…

**John:** If the podcast were this way every week, I would — there wouldn’t be a podcast.

**Craig:** You would end yourself?

**John:** Or I would find some sort of filter that would make your voice not be that.

**Craig:** [New Jersey accent] Hey, come on, John, it’s a good question here. Come on, I’m talking. [laughs] It’s the worst. This is how I grew up on Staten Island. Oh, hey, where you going? All right, Gustavo, here we go.

“I’m finally taking the leap and working on my first screenplay after years of working as a musician. My question is, would you be able to describe the key differences between the ‘inciting incident’ and the alleged,” I’m adding the word alleged, “plot point one. What considerations should you make for each? How dramatic should the inciting incident be versus PP1? I’m starting off with outlining but I’m finding conflicting definitions on line of what each should do for the story.”

**John:** So, this is — I included this question because it’s a very classic sort of like, “I’m just now for the first time approaching screenwriting, and I’m hitting this term and I don’t know what it means and I’m paralyzed by not knowing what this term means, these terms mean.”

I don’t know what “plot point one” means. I think it means different things in different people’s schemas. Inciting incident is a thing that you will hear talked about, a lot, and so it’s worth knowing what people are talking about when they say inciting incident.

Inciting incident is what’s beginning the plot of this movie. Like, without this inciting incident we would not be watching this movie happening here with these characters right now. So, the inciting incident is how we’re starting off our story, not just like how we’re meeting our characters, but what is the fuse that has been lit that is beginning our story.

But things like plot point one, or plot point two, or plot point 17, those are schemas that different people have different ways of doing it, so I wouldn’t freak out over that at all.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah, I mean inciting incident — the idea is the first few pages of your screenplay you’re presenting a character and she’s in her life, and here is what her life is like. And then something happens. And that something is going to change her life.

It doesn’t mean that it’s now Act 2; it just means suddenly a thing happens. This whole “plot point one,” “pinch point,” blah, blah, blah, you’ve been suckered like so many before you into thinking that there is a calculator through which you can run ideas and out comes a screenplay and you just simply calculate your way to success. There is no faster, easier, simpler way to arrive at failure then attempting to calculate the process of screenwriting.

The books that have been written are being written by people who have failed at screenwriting, possibly because they were over calculating, and now they offer you the gift of the very process that failed them. I am not a fan of this nonsense.

There is nothing that these people can teach you that you can’t learn yourself by watching movies, reading screenplays of those movies, reading screenplays by professionals, and then writing, and writing, and writing. Simply, the rigidity that they prescribe is seductive. Of course it’s seductive.

What is more horrifying than the threat of a million choices? And which one should I choose? Well, that’s life, buddy. That’s screenwriting, Gustavo, unfortunately. So, put the books down. Chill out about the terminology. You’re not fitting your story into any box at all. You’re going to write from your heart and you’re going to learn from the structure that has been provided to you by the movies you love and the screenwriters and the scripts that you love, as simple as that.

**John:** Yeah. I’m wondering if we can boil it down to the minimum number of terms you actually need to know about structure, just in terms of what you will hear when you are working in the industry. So, inciting incident is one of those things that I think it’s worth knowing what people are talking about with that, because you’re going to hear that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You’re going to hear first act, second act, third act. Here’s all it means is the beginning part, sort of the beginning 30 pages, the second act is all of the middle 60 pages kind of. The last act is the last 30 pages kind of, so, in a 120 page screenplay.

That’s worth knowing what people are talking about.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you know climax.

**John:** But the danger with something like a climax is you’re going to think like, “Oh, that has to happen on a certain page.” No. I mean, a climax, you’re talking about a sequence that goes up to and reaches its most biggest dramatic point, that’s important to know that that kind of thing happens, but it doesn’t happen on a specific page.

**Craig:** Watch movies, Gustavo. I’m telling you, it’s all there. They are flimflamming you, buddy. They’re flimflamming you.

**John:** Next question comes from Kate in Los Angeles.

“My writing partner and I are writing a script centering around a brother and sister duo. Do we need to make one of them the clear protagonist, or is it all right for both of them to be the hero?”

So, heroes and protagonists. It’s a classic conversation. Craig, what’s your opinion here?

**Craig:** One of them is the protagonist. The idea of the protagonist, traditionally, is that our capacity for drama as humans and such that we prefer — we prefer — that once character is the focus of internal change. One character is going to have an epiphany and a catharsis and a transformation.

But, another character with them can be instrumental to that. Another character with them can change, also. Another character can change in such a way that changes the protagonist.

I mean, there are a lot of movies where we think the hero is one person, but it’s another. It seems like the hero of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies is Johnny Depp, is Captain Jack Sparrow. He’s the one we come to watch. He occupies space in the movie. But, the protagonist, for instance, in the first film is Keira Knightley’s character. She’s the one who changes.

The protagonist sometimes isn’t the biggest one, or the most heroic one, but they’re just the one that changes. So, think about it that way. And just remember, we will be trying to — we will be connecting with somebody’s change. And if two people are changing we want to know which one is primarily changing.

It’s just sort of ingrained in the way we experience story.

**John:** In the show notes I’ll put a link to an old post of mine about heroes and protagonists. And we always think of them as the same person, but they aren’t necessarily the same person. Sometimes the hero of the story, the guy where it’s like, “Oh, it’s about him,” isn’t really the protagonist. It’s not the person who changes in the course of the story.

Examples being, in my Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Willy Wonka is the protagonist. You actually see he has an arc that he goes through in the whole movie. And Charlie, who it seems like, oh, well he’s the guy it’s about. It’s the guy whose name is in the title. He is the antagonist. He is the one who is causing the change. He is the person who does that.

In terms of dual protagonist, it does happen. Big Fish is a dual protagonist story, but the protagonist structure is happening in sort of different spaces. You have Will, the son, is a protagonist who is going on this journey to figure out who his father was and understand this change. And so he’s a changed character over the course of it. We’re following Edward Bloom’s entire life, and he is a very classic sort of Joseph Campbell kind of hero mythology protagonist change, complete with like denial of the call to adventure. He does all that sort of great Joseph Campbell stuff.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So, that does happen. There are situations like that. But if it’s like a brother and a sister duo, if it’s a You Can Count on Me, which was a brother/sister duo, that’s not that.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** And they both could change, but You Can Count on Me, she is the protagonist, he is the antagonist who has arrived to change her life.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly. I think some people might think that in Identity Thief Melissa McCarthy is the protagonist because she seems to change, and she does, but Jason Bateman’s character is the actual protagonist. That’s the one who has to actually learn a lesson about his life in a way that she learns a lesson, but our emotional connection is to his life.

It’s a very… — You just have to know this stuff when you’re doing it, and you have to figure it out, but you can’t divide your attention. You have to actually — you have to know.

The audience, by the way, doesn’t need to… — You ask most people on the street who’s the protagonist of Pirates and they’ll tell you it’s Captain Jack Sparrow. No problem. Didn’t seem to diminish their enjoyment of the film. You need to know, though.

**John:** You’re next.

**Craig:** Oh, god, this is so good. We’ve got Dave in Columbia, Maryland. I have no accent for you.

“Is it okay to give captions in titles explaining quick blubs for historical context so the audience isn’t lost? I know I should try and get those kinds of things in dialogue while trying to avoid being on the nose, but that can be really difficult sometimes.”

Captions and titles. Quick blurbs for historical context?

**John:** Rarely are they good and appropriate. Where I will say, like sometimes you need to place a certain year, or you need to say like, “Near Lexington,” or you need to establish where we are in the world. So, a caption can sometimes be useful. And like in the Bourne movies you’ll see like where we are in the world and sort of like 16 hours later. There’s a certain style of movie in which it can be completely appropriate.

But I’d be really careful because nobody goes to movies to read. You have to find ways to tell your story visually so that the audience doesn’t need to know that information.

**Craig:** Yeah. You can situate time and place, essentially slug line information anywhere you want in a movie, just as long as tonally it seems acceptable. The one place in a movie where you are allowed to put a pamphlet on screen is the very, very beginning. Star Wars seemed to get away with it just fine.

You can open up and people… — The first ten minutes of a movie-going experience I call “grace period” because the audience is completely open and accepting. They haven’t gotten grumpy yet. But, hopefully they don’t get grumpy at all during your movie, but they’re willing to sort of go along with your little adventure here for five or ten minutes on faith alone.

And so you can do it right off the top if you want — still a little risky — but at no point else in a movie would I ever try and pull that number on anyone.

**John:** Agreed. And if you’re going to do something with captions or titles or I would say you need to do that really close to the start. You can’t be like halfway through a movie and suddenly then be throwing up those little tag things, because that was not the contract you made with your audience. First, I agree, that grace period. You’re sort of establishing what the contract is between the movie and the audience. And like as long as you’re consistent with your audience, they are going to have faith in you. But if you start just wildly changing things, they may decide that you’re not honoring your contract and they will get up and leave the room.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Next question comes from Matt in Boston.

“I recently received coverage upon submitting a feature script to a screenwriting contest. The script contains three fairly explicit sex scenes.”

**Craig:** Oh yeah!

**John:** Oh yeah!

“It was mostly favorable feedback, but one critique the reader had was that the explicit nature of the descriptions of the sex scenes may be a turnoff to actors, investors, agents, and producers. He said that if I could tone down the sex the script would be more readily accepted by readers. Though the sex scenes are admittedly rather explicit in nature, they are not gratuitous and they are important to the story and in developing the characters involved.

“How can a writer go about portraying a heavily erotic sexual encounter without scaring off potential investors or talent? Would including a note at the beginning of the scene help?”

Craig?

**Craig:** Well, obviously we don’t have the pages so I don’t know quite how explicit this is. I would caution any writer to overreact to one reader’s comment. The fact of the matter is that the only person whose scruples matter here is the person who will potentially purchase this script and produce the movie, not this one reader.

In general, I tend to believe that it’s the scripts that do stick out and make themselves known unapologetically that attract attention. You say here, kind of nicely for us, because this would be what I would say — this is what I would ask — that they are not gratuitous and they are important to the story and in developing the characters involved.

That’s it. You’re done. You don’t need to do anything now. No notes. No apologies. That’s the script you wrote. And if somebody out there is squeamish about the sex then it’s not for them. But it’s sort of a strange thing. the stereotype is the producer that wants more boobs, so I think that you can just go ahead and just in your mind silently and politely thank this reader for their opinion, but you believe in what you wrote.

**John:** I agree with you. There’s two things I would say.

First off, sex scenes are like fight scenes in that you don’t want to describe blow-by-blow [sighs] what’s happening.

**Craig:** Ha-ha.

**John:** But, you want to give a sense of what’s important about the scene and what’s different about sort of other scenes like it we might have seen.

One of my favorite sex scenes in any movie is in the first Terminator, which is just a great movie for so many reasons. But I remember seeing that sex scene and thinking like, “Man, I want to have sex. That looks great!” And so if you look at the actual description of it, it’s there, but it’s not like gratuitous, but it’s clearly what needs to happen in that scene. And if that’s what you’re doing on the page, that’s fantastic.

Second off I would say about sexual content in movies overall is if it’s honest, and if it’s interesting, keep it. I mean, don’t run away from it just because R movies right now tend to be less sexy. Well, maybe yours will stand out because it actually has some sex in it. It can be a good thing.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s right. In general keep this in mind: Things that are noticeable in scripts, that are not run-of-the-mill, that are maybe towards the edges, the boundaries of extreme, there are certain types of people who just react to that stuff by saying, “Oh, well, I noticed it therefore maybe tone it down.” Their instinct is to tone everything down.

I will tell you that the audience’s instinct is for everything to be toned up. They don’t want the soft-edged movie. They want something that is interesting to them. Quentin Tarantino’s entire career is a testament to this. He continues to defy our own expectations of what we will laugh at, what we will be entertained by.

And more importantly, the people who say yes are attracted to things that are out of the ordinary. The people who say no, yeah, of course, they’re like, “Why don’t you put it more in a box so it’s safe for me to say yes to?” That’s why they don’t run studios. That’s why they don’t direct movies. That’s why they don’t write movies.

So, don’t be afraid to break a few dishes while you’re writing a script.

**John:** I agree with you fully.

Let’s let that be the end of our questions and let’s do our One Cool Things, okay?

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is really simple. And it’s this great little Tumblr called Unfinished Scripts. — Wow, that’s a hard thing for me to say. — It’s this great little Tumblr called Unfinished Scripts, which is basically screenshots of somebody who is writing these scenes that inevitably go horribly, horribly awry.

And what I like about it is, first off, it’s very screenwriter-oriented. But I love that Tumblr and Twitter to some degree — eh, both Twitter and Tumblr — have created this thing where there is sort of like an imaginary user. And so by seeing a collection of tweets or posts you’re sort of like getting the idea of who this person is, this imaginary character who would actually write all of these things.

So, I love that that exists in our culture. And I really liked Unfinished Scripts as an example of that.

**Craig:** Sounds cool. I will check that out for sure.

I have for all of you today a pretty cool thing that’s a little bit of a game. It’s a lot a bit of a game, but it is also connected to my favorite little thing which is the brain.

So, at MIT there is a specific department called the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department. And they’re dealing with this problem of trying to map the connections between all of the neurons in the retina, and I actually spent an entire year in college just learning how vision works from literally photon all the way to our sort of conscious understanding of sight.

So, I’m fascinated by all of this. They have this — this is an area where one technology has outstripped another. They have the technology now to map, I think they’re using rat retinas actually for now, they can map all of this stuff. But it still requires computational power to figure out what’s connected to what, because it’s all in slices and it’s basically a game to figure out, okay, is this thing connected to that, or connected to this? And once they essentially color in all the connections so that this chunk over here is the same color as this chunk, and is continuous, then they’ll actually have a complete map of all of the connections of the retina, which is pretty amazing.

How do you do this? Well, the geniuses over there at MIT, and this is sponsored by the National Institute of Health, have created a game. And they had this brilliant idea that we’ll just put this game online and people can play it. And it’s basically a coloring game. And the way it’s set up is that the game is smart enough to tell you if what you’ve colored in does make sense as a connection or doesn’t. So, you’re basically doing the hard work of just filling in these connections. And the more you play, the higher your points or whatever, but you’re also helping the medical community map the retina!

It’s fascinating. And so I played the game for awhile. It’s incredibly calming. It’s super Zen. And if you want to play, obviously it’s free, it’s web-based. It works particularly well with the Chrome browser on either PC or Mac. And it’s called EyeWire. And so you can sign up for a free account and play the game yourself at eyewire.org.

And know that for once in your miserable little lives you are not wasting time playing a game, you’re actually helping advance the cause of neuroscience.

**John:** Great. So, Craig, thank you again for a fun podcast. I never actually talk about our outro music, and I usually just pick outro music after the episode is done and I just pick something that seems relevant to what we talked about. But this week I actually know what the outro music is. It is Andrew Lippa’s overture to Big Fish, which you can actually hear in person in Chicago if you choose to come.

And, again, if you want to come see me and the show in Chicago, starting April 2, we will be there. And Ticketmaster, Big Fish.

And, Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** See you next time. Bye.

**John:** Bye.

LINKS:

* [Big Fish in Chicago](http://www.ticketmaster.com/Big-Fish-Chicago-tickets/artist/1781632?tm_link=seo_bc_name) at Ticketmaster
* [Green Scream: The Decay of the Hollywood Special Effects Industry](http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/03/oscars-vfx-protest/)
* [How to handle a phone meeting](http://johnaugust.com/2008/how-to-handle-a-phone-meeting)
* [Unfinished Scripts](https://twitter.com/UnfinishedS)
* [What’s the difference between Hero, Main Character and Protagonist?](http://johnaugust.com/2005/whats-the-difference-between-hero-main-character-and-protagonist) on johnaugust.com
* Play [EyeWire](http://eyewire.org/) and help map the brain
* OUTRO: Big Fish prologue by Andrew Lippa