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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2023/the-one-with-sarah-polley).

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

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

**John:** This is Episode 583 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, we’ve got a very special guest. Sarah Polley is a writer/director whose credits include Take This Waltz, Away From Her, and Stories We Tell. She’s also the star of my very first movie, Go. Welcome to the podcast, Sarah Polley.

**Craig:** Woo!

**Sarah Polley:** Nice to see you. You look exactly the same, and it’s really eerie.

**John:** Somehow I don’t age. It’s a lot of wearing a hat I think is what does it.

**Sarah:** It’s frightening.

**Craig:** I worry that what’s going to happen is you’re going to age all at once.

**John:** That’s going to be terrifying.

**Craig:** One day we’re going to be like, “Oh, no, what happened? He’s a hundred.”

**Sarah:** I think it’s like a Death Becomes Her type scenario. Actually, this house that we’re recording this in reminds me a bit of Death Becomes Her, so it’s all coming together. Some kind of illegal potion, and Bruce Willis is somewhere.

**Craig:** Yes. We should do a deep dive on that one. I love that movie.

**Sarah:** Oh my god, that’s one of my favorite movies of all time.

**Craig:** It’s so good.

**Sarah:** I’ve seen that movie probably 30 times. There was a period in high school where we watched it every weekend. We just kept watching it.

**Craig:** It’s so good. It’s such a good movie.

**John:** Sarah Polley, I remember you from Go, obviously, because that was my first movie making experience, so it was all overwhelming. You had made a zillion things before that point. I distinctly remember there was a point in which you wrapped, and the next night we were shooting, and there’s Sarah again, and she’s sitting on the floor of this hotel room, in a scene that you’re not in at all, just watching. Do you always know that you wanted to direct? It seemed like you were studying it from the moment I saw you.

**Sarah:** That actually happened as a result of that movie in a way, because I remember meeting with Doug. I remember I was not feeling particularly ambitious as an actor. I didn’t want to make a movie in LA. I remember Doug hadn’t read the script yet. I remember he waylaid me at a hotel somewhere, was like, “Just meet with me for an hour,” before I got on a plane.

I remember him talking about his filmmaking and how he wanted to break the rules and light differently, and he operated his own camera, and rules of filmmaking that he felt were outmoded, that he was going to change. I literally had a moment in that meeting where I just went, “If I can shadow you and learn about what the hell you’re talking about right now, I’m in. I don’t particularly want to act, but I’d really like to spend my time this way.” I loved the characters.

It turned into this kind of apprenticeship where I was watching Doug working and watching you working with him. That became something I suddenly was interested in was filmmaking. Even though I’d been acting for a long time, I never thought of it as something I was interested in before that movie. Then yeah, I was watching a lot.

**John:** I want to get more into filmmaking and writing and directing, but specifically I want to talk about your new movie, Women Talking, which Craig and I both just absolutely loved.

**Sarah:** Thank you.

**John:** It’s up for all sorts of awards this season. It’s really, really good. We’ll talk about that. I also want to talk about your book, Run Towards the Danger, which is a moment in your life, but also good general life philosophy advice. I think it’s a generally applicable thing you apply to your life and your career, correct?

**Sarah:** I think that recovering from this concussion, which I had for about three and a half years, and having little success doing so, and then finally finding this amazing treatment program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where the advice I’d been given was turned on its head, so the advice to either rest in a dark room, or the best advice I got was walk and do stuff, but as soon as you start to feel symptoms, come on, go down to zero.

He shook that all up, this amazing doctor, Dr. Michael Collins, and he said, “Look, if you remember one thing from this meeting, it’s this. Run towards the danger. You’re not going to get better at handling the things that are difficult for you with a concussion by avoiding them.” There’s a bunch of very specific exercises and vestibular exercises, but basically, your main treatment is exposure therapy. The things that cause discomfort, you have to do more of. That became this paradigm shift for me that permeated every aspect of my life.

**John:** Great. We’ll talk about that in relation to life but also filmmaking and the decision to make this movie after a 10-year gap. We’ll get into all of it. In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, I’d love to talk about child actors, because you were a child actor. You have strong opinions about child actors. I watched your movie, and there were a bunch of child actors in it. I’m like, “Sarah, there’s a bunch of kid actors in here.” We’re going to get into that. Craig, I don’t know even what your theory is on child actors.

**Craig:** It’s fraught with danger for everyone. It’s fraught with danger for the children. It’s fraught with danger for their parents and the relationship between the parents and the children, and it’s fraught with danger for the people making the movie or the show, because you can’t help but put your production first. The panic when you’re making something and making your days and all that is just so palpable. You can easily forget that it’s a child. There are so many ways to go wrong, but I think also there are ways to go right.

**John:** We’ll dig into all of that in our Bonus Segment for Premium Members.

**Sarah:** I love the way you articulated that, by the way.

**Craig:** Thank you. We’re now best friends.

**John:** This is a whole bunch of stuff we want to talk about. We might as well start by framing it in the conversation about this movie that you’ve just made, because it was great. It’s based on a book. I’m curious how the book came to you and what the decision process was, like, “Okay, this is something I’m going to choose to adapt and choose to spend years of my life making.” Talk to us about Women Talking.

**Sarah:** I read it when it first came out. I actually heard about it first through a member of my book club. It wasn’t the book we were doing, but she took me inside into the kitchen and said, “Going to tell you the background events behind this novel. When I do that, you’re not going to want to make this into a film.” The book isn’t about that. It’s about what happens after. She told me the background, which is of course this devastating story of these series of assaults in this Mennonite colony in Bolivia. I said, “I don’t want to make that into a film.” She said, “I told you you were going to say that. Just wait.”

Then she told me what the film was about, or what the book was about, which was about this incredible meeting between these women, this incredibly rich, dynamic, challenging conversation about how to respond to these series of attacks, whether or not they’re going to stay and fight, whether they leave, whether they stay and do nothing, and this incredibly democratic process and difficult discussion that they have. Really, by the end of her talking, and I already loved Miriam Toews as an author, I was pretty intrigued. I ran and got the book.

Really the day I finished reading it, on my Twitter feed it comes up that Frances McDormand and Dede Gardner have the rights to it. I reach out through my manager, Frank Frattaroli, who’s also Fran’s manager. My email says, “Women Talking, do they have a writer and director for this?” He sends me an email he received within the hour before mine.

**John:** That’s great.

**Sarah:** It says, from Frances McDormand, “Women Talking with Sarah Polley doing these days.”

**Craig:** That never happens.

**Sarah:** It was all very thrilling.

**John:** That part felt like it was meant to be. Reading the book, did you have a sense of how you would make this into a movie? The movie has a really strange form, but did you know it was going to have that strange form from the start? For folks who haven’t seen it, it all takes place really over the course of 24 hours. It’s these conversations between these women that punctuated at different times. They break up and they get back together. We’re all seeing it through the lens of this decision. I guess 12 Angry Men would be one of the early comparisons to it. When did you know it was going to feel like that?

**Sarah:** I feel like what I was excited about was figuring out if this could be a movie or not. I won’t claim that I had a moment where I just knew this is a movie. I felt very tingly about it and very excited about the idea of what an incredible cast could do with a conversation like this.

I don’t think I would’ve embarked upon it without partners like Dede Gardner and Frances McDormand, who could help me hash it out. This was an incredibly collaborative process from the beginning, and a thrilling one, of these conversations with women that were rich and wild and bonkers. This process of figuring it out was a real process. I think what I was excited about was trying to figure out with them if this was a movie or not. I think as we worked on it more and more and I honed the drafts more and more, we realized it was.

**John:** Now, a strange thing about the movie is that there’s not a protagonist in a classic sense. There’s a group protagonist. It’s a group of people arriving at a decision and making a decision together. The storytelling decisions are all diffuse among these different people. How early on did you land on that? Were you writing scenes? What was your drafts and documents along the way that got you figuring out what stuff was going to happen, what people were saying, where stuff would fall.

**Sarah:** It’s interesting what you say about there not being a clear protagonist, because I think my first two films, Away from Her and Take This Waltz, the anchor I held onto was, I am going to make this as concretely from one person’s point of view as humanly possible and stay as close to that character as I can. I think anything I like about those films, that’s what it is, is that we never leave that person whose eyes the story is through.

Then I think when I made my documentary, Stories We Tell, things cracked open for me in a way that made me very interested in what it means to tell a story through a chorus of voices and what does that feel like and what does that look like. There was this real break for me with that form of a singular perspective. I always knew it would feel like a true ensemble. I always knew that I couldn’t lose the perspective of any one character at all, so I had to write multiple drafts from each character’s point of view, as though they were the only character in the movie, just so I could keep the thread alive, even if they weren’t active in the scene, that I was looking at the script from their point of view and really gauging how this was impacting them.

In terms of the documents along the way, the first thing I do when I’m adapting something is, after I’ve done the first read of the book, before I read it again, I write from memory what I think the key points are and the most beautiful images are from the book and that I want in the film. I’m always fascinated to go back for that second read and realize how many of those moments I’ve made up. They’re not in there. You project it on.

**John:** So much of Big Fish, I’m like, oh, I took that from the book. No, it wasn’t there, ever.

**Sarah:** No way.

**John:** There’s no circus in the book. There’s no war in the book.

**Sarah:** Wow.

**John:** It’s all creations.

**Sarah:** Were those things that you knew right away you wanted in there that you-

**John:** It was actually while we were still shooting Go, I was reading through Big Fish.

**Sarah:** Wow.

**John:** As I was flipping pages, like, “Oh, the Will character has to have someone to talk to, so I’m going to give him a wife. I think she’ll be French and her name will be Josephine.” On that first read through, you create things, you invent things.

**Sarah:** I think I’m also curious about the things that you just don’t know you’ve invented, like, “That image really spoke to me.” You realize something in your subconscious has mapped something from your life onto the book. I think that’s the really juicy stuff to explore is what’s that distance between you and the book and how are you traversing it in unconscious ways. Unpacking that material of what’s connecting you is super interesting.

**Craig:** One of the things that struck me is that it is an ensemble piece, and you are studiously, and therefore effortlessly, or appearing effortlessly, showing it from all these different perspectives. You can tell you’ve done your work, because sometimes you cut away from the person talking to somebody else, and they’re not simply listening. They are doing things. Sometimes they’re not listening, which is fantastic. Nonetheless, the drama begins to organize itself, as it almost always does, around an axis. For me, it was almost like Rooney Mara’s character was the protagonist and Jessie Buckley’s character was the antagonist. Then at some point you start to feel like, “Wait, maybe Jessie Buckley is the protagonist.”

Interestingly, I’m just curious if this was anything that you were cognizant of, a story about a group of women trying to figure out what is true and what is correct and what is the smart way to do things and changing their minds, that in a reflective way, who we in the audience are attaching ourselves to begins to change and swing back and forth in pretty dramatic ways.

**Sarah:** Yeah, absolutely. It was really interesting through the casting process how every actor I met with was really gravitating towards Salome or Ona, because they thought they were the protagonists. I was constantly saying, actually, by the end, the person this actually revolves around ultimately, and she’s not the protagonist, it is a true ensemble, but the more complex journey which I think ends up surprising you is the character Mariche, is Jessie Buckley’s character, who ends up moving towards becoming the person who leads them forward in the direction they’re going to go, which I think is a surprise. I think it is genuinely an ensemble, but I did want it to feel like we could go back and forth in perspective in terms of who we were most connected to, and to be surprised by the end by our connection to Mariche.

**Craig:** It’s pretty amazing to watch. Jessie is such a good actor. Isn’t it a shame that she’s such a bad person though? One of the nicest people.

**John:** One of the stars of Chernobyl, we should say.

**Craig:** One of the nicest people I’ve ever been on a set with, just so lovely.

**Sarah:** I’m going to be honest. They all were. I know people always talk a whole lot of bullshit about the people they worked with and how great they were. This was the most unbelievable community of human beings. They all shared a greenroom. No one had a trailer. They spent every hour together. It was a time where the Canadian women’s soccer team was doing really well. There were all these amazing videos of their team spirit, and when one of them would of them would struggle, how all of them would run and lift one of them up. I just felt like that’s what we were living. Someone would have a great moment or a monologue, and everyone could feel it when it worked. There’d be crazy applause. They’d literally be lifted up into the air.

**Craig:** That’s awesome.

**Sarah:** It was just this sense of collective celebration of each other and connectedness and also challenging each other and pushing each other, but in very, very healthy ways.

**John:** I want to talk to you about the setting of the movie, because I don’t know how much of this came from the book as well. When you say it’s a Mennonite community in Bolivia, my natural assumption is all this should’ve been taking place in Spanish and stuff, but the actual Mennonite community that was there, that was all in German. It was all in low German.

**Sarah:** In Plautdietsch, yeah.

**John:** In Plautdietsch. It was this weird, insular kind of place. When did you know that you were going to shoot it in Canada? When did you know that you were going to do it in English? Were those just fundamental, baked in decisions from the start?

**Sarah:** Yeah. This book was written as a response to real life events in this Mennonite colony in Bolivia, but the movie takes a little bit of a step from that. While we’re happy to talk about those events, and it’s important to, the film exists more in the realm of a fable. I want it to be placeless. I wanted it to be timeless. I didn’t want people to be able to pin these issues which we’re dealing with in every patriarchal society to some degree or another on this obscure, already misunderstood community. I think it’s really important we talk about that story. For the purposes of the film, I did want it to feel we were basically nowhere.

**John:** There’s a moment at which a 1980s Census taker comes through, 1990s?

**Sarah:** 2010 but he’s playing Daydream Believer.

**John:** Making it clear that we’re not in space, we’re not in some sort of alien dimension. There is an outside world that does exist, but these characters have no connection to it. They have no relationship to it, which is so important as we’re trying to figure these things out.

They’re trying to figure it out in a vacuum, because they don’t have the benefit of having read all the other theory about stuff. As they’re trying to figure out collective action and what we do, these are not literary characters who can do these things, and yet they speak at a level of sophistication that makes it seem like they have had some greater conversations about these things, or at least through their biblical training, have had some elevated level of discourse.

**Sarah:** There is this incredible oral tradition, and especially in communities of faith, where even if there’s no literacy, there’s been an incredible amount of analysis of text and interpretation of text and of thinking about spiritual and philosophical ideas. I did play with the dialog a little bit, because in the book, it’s through August’s point of view, the male, educated narrator. The language at times is more sophisticated than what it would be. I did a lot of work of trying to put it in their mouths in a realistic way. When I started to go too far and make it too pedestrian, I started to feel uncomfortable ethically with that decision.

I had this really interesting conversation with my husband who’s a legal academic. I was like, “I don’t actually want to dumb this down, because I don’t believe that they’re not capable of these kinds of sophisticated ideas and thoughts just because they haven’t received an education. I think they’ve lived in community. They have a sense of the collective and selflessness and faith.” He just looked at me and said, “Why not put the most sophisticated language into the mouths of the most marginalized people you can think of?” These women were incredibly marginalized. There was something that felt like a radical act about that and also that there is a heightened reality to the film that I didn’t want to shy away from.

**Craig:** That comes through beautifully. In thinking about the speech patterns that you’re talking about, it was unique. Listening to them speak, you got the sense that they had been raised to be remarkably articulate. Everyone is speaking very clearly and without many apostrophes. There are not a lot of contractions. It’s very florid but also grounded, and yet some of them are better at it than others. It was interesting to watch how different characters had… For instance, Jessie Buckley, her character doesn’t quite engage on the same structured language level that Rooney Mara’s character engages on, or Claire Foy’s. There’s more structure.

I’m curious if there was a dial that you were turning back and forth in terms of the level of articulation and the level of sophistication or formality of that language, because this is such a dialog-centric piece.

**Sarah:** Absolutely. There’s a reference briefly in the film to something that’s a bigger thing in the book, which is that some of these women like Ona have had access to August’s mother, who’s had this secret schoolhouse. She has brought in some of these ideas and talked about things and had more access to somewhat of an education. There are some differences in terms of exposure amongst the women.

**Craig:** It was a really smart choice to give them that inflection. I really loved it, because it also helped me feel that they were in the center of a religious colony. They’re quoting the bible all the time. If they can’t read, this means that they have been drilled over and over in this kind of biblical instruction, which was remarkable.

Also, just to circle back to an earlier point that you and John were talking about, the fact that you don’t tell us where they are I thought was a fantastic choice, because I’m as afraid as they are when they start to contemplate, “If we leave, where do we go?” because I don’t know where they are. They talk about the city. Where? I felt as insulated as they were, which I thought was such a smart choice.

**Sarah:** Thanks.

**John:** Let’s talk about the script itself a little bit. We printed out some pages here. We’re going to have a link in the show notes to the full script so people can read what you wrote here. This draft we’re looking at is dated April 12, 2021 as the production draft, and then a whole bunch of revisions, double pink revisions on August 16, 2021. This April 12th original production draft, how much does it resemble the movie we saw?

**Sarah:** There are some really seismic changes. All of the films I’ve made thus far, excluding Stories We Tell, you would look at the script, and it’s basically the movie. This one, when they released it publicly recently, I went, “Oh, dear god.”

**John:** I want to talk about that.

**Sarah:** We made huge changes in the editing room.

**John:** Craig and I have a friend who one of his jobs is, when it comes to awards seasons, he has to take like, okay, here’s a shooting script, and here’s the actual movie, and he has to make the script match the actual movie rather than this. I loved being able to see this, because I got to see, oh, I can see why those changes were made.

**Sarah:** Interesting.

**John:** The biggest change of course is, in the draft we have here, the narration is from August’s point of view. I’m not even sure who’s narrating it. It’s a woman who’s narrating it to her unborn child. Is it Jessie Buckley’s child? Who’s narrating it?

**Sarah:** Autje, the youngest woman in the room, the teenager, is narrating it to Rooney Mara’s unborn child from the future colony.

**John:** Great. It completely works in the movie, and it could’ve worked on the page here, but it seems like you didn’t know if that was a thing that needed to happen.

**Sarah:** No. In fact, it’s funny, because I love August narrating it in the book. The narration is so beautiful. Ben Whishaw read it so beautifully.

**John:** He’s a talented actor there, yes.

**Sarah:** He killed it. He killed it.

**John:** He’s Paddington Bear.

**Sarah:** There was no way to think of it as anything but that in my mind. I chafed at some of the… This was a lauded book, and everybody loved it. Some of the criticisms were, “Why would you have a male narrator?” which I just found so boring and beside the point. Actually, it’s also about men listening and taking notes. There is such a thing as a useful presence in a room when someone knows how to be a good ally. There was something about it that just felt so one-dimensional about the criticism. I think I was also quite defensive of the idea of August as the narrator.

**John:** You’re a person who defends the writers’ room’s assistant who takes all the notes in the room. You’re defending that person.

**Sarah:** Exactly. I’m totally defending that person. I just was like, “No, this is amazing.” Again, Ben doing that narration was so beautiful. We cut the film together. The scenes were where we wanted them to be. There was some disconnect. There was some distance between us and the film. Then there was this amazing brainstorming session that we had with Dede Gardner and Frances and with Chris Donaldson. We had another editor, Roslyn Kalloo.

There was this moment where I think it was Dede who originally said, “Should we be looking at the narrator here?” Then the idea originally was maybe it’s Rooney’s character talking to her unborn child. Then I think it was Chris who said actually, “What would be amazing is if it’s the youngest person in the room, Autje,” because we had fallen in love with Kate Hallett’s performance. I’d fallen in love with her. She has a poetry about her and just a way of processing things and going through the world that’s so fresh but also sophisticated.

As an experiment, I asked Kate to send me her notes on her character when she was prepping, because I knew at her age I made these beautiful notes that no one ever saw. Sure enough, there were these beautiful notes, which provided the inspiration for me to go back and write this whole other document, which was me trying to remember what it felt like to be 16 years old, around the age I knew you, and how I saw the world, how uncompromising I was, and fierce, but also there was a sense of poetry and connectedness with my true self and how I was processing things.

I just wrote this stream of consciousness document and would have Kate send back these voice memos to us in the editing room of recording them. We didn’t necessarily know where they were even going to go. We would create sequences around them, or we would take sequences that were there and change them according to the voiceover. Suddenly, we started to find the film. Suddenly, what we started to find actually was the spirit of the book that we had lost by remaining too close to it.

**John:** That’s amazing. Let’s talk about the first page here, because you do some stuff that is so helpful to the reader, but the audience doesn’t get to see. You have this list of the women broken down by family. We see the 11 main characters of the story. We’re introduced to them here, so we can see what the connection is, because later on, you’re going to shotgun them at us, and we’re going to be in a room with all of them and have to sort ourselves out. Visually, when we see it in a movie, we can do that, because you recognize actors.

**Sarah:** Exactly.

**John:** On a page, we would have no sense of what this what. It’s going to get really confusing without this little guide map here at the start.

You also say, “VISUAL NOTE: The flashbacks of trauma will be shot at 15 frames per second and there will be a ‘roar’ over these scenes, animal and/or machine-like.” Early on, you knew that there would be moments where you have to acknowledge these things happening, but you didn’t want them to feel like the rest of the film.

**Sarah:** That’s right.

**John:** You didn’t want the audience to be sitting in them that same way.

**Sarah:** Again, the manifestation of how we created that difference ended up not being what I’ve written there. It was a sense that there would be a differentiating factor. What we ended up using was actually this very, very simple bell that Hildur Guðnadóttir brought to us, in place of my idea of this different frame rate and this roar. Actually, what it boiled down to is something extremely simple. There was some sense in which I wanted the reader to be able to imagine those things.

I think that legend is really important in terms of the characters, because when you’re reading them on paper, I find still as a reader, reading scripts, it’s just this dry document staring at you. It is hard to pull apart who is who.

**John:** The other job of these first three pages is to set up the premise. You get right to it. Right away, we know these things happened. The men are out of the village momentarily, and we have to make this decision whether we’re going to stay or go. I was surprised how little like, let’s set up the world, let’s set up everything else. Nope, you’re going to learn about the world as we’re getting into this decision making process. Is that from the book or that was you coming in to start telling the story?

**Sarah:** It’s me. Also, my first draft of this, there’s about 35 pages cut from the beginning of the film.

**John:** Wow.

**Sarah:** This was the best script note I’ve ever received, which was from Dede Gardner. My first draft had all of August’s childhood and backstory, and we got to know the world. We got to know everyone’s backstory, basically. There were some beautiful scenes from the book that I really genuinely wanted in there.

I remembered my first notes call about this script. I’m used to working with Canadians, where it’s, “Oh my god, it’s so good. I just have one little thing.” That’s not Dede Gardner or Frances McDormand. It’s like, “Okay, let’s get down to business.” The first question Dede asked was, “The beginning of the film, the first 20 to 40 pages, did you write these because you wanted to or because you felt you had to?”

**John:** Oh, wow.

**Sarah:** That was really eye-opening for me in terms of, oh, this gets to be what I want it to be, not what I feel I need to do. That for me then set the tone for every decision I made afterwards.

**Craig:** There is something interesting about a movie that is so much… Let’s say we go back in time, and you don’t cut those pages, and you do shoot that, and it is in the movie. Once they isolate themselves in the barn, that’s where they stay, mostly. We have a couple of brief excursions. If you had gone around and seen their backstories and them as children, once you got them in that barn, there is a danger that you’re like, wait, are we just stuck in the barn now? If you start in the barn and you stay in the barn, then it’s this magical space. I think you made the right choice, certainly.

**Sarah:** Thank you.

**John:** What we often talk about, you have to teach the audience how to watch your movie. What’s crucial for your audience is that they understand this is how our movie’s going to work. We’re going to be in this barn largely. We’re going to jump out of the barn at any time for different reasons. We’re going to be in this barn. Our women are going to speak this way. They’re going to speak at this heightened level that’s not quite natural. The first three to five minutes, you have the ability to teach your audience what the rules are. If you hadn’t come out of the gate like that, once we got into the barn it would’ve felt really strange and artificial.

**Sarah:** I also feel that looking back at my first two features, I would love to go back and cut 10 minutes from both of them. I think there’s too many endings to both of them. I think there’s a time somewhere in the middle that kind of lags, and the beginning of Take This Waltz doesn’t really recover, I don’t think. I think knowing that, having this 10-year gap, and going, wouldn’t it be great to create a scenario where I don’t look back in 10 years and go, “I know where that 10 minutes is.” What if I know where that 10 minutes is now?

I had this, and I said it out loud, which committed me so deeply to this, which was my first meeting with Dede and Fran, I said, “I’m not delivering a script over 95 pages, because I know I’m going to regret it, and that’s still going to be too long. I’m still going to need to cut another… ” As it turned out, I didn’t go over that, and we still cut half an hour out of the movie from our first cut.

I just felt like this film really needed to be efficient, especially because of what we’re asking from the audience. It had to be just pulled tight. I’m also just finding maybe since becoming a parent that I’m becoming really impatient with long movies. I just don’t have it in me anymore. I hit 40, and I was like, “Oh, no, it’s over 90 minutes. What am I going to do?”

**John:** Absolutely. It’s a huge commitment. Thinking back to Go, you came back for the reshoots on Go. That was my first movie, so I didn’t know better. I’m always surprised how few movies plan for reshoots and just really look at, okay, what does the movie want to be now and how do we create the scenes that actually best support that movie? People may not know that the jumping-off place where we get to each of the different three storylines, that was all reshoots, and we brought you guys back for that.

**Sarah:** Which was it? What was it?

**John:** In the back of the grocery store where you’re getting evicted and going out with Simon, and then the TV. Those scenes existed, but they were three separate scenes. We had to go back and make them into one scene so we always knew we were jumping off from the same place. On a script level we didn’t know that. On a read through level we didn’t know that. When we actually watch the movie, it’s like, oh yeah, that’s absolutely true. That’s how it has to be.

**Sarah:** That isn’t a function of you not doing your work. You literally can’t know those things until that chemical reaction emerges between all the different elements you’ve brought together. It’s not something that can always be predicted.

**John:** August as the narrator is a thing that you could not have predicted. What else changed? What could you have not predicted until you actually saw the edit and saw like, oh, that was a thing I didn’t need.

**Sarah:** We had more of August’s backstory too. August at the beginning of the film is about to kill himself. Ona comes up to him in a field and says, “No, we need you. We need you to take the minutes for a meeting.” In a way, she does that to give him a function and a purpose. That’s not in there. There are whole swaths of the conversation where any time we felt we were repeating something unnecessarily, we took out.

We took out stuff in the editing room that nobody has noticed. Where all the characters are sitting down, there’s an entire conversation that happens. Somebody comes in, they all stand up. Then they leave. We’ve taken it out. Actually, the people are completely on different ends of the room geographically. We just put in a sound effect of people standing up or something off camera. Nobody notices it. We’ve taken out 30 minutes of the movie. It’s just incredible what you can get away with.

**John:** I’d love to talk about the speeches, because this is a movie where people have to articulate their opinions. There are some long speeches. Page 54, we have a big speech from Salome. This is a thing where I see excerpted as a credit, because Claire Foy does this brilliant job with this speech, but so much of the film relies on us being able to understand what the characters are saying, but why they’re saying it and what their purpose is in trying to communicate that. When you’re writing it but also as you’re working with actors, how are you getting it to feel like it’s in the moment as they’re saying it?

**Sarah:** First of all, I felt like we had to cast this thing within an inch of its life, so I wanted to make sure the majority, the percentage of actors had a theater background, because I think there’s just a certain relationship they’re trained to have with text that was really important for what we were asking them to do in this film.

We had a lot of conversations ahead of time, a lot of family meetings and meetings between people of various relationships. We had a really full-on rehearsal process. We had a week over Zoom of just text analysis and working through the scenes that way, and then we had a week in the actual location before we started shooting. All of that was necessary, because it was really functioning in so many ways as this almost theatrical experience.

**Craig:** I’m curious, just in talking about rehearsals and looking at the cover page of the script, which, in correct fashion, documents when the different revisions took place. You were a busy, busy bee at the end of June and through most of July.

**Sarah:** I love that someone notices this. It’s so satisfying. I was. Look at these dates.

**Craig:** I’m just wondering, was this the result of rehearsals? What was going on there during that? It’s really just one solid month of work there.

**Sarah:** That was rehearsals. It was Zoom meetings. It was rehearsals. I see I have a draft on July 8th and one on July 9th and one on the 10th and one the 18th. It was finding those moments and input from actors and movements within the space and discovering things that I didn’t know.

**John:** Your Zoom rehearsals, obviously you don’t have the same sense of being in a space. When did you first put scenes on their feet? You said you were in a space to be able to do those things. I’m curious really about that main barn set, because I always assumed that it was a one-story thing and they had a ladder down for the stuff that they need that. Looking at production photos, it really was a two-story set. People were really up in that loft, and you had a crane going in there the whole time. It was a set. There was a blue screen behind everything. You had to digitally replace everything around there. That was the space you were able to be in to rehearse?

**Sarah:** Yeah. I have had this thing on every film where I’ve just driven everyone nuts. It drives line producers crazy. It drives the art department crazy. I’m like, “I need the set dressed two weeks in advance.” I need to be able to rehearse in the spaces with the actors, because what I don’t want ever is a crew to be standing around while an actor’s trying to figure something out and for there to be time pressure on that.

I also don’t want to adjust to new blocking in five seconds, because I want to be really thoughtful about how I’m moving a camera and accommodating for how an actor is choosing to move. It allows me to give the actors freedom in terms of their blocking and me time to process that and come up with an intentional way of shooting it.

**John:** A project like this, you can absolutely do it, because there is one main set you’re coming back to. There were also a lot of other, smaller things. I guess they’re not really dialog scenes. Basically, every place else that we’re hanging out during that time, they’re not big, juicy scenes between actors.j

**Sarah:** We actually had quite a few exterior days, because even though the premise of film, so much of it is in the hayloft, there are actually a lot of sequences outside. Those got to be these just visual, beautiful, meditative, poetic moments. Those days when we were out on that farm shooting, we were all so happy to bust out of that hayloft.

**John:** A question about Frances McDormand’s character. I see her in the first scene thinking, oh, she’s going to be the driving force of this movie. It’s all going to be about her. She’s actually a very small role in it. How early did you know that that was going to be a plan?

**Sarah:** It’s funny. When it wasn’t sure that Fran was even going to be in the movie, Fran talked early about wouldn’t it be awesome to get somebody amazing, like a Meryl Streep or someone you expect to be the lead in that movie, and then they just walk out, and you don’t see them again, just in terms of subverted expectations, but someone who you can map enough onto that that perspective stays alive even when they’re not there, because you have them somewhere subconsciously in the back of your mind.

There was something about Fran playing that part that I loved both for that reason but also because she can show you strength and vulnerability in an instant without moving a muscle. We needed to feel something for that character. We also needed to be intimidated by her. We need to feel a million things, and she’s there for so little time.

**John:** She’s definitely intimidating.

**Craig:** That’s something that I think you really balance gorgeously, which is a sense of empathy for everyone. Frances McDormand, when she shows up, she’s tough and she’s not interested in what they’re doing. A conventional story would have her ratting everyone out. You felt like, uh-oh, she’s trouble. By the end, you have successfully managed to instill empathy in her. She’s sad. She’s so enslaved that she can’t imagine being free.

Similarly, you do this over and over with the women who are in the hayloft, which I call barn, because I’m stupid, but in any case, where I kept being surprised with how empathetic they were to each other. Look, it’s called 12 Angry Men for a reason. If you put a bunch of men in the hayloft, they’re going to be shouting. Someone’s going to go full Pacino real fast, and then there’s going to be a lot of anger.

Particularly, I loved the way the generations were striated, that the older women would just moderate the younger women through empathy. The empathy was drawn from their religious background, that they were actually, even though this colony and their religious upbringing had led to this terrible crime, they still believed and were using it in the best possible way.

As you’re writing these speeches and as you’re writing the reaction to these speeches, how did you approach the task of making all of us feel empathetic all the time, even when for instance a character like Jessie Buckley’s is being pretty awful?

**Sarah:** I think that that process of writing and rewriting the script from each character’s point of view helped, just forcing myself to make sure I could see it clearly from everyone’s point of view.

One of the things I love about Sidney Lumet as a filmmaker is if you go back and watch all of his films, I’m not thinking specifically of 12 Angry Men although that’s in there too, but he just loves all of his characters. There’s no one that he others, which means he ended up being so ahead of his time on so many levels of these characters, not necessarily because he was the most progressive guy. I don’t know what his politics were.

If that’s your starting principle, that you will love your characters equally and force yourself to do so, and take their perspective no matter what, you’re going to be ahead of your time. Thirty years later, you’re not going to look so bad in the way you’ve represented someone that had an experience completely other than you. It’s funny, I spent a lot of the pandemic rewatching his movies, and I just took that as my operating principle is that I will love these characters equally.

**Craig:** It shows.

**John:** I want to talk about the decision to make this movie. Also, you have a 10-year gap between this movie and your last movie, and the things that happened in between. You had three kids, which is a lot of it. You also had a concussion. It looked like you were going to be knocked out of commission for who knows.

**Sarah:** Ever.

**John:** Forever. Can you tell us about the decision, like, “Okay, now I’m going to step ahead and make this movie,” and what led up to, “Oh yeah, that’s right, I’m a filmmaker. I’m going to go back and start making films.”

**Sarah:** It’s funny, because I definitely didn’t think I was going to be able to make a film again, because I couldn’t multitask anymore. I couldn’t handle bright lights or a lot of noise, couldn’t handle too many activities in a day after my concussion.

I remember when I did this treatment with Dr. Michael Collins. I’ve been told by doctors before… When I said, “Will I be able to make a film again?” they would look at me sympathetically and say, “It’s a good goal to have.” It was clear they did not think I was going to be able to. I remember my first meeting with him, saying, “Will I ever be able to make film again?” He said, “Let me put it this way. You’re not going to get better until you make a film again, because that’s part of what makes you you. That’s what you’re working towards. That’s what you’re going to have to do. You’re not going to be a hundred percent until you’ve done that impossible thing.” That was an amazing paradigm shift. That for me opened up, for the first time, “Okay, maybe I will make a film again.”

Then this came along. I’m not one of these filmmakers where I have to make a film all the time and I want to have some illustrious career. I don’t need people to tell stories about me being a filmmaker. I make things because I feel like I have to and it’s urgent. I hadn’t felt like that about anything in a really long time. I felt like that about this book and working with these people. I did feel like by the time I embarked upon it, I was way better than I had been, but through the process of making it, all of my headaches went away.

**John:** Let’s talk about the accommodations, because it sounds like you didn’t end up having to make accommodations for disability, because you were actually able to tackle what was standing physically in your way and deal with that, but there were other things that were standing in the way of women with three kids making films.

**Sarah:** Absolutely.

**John:** What were some of the things that you were able to do and your producers were able to do to make it possible for you to make this movie this way?

**Sarah:** The first thing that I said to Fran and Dede was, “I love the idea of writing this. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years, like many female filmmakers I know who have made one or two films and then have a kid and go, ‘I don’t want to disappear forever, and so I’m going to write.’ I would love to direct again, but I don’t think I can, because I don’t think I can work those hours. I want to see my kids on a daily basis. This is probably impossible, but is is possible to work way shorter hours so people get home for dinner and put their kids to bed?”

Fran took a pause and said, “Men have written the rules of this film industry, and we’re women talking, and we’re going to rewrite the rules. Let’s just make that happen. We’re going to have to fight for more money to do it and more days. It’s going to be hard, and we’ll do it.”

**John:** What are some of the changes that you made?

**Sarah:** We had 10-hour working days, which in any other industry doesn’t sound that spectacular, but in the film industry, for some reason, that’s incredible.

**Craig:** My god, what a luxury.

**Sarah:** I believe we won the 40-hour work week like a hundred years ago, but in the film industry this is revolutionary. We had a rule that if anyone ever needed a break, they could take one. If anyone needed to take a call from their kid or elderly parent or vet or if they needed to breastfeed their baby or if they needed a break from the intensity of the work, we took one.

I learned that trick from my sister Suzie, who’s a GP, who often will give patients her cellphone number and say, “You can call me anytime over the weekend or at night.” What happens is she rarely gets a call. What she does get is a much less stressed out Monday morning, because people know they could. I think that thing of like, anyone can take a break at any time, people panicked when I said that. It happened maybe once or twice. The knowledge that people could I think just created a safer, more nurturing environment that really helped us.

We had a therapist on set, because a lot of stuff I knew would come up. Some of my crew I knew had come from histories of abuse and from backgrounds actually unfortunately like the women in the film. She was available for harder days if people needed and always accessible by phone. We just tried to build in the presence of care as a basic principle of the working environment, which leads us to the conversation about kids, where for me the basic operating principle with the kids was, “If you’re not having fun, if you’re even a bit bored, you can leave. When we do have you here, we’re basically just going to play. We’ll follow you around and have fun together. If you’re not having fun, you don’t have to stay. We’ll work around that.”

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** That sounds like somebody who did in fact work as an actor as a child. There is something nice about being able to retroactively fix some of the crimes of the past. We’ll get into that in our bonus episode.

**Sarah:** I was going to say, I don’t want to give away anything from the bonus people. I’ll keep my trauma to myself for the bonus people.

**Craig:** You’re costing us eights or nines of dollars.

**John:** Talk to us about the plan for making the movie announced to releasing the movie. Did you know it was United Artists from the start? Did it sell at a festival? I don’t even know what the history of this was.

**Sarah:** This is interesting. I originally was going to write it. Dede and Fran had basically raised the money for us to make it with somebody who was going to pay for me to write the script and ultimately make the film or finance the film. There was just a moment early on where I just felt like, not so much in his interactions with me, but just… A couple emails went by with Dede and Fran where I went, “You know what? How about I write this on spec, and then let’s figure out who our partner is?” because already there were caps on budget and all of these things, where it’s like, we don’t have any of this information yet.

I wrote it on spec. Then Dede had a deal at MGM. This was her picture at MGM that year. It both created this incredibly liberating space in which to make the film, but also our partners there at the time were Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy, who just absolutely understood the film, believed in Dede and Fran, believed in me. It was this utopian studio experience, the likes of which I am certain I will never have again.

**John:** This is MGM when it was functioning. It feels like a Fox Searchlight movie. It feels like a specialty film thing, so they could see it as, oh, this is a thing we could release theatrically, and they had a plan for it. This is all pre-pandemic, right, when this is being set up?

**Sarah:** Yeah.

**John:** Then a pandemic happens, and everything gets pushed.

**Sarah:** We delayed for a year, and then we went back to it.

**Craig:** It’s Orion. It was so lovely to see the Orion [crosstalk 00:46:23]. It was like, ah, I’m back.

**Sarah:** Awesome, yes, but when we were cutting, we were using the old Orion logo.

**John:** The original one is so beautiful.

**Sarah:** I loved it so much.

**Craig:** I know. What happened?

**Sarah:** I was so sad to see it go.

**Craig:** Do they not own it anymore?

**Sarah:** They do. I think that they were revisiting what Orion was and meant, and they wanted it to be more indicative of that, which I actually think makes sense. Now that I’ve lived with it a bit longer, I’m like, okay. I was having a very eh reaction to it.

**John:** I associate Orion with Robocop. There’s a certain kind of movies. I just loved seeing that Orion logo. It’s so good.

**Craig:** It’s so great, just circling stars.

**Sarah:** [Crosstalk 00:46:58].

**Craig:** It makes me happy.

**John:** We have a listener question I think is actually perfect for Sarah Polley. Megana, you want to read it for us?

**Megana:** JM asks, “I’m a novelist, but I recently wrote my first screenplay, submitted it to Austin, made the second round, went to the festival, without really any idea of why I was there. However, at the WGA party, I met an indie director and producer who were looking for exactly what I had, and now they want to make a film. They had a feature film in the festival in the same genre as mine, and we even are from the same part of Canada, so we’ve met up here too.

“This will be a union job in Canada. I’m a dual citizen, but not a member of the WGA or the WGC. I’m waiting for the option now, but the director did tell me he wants to proceed and he’s putting it all together. I’ve had a literary agent since 2009, but I left him last fall, as we’d run our course, and I have a new novel I’m shopping around to agents now, so I’m also agent-less. Basically, I have no clue how this all works or what I should be doing. Please help.”

**John:** This Canadian novelist screenwriter seems to be in a pretty good spot. It’s just looking for an agent or somebody to help out making the deal. Sarah, what’s your first instinct?

**Sarah:** My first instinct is to get the agent thing sorted out. I do think it’s a dangerous thing to be at this stage with an agent. I think people can really undervalue having that protection and that wisdom around a process. It does feel like if someone’s trying to make your thing, it seems like a perfect time to be doing some very real research about who the good agents would be to approach. You would know more about this question than [crosstalk 00:48:34].

**John:** I’m curious whether you think this person needs a Canadian agent manager person or would a Los Angeles person be okay?

**Sarah:** I think either would be okay. I think it’s about the connection. I would meet with both and figure out who you feel most connected to and safest with. Margaret Atwood always says this thing, because sometimes she’s waited for people like me for years and years to make their thing when she’s had other options. She always says go with the one who loves you. Whether that person has more or less status doesn’t matter. Go with the one who loves you.

**John:** Craig, what are you thinking? Does this person need an agent? Would a lawyer be okay for this point? What do you want JM to be asking for?

**Craig:** I agree with Sarah. I think an agent is extremely important. There’s always one little moment of these questions that makes me go (gasps). The (gasps) moment of this one was, “The director did tell me he wants to proceed, and he’s putting it all together.” I’m like, what about you, JM? You’re the one who’s writing it. I get nervous when someone’s like, “Don’t you worry. I got this.” Someone has to be advocating for you. You as a writer will never have more leverage than the moments right before you sign away the rights to a thing you wrote.

**Sarah:** You don’t do that without an agent, because actually, I just have a friend in a situation, worked on an idea for years, and the series is going ahead right now without his name on it anywhere. Get your agent.

**Craig:** These things happen. I’m not sure how the WGC functions in terms of credit and all the rest. It’s a different situation because Canada does have [inaudible 00:50:14], and they don’t have work for hire the same way that we do. There are also other limitations to being in the WGC. I’m not sure there’s much in the way of residuals there, the way there are for the WGA. There are all these questions. The agent will then get a lawyer on board. The lawyer can handle a lot of the details. Somebody needs to be advocating for you. This is the most pro-Canadian thing I can say, as somebody that just lived there for a year and a half. Polite people get chewed up all the time.

**Sarah:** Yeah, a hundred percent.

**Craig:** Canadians are beautifully and wonderfully polite. Your natural instinct may be to accommodate and bend and compromise. That’s why you need a jerk who’s American to advocate for you.

**Sarah:** I could not agree with this statement more. I’ve learned this the hard way over and over and over again. The other thing I would say that I’ve learned far too recently is that clear is kind. I’ve done a lot in my life of being nice and accommodating and all those things. People in a professional environment, clarity is the most kind thing you can do for yourself and for others. It’s underrated in my country.

**Craig:** Right on.

**John:** Sarah, can you talk to us about the state of Canadian filmmaking? It’s a lot to be throwing at you, but is this film a Canadian film or an American film?

**Sarah:** It’s an American film.

**John:** It’s an American film?

**Sarah:** It’s my first American film.

**John:** Your first American film.

**Craig:** Where did you shoot it, Sarah, just out of curiosity?

**Sarah:** In Canada, so mostly Canadian crew and lots of Canadian cast. Just outside of Toronto.

**Craig:** In Toronto.

**Sarah:** Just outside of Toronto, but American finance.

**John:** Talk to us about the differences between Native Canadian films and American films. Do people try to go back and forth and do both? We have listeners in Canada right now. I’m really asking on their behalf. Should they be focused on trying to make a Canadian film or trying to get someone in the US to try to make their thing? What is your instinct? There’s so much talent in Canada.

**Sarah:** I’m a little bit out of touch with the Canadian system, because I haven’t made a film there for 10 years. I obviously live there and I have lots of friends who are going through it all the time. I think you look for the people with whom you can make your film the most authentic to what you want that film to be. You don’t go for the shiny apple where you have this whisper of huge mistrust, but you know they can get a big platform for it. I think you go with the people who help you make the film the most you want to make it.

In my experience, that’s been more in Canada, because there have been some protections, when you get public money for a film, around your creative vision. However, I will say more and more I hear that it is just part of the process now in Canada that you test screen everything. Nobody’s immune to that. With this film at MGM, with a bigger budget than I’ve ever worked with, I did not have to test screen it.

**Craig:** Oh, joy.

**Sarah:** I would say I had not just creative freedom on this, but enormous help from people, where I wasn’t afraid of their notes. I was excited for their notes. It was an idyllic process. I don’t know if it’s as much Canadian versus American as the specific people you can find to make your film with.

**John:** It’s come time for our One Cool Things. Sarah, you said you had two cool things to share with us. Let’s get you started here.

**Craig:** Overachiever.

**Sarah:** I love the novel Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I’ve read it over and over and over again. I think it had a huge impact on my approach to this film, just in terms of the love and the kindness in it.

**John:** I know nothing about this book.

**Sarah:** Oh my god.

**John:** Now I’m excited, because it’s new to me.

**Sarah:** It’s so beautiful.

**John:** Everyone else may know what it is, but I don’t know, so pitch me.

**Sarah:** It’s written in the form of a letter. This older man who’s a preacher, and he’s writing a letter to his seven-year-old son. He’s dying. It’s about his father and grandfather in the Civil War. It’s about him. It’s about spirituality. It’s about his love of his son. Every sentence is stunning. It gives you some faith in human beings. There was a moment where I just felt I was reading all these great novels, but I just wanted to read about a good person who I might like to be. It’s the most stunningly beautiful book. Whether you’re religious or not, it’s stunning.

I think that a film that I’ve not seen get the attention it deserves this year is Till. I think it’s an incredible film. For me, it’s the best performance of the year, with Danielle Deadwyler. Chinonye Chukwu just is a masterful director. I just recommend everyone go see that movie. Don’t be afraid to go see it. I think people are really afraid. She really protects her audience. She’s very conscious of making it a really fruitful, rich experience to watch it and not a damaging one. I just recommend everybody go see it.

**John:** Protecting your audience feels like that was also a goal in your approach to filmmaking, especially for this movie, because it could’ve been harrowing and terrifying and gruesome, and that’s not what your movie’s about.

**Sarah:** That’s right. We never showed the assaults. We don’t go deeply into that. What we go into is the recovery and the healing and the conversation.

**Craig:** That’s great.

**John:** My One Cool Thing is something that could be a How Would This be a Movie. It could be for that segment that we often do. It’s this article I read this week by David Epstein. It is about this 39-year-old Iowa mother named Jill Viles. She knows she has some form of muscular dystrophy. Her arms and her legs are wasting away. Her torso is normal proportions, but everything else is wasting away and she ends up having to use a scooter.

When she goes to college, even though she wasn’t a biology major, she spends all of her time in the library just researching different things like, “What is it that I could possibly have?” She comes across this syndrome that she thinks maybe she has and maybe her father has in slightly different manifestations.

Where the author, Epstein, gets involved is, she reaches out to him to say, “I think there is this famous athlete, this Priscilla Lopes-Schliep, who is a Canadian sprinter. I think she has the same thing, but slightly different. I think she has the opposite, where her muscles are over-developed in ways that are interesting.” Through Epstein’s help, she’s able to get genetic testing and all of it. It turns out, yes, they basically discovered this one genetic mutation anomaly that is the cause of both of their situations. It’s a good, long read. It’s in ProPublica, but just a fascinating story.

**Sarah:** Wow.

**John:** It is movie fodder. Allison Williams is apparently already developing it, because she’d be perfect for it. It’s so inspiring to see somebody who says, “Listen, I know I’m not the person who’s supposed to be able to figure this out, but I want to figure this out,” and she just does it.

**Sarah:** Amazing.

**Craig:** Love that.

**John:** It reminds me of Lorenzo’s Oil.

**Sarah:** Sounds incredible.

**John:** It’s another relationship to it. Craig, what you got?

**Craig:** I feel like we’ve just overdosed on inspiration, so let me bring things down a bit.

**Sarah:** Good for you.

**Craig:** The most mundane possible One Cool Thing. Bo Shim, who used to be my assistant and is now a writer, got me a holiday gift that I am so in love with. I take it everywhere. I’m the worst person to get gifts for, because either I just don’t need a lot of things, and if I do want something, I just buy it. I don’t believe in waiting, because life’s too short. Get the thing you want. She got me this thing. It’s the Mophie 3-in-1 travel charger. It’s like a trifold wallet that you fold back up again. In one part there’s a little tray for your air buds.

**John:** AirPods.

**Craig:** AirPods, not air buds, because I’m stupid. Then there’s a bit for your phone. Then there’s a bit for your Apple watch. It’s incredibly compact and so useful around travel time, because I used to have to fight over who had their watch charger. It’s all said and done.

**Sarah:** I like that.

**Craig:** It just wraps right back up. It’s not expensive. I don’t mean to say that Bo’s cheap. I’m just saying, folks at home, you can buy this. In fact, I’m going to tell you how much it is right now.

**Sarah:** I like this idea a lot, because I’m not a very organized person, unlike John August, whose house I’m in right now, and is terrifying. It’s Sleeping with the Enemy in here.

**Craig:** For sure.

**Sarah:** Everything has been thought of. It’s absolutely terrifying, but these are my aspirations, and so I would like that.

**Craig:** Every room in John’s house is a killing floor. No question.

**John:** There’s a drain in the side, straight down.

**Craig:** Every single room.

**Sarah:** When you open the drawers, everything’s perfect. You know how terrifying that was in that movie?

**Craig:** I want to amend my statement. This was expensive.

**John:** I’m looking at it. It’s $150, Craig.

**Sarah:** You jerk.

**Craig:** It’s $150.

**Sarah:** You got us all excited.

**Craig:** Now I feel terrible but not super terrible, because honestly, it really is great. Sarah Polley, I do believe that if you are looking to slightly upgrade your life organization, pick this thing up.

**John:** I like it. Craig, I was thinking what an air bud charger would be. I think it’s when you plug in your dog. You plug in your dog, air bud, and so he can catch the footballs.

**Craig:** You insert it gently into your dog.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Gross.

**John:** That’s our show for the week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli as always.

**Craig:** Yay! What what.

**John:** Outro this week is by Timothy Lenko. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can send longer questions. For short questions, sometimes I’m still around Twitter. Are you still on Twitter, Sarah?

**Sarah:** I’m on Twitter.

**John:** You and I DM’ed on Twitter once. Craig’s gone though, so don’t talk to him.

**Sarah:** Are you gone for moral and ethical reasons?

**Craig:** I am gone for moral and ethical reasons, yes.

**Sarah:** Wow. Should I be thinking about this? Is this what’s happening?

**Craig:** I am a fairly low bar, so yeah, I think so.

**Sarah:** [inaudible 01:00:09].

**John:** I’m also on Mastodon and the other things, so I have my backup plans.

**Sarah:** Where am I going? Mastodon, is that where I’m going?

**John:** Yeah, probably Mastodon.

**Craig:** [Crosstalk 01:00:18].

**Sarah:** It’s so complicated.

**John:** I’m also on Instagram. Instagram’s easy.

**Craig:** It’s so complicated. It’s so annoying that Twitter got ruined. Not like it was just a paragon of loveliness. Still.

**John:** People can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the script for Women Talking, so you can see where it was before it became the movie. If you want to watch the movie though, is it on Amazon at this point? Where can people see it?

**Sarah:** It’s in theaters only right now.

**John:** Theaters only right now. Go to your theater and see the film on a big screen. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments like the one we’re about to record on child actors. Sarah Polley, it’s so amazing to see you again.

**Craig:** It was lovely talking with you, Sarah.

**Sarah:** Thank you so much for having me. I loved being here. I love the show. I listen to it all the time.

**Craig:** Thank you.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** Sarah Polley, you were a child actor. You were in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Sweet Hereafter, which I think is the movie right before Go, the bus crash movie. It’s like, “Oh yeah, that girl from the bus crash, she should play a checkout clerk who’s trying to make a drug deal.” You’ve written to and about Terry Gilliam and your experience on Baron Munchausen. What’s the synopsis of that? Basically, it was traumatic in a way that you felt like hadn’t been acknowledged? What was your feeling about being a child actor?

**Sarah:** In general, my feeling about being a child actor is that it’s not a good experience and that it’s also really hard to untangle what a child’s really feeling from what the expectations are of them, by either their parents or other adults in the room. It’s really hard to get the truth out of a kid who feels the pressure of adults.

In general, I think that film sets are generally populated with people who are not trained or particularly interested in the well-being of children. Craig very eloquently put it, the production is always going to come first. When you put the panic, emergency room mentality around something, a kid’s well-being is going to be forgotten, no matter how conscious you are of it.

I had particularly traumatic experiences, for sure. They were on the extreme end, which led to a whole interaction with Terry Gilliam later when he was about to cast another child actor. I reached out to him to explain how difficult my experiences had been on that set, which I felt very, very unsafe. I felt that things had been very dangerous, scared for my life at times. Again, it was extreme, but I’ve seen child actors with less extreme in terms of the tangible, physical danger experiences, and still, I don’t buy it.

There was a really concrete example of what Craig was talking about on my set, because I had this horror of, I can’t make this religious community that’s doing this whole thing to basically fight for the future generation and build a new world without ever showing children.

**John:** That’s crucial.

**Sarah:** That’s exactly what these women are fighting for. I did a couple things. One was, yes, the kids are going to run around and play. We’re just going to follow them with the camera. I’m going to make an announcement every single day, they can leave whenever they want. It’s no problem.

My kids couldn’t visit set, because of COVID, unless they were gainfully employed by the production. My oldest has always wanted to be an actor, because every button gets pushed by your children. There was this advocating that happened for my kids going, “We’re coming to set. It’s the only way we get to see you at work. You’ve never been working like this since we were born. We’re coming to watch you work, and we’re going to be background performers, and we’re really excited about it.”

My kid’s there. It’s my seven-year-old’s birthday. Of course, it’s a giant crane shot and a drone shot at magic hour. As the crane comes into my seven-year-old’s face, my kids keep looking at the camera and flaring their nostrils. It’s this giant crane shot. Literally, we have five minutes to get the shot. We’re just coming in, and they’re like, “Ha ha, let’s screw up mama’s shot again.” They thought it was so funny.

I literally had this moment where I empathized with every filmmaker who [inaudible 01:04:40] for granted as a child actor, which is why kids shouldn’t be on set, because even me, with my past and my trauma and my own children, I had a hundred people standing around panicking, and this kid was potentially between us and getting the shot, and this is why children should never be on sets. I just proved my own point.

**Craig:** It’s true. It’s true. I had a really interesting, I guess I could call it a revelation or good learning experience, making The Last of Us, because we cast an actor who, I believe he was eight or nine. He’s deaf. The thing about casting a kid who’s deaf is nobody questions how much support is required. His mom is there, but also, he’s got an interpreter, and he’s got a coach, one of whom is deaf and obviously communicates with him through ASL. Then the translator, or the interpreter rather, is helping us back and forth. There’s all this support around this kid.

Then I thought, wait, shouldn’t be there all of this even if you’re not deaf? Any kid being on set should be carefully bubble wrapped. Schedules should presume that the kid is not going to be able to nail the crane shot the first three or four times.

**Sarah:** There you go.

**Craig:** What ends up happening when you’re panicked and running out of money and you’ve got this studio gun to your head, whatever it is that is all of our madness while we’re making these things, is children become these annoying obstacles. They can’t work as many hours. Oh, we get to send him to lunch. Oh, he gets a break. Oh, he has to go to class. School they call it, fake school in the trailer, whatever it is. You’re like, “Ugh.” Now you’re angry.

I’ve been angry at babies. I got angry at a baby once, not to its face. I didn’t yell at the baby. Obviously, I’m in the tent by a monitor. I’m like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe this baby. We don’t have another 20 minutes with the baby?” They’re like, “It’s a baby.”

**Sarah:** I literally had this moment a couple of times on my set, where I was like, “Oh my god, we’re bringing the kids again. Oh my god, bringing the kids again. Oh my god.” I remember the parents all coming up to me and going, “No, we’re okay.” I’m like, “I can’t, because I actually literally wrote this rule.”

**Craig:** I know. I know.

**Sarah:** I wrote this rule in the ACTRA, in the Canadian actors union. I’m not breaking it. I promise.

**Craig:** At that moment you were like, “It was really more of a guideline and not so much a rule.”

**Sarah:** Exactly.

**Craig:** “Got to make my day.”

**Sarah:** Here’s the other thing that should be presumed. The other thing that should be presumed, whether it’s true or not, and a lot of the time this isn’t true but it should be presumed just in case, is that the parents don’t have the kids’ best interest at heart.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**Sarah:** That’s a really hard thing to presume, because you always go, “If the parent’s okay. It’s their department.” We have no idea. Whatever face that parent is presenting to us, whatever face the kid is presenting to us, we have no idea what the pressures look like at home. I’ve seen those be two very different things in my own experience of other kid actors I was working with. I would see one face that the parent presented on set and another one that I would see in private moments with the kid. There has to be a third party that is not paid for by either the production or the parent who makes calls that will sometimes fly in the face of what both the production and the parents say is okay.

**Craig:** I think that’s so true.

**Sarah:** I think that person has to be there. I also think kids can’t sign long contracts for series. I’m sorry. There should be a limit on how much a kid could work in a year, maybe one project, maybe two projects a year. I don’t know. I think there have to be some really serious things in place to allow for the fact that as a society we have decided children should not work, but we’ve made this exception for this Wild West of an industry that’s probably the last place that should be given this exception.

**Craig:** You’re on to something there.

**John:** First movie I directed, Elle Fanning was the star of it. Small role, but she was fantastic. She was Elle Fanning before she was Elle Fanning. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, you’re great. I’m going to write additional scenes for you.” We’re shooting exterior. It’s Ryan Reynolds, Melissa McCarthy, and Elle Fanning. We’re setting up these shots. Elle Fanning can only work a certain number of hours.

The AD goes, “Oh, and this is her stand-in.” The stand-in is some other kid. I’m just like, “Wait. First of all, this kid’s really annoying.” I didn’t like this kid. Also, what is this kid getting out of it at all? This kid is not going to show up on camera. This kid is not acting. This kid is just there just to occupy space and is just working.

**Sarah:** They’re not being treated particularly well. Those kid stand-ins get treated badly.

**John:** The kid was annoying. I said, “I never want to see that kid again.”

**Craig:** Did they murder the kid?

**John:** Yes, they did. “Get her out of my sight.”

**Sarah:** “Take her away.”

**John:** Also, I don’t ever want a kid stand-in. I want to find some other way to do this, whether it’s a little person or some other situation where we can just find a person to do that role. That kid could not get anything out of it.

**Sarah:** No, because they’re not even getting the fun, whatever, toxic coddling that can feel good in the moment.

**John:** Absolutely, as opposed to Elle Fanning, who was clearly a superstar in those little moments I saw her. She’s giant and can do all these impersonations. She was having the time of her life. This other kid was there because her mom wanted her to be there.

**Craig:** John, what if that kid is a fan of Scriptnotes? They’ve grown up. They listen to Scriptnotes every week.

**Sarah:** [crosstalk 01:10:04].

**John:** This whole time.

**Craig:** They’re like, “Apparently, I was annoying.”

**John:** I just ruined things [crosstalk 01:10:09]. The other thing I want to point people to is the second season of Nathan For You is about this experiment where Nathan puts together this house to figure out what it’d be like to have a kid. This woman wants to know what it’d be like to have a kid. They hire a bunch of child actors to be this woman’s kid.

**Sarah:** That’s really funny.

**John:** They go through all this stuff. Later on in the season, it becomes clear, oh, some of these child actors have really enjoyed it and enjoyed being part of the family and this relationship and what is responsibility to child actors. Like all Nathan For You, it doesn’t answer the question at all. It just makes you really uncomfortable about it. It was a good exploration of what it feels like to be using children to be doing this emotional labor.

**Sarah:** The other thing about it is it’s this toxic combination of coddling and neglect. You have on the one hand, everyone’s going to laugh at that kid’s jokes, everyone’s going to tell them how great they are. Everyone’s going to lie to them if they’re behaving horribly and laugh it off. There’s no boundaries on behavior really. No one actually deeply cares about that kid’s well-being beyond what their purpose is on that set. There may be one or two angels that come out of the woodwork. In my case, there were. The kid’s experience is not the priority on that set. It’s getting the day. It’s a terrible thing it does to one’s head of both this superficial ego boost and the sense that nobody cares about me really.

**Craig:** Then on the other side of things, there’s the more modern problem. I know Bella Ramsey’s been talking about this. When she started with us, she was 17, so there was still a K on her number. Then she turned 18 fairly early on. When she started shooting with us, she was still not a legal adult. Then you come out on the other side of shooting, and hopefully everything’s gone well and you’re treated well. In our case, we were also very lucky, because her mom was there, and she was fantastic. Everything’s wonderful. Then the internet has to talk about your face and your body and your this and your that and your hair and your eyes and everything and take you apart.

**Sarah:** It’s a whole other dynamic now.

**Craig:** This is difficult for adults, difficult, borderline impossible for adults to handle. For a child, it’s terrifying to think, I want to really tell this story and I want to make a TV show but am I damaging someone. We talked about it a lot. We still talk about it a lot. It’s a scary thing. It’s something that’s made I think being a child actor even harder than it used to be.

**John:** Sarah, you are a parent of a kid who wants to be an actor.

**Sarah:** I am.

**John:** Let’s say you’re a listener whose kid wants to be an actor. At what age do you think you might allow a kid to start, it’s like, “Okay, you can start doing this.” When do you think that maturity might be a thing where you feel like they have some agency in the situation?

**Sarah:** It’s so fun, because I’ve always had to talk about this in the abstract, and now I can talk about it for real as a parent of a kid who really wants to go into it, to the point where I have almost weakened. It’s so desperate, this need and want.

The first thing I would say is we have loaded my oldest kid up with after-school theater programs, weekend improv classes, to get that creative stuff going, because that’s legitimate. Wanting to create things shouldn’t be held back, but in an environment that is designed to be nurturing and exciting and educational. We’ve done a lot of that. We’ve talked about 16 as the age where we can start talking about it if they still have this intense desire to do it professionally. I still think that’s young, but we’re willing to talk about it.

I had a hilarious experience recently. My brother’s a casting director, and he was casting this film with child actors. My oldest was being babysat at the time, last-minute thing. I had to drop off my kid. He was doing these Zoom auditions. My oldest was like, “Just get me on.” My kid goes on, gets the part.

**Craig:** Love it.

**Sarah:** I watched then. I get there. I watched for the rest of the Zoom calls, hidden, and go, “Okay, this woman has cracked the code of how to deal with child actors.” I saw her subvert horrible stage parents who I have worked with and make it a good experience for those kids. This woman was a genius, clearly. Then at the end, I talked to the woman, and she’s like, “I just read your book. It’s becoming part of our model for how we’re going to treat child actors.”

I’m like, “Okay, it’s only four days. I’m free for these four days.” I was like, “Eve, if you’re willing to put up with me being the most obnoxious on-set parent where I’m literally shutting down that production, pulling the lights at the slightest discomfort for anyone.” Eve was like, “Yeah, I’ll deal with that.” We’re about to do it. Eve reads the script. It was a great script based on a great novel, but Eve was like, “This is about a kid with a disability, and I don’t trust that your generation of filmmakers is going to get how to do this in a way that’s not sensitive. There isn’t someone with a disability making this film. I can’t be part of it.” Eve passed.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Wow.

**Sarah:** Eve passed. Eve passed.

**John:** That’s totally Sarah Polley.

**Sarah:** Just like their mom. Just like their mother. All I really wanted to ever do was pass. I never really wanted to work as an actor. I just liked passing on stuff. It was my favorite.

**John:** You passed on Go a bit too.

**Sarah:** I passed on Go. I passed on everything. It was the best part.

**Craig:** That’s great.

**John:** I remember one person had to fly you up and walk you through immigration in Canada to get you here to Los Angeles.

**Sarah:** I know, because I bailed at the last second, because customs was a tricky, and I was like, “You know what? I didn’t really want to do this anyway.”

**Craig:** I love that.

**Sarah:** “Forget it.” Chuck Schumer got involved. It was a whole thing. With Eve, they wanted to do this so badly, and they passed. Now, I don’t know where we are, because I finally caved on this that was so intense for me.

**Craig:** Maybe that’s all they needed was just permission.

**Sarah:** I wonder if it was also like they saw this thing was on the others in terms of me having this red line around something and went, “We’re just going to get rid of that and then we can move on.”

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** On Episode 2000 of Scriptnotes, they’ll come on this show, and we’ll talk to them about what it was like growing up with a director parent and why they are now the filmmaker they are today.

**Craig:** Yes, when their book, I Hate You, Mom, comes out, it’ll be great. We can go through it and really dig in to what happened.

**John:** Sarah Polley, such an amazing pleasure.

**Craig:** Thank you, Sarah.

**Sarah:** This was so fun. This is the middle of a crazy, soul-crushing part of the process of putting the film out, and this was by far the highlight.

**John:** Yay.

**Sarah:** Thank you for the very awesome conversation, you guys.

**Craig:** Fantastic.

**Sarah:** This was amazing.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** Thanks.

**Sarah:** Thank you.

**John:** I’ll see you later, Craig.

**Craig:** Thanks. Bye.

**Sarah:** Thank you.

Links:

* [Sarah Polley on IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001631/) and on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/realsarahpolley/)
* [Women Talking](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13669038/) film and [novel](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/562880/women-talking-by-miriam-toews/9780735273979) by Miriam Toews
* [Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory By Sarah Polley](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/688129/run-towards-the-danger-by-sarah-polley/)
* [Find the Women Talking Script by Sarah Polley here](https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Women-Talking-Read-The-Screenplay.pdf)
* [The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene by David Epstein](https://www.propublica.org/article/muscular-dystrophy-patient-olympic-medalist-same-genetic-mutation) for ProPublica
* [Mophie 3-in-1 Charger with MagSafe](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HPTA2ZM/A/mophie-3-in-1-travel-charger-with-magsafe?)
* [Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson](https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/marilynne-robinson)
* [Till](https://www.mgm.com/movies/till) film
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Check out the Inneresting Newsletter](https://inneresting.substack.com/)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Timothy Lenko ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/583standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/adapting-station-eleven).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Heads up that today’s episode has just a little bit of swearing in it. Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and this is Episode 553 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Station Eleven was one of my previous One Cool Things. Today on the show, I’m very excited to chat with the series creator, Patrick Somerville. Patrick, welcome.

**Patrick Somerville:** Thank you for having me, John. 553, intense.

**John:** 553. 553 episodes.

**Patrick:** That’s a lot. That’s a lot of podcasts.

**John:** We finally get to you. Now in addition to Station Eleven, we should also say you are a TV expert, because you wrote on Leftovers, Maniac, Made for Love. You’re writing a new thing called The Glass Hotel, based on another book by the same author. I’d love to talk to you about adaptations in television and getting into it. You actually started as a novelist. Isn’t that right?

**Patrick:** I did. I never actually had any plan or thought that getting into TV and film was even possibly, honestly. I think 12-year-old me went down to the Brown County Public Library in Green Bay, Wisconsin and got George Lucas and Steven Spielberg biographies and desperately wanted to be a movie director and wrote letters to both of those gentlemen. I think when I was 16 or 17, I think being from Green Bay, just not having connections, I just was like, “Writing fiction seems like the way to go if you have no resources, no connections at all.” I went all in in that direction. It wasn’t until my early 30s after I’d published 4 books that a manager cold-emailed me and asked if I liked TV, and I said, “Yes, I do.” Then I ended up in Hollywood.

**John:** That seems impossible. I do want to get back into the origin story of you and how you started writing for film and television. I want to actually really drill in deep on Station Eleven and the process of going from here’s a book you read to here’s a book you’re adapting to assembling a writers room, putting this show up on its feet. I really want to do a deep dive in that. We haven’t had a chance to really deep dive on a project for a while. Also, we have some listener questions I think are right up your alley, because there’s TV stuff that I won’t know the answer to, but you definitely will.

**Patrick:** Maybe. We’ll see.

**John:** If you’re willing to, in the Bonus Segment I want to talk about making a pandemic show during a pandemic, because that just feels like an extra weird complication on top of complications.

**Patrick:** You’re right. That’s exactly what it was.

**John:** Cool. Let’s get back to… You were growing up in Wisconsin. You are a kid who reads books, like pretty much everyone who’s listened to this podcast. I’m guessing you were always a writer, you were always singled out for being good at writing, and yet you didn’t have any way to approach film and TV writing, so you started working in books.

**Patrick:** A lot of those details are exactly right about me. I decided to be a writer when I was seven, standing in I guess my 1st grade classroom. I had written a short story called How to Be a Molecule. I loved writing it, but the thing that got me was reading it out loud to the audience, to all my fellow students, and them clapping afterwards. Something in there, in that whole mix, just sparked me in a way nothing ever had and hasn’t since then, honestly. I didn’t know how to do it, but I think my heart knew what I wanted to be really early, which is a gift. There’s lots of people who I meet now in our business and otherwise. I think there’s something about those 10 years of insane teenager energy devoted to being a writer that I actually think matters.

**John:** If you were a person who was great at basketball and you didn’t spend those 10 years playing basketball, you wouldn’t have developed all the skills and the muscle memory for how to do these things. Like you, I was the kid who was writing in 1st grade and declared myself a writer. I didn’t know what I wanted to write, but I definitely knew I was a writer, because that’s the thing that I was good at that people kept telling me that I was good at.

**Patrick:** You were good at it. I think it wasn’t just feedback. You had some special ability with the language that put you ahead.

**John:** Now, did you study writing? Did you go through a writing program? How did you go from this kid who was writing a story in 1st grade to a guy who published four books?

**Patrick:** I was standoffish about the profession of writing, especially growing up in the Midwest. There’s a bit of an eye roll when you say, “I’m going to be a writer,” just because like, good luck, kid. My dad was a doctor. I had this plan that I would go and be an English and biology major and go to medical school and then also write fiction. I don’t know if it was my cover. Actually, I think I believed it until about sophomore year of college, when I just dropped the bio part, because fruit flies, counting fruit flies, John. I was like, “I am guesstimating these fruit flies right now. I don’t like this. I’m not detail-oriented in the right way. I’m going to kill someone if I’m a doctor, because I’m going to, I don’t know, eyeball something that I shouldn’t be eyeballing.”

I didn’t really get the idea of creative writing as a subject. I just was an English major. I just was like, “If I want to be a writer, I should just read as much as possible.” I was an English major. I didn’t really take creative writing classes, but I did then move to New York for a year in 2001. I was a waiter, and very quickly realized that I needed to be back in academia to somehow insulate myself from the job market and the regular world. It was also 9/11 three weeks after I’d moved to New York. It was a strange moment. I applied to MFA programs. I got into Cornell, which was a great one, and went up there for three years.

**John:** My perception of writing programs, and this is probably a broad stereotype, it’s just a bunch of people who were always told they were good writers, who were then put in a hothouse environment to… I don’t think it’s a Survivor situation. You’re theoretically trying to help each other, but at the same time there’s a competitive aspect between you guys. What was it like being in an MFA writing program?

**Patrick:** It’s a bit that, but for Cornell, it’s a very small program. The cohort is only four people of total fiction writers and four poets coming in each year. There’s eight total in the program. Unlike other programs, everyone’s totally funded. There isn’t a tiered list of funding. Everyone has the same deal. Everybody’s getting paid and getting a stipend to live in Ithaca and teach and write. We weren’t competitive for resources. We were friends. It was a pretty good vibe there, even though there were different approaches maybe to using the time from different people. I was young. I was 23. Everyone but one other incoming writer was 27 or 28 and had been in the workforce. I just was in psycho devoted writer mode. I would just hole up in my apartment for 12 hours, not see the outside world, and write a short story over and over and over again. I was feasting on my hermit fantasy of writing.

**John:** What was your output during that time? You say you’re working on a short story and rewriting it. On a given week or a given month, how much were you generating?

**Patrick:** A lot. More than is realistic to be good. Too much probably, but my imagination was really firing. I think it was that moment when your technical skills starts, just to get to a place where you’re like, “My taste thinks this is good.” It’s very frustrating when you’re young because you can’t… I couldn’t make it feel like the books that I read when I was writing yet, but it was coming. It’s just slow. In the end you leave with a thesis, which became my first book, Trouble, pretty soon thereafter. I probably wrote three times as much as that thesis.

**John:** Wow.

**Patrick:** I probably wrote a thousand pages of fiction while I was in my MFA program.

**John:** Circling back to what you’re saying there, you were describing what Ira Glass describes as the crisis where you have taste, but you don’t actually have the ability to reach that taste. You know that you’re not quite good enough. Maybe that program gave you the chance to actually get your skills up to what the level of your taste was.

**Patrick:** It helped. Also, I’m funny in that my taste was stunted, I think, which was a gift also. It took me a while. I was behind in cultural matters, I think, in a lot of ways. Also, just the way my brain is built, I don’t overwhelm myself with self-criticism that much, which I think is unusual for writers. My problem’s in the other direction. I think everything is good. Then it takes a little while for my taste to settle in and be like, “Actually, that’s not good, Pat.” I didn’t crush myself, but I did know that my technical skill as a prose writer was a ways off from the caliber of fiction that I wanted to be producing. To me it’s just read and write and read and write and do reps in that time.

**John:** You started writing prose fiction. At what point do you become aware of screenwriting, or at least the form of screenwriting, and what it’s like to write for film and television? Was that during this program or after?

**Patrick:** No, it was 10 years later. One thing that was happening at Cornell, it was right when the last season of Sopranos was premiering. I got cable, I remember, so I could watch that. The Wire and Deadwood were both on then too. I was like, “What are these shows?” because I had loved a choice selection of TV shows, like Northern Exposure, growing up. What else? Six Feet Under. I guess Dream On from the old HBO days, The Larry Sanders Show. I had glimpsed kinds of TV that I loved. That year it just was like everything on HBO was as good as any book that I was reading. I was like, “This is the same.” I watched those then. I just continued on the fiction road. It wasn’t until that manager, Brian Steinberg from Artists First cold emailed me and asked me if I was interested in writing for TV that I read a script, I think. Then I downloaded Breaking Bad and Mad Men and Six Feet Under and Sopranos I think. I read them all, and I wrote a pilot of a TV show.

**John:** Right now, a bunch of listeners are throwing their phones across the room, that a manager cold emails you, a person who’s not even a screenwriter, to offer to represent you.

**Patrick:** He didn’t quite do that. He had read one of my novels, and he had noticed that the dialog I wrote lent itself to screenwriting and was curious. I was like, “Are you real?” I had to look up… I felt like it was a phishing scam or something, but it wasn’t. It took I think a year and a half to actually get repped by them and another year maybe for WME to decide they wanted to sign me.

**John:** You’ve now downloaded these scripts. You’re reading these scripts. You’re learning about the form. What were the first scripts that you wrote?

**Patrick:** The first script I ever wrote was called Very Honest. It was a pilot. It was an idea I had for a short story that I did as a show. It was about a right-wing radio guy, Bill O’Reilly at the time was the comp, who received a phone call from a Speak and Spell that basically said, “I know what you did. Tomorrow on your show I want you to say, ‘I am a fucking asshole,’ and I want you to turn your show into a show about how you are a fucking asshole. Unless you do this, I’m going to reveal what you did.” The guy’s such a dick that he has to make a list of the 10 people it could be who are blackmailing him. Then the shape of the show is him trying to figure out whether it was someone inside his family, his son, his daughter, his wife, or various people he’d run afoul and had problems with in the past. He does, in the end of the pilot, lean into his mic and start talking about what a dipshit he is, which I think is very wish fulfillment on my part at that time.

**John:** Now, this very much feels like it was in keeping with the HBO shows at the time. You have this antihero at the center of your story, a person who should be unlikable, and yet because we are laser focused on him, we can see through the bad stuff into the good side.

**Patrick:** I think actually what you just said is why it wasn’t a good project ultimately, because I didn’t have the vision yet to see the wall I was going to run into about how my political anger was aligned with the blackmailer, not the protagonist. I think ultimately that was going to end up having to make me humanize a bad person that I didn’t want to make a whole show or write a show about or watch a show about.

**John:** After this script, how many more scripts had you written by the time you got repped, by the time you started meeting on shows to be working on?

**Patrick:** I probably wrote a half dozen pilots in that period. This is right after my son was born, my first son. I was 32, 33. We were living in Chicago. We had no intention of ever leaving Chicago. It was Pat’s dabbling around in Hollywood things, I guess. When you’re a fiction writer on that side, you tend to get real skeptical of like, “Oh, someone’s optioning my novel. Oh, someone wants to work with me.” That stuff comes and it seems like it’s life-changing when you’re on the fiction writer side. Then you realize when you get here, oh, that was just someone taking a shot at something. There was never any chance of that turning into anything. When you’re a fiction writer, you’re like, “My life has changed forever. I am going to be rich. They’re making a movie out of my novel.” The movie didn’t come ever.

When I did actually get a job suddenly, on The Bridge on FX, via a Skype meeting with Meredith Stiehm and Elwood Reid, I had to go home from my office and tell my wife I’d just been hired for a job in Los Angeles that started the next Monday.

**John:** Wow.

**Patrick:** She said, “What the fuck?” I ended up commuting for a whole year. I flew to LA on Monday mornings, went to the room all week, or set, came home Friday nights and helped my very, very brave and loving wife take care of our son.

**John:** The first show you’re working on is The Bridge. I know Meredith. This is an adaptation of a Scandinavian show. It was a show in its first year, right? This was still all being figured out. What did you learn being in that room for the first time? Being a novelist is always a solitary job. You’re just doing this all yourself. Suddenly, you’re having to be in a group environment, figuring out this show. What did you learn?

**Patrick:** So much. It’s almost like waves of learning, because I had no context. Unlike the other track of assistants, I think, witnessing rooms for a while and then getting it, getting the language, I was completely in the dark. I think I learned that listening is really good early. I learned that it was very, very, very good for me to come in at the staff writer level way down on the bottom rung and have to learn and do the work to learn how to be a screenwriter, because what I also learned is I had no idea how to be a screenwriter. I was good enough I think to earn my place in that room that first year. I didn’t really know what pitching was. I didn’t really know what a scene was. It took me that year of watching it and listening to understand that the fundamentals of fiction writing are just not the same as screenwriting. There’s an overlap, sure, but I needed to pay my dues. I think that first year was paying my dues.

**John:** The Bridge, you were on that for just one season, and then what was your next job after that? How did you get from that to your next job?

**Patrick:** I was at The Bridge for both seasons. Right around the end of the first season of The Bridge, Meredith introduced me to Howard Gordon. He had a need for a young writer in the 24 room for the limited series, the last episode of 24 that Jack was in. I went over and met those guys one day at the Fox lot. I was like, “What is going on?” because I love 24 and that kind of storytelling, more specifically, just the intensity and drive and clarity and just like da da da da da da da da da da. I didn’t know how to do it. I was a literary fiction writer, but I was a fan. That’s how I met them. They offered me a job. Right when I was coming back, I had to tell my wife I got another job. That’s when we decided to move, when we moved to LA. I went right from the 24 room back to The Bridge Season 2 room.

**John:** Great. That was between two seasons you were doing this 24. Was Leftovers the next show after The Bridge?

**Patrick:** It was. The Bridge got canceled in the summertime I think of 2013. I was always wanting to get to the showrunner level and not ready, but wanting nevertheless. I think when The Bridge ended, I was going down that road. I wrote a cop show set in Chicago that I was into and trying to get set up. Then The Leftovers came around. That show in particular, the combination I think, Tom Perrotta and Damon Lindelof, and also just it had everything that I wanted in terms of what the next step was. I didn’t think I was going to get that job. It took 400 meetings to even get to Damon to have lunch with him. We hit it off when we met. I think it was only after spending two years in that room with so many amazing writers that I realized I wasn’t ready for anything at that moment before Leftovers. I needed that time. I needed those two seasons to really learn the last things I needed to learn before I took a crack at it.

**John:** We’re working on the Scriptnotes book right now. Just yesterday I was reading through the Damon Lindelof interview I did a zillion years ago where he’s talking about The Leftovers room. It’s weird to hear Damon talking about this. This is pre-Watchmen. Leftovers was still on the air. He doesn’t send writers to set. He believes that he wants writers in the room. He himself doesn’t seem like he wants to go to set. He’s a creature of the room. How different was that from your experience on The Bridge or on 24? It just feels like there’s so many different ways that showrunners run shows.

**Patrick:** It was the complete opposite as what Meredith and Elwood did and thought. I was sitting on set within a month, and I didn’t know what to do there. I had too many jobs to enforce and not enough context. It’s a great way to learn, especially if you’re humble about it and read the room well and understand it’s the director’s set but you’re there to support the script. It was great. The thing about Damon’s point of view that I think is right is it does make it so the script has to be the script. That requires a very complicated system to make that true. It was good for me to have that two-year period where it was very room-centric, but now I am not like that at all as a showrunner. I am very present on set. I very much believe in having the writers come to set too. I couldn’t for Station Eleven because of the pandemic. I’m active on set, in rehearsal, in the dialog with the HODs and with the actors.

**John:** Now, I want to get to Station Eleven, but I don’t want to skip over completely Maniac or Made for Love. What were those experiences like? My hunch is that Maniac was completely scripted before it was shot, but maybe there was some stuff along the way. What were those room experiences and development experiences like?

**Patrick:** Different. Both of those shows were specific situations and different setups. Maniac was ordered straight to series before they had a writer. That was complicated. We incubated all 10 scripts in a room, the way I had learned it. They changed a lot once we got into prep. That largely had to do with the collaboration with Cary, my creative partner on that show. That was a whole different kind of experience that I would characterize probably more like a movie.

Made for Love, we had a great room and did a lot of the work up front. I think that’s the one where I learned, I think, about budget and production realities and how you have to protect your show and your people by acknowledging the cost of scripts at the front end and insulating them from being deconstructed during prep, because that’s a dangerous thing.

**John:** When you say acknowledging the cost of scripts, basically acknowledging what in the script is going to be expensive, what is going to push it over the edge, that’s going to force dramatic cuts or compromises down the road?

**Patrick:** Yeah. I think putting your producer cap on when you’re in the writers room or privately doing it, because it infects the conversation if you do it too much. You won’t end up in the right creative place. I think I was coming from more maybe a purist point of view where we don’t talk about that when we’re in the room, we’ll figure it out after. Now that I’ve been through it a few cycles, and I can even feel it, the way I pitch, the way I think about scripts now is some part of my head is always thinking what’s this going to cost and what’s the core of this beat and how are we paying for it in another part of the season, how do we get it back or how do we do it in the one tenth of the cost way. I think that’s just about experience too. You learn a new layer of this business every time you go through the cycle. That one, I was learning about being a producer at the front end.

Then Station Eleven came along right on top of the beginning of Made for Love. I transitioned over to exclusively being the showrunner of Station Eleven when we were in prep in the fall of 2019 in Chicago.

**John:** I want to talk to you about how you came upon the book and whether you knew from the start the shape it was going to be in. This is a book by Emily St. John Mandel, which I’d read early on in the pandemic. I think my first conversation with you, I DM’ed you on Twitter saying, “Hey, just read this.” I think my question was, “Does COVID exist in your world?” I was just really fascinated by how you were going to do this thing. How did the book come to you?

**Patrick:** I just loved the book. I read the book when it came out, because I very, very barely knew Emily from the fiction world. We had read together once in Chicago and had a great conversation, in which I said, “I don’t think I can support myself and my family or pull my weight as a fiction writer, even though my books are getting reviewed in the New York Times.” I was successful by all metrics, at least that I’d built for myself. I was broke. I was like, “Emily, math doesn’t make sense.” She was like, “I know. I’m going to try to write one more and see how that goes.” I went to the Bridge job, and about a year later I see her book just everywhere and on the bestseller list. I was like, “Oh, okay, Emily figured it out.” When I read it, I just loved it. I loved the element, the weird combination of post-apocalyptic Shakespeare at Hollywood, the idea of, I don’t know, the minutia of everyday life in the apocalypse instead of death over and over again. I loved it.

**John:** For folks who haven’t read the book or seen your show, what’s the quick elevator pitch version of the story? How do you describe it?

**Patrick:** This is how I pitched it. Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic show about joy. I think story-wise, a flu descends very rapidly on the world in our modern era and wipes out 99.9% of the population. Most of the book takes place around the Great Lakes with a traveling group of artists putting on Shakespeare plays to little villages 20 years later. It’s not about the horrible survival times. It’s about the rebuild times. It’s actually life-affirming, even though so many people die in the beginning.

**John:** It’s not The Walking Dead. I think whenever you hear post-apocalyptic, you assume it’s going to be this. I would say some of the choices you made in the adaptation make it a little less ominously The Walking Dead. You made some clear choices. I’m wondering when those choices came about. For example, keeping Jeevan with Kirsten through much more of the story, the changes with the prophet, who Miranda is and how she comes upon the graphic novel. How early on into this conception of like, oh, if I took this book and could make it into a series, when did you know you were going to make those changes?

**Patrick:** Right after Maniac, I called Emily, because I had heard that the book was coming available again. They’d been trying to make a movie script out of it and failing. I got a meeting on the books with Scott Steindorff, the producer who had the rights for something else. I just went to his office, and I was like, “Hey, Station Eleven, how about a limited series?” I told him what I thought it should be, and he agreed, and we made a deal with Paramount. I was in an overall with Paramount then. They paid for a mini room for me. It was just two weeks.

All those ideas, the big ideas that you’re talking about, the Jeevan Kirsten stuff, their separation and reunion, the change of Tyler as a standard cult leader into a different kind of cult leader, and how to handle the airport, the big ideas, we cracked a lot of the huge ideas in that two weeks. That was enough to help me write the first two scripts on my own. That’s what was the document that I sent to Hiro when he signed on. Then we sold the show, all on the energy of that early development.

**John:** Hiro Murai, who’s the director who did the first two episodes.

**Patrick:** Yeah, and really a creative partner at the development level for months and months and months beyond his duties doing prep for those two episodes. It was a very close partnership I think to crack that show, the tone of that show.

**John:** I want to go back to this mini room you put together, because it’s two weeks. How many writers did you have together to tackle this?

**Patrick:** It was just four writers. It was Nick Hughes, Gina Welch, Mauricio Katz, and Kim Steele and me.

**John:** I recognize two of those writers who wrote scripts later on on the show. What were you actually doing in that room? Was it just filling up whiteboards of stuff? Was it chatting? What happened in that room?

**Patrick:** There was one whiteboard. There was a big couch and a table and one whiteboard. We just would chat. We were just talking. They had all read the book. We just came together and like, “How would we do this?” It was just putting the big ideas up on the board.

**John:** The end result of this two weeks, you come out of there, and did you then need to pitch to Paramount and to other places about what the show’s going to be? Obviously, Paramount had gotten involved here, but had it already been set up at HBO Max? What was the status of the show at this point?

**Patrick:** It was not set up at HBO Max. It was an in-house Paramount development. I’ve always gravitated more toward writing scripts than pitching verbally. I think I’ve gotten much better at pitching verbally, but I like to lead with the text to show people what the show is. I wrote those two. We talked with Scott and the early producers about them. Eventually, right in there, the head of Paramount Television changed over and was just a reset for everyone who’s under an overall. Nicole Clemens came in and really doubled down on Station Eleven and endorsed the project and said she was very excited about it. We lined up the pitches once Hiro was attached and went around and pitched in April of the following year. I sold Made for Love in between in that story.

**John:** Just to make sure we’re clear on the timelines, so you’d gotten together this writers room. Two weeks coming out of it, you had a whole bunch of notes. With those, you wrote two scripts. You wrote these first two scripts, then attached Hiro to direct, and then went out to pitch?

**Patrick:** Yeah. I wrote Episode 1 while the room was going, in the background of the room. Then we internally talked about it, the producers and the studio, and everyone decided we wanted a second script. That took another month. I think I was on my own for that. Then Hiro, and then we went and pitched.

**John:** The decision about the second script was that the first one was entirely in present day, and the second episode jumps forward 20 years. You really could get a sense of what that world was going to look like and feel like.

**Patrick:** We needed the second world, but we also needed to understand the lead, adult Kirsten.

**John:** She’s not in that first episode. She shows up at the very end.

**Patrick:** Yeah, we needed a full episode with her. I was into it. It was hard. It was daunting to do it by myself, especially because you are faking the world building. When you’re there, you have guesses, and you have the novel. I didn’t know some truths about the traveling symphony or about the characters yet. You have to leap of faith your way through a script in those early days.

**John:** You’re taking us around to the various streamers and networks. How quickly did you end up at HBO Max? It sounds like based on your experience in the shows that had informed you so much, HBO felt like a great home for this.

**Patrick:** HBO Max didn’t exist.

**John:** That’s right, so just HBO.

**Patrick:** The first day we pitched was to HBO and to Warner Media, which I didn’t really know what the difference was. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure they did. Then throughout the next week, we pitched to all the places and had a number of offers that coalesced down into Netflix and Warner Media. We went with Warner Media for a lot of reasons. Sarah Aubrey was there, who I knew from The Leftovers and also from the sale of Made for Love. They felt like a good home for the show.

**John:** Cool. I want us to start talking about the pilot script for this. In the show notes for this, people can see, we’re going to have links to the pdfs of all eight episodes so people can read through the scripts and really see what the show looked like on the page. I really want to, on this episode, talk about the pilot script and some things I’ve noticed from this. Episode 1 of 1, Wheel of Fire. Why is it called Wheel of Fire?

**Patrick:** There’s a burning Ferris wheel at the end.

**John:** That’s true. There is a burning Ferris wheel at the end. There you go.

**Patrick:** That term has some older connotations as well. The wheel was going to be a motif and theme.

**John:** For the traveling circus.

**Patrick:** For the whole show. I wanted it to be in there. I just thought it sounded cool too.

**John:** It does sound cool. Do you call this a pilot or not a pilot? If it’s a limited series, does it actually have a pilot or it’s just the first episode?

**Patrick:** I don’t know. It depends who you’re asking, because they ordered the series straight to series, but that doesn’t mean straight to series, I think. There’s always an opportunity for the streamer to bail at any time. I did call it Episode 1 on principle. I think collectively 1 and 3 operated as pilots for the show.

**John:** Just because we’re not looking at TV production scripts very often, this second page is revision history. The draft we’re actually looking at is the third white revisions. As I look through this revision draft, there’s 12 revisions here. There’s a noticeable gap here. The second pink revisions were December 1, 2020, which would’ve been production-ish. Then more than a year later, we have second yellow revisions on 1/4/21, which would’ve been production post-pandemic or once you can get back into development. We show also what pages are revised in each of these scripts, which is so helpful, so people can zoom right to what might be different.

**Patrick:** You know what happened between 12/1/20 and 1/4/21.

**John:** The actual pandemic, the thing that eclipsed a lot of what you were trying to talk about in the show.

**Patrick:** Yeah, but we also shot the episode between those two dates. The reason it kept getting revised after we had shot it is there was one piece left to do in Canada. We had to keep adjusting and adjusting and adjusting that.

**John:** What is the sequence that was left over from that first episode?

**Patrick:** On page 53, after we’ve gone to space, we’re coming back, and scene 47 we land on a stage, different version of a stage than where our story began. We see wagons. We hear actors. We’re hearing lines from the play King Lear. Then we’re finding people playing King Lear, but not at all in the context that the episode began in Chicago. This is the traveling symphony out in the wild and Kirsten playing the same part Arthur played at the beginning of the episode. That was the wheel. We were trying to close that loop in the script.

**John:** It was meant to be a clean bookend, where it starts with King Lear and ends with King Lear. That’s not how the actual episode ends, as I recall what I watched.

**Patrick:** It’s not. It’s not at all. We shot this. Our costume team made an amazing new set of costumes for Lear, and Jeremy shot the shit out of it. Mackenzie and company crushed it. When we put it all together, we didn’t feel like it was quit capturing the bang of the year 20 feeling that we needed. I think actually, this is so superficial seeming, I guess, but simple, I don’t know. We shot this at night. That was a problem, I think, because all of Episode 1 is dark and night. I think we needed it to be day. We needed to see the green, and we needed to see the lushness of year 20. We needed to know, just to know that that was Kirsten inherently.

**John:** You needed someone to yell Kirsten and her to look over.

**Patrick:** Yeah. That’s actually a piece from Episode 4 that Helen Shaver shot. It’s a scene that we come back to by Episode 4. One of our editors had that idea. What’s so great about it and what Hiro loved too is that the book is there. That is the linking piece that has been the thread through the whole episode.

**John:** The book plays a much more important role in the series than it does inside the book, I think partly because it’s a visual medium. Seeing who has the book, who has exposure to the book becomes incredibly important in the series. You’re letting the audience know, pay attention to this graphic novel.

**Patrick:** Who wrote the book was the other thing. We had to write the book, basically, to make the show make sense to us.

**John:** That’s a lot. Second page of the script, or sorry, third page I guess, is the cast list, so showing who is in our episode. We have a scratch through for the conductor, Lori Petty, because she’s no longer in that first episode because of changes that you guys just described. That makes sense. Locations list, this is where you’re talking about the producer hat and where the money’s going. Locations that you’re only going to see once that are expensive are costly. People that are getting the script, who is going to be focused on the location list? Obviously, your location manager, but why else is this page important in the script?

**Patrick:** I think your production designer and art department is going to sit down and get a feeling for this spread of the episode. We talk about world building in terms of big fantasy and big tent pole stuff, but every episode has world building to it. What is the world of Episode 1?

I think for Ruth Ammon, our production designer, Frank’s apartment was critical, not just for this episode, because we have a big VFX shot in it, but for the whole series. Lake Point Tower is a very specific building that we fell in love with and communicated a lot about the show. You can see it stacked there, how many Lake Point Tower locations there are. That’s a pretty quick sequence. That’s on the way in, which we shot really there. In the lobby we shot. To the elevator we shot. Then we built Frank’s apartment. That one is on our stage. The hallway we also built. The stairwell was a different stairwell. It’s a very important sequence, stacked as dense as the theater, which we also constructed out of four Chicago theaters.

**John:** As you watch the whole run of the show, you start to realize, oh, these are the standing sets that we’re coming back to. Frank’s apartment is an incredibly important standing set that we’re going to come back to. The airport is incredibly important standing set that we’re always going to be able to base ourselves around. Even as a person who was just watching the show, the producer brain does kick in, and I start to realize, okay, these are the things they actually built or found or headquartered in versus some place they traveled to to shoot for a couple days.

**Patrick:** Actually, the crazy thing about Frank’s apartment is we trucked it from Chicago to Toronto during the pandemic and rebuilt it as well. It traveled. Our standing set traveled.

**John:** Anything can travel. On this last page here is a day and night breakdown. Tell me, who is responsible for making these pages that are going at the front of the script? Who was doing these pages?

**Patrick:** Katie French, who had gone from our writers assistant in the room to our script coordinator through the whole run of the show and who ultimately was promoted to staff writer right at the end of production. She’s in the mini room for The Glass Hotel now.

**John:** Fantastic. Finally, on the sixth page of the pdf, we’re actually at the first page of the script. Some things I notice right from the start, you are a double spacer. You hit that space bar twice after every period. That’s fine.

**Patrick:** That’s correct.

**John:** Some people do.

**Patrick:** We can talk about it if you want. We don’t have to talk about it.

**John:** There are no wrong choices about spaces. I used to be a double spacer. I famously gave up my double spacing and never looked back, but nothing wrong with-

**Patrick:** I’m not as passionate as I once was.

**John:** You might be the last one. You might be the last one.

**Patrick:** That’s fine too. It’s just I think that I’m wrong. I actually think that I’m wrong. I keep doing it. I don’t know why. I can’t tell you why.

**John:** Because you have muscle memory. If you try to stop it, it’ll feel weird for a sec, and then you’ll get over it.

**Patrick:** What happened to you? Are you a fundamentalist now? Are you open?

**John:** I used to be a fundamentalist about double spacing, to the degree which I would actually do a find replace in my script before I turned it in, make sure all the spaces were double spaced. Then I started to realize I’m the only person left doing this, because double spacing went away completely on the internet. Html actually gets rid of double spaces. At a certain point I was like, “You know what? I’m going to stop fighting this fight.” I gave up. It’s smooth sailing. Here’s the reason why we don’t need to do it anymore. Our eyes are used to seeing capital letters start sentences. We don’t need that double space anymore. It’s just a vestige of how we used to do things with typewriters, truly.

**Patrick:** As insane as I am about the way the script looks personally, I don’t care also. Every writer who’s ever been in my room is rolling their eyes right now because I made them do it. I think I’m done fighting this fight. It’s stupid.

**John:** I want to talk about how good this first page looks, because I answered a question on Twitter this last week about… Someone said, “Is it wrong to not have any dialog on your first page?” Here’s a first page that has no dialog on it.

**Patrick:** Not a great sign. Not a great sign, I got to say.

**John:** If you’re going to have a page without any dialog on it, your choices of when to bold stuff is helping a lot. It’s helping me get my eyes down the page and make me less terrified about reading just a wall of text. A thing I notice as I read through this, because I just read this this morning, versus watching the show, is we have post-apocalyptic guy, post-apocalyptic boy, who are set up as these recurring characters throughout the pilot. They don’t actually recur throughout the pilot as shot or as shown to us. When did that idea drop down or diminish?

**Patrick:** In post we shot them. Hiro was having an instinct that there was something wonky about them coalescing in his head. He liked them too. It was almost too cute in the way that it was pretending to be The Walking Dead. They looked unlike any of the traveling symphony people. they looked ratty. They looked like the dad and the kid from the road. We were trying to tell a little bit of a story with the boy. I think Hiro’s instinct ultimately was the right one, which was it’s too much story freight to be asking the audience to track too soon about people who don’t matter in our story. Hiro I think also knew that these opening moments are about place, not about people. The ferns were doing the work. We didn’t need a boy and a dad too.

**John:** A thing you do on the second page here… I’m going to just read aloud this paragraph. “Somehow the boy didn’t even hear that. Watch out, boy. Where is your father? You are about to be eaten by a man in rags who has teleported from another network’s very earnest, self-serious prestige cable limited series about pain, starvation, and how all humans are horrible at their core.” You spent five lines just talking to us as the reader about what your show was opposed to another post-apocalyptic show would be. I like it. It reminds me of… Lost scripts would do that, where they would actually just really give you a sense of, this is what it’s meant to feel like as a person watching the show.

**Patrick:** I think obviously I watched Damon do that for years. I had been doing maybe a version of it myself. It fought the screenwriting advice that’s pretty standard, which is don’t do that. I think the reason I do it, I have to do it, because my writing is really, really dependent on tone. Whether or not a scene, any given scene I write works is entirely up to getting the tone right. Therefore, I think I need the person reading the script to understand it a little bit more than what the very skeletal version of the scene would do.

Some of it maybe reflects my anxiety changing over from the novelist to the screenwriter and not knowing how to make tone happen because of the scene, if that makes sense, or I’m still learning, I think, in that regard. I think part of it is also these are sales documents. You have to attract your crew. You have to attract your actors. You have to get people to want to buy it. The script has to be a read in and of itself.

**John:** Yeah, because you’re asking someone to take an hour of their day to read the script. You’re trying to make it a worthwhile hour of their day, and not having them skim, not having them skip through things.

**Patrick:** In this case too, post-apocalyptic genre comes with a lot of baggage. I think very early I wanted to make it very clear that we both had a lighthearted and wry point of view about all this, and we’re not doing the thing that that genre often did do.

**John:** I don’t want to talk about every page. There’s a moment you have happening on page 8, near the bottom of the page. “Jeevan moves away, crosses past Arthur’s body, and asserts himself between it and little Kirsten, who’s still staring, fascinated and unable to look away.” You’re doing some very specific blocking of two actors. It works really well. I remember that moment working as shot. On the page I can see he’s trying to physically do something here to keep this girl from seeing this. We’re learning about both Jeevan and Kirsten in this moment. I just wanted to single that out, because it’s the kind of thing that I think a lot of writers feel like, “Oh, that’s overstepping my boundaries. I’m directing too much from the page.” It’s not at all. It’s absolutely essential to make that beat work.

**Patrick:** Blocking is unbelievably important. Whole scenes can crumple when the blocking changes. On top of all that, this is just how I imagine. I think that blocking says a lot about Jeevan and who he is and how he’s safe and how he’s driven fundamentally by concern for the well-being of a stranger. That’s happened twice now in the last couple pages. I think in terms of the director conversation, any confident director will just say, “That blocking sucks. Let’s do it this way.” Any confident writer showrunner who knows what they’re doing will either say, “You’re totally right,” or, “No, we got to keep it.” I think if you’re all there doing the same thing, the blocking will end up what it needs to be.

Hiro, Christian, every director, Jeremy, they all knew they could change it if they needed to, from what I did. I often was lurking too. I would be like, “The problem with that though is this line doesn’t make sense anymore.” We worked together. Half the time I’m wrong on the page here, but I was doing it for a reason all the time. I think that’s the key in the collaboration. If everybody knows that, then we’re good. We changed a ton of stuff left and right.

**John:** What you’re doing on the page has set the tone. It’s the pre-tone meeting in terms of what is this scene actually really about. You can tell because of the specific stuff that you put in the scene.

**Patrick:** I find directors, actually that’s what they’re looking for, what is the core essential truth in this scene. I think the hard thing about being a director in Hollywood is getting scripts that just don’t speak to that at all.

**John:** We could focus for another hour on the script, but let’s actually turn our attention back to the room, because you’ve now set up the series. You are going to be going straight to series, but you need to actually write all these scripts. This is where you’re assembling a new room to put together the scripts for this 10 episodes. How many weeks was that? How did you find your writers? What was the process for putting together a room on Station Eleven?

**Patrick:** It was a 20-week room.

**John:** 20 weeks, that seems like a lot.

**Patrick:** It wasn’t enough. At the same time, yes, in today’s conversation I think that’s just… Leftovers, Season 2 was 42 seeks, and Season 3 I think was 44.

**John:** Oh my gosh.

**Patrick:** We moved slow. When the script came out of those rooms, it was the episode. There wasn’t any fluctuation in prep or in production. That was the show. We moved slow. Damon really believed in collective consents. We wouldn’t move forward if someone was bumping anywhere. We would overcome it as a group. You often would bog for three days on one scene because of that.

**John:** Wow.

**Patrick:** The problem though I faced at the beginning of this fall of 2019 was that because of Hiro’s coming schedule with Atlanta, because of my various entanglements in Los Angeles where Made for Love was shooting, the room was starting, and we had 20 weeks to go. We had 2 scripts, and we needed to output a bunch of them. I was getting pulled to Chicago and a set in LA. We had originally planned to shoot Station Eleven much later but had to pull it up into the fall of 2019 because of what Hiro’s coming schedule was going to be. It’s crazy to think about it, because it created a very difficult situation for the room. I was not in it all the time. I think that made it hard for the room sometimes. It’s crazy to think, had we not done this, we never would’ve made Station Eleven, because there’s no way in hell HBO Max would’ve said go ahead if we had shot nothing and the pandemic descended.

I built the room out of writers I knew and new writers to me. Nick Hughes came, a writer named Shannon Houston, who’s brilliant, who I’d been talking to for a while, Cord Jefferson, Kim Steele, Will Weggel. My former assistant also came in. A few other people. We were underway together, and September rolled forward for about a month before I started popping around to different places, and they tried to keep hacking away at it.

**John:** Looking through, just on IMDB, some of these people who I don’t know, it felt like the room was bottom-heavy. So often with small rooms, you see here’s a consulting producer or these are near showrunner levels. These were a lot of people who felt newer, or newer to their career.

**Patrick:** That’s true.

**John:** A deliberate choice?

**Patrick:** Sarah McCarron I forgot to mention, who’s also a brilliant writer. A deliberate choice? Maybe not consciously aware. I trended that way. Honestly, all these people are brilliant people who are in the room. We had plenty of brain power to get the show baked enough. I think a mistake I made as a younger, inexperienced showrunner was often to do this, and I think honestly reflects more than anything my own insecurity being able to run a room and being intimidated by the idea of someone more experienced than me in the room with me. I think this room reflects the end of that time for me when I was starting to realize that it was a mistake to not embrace as much experience as I could around me and take the wisdom and help of people who’d done it and been through 10 cycles of production. It was silly, but I think I didn’t quite know that that was happening consciously. I don’t think if I time traveled to me and confronted me about it, old me would admit that that was what was happening. Does that make sense?

**John:** Absolutely. We had Liz Meriwether and Liz Hannah on the show recently. They were talking about the rooms for their two limited series and how incredibly important it was to have a writer on it who’s like, “Okay, that’s all well and good. Here’s how we make a TV show.” It was important to have a writer who just really knew how stuff got done. That was useful.

**Patrick:** I thought that was me. I think I was overestimating that too. You need help. You need experience. You need people who have gone through it a bunch of times who can guide you. It doesn’t mean that you’re not a good leader, I think. I think it probably means you’re a better leader to know that.

**John:** What internal documents or tools were you using to get the show figured out? I assume there was a whiteboard, because you’re actually recording this in the room where you put the room together, I guess. You have whiteboards, but what were the internal documents or what things were you guys looking at as a group?

**Patrick:** We had a bunch of stuff going at the same time. If I had to do it all over again, I would’ve started in a different order. We had whiteboards. We had a board that had a guess at what the 10 episodes were wanting to be, what the flow of the season was wanting to be. One thing that was very right was Episode 103 firmly planted as Episode 103, which later became a point of discussion a lot about whether that was the right place for it. We always thought that Miranda’s story needed to be right there early, even though it was a departure from the central story. The break was going for whatever episode we were on. Damon always likes to do a scenes we like board, which was the pre-break conversation for a few days. There was that going. We only got through the break of Episode 5 before the show was in production, 5 or 6.

**John:** Wow.

**Patrick:** What happened was the amount of world building was unbelievably gigantic, more so than I think I ever thought it could be, between Tyler, the airport, the way to separate Kirsten from the troupe, the way to reunite everyone, the scenes of the show. There was a lot to talk about. I think it was like, “I’m going to go out for a hike,” and then walking up to the base of Mount Kilimanjaro and realizing at the last minute that you hadn’t brought some important climbing gear or tents and stuff. Do you relate to that experience?

**John:** Oh my god, yeah. Backstory behind all of this is that my first and really only experience running a television show was a disaster, back in the year 2000, 1999, where I was the hotshot young screenwriter who set up a show at the WB and was running the show that I had no business running, and just this slow-motion car crash of trying to do all this. I’m nodding as you’re saying that fear of having more experienced people in the room. I didn’t have more experienced people in the room. I surrounded myself with just the wrong folks.

**Patrick:** In my case, I was surrounded by the right folks, but I think I needed to be surrounded by more folks.

**John:** Exactly. You were too lean.

**Patrick:** I’m not sure my health was okay as those months of prep continued and I kept flying back and forth on red-eyes and not sleeping. I definitely was thinking that I was totally okay, but I was, I think in hindsight, slowly getting pulled into a whirlpool down. I think it was one of those things where we had just enough. I had the support I needed at the critical times I needed it. I think Hiro and his team and Christian and the HODs we had hired together in Chicago were so good. They were so brilliant and so pursuing the right questions, the times I wasn’t there in Chicago. The studio and the network ultimately had my back, just enough to get us rolling.

When we were rolling, I don’t think we ever missed on a day of dailies. I don’t think there’s a bad take in anything Hiro shot for the first 28 days of production that he directed 1 and 3 for. I think that’s when the Schrodinger’s box of is this showrunner a conman or not gets opened and that you start to show episodes, and they work and they’re good. Our cast also, they were so incredibly grounded and on it emotionally. Everyone knew what they were playing so well, so intuitively that I was learning from them as they shot scenes, to tell you the truth.

**John:** You said before, you couldn’t have actually waited any longer, because the pandemic would’ve happened, and you would never be making the show. The show would not have existed if you hadn’t started shooting before the actual real-life pandemic. In a perfect world, what would you have wanted to do or what would you want to do in the future. Would you want to have clear separation between the writing phase and production phase? What would’ve been different about how you would set up a show like this?

**Patrick:** Station Eleven is special in that the way in which things happened in the wrong order created the magic of it. I don’t mean to say that it should be that way. It’s hard to think about… For example, Danielle Deadwyler shot the end of Episode 3, her speech in the boardroom in Malaysia on day 3 of our shoot.

**John:** That’s crazy.

**Patrick:** I had that to aim for as an idea of the show always. I couldn’t have written some things without seeing what Danielle did. The right way to do it to me is the room outputs all the scripts that are at production draft level and ready to shoot before prep starts. That’s the right way to do it, I think.

**John:** That’s the fantasy. You’re actually prepping a thing you know how to make.

**Patrick:** Stability too, for the actors, for the sake of the departments and everyone’s ability, because people below the line in our business can pivot amazingly. Sure, they can do it. Do you want to do that every day to people? No, it won’t get you the best show. It’s not okay. It’s ultimately the showrunner’s responsibility to be good at his or her job and prevent that from happening. I’m learning. I’m trying to get better at that.

**John:** My cohost, Craig Mazin, has been away for the better part of a year making his own show up in Calgary. He’s obviously having to do a lot of writing on set and producing on set. Talk to me about your experience of being on set as the writer, creator, showrunner, and what you see as your function there.

**Patrick:** There needs to be someone there who just knows the answer. That’s both a creative thing and I think a leadership thing and a morale thing too. Scripts were still changing all the time, even the next year when we were in Toronto. Somehow in that year gap and having the two episodes and having written it all, something had internalized in me where I just understood the show. I felt like I was ahead of everyone in a weird way, because I just had been in the scripts. I felt like I could come to set, I could see if something was off, maybe with the blocking or with set deck, or someone needs to be there with the director when he says this scene isn’t quite right in the writing. There’s got to be one person on set who knows. I felt like every scene of the show, there’s some little nudge or change or alteration that I think I’m not sure it would be unified in the right way if I hadn’t been there.

**John:** Talk to me about post. Were you posting while you were shooting? Was post up in Chicago and then Toronto or was it back in Los Angeles? How did all that work?

**Patrick:** The first part of the show, the Hiro episodes, we shot them and then we posted them linearly. That’s when the pandemic descended in the middle of the post process for those two eps. Then post came back up online in January right when I flew to Toronto. A few weeks into the shoot, here’s my morning. It’s 5 a.m. in Toronto. It’s dark. It’s 1 degree. Go to the stages, which is an airport and a facility near an airport. I enter my trailer, because it’s COVID. I have three monitors up. I have post back home, which will come online at noon. I have the sets, which is 150 feet away from me, but I’m not in it, because it’s COVID. I would need a reason to be in it, which usually just means your rehearsal and then I go back to my trailer. Then I have prep meetings on the third monitor happening about concept meetings for Episode 9.

**John:** Zooms.

**Patrick:** Yeah.

**John:** Wow.

**Patrick:** My day is in there and then going to set and then coming back into the trailer and then going to set, in that case when Lucy needed me. We shot Episode 7 first.

**John:** Throughout all this whole process, what is HBO Max seeing? What is Paramount seeing? Are they getting outlines? How do they know what the show is that you’re making?

**Patrick:** By Part 2 in Canada, they had all 10 scripts.

**John:** That’s true.

**Patrick:** On Part 1 when they had a total of 3 scripts. They had 1, 2, and 3 when we shot 1 and 3. Soon after we started, I published 4 and 5. Then I published 7 during the January and February shooting period. I went and gave a big presentation and pitched the entire season out right after we wrapped that first iteration. We got behind in the room. We were supposed to have outputted more than that. That’s not on the writers room. That’s just on me not wanting to publish a script that felt not right yet. You know that thing, where it sometimes feels like it’s going to do more damage to your show to publish the wrong script than to publish no script? Like I said, the world building feat was just more gigantic than I think I had realized. That was what was happening slower back in the room, back in LA. Ultimately, that’s what I used to write the rest of the show, the work that the room did.

**John:** At what point do writers who are in that room get assigned, “Okay, you take this script. You take that script.” When is that decision made?

**Patrick:** That was pretty early. I think everyone in there got a script, and everyone knew what their script was going to be. It was tougher for 7, 8, 9, for Kim, Sarah, and Will, because the break, we really had only gotten to an outline place for those ones by the time the room was wrapping. What I think the room ended knowing and getting right was what emotionally each episode needed to be and a basic break of it. Then I think in all those different cases we continued, or I continued to do the writing.

**John:** Great. We have a listener question here which is right up your alley. Megana, do you want to help us out with that?

**Megana:** Nicole asks, “I have my first interview ever for a staffing position on a legal drama. I listened to your episode Advice for a New Staff Writer and was just wondering, do you have any tips for preparing for the interview? This is a new series that’s just been ordered. Any tips of advice would help.”

**John:** Pat, you’ve been through both scenarios here. You’ve been the new person interviewing for a job, and you’ve had to interview someone who wants to be a staff writer on a show. What advice can you give for Nicole? What should she be thinking about as she goes in that room?

**Patrick:** I’m thinking back to that Skype I had with Meredith and Elwood. I’m trying to remember. I’ll say it this was as the hirer. I think what I want is someone who seems to be both sophisticated socially, someone who can read a room and feel their way through a situation, just getting the sense of that, the life skill, and then someone who seems to have clear ideas, whether or not they agree with me. I think it’s very easy to get into this thinking that you’re supposed to serve the showrunner. Then sometimes that feels like without critical thinking. I don’t know. You need to show them that you’re not necessarily pliable, you’re not just there to please their imagination. It’s a tough needle to thread, honestly, because you got to be a good worker too. You got to, quote unquote, get it, whatever the fuck that means.

**John:** When Nicole goes into this room for staffing, how quickly does she bring up how much she loves the script that she read, the other writers’ previous work? What are the kinds of things that Nicole should just have cued up, ready to go when she walks into the room?

**Patrick:** I think if someone’s read the script, and if someone says one sentence… It doesn’t have to be, “I loved it.” It just has to be something that catches me like, whoa. If someone says, “I think this show is about blank,” and it dings a bell in my head as the creator, then I’m really paying attention. If someone has a thematic understanding of the story in a way that feels new to me, that’s really great. I don’t think it’s about praising it. It’s about understanding it. That’s when I feel as a showrunner someone’s going to come in the room and really help me.

**John:** Great. As the showrunner, you’re looking for somebody who can help you. That doesn’t just mean flatter you. It’s somebody who actually can bring something that you sense that you need. How could Nicole communicate that I guess is what I’m trying to get to. What does she say?

**Patrick:** I think it’s about the read of the script, honestly, what do you think this show is about, because the person doing the hiring in that situation doesn’t know the answer yet, usually. I think the anxiety best served is how do I help the showrunner know what this show is and find her vision, find his point of view.

**John:** Wonderful. It has come time in our podcast for One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an article I’ve just read this last week about the time in Ethiopia. I know that different cultures will have different calendars, just for cultural reasons. If you’re in Ethiopia, 1 a.m. is when dawn happens. Dawn is 1 a.m. It goes through 12 hours and then starts over again after 12 hours. It just made me realize it is so arbitrary that we start our days at midnight, in the middle of the night, as opposed to starting it at dawn, which feels like a very natural way to start your days.

**Patrick:** I got a good one.

**John:** Tell me.

**Patrick:** I’m not an expert, but this is what I’m doing lately in the last week. I saw a tweet last week that was a quote from Bell Hooks about friendship. I texted my friend who knows a lot about Bell Hooks, and I asked her about the quote, and she put me onto All About Love. What the quote was about, and why I’m fascinated, I’m about to dive into Bell Hooks, I guess, what she was saying is we live in this world of systems right now that we’ve already lost in a lot of ways in terms of power, just as a democracy. This is why friendship is so important, that we should treat friendship like the stakes are as high as anything else.

In the pandemic, I found it was really easy to let go and not put energy into a certain tier of friendships, the kind that you would maintain in regular life. I don’t know, I just started to feel that loss as very important, myself personally. Showrunning does this to you too. You can’t keep up with friendships properly, which it’s nefarious. It’s actually really important to find a way to keep balance in your life. Read All About Love, but also listen to Bell Hooks on friendship. That’s my one thing.

**John:** Your show is a lot about friendship as well. Arthur’s friendship and the trials that he goes through with their relationship is crucial story points there.

**Patrick:** It’s weird stuff for TV. It’s like Clark saying, “I miss friendships. I just miss friendships,” which just kills me still the way David Wilmot did that, because I do. There’s usually not a good way to frame that in TV and movie storytelling, but it’s a powerful emotion if you can get to it.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro is Pedro Aguilera. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, Craig is @clmazin, I’m @johnaugust. Patrick, what are you on Twitter?

**Patrick:** I am @patrickerville. It’s Patrick E-R-V-I-L-L-E.

**John:** Fantastic. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find all eight episodes of Station Eleven scripts that you can download and read at your leisure. You’ll find the transcripts there and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments like the one we are about to record talking about making a pandemic show during the pandemic.

**Patrick:** Don’t try it.

**John:** Thank you so much for coming on the show.

**Patrick:** Thanks for having me. 553 represent.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** We’re back. Patrick, as I said in the main body of the episode, I first reached out to you during the pandemic because I had just read Station Eleven and wondered how the hell you were going to make a show about a pandemic after a pandemic had happened, whether you were going to acknowledge COVID. I think you said, “We’re in a separate timeline where that pandemic never happened.” Is that where you ended up?

**Patrick:** Yeah. What’s crazy was that our date I think for the pandemic was December 12, 2020.

**John:** Oh my gosh.

**Patrick:** That was just what we had done well before it was even happening in Wuhan. We were shooting then in January in 2020, and then the show premiered December 16, 2021. I had no idea when you texted me or when you tweeted, DMed me… You couldn’t tell. We were watching cuts of our own show and being like, “I literally can’t tell if this will be tone deaf or not a year from now.”

**John:** It came out at just the right time. It came out at a time where it’s like, oh, it’s beautiful, and a memory of a different world, in a weird way. The most jarring moments for me watching your show were when we were in the hospital with Siya, his sister, and no one is wearing masks. I’m like, “Of course they’d be wearing masks.” At the time you were shooting that pilot, that first episode, it was reasonable that they wouldn’t be wearing masks.

**Patrick:** The other crazy thing about that scene is the kids are wearing masks. That was the thing in the script. It got erased by the pandemic. What was chilling about that scene was the idea of seeing children in masks. Now that’s normal. It doesn’t read right anymore, but it doesn’t matter.

**John:** I’ve finally gotten to the place in watching film and television where I don’t bristle at, “Oh wait, these people are standing too close to each other in the elevator.” I’ve gotten past some of that early pandemic fear. A question for you is how far were you into shooting, what was the last thing you shot before you had to shut down because of COVID?

**Patrick:** I think our last day of shooting was Arthur’s house at the dinner party. We were finishing up the dinner party and the fire. That was the pool house on fire. That was somewhere around February 20th or 25th of 2020. What’s crazy to me is the first shot of the show, the theater that’s full, that’s practical. You can’t shoot with that many people in a place anymore. That’s 300 people. Our before is the before, if that makes sense. We shot all that in the time when no one had heard of COVID yet.

**John:** That’s wild. Talk about the day when you had to shut down, because I’ve talked with other friends who’ve literally had to… They got the call, and 10 minutes later they’re packing up the trucks. What was it like for you?

**Patrick:** We were in post. It was very memorable, because post is a place where you go down into this hole, and in reality it doesn’t exist. It’s alarming to say this, but that morning, Friday the 13th, my wife had stopped by with my two-year-old daughter to say hi in the morning. It was like, this feels scary, but we don’t know what’s going to happen. We had just I think heard the term shelter in-place a day or two before when San Francisco closed down. That’s how oblivious and not at the same time we were.

Hiro and I, we had really been grinding. We were at some microscopic stuff in 101. We worked all day with Isaac Hagy and the editor of Episode 1. Right around 5 p.m., Hiro’s producing partner and one of our EPs on the show, Nate Matteson, just burst into the bay. His hair was just wild and everywhere. It was scary, because you could see a person who had been spending the day in a different world, and he was like, “What the fuck are you guys doing?” That kind of energy. He had to come down, I think, to properly communicate to us that we had to go. It was scary. It was really human. We’d been through a lot together making the show. I hugged Hiro goodbye in the parking structure. I don’t know when the next time I saw him in the flesh was, a long, long time. We got back to work I think a week later online and continued editing Episode 3.

**John:** This was in Los Angeles or this was in Chicago?

**Patrick:** That’s LA. That was all in LA.

**John:** That’s LA. You were basically the grocery store cashier, and someone had to come and tell you, “Oh no, no, you should probably just leave. The world as you knew it no longer exists.”

**Patrick:** Is this that thing, that flu thing? Greatest day player of all time, that dude. Holy shit, he’s good. Yeah, that was me. That was all of us. We were at work. We were head down in the show.

**John:** Talk to me about the decision to go back into production. Were you ever worried that they were just going to pull the plug and say, “We’re just not going to make the show at all.”

**Patrick:** As much as everyone was about everything.

**John:** Because of the subject matter. Basically, you were thinking-

**Patrick:** No. That part I wasn’t worried about, because 1 and 3 were just too good, I thought. Also, we always were set up to be… If any show was going to be continued, it was going to be ours, because it was about rebuilding. It was about connection and joy. It wasn’t about pain exactly. I think if either of those episodes had been distressed episodes, that would’ve been a problem. I think Hiro, the cast, everyone delivered. I think people just wanted to see the show. What we had to decide was where to shoot. We had to wait for a while, and then we had to make a choice about where to go, because it didn’t feel like Chicago was going to be safe on the timeline they wanted to shoot. That was the big conversation over the summer.

**John:** Had there been no pandemic, you would’ve done those two episodes and then immediately gone into shooting the rest of the show or was there always going to be a break between the two episodes that had been shot and the rest of things?

**Patrick:** We had eight weeks more prep in Chicago and time for me to write. We were going to come back up in the late spring and shoot year 20 stuff with Mackenzie in and around Chicago. That plan went out the window.

**John:** All the prep you’ve done for Chicago is moot, because you had to prep completely from scratch in Toronto to figure out here are our exteriors, here are our locations, here’s how we’re going to do everything.

**Patrick:** It wasn’t moot. It wasn’t moot, because the prep we’d done in Chicago was conceptual about the show. It was about the space station. We hadn’t even gotten to the wagons and the airport yet. It was deeply valuable, that prep in Chicago. The loss of those eight weeks was-

**John:** You knew what you wanted to do. You didn’t know what the specific locations were and such.

**Patrick:** We hadn’t scouted yet for the next stuff, so we didn’t lose that. The loss of that eight weeks was horrific. We needed that. We got some of it back in the summer online with art and costume. We needed all of it. We were playing catch-up all through the shoot.

**John:** I wish you no pandemics for the next things you’re going off to shoot. You’re in the room right now for the next Emily St. John Mandel book?

**Patrick:** We’re working on The Glass Hotel. We’re working on a different version of The Glass Hotel that fits into the Station Eleven world that we made.

**John:** It’s set around Miranda, right, so a character who exists in Station Eleven?

**Patrick:** Yeah, that’s right. I think unlike in the novel, the role that Miranda plays in the story is much bigger.

**John:** Great.

**Patrick:** It’s the financial collapse in 2008. It’s new zone for us. It’s also, this is my favorite, it’s a mystery. We’re learning all those new kinds of story moves, but in our way.

**John:** That’s great. How far are you into the process of the room, this new product?

**Patrick:** We’re early. We’re finishing up what’s been a six-week mini room. We’re going to output the first two episodes and we’re going to go talk to HBO Max about making the show.

**John:** That’s awesome. Good luck with that. Absolute pleasure talking with you, Patrick.

**Patrick:** Thank you, John. This has been great.

Links:

* Follow along with the [Station Eleven pilot](https://johnaugust.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/S11_101_3rd-White-Revisions_6.15.21_Collated.pdf) discussion! Read all of the Station Eleven scripts [here](https://johnaugust.com/library).
* [Station Eleven](https://play.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GYZWoOQ6F9cLDCAEAAABP?camp=googleHBOMAX&action=play) the series on HBO
* [Station Eleven](https://bookshop.org/books/station-eleven-9781594138829/9780804172448) the book by Emily St. John Mandel
* [Patrick Somerville](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5821126/) on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/patrickerville?lang=en)
* [All about Love: New Visions by bell hooks](https://bookshop.org/books/all-about-love-new-visions/9780060959470)
* [Time in Ethiopia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Ethiopia)
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* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
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* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Pedro Aguilera ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/553standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/the-billion-dollar-episode).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Heads up that today’s episode has just a little bit of swearing in it.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August. This is Episode 575 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. One billion dollars, that’s the cost for entry for today’s How Would This Be a Movie segment, where we take a look at stories in the news and ask ourselves, huh, is this something I could watch on the screen somewhere?

Who is this we? We are down one Craig. Luckily, we found a comedian, actor, writer, podcaster, and very experienced host to fill in. You might know him from Fire Island, I Love That for You, or as one half of the Las Culturistas podcast. His new Showtime special, Have You Heard of Christmas, stream started December 2nd. Welcome to the program Matt Rogers.

**Matt Rogers:** I am so happy to be on the program. Thank you, John. I’m a massive fan, which I think I told you the first time we interacted over direct message, which is exclusively how we’ve known each other up to this point.

**John:** It’s so weird, because as we were starting to record… Do we know each other? It’s a real 2022 question, because we chat on direct messages on Instagram. That’s the extent of our relationship up until this moment.

**Matt:** I also guess it just matters how much of ourselves we put into our work, because if you’ve put a ton of yourself into your work, which I’ve seen many, many times… I often cite Big Fish as one of my favorite films. It’s in my top five again and again and again. Then I feel maybe I know you quite well, but this will be an opportunity to heighten that.

**John:** I also have a bit of a parasocial relationship with you because of the podcast you do with Bowen Yang. Obviously, you’re putting a lot of yourself in that podcast every week. I hear you, and I feel like I know you through that, because you’re talking about your ups and your downs and all the stuff in between. It’s a strange way that we know each other.

**Matt:** I think probably I share about 90% of my reality on that podcast. 10% you gotta keep hidden, which I think is a good rule of thumb.

**John:** That sounds like the iceberg motto, yeah.

**Matt:** Exactly. In a world where 90% of icebergs are above the surface, that’s the Las Culturistas podcast. Maybe for Bowen it’s 70/30.

**John:** Absolutely. We’ll see if we can just sink the Titanic with this. On this podcast, I want to talk to you about your origin stories or how you got started, because I think of you as a performer, but you’re also a writer too. You wrote on The Other Two. You wrote on Q-Force. I want to talk about balancing being a performer and being a writer on other people’s stuff. We have obviously a bunch of billion-dollar stories to talk through. Megana also picked out some listener questions I think are going to be perfect for you to answer.

**Matt:** Awesome. I’m ready, locked and loaded.

**John:** Let’s get into this. Let’s get into some origin story stuff.

**Matt:** Cool.

**John:** You went to NYU. Were you always a funny person who wanted to perform? When did you start to find your lane?

**Matt:** As a kid, I grew up on Long Island. I grew up in a very sporty atmosphere. My father was a varsity football and baseball coach. I think ever since I was a young child, I definitely wanted to participate in those types of activities, perhaps to impress him and make him proud, like any kid with their dad. There was always this thing in me, I think around the 1997 Oscars and the Titanic fever, when I was like, “What’s going on here? What’s this world? What’s this industry?” I was very susceptible to that Hollywood environment. It really hooked me just through the television. Then I think I realized, oh, maybe there’s something inside me that wants to perform.

By the time I got to college, I felt like I was distant enough from the atmosphere where I had to be very, very closeted on Long Island, and I was. I went to NYU and I think did a year there in a general studies program, and then I transferred into Tisch, truly willing myself into Tisch.

It’s true that basically I always wanted to be an actor and a performer and a comedian by the time I got to New York and was around 19 years old, but I just didn’t have the confidence in myself to go into Tisch and audition with a monologue, because I had never acted before. What I knew I could do as an AP English student, I was like, “I can write 25 pages of new material,” which was the requirement to get into dramatic writing at Tisch. I did that and got in.

I thought, “Great, I hacked the system. I’m in Tisch now. I can find a way to perform and act while being in this school.” Lo and behold, I realized I had a passion for writing, a talent for writing, and I basically was able to find performance as well through sketch comedy. I joined my sketch comedy group at NYU, which was called Hammerkatz, which was a legacy sketch comedy group at NYU. Its alumni are Donald Glover and Rachel Bloom. Those are just a couple of the names. They’ve obviously gone on to become these-

**John:** Titans of industry, yes.

**Matt:** … celebrated multi-hyphenates in their own right. I would even say I was addicted to writing and performing sketch comedy. It was my entire reason for living. It was really what propelled me forward in terms of… I was all of a sudden this prolific person. I would come into the sketch meetings with… If people were required to bring in two new ideas or two new sketches or even two new one-pagers, which is what we call it when you bring in just the first page of a sketch just to get the game out, I would bring in five. I was just always feeling like volume was going to get me to a place where I would produce something good. I always said, when I was directing the group, “If you have 10 ideas, one of them is good, so bring in volume.”

**John:** What is this schedule for this? Was it weekly meetings where you’d have to do this and then you’re putting up that show later on that same week?

**Matt:** Correct. We did monthly shows. We did new monthly shows. Probably there was 10, 11 sketches in the show. We would have writers’ meetings on Monday evenings. I eventually became the head writer and director of the sketch group. Sudi Green was my assistant, who went on to become a writing supervisor of Saturday Night Live. We ran the group together. We really, really, really took it seriously. It was also around this time that I met Bowen Yang, when he was in the improv group at NYU. We became this coterie of students of sketch comedy and also participants in the New York comedy scene very young.

I was not only doing that, but I was studying writing. I did get my major in a concentration in television writing at NYU Tisch, but also took screenwriting and playwriting. I had a really well-rounded writing education by the time I left, but really my passion was writing and performing sketch comedy. I paired that with taking classes at UCB.

Then all throughout my 20s, I found musical sketch comedy. I was the artistic director of a musical sketch group with Sudi and Bowen called Pop Roulette. We were an indie group in New York for several years. Then started performing on my own. Before I knew it, Bowen and I had the podcast, which started in 2016. All of a sudden, it was apparent to me that I didn’t have to hide in sketch anymore. I could also use my own voice for comedy. All of that in my 20s coalesced to create the me of now.

Now I have Have You Heard of Christmas, which takes all of those things and puts them together. It’s all original music. It’s stand-up. It’s sketch. It’s very much a narrative piece, actually. It’s not just a person up there singing cabaret songs. It’s actually a narrative piece. It almost feels like a book end, like I started and ended, and I have this. It feels almost like a love letter to myself all through my 20s when I started. It’s this thing I have at the end of my 20s and the end of my time in New York that I get to share with people now.

**John:** You fast-forwarded through a part that I actually want to dig into more deeply-

**Matt:** Sorry.

**John:** … because transitioning from you’re working at this sketch group at the university, but then having to move beyond that to actual professional spaces where you don’t have the excuse that, “I’m just a student.” Was UCB a crucial part of that? How did you move from being a student where you have that protection to you’re out there in the real world? You must’ve had a job. What were you doing to pay the bills while you’re trying to figure out how to make a living as a writer/performer?

**Matt:** I was waiting tables. I waited tables for a decade in New York. That was not my favorite thing to do. This is actually funny. When I was very young, I went to a Screen Actors Guild screening of the movie Zero Dark Thirty. Jessica Chastain was there. I’ll always forget… I’ll always forget.

**John:** Always forget.

**Matt:** I’ll always forget what she said. I’ll always remember what she said, which was, “Do one thing every single day that reminds you why you’re an actor,” is what she said. I said, “I’m going to do one thing every day that reminds me why I’m a comedian actor/writer.” I made sure to always keep an anchor on something, even if it was something as small as sending an email that would further my career or something.

When it came to transitioning to professional situations, that really didn’t happen, because everything was very self-start-y all throughout my 20s. I did not get a job in the industry until I was hired as a writer on The Other Two in 2019, so for the second season of The Other Two, which was a huge wake-up call in terms of how the industry works and how a writers’ room works. If I had a note for NYU dramatic writing, Tisch, it’s they should think about how a writers’ room actually works, which they have to know, because they’re all adjunct professors.

The industry had changed so much from the time I had graduated to the time I was hired on that show, because I graduated in 2012 where they were still teaching spec scriptwriting, so I left school with a Modern Family, which is something that no showrunner is going to look at and consider as a worthy sample for their writers’ room in 2019 when I’m hired on The Other Two. By that time, it was more about reputation, and it was more about original work. It was really interesting the way that it changed very quickly.

What I did get out of my time at NYU were my connections and my friends and my eventual colleagues, because I’ve continued to work with all of them. It was being seeped in the environment of New York City, of creatives that really was the thing I took from school. I know this is a frustrating answer for some people who they’re more comfortable simply just putting stuff on the page and then sending it out or having themselves represented on the page, but it really was more social connections and maintaining and watering those connections I had with peers, lifting people up myself, that ultimately resulted in me getting hired, because I knew Chris and Sarah, who created The Other Two.

**John:** They came from Saturday Night Live, so they were part of that whole environment.

**Matt:** Right, and they had become fans of the podcast.

**John:** Great.

**Matt:** Then I had them on the podcast, and we really hit it off, and so they put me in their room as a staff writer. That was my first job in the business.

**John:** Now, during this time where you’re waiting tables, you’re doing other stuff, were you also submitting packets for late-night shows? What were your goals? Ashley Nicole Black has been on the show talking us through that process, and it seems crazy. You’re trying to put together the best packet, but clearly there’s also a who you know to even know that they’re looking for packets.

**Matt:** Absolutely. It was a fool’s errand for me when I was submitting late-night packets, because I didn’t know anyone at the time. I was 23, 24, 25. Eventually, I just realized this is not my skill. I always thought, weirdly enough, it’s just not what I… Even though I’ve written sketch, I wasn’t good at the monologue jokes of it all. I really couldn’t stand writing in the voices of some of these hosts, just because they were not my voice.

It’s really difficult when you have a packet, and these are 10 monologue jokes that will go in Jimmy Fallon’s voice or Jimmy Kimmel’s voice or any Jimmy really. That was not my skill, because it’s also a lot of times coming up with centerpiece bits that people can do and less sketch ideas for people. It’s some sort of thing where Jimmy can go in front of a green screen and something behind him is surprising. It’s more creating bits than it is doing, and this is going to sound shady, it’s not, actual comedy. It’s more responsive to the environment and the ecosystem of what’s happening, which doesn’t necessarily have to be hard jokes.

Everything I wanted to do was writing television, being in television, and doing sketch. Ultimately, I did end up sending several packets to SNL. That never went forward. I did screen tests for SNL and did the whole thing, actually alongside Bowen. They had us both on hold for six months. Ultimately, they cast him, and I was released. Then I moved to LA and worked on The Other Two. I went as far as you possibly could in the SNL process without getting hired.

**John:** When you go in for one of these final things at SNL, are they going to bring you in as a performer, a writer, or both? I know Bowen was really more of a writer before he was a performer.

**Matt:** It’s interesting the way it works, because if you are screen testing, they can decide to do whatever they want with you. You sign a contract before you even get on that stage. It basically says we can put you in the writers’ room, we can do whatever. Bowen was put in the writers’ room first, but that’s not because they didn’t want him to perform. It was a thing of, let’s see how he does in the atmosphere of Saturday Night Live before we move into cast, which I think was almost a good thing, because then you’re not thrown to the wolves as a featured cast member, and sink or swim. He also did get to do a bit with Sandra Oh on the show.

That’s the way it works there. It’s a more holistic thing. It’s less like, oh, you auditioned for a performer, and so we’re only seeing you for that, or we saw your packet and so you’re only going in the room. It’s much more of a chaotic process that makes a lot less sense than you would ever think.

**John:** Circling back to late-night, I think one of the trends I’ve noticed over the last few years is that more late-night shows are using some of the people that they bring on as writers and as performers to actually be themselves on the show, like Louis Virtel, who gets to be himself, or Amber Ruffin. That is a great thing too is recognizing that not every writer is going to be able to write for that white male host, and the white male host is not going to be able to deliver every joke to every audience. I hope that we continue this trend where you might actually have one named host, but you see a lot of other familiar faces on the screen who can be specific in their comedy because they’re part of a group.

**Matt:** Yeah, definitely. I know Lou has a great time doing that. He’s a dear friend of mine. I obviously adore Amber. To see her spin off into her show, which is so great, that’s so awesome. In fact, Bowen and I actually, we did our segment I Don’t Think So, Honey on The Tonight Show, and it was supposed to be a recurring thing. The second time we went to do it, we got cut because Aretha Franklin had passed, and they needed to make time for Ariana Grande to come out and sing Natural Woman. J-Lo was on the show. Aerosmith was on the show. It was this really crowded day where they cut us, and so we were never invited back.

**John:** You’re going to blame Ariana Grande for the rest of your life. Aretha and Ariana screwed you over.

**Matt:** I have beef with both of them, in life and death. Just kidding. I’m good with them both.

**John:** Let’s get into our main segment here, which is How Would This Be a Movie. We do this every couple weeks where we talk through some stories in the news or history and think about how would these be converted into quality filmed entertainment, either 2 hours long or 10 hours long, as we tend to do these days.

**Matt:** Everything’s too long.

**John:** Everything’s too long.

**Matt:** Cut 40 minutes out of every fucking thing. That’s my note. Every single thing.

**John:** Most 10-episode things could probably be episodes, because there was padding.

**Matt:** Oh, darling, the way The Vow is back with another 10-episode season, I know that’s not even narrative, but I’m like, essentially, yes, it is, because we have to watch it, and we’re being told a story. You gotta get this done in four.

**John:** I don’t even remember what The Vow is. That’s how much TV there is. What is The Vow?

**Matt:** It’s about the NXIVM cult. It’s on HBO.

**John:** I love me a cult, but I don’t have 10 hours to watch it.

**Matt:** Love me a cult, but I understand what a cult is, and you don’t need to explain it to me again and again, episode to episode. It’s actually not that different from the other cults.

**John:** Speaking of cults, we should let the listenership in on our main point of bonding on Instagram was talking about great Elizabeth Mitchell was on Lost.

**Matt:** Oh my god, yeah, one of my favorite TV performances of that era.

**John:** She is the cult leader I would follow anywhere. Forget Ben. Elizabeth Mitchell in any role, I’ll watch her do it.

**Matt:** She was so great on that show. I remember she played Juliet. They missed the opportunity to give her any Emmy nominations while she was on the main cast, but then they threw her a guest nom the year after for I think the final season, which was too little, too late.

**John:** A hundred percent.

**Matt:** She’s so great on that show.

**John:** Yeah, so great.

**Matt:** They so did that character dirty. It sucked.

**John:** I know, but they did everyone a little bit dirty.

**Matt:** They did themselves dirty, or the network did them dirty.

**John:** A lot happened there.

**Matt:** It’s not Damon’s fault. He’s made good on it.

**John:** Let’s find a way to catch Elizabeth Mitchell in all of these projects that we’re going to discuss here. We’ll start off with FTX and Binance. As we’re recording this, the company’s imploding. I’m going to try to give the quickest summary possible, so if you have to talk about this at a cocktail party, this is what happened with FTX.

There is this company called FTX, this giant exchange where you can buy and sell cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin. It’s sort of like a bank. You can put your money there. It’s the second largest of these exchanges in the world. It’s founded by this guy named Sam Bankman-Fried, who we call SBF, everyone calls SBF. You’ve seen pictures of this guy. Do you know what he looks like?

**Matt:** Yeah, I have.

**John:** He’s sort of like a young Jonah Hill-ish type.

**Matt:** It’s giving schlub.

**John:** He’s giving schlub. Binance is the second biggest of these exchanges. It’s founded by Changpeng Zhao, who everyone calls CZ. The general portrayal is that SBF is like the Luke Skywalker of the story, and CZ is like the Darth Vader. They’re like the good guy and the bad boy of crypto. Their relationship starts off well. They both become billionaires. They both form these giant companies. When SBF starts cozying up to regulators, things get frosty.

Last week, an article by CoinDesk showed that internal accounting at FTX was basically… They were all magic beans. There was nothing underneath there. That starts a run on FTX, which can’t pay out, ultimately agrees to sell itself to its rival, Binance, run by CZ. Then Binance looks under the hood and says, “Oh wait, no, we don’t even want to buy you.” FTX declares bankruptcy. FTX has lost $15 billion of its $16 billion, and this all happens in a few days. All of this cascades down. Matt Rogers, as you look at the story of FTX, what are the interesting things to dramatize? Who do you think the funny characters are? What kind of movie or TV show would you watch out of this or want to make out of this?

**Matt:** Picture this. I’m going to go a completely different way with it.

**John:** I want to hear it.

**Matt:** It’s actually a queer romantic comedy. It stars me and let’s say Bowen Yang.

**John:** I could see that.

**Matt:** It’s about two men who instantly have a connection, but one of them understands what the fuck you just talked about and one of them doesn’t. I play the one that doesn’t get, for a single second, what any of this is. When someone says the word crypto to me, I go absolutely black in the eyes and in the mind. Basically, we try to make it work, but it’s the very difficult, complicated love story, that really gets cute at the end, about a crypto gay and me, because there are crypto gays out there. I have questions for them like, what? I have questions for them like, huh? I don’t understand a single thing.

For the listeners at home, they send the outline. You’re to prepare, based on the outline. I said, “This is not the project for me to story break.” I’m going to be a joke writer on this one. I’m actually going to sit in the room and participate in the way where it’s like, I’ll pepper you with jokes, but this is me checking out in the plotty part of the room, which is what I do when I’m in the rooms I’m in. Once they get too plotty, I’m like, “Yeah, and then they go to Burger King.” That’s where I’m at.

**John:** You snipe in there with a joke, a funny line there, but not the web and plotting.

**Matt:** Yeah. Then basically, someone can be like, “You know, SBF.” I’m like, “SPF?”

**John:** “What?” Yeah.

**Matt:** “Yeah, we should all wear SPF. I totally agree.” He’s like, “No, SBF.” I’m like, “I don’t know.”

**John:** Matt, I think a lot of times you need to find some other template for what the story could be. That’s why you reach for Shakespeare, you reach for Romeo and Juliet, you reach for a rom-com. I think the template for this might be Showgirls.

**Matt:** Now we’re talking.

**John:** You have Nomi, who comes to Las Vegas, and then you have the Gina Gershon character, who is the bad girl, who teaches her the ropes of things. Ultimately, they’re going to be vying for… There’s only one featured dancer, and it’s all going to come down to this. I think that could be the SBF-CZ competition, because they have their moments of bonding at the start, the dog food conversations, but then fundamental values get involved there. The turning of the two of them on each other I think could be fascinating, like who’s pushing each other down the stairs.

**Matt:** Could it also be a little horny between them?

**John:** You know what? It can be a little horny between them. Why not?

**Matt:** Or are we going to have a hard time selling that?

**John:** Oh. I don’t know. I think as long as they don’t actually touch… I think straight audiences love when there’s tension but it’s never consummated.

**Matt:** We all know the big problem with Bros where they didn’t cast Chris Evans, so of course we get Chris Evans for this. Maybe we de-glam him. We turn him into a Seth Rogen type. Maybe Seth Rogen plays the other one, because now he’s shedding the pounds.

**John:** There’s some homoerotic tension in there, a little bit like… You think back to 40-Year-Old Virgin, I Love You, Man. There’s a thing about that that is fair [crosstalk 00:21:43] go far. It’s a comedy, I think, because it’s gotta be that way.

**Matt:** I think it has to be, because I’m telling you, if I’m writing the script, I’m bailing on anything in plot, and it’s becoming really silly and stupid, because I do not have the human capacity to understand Bitcoin. I just don’t. I feel like life is too short for me to try.

**John:** I think so too. I get that. I like that choice for you.

**Matt:** Look. Listen. They say write what you know. Write what you know. I’ll never forger, when I was in school, my teacher, his name was Paul Selig, he was my craft of writing teacher. He had us all come in at the end of the semester, and he sat us down. He was going to give us advice, individual advice. He said to me, “I just think you need to go out and live more life.” He goes, “I think you need to go out and get your heart broken, because I think you’re a real writer, but you don’t know anything yet.” I was like, “Okay.” I know that I don’t know about Bitcoin, so I’m going to pass this one off.

**John:** I love it. This will become a movie almost definitely, because there’s already a Michael Lewis book being written about it, so Michael Lewis who did Moneyball and did other famous books about real life things. He was already embedded with SBF when this all crashed down. The hubris of this kid, this 30-year-old billionaire, to say, “Oh, you know what? I want this famous biographer just to follow me around while I create this massive fraud company that’s going to completely disintegrate.” There’s something about that that’s fascinating too.

**Matt:** Listen, God bless Jonah Hill on his third Oscar play. That’s wonderful that he will ultimately have that, because I guess you’re right, it really is that for him, huh?

**John:** It is. It is.

**Matt:** Probably has to dye his hair back from Malibu blond, which it is right now.

**John:** That’s fine. He’s willing to do it for the art.

**Matt:** He can do that.

**John:** He’ll do that.

**Matt:** Of course, and wigs.

**John:** Wigs. Come on, with the wig craft these days, it’s unstoppable.

**Matt:** Truly.

**John:** You know nothing about cryptocurrency. You probably know a little bit more about Twitter. Is that true?

**Matt:** A little bit more.

**John:** A little bit more about Twitter.

**Matt:** A little bit more.

**John:** We’re recording this on a Tuesday. Who knows what’s happened to Twitter by the time this episode comes out next week.

**Matt:** I hope it’s over. I have such a burn the world mentality about it. I hated it to begin with, and now that it’s run by a demon, it’s just like, let’s just burn it down, for me, personally. I hope by the time this is out, this whole thing is moot.

**John:** This is the first project in a while where even before it was on this outline, I got an email saying, “Hey, would you want to do a Twitter movie? Would you want to do a movie about what’s happening at Twitter right now?” Some people reached out to me like, “Hey,” sort of thing. There probably is a thing, but it’s the question of where are the interesting boundaries of this, because Elon Musk is going to be a character in this. Great, you can find some way to do Elon Musk, but are the other characters in it… Who? There’s Grimes. There aren’t a lot of other names you can put to it. There’s just faceless employees who get fired and that sense of-

**Matt:** Jack Dorsey is probably the main character.

**John:** Jack Dorsey, sure.

**Matt:** I would say Jack Dorsey’s the main character of this, because honestly, he’s the center of it. He was there for the rise and the fall. You’d need that in this narrative. He saw it and then failed with it. Now he’s watching it from afar, probably with overgrown facial hair, watching Elon burn it down. I do think that Trump has to play into this narrative too, because I think he broke Twitter.

**John:** It’s a question of do you want to do The Social Network, where you’re looking at the launch of the thing, or are you doing some very small slice? I just saw the movie Margin Call, which is great, Demi Moore is in it, which is just focusing on 24 hours and everything falling within that.

**Matt:** I’d rather see grandeur.

**John:** I like grandeur.

**Matt:** I’d rather see grandeur.

**John:** Big vision there.

**Matt:** Big vision, I think. Let’s see the rise and fall. Let’s tell the story, because you really can. I don’t think it’s too complicated. I think that that’s the most compelling thing is to see something enter the consciousness, change the world for the better, then the worse, and then cease to exist because of ego, which I think is so much a part of Twitter too, that you can log on there and say anything you want, and that you’re going to not be held accountable for it. Then comes the accountability in a major way, which is the digging through of old tweets, etc. I almost think you could do a Don’t Look Up style, many characters in many different environments situation. It could be very big, many different people and how they respond to it. Maybe this is a limited series, to be honest with you.

**John:** I’m wondering if it’s a limited series too. It feels like a lot.

**Matt:** Like a Mrs. America type. It’s definitely a lot. There’s a lot to tell. I do think it’s an open and closed, season-long, let’s call it six, seven-episode narrative.

**John:** People will push for 10, but you say no, we’re going to keep this short and tight. This is going to be Chernobyl. It’s not going to be one of these other things that keeps going on and on forever.

**Matt:** It’s Andrew Garfield’s limited series lead actor Emmy and hearkens back to the Facebook of it all. I think he’d be a great Jack Dorsey.

**John:** He would be a great Jack Dorsey, absolutely.

**Matt:** He looks like him.

**John:** Yeah, he does. That’s great. [inaudible 00:26:43].

**Matt:** So do I, kind of. Actually, I take it back. I want to play him.

**John:** Very good. What are you doing here? You’re pitching this movie, and you’re not even pitching yourself as the lead in it.

**Matt:** I know, as if Andrew Garfield needs more. He’s got it all, and now they released those pictures of him today where he looks hot. Did you see those pictures of him in GQ?

**John:** I saw those pictures. It’s him in leather pants on a sand dune and apparently falling or something. He looks absurdly hot.

**Matt:** Do you want to know some tea?

**John:** I want to know all the tea.

**Matt:** We share a makeup artist. We share a groomer. I asked what he was like, and she told me he’s amazing, so nice, very emotional, often a laugh away from a tear, a very emotional, grateful, sensitive person, to the point where sometimes he’ll get emotional, and they’ll have to redo his makeup. He needs a lot of touch-ups, because he’s very grateful, emotional, right on the skin, water sign type. I would be really interested to find out astrologically what the situation is.

**John:** Matt, my guess is that you are often close to a tear too. I guess that you are an emotional person. Is that fair?

**Matt:** Oh yeah, I’m a Pisces, rising Pisces, Cancer moon.

**John:** Oh my god.

**Matt:** If you say one thing to me [crosstalk 00:27:49].

**John:** I have no idea what any of that means, but Megana, she’s [inaudible 00:27:51].

**Matt:** It means I’m a dripping wet water sign, which yes, to answer your question, means I’m emotional. I’m in the right business.

**John:** Always good.

**Matt:** Sort of.

**John:** Circling back to you didn’t cast yourself in this movie to start with, that is a rookie mistake. You look at Seth Rogen, Seth Rogen isn’t setting up a thing, saying, “Oh, but there’s no part for me to play.” No, Seth Rogen’s like, “No, I’ll be in there.” [Crosstalk 00:28:14] figure out like, “Oh, there’s a role for me in this movie too.”

**Matt:** I know who I play. Exactly. I respect it. I respect the hustle, always. He’s like, “Oh, there’s a romantic comedy with me and Charlize Theron? Of course I’m the lead.” That is the confidence we should all aspire to.

**John:** Seth Rogen levels of confidence.

**Matt:** I liked that movie actually.

**John:** I did too.

**Matt:** Long Shot.

**John:** It’s good stuff. Finally, we’ll end on maybe a happy note. This is the billion-dollar lotto. $2.04 billion was awarded this last week. The winner hasn’t come forward yet, but the store owner is potentially a good character. His name is Joel Chahayed. I didn’t realize that the store owner gets a million dollars for having sold the winning lotto ticket.

**Matt:** I didn’t know that.

**John:** Yeah, that’s wild.

**Matt:** Really?

**John:** Kind of great. This guy is a Syrian immigrant from the 1980s. He said, “We are excited. We’re happy for California, happy for Los Angeles County, happy for the city of Altadena, and we’re happy for the schools that are going to get more money.” He’s saying all the right things. This little, small store owner gets a million dollars just for the luck of having sold a lotto ticket. What do we feel about lotto? Is lotto culture?

**Matt:** You know what’s interesting about lotto? It’s actually something that specifically was discussed in writing school about what a cop-out it is to have someone win the lottery. Then I’ve seen it happen a few times, where I was like, “I buy it.” I guess if you like In the Heights at all, you have to like the lotto of it all, because it’s the whole movie by the end. Is lotto culture? Yeah, it’s culture. Everyone knows what it is. It is monoculture. Buying a lottery ticket and potentially winning or losing and how it might change your life. It hearkens back to Rosanne, that sitcom that everyone was watching in the ’90s. That is monoculture. Of course lotto is culture. I’ve been told it’s hack narratively.

**John:** I think it’s hack unless it is actually the fundamental premise of the thing. You get let’s say one coincidence in your story. If that coincidence is the inciting incident, great. Otherwise, the lotto feels like too much of a wild thing.

**Matt:** The lotto can come in and change the world of what you’re doing. If it does, it probably has to be the center of it, or it’s a heightened musical. I’m actually an In the Heights apologist. I don’t think it got what it deserved.

**John:** I a hundred percent agree with you. I loved In the Heights. First off, I’ll acknowledge that I’m watching it on the Chinese Theater, and the huge screen, and the first movie I’ve seen on a big screen post-pandemic, or mid-pandemic. The big pool fountain sequence in the middle of it-

**Matt:** Amazing. That was so great.

**John:** Blows me away.

**Matt:** Jon Chu is great.

**John:** Jon Chu is great.

**Matt:** I actually have a lot of faith in Wicked. I love Crazy Rich Asians. He’s really, really good. He can put a set piece together. Also, everything tracks. I thought In the Heights really fleshed out those female characters too, especially if you have seen the stage musical. Vanessa is not fleshed out enough, which is interesting, because they had such an amazing actress, Karen Olivo, playing her on the stage. In the movie, it’s this whole fleshed out thing. I thought the ecosystem of the world felt very full. It’s got that great performance by Olga Merediz as the grandmother. Anthony Ramos was amazing. That was a great movie, so I didn’t mind the lotto of it all.

**John:** It needs more love, for sure.

**Matt:** It needs more love. It was bizarrely ignored.

**John:** Let’s talk through our billion-dollar movies here. The FTX movie or something will get made, because a book happened. There’s no love for Matt Rogers in this thing. You’re not going to watch it. [Crosstalk 00:31:55].

**Matt:** I’m not going to go see that. I’ll go see it if I have to go see it. If at the end of the year, they’re like, “You all have to see Jonah Hill’s tour de force,” then I’ll be like, “Okay, I’ll go see Jonah Hill’s tour de force, I guess.” I’ll always try to put my own personal biases aside if there’s an actor tour de force. I try. Sometimes it just can’t happen for me. I cannot sit through a horror movie. If Bitcoin is less of a horror in this film than I think it is to me personally, I’ll sit through it.

**John:** Did you like The Big Short?

**Matt:** Yeah. I’m actually a bigger fan of Adam McKay than I think a lot of people in my coterie are. Some people drag him.

**John:** People got annoyed by Adam McKay as the public figure, I think.

**Matt:** I actually saw a DGA screening of Don’t Look Up. It was the first screening in LA actually. Adam was there. Leo was there. Jennifer Lawrence was there. Meryl was there. They came and did a talk-back after. I remember watching the movie, and my immediate response that I felt was, this was funny, but it also needed a joke punch-up bad, and also, it’s obsessed with the lesson it’s teaching you, which I think is a little bit lol when you consider it’s Leo, who does do a lot of good things but is also a massive hypocrite when it comes to the environment. We’ve seen the yachts, to say nothing of the age of the girls on them.

It’s just bizarre to me, the finger-wagginess. I just know that when Hollywood waves a finger at everyone re: climate, it’s like, okay, but… I actually liked Vice more, to be honest with you, because I thought it was more knowing and surreal. Then I say that about a movie where an asteroid hits the earth.

**John:** Funny, that. Did anybody ask about Jennifer Lawrence’s wig work in that movie? I think that was a crime.

**Matt:** The wig work? I actually thought she was the strongest part of it, to be honest with you. I thought Leo was great. He’s an amazing actor.

**John:** I think a good performance despite wig. The wig sometimes elevates the performance. It just makes the person, “Oh, I see what that is.” Nicole Kidman is transformed by a wig. Jennifer Lawrence I felt like was just-

**Matt:** Not everyone is.

**John:** She was trapped under that thing. Whatever that was, I don’t understand it.

**Matt:** They were giving her a cool girl haircut. They were giving her the little bangs and the whole thing so we knew that she was alt and a scientist, but cool scientist, young scientist, and willing to speak truth to power. I did love her joke about [inaudible 00:34:28]. I thought that was the strongest part of the movie. I thought the movie needed more of that. I don’t know. It just needed a punch-up.

**John:** Agreed, a punch-up is needed. Finally, we’ll get to the billion-dollar lotto. We’ve learned from Matt Roger’s teachers that lottery tickets are lazy is what we’ve learned.

**Matt:** I don’t mean to be a snob about that shit either, but you can always do better than that.

**John:** You can do better. You can do better. Do better, Hollywood.

**Matt:** Do better.

**John:** We have some listener questions I think are very appropriate for you to be answering here. Megana, can you help us out?

**Megana:** Yes. I also have one of my own questions for Matt.

**John:** You can start with that if you want.

**Megana:** A lot of our listeners, I feel like coming out of film school, they have a question of what is their next step. Hearing you talk about your origin story, it sounds like you were doing so many things and just putting your work out there. Did you have any sort of guiding principle? You’d gone to school for television writing, but you weren’t afraid to do sketch and do different performance things. What was your guiding motivation throughout that period?

**Matt:** I just wanted the work to be good. All I wanted was for the work to be good. I took every opportunity to try out what I had written. Like I said, I had this sketch group, and I was the artistic director of it. I steered where it went comedically and musically and artistically. I always felt like if I tried something and it didn’t work, at least I had put a ton of work into it in preparation. Everything was always really well rehearsed, rewritten, punched up, etc. Then if it didn’t work, it was just because it didn’t work, but not for lack of trying. I just always wanted to make sure that I was doing work that I at least felt was good. Nothing was ever not ready, even if it was a little bit show. I always over-prepared.

I think that all throughout my 20s when I was doing comedy and the stakes were so low because no one was watching, it actually taught me a lot, because in my over-preparedness, I think sometimes I lost a little bit of that spontaneity and the magic that comes with doing live comedy and discovering things on stage. You don’t want to be so married to something that the littlest thing throws you off, which can happen in live performance. Again, that is how I developed. I’m speaking more to people that are more on their feet doing the work. I’m talking more to comedians with this.

I guess my global note for something like that is, if you’re going to send something out, if you’re going to present something, at least stand by it, because I always think it’s better to wait on capitalizing on a connection that actually can move you forward than present something to that connection just because that connection is there.

Don’t be stressed out that you don’t have a manager or an agent at 23, 24, 25. I think I got one at 26, 27, and I felt really stressed about that. When someone who you’re meeting with says they can advance your career eventually or represent you eventually, that’s not necessarily a frustrating or bad thing. They know, from being professionals as well, who’s ready, who’s not. It’s not a bad thing to be told you’re not ready yet or, “Keep going,” or, “Keep sending me stuff.” Just make sure you’re proud of what you’re presenting.

If you don’t know yet what is good or bad, go out and see things and gauge your own reactions. Expose yourself to things. If something makes you feel a certain way in any regard, ask yourself why. Journal about why. Really follow the careers of people that promote a gut instinct in you, I would say.

**John:** Love that.

**Megana:** That’s such good advice. Our first listener question is from To Drag Or Not To Drag. They wrote in, “I was invited to participate in a Zoom pitch festival later this month. The pilot I’m pitching is about a queer masc-presenting, assigned female at birth person who’s also a drag queen coming into her femininity while her girlfriend, a high-femme and very glam trans woman, is realizing she may identify more as nonbinary and taking back her masculine side. This show works through questions and issues about gender presentation, ongoing issues trans people face in using shared/public restrooms, identity, what it means to be a woman, etc.

“I work with drag queens at my day job and learned to do drag makeup during the pandemic. I haven’t performed but have gone out in female drag with the queens I know. What I’m wondering is, should I consider doing my pitches over Zoom in drag, or is that way too schlocky and gimmicky? I realize that I can instead talk about this in the, quote, ‘talk about myself and how my background, experiences, and point of view led me to write this specific script’ portion of the pitch.”

**John:** Matt, what do we think?

**Matt:** I think there’s a couple things I think based on this person’s question, which is, I think it’s always great to stand out in your pitch. My special, Have You Heard of Christmas, I did it in full Christmas garb. I pitched it in the summer, and I had a red sweater on and a bow tie and everything. It’s always important in a pitch to stand out.

I also think the pitch that you’ve described, while it sounds interesting, is complicated. I think that you need to try to think about how you can distill what you are presenting to the most simple thing. I honestly almost feel like you doing the presentation in drag would help simplify it and center in on the joy and the relationship of what is happening between your characters in the pitch, and less on identity, because me, even as a part of the queer community, has heard this pitch in your question, and I’m a little confused as to who’s who. I think we need to pare it down, make it about relationship and character. I actually think that you pitching in drag could help that, because we immediately understand what it is.

I don’t know how good your drag is. I would not look like a person in a wig on Zoom. If you’re going to do drag, let’s get the drag together and make sure that we have a really solid landing spot for the people that you’re pitching to, because I think clarity is going to be really, really important in any pitch, especially because a lot of them happen over Zoom, where people are less in tune off the top. Clarity, comedy, and-

**John:** Some other C word.

**Matt:** Beat your face right.

**John:** What I would say to our listener is that a pitch is a performance. When Matt was going out to pitch his show, he’s giving a performance. You are going to be giving a performance, regardless of whether you’re in drag or not in drag. The fact that you’re not a seasoned drag performer makes me nervous about whether you’re going to be able to deliver fully in drag. I think the way you’ll know is just to try it. The good thing about Zooms is you can do some with it and some without it. Maybe use one of your less important ones, try it in drag, and see what it is and see how it feels there and whether you’re able to land and connect the way you want to connect.

I guess I do worry about that it’s going to feel like you’re dressed up and that you’re not actually performing, that you’re not actually able to be authentically the writer pitching this thing, that you’re just going to be a guy dressed up, and they’re not going to see… They’re going to be too focused on figuring you out that they’re not going to be able to figure out your pitch, unless you’re good. If you’re Trixie Mattel, do it in drag, but you’re not Trixie Mattel yet. That’s my question.

**Matt:** I guess that’s the thing is we actually don’t know, and again, this is going to sound harsh, but the quality of your drag.

**John:** Exactly.

**Matt:** Immediately, if it’s looking shitty on Zoom, they’re going to be like, “This is looking shitty on Zoom.” Then it’s going to distract them. I would say if you have the opportunity to have an actual drag queen or drag makeup artist do your makeup, then sure, but you have to be really confident too, because that’s another thing about drag is you can’t hide in drag. When you look shy or silly in drag, apologizing for being there, that defeats the purpose of doing the drag. If it’s something you’re really confident about and feel really good about and like it’s going to extend your clarity and make it a simpler, more visual, easier pitch to go down, then I would do it, but you have to be honest with yourself.

**John:** Matt, my nightmare scenario is that it’s going to feel like when Ru says, “Okay, you have 10 minutes to get into quick drag for this thing.” No quick drag. This is going to have to be good.

**Matt:** Get it together or just don’t do it. You could also get the drag across by using visual aids. It doesn’t have to be you. That’s another thing. You can also just make sure you look fucking great, so that in presentation of yourself, you give the vibe of, oh, this is someone who aesthetically knows what’s up. Get your lighting together. Ain’t no shame in putting up a ring light.

You can present someone who’s part of the queer community and really knows how to put themselves together without doing drag, because we’ve now actually seen, especially people that are in the industry, that may assume it’s easier than it is, because they see it presented on a television show where these people are in the Olympics of drag. These are the best makeup artists in the country, sometimes in the world. They’re also lit by professional, Emmy-winning technicians that make Ru look like the most beautiful human being possible. Understand that the tolerance for bad drag is now really low. You should see some of the ways that the Drag Race fandom drags these queens who are capable of things these people that are commenting never could be. Just understand the bar is very high when it comes to something like that.

**John:** Megana, next question.

**Megana:** Small Client asks, “In the year since I signed with my agent, he’s become a bit too big for me. He’s moved up, become a partner at his agency, and reps writers who are much, much more prominent than myself. As a result, he puts minimal effort into representing me, as in I haven’t had a successful last few years. We have something of an unspoken agreement. I don’t bother him, and he keeps me on as a client. While that may seem sad, using his name as cache has been hugely helpful over the past few years and has helped me generate some recent momentum. I’ve got projects going out, and I recently signed with a new management company. The managers there are more engaged and interested than my agent.

“Here’s my question. Now that I have a little bit of buzz, is it prudent to go ahead and cut ties and find a better match, or should I let him know that I don’t think his representation has been up to snuff and ask him if he’s willing to do better? I actually like him as a person, and he always responds promptly when I contact him, but he doesn’t put me up for any work.”

**John:** If Craig were here, he would say fire your agent, but I’m not going to say fire your agent. I’m more curious what Matt Rogers thinks about this situation.

**Matt:** I would be curious what agency he’s at. That’s I think missing information here, because firing your agent is actually not the worst thing in the world, because then it’s less people to pay. Then it really feels tough when you’re paying someone that actually did no work. I will say sometimes it is worth it just to be able to say, “I’m at UTA,” or, “This is my agent.”

My agents did not pay attention to me until I made money, period. That’s not really the job of your agent. Your manager, which it sounds like you have good managers, are there to be on the ground floor with you and help cultivate your career and your connections. That’s the job of a manager. It’s the agent’s job to broker deals. If there are really no deals there, then your agent doesn’t have anything to do.

I know it sounds weird, but I was told when I signed with UTA at 27, where I had friends tell me that they were expressly told we don’t really do anything in the first 10 years. It takes a long time for people to build their type of cache in the industry. Then your agent starts popping off when there’s stuff to do. If there’s nothing to do, and it sounds like things are percolating because your management is good, then I wouldn’t fire your agent, because then you’re leaving the agency. Then you burn a bridge with the agency. There’s nothing to burn down yet, so don’t burn it down. That would be my opinion.

**John:** I think that’s the right opinion. We don’t have any information about this agency, but we said this agent became a bigger partner, so it’s big enough that there’s that.

**Matt:** Which feels not good to be ignored.

**John:** There may be some other junior agents there, younger people, not partners, who are a better fit for what you need to do. I would talk to your managers about the situation and see what they say. It’s entirely possible that they can interface with some other agents that they know at that agency, because you’re represented by that agency, not just that agent. If you’re trying to do TV staffing, just have some conversations about the things that this agency could be doing for you, or at least who they can put you in rooms with and where they see it fitting.

**Matt:** It feels like the mistake that this person is making is that they have this weird relationship where they don’t communicate. I don’t think you can expect anything to ever happen where you don’t communicate. Also, this is another thing I’ll say, because this is a lesson I wish I had learned earlier. Don’t be afraid of your reps, because they work for you. They work for you. You can communicate as much as you want. Don’t worry about being annoying. They’re not going to not respond to you anymore because you were annoying.

I was having an issue at my agency where I realized there was really no one on my team to send me out for auditions. I made it very clear that if I’m going to be in Los Angeles and an actor, I need someone on my team that’s dedicated to sending me out on auditions. Then they added that person, and my life completely changed. I booked a pilot within I think 18 months.

**John:** Great.

**Matt:** It’s about asking for the opportunity. If you don’t ask for the opportunity or if you don’t express the things that you think are wrong, then you’re fucking yourself. Also, at the same time, when there are no opportunities yet, or there aren’t opportunities that someone that’s at the level of your agent usually meddles in, then try to see if your managers can make that happen. They probably can, because oftentimes it’s very amorphous what a manager does and what an agent does. We don’t know what the management company is or the agency is, but you can probably get a lot of the things you want from your agent, who’s now a big deal, from your managers, and that will cultivate more going on for you that maybe your agent [crosstalk 00:48:50].

**John:** Managers can get you into rooms to meet with people.

**Matt:** Absolutely.

**John:** Agents can do that too. It’s going to be meeting with people that’s ultimately going to get you some work. Then when it comes time to negotiate how much to be paid for that work, then your agents could be excited to get back involved in stuff and see you’re a person who makes money.

**Matt:** I think that there’s this misconception because of the way that agent-client relationships maybe are depicted in film and television or the way that we may think of things on a simplistic level, that people are close with their agent. They’re not. You could be. Maybe if you were a big deal and they’re one of your only clients, or you’re one of their only clients, then maybe that situation happens. People are much, much closer with their managers than they are their agents. That’s certainly my reality.

**John:** Another question from Megana here.

**Megana:** Adrian asks, “I’m an aspiring writer who just hit his one-year mark in LA. Since I’ve been here, I’ve bartended, day-played, and just worked on the TV show as an art PA that wrapped in September. It’s been a struggle to say the least, but I think I’m making progress. I’m out of work now, but I’m hoping my luck will change soon. My question is, how am I doing? I know you’ll say good job, keep it up, but what should be my next step? I know there’s no right way, but there’s always a better way. Any advice at my one-year mark? What should I be doing now besides writing and submitting a thousand fellowship applications?

**John:** We’ve both been there, where you’ve been doing this for a while and it’s not clicking and you’re hoping it’s going to click. What advice do you give to Adrian in a situation at the one-year turning point?

**Matt:** He has to be persistent. He has to be persistent. I think it’s probably really difficult in LA to hit the one-year mark, because everyone’s doing the same thing. You will, if you don’t already, have those people that are popping off in areas, and you’re going to wish that that’s the same for you. There’s really not much to say besides you have to keep writing and keep making connections. I think that is the most important thing is that the connections are going to be what gets you the work. That is just true. I don’t know if you’re also a performer, but try to be as well-rounded as possible. I would just always try to maintain a situation where you are as ready as possible and really keep up to date about who’s working in what rooms, what’s staffing, what’s been picked up.

When I heard the Q-Force animated series that I wrote on was picked up, I literally said to my agents and my managers… It was really my managers actually, just to hearken back to the last question. I said, “Please be on that for me,” because I knew the showrunner, and I knew it would be a cool project. They were on it for me. They got me a meeting based on a sample that I had, not a spec script, an original sample, which I’m sure this person has. Then I got the meeting, and it went from there. I did get hired.

It’s about giving your representatives enough time to procure those opportunities. You’re going to be able to do that by being really aware. Pay attention to that group chat of writers that you’re in, which I think is also a really good thing. Have a hub socially where people talk about this type of thing. I understand that it can get to be a little much, because it feels like in LA that’s all anyone is ever talking about is the business, but those people also work. Really keep your ear and nose to the ground, and don’t be afraid to send a deadline article to your reps and being like, “This.” I’ve done it many times, and it’s worked out for me several times.

**John:** It feels like Adrian may be pre-reps, so he may not have a manager yet or anything like that. He definitely has people in his or her life that are out there trying to do the same kinds of things. Matt, let’s talk just for a second about good networking, relationship building versus gross network and relationship building, because I definitely have encountered people who I just felt like, “You don’t actually give a shit about me. I’m just a contact that you’re just trying to mine and keep fresh in your Rolodex.” As a performer and as a writer and growing up and working up through New York, how did you keep people engaged and keep up with people in a way that felt like it was positive, like everyone was coming up together, versus, “I’m using you.”

**Matt:** The thing is, people do talk about it when it feels like there’s a person like that around. I would say make your relationships about the other people. Don’t make it about their connections. Make it about like, “I respect your work,” and hopefully they respect your work too. “You made me laugh. I wanted to tell you that.” This is maybe not easy for everyone. It’s not always easy for me. I’ve really had to learn this skill. Being social is really important. This is a very social industry. Sometimes it means it’s genuine interest and not fake interest. If all you have is fake interest, understand that people can see that. Go to therapy. Find other things in your life that you care about. This cannot be the only thing, because if it is the only thing, you do feel and seem sharky.

Also, if you are going to be like that, then be up front about it, because there are other people like you. That’s another thing is you can’t expect to go up to someone and be like, “Hey, you should consider me for this,” and have everyone respond to that. If that’s going to be the way that you go about it, there will be some people that do. I’ve seen some people become extremely successful that do that. That’s not what has worked for me. It hasn’t been what I respond to. Genuine interest, be a nice person, and be around.

**John:** Be around. It’s being around so that people can remember you exist, and then following up with the people you think are actually genuinely talented people who down the road, you can help them, they can help you. That’s one of the good things about going through my film program, and it sounds like for your film program too, is you met a bunch of people who were trying to do the same things you were trying to do, and you all rose up together. Adrian’s not in a film program, but he’s going to meet people trying to do the same thing. See if there’s a way you guys can all rise together and enter into the business.

**Matt:** Also, one year in LA is nothing. You have time before you even have to worry about the question, what am I doing wrong or what’s next. You have time.

**John:** Agreed. It’s come time for our One Cool Things. This is where we recommend things to our listenership. My One Cool Thing is a game called OnlyBans. It is a web game, nothing to pay, just click through on the link. It’s created by this team of sex workers and allies. It’s this interactive game that shows what it’s like to be a sex worker working on OnlyFans and the obstacles and challenges you run into. It’s like Oregon Trail but with nude pictures. There’s no actual nudity in the game itself.

I think it’s a really smart way of showing the frustration and hassle and stuff, what it is to try to make $200 in this business and how it all fits together in a way. Reading an article, I wouldn’t really get a sense of it, because you’re not doing it first-person. Click through this thing, OnlyBans. I thought it was just a really smart presentation of a difficult situation faced by sex workers in the US.

**Matt:** Love it.

**John:** Love it. Matt, do you have a One Cool Thing to share?

**Matt:** I have One Cool Thing to share. If you are in New York or you’re traveling to New York, some of the best theater I’ve seen maybe in years and years is a show called Titanique. It is in New York. It transferred from what was the old UCB Theatre. It was in that space. It’s now at the Daryl Roth Theatre. From November 20th on through February, they’re going to be performing there. This is on 15th Street.

Basically, it is a parody musical using the music of Celine Dion to tell to the story of Titanic from the perspective of Celine Dion, because she claims she was on the Titanic. Marla Mindelle, who’s an absolute genius musical theater actress and comedian, plays Celine Dion. It was co-written by her, Constantine Rousouli, who plays Jack, and Tye Blue, who also directs. This is a really amazing cast. It’s incredibly funny.

**John:** That’s great.

**Matt:** It’s also really camp and dumb. The music of Celine Dion is also so camp and dumb and big, but it feels so good, especially with these truly incredible musical theater performers singing it. I’m telling you, when I hear parody musical, I of course have a certain reaction to that. I’m like, “Oh, come on. Is it going to feel like off-Broadway in not a great way?”

**John:** [Crosstalk 00:57:49].

**Matt:** This is so funny. It’s the real deal in terms of how much you’re going to laugh and how much you’re going to enjoy it. It’s a truly holistic theatrical comedy experience. I’m so excited that they have such a hit on their hands. I went to go see it. That’s one of my favorite things about having the podcast Las Culturistas is I get to share what I truly like with everyone and encourage everyone to indulge in these things that I think everyone that listens to my podcast might like. This is one of those things. I’ve not received one piece of feedback that was like, “That sucked. Why did you suggest it?” Everyone that’s gone is so happy when they’re leaving.

Honestly, it made me excited about New York theater again, because I had seen this on the heels of seeing so much bullshit on Broadway. It’s really in bad shape. If you’re going to New York, one of the nights you have to have out on the town is to see Titanique from November 20th through to February at the Daryl Roth Theatre.

**John:** Very excited. As we wrap up here, I want to make sure we don’t miss out on another musical comedy experience, which is Have You Heard of Christmas. Megana and I are going to see your show in Los Angeles. Should we also see the Showtime show or should we wait?

**Matt:** Let me make this very clear. You should stream the show on Showtime, absolutely, to everyone wondering. When I do the show, it’s going to be a concert version of what is really like an original album.

**John:** Great.

**Matt:** Don’t worry about spoilers. It’s a completely different thing. There’s a whole narrative element in the special that’s not in the live show.

**John:** Great.

**Matt:** Basically, what it is, it’s a documentation of me trying to become the pop prince of Christmas and join Mariah Carey as Christmas royalty so I can forever be synonymous with the season and make money in a capitalist sense. It’s a fully original album I co-wrote with my musical director, Henry Koperski, who’s also my ex-boyfriend, which is explored in the show. It is ultimately an incredibly dumb and what I hope is fun show. I’m really proud of it. It’s definitely something I can point to and be like, “Yep, that’s me in there.”

**John:** We are streaming. By the way, we are not only just streaming to watch it. We’re just going to keep clicking the stream so it just streams a zillion times. We’re never going to stop streaming it.

**Matt:** A hundred percent. If you don’t have Showtime, honey, you better get that 30-day free trial, and you can stream I Love That For You, all eight episodes as well.

**John:** A hundred percent. Also, if you’re a Paramount Plus person, it’s just a little add-on to it.

**Matt:** Hulu too.

**John:** Hulu too.

**Matt:** There’s ways.

**John:** No excuses.

**Matt:** There’s ways. Also, please come see me on tour in 14 cities all throughout December. You can go to www.mattrogerscomedy.com or go to my Instagram, and there’s a Linktree there, @mattrogersvo. Please come see me on tour.

**John:** Love it. Of course, listen to Matt and Bowen every week on Las Culturistas, another very good podcast.

**Matt:** Of course.

**John:** By the way, that was actually the first time I think you were referenced in this show is because I think-

**Matt:** I remember.

**John:** We did a thing about how people actually really talk versus normal dialog, and we used a snippet of it.

**Matt:** Yeah, with that Ben Platt episode.

**John:** The Ben Platt episode.

**Matt:** It was really cool.

**John:** It was fun.

**Matt:** Thank you for doing that. It taught me something too, because you’re right, it’s rare that you see something like that depicted, but that is three excited gay men talking. We do talk over each other. Sometimes it’s interesting, because when you’re recording a podcast in person, that happens, especially when you all really like each other and are excited to talk about these things. It can feel a little rude listening. It’s not one of those podcasts that’s like, “I’ve said something, and now you said something.” That really is just me and Bowen’s friendship on paper, or on recorded podcast paper. It was really interesting to hear you call it out like that. I was very honored.

**John:** It was a pleasure to have you on this podcast officially.

**Matt:** Thanks for having me.

**John:** Of course. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao, it’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Owen Danoff. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions on Twitter, I’m @johnaugust. Matt, you’re on Twitter at the moment, right?

**Matt:** You can follow us on Twitter @lasculturistas.

**John:** That’s better.

**Matt:** Bowen and I share it. I’m not individually on Twitter, no. It’s hell.

**John:** It’s hell. Obviously, you’re @mattrogerstho on Instagram.

**Matt:** On Instagram and TikTok now.

**John:** And TikTok now. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts. They’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments like the one we’re about to record on the culture. Matt Rogers, thank you so much.

**Matt:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** Matt Rogers, you are an expert on the culture, because you host a weekly podcast on the culture, Las Culturistas. What is culture?

**Matt:** I think culture is everything. It’s so funny, because we ask the question of all of our guests, what was the culture that made you say culture was for you. The answers vary from just a musical artist or a scene in a movie or the attitudes of people where they grew up. Culture is I guess a holistic thing. I love the fact that high culture and low culture is blending nowadays. I love talking about the fact that there’s going to be a Super Nintendo theme park in the same breath as Tár. I think it’s whatever affects you and moves you to think, create, whatever, perform, anything that moves you to express your own opinion or your own take.

**John:** I like that as a definition. It’s whatever you’re experiencing that makes you want to participate in it. For me, that moment of culture was, I remember as a child watching Wonder Woman spin and turn into her new outfit, so when Diana Prince would spin and all those transformations. I did not realize that was culture. I realized that other people had the same response about it that I did. That’s culture. It’s like, oh.

**Matt:** That’s another important element of it is it’s something that connects. It’s something that we all can observe and react to and then discuss. In that way, it’s a really, really broad thing, but yet you can get so specific with it. I think that is such a specific answer to what was the culture that made you say culture was for you, specifically her spinning, not Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman spinning and changing. That is actually very much a queer answer.

**John:** It is.

**Matt:** It was a powerful woman changing into the protector and the warrior. That is very indicative.

**John:** Very much. I would posit though, so much of what we talk about the culture is what is interesting to the gays, basically what is it that they are going to be discussing. I don’t think it’s just because we’re two gay men and of course we’re looking at everything through our eyes. There’s been a way that the gay eye defines, not just in fashion, but like this is a moment, this is a thing that we’re going to talk about, is it worthy of discussion independently of its place in normal society. There’s just something about whatever the gays find fascinating is culturally relevant.

**Matt:** I think it’s any minority group that’s pushed to the side of what is widely popular or whatever media at the time is telling you is monoculture, which caters to I think a heterosexual white audience. I think what happens is those other groups either can see that culture very clearly for what it is and make their own estimations and opinions on it, or they create their own cultures, which then thrive in such a way because there’s such a specific energy to them that then those things get co-opted and become mainstream culture themselves. It’s really interesting for you to say that, because I would say that yes, gay people and queer culture and queer communities, they do dictate what is en vogue, but also, that’s often taken from the Black community, which were the most pushed to the side-

**John:** Of course.

**Matt:** … and have obviously been pioneers in terms of everything that is quote unquote gay culture now does have its roots in that. You see that even in popular music. Obviously, rock-and-roll was a Black invention. Obviously, hip-hop is a Black invention. Then you see it appropriated and marketed and capitalized on in the society, and there’s not enough questions asked about why that happened, because the answer is very ugly, because people felt like they could make money on it, because what they’re really good at is finding ways to make money based on things. It’s an interesting melting pot that we have in America. It’s important to understand that it was those communities that are pushed to the side that actually set the tone.

I think the other thing about queer people is because we communicate through this common interest of pop culture, because we’ve all been pushed to the side and forced to see it very clearly, it’s one of those things that connect us. Because we are unabashedly interested, that translates to us being trendsetters and oftentimes gatekeepers of culture. It’s a very interesting phenomenon. I think if you look at the past 60 years, it’s been a really interesting journey in terms of how culture is decided upon, discussed, and ultimately sold.

**John:** I have some questions for you, a speed round about is this culture. I just want your honest reactions. Shania Twain, is this culture?

**Matt:** Absolutely, 100%, important culture, revolutionized women in country, created country pop in many ways.

**John:** Yeah, a hundred percent. The Gap?

**Matt:** The Gap is culture. Everyone needs a basic, and that does not necessarily mean you’re basic. The Gap, it’s a place to begin.

**John:** A place to begin. Forest Gump.

**Matt:** It’s absolutely culture. It also directly responded to culture. That was I think one of those big ’90s movie, where it felt like nostalgia was almost starting in the ’90s. I think because of what was going to become the internet and the fact that we were now able to access the past in a quicker way made us more interested in the past. Forest Gump, literally, this is a man who has interacted with all of the important cultural events of his lifetime. That’s because there was an interest in culture to begin with, and then that movie became culture itself, because it was well-performed and let’s say iconically written.

**John:** We have the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company thanks to Forest Gump.

**Matt:** Absolutely. Bubba Gump Shrimp is culture in and of itself. Of course it’s culture.

**John:** Absolutely, movie-themed culture. White copier paper, 8.5 by 11 white copier paper. Is that culture?

**Matt:** Yes, it’s culture. It’s office culture.

**John:** It’s Dunder Mifflin.

**Matt:** That is culture. Office culture is the basis of so many things. Yes, of course we have pieces of pop culture that interact specifically with offices, because again, working in an office is monoculture. We all understand it. What’s more important than paper? How would we write without it? Of course it’s culture, which we use to write things.

**John:** Are treated as culture.

**Matt:** Exactly.

**John:** Not being able to believe someone hasn’t seen Tár.

**Matt:** That’s becoming culture.

**John:** I heard you on Lovett Or Leave It. I had two issues there. I was wondering, when do you go for one specific person experiencing a thing to it becoming a cultural meme. I do wonder if we’re going to get to a place where not just Tár, but being obsessed with someone not having seen Tár becomes a thing.

**Matt:** I think I just want the best for everyone, and so that’s why I react so strongly to someone not having seen Tár, especially a very tuned in… I would imagine a lot of queer people in that audience. I’m telling you, you couldn’t see it, because podcasts are not a visual medium famously, but there were about five people in that audience of a packed Dynasty Typewriter that had never seen Tár. I was like, “This is crazy.” Lovett himself had never seen Tár, which to me feels very odd-

**John:** It does.

**Matt:** … because it’s been out for weeks now, and we’ve been saying it’s one of the, if not the performance of the year, and I think so far, my favorite film of the year, up there with Everything Everywhere All at Once.

**John:** A slip of paper in your playbill that says, “At this performance, the role of blank will be played by:” Is that culture?

**Matt:** Someone else. That is culture. It’s disappointment culture. Ultimately, it’s opportunity culture.

**John:** It is.

**Matt:** It is of course interacting with the culture of theater. That idea, that ideology of the show must go on, the idea of the understudy. You mentioned Showgirls before. It is an opportunity for someone to appear. Of course, we are reminded of Sutton Foster in Thoroughly Modern Millie, an understudy, and then so stunning when her opportunity arose that she became not only a Tony winner and a success in that performance, but a bona fide Broadway star, which are few and far between. That little paper had to appear in that playbill for that to happen, John.

**John:** I think the lesson I’m taking from you is that everything is culture.

**Matt:** It is

**John:** I tried to stump you with some of these, and you were able to find ways it was just culture. Both everything is culture and you’re also very good at improv and thinking on your feet, which are two crucial skills.

**Matt:** I’m very good at bullshitting, and also I genuinely believe what I say.

**John:** The best bullshitters do believe what they’re saying.

**Matt:** Here I am working in this industry. I obviously was able to fool a lot of people. I’m an excellent bullshitter and a major talker.

**John:** Fantastic. You’re a fantastic fill-in host. Matt Rogers, thank you so, so much for doing this.

**Matt:** Thank you for having me. It was a genuine pleasure.

Links:

* [Matt Rogers](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4410278/) on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/mattrogerstho/?hl=en) and [Tiktok](https://www.tiktok.com/@mattrogerstho)
* [Have You Heard of Christmas?](https://www.sho.com/titles/3518900/matt-rogers-have-you-heard-of-christmas) December 2nd on Showtime and on tour, [buy tickets here!](http://www.mattrogerscomedy.com/)
* [Binance Pulls Out of Deal to Acquire Rival Crypto Exchange FTX](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/09/technology/ftx-binance-crypto.html) by David Yaffe-Bellany for NYT
* [Michael Lewis FTX Book](https://theankler.com/p/hwood-ftx-frenzy-as-michael-lewis?sd=pf)
* [Billion Dollar Lotto Ticket](https://ktla.com/news/local-news/winning-2-04-billion-powerball-ticket-sold-in-altadena/)
* [OnlyBans.com](https://www.onlybansgame.com/v2/v2.html)
* [Titanique](https://titaniquemusical.com/) Musical in New York
* Dialogue episode where we sampled Las Culturistas [Scriptnotes Episode 438](https://johnaugust.com/2020/scriptnotes-episode-438-how-to-listen-transcript)
* [Las Culturistas](https://twitter.com/LasCulturistas) on Twitter, listen to the podcast [here](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/las-culturistas-with-matt-rogers-and-bowen-yang/id1092361338)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
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* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Owen Danoff ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/575standard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2022/difficult-scenes).

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

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

**John:** This is Episode 574 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, what do you do when you just can’t crack a scene? We’ll discuss why some scenes are harder to write than others and what to do when you want to throw your laptop at the wall.

**Craig:** Throw it hard.

**John:** We’ll also answer listener questions on twists, scene headers, and getting elbowed out. Plus, can something be too meta, Craig?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** In our Bonus Segment for Premium Members, we’ll talk with Megana about what she learned from her first time attending the Austin Film Festival.

**Craig:** Wait, that was not Megana’s first time.

**John:** That was.

**Megana Rao:** It was.

**Craig:** Whoa. You and Bo were both newbies. Fun. I had a great time at the Austin Film Festival.

**John:** You enjoyed attending all the panels and all the discussions and really lining up for all those things.

**Craig:** I had one good day.

**John:** You had one good day, and then you got really sick, Craig. Are you feeling better?

**Craig:** I am, yeah. I got sick. I thought I was hungover, but I was not hungover at all. I was sick for four or five days. I don’t know what was going on. It wasn’t COVID.

**John:** It was not COVID. It wasn’t RSV probably. It was just something you got.

**Craig:** I think it might’ve been a long, lingering stomach virus or something.

**John:** I got a text from Craig about 15 minutes before the live show for the Three Page Challenge, and Craig’s like, “I cannot leave my room.” Me and Megana did it well with Marc Velez, who was a great guest.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** It ended up being a good show, but we missed you, Craig.

**Craig:** I’m sorry. It was one of those things where I’m like, “Get up. You know there’s stage health. If you just get out on stage, you’ll feel good.” I just was on my way from the bed to the door, I’m like, “Nope. Let’s turn around and get right back in bed.” I left the room for about 12 minutes on Saturday. It was just awful.

**John:** We saw you very briefly and dinner, and then you went back upstairs.

**Craig:** I couldn’t make it. I lasted five minutes.

**John:** You had this bottle of Gatorade. We decided that bottle of Gatorade is contaminated, so we wrapped it in a napkin and set it aside.

**Craig:** That’s nice. I made sure to test myself, just to make sure it wasn’t… It didn’t feel like COVID, because I’ve had COVID before. It was a stomach thing. Now I’m never going back, because you know what happens. If you throw up after you eat a particular thing, you can’t eat that thing anymore. I guess I can’t go to Austin anymore.

**John:** Now in Austin Film Festival. For all we know, we’ll never be invited back again. We’ll see what happens.

**Craig:** I’m okay with that.

**John:** You know who else is never going to be invited back?

**Craig:** Who.

**John:** The former executives from MoviePass. They were indicted by the Justice Department.

**Craig:** Were they? Were they? What for?

**John:** This’ll be for security frauds and three counts of wire fraud. We’ll put a link in the show notes to the article about this. I guess I’m a little surprised, because to me, I think MoviePass was a really bad idea in general. I wasn’t surprised that it failed. I guess I was surprised it was actually a criminally bad undertaking.

**Craig:** Once you start lying to people, I guess it becomes a problem. Of course, what gets you in trouble faster is lying to shareholders. Lying to customers, people are like, “Meh, business.” They definitely did falsely claim things. It seems like where they really screwed up was lying to their shareholders about the value of the business and how they were doing. That’s how they get you. They could’ve just asked us. We knew.

**John:** They could’ve asked us. They should’ve come to us for due diligence, said, “Is this a good idea?” We would’ve said no. We said no repeatedly on the air.

**Craig:** We said that there’s something terribly wrong with this, it makes no goddamn sense. As it turns out, it didn’t. By the way, could you come up with better businessmen names than these guys, Theodore Farnsworth and J. Mitchell Lowe. It’s like they’re from 1880.

**John:** I don’t want to say pushing back, but I feel like any time you’re starting a new venture and a new business, you are faking it until you make it. It’s a question of where does the line between faking it and actually fraud exist.

**Craig:** That’s why you have lawyers to tell you, “Oh, no, you can’t say that.”

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** There’s no question that they had lawyers working with them that they were like, “Oh, you don’t want to say that.” They were like, “Shut up, lawyers. We know better. We’re MoviePass. We came up with a brilliant idea to charge people $10 for something that’s going to cost us $80.” Stupid.

**John:** What if the MoviePass movie makes a hundred million dollars and wins Oscars?

**Craig:** It’s unlikely.

**John:** It’s unlikely.

**Craig:** It’s unlikely that it will.

**John:** It could happen.

**Craig:** By the way, it’s unlikely just because any movie making a hundred million dollars and winning Oscars is unlikely.

**John:** The MoviePass movie is more likely than my Van Halen movie that I pitched on the show. Basically, a couple episodes back, I said I really want to make a Van Halen movie. I want to put this out there in the world and see if the universe will say, “Yes, let’s make a Van Halen movie.”

**Craig:** And?

**John:** Thank you to everybody who wrote in with suggestions. People knew music execs and other folks. Through my agency, I was able to actually talk to the music execs involved, because ultimately, as we discussed on the show, when you’re doing a biopic, you don’t necessarily need the rights to all those people. I could just do it without all that stuff. Without the music rights, there’s not a Van Halen movie to make. There’s not a Van Halen movie to make, because David Lee Roth does not want a Van Halen movie to be made.

**Craig:** There you go. You know what? There’s nothing wrong with certainty, even if it’s bad news, if it’s certain bad news. It’s the bad news that’s almost bad news, but like, “Oh, if we just do this or that or write a letter or wait five years,” or blah blah blah-

**John:** Keep pushing that rock up that hill.

**Craig:** Exactly. It’s better to just be like, meh. Sometimes dead is better.

**John:** One thing that is not entirely dead is the Warner Bros. Television Workshop.

**Craig:** Segue Man. Yeah, that’s right.

**John:** It looks like they were closing down completely. It now looks like it’s going to be morphed into a new thing that’s part of a different arm. We asked for listeners who had experience with the program if they could write in and tell us about it. Megana, can you talk us through what we heard from these people?

**Megana:** Eli wrote in and said, “I can’t speak to all the programs, but getting into the writing fellowship has been very positive for my writing partner and me. The program led to two immediate benefits. The first was my mom stopped passive-aggressively telling me I should be a producer and started actual-aggressively telling others I write for HBO. The second immediate benefit was that the industry’s perspective of my writing partner and me changed. We’re showrunner assistants, and that’s all people saw when they met us. Getting into the program gave us a stamp of approval that allowed people to view us as actual writers. When my boss found out that only 21 of the 3,000-plus applicants got in, he stopped making me get his dry cleaning, so that was nice.

“The program itself consisted of weekly Zoom workshops/masterclasses with executives and writers. We developed a pilot with the program executives, which allowed us to experience the notes process for the first time. Also, we were paired up with some amazing mentors, and we got to work with and learn from all the other talented writers in our cohort.”

**Craig:** That sounds great.

**John:** That does sound great.

**Craig:** I really like the point that this really comes down to a stamp of approval. While that is a turn of a phrase, it’s almost literally the truth that there is this weird imprimatur that has to happen where you’re like, “Okay, I’m in this bucket or I’m in this bucket.” If all programs like this do is shift people from one bucket to the other and makes it easier for them to be seen as writers, then it’s worth it, because it is fairly arbitrary how some of that stuff works sometimes.

**John:** I think the thing I hope we see happening with this new revamped program at Warner Bros, and also Universal’s programs and other places, is that having a structure behind it is so important and so crucial, because people can go to film school. We had other people write in like, “I went to film school. I was a page. I did other stuff. It wasn’t until I got into this program that I actually had a structure that talked me through like, this is what I’m writing, this is the feedback I’m getting from actual executives who would be working on this, from actual showrunners, and got me that first position on a job.”

That structure is really crucial. It feels like the people who are running this program at Warner were really good at that structure. I just want to make sure that whatever we do to replace this isn’t just like a, “Hey, we’re going to try to hire some more diverse writers.” No, you actually have to have a plan for how you’re going to get them set up for success in those rooms.

**Craig:** This will always be part of the charity wing of these massive, multinational conglomerates. Their budget for private jet travel for their CEOs and so forth is going to outstrip how much they spend on this by I assume logarithmic amounts. That’s reality. We can bemoan that, or we can protect at least what we have, because we saw how quickly… To me, this is the equivalent of Congress debating whether or not they should keep funding NPR or something, which they actually don’t. It’s just pointless. The budget is a trillion dollars, and they’re picking on 75 million. This is a similar thing.

I hope that everybody watched what happened here and learned the lesson. In a very simple way, what happened was the company made a lot of changes and then people went, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you shouldn’t have touched that.” Everybody correctly yelled at them, and they went, “Oh, sorry, no, we didn’t mean to touch that,” even though they did. I’m glad that they didn’t. They’ve got to commit resources. They can’t just keep it limited to just a little bit of a charity organization.

**John:** Agreed. Some more follow-up. We were pretty negative on how much progress we really thought had been made on battling copaganda. Some listeners wrote in with suggestions for shows that they felt were doing a good job showing the other side of things. Some of those were Bloodlands in the UK, Beyond the Night, Alaska Daily on ABC, 61st Street on AMC.

A guy named John wrote in saying, “As a film professional in Chicago, let me tell you, avoiding copaganda shows while making a living takes full-time vigilance. Protest requires sacrifice, and per usual, most people take the paycheck, but not all of us, and we are out here.” Talking about the decision whether to write on that show, whether to work on that show can still be an individual choice.

**Craig:** I guess that’s a positive thing. Look, any working person, let’s call part of the below-the-line cadre of crew folk, they deserve to make a living.

**John:** Craig, you and I both admitted to the fact that we don’t watch a lot of these shows, but we had a listener write in who does watch a lot of these shows. Megana, can you talk us through Complicit here?

**Megana:** Complicit said, “As someone who doesn’t write copaganda but who watches a lot of us, I wanted to gently push back that no progress has been made in copaganda since George Floyd. These shows actually have had a large increase in message episodes that talk about police misconduct, police brutality, gun control, and even other progressive issues like abortion. As I watch them, I can’t help but imagine the writers who have advocated for these episodes to be included, as I don’t believe it is in their economic interest to write these themes. These shows have almost completely abandoned a ton of the good cop who plays dirty tropes they used to embrace. There’s also no longer an acceptance that sometimes the heroes may need to rough suspects up to get the truth, which was sadly extremely prevalent just five years ago.

“I understand that this isn’t really the point and the infallibility of the shows’ heroes furthers copaganda even when they are investigating bad cops in the context of the show, but in terms of the progress that can be made, I want to recognize the people who are pushing for these storylines, as I feel like it is the only reasonable hope for progress that we have. It’s a big ship to turn, so I appreciate the people leading on the rudder, or maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better.”

**Craig:** No, I don’t think you’re trying to make yourself feel better. I think it’s important to note these things. I don’t think that we felt no progress had been made. It’s good to hear what you’re saying is out there. That’s a positive thing. I guess that it wouldn’t have been really surprising if things hadn’t changed at all, because the complexity of the writers’ rooms have changed, I would imagine quite a bit.

**John:** Some more follow-up on virtual rooms. Andre wrote in, “I was just getting caught up. I was listening to Episode 557 where you guys were talking about virtual rooms versus in-person rooms. I had a question about how to go about letting them know that you would prefer a virtual room. For me, I have a handicapped daughter and would refer a virtual room because I like to be with her as much as possible, because she requires a lot of attention. I know you guys have been going on about disabilities and that stuff.”

**Craig:** I like “going on about.”

**John:** We’re going on about disabilities and that stuff.

**Craig:** “You guys are just going on about these disabilities.”

**John:** Craig, off-mic and over beers, I have conversations with a lot of showrunners. This is about the Austin Film Festival. I was asking them, “What’s happening with your rooms? Are you back in person? Are you going virtual? Is it a hybrid?” What have you been hearing?

**Craig:** Both. I’ve been hearing hybrid. I think it’s more common now that the rooms are in person again, but with exceptions made for people who want to dial in virtually. The infrastructure is there. It’s easy enough to have some people on the big screen on the wall and everybody else sitting around the table. That’s what I’ve basically been hearing. For Andre here, it sounds like the way you would go about letting them know you prefer a virtual room is by saying, “Hey, I’d prefer a virtual room. There’s this situation with my daughter. I’d like to be here. Here’s why.” I would be blown away if a showrunner was like, “Oh, no, sorry.”

**John:** Like, “Andre, we think you’re the perfect writer, but no, we won’t accommodate that.”

**Craig:** “No, sorry.”

**John:** One model I did hear discussed at the Austin Film Festival was someone was setting up a room that I think they were in person Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then virtual Fridays and Saturdays. She had some writers who did not live in Los Angeles, who were flying in to be there Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then gone the other days.

**Craig:** That works. It really comes down to the nature of the room and who you have in there. If it’s very small, then I would think keeping it… This is just my preference would be to want to be in a physical space with people. It is easier for me, maybe just because I’m old.

**John:** Could be. We have one last bit of follow-up. Someone asked about act breaks and whether act breaks are going to be coming back into shows now that streaming shows are going to have ads. This thing is actually pretty long, so I think we’ll put it up as a blog post if we can. To summarize, this guy Mike wrote in and said that he was working on a show for one streamer which had act breaks but then it decided it was going to premier internationally on another streamer which did not have ad breaks.

**Craig:** Oh, boy.

**John:** He was in the editing process of this. They put in commercial black, basically a place for where the commercials go. The second streamer got the show and said, “Oh, no, we don’t have act breaks, so you need to take all those things out. Take out those black spaces.” Of course, it’s not just the black spaces. You have music that ramps into the commercial and then out of the commercial. This whole thing is set up to have those things there. It became a whole fight over the holidays over what was going to happen with this.

**Craig:** I’m in the thick of all this right now for The Last of Us, because as we’re approaching our broadcast date, which has been announced to be January 15th, we now have to make sure that we have all of our deliverables hitting their dates. So much of it comes down to what Mike refers to as localization. That’s the word for it. Everyone around the world needs time to take the show and subtitle it and prepare it for also, in the case of HBO, a lot of different delivery systems.

It’s much easier for a single delivery platform like Netflix, because everybody gets Netflix the same way around the world. They log into Netflix and they watch the Netflix. HBO’s not the same. HBO is on cable, it’s on satellite, and it’s also on HBO Max, so you have to prepare all of these things. All of these little ticky-tacky bits and bobs need to be figured out, how long is the space between the end of the main credits and the beginning of the show and so on and so forth.

One of the things you get into is, when you’re putting a show together, or a movie, when you lock picture, that’s your time, and then all the mixing, all the sound is laid on top of that. If you change the time, you have to go and do quite a bit of work to just get the sound mix back together to match this new time. Also, if you’re moving things like black spaces in and out, you have to redo all the color timing. It’s a whole mess. This will be an ongoing problem.

**Megana:** Can I ask a question?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Megana:** Would it make sense then to just, by default, include act breaks all the time?

**Craig:** No, because if you include act breaks… This is exactly what happened to Mike. The show had act breaks. It came out of Hulu. He had to then remove the act breaks, because they were sending it over to Disney Plus, that doesn’t have commercials. Basically, the commercial black is the hole where the ad goes. You send it to the broadcaster with these holes in it, and then they drop ads into the holes. Removing the holes is work. It’s work to re-conform the mix and the color timing and the cut and the music around the fact that there are now not these holes in it. The answer is don’t change it. That’s the only real way to get through this with any kind of efficiency, but no such luck.

**John:** Re-asking Megana’s question in a different way, if you think your show is likely going to end up having ad breaks in it, from a creative standpoint it may make sense to think about where those ad breaks are going to be and build for them, because otherwise it’s going to be jammed in randomly.

**Craig:** Writing-wise, yes, but production-wise, no. There’s no way to anticipate it. Basically, you are going to produce your show to either have or not have commercial breaks. It is a binary choice. The problem is that in certain situations we find ourselves living in a nonbinary world when it comes to commercials. It is impossible to have something be flexible enough to have both ads and not ads. You need to make two versions, which is money. It’s just money and time. It’s complicated. It’s annoying.

**John:** For instance, I very much enjoy the show Reboot on Hulu. Because we pay for Hulu, we don’t get ads, but you can definitely tell where the ads go in the Hulu version. It’s fine. You don’t need to stress out about it. You have basically the commercial blacks. We see it goes to that and then it comes back out. It’s great. If you were to try to strip those out, it would be chaos. We’re talking about for music, but also for all the internationalizations, for all the subtitles. Those have to link to specific moments of time code. You change the time code, you’re breaking subtitles.

**Craig:** This is why for a guy like Mike, who’s a post-producer, he’s the person who’s shouldering this burden with his team that are doing all the technical work. It would be nice if they just picked one. HBO is tricky, because we don’t have that Netflix delivery system. We have to deliver things earlier than they do I think at Netflix, just so that they have time to get ready. What I don’t have to worry about is whether or not there are going to be ads. HBO does not air with ads.

**John:** That said, your show will have ads in some markets down the road. It will. We know that. We know that from Chernobyl.

**Craig:** That’s what happens. At that point, I don’t even care.

**John:** Let’s get to our marquee topic here. This actually comes from a blog post I wrote a gazillion years ago back in 2008, where I talk through why some scenes are harder to write or really how writing this one scene was so unexpectedly difficult. It took me six hours to get through what didn’t seem on the surface to be a very complicated scene. I went through all the agonies of wondering whether this needed to be two scenes rather than one scene, were they starting at the right place, could a different character drive the scene. Ultimately, it came down to, no, I actually needed to work really, really hard to get the one scene to work, and it ended up being a good scene. I thought we’d talk for a little bit about why some scenes are much trickier to write than others and what we do when those scenes come upon us.

**Craig:** I definitely have had scenes that I knew were the right scene. I knew that it was supposed to be here and accomplish the following things. What was so challenging was making the scene feel original, because the nature of the scene might’ve been, “There’s 500 cliché ways to do this, and I don’t want to do any of those, so now what do I do?” Also, sometimes scenes where people deliver speeches are really hard, because there’s a fine line between a good speech and crap. It’s a really fine line. The scene in Chernobyl where Stellan Skarsgård gives this kind of speech to the potential divers, trying to get them to go dive under the reactor. Oh my god, I spent so much time on that speech just to make it what I thought would be interesting and speech but not speech.

**John:** Craig, if you’d spent a little bit more time, would it have actually been good? I’m sorry, I never do that, but you set me up so perfectly for it.

**Craig:** I don’t think so. Basically, it was the best I could do but not.

**John:** I bring this up because it comes down to the fact that underlying this whole conversation is really about taste and recognizing this is a good scene, this is not a good scene. If you don’t care, there really are no difficult scenes, because it’s just like that. If you’re fine with crap, it’s not a problem. The challenge comes when you know what the quality level needs to be, and you still can’t get that scene to happen the ways you need to do it. Your Chernobyl example, that was in your first draft. You’re just trying to figure out how to get the scene to work on the page the first time.

I was trying to listen through some of the issues that come up, like why sometimes those scenes are big challenges here. I’ll list them through. Sometimes it’s a major shift in the story. If it’s a crucial reveal, if it’s a highly emotional moment, if the scene has really complicated geography, choreography, or simultaneity, things have to happen in the same moment, when you need to set something new up, sometimes these things are hard, because the story overall, the movie wants the scene to be short, but the scene itself wants to be long. It wants to take its time. Sometimes you just have to accomplish a lot within a scene. The needs of tone make it difficult to do the story points you needed. You need the scene to be funny, and yet it’s actually material you need to cover, and it’s just not funny, or vice versa, this has to be a big, serious thing, and yet it doesn’t feel like it wants to be that. Sometimes, obviously we talk about this a lot on the show, the issue is you’re locked in by the scene that happens before it and the scene that happens after it, and you have to connect those two things. It’s just really tough. Those are some of the things I’m encountering on a first draft when I hit a scene that is really blocking me.

**Craig:** I think because I’m such a planner, it’s rare for me to struggle with how to connect two scenes, because I’ve already thought that through. I did the hard work on that one a little bit earlier. I wasted my six hours earlier on that. You mentioned emotional scenes. Emotional scenes are like a car with bad alignment. They keep wanting to pull towards melodrama. It’s so tempting to just write somebody, parentheses, sobbing, “How could you do this to me? You meant everything to me.” Then you get there, and it’s just a soap opera. Figuring out to do those things in a way that is honest…

I always think about Spielberg as somebody who aims for honest emotion, true emotion, but doesn’t shy away from entertaining you while it’s happening, because there’s the mumblecore version of everything, which to me is the greatest capitulation of all. That’s just like, oh, rather than expose myself and potentially be laughed at, I will just simply have everybody feel everything at a 0.5, and therefore I’m cool. I would argue, sometimes, and sometimes it’s just cold and I don’t care and I’m bored. Trying to find that middle ground where you are both entertaining and showing restraint, this is hard stuff to do. I find it hard. Spending six hours, by the way, on a scene, I do that all the time. All the time. That’s not even that long to me.

**John:** If you think about it, 6 hours on a scene, most movies are about 100 scenes long, so 600 hours to write a script. That’s a lot. That’s 12 weeks to do that. It’s not impossible.

**Craig:** I don’t know. If there’s 100 scenes, not all of them are going to be 6-hour scenes.

**John:** They can’t be.

**Craig:** No. A whole bunch of them are going to be not that at all. Within a 60-page hour-long drama, so I’ll make it a little bit shorter for purposes of the argument, maybe there’s 3 scenes that are going to be what we’ll call 6-hour scenes. It’s no big deal. I really only write a scene a day basically, or what I consider three pages a day. 20 days to write a script is not that bad. It’s four weeks, or if it’s a movie it’s roughly eight weeks. That works.

**John:** The question I have for you, and I’m asking myself this, is can I always anticipate which are going to be the difficult scenes to write. You are a big outliner. From your outline, do you have a sense of which scenes are going to be the tricky ones to write, or are you surprised in the process?

**Craig:** I have a terrible sense. All my predictions are wrong. I’m like, “This is going to be hard.” Then I get there, it’s not hard, it’s just a lot. Then there are other things where I’m like, “I know exactly what that scene is. That’s going to be a joy to write.” Then I get there, I’m like, “Oh, no, this is not a joy to write at all.” My guesses are useless, and so I’ve stopped trying to guess. On the day, I discover is this going to be one of those days or not.

**John:** In Big Fish, I think I did know from the start, these are going to be really challenging, difficult scenes to write, because they’re emotional. They’re really tough to get just right. The first 10 pages of Big Fish were so challenging, because I had to set up so many different things. I knew this would be a situation where I was going to work for weeks just to get those 10 pages to work properly, which is great.

I would say going back to action movies that I’ve worked on, you think, “Oh, that should be pretty straightforward.” Then you realize the amount of simultaneity or the amount of different things that all have to happen at the same time. Charlie’s Angels are some of the hardest movies for me to write, because those scenes have to be entertaining and action-filled, but also move one of the three Angels’ storylines ahead. Those are really tough. When a scene has so many demands on it that has to do with a bunch of things, that’s where it becomes a puzzle, where I know this has to work within the framework of this scene, and yet it’s just really tough to get all those pieces to click together.

**Craig:** The action stuff generally, because again, I know the challenges you’re talking about, I try to address those in the outline phase, so that when I get to the action sequence, it’s just annoying, because it’s so many goddamn words, but I get through it.

The harder part for me, I think you put your finger on the first 10 pages, certainly in a movie. I will spend as much time on the first 10 pages as I do on the first 30 pages or 40, because the first 10, it’s everything. We’ve talked about this before. That’s the zygote. It’s worth spending time on those. If you can make the first 10 beautiful, the rest of the way should be much, much easier.

**John:** As long as you get the ship moving in the right direction, you’ll hopefully get to some good places. It’s just so often, those first 10 pages are required to do so much, and you feel like, “I have to set up this thing to get to that thing.” It’s remembering [inaudible 00:27:57] that you are both the writer who knows where this is going and the reader who has no idea where it’s going. That’s the tricky balance there.

Let’s talk about why scenes sometimes can be hard because of the rewrite. We’ve just been talking about the first draft and the obstacles there. Sometimes in the rewrite, you get those six-hour scenes where it’s like, “Jesus.” Those are situations where I’m now asked to compress two or three or more scenes down into one scene. I basically have to cover the story points that multiple scenes used to do, down to one thing. So tough.

There could be a shift in focus. There could be a shift in what I’m trying to emphasize at that moment. There could be a scene that was a major link, and that scene is no longer there, so I’m having to do the work of that, or I need to link it from one idea to actually a different place that the scene has a different job than it did before. It’s the same people in the same place, but the actual purpose of the scene is so different. The energy from the previous draft doesn’t actually make sense for where I was. Then of course, there’s the bigger things like different actors, different production things, different realities of what you had planned versus who you have now.

**Craig:** I try and solve a lot of the problems ahead of time. What I need to figure out and I can’t solve ahead of time, what I need to figure out on the day is shape. Shape is the trickiest thing. I know what’s supposed to happen. I know why. I now how everyone starts in the scene. I know how they end. I know what the plot points are. I know all the facts. I know what I must achieve. Now, achieving that with shape so that the scene feels like it has places to go and reversals and an interesting flow with some surprises, and then balancing out what is said and what is unsaid, how much can I say without talking, all these things, that execution stuff is where I find myself really tweaking tiny little screws and bolts to make it feel seamless and gorgeous. Sometimes you just know you’re going to be there for a while, and that’s okay.

**John:** Sometimes you have some stuff down on the page. You’re like, “If I move this around, I start at a different place… ” Sometimes it is just like, “I have to wipe that clean and just find a different way into this moment, a different way through this moment, because it’s not the words and who says what. It’s like, “This is the wrong way for me to get this.”

It could be that I approach the scene thinking I’m going to ask the question. Maybe I need to actually answer the question at the head of the scene and deal with the ramifications of that. You come in with the answer rather than answering the question, or the reverse, where I thought this would be the person who has the answer. No, they’re actually answering the question and exploring in the moment. I thought it was this energy level, and that’s actually not going to get the characters where they need to go. I need to change the energy level to a different thing. I need to set the tone higher. That’s a real tricky thing.

As a writer, I’m always imagining myself in the space with the characters, watching what they’re doing and seeing stuff. Sometimes I have to scratch that. It’s just like, “Okay, now let’s build a new space. Let’s build a new approach to how to get this and wind it up and see what the characters want to do and how they want to make the scene happen.”

**Craig:** The most important thing that you’re demonstrating is a sense that something’s wrong. To me, we should all be like the Princess and the Pea. The tiniest thing should cause us the most distress. That’s how you make it better. When I’m working on a scene, and it’s not right, and I don’t know why it’s not right, I feel terrible. I feel like I’m dying. That is important to listen to. You need that sense. You need the sense that something’s wrong. I think so many people write with this sense that they’re doing something correctly, and they just accentuate the positive, which sounds healthy, except they’re missing so many things. Really being attuned to something being not good enough, not correct, not delightful, it’s essential.

**John:** My daughter the last couple years has really gotten into indoor bouldering. She goes climbing all the time. When you’re working on a climbing wall, you call that a problem. Basically, you are trying to climb the wall and figure out how do I get to the top. It can be really hard. One of the things I loved in watching her is how you tackle and solve problems. “I got to this part. I got to this part. I cannot get to this next thing.” You’ll fall or drop. Then you’ll sit back, and you’ll look at the wall again and figure out, “Okay, that didn’t work. What could I do differently? What if I put my foot there rather than there? What if I try to make this reach?”

Sometimes other people will watch you do it and get suggestions. Sometimes it is an issue of you are trying to do it wrong. Other times, the answer is you just gotta do it perfectly. You actually have to make that jump and grab. It’s just like your hand wasn’t strong enough to do it. You try it the fifth time, you suddenly can make that hand hold and you can get up it.

That sometimes is writing scenes for me. Sometimes I’m just trying to do it wrong, and I have to start over. Other times, I just have to keep pushing forward. Finally, I’ll find that word, that one line of dialog that will actually make the scene work, and then I can keep climbing higher. You just don’t know from the start what kind of solution it’s going to be. Regardless, I think one of the things we can take comfort in is that, no matter what, most readers will have no idea how difficult those scenes were.

**Craig:** Nor should they. Not their problem.

**John:** Not their problem, but we do have listeners with problems.

**Craig:** Segue Man.

**John:** It’s time for some listener questions. Megana, can you help us out?

**Megana:** Yes. Andrew wrote in and he said, “I’m curious if there’s something that can be too meta. Apparently, Hallmark has a Christmas movie coming out about a small town where a production company is producing a Christmas movie. The premise is that a small-town woman falls in love with the star of the movie, who’s known as the King of Christmas. The movie’s called Lights, Camera, Christmas. Have we reached peak meta? Is there such a thing?”

**John:** Andrew, there’s no such thing as too meta. I think it’s fantastic. I think it’s a great idea.

**Craig:** That sounds actually like regular meta. It’s not even that meta. It really isn’t. It’s one level of meta. I think it’s fine. What’s wrong with that?

**John:** There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s a Simpsons episode that is basically the same plot, but of course it’s better that it’s a Hallmark movie that’s making fun of Hallmark movies.

**Craig:** Simpsons did it.

**John:** Simpsons did it. Simpsons always did it. We endorse the meta here on the Scriptnotes podcast.

**Craig:** We do. We love a meta.

**John:** Oh, I see we have a listener from the UK. Craig lovers a listener from the UK.

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** We have audio for this one. We will listen to Beavis’s question read aloud in his own natural accent.

**Bevis:** Hey, Megana, John, and Craig. I have recently completed the first draft of my first screenplay. It contains two plot twists, one that you probably see coming, and the second that I hope is less obvious. To date, I have only shared the draft with friends and family, and so I have not had to describe or sell it to them first. I would like to pursue opportunities to ask others to read it, but I am not sure how much to reveal to any potential readers. Explaining the twists in advance would help articulate the plot and overall sense and tone of the script but might compromise the reader’s ability to objectively assess how effective the twists are. I may of course be rudely underestimating the capacity of professional readers and writers to make this kind of objective assessment.

I would be grateful if you could offer any advice on how to handle this in the following scenarios: in a log line or outline summarizing the script, in an informal conversation or an email exchange with the potential reader, in a formal treatment document.

I am based in the UK, so I would just like to say to ’90s cockney Craig, all right, mate, thanks for doing this. You’re a top geezer. [inaudible 00:35:56]. You and your podcast are fantastic. Thank you, Beavis Sydney.

**Craig:** Thanks, Beavis.

**John:** Craig, what do you think? You will have the twist in your story. In what scenarios do you reveal the twist or not reveal the twist?

**Craig:** There are zero scenarios where I reveal the twist. It’s a twist. Either it works as a twist or it doesn’t. You can certainly say, “Hey, look, you may be reading this and wondering WTF. There is a twist.” You could say that if you felt the need to. Even saying that does rob the twist of some power. I’m not sure there’s a world where you write an M. Night Shyamalan type of movie and give it to someone and you go, “By the way, the thing is that this village actually isn’t like in the 1800s. It’s in modern day. They’re just sealed off. That’s the whole thing. That’s how it ends.” That doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

**John:** I would agree with you that if you’re talking with somebody about a project, revealing the twist in that is generally not useful unless it’s a longer conversation, and you’re really going through the whole story. In some of the written samples here, Beavis has a formal treatment document. Yeah, in that you’d have to reveal the twist, because that’s a crucial part of what’s happening there, particularly if it’s not even an end twist, like a Shyamalan twist, but a midpoint twist where everything changes like a Gone Girl. Yeah, you would have to reveal the twist in that. If you were doing an elevator pitch on Gone Girl where there’s a big mid-story twist, I don’t think you would reveal that there.

**Craig:** They’re twists. Keep them twisty.

**John:** Don’t twist it.

**Craig:** Keep the twists twisty. Thanks.

**John:** Megana, help us out with Elbowed Out.

**Megana:** Elbowed Out asks, “I’ve been developing a project with a production company for the last two years. It’s a true crime story, and we have the life rights of the people involved in this scandal, and the quintessential book rights. I created this project, wrote a spec pilot, the pitch deck, series treatment, but the production company, as well as the producers attached, have told me I’m not big enough to tackle a show like this. I totally understood, and we started looking for showrunners. We landed on two talented industry vets as our showrunners. When asking them if they’ll be doing writers’ room, they said, ‘No, we’re going to tackle this ourselves, because there’s too much research to catch everyone else up.’

“I’m 25 years old, and I’ll be the executive producer of the series, which is pretty nuts to me, but I also wanted to be a writer on this. I already know everything about this case, and I want to help creatively in any way I can. I’ll take notes and get them coffees if I need to. I just don’t know how to give this up and let them take over.

Also, speaking for the future, this was supposed to be a launching pad for my career, but it seems I won’t get the attention I initially thought I would. How do I nicely get involved creatively or push myself forward in this madness? Because I’m slowly being cast to the sidelines.”

**John:** I want to start with the good news. Hey, you’re 25 years old, you got a series set up with good people, and this could actually happen. That’s great. Don’t shit on yourself for things that may not happen, because good stuff is already happening for you.

**Craig:** There is good stuff happening, but there are some warning signs. There are a few red flags here that concern me, and not concerned in the way I normally am, which is, “Oh my god, Elbowed Out, you’re being abused.” I’m more concerned that a number of people have all agreed that you’re not ready to be writing on this, which makes me wonder if you might not be ready to be writing on this, which is fine. When people say you’re not big enough to tackle a show like this, if they love the writing, I think they might think otherwise. The showrunners similarly I think would think otherwise.

What I think is fair to say is this. It is fair to say to the showrunners, “Look, I get it. It seems like from what people are reading, I am not necessarily at the level you are looking for, for this work.” Honesty will take you so far, Elbowed Out. You can’t even imagine. You can continue that honesty and say, “I really want to get better. The way to get better is to work professionally and in a room. If I can’t be in a room with you guys, is there a world where maybe you let me write a draft? If you hate it, just rewrite the whole damn thing. You’re going to do that anyway. Is there some kind of participation I can do here, with full honesty that I understand what’s going on?” Then people may be like, “Look, we get it. You know what? You’ve earned a break here, so let’s throw you a bone.” I think that’s probably the best you can hope for. Full honesty is going to be the best policy for you.

**John:** I vouch for Craig’s full honesty within this room, with these people, with these producers. Then I think there’s another level of how you present this out to the world. You should be getting an agent and a manager off the fact that you have a series set up as a 25-year-old. People should want to represent you.

I think as you go out to the town with these representatives and they talk about, “Oh my gosh, it’s so amazing that you have a show set up,” your reps can be a little bit more aggressive in promoting what a wunderkind you are for getting this thing happening and getting you out there and getting people to read your stuff, which is hopefully good, because even if you don’t have the opportunity to do everything you could do on this one series that you got set up, you should hopefully be in a good place to have great meetings and hopefully get good jobs on other projects out there. I think there’s space for both real honesty within the showrunners and a little bit more expressive hyping of you because of what you’ve been able to do.

**Craig:** Definitely, there’s good hype opportunity here, certainly hype opportunity as a person that finds material and gets it set up places. If you want hype material for the writing, the writing has to be there. That’s part of the deal.

**John:** He says that he wrote a spec pilot. Maybe that spec pilot’s really good and it got him places.

**Craig:** I gotta be honest, just based on what I’m… It’s a rare thing for somebody to write a spec pilot that’s really good and then for everybody to be like, “No, thank you.”

**John:** I agree with you. More often, if this pilot was really good, and they were concerned about his ability to run the show-

**Craig:** They’d pair him with someone.

**John:** … they’d partner him up with somebody to actually keep going after that.

**Craig:** Co-showrunners, exactly, or at least you would be in a room or be part of that process.

**John:** Cool. Let’s take our last question from Juliana here.

**Megana:** Juliana asked, “When your character is moving from one room to another, do you ever end the previous scene with wording that leads directly into the slug line, or would one address the location change and then reconfirm in slug line? For example, ‘She takes her wine and heads into the INTERIOR KITCHEN NIGHT,’ or, ‘She takes her wine and heads into the kitchen, INTERIOR KITCHEN NIGHT.’ It feels more continuous shot the first way, but also more confusing to read. Is there a better way to direct this type of continuous movement on the page?”

**John:** Craig, I find myself doing both of these things. I do it both ways. Sometimes I do wonder, because people don’t read slug lines, whether it will actually track and make sense, and yet on the page, you can make it work. What do you do?

**Craig:** It depends. Juliana, here’s the good news. It doesn’t matter. Honestly, it doesn’t matter. I will often say things like, “She takes her wine and heads into the,” and then usually I’ll put a colon if it’s heading into the slug line. It’s for no reason. I just like that. That’s perfectly fine.

“She takes her wine and heads into the kitchen, INTERIOR KITCHEN NIGHT,” feels a little bit like time cut almost in that sense, like you’re starting a new… It’s an hour later and her wine is empty. If there were a time cut involved, and I was going to show that by showing, oh my god, the whole wine bottle’s empty now, or there’s now three open wine bottles, then yes, I would say, “She takes her wine and heads into the kitchen.” Period. Next, “INTERIOR KITCHEN, LATER,” is probably what I would write. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with creating a… If you want them to feel a natural flow from room to room, I think using the wording that leads into it makes total sense.

**John:** Agreed. I would probably be more aggressive, “She takes her wine and heads – INTO KITCHEN NIGHT,” because you then read INTO KITCHEN NIGHT as into the kitchen night, and flowing through. The question is sometimes that dash, I will then match with a dash on the other side of the scene header, if it’s a natural flow. Then I’m not even really acknowledging the scene header. I’m just saying it’s a continuous action that brought me to a new scene. You’re thinking the right thoughts here, Juliana. It’s basically how do you make this feel right on the page, make it feel like it is one continuous action, versus starting and stopping a brand new scene.

**Craig:** It’s all about your intention. How fluid do you want this to feel? If you want it to feel fluid, if you want the audience to experience this as somebody breezing from room to room, then this would be the way to do it. If you don’t, then don’t.

**John:** Great. Craig, it is time for our One Cool Things. Want to start us off?

**Craig:** Sure. I have two One Cool Things this week, which you know me, I’m making up for past crimes. The first one is calling The Past Within. I think I mentioned this earlier when I was doing the other cooperative puzzle-solving game. This is by the folks at Rusty Lake, who make all these wonderfully surreal, effed up little puzzle games. They’re all fantastic. Definitely check out the Rusty Lake games if you haven’t already. They have their own weird mythology that I can’t quite make sense of. It involves some people who are owl people and crow people and also shrimp, matches, and other strange light motifs.

The Past Within is their first game that is a required cooperative game, meaning two people are playing it on separate devices. One person sees one part of it, and the other one sees the other part. They have to cooperate back and forth to solve it. I did it with Melissa and we had a great time. It’s pretty short. The point is definitely check out The Past Within. It’s great to play with… An older kid can do this, a teenager, no problem. Also great to do with a spouse. It goes by real fast. It’s two chapters, so it’s pretty simple.

My second One Cool Thing is The Fabelmans, which has not come out yet. This is the new movie from Steven Spielberg. It is essentially the story of his coming of age. I was asked to interview him and Tony Kushner, his fellow screenwriter and producer on the film, for the Writers Guild Theater showing. In order to ask the questions, I said, “Hey, I need to see the movie first,” and I loved it. I just loved it.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** The log line, I’d be like, “I don’t know. It’s a movie of his own life. It’s a movie about movies, and I generally don’t like that trend.” It’s gorgeous. Beautiful performances all around from everybody. A fantastic screenplay from Steven and Tony. Tony Kushner is… He’s Tony Kushner.

**John:** [inaudible 00:46:55].

**Craig:** Angels in America and so many other things. Just a brilliant man. They made something absolutely beautiful, that is not really about the power of cinema at all. It’s about something else that’s I think far more profound and oddly sad, sad and beautiful at the same time. When that movie comes out, which is pretty soon, I think, maybe has already come out by the time this airs, definitely check out The Fabelmans. This up-and-comer Steven Spielberg did a great job.

**John:** That’s great. My One Cool Thing is a sad One Cool Thing. Doug McGrath, who is a fantastic writer and director and actor, a Princeton grad-

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** … died this past week, had a heart attack. I really regret we never had him on the show, because he was an absolute delight of a guest and a raconteur. His credits include Emma, Infamous, Born Yesterday, Saturday Night Life, but I mostly knew him through the Sundance Labs. He was just a fantastic mentor and advisor to everyone who came into that Labs, but also to me, because he was always just such a personification of kindness and grace and wit and was just a phenomenal guy.

I’m going to put a clip in here. He was accepting an award from the Austin Film Society in 2012. He was telling a story I’d heard him tell in person about showing his movie Emma at the White House. Bill Clinton is there. I’m excising the part where Bill Clinton eats two giant bags of popcorn and drinks a soda, just to start with Bill Clinton and his reaction to Emma, which I think will fell very familiar to a lot of us.

**Doug McGrath:** The weird thing about watching a film at the White House with a president in the front row is that nobody watches the movie. They just watch the president watching the movie. Now, Emma is one of the great comic novels in English literature. There’s a lot of very funny things that happen in it. They’re not listening to it. They’re just watching President Clinton. If there was a joke and he laughed, about a half a second later, everybody would laugh. If there was a joke and he didn’t laugh, it was like you were at a child’s funeral. It was the saddest quiet room that you’ve ever been in. I’m like, “Hey dude, chuckle it up. They’re all looking at you.”

About three minutes into the movie, but not four, just three, three at the latest, I noticed, because I’d seen the movie a lot, and I wasn’t really paying much attention to it, I was trying to watch him peripherally out of the side of my eyes, I noticed there was a lurching motion. He lurched toward me, lurched forward, and then pitched back and dropped his head on the back of his chair and went to sleep. I’m telling you a dead sleep. Russian troops could’ve come into Washington and they would not have disturbed him. Lincoln saw more of that play at Ford’s Theater than President Clinton saw of my movie. In a deep sleep.

I thought, “Look, I’m not going to hold it against him. He’s the leader of the free world. God knows what he’s been doing all day. I’m sure it had been a draining experience for him. The guy was tired. I can’t blame him. It’s not like I had an action film to show him. Our idea of an action sequence in Emma, it’s Emma poured hot tea. I just thought, “Give him a break.”

20 seconds passes, which is like 7 years, because the audience is thinking, “Now do we have to go to sleep?” They’re all just watching him. After about 20 seconds, you know he was doing that thing whenever you fall asleep, which may be happening now for people, where you fall asleep and you think, “Where am I?” I know he was thinking, “Oh my god, where am I? Oh, I’m at that movie,” because all of a sudden, out of a dead sleep, he lurches forward and goes, “Nuh!” He looks over at me. I’m just looking at the screen like, “I had no idea you were asleep. Look at the pretty English field.” I just pretended I had no idea he’d been asleep, but he didn’t want to leave it at that.

He takes my arm. We shared an armrest. He takes my arm and he squeezes it and he says, “I love this movie.” I’m like, “Whatever. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever. It’s fine. I’m pretending I don’t even know you’re here. Whatever.” He squeezes my arm again. He goes, “I mean it. I just love it. I love it.” I’m like, “Dude, I’m voting for you. Don’t worry about it. Everything’s fine. It’s fine.” He could not leave it at that. He leans over one last time, and he says, “Sometimes the language is so beautiful, I have to shut my eyes and let the words wash over me.” That is why you want to be in this business, to be a part of an evening like that.

**Craig:** I only spoke with Doug McGrath once. I was very early in my career. I was at my very first job in that agency. One of the account executives had also gone to Princeton and was a classmate of Doug’s. He knew I wanted to write, and so he put me on the phone with Doug. We had a lovely conversation. He was just such a nice, warm guy. He meant so much to me. I think it was right around when his Born Yesterday was coming out. I was like, “Wow, he’s on a billboard, and I’m talking to him.” It was very cool. He also has a fantastic little cameo in Quiz Show.

**John:** Great.

**Craig:** Which is one of my favorite movies. Rest in peace, Doug McGrath. Very, very nice guy, very cool guy, good writer, and taken from us a bit too soon here.

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

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** Edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** Indeed.

**John:** Our outro this week is by Matthew Jordan. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions. For short questions, Craig’s not on Twitter anymore, so don’t even try. Don’t even dare.

**Craig:** I’m gone.

**John:** He’s gone.

**Craig:** I’m gone. Oh my god. Can I tell you how good it feels? It feels so good. It hurt for 15 seconds.

**John:** You left Twitter before though.

**Craig:** No, I didn’t leave. I took a break. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to leave my account here, but I’m just not really going to do much.” Really, ever since then, I didn’t really do much. My tweeting dropped down to almost nothing. I had a few replies here and there to people. My account, it’s over, gone. My account’s gone. It’s done.

**John:** For the moment, I am still @johnaugust on Twitter, but also Instagram. You can find me there. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts and sign up for our weeklyish newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have T-shirts, and they’re great, and hoodies and other stuff too. Aline is really pushing for sweatpants, so maybe we’ll get some sweatpants in there too.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** Aline wants sweatpants.

**Megana:** No, a full-on sweatsuit. She wants a sweatsuit.

**John:** She wants a full sweat-suit.

**Craig:** I want a tracksuit.

**Megana:** That’s it.

**Craig:** I want to look like an Eastern European gangster.

**John:** I think we need zip-up jumpsuits.

**Craig:** Like in the future?

**John:** Yeah, like Carhartt overalls.

**Craig:** I think of those as future clothes.

**John:** Whatever we make, you’ll find them at Cotton Bureau and only Cotton Bureau. Craig, you realize that there’s now knockoff merch?

**Craig:** What?

**John:** Listeners sent in links to Scriptnotes T-shirts, of our new Scriptnotes T-shirt, the one with the cool S, on other sites that are not Cotton Bureau. If you go to one of those other sites, you’re going to get an inferior knockoff product that has not met Stuart’s quality of softness. It’s not that you’re taking money out of our pockets. You are hurting yourself by not getting the softest T-shirt you can imagine.

**Craig:** Is there that much of a market for these things that there’s a knockoff market? What are we, Louis Vuitton?

**John:** I don’t know. I don’t understand either. It’s one thing if somebody wants to make their own Scriptnotes T-shirt that it’s just the word Scripnotes in their own style and things. More power to you. We don’t have a trademark on the word Scriptnotes. Go for it. If you’re literally taking our design, that’s lame.

**Craig:** That is copyrighted.

**John:** That’s copyrighted. I have no interest in going after them, suing them.

**Craig:** That feels like a lot of hassle. I can’t imagine the damages of that, like, “We sold four T-shirts, so after your $400,000 lawsuit, here’s your $12 back.” I don’t think so. Anyway, I think it must be just bots just do this, right?

**John:** Yeah, I think that’s what it is.

**Craig:** Populate a marketing thing, yeah. Damn you, bots.

**John:** Damn you. You can sign up to become a Premium Member at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back-episodes and Bonus Segments like the one we’re about to record with Megana talking through what she learned-

**Craig:** What she learned.

**John:** … at the Austin Film Festival. Craig and Megana, thank you very much for a fun show.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

**John:** We’re here.

**Craig:** Woo! Woo!

**John:** Megana, this is your first time at the Austin Film Festival. I just want to hear your honest feedback about what you were expecting and what you actually encouraged. How was your time in Austin?

**Megana:** It was great. It was really fun. To be honest, it was I think probably the biggest event I’ve gone to post-COVID. That aspect was a little overwhelming.

**John:** I was a little overwhelmed to.

**Megana:** As I understand, they have changed locations or venues. It felt a bit sprawling. I learned the topography of Downtown Austin as it relates to all these different hotels very well. I had a great time. I wasn’t expecting or predicting that intangible feeling of being around a bunch of people who are passionate about similar things that you are. That was really nice, that sense of community.

**John:** Now, you actually went to other panels and things, because when you weren’t producing Scriptnotes, you could do that kind of stuff. What did you attend? What did you learn? What is the process like going to things? Because we never go to anything.

**Megana:** I also wasn’t expecting how long the lines were. I don’t know if that was a new thing or a post-COVID queue culture thing where people are just obsessed with standing in lines. There were a few panels that I wanted to go to that I wasn’t able to because of the lines. Then the things that I went to, I saw managers speak and different screenwriters. A lot of the things that they were saying were similar to stuff that you guys say on the podcast, but I guess it’s just nice to hear similar sentiments come out of other people’s mouths.

**Craig:** Is it as good? I don’t think it’s as good. We say stuff and it sounds amazing. They say stuff and it’s like, “Fine, whatever.” That’s not how it is at all. I’m sure they were great.

**Megana:** It was great. It was great.

**John:** What was not so great?

**Craig:** They need to know. It’s good for them.

**Megana:** Sometimes it’s just hard when I meet a lot of people who are aspiring screenwriters. Say they were aspiring novelists or something. That’s great. This is beautiful. You’re creating art. Whether or not this is published, you could self-publish or you could show this to somebody. It feels like going to a conference for aspiring architects. Nobody cares about blueprints. People care about houses. A screenplay, it’s just the first step, and it requires so much work after that and so much other buy-in. That aspect stresses me out when I meet people who are so excited about the screenplay, but it feels like that’s where it ends. If you get satisfaction and joy from that, I love that, but if you don’t, then that makes me feel bad.

**Craig:** Because that’s what it’s probably going to be for a lot of people.

**John:** It will be. I don’t know how many thousands of people attend the Austin Film Festival, but most of those people were not going to be having screenwriting careers. That’s the reality. I think, Megana, you articulated something that I always felt about Austin is that it’s great, all-day enthusiasm, but I get a little sad for the enthusiasm, knowing that a lot of these people are chasing a dream that won’t happen for them.

**Megana:** Right. If you want to connect with people who love movies and who are interested in movies and interested in writing as a hobby, I think that’s so positive and awesome. I think it’s also overwhelming to look at that amount of people, and then all of the people I know in LA who are aspiring screenwriters. I don’t know, it does something to my heart a little bit.

**Craig:** I’ve felt this too. The rough part is that there’s something a bit old-fashioned, bordering on anachronistic at this point, about a conference dedicated to scripts, documents, as opposed to the making of things, because obviously they do have movies at this thing as well. There’s the film festival. The screenwriting part, just the pure, “How do I write a script?” so much of it, as you say, is focused on either a pitch for the pitch competition, that does not resemble in any way, shape, or form how people pitch things in our business, or on the creation of the documents but no concept of what happens after, when in fact, screenwriting is an integrated job. Ideally, it is writing and seeing your writing through as it’s made. It’s one of those things where a lot of people only ever do half of what the job is. It has been weighing on me.

Alec and I did a panel. Someone asked us about the value of the competition, the screenplay competition. We both told them our honest opinion, which is it doesn’t matter. If you win that competition, I don’t think it really matters. There a lot of that. Lately, I’ve just been wondering. It’s a fun thing to do. I think a lot of people like doing it. Is it a little bit of a tourist trap? Possibly.

**John:** Makes me think about Comic-Con or fan cons of things, where if you go to one of those things, it’s a chance to meet all the people who are making the stuff that you love, and it’s great for that, or DragCon, same thing. You’re going to see all the drag queens, but you don’t go there thinking, “Oh, now I’m going to become a drag superstar.” You’re there to celebrate a thing.

**Craig:** You’re not going to learn the real deal of how to be a drag star. You’re there to just see people you love, which is totally cool.

**John:** Completely fine.

**Craig:** I completely agree, that aspect is great.

**John:** Absolutely. The degree to which people want to just soak in screenwriter culture, [inaudible 01:02:17] screenwriter culture, it is fun for that. I think we are a part of that. Scriptnotes is a part of that. It’s part of the reason why we go back, because it’s a chance to hang out with a bunch of our screenwriter friends who we could see in Los Angeles but we don’t. We get a beer at The Driskill. It’s fun for that. I am torn, because it’s fun to be around people who like to talk about screenplay stuff. That’s great, but it’s also a little sad knowing that most people who are going there because they want to become screenwriters are not going to really progress based on their attending.

**Craig:** I’ve shed my tears for all those folks. I think the part that is a little uncomfortable for me is just feeling a little perhaps implicit in creating a sense of, hey look, if you purchase a special badge, you will hear a secret. Like I say to people all the time when they’re like, “Hey, I would love to just buy you a coffee and pick your brain for 10 minutes,” I’m like, “You can just listen to 580 hours of me talking with John. We’ve done it all. I’ve said it. It’s all said. It’s all out there.” I’m not sure anybody should pay for anything you or I have to say.

**John:** Megana, I want to get back to you here, because Megan McDonald’s gone to Austin with us before, we’ve had other people who have gone, but you are the biggest celebrity of our producers, by far. How are people with you there? I tend to hide while I’m there, but you were out there. Were people cool with you?

**Megana:** I don’t think anybody really recognized me. I wish I had more of that experience that you’re describing.

**Craig:** You’re a radio personality.

**John:** They recognize your voice at times.

**Megana:** I was just walking along the sidewalks reading questions off my phone, hoping somebody would stop me.

**Craig:** I love the idea of you standing, waiting for the crosswalk, and you’re just saying, “John writes in and says,” and then you look to your right at a group of people like, “Mm-hmm? Did you hear that?”

**John:** I will say, Craig, you missed out on the live show we did for the Three Page Challenge. Megana gets this huge round of applause, because everyone knows Megana Rao is the heart of the Three Page Challenge. It was nice to see the public validation for all the hard work you do making this show possible.

**Craig:** No one deserves fame more, as far as I’m concerned, than Megana Rao.

**Megana:** I appreciate that. I think it’s also because I don’t really want it.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**Megana:** It was so nice to meet our listeners. I do want to say that. Also, I feel like I introduced a lot of you listeners to my very creepy memory, where they’d be like, “Hey, my name’s this, and I wrote in,” or, “I had this Three Page Challenge.” I was like, “Yeah, and this thing happened, and then this character was there.” They were like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe-”

**Craig:** Are you like a Marilu Henner?

**Megana:** No. I read all the emails that come in. Whether or not you respond to them, if you give me enough details, I’ll usually be able to recall them. It was so nice to be able to put some faces to these emails and these Three Page Challenges that I’m getting.

**Craig:** Wow. I didn’t know that you could do that.

**Megana:** Not all the time. Most of the time I can though. I’m not going to downplay it.

**Craig:** I got to say, that’s impressive. That is a thing actually. I didn’t realize that you had that, because I answer emails all the time, and then they’re gone.

**John:** Then they’re gone.

**Craig:** They’re gone.

**John:** Here’s the nice thing about emails. I go and search back and find who was that person, what were we talking about.

**Craig:** If you’re Megana, you don’t have to.

**John:** It’s just in your brain.

**Craig:** You just, boop boop, “Oh yes, I remember you.” Megana, what can’t you do?

**Megana:** Oh, so many things.

**Craig:** That sounds like a good Bonus Segment for next time. What can’t Megana do?

**Megana:** Singing is definitely up there. One of our listeners brought a book for me that she signed, that she’d also written. That was cool. I think that was my favorite part of the experience is just being able to meet our Scriptnotes fans. I think that the Scriptnotes events were, in my humble opinion, the best events at Austin.

**Craig:** That’s nice to hear. I will say that in the past, I think there have been… It’s gotten a little thin. I think the cadre of people showing up, it used to be a little bit thicker with big shots. It’s got a little thinner in that regard. It’s very encouraging to see that people still listen to the show and they enjoy the show. We do have a good time. I think a lot of these panels are soaking in… You know that thing where people are so excited to be the professional on stage answering questions, that they get really self-important? We don’t do that. You get a break from all that, of going to panels where people just talk to you with unearned confidence about all the stuff that they insist they know.

**Megana:** There’s just no right way to do any of these things. That’s why you guys are still talking about this 500-something episodes later. There’s just so many different ways to find success or be successful in this industry.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Megana:** I wish there was a secret you could learn over a 10-minute coffee.

**Craig:** See, this is my problem, because I do think people are, in a sense… There are people going there looking for that, because we still get questions like that all the time. It’s hard to answer. What I do know is that a lot of people came up to me and just thanked me for this aspect of the service that we provide, not the advice, not the topics, just caring, caring enough to take questions and to answer them and to listen to people, and in the sense that this is a give-back show, because we’re not running ads and we’re not Dax Shepard and all that. I think it does good. People really appreciate it. It’s nice to hear that from them in person. Everybody that said anything nice to me, I really was quite touched by.

**John:** As was I. Megana, thank you very much for coming with us to the Austin Film Festival and for sharing what you learned there.

**Megana:** Thank you guys.

**Craig:** Thank you, Megana, for… You know what for. Let’s leave that as a mystery for everyone. Now they’re like, “Oh my god, there’s a Craigana. It’s happening.”

**Megana:** You’ll have to subscribe to the super premium content.

**Craig:** The super premium to hear what Megana did. It was really helpful.

**John:** Awesome.

**Craig:** Thanks, John.

**John:** Thanks, guys.

**Megana:** Thank you.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [MoviePass Executives Charged with Fraud](https://deadline.com/2022/11/moviepass-executives-charged-fraud-doj-1235164324/)
* [Warner Bros. Discovery Says It Will Keep Writers and Directors Workshops Alive, But Evolve to Conglomerate-Wide DEI Oversight](https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/warner-bros-discovery-writers-directors-workshops-alive-1235401368/)
* [The Six Hour Scene](https://johnaugust.com/2008/the-six-hour-scene) from John’s Blog
* [Doug McGrath](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0569790/) Austin Film Society [Honoree Speech](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqmaguUe9Gc)
* [The Past Within – Rusty Lake](https://www.rustylake.com/adventure-games/the-past-within.html)
* [The Fablemans](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14208870/)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Check out the Inneresting Newsletter](https://inneresting.substack.com/)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Holly Overton ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/574standard1.mp3).