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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/adjective-soldier).

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

**Craig Mazin:** Mazin is name Craig mine.

**John:** This is Episode 325 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the program we’ll be answering a bunch of listener questions on topics ranging from montages, to life rights, to passive heroes.

**Craig:** That should be pretty good. That’s a nice spread.

**John:** It’s a good spread. So essentially what happens is people write in with these great questions ,and we always have a few of them on the outline to get to and we just don’t get to them.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, because we like chit-chatting.

**John:** We chit-chat. So how was your week, Craig?

**Craig:** Well, you know John, since we’ve entered the chit-chat mode, I have to tell you I’m still just every day I feel like I’m being smashed in the face with the news. It’s relentless. And dispiriting.

**John:** I guess I would take some inspiration. I feel like a bunch of stuff that has been percolating for forever is now getting out. And I do think we will emerge from this in a better place. It’s just you open up Twitter each day, it’s like who was the terrible person today?

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** And sometimes they’re the people you knew would be the terrible person. And sometimes it’s a brand new person. So, we’ll see.

**Craig:** I feel a little bit like, did you see Team America?

**John:** I did see Team America. We’re going to reference Team America later on.

**Craig:** Indeed. So there’s that moment where the lead puppet, I can’t remember his name, just gets super drunk and he starts vomiting in an alley. And the vomit just keeps coming. That’s basically me. Every day I wake up, I look at the news, I get on my hands and knees in a dirty alley and I start vomiting.

**John:** Yeah. It’s a natural feeling.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You are in the middle of casting your project, and a question for you is – obviously you don’t need to name any names – but do you feel that the discussion of casting has changed at all just with the revelations of this past month?

**Craig:** Yes. For sure. I mean, we have not encountered anybody that we’ve been considering who has at all been on the radar for any kind of problem. So it hasn’t come up in a specific sense. But we’ve had a ton of conversations about it, obviously. And I think what’s clear now is that anyone that’s now casting a show or hiring a director for a show is just not going to hire somebody that there’s even rumors about. Because the damage that is done – it’s fatal. These are fatal blows to projects. And naturally our first concern should be with the human beings who were victimized, but we know that businesses by and large tend to think about things in terms of money. They’re not people, they’re businesses, no matter what the Supreme Court says. And they don’t really have feelings.

There is an enormous amount of damage that is done when these things happen. So I think right now – I mean, look, you and I, we’ve heard some rumors about people and we don’t necessarily report on rumors, because we’re not journalists, and I guess journalists don’t either. But I would be shocked if any of those people were hired at this point.

**John:** Yeah. I think it’s an interesting time we’re moving into because traditionally when you go into casting you get really nervous casting somebody who you worry is going to screw up in the future. That they’re going to screw up during the course of your movie, or they’re going to screw up before the movie comes out, and there will be a liability. And so those are the people that make you nervous.

I think a change that has happened is that people who worried like, oh, something is going to come out about them during the time that we’re making this thing or when we’re trying to release it, and then we’re going to have to scramble or it’s going to taint this project. And so anybody who could potentially taint the project is a liability.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, you know, this is actually a great study in sort of a before and after as the world has woken up to the reality of what’s going on. And I include myself in there because I didn’t understand the depth of the predation that was occurring. My concerns prior to all this stuff, we’ll call it pre-Harvey, was will this person be nice? Will they be difficult? That was basically it. Are they going to be nice or difficult? And now it’s this whole other thing.

And I think Hollywood – I don’t think we’ve quite yet processed or even have the capacity to process how this is going to change our industry. It is going to be a profound change in our industry. Profound.

**John:** I think you’re right. So that will be one of the topics I hope we will discuss at our live show December 7 in Hollywood. So, this is the official first announcement of that. December 7 here in Hollywood we’re doing a live show. We do our annual sort of Christmas-y holiday show. We don’t know who our guests are going to be yet, but we’re going to be looking for fascinating people to talk about these topics and other topics. We usually get into sort of the big movies of the award season, but also great TV. So we’ll have some amazing guests on stage, me and Craig, at the LA Film School. An event sponsored by the Writers Guild Foundation, our friends there.

So, if you’re in town, come join us for that.

**Craig:** And this event benefits the Writers Guild Foundation.

**John:** It does indeed benefit them. So, when the page is up where people can buy tickets, we’ll put a link to that. But just mark it on your calendar so you don’t double book yourself that night.

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** Cool. Let’s answer some questions.

**Craig:** Yeah, let’s do it.

**John:** Let’s start with a question from Anonymous who writes, “I’d like to get your take on the thought that all lead characters must be active, not passive. I’ve gotten the note about a passive main character numerous times, but it’s almost as if the passivity is essential to who this character is as he reacts to some of the absurdity and misfortune the world places upon on him.

“My script is a comedy and heavily influenced by pieces like Swingers and the TV show Louis where the main character is mostly passive and forced into action against his will.” So, Craig, let’s talk about some passive main heroes.

**Craig:** Well, the problem with passivity isn’t necessarily passivity, I think. I think the problem with passivity is that it generally is a symptom that your character doesn’t want anything. So, our lead characters are people that want something. And what they want can change. It very often does. But they are driven to achieve a goal. That is in a feature film.

In comedies, particularly episodic comedies, but we’re talking about sitcoms really where the idea is you’re watching things unfold over time, you can have cases of a show where the characters are reacting to the world around them. In Seinfeld the characters were often passive. Not always, but often. And were simply commenting. And it was a kind of dramatized version of stand up in a weird way. A show about nothing, so to speak, and that’s all right because you understand you’re visiting with these people for 22 minutes and there isn’t a beginning, middle, and end that has some sort of meaningful closure or growth for the lead character.

But for a feature, your character needs to want something. If you’re getting the note that your character is passive, it may be in fact a symptom.

**John:** I think you are correct. I think passive can be fine. Aimless is rarely a good quality in your hero, your main character. Aimless in the sense that we don’t know what that character wants. You’re not making it clear what the character is going for, either in the someday down the road future, the immediate future, or even like right what they’re trying to do within the scene.

If those kind of motivations are unclear, then there really is going to be a problem. You can have a character who seems to be stuck in a situation and is not driving the story. That can work as long as we understand what that character is trying to do. What this character is being prevented from doing. Even the character isn’t making like huge outgoing efforts. As long as we can see what they’re hoping for. What their aim is.

If we can see how that character imagines themselves in the future in a better place, that’s going to get you something. But I agree with you also that in movies you tend to have characters who take an action that changes their life forever over the course of that movie. Like a thing that could only happen once happens to them in the course of that movie.

In television, you know, it’s a repeated cycle. So you have so often in television comedy that main character is sort of the straight man who is reacting to the wacky characters around him or her. So you have, you know, the Frasier Crane character on Cheers is a more extreme character and is driving scenes by being sort of extreme. But when you take Frasier and you move him as the lead of his own sitcom, he calms down a little bit and everybody else around him gets a bit wackier. So, that’s kind of natural in comedy.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think if Anonymous is getting this note over and over and over it may be that he or she is working in the wrong genre, or the wrong format. It may be that Anonymous belongs writing episodic comedy as opposed to feature comedy. There’s nothing wrong with that. You kind of have to write toward where your voice is. It’s probably not so much about the passivity. I think you and I both agree – I think your word aimless is exactly right, because what else is an aim if not a want.

**John:** Yeah. I would also just look for conflict overall. Make sure there’s conflict happening within your scenes and overall between characters. I think so often newer writers tend to be afraid of conflict or putting their characters in bad situations. So, put them to the fire. And you may also just be new to the form. And so when you first have characters on the page talking to each other, you end up doing a lot of quotidian chit-chatty stuff. And that’s not a movie. That’s not TV.

**Craig:** No, I think you’re right that new writers will engage in the chit-chat because it’s a way for them to find a path toward naturalistic dialogue. And that’s fine. I mean, you have to learn one way or another. But the problem is if you include that in a screenplay what you’re also saying is “My training exercise to figure out how people speak naturally to each other is now also something that you are forced to sit there and watch because I also think it’s entertaining.” That is typically not the case.

The goal of the craft is to, A, write dialogue and exchanges naturalistically, and B, have them be purposeful and entertaining and fascinating and challenging and smart and clever and funny and sad. Whatever it is that you’re going for. So, these wandering kind of discussions are very common for early writers. I always feel like they’re grasping. It’s like they get proud because they say, “Look, this actually does sound a legitimate conversation.” Correct. Now, you have to just write one that people would actually care to listen to.

**John:** Yep. I just typed down purposeful but natural, which I think is an incredibly key thing you identified about good dialogue there. It feels the way characters could actually speak in that moment, and yet there’s a purpose behind it.

**Craig:** There you go.

**John:** Next question.

**Craig:** Next question. We’ve got something from RJ. I like that – it’s hard to tell – I’m just cheating ahead, the people that have written in. We have quite a few where you just don’t know the gender. It’s a mystery. I like it.

RJ writes, “How many montages are too montages?” How many montages, John? How many montages does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?

**John:** How many montages must a man climb before he’s, you know, seen the world?

**Craig:** Is there a number? I think the answer is 42. [laughs]

**John:** So back in Episode 268 of Scriptnotes, the episode was titled Sometimes You Need a Montage, we talked a lot about montages and different kinds of montages, but I think we didn’t really answer RJ’s question here, which I think is a good question. I’m going to say three?

**Craig:** Oh, yeah, three is a lot.

**John:** Three is a lot. But, here’s what I would say. It really depends on the kind of montage there is. So let’s just see if we could list different kinds of montages because they’re very different. So, we have to start with the classic training montage and when we say that we are required to play a snippet from Team America World Police. So let’s play that here.

[Snippet plays]

All right, so that’s talking about classically where a character starts learning how to do something. They get better at it and stuff goes along. But so that’s an important thing. But there’s other montages that aren’t quite so egregious or sort of montage-y. So there’s these sort of passage of time, where literally you’re just moving from one season to another season. I feel that will be a montage of shots, but it doesn’t feel like a montage. It doesn’t feel like a bunch of little short scenes. It’s just like you’re showing a passage of time.

You could have multiples of those in a movie and you’d be fine.

Changing into various clothes things, you get one of those in a movie. If you get two of those, you’ve got to be commenting on the absurdity of having two of those kind of montages.

And I would also just look for why you’re using montages. If it’s just because you don’t know how to do it any other way, or you’ve just got a bunch of stuff to stick together, that’s probably not a good reason for using a montage. There really has to be a purpose behind why you’re choosing to show it in that form.

**Craig:** You’re the best around. I think that there’s a certain kind of montage that we think of as a montage-y montage. So, the changing of the clothes, the training. Those things I think you get one of. I don’t even think you get one of each. I think you get one.

**John:** I think you’re right.

**Craig:** The other kinds that aren’t really noticeable as montages, so someone is driving through a new town and looking around at the churches and the restaurants and the houses, that’s just sort of – often times those will play under a kind of relaxed song or something, but I don’t think of those as montages where you’re trying to show growth, or change, or any of those silly things. It’s just the stick-outty montages. You get one, I think.

**John:** Yeah, I think you’re right. Here’s the other kind of montage which I think is appropriate in different genres can make it is sort of the heist montage, or the moving through a series of small steps that get you into a place or out of a place. That can be valid, too. So if you’re making a heist movie, you’re making one of those Now You See It movies, that you’re going to have multiple montages because that’s just the nature of it. Or there’s going to be some bigger event that you are going to compress into smaller sections. I get that for that kind of movie.

But for most movies, I’m going to say three. I’m going to stick with three. And only one of those can be a training or changing clothes montage.

**Craig:** Right. And we would like to get that training or changing clothes montage number down to zero. That would be good.

**John:** That would be good. You know what? I’m still going to allow them, but I would say like you have to be aware that you are entering into cliché territory and either be better than most of them, or be commenting on the nature of it to really work.

**Craig:** Exactly.

**John:** Cool. Christopher writes, “I’m working on an adaptation of a book. What is the etiquette on using direct quotes or lines from the source material?”

**Craig:** Well, I’m going to presume some things here, Christopher. I’m going to presume that the book is fictional, and I’m going to presume that you do not have the rights to the book, or else you wouldn’t be asking the question, I don’t think.

**John:** Oh, well maybe he would own the rights.

**Craig:** Well, if he owns the rights, there’s no etiquette. The etiquette is take whatever you want. And if there is some great dialogue, great quotes or lines in the book, by all means use them. If you don’t have the rights and you’re sort of doing this on spec and hoping that you can get them, then again I would say go ahead and take what you want as long as you acknowledge when you’re showing the screenplay to people that you don’t have the rights. And that the rights would be necessary. Which they would be regardless, whether you took lines of dialogue or not.

No one thinks of that as plagiarism. The whole point of adaptation is you’re taking a book and you’re taking a work of art, and you’re transforming it into a related work of art, but you’re taking the characters and the plot points and all sorts of stuff. So, yeah, you’re free to use whatever you want.

**John:** Yeah. Legally, morally, ethically, you know, owning the rights to a piece of property and adapting them into another work, what you have there that is usable you’re allowed to use. I’ve adapted many, many books, and rarely is there much that you get to take directly from the book. But if there’s something that’s great there, you use it.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was sort of an exception in that in that case I literally went through the book with a highlighter and I would save even like little bits of scene description as much as I could, just so it would be as Roald Dahl-y as possible. But most of the things I’ve worked on, there hasn’t been really a single line of dialogue that I’ve been able to take over just because dialogue in movies and dialogue in books is so different. So, you’re unlikely to be able to use that much of it.

**Craig:** Unquestionably. Same experience with me on the project I’m doing with Lindsay Doran. There is a novel and there’s not really much in the way of specific dialogue. There are a couple things here and there. There’s one line – really it’s a description of an object – and we loved the way the character described the object and we just lifted that exactly. So, it’s your choice. It’s entirely your choice.

Well, we’ve got our next question from Chris here in Los Angeles. Chris writes, “I have a question regarding the writing of screenplays based on documentaries. There are a few docs I’ve seen that have interested me so much that I have wanted to write a screenplay based on them. Because these documentaries are based on true events, are the stories public domain? Or are the rights to the documentary needed before writing a screenplay?”

**John:** So documentaries are not in the public domain. So you’re not adapting public domain material. You are adapting this documentary. It sounds like you are so entranced by how this documentary presented this material that you think that the documentary needs to be adapted into a screenplay. That is source material. That is a source material you would need to get the rights to in order to sell or make a movie based on that.

Now, it could be that you watched a documentary about some historic event that happened 50 years ago, 100 years ago, that you think is fantastic. And you don’t necessarily think it’s any one particular thing about that documentary that is fantastic, but you think the event itself is fantastic. So then you’ve gone out and watched nine other documentaries about it and you’ve read books about it and you’ve done research and you’ve taken notes and you are ready to write your own version of a movie based on these events. Then you’re free and clear I think both ethically and morally. But show your work. Show that you’ve actually done this research to create your own take on what this historic event was, or events were, and real life people.

But, yes, if you are thinking about adapting a documentary into a movie, that’s the same kind of getting of rights as working off of a book.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** All right, tell me your thoughts.

**Craig:** If there is a certain kind of narrative structure to the documentary that you want to convert into a screenplay form, then I think I’m completely onboard with you that there is something specific about that documentary and its narrative structure. The way it kind of moves around in time or the way it reveals things and how it reveals things. But the actual information in a documentary is not any more protected than information in a news story.

People who appear on a documentary and tell their story, and documentaries are always nonfiction obviously, they’re telling their story. That information is now fact. And people can’t own facts. So, if I watch a documentary about something that even happened a month ago, and all I want to do is take the information that I’ve learned from that documentary and then make a movie about it, then I can do it. However, there are some areas where you have to be careful.

If you are now creating fictionalized characters of people that you saw in the documentary, well for starters you can’t do anything to defame them, obviously. You can’t take somebody from a documentary and then present them as a drunk when they’re not a drunk. And you’re only really limited to the information that you can get through a documentary or news articles or any other nonfiction sources. So the documentarian can’t own the facts about those people. They can’t own what those people said onscreen.

But, you know, if you were to make a movie you would have to maybe think about going and getting some life rights so that you could actually speak to those people and get more information. So, it’s a little tricky.

Generally speaking, I agree with you though, John, that in the casual day-to-day affairs of doing business, if a documentary comes out and it really grips people and somebody wants to make a movie of that documentary, a fictionalized movie of that documentary, they would probably go and get the rights to adapt it so that there wouldn’t be any question.

**John:** So, let’s make up a documentary, and I’ll show you sort of the counter examples of what you’re describing in terms of it is based on real people so you have to go do it. Let’s say you watch a documentary about this chess prodigy in Northern Canada. He’s an Inuit whose grandfather learned chess in WWII, and it had a transforming effect in this village that he grew up in. You see a fantastic, compelling documentary about this.

If you want to go off and make the feature version of this, and this is the only sort of source you have for this. This is how you found out about it and there’s really nothing else written about it other than like articles about this documentary. If you want to go off and make the feature version of this without trying to get the rights to that documentary, I think you’re in a really dicey place morally, ethically, legally to try to do your version of it.

Because maybe all these people are now dead, so there aren’t even life rights involved.

**Craig:** Well, if they’re dead there’s even less of a legal issue.

**John:** I still think there’s a legal issue because you’re adapting the work of the documentarian who made this specific film and sort of put together this whole package of an idea in terms of what this chess prodigy Inuit living in a remote Canadian village, how he was able to transform the town. I think your framing of the story and what the impacts were could very well be legally if not just morally bound up in that original documentary.

**Craig:** Well, I’ll give you moral on that one, for sure. I mean, if there’s one documentary, there’s nothing else, and you just take it and you just do a fictional version of it, A, that feels wrong. B, like I said, if you’re following a documentarian’s narrative structure, then I do think that there’s a real case for infringement there.

The part about the facts, that’s coming – I’ve been having conversations with lawyers recently, just you know I was starting to talk to the folks at HBO just to make sure that everything in Chernobyl is OK because I’m just pulling this all from many, many, many sources. You know, tons of books and articles and documentaries and everything. And so I’ve been getting an education, and I’m in great shape. But I’ve been getting an education on how it works and it’s actually far more permissive than I thought.

**John:** OK.

**Craig:** Only in the sense that people can’t own facts.

**John:** That’s true.

**Craig:** That’s really the big one. Is that they can’t own facts and they can’t own – if you film a real person saying a thing, so that person said, “Yes, you can film me saying this,” then that film in the world, that is now not ownable. The film is ownable, obviously. You can’t project that film. But what they said now is a matter of public record. And anyone can use it.

**John:** Absolutely. I’d also direct people back to — Irene Turner was on the show last year and we talked through things she was doing when she was making her movie based on Madeline Murray O’Hair. And the challenges that she ran into with the legal rights advisers for that because there were places where they had to sort of prove the sourcing on where stuff was, both in terms of not libeling and defaming people, but also just where these facts were coming from.

**Craig:** Yeah. And I’ve had to do a very, very, very extensive annotation, which I was helped with by our researcher, and then that annotation went over to HBO. And then they have their person who does an independent annotation of everything. And then we have a large discussion going through and making sure that everything is appropriate. So companies actually do quite a thorough job on these things. And for good reason.

**John:** Yeah. And so going back to Chris’s question, if in doing that annotation you were to find out that like, oh, almost everything is coming from this documentary, that’s probably a signal that something needs to be figured out in terms of how you are approaching the rights to that documentary.

**Craig:** It’s also a bit of a strange thing to do, I mean, we haven’t actually mentioned that. To turn a documentary into a non-documentary is a bit of an odd move. I’m trying to think of an example of it.

**John:** A few years ago there was an adaptation of Serial that was going to happen for television. And that was a case where it was moving from a documentary series about the case in the first season of Serial to a fictionalized show. And that, you know, that stuff does happen.

**Craig:** Well, that’s more of a branding thing, isn’t it?

**John:** I guess it’s a branding thing, but you know–

**Craig:** Because they weren’t going to tell the story that they actually told on Serial, right?

**John:** I don’t think it was ever quite clear.

**Craig:** Oh, interesting.

**John:** I remember getting the call about doing that. I’m like, “I don’t know how to do this.”

**Craig:** I say that all the time. How many times a week do you say that? I feel like I need a recording of myself saying, “I don’t know how to do that.”

**John:** Yeah. Actually just this last week I got sent a book that is based on a real life event that happened in a city historically – well, that narrows it down. But I was sent this and I was like, yeah, I get why that’s a movie and I totally get how that can be a movie that wins awards, but I don’t know how to do it and I don’t know how to sustain my interest in doing it for the three years it would take to make this happen.

**Craig:** Yeah. No one seems to care about our interest in things. They’re always just like, “No, no, no. We’re offering you a job. That’s enough, right? You say yes. I say here’s money, you say yes.” That’s the way it used to be with me, by the way. [laughs] And I was like, “Yes, I’m sorry did you say money? Yes, the answer is yes.”

Shall we proceed on to our next question?

**John:** Yes, let’s do it.

**Craig:** All right. We’ve got Josh in Enceladus City. Enceladus?

**John:** I’m wondering if it’s a joke. I’m wondering if this is a made up thing and it’s a reference we’re not catching?

**Craig:** Oh my god. Well, I’ll just ignore it and pretend it’s real. Josh in Enceladus City writes, “If I want to make a web series loosely based on someone’s life, a life,” oh, this is sort of a related question, “a life I know only through a Twitter feed, how would I go about doing this to protect all parties involved? The person in question is not famous or even Twitter famous. He’s an amusing blue collar guy who has a particular set of life circumstances that would make a great series. I’ve exchanged emails with him and basically said, ‘LOL, man, just go do it. I’d love to see that.’

“Initially this would be just a web series. Of course, we would hope that we’d follow in the steps of a web series like Broad City and eventually turn it into a TV show. So for the web series I’d be asking for a very low cost option on his Twitter account. But I would want to protect him so that if we were able to transition to a proper television show he would get paid a fair price or percentage. Obviously I want to protect myself as well, but the last thing I want to do is take elements of this guy’s life and screw him over.”

All right, Josh, well your heart is certainly in the right place. John, what advice do you have?

**John:** First off, I like Josh. I like that Josh is thinking not only of himself, but this guy as well. And he’s thinking about the future. And he’s thinking big. He’s thinking Broad City. So I hope all these things can happen.

When I first read the question I had skipped over the fact that he only knew him through Twitter, so I thought it was a real life friend, which doesn’t change the calculation that much, but the person you know on Twitter is basically a stranger, so you don’t know what kind of all the dynamics are going to be.

I would say that Josh is looking for an agreement that would say I am authorizing Josh to write a script and literary material – don’t even call it a script, don’t call it a television series – to write literary material based on my life and things that have been portrayed in this Twitter feed. I understand that the characters and circumstances may not necessarily reflect actual things. There’s going to be good legal language you’ll find for that. I’m going to put a link in the show notes to the NOLO legal guide for rights and rights purchases, which I think could help him out there.

But basically you want some letter that you’re both signing that states like, “Hey, here’s what we’re trying to do. Here is how we’re sort of overall framing this.” I wouldn’t get into the compensation or producer credit or anything like that in this first go around. I think this guy who you’re writing about, you know, he’s going to probably want some protection in him saying that it’s a non-exclusive option on these rights, so that you’re basically paying him no money. You don’t get to hold on to the rights to his stuff for forever, or do whatever you want for a long time.

Craig, what would you say to Josh?

**Craig:** I agree with you that Josh is a good guy. And so here’s the thing. Most of these things get worked out by the company. The company will want the most leeway possible. So they’re going to want to, A, pay him off one time. They’re not going to want to pay him a percentage of anything. And, Josh, I have to tell you, if you work on this show for five years and it becomes really, really successful, you’re going to get tired of paying this dude, too, every week.

Because he’s not doing anything. You’re doing it. You’re making the show. And the character is going to develop and evolve over time away from the inspiration and into what it is which is your creation that was initially inspired by somebody. So they’re going to want to do a payout. And the buyout means they are going to own the rights and life rights in perpetuity forever across the universe. For now, for you, I think the most important thing is that you actually have an email from him saying go ahead, do it. Believe it or not, that matters. He’s essentially given you permission. And you haven’t done anything yet to damage him.

**John:** Yep.

**Craig:** See, the damaging part, so this is how this works. People can sue you if you have damaged them. If you start to portray him using his real name and having him do things that he wouldn’t do that are embarrassing, hurtful to him, hurtful to his reputation, then he can come after you. But that’s not going to happen until a studio gets involved. Right? It doesn’t get produced and therefore cannot cause damages until a studio is involved.

They’re going to handle this. So, I think you’ve actually done what you need to do.

**John:** I think there’s a case to be made for getting something a little bit more in writing before you go off and shoot the web series. Because a web series could be that you’re spending a thousand dollars, or it could be that you’re spending $100,000, and you want to have some protection for yourself there. And some sense of a structure before you do that.

I agree though that it’s not until you get an actual series or feature deal or something else that it becomes important to do something bigger than this.

**Craig:** Well, yes. Look, Josh, if you’re the money behind the web series then you’re the company. Now you’re the company that means you need a lawyer to do the buyout. And you buy it out. And here’s the thing. The guy is going to get some money that he never thought he was going to ever get in his life for that. And he has a choice to make about whether he wants that money or not.

And, again, I’m not sure an ongoing percentage is fair. I think a lump sum and a buyout is a fair. In talking with an attorney, you may both find that it makes a lot of sense for you to change the name, because his name doesn’t mean anything. Rather than expose yourself and this man to any kind of potential harm, you just use him as an inspiration but you change the name and therefore you’re really well protected.

**John:** Yeah. I think you’re right. I’m curious, I haven’t looked up the backstory of Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld who is based on/inspired by a real person, so every once and awhile you see stories of the real Kramer. But I don’t know what he was paid or sort of how he was acknowledged in the genesis of the show. Our friend, Dana Fox, her show Ben and Kate, the Ben of that show was Ben Fox, her brother. And so I think he got some payment for that. But he was sort of the inspiration of that character and sort of the thought behind that character. But he wasn’t literally the actor on screen. It wasn’t exactly what himself was onscreen.

**Craig:** Obviously if it’s your brother it’s a bit different. Kramer, the real life Kramer, did file a defamation lawsuit against a former Seinfeld writer, but I don’t really know. It didn’t go anywhere. It was dismissed.

**John:** All right.

**Craig:** So, but I don’t think it was about the show. I think it was about something that that writer had written in a book. I mean, if you are inspired by a real life person, but you create a character with an entirely different name there really – and you never talk about the fact that it was inspired by that person – the real person really has no damages. They kind of create the damages themselves by saying that person is based on me.

**John:** Anybody who enters into a writer’s life kind of – there has to be some sort of general acknowledgment that if you’ve enter into a writer’s orbit, you know, you may be portrayed in a fictional version somewhere down the road. And I think a bigger discussion to have is sort of what is a writer’s moral and ethical – and legal – responsibility to inform the person that they are taking that one little aspect of a character or there’s a person who does that, but essentially if you’re a married man writing about a wife there’s going to be some aspect of your own relationship with your wife that’s going to be portrayed there. That is just natural.

**Craig:** Yeah. For sure. And listen there is obviously the legal stuff that we’re talking about and then there’s the ethical stuff. And any time you write something, I mean, I hear these stories. I know people write something and then they hand it to somebody and someone goes, “Oh my god, that’s me.” And sometimes the writer says, “What? No it isn’t.” Those people are like, “Yes it is.” And they’re like no it isn’t.

And now there’s a problem. Sometimes they’re like, oh yeah, that story you told was so funny and so I used it for this. And this person is like, “Yeah, but I didn’t want anyone else to know that story, even though it’s not associated with my name, or it was mine.” So, you can create interpersonal problems. And you do have to be aware of that when you do these things.

**John:** I had a friend who wrote to me about an executive that he had an interaction with that’s like, “Hey wait, was that character in that one movie you wrote, was that based on her?” I’m like, “Oh no, god no, that wasn’t her at all.” I could totally understand why he might have thought that, but it wasn’t. It was just a general composite of that kind of person that I’ve met. But he was convinced like, oh no, no, no, you wrote exactly that person. And a couple times in my life I have had people feel like, “Oh, that was based on this person.” And I was like, yeah, I can see why you say that, but no. It’s just my own take on that kind of person.

**Craig:** Exactly. There’s only so many different kinds of people.

**John:** Indeed. All right, Travis in Santa Monica wrote to ask, “What happens to the copyright of films and film universe specific content that is based on source material when the source material enters the public domain? For example, Ian Fleming’s James Bond character has become public domain for those adhering to the Berne Treaty, which is 50 years after his death. So, can Canada make a Bond film?”

Craig, absolve all these legal issues for us.

**Craig:** Well, I will do my best. So, there are two different kinds of copyrights we’re talking about here. One is a copyright on source material and one is a copyright on a movie that’s made of the source material. And these things expire at different times because they’re created at different times.

So, basically what we’re saying is, OK, Sherlock Holmes, perfect example. That’s long now in the public domain. That means anyone can create a derivative work from the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories. But you can’t take things from say the recent Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies because that’s still copyrighted by, I believe it’s Warner Bros.

So the copyright of the movies doesn’t change at all when the source material enters the public domain. All it means is now other people can make such movies. This is why for instance there are 14 billion different kinds of movies set in and around the world of Oz. But they can only draw on the public domain material, which is what L. Frank Baum wrote. So, for instance, very famously when Disney was making – what was it called, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the one with James Franco?

**John:** Yeah, Oz, Great and Powerful.

**Craig:** There you go. And at one point they have the witch turning green. Well, I don’t believe the witch is green in Frank Baum’s books. Warner Bros. I believe holds the copyright on the 1939 film which is still in copyright. And basically what it came down to is they were like when all the law dust was settled it was there is a shade of green that is our property. If you want to turn your witch green, she can’t be our green. So, it comes down to stuff like that, which is sort of fascinating.

Similarly with Bond, yes, so in Canada you can make a movie about James Bond. You cannot take any single element that has ever been in any James Bond movie.

**John:** Well, any single element that’s been in the movies that is not already in the book.

**Craig:** Correct. So, and you’d have to really make sure. And it probably couldn’t even look quite like it was in the movie, even if it’s a common element. And the truth is the movies are different than the books. And there have been so many since. So, it’s not quite so simple. And, of course, when it’s based on work that is not in the public domain in another country, like say the United States, I’m not sure how that exactly works. You may not be able to release it in the United States. So, tricky.

**John:** I have a half memory of an adaptation of 1984 done zillions of years ago that could not be released in the US because in the US 1984 was still under copyright. There was some problem with 1984 that it couldn’t be released.

Another thing I would point out – and I don’t know if this is the case with Bond, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is – trademark and copyright don’t line up necessarily.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** And so certain big characters are trademarked, even if their copyright has expired. And so, again, I don’t remember what happened with Tarzan, but for a while Tarzan was a trademarked brand. And so you could do a story that sort of uses the underlying novel of Tarzan but you couldn’t call him Tarzan because Tarzan was a trademarked character name.

So, there can be issues like that that are thornier than you would expect. I wouldn’t stake your house on trying to make your Canadian James Bond film when you move from Santa Monica back to the north.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, I would say that there is an interesting thing you can imagine where some of these things, like Bond for instance, let’s say the Fleming novels go into public domain globally. And eventually they will. To do a James Bond movie that is just a complete deconstruction would be fascinating. The truth is you can do that now anyway. I mean, really in the end what are you getting? You’re getting the name.

By the way, this happened because – so the Broccolis, I don’t understand the providence completely, but the Broccolis, the greatest of all names–

**John:** They are the producers of the Bond films.

**Craig:** Correct. The control that property. Somehow the copyright lapsed one way for one reason or another on Thunderball, which is one of the earlier Bond movies, and the book – I guess the rights on the book lapsed early before it this public domain stuff happened. And another company went and made – they brought Sean Connery back for I think it was called Never Say Never Again, or Never Say Death, or something like that.

**John:** That’s right.

**Craig:** And that was just Thunderball. Again, it was the same story, I believe, they just retold it different, just using the book. It has weirdly happened.

**John:** I should also say that our explanation of this whole copyright stuff is in no way intended to be a defense of how we do stuff. How we do stuff is genuinely crazy and needs to be sorted out. As writers, we want copyright because it protects our work. It helps us get paid. It’s fantastic for those reasons. But the way that copyright has morphed into this bizarre thing that sort of never ends and keeps getting extended is potentially really damaging for people who try to make art. So we want to make sure that we are in no way trying to defend what’s happening now. Just try to explain it.

**Craig:** There has been a trend in the United States to extend copyright over and over and over. And in weird way the big motivator is Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse should have gone into public domain some time ago. It is not. And so obviously the Disney Corporation has lobbied quite effectively to extend copyright protection in general. It is now longer than it has ever been before.

The Sonny Bono Act, I believe it was Sonny Bono, representative in Congress, who had his name on that particular extension. At some point it does need to be curtailed. I mean, the purpose of copyright ultimately was to be able to get works created in such a way that they would end up in the public domain. The copyright, the idea there – copyright is written into the United States Constitution. The idea is we’re going to create a system whereby people who want to create things will be so sufficiently rewarded in an amount of time that they will do it so that eventually it’s free.

**John:** Yep. Copy Right. It talks about the right to copy.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** The right to distribute stuff. So I read an interesting story this past week about Charles Dickens who was really frustrated because at the time in the US copyright protection for British works was not enforced. And so essentially his work in the US was being pirated wildly. And so he was not seeing any money coming out of the US. And so he lobbied to sort of get the laws changed in the US, unsuccessfully. Ultimately he ended up doing a big speaking tour across the US and making his money that way.

But it was just so weird to think of a situation where American copyright law was weak and so therefore this person was not getting paid properly. And so this has become so, so flipped.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure.

**John:** All right, let’s go to Brett in Portland. Do you want to ask his question?

**Craig:** Yeah. Brett from Portland writes, “I’m writing a western that takes place just after the Civil War. I have several different scenes that feature military troops and numerous soldiers. I’m having trouble distinguishing between the different soldiers. I’ve given more important characters higher rank and names obviously, but what about the soldiers who are just being given orders and such? Does giving characters numbers, for example, Soldier 1, just work from scene-to-scene? Or do those numbers continue throughout the entire script?

“I don’t want to have Soldier 1 through 10. Any advice on how I can differentiate between these smaller characters and keep them from running together on the page?”

**John:** Yeah, it’s brutal and there’s no perfect solution to this. I’m never a numberer of characters thing. I just find that so annoying and frustrating. And I hate reading it in the script. I find it confusing to follow up on those things. So I’ll always try to find some adjective to stick to the soldier to differentiate them from other people. Try to find some way to let us be able to track them over the course of the scene and hopefully over the course of the movie, if they do appear in multiple scenes.

If they do appear in multiple scenes, probably give them an actual name so that you can remember that. And so it becomes clear to the people. But it is truly frustrating. I would say one of the other pros to like doing the adjective name versus the numbered name is that it forces you as the writer to think something about who that character is and sort of be just a little bit more specific than giving a person a number.

**Craig:** 100%. Thinking about this, Brett, you say that some of these characters are just being given orders and such. Well they don’t need names at all because theoretically they’re not talking. They’re just getting orders. And in that case, I don’t bother distinguishing. You know, he turns to a soldier, gives him an order. OK, that’s fine. I know that then in the next scene so-and-so turns to a soldier, tells them to run. That’s probably a different soldier.

It’s really when they’re talking. And when they’re talking, well first of all, if they’re talking and they have one line, do we need that line? And then if we do, then I’m in complete agreement with John. I don’t like to do the number thing at all.

I just went through this actually with the production department on Chernobyl because we have like 102 speaking parts in this thing. And there’s a whole bunch of soldiers. And so a lot of the questions were, OK, we’re pretty sure these are all different soldiers, but is this soldier the same as this soldier? And so I just had to clarify, yes, this is the same soldier as this solider.

And then they get numbers, but those are production numbers. So now the production understands that what we know as soldier is actually actor number 73.

**John:** Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I was thinking back to Go and there’s a scene early on in Go where Ronna is in a van with some high school kids and she’s selling them fake drugs. And so each of those kids, they’re basically only in that scene. They sort of appear outside at one other point. But I didn’t want to just – I wanted them to be individual specific. And so like one of the kid’s names is Spider Marine, which in the Smashing Pumpkins song there’s a lyric, “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in the cage.” For whatever reason I heard that as – I heard despite all my rage as Spider Marine. And so I had been singing Spider Marine for like a year. And so Spider Marine was the name I gave to that one character.

And what’s nice about it is it kind of feels like — I don’t know why his name is that, but it gave the hair and makeup and wardrobe departments something to focus on. And so they picked something that spoke to them as Spider Marine. And it was useful. And so I’m always fan of just giving a descriptive name for those minor characters. Also so that when they scroll up in the end credits you can sort of figure out like, oh, it must be that guy. Like Overheated Customer in Bar.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** That makes much more sense.

**Craig:** Yes. No question. I mean, with soldiers, they’re in uniform and so then really if they’re just meant to go run off somewhere then they’re a soldier. If there’s something important going on, then you do. You have to think about their face, their age, everything. And then a name may be called for.

**John:** All right. Let’s do our last question. This is from Carrie who says, “I’ve recently gotten to Episode 109 and I was wondering whatever happened to the first song Craig recorded on the podcast with the guitar? The episode should include it at the end, but then suddenly it’s not there. I’m assuming there may have been some legal issue, but if not, where can I find that song?”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. So Craig recorded a song called Killing the Blues. Who was that by originally?

**Craig:** It was written by someone named Rowland Salley and most famously recorded by John Prine. And then by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

**John:** So it is a fantastic song. Craig did a fantastic version of it. And the reason why we didn’t stick it on the USB drives or put it on Scriptnotes.net was really a rights thing. I was genuinely worried that the rights holders to the song could come after us and say like, “Hey, you’re selling the song without paying us royalties” and they’d kind of have a point.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So on a podcast in general like if you’re using a snippet of music or especially you’re talking about a song, so you’re basically critiquing this little part of it, or you’re doing something where that song is used in context for a specific thing, you’re generally kind of OK with that. If you’re using a lot of it, there’s a point at which you need to be buying the rights to be using that song, just like you would if you were using that song in a movie. And I did not want that sort of liability to come back and hurt the podcast.

So that’s why we snipped it off of the USB drives and off the Scriptnotes.net. But, Craig, it got me thinking there’s a place where people do song covers all the time. Like YouTube.

**Craig:** Yeah, no, that’s true. And, by the way, you can – again, it’s about damages. If you record a cover of a song and you put it on anything for free, there’s no damages. If you’re selling it, yeah, sure. But you could stick it on your website.

**John:** Yeah. So what I think I wanted to do, Craig, if this was OK with you, is we’ll upload it to YouTube, because YouTube can actually track the rights on that thing. And if there’s any money to be made off of it it would go to the songwriter for your cover of that song.

So, we’re going to stick a snippet of that as our outro for this week, but if you want to hear the full version we’ll have a link in the show notes where you can listen to Craig’s really good cover of this song. I found the original file and it was great. So, we’ll put that up there for Carrie and for everyone else who has written over the years asking where the hell is that song that Craig was supposed to sing.

**Craig:** Very good. Very good. Well, I guess it’s time for One Cool Things.

**John:** You start us off.

**Craig:** My One Cool Thing this week is a videogame, South Park: The Fractured but Whole. That is the best title ever.

**John:** It’s a good title.

**Craig:** Ever. It’s great. I played the first South Park videogame, The Stick of Truth, which was spectacular. The big surprise with that game was, OK, so it’s South Park and it’s got Matt and Trey doing all the voices. And all the writing. And all the directing. Great story. But also the game play itself was really, really good.

So, you kind of ended up getting a great game and also just this incredibly long and very, very screwed and funny South Park episode. And they’ve done it again. More of the same, but with a great twist on it. And just really, really good. So, I would strongly recommend South Park: The Fractured but Whole.

You know what my trigger warning for that is? All possible trigger warnings. Every possible trigger warning in existence for everyone. Everyone. Including white people. Everyone is going to get it in this game. And does.

**John:** That sounds very fun.

**Craig:** But it’s really, really fun. It is.

**John:** Cool. My One Cool Thing is the Adelante Shoe Co. And so this was recommended to us by other writer friends, mutual friends. So it’s this company that makes shoes, and they make nice looking shoes. I’m wearing a pair of their boots. I like them a lot.

What’s different about them is they work with shoemakers in Latin America, largely Guatemala, and they work with them to try to figure out how to pay them a living-well wage, which is basically a price that’s well above what minimum wage should be so that a person who is working for them who is making these shoes can do this and actually sustain a family on their salaries.

So, their website is cool. I’ll send you there. They talk about sort of their transparency, their accountability, and sort of what their mission is. I dig them. It reminds me of Kickstarter and some other B corporations, those sort of public benefit corporations that have objectives beyond just making the most money possible. So, I am wearing the Havana Boot. It’s really good. But all the stuff there has been really good. So, Chris Nee I think was the one who first turned me onto them. So, I would recommend you check them out for your boot and shoe needs.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** Some housekeeping. Next week is the Three Page Challenge from Austin. So we recorded that a couple weeks ago, but you can listen to that. If you would like to read ahead, the entries for that episode are up in Weekend Read. They’re also at johnaugust.com/Austin2017. So you can read through the four different Three Page Challenges we read through and then listen to the episode and hear from the writers themselves, which is one of the best parts of doing that show live in Austin.

And that’s our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli.

**Craig:** Yeah, and whoa.

**John:** Matthew moved to Japan and actually just this week put up a video about his first two months in Japan which is well worth watching, about how his apartment is not haunted but sort of seems like it probably is haunted. But he was living in Akita, Japan, which I knew nothing about, and it was fascinating to see sort of what his life is like up there.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** Our outro this week comes from Craig Mazin. But if you have an outro for us to play you can write into ask@johnaugust.com with a link to that. That’s also where you write in with questions like the ones we answered on today’s podcast. Short questions, I’m on Twitter @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin.

We’re on Facebook. Just search for Scriptnotes Podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts. Again, leave us a review if you are there because that helps people find the show.

We have all of the back episodes up now at Scriptnotes.net. We have transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with show notes.

We also have more of the USB drives. So people were asking for those. That’s the first 300 episodes, plus all the bonus episodes on one little handy dandy USB drive that you can carry with you as you make it through your day.

**Craig:** But the t-shirts are gone?

**John:** The t-shirts are done. So thanks to everybody who bought a t-shirt. So those t-shirt orders have closed. And they’re shipping out really soon, so maybe by the time people are listening to this podcast – or at least by the time they’re listening to the Three Page Challenge they can be wearing their brand new t-shirt. I’m so excited to have those on hand.

**Craig:** Wonderful.

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

**Craig:** Thank you, John. See you soon.

Links:

* Tickets available for the [Holiday Live Show](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-holiday-live-show-john-august-craig-mazin/) now!
* Team America: World Police’s defense of [“Montage”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I_5Bw1U4s4)
* [NOLO’s Getting Permission: Using & Licensing Copyright-Protected Materials Online & Off](https://store.nolo.com/products/getting-permission-riper.html), a handy legal guide for rights and rights purchases.
* [Cosmo Kramer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmo_Kramer), from Seinfeld, is based on [Kenny Kramer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Kramer), who [sued a writer for defamation](http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/seinfeld-writer-beats-kramers-defamation-718728)
* [James Bond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond) and [the Berne Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention)
* [Trademark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark), [Copyright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright), and a snazzy (https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks-getting-started/trademark-basics/trademark-patent-or-copyright) on the difference between them from the USPTO.
* The [Copyright Term Extension Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act), AKA the Sonny Bono Act, AKA the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
* [Charles Dickens’](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens) struggle with piracy in the US is illuminated in [Fifty Inventions that Shaped the Modern World](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0735216134/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) by Tim Harford.
* [Go](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139239/)’s character, Spider Marine, comes from John’s mishearing the Smashing Pumpkins lyric [“despite all my rage.”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-r-V0uK4u0)
* Craig’s [cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEHWE-pcK2A) of “Killing the Blues,” by Rowland Salley.
* The [South Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park) video game, [South Park: The Fractured but Whole](https://southpark.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/home/) (a sequel to [The Stick of Truth](http://southpark.cc.com/games/stick-of-truth#))
*all possible trigger warnings apply
* The [Adelante Shoe Co.](https://adelanteshoes.com) makes shoes for the discerning global citizen.
* Next week’s episode is the 2017 Austin Live Three Page Challenge — you can check out the pages [here](http://johnaugust.com/aff2017) or on [Weekend Read](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread/).
* Matthew Chilelli’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSNzEBS_KW8&feature=youtu.be) about his definitely-not-haunted apartment in Japan
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Rowland Salley, performed by Craig Mazin ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_325.mp3).

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/austin-live-show-2017-aka-too-many-scotts).

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

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

**John:** And this is the live show of Scriptnotes at Austin, 2017.

**Craig:** 2017. And I don’t know if any of you were at the show last year.

**John:** I was not.

**Craig:** And so you remember that. We’re also drunk again.

**John:** I’m not drunk.

**Craig:** I assume a number of you are also somewhat drunk again. Somewhat is the key. Now last year when we did the show, because John wasn’t here last year–

**John:** I was in Paris.

**Craig:** We had the benefit of my organizational skills. Which essentially amounted to nothing. We winged it. And it was great. John’s not a winger. So we have an actual agenda tonight.

**John:** There’s an agenda. This will be the largest Scriptnotes show. If you notice the chairs up here you might think, wow, are there going to be like seven guests?

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No. There will be a total of 13 writers on stage. We topped ourselves again.

**Craig:** I mean, look, you guys showed up. We’re going to deliver. That’s what we do.

**John:** So Craig, we’re in Austin, Texas, and one of the things I enjoy most about visiting Austin is I could be sweaty after a run and someone will be in the elevator and say like, “Hey, you’re John August.” I’m like, yeah, I’m a gross, sweaty John August. Thank you for saying hi. But I also love seeing so many Scriptnotes t-shirts.

**Craig:** So many.

**John:** In the wild. And some people have some deep cuts of Scriptnotes t-shirts. They’re back to like–

**Craig:** Old school.

**John:** The Camp Scriptnotes shirts, which didn’t sell a lot, but someone here has a Camp Scriptnotes shirt.

**Craig:** The originals. But we have some new ones coming out which, as you know, will accrue to my financial benefit not at all.

**John:** No, not at all.

**Craig:** But they will line John’s pockets. So you should definitely buy those.

**John:** So there’s one week left to buy Scriptnotes t-shirts. You can find the link either at johnaugust.com or just go to CottonBureau.com and we’re selling a bunch of shirts there. So there’s three different models. They’re great. There’s classic ones. There’s a Star Wars-ish one.

**Craig:** What’s the good one?

**John:** Is the Umbrage and Reason one. It’s really good. It sort of looks like Craig’s–

**Craig:** Kind of sort of obligatory, isn’t it?

**John:** So hopefully we’ll see some people wearing those next year. But we actually have something extra special for you tonight. Something that you cannot get anywhere else.

**Craig:** I don’t know what this is. I’m so excited.

**John:** Ha, see. Some organization. We’re going to be doing sort of a game show thing in our final segment tonight, and it’s always hard to pick how you’re going to find that special candidate. Do you remember at our 100th episode we picked a person? Do you remember how that person was chosen?

**Craig:** Maybe something under their seat?

**John:** Yeah, so I mean people could check under their seats. But that would be a mistake because it’s not underneath your seats.

**Craig:** But go ahead and do it. Just do it just to see, just to make sure. Nothing there.

**John:** At the homecoming show, remember how we picked the winner for that?

**Craig:** We had a homecoming show?

**John:** Yeah, two months ago. At the WGA Theater.

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

**John:** Yeah, that was called the Homecoming Show. He doesn’t listen to the show, so he doesn’t know.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** How did we pick the winner for that one? Do you remember?

**Craig:** There was a raffle ticket?

**John:** There was a raffle ticket, yeah.

**Craig:** OK, great.

**John:** So check your raffle ticket. No, there’s no raffle tickets. Instead, Craig, at the end of every episode we say for longer questions write in to ask@johnaugust.com, or for short things we’re on Twitter.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And you’re @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust. So if you would like to participate in our final segment thing, you need to tweet “Pick me” to @johnaugust. And the first person who tweets “Pick me” @johnaugust gets picked for this live show.

**Craig:** You mean right now?

**John:** Right now. Pull out your phones. Do this right now.

**Craig:** Do not tweet @clmazin. I will not look at it.

**John:** So in the third segment we’ll figure out who is first in my timeline and that person will be coming up to win something that no one else could possibly win. Now that everyone has tweeted, it’s time to get to the serious business of this podcast and bring up a writer who we’ve wanted to have on the show from maybe the first moment we recorded.

**Craig:** And who was it?

**John:** It was–

**Craig:** Scott Frank.

**John:** Walter Hill or somebody. No, it was Scott Frank.

**Craig:** Scott Frank.

**John:** Scott Frank, his credits – I could read them off the list, but you kind of all know them.

**Craig:** Let’s just say some of them, because they’re fun. There’s Dead Again.

**John:** Great movie.

**Craig:** You’ve seen Dead Again, right? Do you like Out of Sight? Do you like Minority Report?

**John:** Yeah, that’s good.

**Craig:** Do you hate dogs, so you like Marley & Me? All right.

**John:** I think I saw the name on a movie called Logan this last year. But you know he’s also directed. He directed a movie called The Lookout.

**Craig:** Loved Lookout.

**John:** He directed a movie called A Walk Among the Tombstones. But he also has a brand new show called Godless and we’re going to talk to him about all these things. Scott Frank, please come up here.

**Craig:** Come on up, Scott Frank.

**John:** How did you first get to know Craig Mazin? Oh you need a microphone, that helps.

****Scott Frank:**** I met Craig in a gay bar.

**Craig:** I don’t know if it was a bar.

[laughs]

It was a club.

**Scott Frank:** It was a club.

**John:** Any place with dim lights and alcohol can be a bar.

**Scott Frank:** Craig, I lived in Pasadena for a very long time. And Craig lived in La Cañada, very close by.

**Craig:** Pasadena-adjacent.

**Scott Frank:** Pasadena-adjacent. Our offices were a block apart. And I think Craig invited me to a Writers Guild something. A meeting. And I remember thinking there were several representatives from the Writers Guild and a lot of writers from the San Gabriel Valley. And I remember thinking that guy is really smart.

**Craig:** Who was that guy?

**Scott Frank:** And then there was Craig.

**John:** The guy next to him was Craig Mazin.

**Craig:** Was that John Lee Hancock?

**Scott Frank:** That was John Lee Hancock. And we became instant friends ever since. Well, Craig became a friend with me. And then started stalking.

**Craig:** Years before that happened I, like all of you, went to go see Out of Sight, which was 1996?

**Scott Frank:** 1998.

**Craig:** ’98. Thank you. And so I was a screenwriter at the time in the sense that I was working as a screenwriter, but I really was just learning. And so when I went to go see Out of Sight I had the experience that I think a lot of screenwriters have when they watch Scott’s work on film which was just shame. General shame. But also a liberation because you can say, oh, well you know what, I don’t have to worry about fighting my way to the top of any heap, because there’s this guy at the top who will always just beat me back. So that’s actually quite freeing.

And I also remember thinking, because I saw it with Melissa, and I remember I said to her after, “There’s a movie where I really want to know the writer.” I mean, I appreciate what Steven Soderbergh did, it’s very, very cool, and I like the acting, but I want to know the writer. But, you know, how are you supposed to meet a writer? And this is in the nineties. There’s no real Internet connection. There’s no kind of this is going on.

And I just got lucky. I got lucky.

**Scott Frank:** You staged a fake WGA meeting. And I showed up at it.

**Craig:** Yeah, it was lucky, but it was also psychotic. I mean, it was a combination. Sometimes, maybe even more often than not, when you do meet your heroes you are devastated by how awful they are. And this was certainly no exception. But, over time, I came to see that there was great value in this man. Truly, he is a mentor. He is an angry dad to me. But he’s also a great dad to me. And a friend. And it’s just been the greatest thing. The greatest thing to know you.

**Scott Frank:** Aw.

**John:** Aw. So nice. So, Scott, I got to know your work as a screenwriter, and I think I first met you up at the Sundance Filmmakers Lab. And so you were one of the gracious hosts of the Sundance Filmmakers Lab. And you brought me up there and I was terrified and you were very nice and very generous. But I always basically thought of you as you’re the guy who can sort of write any movie. Like basically you’re the guy who they come to when they need a big thing done, whether it’s an original movie or to fix a lot of movies.

And so when you went off to do, now you’ve directed movies, which is awesome, but now you’re off doing a television program. Why? What’s changed? And what was the decision to like now is the time to go off and do Godless?

**Scott Frank:** Well Godless began life as a movie. In 2004 I’d written it. And for some reason most of the things I write seem to take quite a while to get made, and this one was no exception. And I’d written it in 2004 and my agent said to me before I wrote it, she said, “You know, no one anywhere is buying a Western.” And she said, “I’m worried you’re going to spend a lot of time writing the script and no one is going to be interested. Westerns don’t do well in the United States. They don’t travel well overseas. You know, Westerns are now Tom Selleck on TNT. It’s not movies.”

And so I said I have to write this script. I love this script. I’m going to do it. And I spent two years writing it, and she was right. No one wanted to buy it.

**John:** So even though it was you, even though you had a terrific reputation, because it wasn’t based on anything else, because there wasn’t another filmmaker, because it was a Western. Because essentially the genre you think there was no appetite for making—

**Scott Frank:** There’s no appetite.

**Craig:** I mean, wasn’t it briefly at Sony? Am I crazy?

**Scott Frank:** It almost got made several times. And I didn’t write it initially for me to direct. And I’d written it for Steven to direct. And Steven said, “Wow, I think this is the best script you’ve ever written. I fucking hate horses.” And I said, “But besides that, maybe you could do this.” And he said, “I really – I don’t know how to shoot them. I hear they’re really difficult. And I don’t want to do it.”

And I said, “You know, Clint Eastwood was allergic to horses. And he still – he did it.” And for some reason that didn’t help. And so then Sam Mendes was going to direct it. And we had a whole cast. And it was very expensive. Sam–

**John:** I’ve been there.

**Scott Frank:** Sam cut his fee to $10 million.

**Craig:** Oh. That’s super generous.

**Scott Frank:** Yes. And his then wife, Kate Winslet, who was going to be in it, cut her fee to $10 million.

**Craig:** Well these people are almost saint-like.

**Scott Frank:** Yes. Isn’t it awesome? And for some reason he didn’t understand why we couldn’t get the budget down to what it needed to be in order to get made. And various people flirted with it and were in and out of it after that. And then I made The Lookout. And then I said, “Hey, I’m going to direct it,” which made it even harder to get made.

**Craig:** Yes. So you said, “I’m going to direct it,” and Hollywood responded with a—

**Scott Frank:** Collective nothing.

**Craig:** Nothing. They just simply did not hear you say that.

**Scott Frank:** They said, “Who?” Yes. Nothing. So because The Lookout was such a giant hit.

**Craig:** Huge.

**Scott Frank:** Huge.

**Craig:** Massive.

**Scott Frank:** I think the people in this row, including the empty chairs, were the total people who saw it in the theater.

**Craig:** It made tens of dollars.

**Scott Frank:** It made tens of dollars. Thank you very much. So I went out and we tried to get it set up that way. And it was almost made. To be honest, we almost made it at Warner Bros. We almost made it a few places. But it couldn’t happen.

And then one day Steven Soderbergh said to me, because I kept him on as a producer, and he said to me, “Why don’t you do it yourself as a mini-series?” Because he had just done a couple of seasons on The Knick. And he said, “You should do this.” And he said, “Television is telling far more serious stories than movies are. And I think you should give it a try. And you should bring it to HBO. I’m very close with them at HBO.” He had done Liberace and The Knick and so on. Was doing his project Mosaic there at the time.

And so I had a meeting with HBO in NYC where I live now. And the meeting went – it was interesting because the head of HBO miniseries says to me, “Well what have you directed?” And I said–

**Craig:** We have the Internet. You just have to Wiki it.

**Scott Frank:** And so I told him what I had directed, and then he proceeded to tell me a long story about how they had just shut down a Western they were making, Lewis and Clark. And how–

**Craig:** So far so good.

**Scott Frank:** And how they had to fire the director. And so I took that as a not so subtle message as you’re concerned about me directing this movie, aren’t you, this miniseries? And for some reason, I’m helping, I’m consulting on a TV show at Netflix called A Series of Unfortunate Events. And two things happened while I was there. One, out of nowhere, HBO says we’d like to meet with you about Godless. And I said, “With me directing it, right?”

And they said “Yes.” And I met with somebody else, with the then head of HBO, who said we want to make this. We don’t care who is in it. We’d like to do a Western. We think there’s a big appetite for Westerns on television. And we’d really like to do this as a miniseries. And I said, “Great.”

And at the same time, the people at Netflix I’m working for, the head of their dramatic programming says to me, “I hear you wrote a Western.” All in the same day.

**Craig:** This is how it happens.

**Scott Frank:** This is after 14 fucking years.

**Craig:** You guys are wondering like how to succeed in Hollywood. You just have to have that day.

**Scott Frank:** That day. All you need was that Wednesday. And so I said, “Yes, I wrote a Western,” and she said, “Well, will you send it to me?” And I said, “Sure, I’ll send it to you.”

And less than 12 hours later I get two things. I get an offer from HBO that reneges on every single promise that they made. Basically, we’ll develop the six scripts with you and then we’ll see what casting we can get. And then we’ll decide and we’ll see if you as a director can attract anybody. And this is what we’ll pay you, and so on and so forth.

Netflix, also known as the de Medici family, sends me – they say – Cindy Holland, who is head of their dramatic, just sends me an email saying, “We’re going to make this next year at this time.” I hadn’t even expanded it into a miniseries. “We’re going to just do it. It’s going to be our first in-house miniseries.”

I then got an offer that was 12 times what the other offer was, promising everything, and we don’t care who is in it. Cast it with the best people you want. And so on and so forth.

**Craig:** So now you’ve got a dilemma.

**Scott Frank:** It’s tough.

**Craig:** What do you do?

**John:** It is tough. Your thought process is like, “Do I take the terrible deal for the people who are mean to me?”

**Craig:** Right. Don’t like me.

**Scott Frank:** It was a long, long, long, long minute.

**Craig:** Meanwhile, I’m the idiot that is writing a miniseries for HBO.

**John:** How is the HBO series going?

**Scott Frank:** How’s that going, Craig?

**Craig:** I thought it was going really well.

**Scott Frank:** All the people, or a couple of the people are no longer there. So it’s different for you, Craig. Anyway, we made the show at Netflix and they were tremendous. And it was the right thing to do as a miniseries, because in expanding it I realized that it was already too long as a movie, anyway. In fact, the screenplay makes up 3.5 of the episodes.

**Craig:** Well, you know, tomorrow if you have a chance in the afternoon, I’m going to be doing a little one-on-one with Scott where we’re going to walk through his process and you’re going to learn if you show up – and you’re smart to show up – to learn from him.

One thing that’s always been very freeing to me is knowing that every first draft you’ve ever written in, in this case with Godless the final draft that you’ve written of a feature, you said like – I think you said I’ve never submitted a first draft that was under 150 pages? Something like that? Right.

**Scott Frank:** He had to look at Lindsay, but yes.

**Craig:** Yes, Lindsay is like, yes, that was my problem that I had all the time.

**Scott Frank:** The shooting script for Get Shorty, which is a 97-minute movie, was 135 pages long.

**John:** Yikes.

**Craig:** I forgot about Get Shorty.

**Scott Frank:** The shooting script for Minority Report was 180 pages long. Cheated into 165 pages.

**Craig:** By the way, don’t bother cheating 180 into 165.

**Scott Frank:** Once you’re above 160. Out of Sight was 130. Most of them are around 135 pages.

**Craig:** Do you see what we mean when we talk about the stupidity of the rules all the time. And the conventional wisdom that gets put on you guys all the time. And here is arguably the most successful screenwriter working today and he never follows that rule ever. And never, ever did.

**Scott Frank:** Well, first of all you have to tell me. Is there a rule?

**Craig:** There is. There is. “Never write anything more than 120. Really it should be 107.”

**John:** Yeah, it should be 107. We are going to get into some feature rules right now. And I want to bring up some other feature folks to talk about features. Because like you had a great experience in television it sounds like, but you’ve done a couple features.

**Scott Frank:** One or two.

**John:** So let’s talk about that. I want to bring up some more amazing folks. I want to bring up Guinevere Turner. She’s the writer of American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page, and Go Fish. Scott Alexander wrote Ed Wood, The People vs. OJ Simpson, The People vs. Larry Flint. People vs. Everything. Man on the Moon. And Big Eyes. Scott Alexander.

Tess Morris wrote Man Up, but she also hosts a podcast you should listen to called “You Had Us At Hello.” The legend, Lindsay Doran, producer of Stranger than Fiction, Sense and Sensibility, Nanny McPhee, Dead Again, The Firm. Lindsay Doran.

Why I sort of wanted you guys all up here on the stage with us is to talk through a thing I’ve noticed, and you talking about doing Godless and sort of moving from doing a feature to doing a television show, I see so much amazing stuff happening in the one-hour space. And we just make these amazing shows. Have any of the lessons or the opportunities we’ve seen in one-hours and you’ve done some amazing television stuff, too. Are those translating back to features? Can we make better features based on how good we’ve gotten in our one-hours?

And I also wonder whether there’s any things we can learn structurally about what we’re able to do now in television that could help us make better dramatic features? Scott, talk to us about—

**Craig:** He looks super optimistic.

**John:** Because he seems so confused, I’m going to start with you. When you went on to do People vs. OJ Simpson did you have to learn a fundamentally different aspect of telling a story over multiple episodes?

**Scott Alexander:** Yeah. But that wasn’t your first question.

**John:** I know. But we’re going to get back to my first question.

**Craig:** Don’t question John August. Just answer his questions.

**Scott Alexander:** We went into OJ thinking we were writing a ten-hour movie. And we were thinking of it as episodes one, two, three are kind of the first act, and four, fix, six, seven are kind of the middle, second act. And then the rest is the third act. And then someone had to explain to us, it’s like, “Guys, no, you’re making ten one-hour movies. And each one needs to have a beginning, middle, and end, and needs to carry you into the next episode.”

And we said, “Oh.” And then we came up with this idea which was that every hour would have a high concept theme to it, which I don’t know if that’s how other TV writers work, but it was this thing we sort of stumbled onto, which was, “OK, this week is the Bronco. This week is Marcia and gender politics. This week is the jury.”

And so sort of like gave a talking point to every week’s episode. OJ was a – it was a great writing experience. I mean, we spent three years sort of being in charge of ten hours, which was a long time. It honestly broke us when we went back to features because after doing OJ our next job was to do the Patty Hearst kidnapping, also based on a Jeff Toobin book. And we just had no idea how to fit a story into a two-hour format anymore, or 2.5 hour, or even a three-hour format. And we left out half the book. And we still brought in a first draft at 207 pages.

**Craig:** That’s even long for Scott Frank.

**Scott Frank:** I’ve never broken 200. 199.

**Scott Alexander:** Oh, I once wrote a script that was 291 pages. A feature.

**Craig:** Why would you?

**John:** But why?

**Craig:** What failure of planning occurred there?

**Scott Alexander:** It was a biopic of the Marx Brothers who I love dearly, and we worked so hard on it. And what a waste. Years of my life.

**Guinevere Turner:** I love this page count shaming that’s happening.

**Craig:** Well, I mean, you’re asking people to see a movie about the Marx Brothers. It’s the length of the Shoah or whatever.

**Scott Alexander:** Brilliant Alexander plan.

**Craig:** Sorrow and pity. I mean, it’s insane.

**Scott Frank:** He’s got the biggest page count.

**Lindsay Doran:** I worked on something like that once. And the writer – and I said, “I can’t hand this in.” And she said, “Just tell them that all they have to do is read 120 pages, and if they don’t like it, they don’t have to read the rest.”

**Scott Alexander:** I don’t want to come off as obnoxious. But that’s an internal draft. Our sort of rule of thumb has been once it goes into the buyer, meaning the studio, it has to be under 150. So that’s a rule we’ve always tried to live by.

**Craig:** 150 is not admirable. That’s not a thing.

**John:** OK, Lindsay Doran, you ran a studio. You ran United Artists. And so—

**Lindsay:** You’re going to tell all these people that?

**John:** Well, you don’t have to do it right now.

**Craig:** It’s her fault.

**Scott Frank:** She made West Side Story.

**John:** Yeah. Let’s say, no, so let’s say you had a new studio. Do you think that the changes that have happened in one hours would be informing some of the choices you’re making as a studio head? Either the projects you’re doing or how you think the storytelling can happen on the page. Do you think there’s a change in what screenwriters can do based on what TV writers have been able to do in the last ten years?

**Lindsay:** Rightly or wrongly, I feel as though there’s been a shift from “never be boring” to “always be exciting.” Somebody I know who made a movie for Netflix said that he got one note the whole time which was, “Make sure something amazing happens in the first five minutes. That’s all we ask of you.” Does anything amazing happen in your first five minutes, Scott?

**Tess Morris:** First 150 pages.

**Scott Frank:** Yes.

**Lindsay:** So, I think there is a sense, whether it’s true or not—

**Scott Frank:** But wait, isn’t that just good writing?

**Lindsay:** Well, yeah, I would think so. But that idea of the slow build, you know, I wonder if you could write a fantastically elaborate, interesting first scene and it would be enough. Even if it was great. I wonder if people are going to say, “But wait, I want something really exciting to happen.” And you go, well how about this really exciting writing. And it’s like, “Well, yeah, but nobody gets killed and nobody gets betrayed and nobody gets pushed under a bus…”

**Guinevere:** But in and around this conversation is actually as writers how we now think, because we know that we may say, “Here’s my idea,” and someone will say, “Is that a back door pilot? Is that a series? Is that a feature?” That’s just a feature. And how features may or may not be devalued/haloed as this new rarified form. And/or how does that have legs in season five? And so it’s actually changed our brains and the way that we think about our own narratives. And this whole idea of legs and seasons—

**Craig:** It’s flipped things around, right?

**Guinevere:** I mean, is it good? Is it bad? It’s definitely stretched our muscles and made us think in different ways.

**Tess:** But if you think – I had a show that was a film idea originally, that then we turned into a six-part thing. But actually weirdly the structure of it still made sense because it was a romantic comedy, so we still had a very clear end point to everything that was happening. Like Catastrophe does it really well. I mean, really you could watch each series of Catastrophe as a very long romantic comedy movie. So it’s just our brains that have to change. I don’t think the audiences have to, maybe not.

**Scott Frank:** You’re not from around here, are you?

**Tess:** I’m not, Scott. No. I’m new in town.

**Scott Frank:** Yes you are.

**Lindsay:** From East Texas.

**Scott Frank:** Houston.

**Scott Alexander:** John, I think you’re asking a hopeful question with a bad answer.

**John:** The best kind, yeah.

**Scott Alexander:** Because as we all know, the mid-budget film, the mid-budget drama/dramedy that we all grew up on and love has been in trouble for years. I would think that the success of all the long form television has just made it harder because it sort of taught people that audiences will invest in that long term storytelling. They want to hang out with those characters for a period of time. And why would you want to invest $40 million to only hang out with them for an hour and fifty minutes.

**Guinevere:** But I would have watched The Breakfast Club for five seasons when I was a teenager.

**Tess:** Oh my god, yeah. Imagine Pretty in Pink every week. That would be amazing.

**Craig:** Well, but the point is you actually wouldn’t have to. If it happened now, that’s what it would be. Because they would not make The Breakfast Club as a feature. It wouldn’t make economic sense. They would simply say this could be so much better if we made six of these, or we made a season of different people in detention every season, because that’s—

**Guinevere:** Oh my god. I already love it. I totally want to make that.

**John:** I would argue that we actually are already doing sort of the giant version of this, is the Marvel movies, which are essentially a giant TV show—

**Tess:** They’re not like The Breakfast Club.

**John:** They’re not like The Breakfast Club. No they’re not.

**Craig:** But he’s not wrong. Because they are soap operas.

**Tess:** No, I know. They are.

**Craig:** And, look, the problem is that what’s happened now is in movie theaters we now have created the space for spectacle. So Marvel movies get away with soap opera because they’re spectacle soap opera. Soap opera soap opera really now is just for TV. But the viewing audience, one thing that we know because we are – even though we write, we are also viewing constantly – we know that watching things at home is so much more comfortable. We only watch what we want to. We don’t feel trapped. We certainly haven’t paid for the experience per that moment.

**Tess:** I do like the idea of Emilio Estevez like ripping his shirt off and it being Captain America underneath it, you know, that scene in Breakfast Club. You know, and actually it would be like a Marvel character underneath it.

**Craig:** You should go pitch that.

**Tess:** I’m not going to do that, Craig, but OK.

**John:** Well, Tess, I want to get back – your podcast is essentially about romantic comedies.

**Tess:** It’s very niche.

**John:** It’s very niche. So if you enjoy romantic comedies, or even if you’re just confused by romantic comedies, listen to her podcast. They really do break it down and talk about that as a form.

**Tess:** Very niche.

**John:** As a genre. But essentially romantic comedies have been usurped by series television, like we’re not making very many of them. Like you were able to make one, but very few of them are getting made. Is there anything that you see happening in television, from like Catastrophe, from anything else, that could get us back to a feature place of romantic comedies?

**Tess:** Netflix and chill is our last hope, I feel.

**Craig:** That means sex, right?

**Tess:** Yeah. But why is not like Hulu and hang?

**Craig:** Hulu is not sexy.

**Tess:** Hulu is sexy.

**Craig:** Oh, it is?

**Tess:** There’s sexy things, maybe not as—

**Craig:** I don’t know what sexy is. Everybody knows that.

**John:** I think I know why she thinks Hulu is sexy suddenly, but I’m not allowed to say.

**Tess:** All I know is that all the carbs I ate have kicked in suddenly and I feel quite slow.

**Craig:** You mean alcohol.

**Tess:** I think when we made the film that I wrote, Man Up, we released it in the cinemas and knowing what we know now we would not release it in the cinema again. We had a very small release here and we had a bigger one in the UK. But we would definitely now, like the next film that I’ve written for the same company we will probably take it straight to somewhere like Netflix.

Because you’re all fucking idiots, but people don’t go to the movies to see romantic comedies anymore.

**Craig:** You’re welcome.

**Tess:** And I don’t either.

**Scott Frank:** Thanks for coming to our country.

**Tess:** You’re welcome.

**Craig:** Still this lingering resentment about the Revolution.

**Tess:** I’ll stop when I swear first. Someone had to swear. But, no, I think that – I do actually believe that there is the event, like The Big Sick did incredibly well and it’s a great little movie – big movie. But that was packaged brilliantly and sold perfectly. And also was a really modern take on the genre. And was about something that is important right now. So, I think that is the way, if you’re going to get people in the cinema, you have to try and think bigger now.

Yes, Scott Frank, what would you like to ask me?

**Scott Frank:** Well, you can’t make a slate out of The Big Sick, which was a great movie, but—

**Tess:** No, but you could make a nice six-part recurring series about it. They could get divorced in the second one.

**Scott Frank:** But speaking about movies for a second, even if you make a movie – a drama – for $25 million at a movie studio, they’re still going to spend $30 million to sell it. So it’s still a $50 million proposition. And everybody was talking about Logan Lucky only making $10 million because he did this experimental thing and, you know, that was a failure. It actually is about what it would have made if it were at a studio. It was a $25 million movie. If they were at a studio they were all going to spend $35 million to market it with that cast. And they would have, you know, maybe they would have gotten more people in the movie theater, maybe not, but ultimately after you take away all the profits for the studio, they $10 million or $12 million that everybody who made the movie has to split, it wouldn’t be there anymore.

And if you think about who is going to movies right now, which is – thinking about – which is everything. It’s kids who are 13, 14, experiencing their first independence. That’s who supports most of the movies. You go to any mall on a weekend night and look who is there. Or it’s families taking their kids to see family movies. It’s not a lot of other adult or serious movies.

There’s certainly anomalous things we can all point to, but it doesn’t make economic sense if you’re a studio not to take the big swings.

**Craig:** Right. But we do have this – I mean, there’s some good news here, believe it or not.

**Tess:** Well, tell me the good news.

**Craig:** The good news is—

**Lindsay:** Craig Mazin, bearer of good news.

**Craig:** It doesn’t happen frequently, so listen up.

**Lindsay:** I know. I’m all agog.

**Craig:** You guys have a freedom that we did not have. So, I certainly didn’t, and I know Scott you couldn’t have had, and John you didn’t. When we started it was you write a movie, this is what a movie is. Or, you write a show which is on this network and that’s what that is. And it has the commercial breaks in it, see.

That’s it. You guys can write anything. It can be any amount of time. It can be any amount of episodes. It can be one long thing. Five little short things. Even amongst themselves, like so Dan and Dave who do Game of Thrones, the first season of Game of Thrones which is now, what, eight or nine years ago at this point I think, the first season they did all their shows, they shot them all, they edited the whole season together and then HBO came back and said, “You’re short. These episodes are too short. They need to be 55 minutes and blah-blah-blah seconds. And you’re short.”

So they had to go back and shoot some extra stuff to pad them out. Now, no one cares. They have episodes that are 48 minutes long. They have episodes that are 79 minutes long. You guys have a freedom we did not have. And that’s exceptional.

**Tess:** But just to finish my rom-com rant, though, is that the only issue, if anyone writes romantic comedy here, is that you really know the ending to most rom-coms and that is the fundamental issue with turning it into – with making it doable for TV. Is that you have to find ways to make people break up and make up many more times than you do in a film sort of structure. So that’s the only sort of problem with the rom-com.

**Craig:** So good news for everybody except the rom-com writers.

**John:** Guinevere, I want to ask about, so you’re doing a movie with Mary right now, Mary Harron, based on the Manson girls. And it feels – you’re doing it as a feature, but it feels like it could very easily be Netflix, it could be HBO, it could be some sort of television thing. Why a feature and why not a television thing?

**Guinevere:** So it’s a story about the women who killed for Charles Manson. Three of them went to prison. And to me it’s about this very specific point in their history, which is after the orgies and the sex and the cameras and the trial. And this real moment of time, five years where they spent – the three of them – in isolation in prison. And that, to me, only – that story needs to be told in that way.

**John:** So it’s sort of a one-time journey. It doesn’t want to sort of stretch out over longer things.

**Guinevere:** I mean, you could go second season, they get into the general population which is where my movie ends, but to me it’s a little bit corrupt, because I’m really talking about the mindset of these people and it has more to do with the moment in history and where women were and where prison was and where the media was with this story than the far-reaching things. So, I mean, if somebody came to me right now and said “We want to make six seasons of post-Manson, the ladies, how the ladies lived,” I don’t know. That’s the wheelhouse I lived in.

**Scott Frank:** That’s a romantic comedy.

**John:** That’s a good one.

**Craig:** I have a squeaky [unintelligible] romantic comedy would be something to behold.

**John:** Fantastic.

**Scott Alexander:** I’m so in.

**John:** Let me get a roundtable room going. So that’s one of the last things I want to talk about is there has been this move in features to sort of bring together rooms to sort of break features. And that’s a thing that we’re also taking from television where like, well, we have this piece of intellectual property. We have – we always say Slinky – but what does the Slinky movie want to be. They’ve done this with other big videogames. And they’ll put together a room-

**Tess:** Sorry, a Slinky?

**John:** A Slinky. A toy.

**Craig:** It’s a large coil that—

**John:** Yeah, that walks down stairs.

**Craig:** In Britain I believe it’s called the Coily or the—

**Scott Frank:** There really is a Slinky movie?

**Craig:** Stair Walker.

**Scott Frank:** I got to catch up. 120 pages.

**John:** A general take on feature writing rooms. Because I’ve never done one. I’ve done roundtables, and I think a lot of us have done roundtables, but this idea where we’re breaking the whole – we’re figuring out from the genesis of what this movie is as a team, as a group.

**Craig:** I wonder, what do you think about this phenomenon? You’ve been watching this happening, right?

**Lindsay:** Well, I actually just went to my first roundtable. I’d never been to one before this month, I think it was. So it is this odd thing. In family movies I do see it a lot, because I work on those a lot.

**Guinevere:** I’m sorry, because I’ve never been to a roundtable. Can anyone and all of you just tell us what does it look like?

**Craig:** Well, there’s two different things we’re talking about here. One is a roundtable which Lindsay is mentioning where a movie is about to go into production, or a movie has been shot and they’re contemplating reshoots, and they will have six or seven writers sit around and just discuss.

**Tess:** And eat.

**Craig:** And eat.

**Lindsay:** That had nothing to do with the roundtable that I went to, but that’s OK.

**Craig:** OK, so you had a different roundtable. So then there’s this other thing which is “We are contemplating making a movie. Let’s get a bunch of writers together to talk about what this movie should be.” That is the thing that is horrifying to me.

**John:** Yeah, so it’s more like breaking a season of television, but you’re breaking a feature out of it. Or sometimes you’re breaking three features and a TV series. So sometimes they’re month-long rooms. It’s such a very different way of working that we’re just not used to.

**Scott Alexander:** I mean, I’ll say I’ve never done either, ever. I think it’s the end of the world.

**Guinevere:** Anyway, back to Lindsay, please, because I’m so curious what you have to say.

**Lindsay:** No, I think it was very confusing. Really, I found it – it was like where is the person in this room with conviction. Because the whole point was to not have conviction.

**Tess:** I think it’s different in a comedy.

**Scott Frank:** The roundtable to me is so distressing conceptually because somebody – whoever that poor writer was – wrote a script and put thought into it. And then a bunch of people are just going to sit around for eight hours and get paid a daily rate and just block out lines—

**Craig:** Well, to be fair, most of the times when I do it—

**Scott Frank:** I wasn’t looking at you.

**Craig:** I know. I’m just telling you because you don’t do them.

**Scott Frank:** I was looking at Lindsay.

**Craig:** Don’t you dare. Usually the writer is there. So, you know, I did one for the Pirates of the Caribbean, what are they up to?

**John:** 19?

**Tess:** 40?

**Craig:** 70. All right. Pirates of the Caribbean, 70.

**Scott Frank:** That was the good one.

**Craig:** But Jeff Nathanson was there. He is the writer and he was there. And we just sort of – really what it came down to was, in some of these cases, the roundtables that are post-facto roundtables are kind of like writers are doing what maybe the development executives used to be able to do but don’t. So we’re just sort of saying, “Well what about – here’s some questions of things that maybe you can think about or help.”

But this other thing that’s happening which is develop a movie together. Dana and I – why isn’t Dana up here? I don’t understand.

**John:** She’s up in the next segment.

**Craig:** OK. So, anyway, the person that I will not mention is up in the next segment, were asked to do a roundtable at Disney to create a new story for a new movie. And the two of us freaked the F out. Because that to me is what you’re talking about. There’s no authority. There’s no voice. There’s no author. There’s no vision. There’s just a bunch of people now cobbling together a movie. Forget the economics of it, which are disastrous for writers. I just think creatively it’s – that I agree with you. End of times.

**Scott Alexander:** How does that get arbitrated?

**Craig:** I don’t know.

**John:** Horribly. Horribly.

**Tess:** That’s a whole other podcast.

**Scott Alexander:** How do they even? What do they even do?

**Craig:** I don’t know.

**Tess:** Don’t even ask that question.

**John:** It’s a genuine mess.

**Craig:** I legitimately don’t know.

**John:** So, as we wrap it up, I’ll say that in television where they have writer’s rooms, everyone is also a producer, so you have a credit because you’re a producer. There’s some other way that you’re acknowledged. And so when you’re running your shows, there’s a system, there’s a structure for that.

**Craig:** For multiple episodes. So somebody is going to get a credit sooner or later.

**John:** That doesn’t exist in features. And if this trend continues we’re going to have to figure out something, because it’s going to be weird. And all you guys will be in there, because we’ll all be retired by then.

We need to get to our next segment. This was an amazing discussion. Guys, thank you very much.

**Craig:** Thank you.

**John:** You can head down. We’ll bring up the next folks.

**Craig:** Fresh writers. More grist for the mill. Never stops.

**John:** A new thing to try.

**Craig:** Oh, we got a new thing. Oh, here we go. You guys know this was John’s idea, because I don’t have any.

**John:** It should be good. We’ll see. To do this, we need some new writers up here. We’re going to start with Dana Fox.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Dana Fox. Dana Fox is the writer of What Happens in Vegas, Couples Retreat, How to Be Single. She was the creator and showrunner of Ben and Kate. She’s directed New Girl. She’s awesome.

**Craig:** Stop apologizing. Just own your genius.

**John:** And a bunch of other movies.

**Dana Fox:** I’m not up here with Scott Frank.

**Craig:** None of us are.

**John:** And she’s a repeat Scriptnotes guest.

**Dana:** I love it.

**Craig:** One of our favorite Scriptnotes people.

**Dana:** Anytime you ask me I say yes.

**John:** Another repeat Scriptnotes guest, Megan Amram.

**Craig:** Megan Amram. Literally just noticed your shirt by the way. That’s the greatest shirt ever.

**Dana:** We’re wearing message shirts.

**Craig:** So Dana’s shirt says “Ask Me About My Feminist Agenda.” I did.

**John:** Yeah, we did.

**Craig:** Megan’s says “Zero million followers.”

**Megan Amram:** MY friend, Mo Welch, makes these shirts. They’re great. If you have less than a million followers, I highly recommend it.

**Craig:** Nobody here, that doesn’t apply to anybody.

**John:** So when we introduced you on the last live show, you were the writer-producer The Good Place, Transparent, Silicon Valley, Parks and Recreation. You’re the author of Science for Her. But now you’re also a writer on The Simpsons.

**Megan:** Yeah, it’s a pretty weird coincidence that I appeared with our friend Matt Selman on the show last time, who happens to show-run The Simpsons. And then I got a job really soon after that.

**John:** So I think the key here is if you want to get staffed on a show, be on an episode of Scriptnotes with the showrunner. That’s how you do it.

**Megan:** I owe John and – what’s your name?

**Craig:** I’m your cousin.

**Megan:** Oh, that’s, OK, Craig. I owe you both my life. So, I don’t know what you want to do with this segment.

**Craig:** I don’t think you need to go that far, but you owe us quite a bit. Quite a bit.

**John:** Our next writer, I’ve never pronounced your last name, so I’m going to try. Oren Uziel. Yes? Oren Uziel, writer of 22 Jump Street, Freaks of Nature, The God Particle. Oren, who I know mostly through roundtables. That’s how I’ve actually gotten to know you.

**Oren Uziel:** Yeah, I’m sorry.

**John:** No, it’s awesome. Jason Fuchs is here, though.

**Craig:** Fuchsy.

**John:** A writer whose credits include Wonder Woman, Ice Age: Continental Drift, and Pan.

**Craig:** And also…if you saw La La Land and you remember that douchebag screenwriter who talked about being really good at building worlds: Jason Fuchs.

**Jason Fuchs:** Sorry.

**John:** So this is the part of the show where we need to bring up the Twitter person who tweeted first. So, this could be you. This is somebody in the room. And so I’m going to go to my Twitter here.

**Craig:** Hey, Scott Rosenberg!

**John:** Scott Rosenberg is here. Come on up here.

**Craig:** What a weird attention grabbing—

**Scott Rosenberg:** Someone needed a beer. Apologize. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

**John:** Scott, don’t read this yet, but you’ll read it eventually.

**Craig:** Super attention-grabby. Super like look at me, I’m Scott Rosenberg.

**Dana:** He’s going to get a haircut during this podcast.

**Craig:** Some people have it. Some people don’t. He’s got it. He’s got it.

**John:** So the first person to tweet at me was John the Wizard. Where is John the Wizard?

**Craig:** John the Wizard.

**John:** Oh, holy shit. All right.

**Dana:** John the Wizard. John the Wizard.

**John:** Will you take that microphone there? This is the game show we are going to be playing here. So, all of us up on this stage have received at certain times notes from the studio. And five of these things we’re going to read aloud are actual notes that I received from the studio on my projects. The only, I promise to God, the only things I’ve changed are sometimes identifying character names. But everything you’re about to hear, except for one of them, is true.

Your job is going to be to identify which of these was not the true thing. What is so crazy is you are the person who came up to me and asked if I could sign your Writer Emergency Pack, is that correct?

**John the Wizard:** Yes. That’s correct.

**John:** The gift you’re going to get out of this, which is nuts—

**Craig:** Oh no.

**John:** Is the dark mode deck of the Writer Emergency Pack. The exclusive black edition of the Writer Emergency Pack, which no one has, and that was never sold.

**Craig:** You should be good at this, because you are a wizard, so let’s see.

**John the Wizard:** I mean, that’s referencing my D&D.

**John:** Craig, start us off.

**Craig:** Here’s the first one. I assume he’s going to listen to them all and then make your judgment.

**John:** And we may discuss a bit.

**Craig:** We may discuss a bit.

**Scott Rosenberg:** Can we just go back to the pros and cons of writers’ rooms? Because I’m totally confused.

**Craig:** This is not about you.

**Scott Rosenberg:** I keep staring at this thing over and over again. I don’t know what the fuck it means. I don’t know who Madden is.

**Dana:** No, don’t give it away.

**Scott Rosenberg:** Where’s Scott Frank?

**Craig:** Scott Rosenberg, you can’t just Scott Rosenberg all over this.

**Scott Rosenberg:** All right. Carry on.

**John:** Craig Mazin, read a note.

**Craig:** Can you believe this guy?

**John:** No, I can’t. I honestly can’t.

**Jason:** Do you want to switch with me?

**Craig:** God. Wasn’t enough that like—?

**Scott Rosenberg:** You’re not going to like that one more.

**Craig:** God, Scott Rosenberg. Not handsome enough. Not tall enough. Jesus Christ. OK, here we go. “The inherent fantasy fulfillment, especially for kids, makes this something we believe audiences will embrace and thoroughly enjoy. That said, the tone of the picture needs to be much edgier.” Possibly real. Possibly not.

**John:** Dana, go for it.

**Dana:** OK. “We like the pivot away from the misdirect and towards embracing Johnson’s role as a villain from the outset. But, as we move forward we’d like to make sure that we don’t lose his complexity and shift too far into his evil persona that it feels cartoonish.”

**Craig:** Ooh, so many clauses in that.

**Megan:** Word salad. Word salad.

**Dana:** It was really hard to read.

**Craig:** Multiple clause note.

**John:** Megan Amram, perform for us.

**Jason:** This is not good. This is not good at all.

**Megan:** “Can we discuss whether Mark and Kristen need to die? We don’t feel like the characters have earned the terrible things that befall them.”

**Scott Rosenberg:** That’s totally real.

**Dana:** The terrible things including death.

**Craig:** Right. Right.

**Megan:** One of the worst.

**Craig:** Things with an S. Right.

**John:** Oren?

**Oren:** All right, “We appreciate the early look and understand and respect that the creative process is still in motion and that there are outstanding notes the producers want to make before the draft we read is considered official.”

**Craig:** Wow, that’s just fucking sinister.

**Dana:** That’s too real.

**Scott Rosenberg:** That’s just they don’t want to pay for delivery yet. Right?

**Dana:** I’m just so surprised they actually put that on paper. That seems illegal.

**Craig:** That’s like fraud, right? It’s amazing.

**John:** All right, Jason.

**Jason:** “We would like to clarify and simplify the rules of time travel.” Sure. Sure. By the way, we’re halfway in, so far not a bad note. “Could Madden explain that only certain actions disrupt the time stream?”

**Scott Rosenberg:** See, that’s the one that I kept looking at over and he switched with me. I couldn’t understand it. What’s the time stream?

**Megan:** Yeah, that’s why you have to clarify the rules.

**Dana:** That’s why they have to clarify the rules.

**Jason:** According to the note. That’s what we’re doing.

**Craig:** I know this is crazy, when you walk in the middle of something to not understand it.

**Jason:** This is why you don’t get the bit.

**Scott Rosenberg:** I’m sorry, I’m a screenwriter. I thought we were talking about screenwriting stuff. This is why they’ve never invited me on whatever that thing is they have. That podcast. Never ever, by the way. 42 movies I’ve made. Never. Never once. Never had a dinner.

**Craig:** You’re that guy now? You’re the 42 movies made?

**Scott Rosenberg:** Not once. Never. Never.

**Craig:** 42 movies I made.

**Scott Rosenberg:** Koppelman, he knew me a minute, put me right on. “What are the aliens waiting for? Is it simply that it’s taken this long for them to amass a big enough force to try to take over Earth again? Or, is there a more specific “why now” reason that the alien invasion is finally happening again?”

**John:** Wow, that’s a lot.

**Scott Rosenberg:** I mean, duh.

**John:** I think we may need to read through them again. But general themes. Do they seem familiar? Have you encountered these notes before? I saw some nodding.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, my note I could summarize as make it nice but make it not nice. It’s just like these inherent contradictions, right? And yours seemed—

**Dana:** I truly had no idea what was happening with mine.

**Craig:** Basically yours was the same thing, like make him a villain but don’t make him too villainy.

**Megan:** Yeah. I had summarized this as do Mark and Kristen have to die. A pretty, you know, universal question you should ask yourself. I mean, everyone’s got a Mark, everyone’s got a Kristen. And you just have to think to yourself, did they earn the terrible things that befall them? So.

**Oren:** Mine is basically we enjoyed reading your script. Do we still have to pay you for it?

**Dana:** That one was the most familiar for me.

**Craig:** Familiar note.

**John:** Jason, back to yours.

**Jason:** Yeah. Mine is we paid you to write a script about time travel. Can you figure that out? No. Doesn’t make any sense.

**Scott Rosenberg:** I’m going to be super controversial. I’ve gotten the stupidest fucking notes in the world my entire career, and I’ve never once been less than grateful to be a person getting stupid fucking notes.

**Dana:** Shut up.

**Scott Rosenberg:** It’s just a fact. Honestly. And I’m the last guy to have any gravitas in this whole room. But honestly, like you take them, and they’re ridiculous, and they’re absurd.

**Dana:** Are you from Canada?

**Scott Rosenberg:** And I am from Canada.

**Dana:** Honestly.

**Scott Rosenberg:** By way of Boston. But, no, seriously, I remember the stupidest note I’ve ever gotten in my whole life was I wrote this crazy psychotic character and they were like, “We just found he was so irrational.” And I was like “Because he’s psychotic.” And they were like, “Well couldn’t his irrational psychosis just be a little bit more rational?” And I was like, “Wow, you are insane.” By the way, she is not in the business anymore that executive. But I just remember thinking like as I drove home thinking like how am I going to tackle this.

I was like, goddamn, god bless me that she’s actually paying me to do this and I actually – I’m sorry to like rain on the fun of the gag.

**Craig:** You should be.

**Scott Rosenberg:** But seriously, that’s my thing. Madden, where’s Madden?

**Jason:** You want Madden back?

**Scott Rosenberg:** But seriously, we’re all getting stupid notes. That’s the nature of the gig. But you know what, God bless us all for getting them.

**Craig:** That surely was helpful for you.

**John:** That was helpful. Scott, would you remind recapping what your actual note was so this gentleman can try to win? What was your actual note you got? What was the actual note that you read aloud?

**Scott Rosenberg:** I read it. I actually read it. You want me to read it again?

**Craig:** Just summarize it.

**Scott Rosenberg:** I actually didn’t understand it.

**Craig:** OK.

**Jason:** That’s the point of the game.

**John:** John the Wizard. Tell us where your head is at.

**Craig:** Do you have a sense?

**John:** Which one is the fake note?

**John the Wizard:** I’m seriously confused if it’s the last one or the third to last one. Both seem very confusing.

**Craig:** You think maybe it’s the Oren right here.

**John:** Do you want to hear them aloud again.

**Craig:** Again? Really? Just those two. Just those two.

**John the Wizard:** And I’ll take the audience, what they think.

**Oren:** “We appreciate the early look and understand and respect that the creative process is still in motion and that there are outstanding notes the producers want to make before the draft we read is considered official.”

**John the Wizard:** This is so confusing.

**Oren:** There’s so many words.

**John:** I can’t believe that’s real.

**Oren:** No commas.

**John:** Do you want Jason or Scott’s?

**Jason:** I also have no commas. “What are the aliens waiting for? Is it simply that it’s taken this long for them to amass a big enough force to try to take over earth again? Or is there a more specific “why now” reason that the alien invasion is finally happening again?” I think I’ve gotten that note on every single script I’ve written.

**John the Wizard:** I guess my problem at the end is the aliens, I would assume is referenced to a real–

**Craig:** Don’t dig in too deep here.

**John the Wizard:** No? Is it too much?

**Craig:** Just go with your gut.

**John:** Go with your gut.

**John the Wizard:** You sir.

**John:** Oren’s?

**Craig:** He has chosen Oren’s as the fake note.

**John the Wizard:** I’m going to choose Oren.

**John:** But up here, what do you guys think?

**Dana:** I think that’s definitely real.

**Craig:** I think it’s Jason’s.

**Megan:** I think mine might be fake.

**Craig:** I think Megan is fake.

**Megan:** Thank you so much.

**John:** Oren’s is completely real. Oren’s is 100% real. That was in a memo and it basically was what you describe. Like “Thank you for showing this producer pass early so we don’t have to pay you and we can still give notes.” So that’s a lovely thing. So your second choice is Scott?

**John the Wizard:** Yes.

**John:** You’re still wrong. Sorry.

**John the Wizard:** It’s not the first time so.

**Jason:** Does he get another guess?

**John:** It’s Jason’s.

**Craig:** It’s Jason’s.

**John:** Time travel.

**Craig:** Jason’s time travel thing seems so real.

**Jason:** Yeah, well, I sold it.

**John:** Why did it seem real to you?

**Craig:** Well, it seemed real because it was so stupid. I mean, you know, like every time you see a movie, or any time you’re writing any movie that involves anything slightly magic or slightly science fiction, the first thing they talk about – because they love to – is rules. They’re obsessed with the rules. What are the rules? No one actually cares about the rules.

I don’t know what the rules are in Lord of the Rings. People literally show up and fucking turn into ghosts and back again to regular people. And I don’t give a shit, because I don’t care. It’s awesome to watch. But they love talking about the rules.

**Megan:** I hate to be a Scott Rosenberg here, but I love the rules. I love like a scene where they just talk about the rules. There’s a scene in Arrival where he just narrates the rules and I loved it. You know, diverse. It’s a diverse panel.

**Jason:** I have to say these are all obviously dumb notes, and they’re better than any notes I’ve ever gotten on any project I’ve worked.

**Oren:** These are high level John August notes.

**Jason:** I mean, these are terrific notes. I was working on a project, I’m currently working on a project where a producer said to me, “What’s the tone of the movie?” We’re like two months in. And I said, well, you know, it’s kind of like a darker grounded Star Wars. And the gentleman I’m working with is Italian and he said, “I don’t like the Star Wars.”

**Craig:** Is he Italian or is he a cartoon Italian?

**Jason:** He is, in fact, both. And I said, you know, “Why don’t you like Star Wars?” And he said, “Where’s Earth?”

**Craig:** That’s awesome.

**Jason:** I swear to god. This is a week ago.

**Craig:** That’s an amazing critique of Star Wars.

**Jason:** Yeah, he said, “They never talk about Earth. They never go to Earth. Why is no Earth?” And I said, “Well, you know, it’s Star Wars. It’s in the stars.” And he said, “No, no, I get it. But you know…” he had an idea. He didn’t just have a problem. He had a solution. He said, “You know what’s a good film? You see the Battleship?” And I said, “Peter Berg’s Battleship?” And he said, “Yeah, si, si. They’re on Earth. And the soldiers on Earth and marines. Watch the film Battleship.”

And I said, “You want me to write this film – you’re going to pay me, you want me to make it more like Battleship than Star Wars?” And he said, “Watch Battleship again. You’ll see what I’m talking about.” And I literally called the studio. I said, “I can never speak to that human again.”

**Craig:** No. And then I assume he was like, “Now I got to go make the meatballs.”

**Jason:** These are terrific notes. I wish I had rule notes.

**Scott Rosenberg:** To me, the greatest notes story of all time is–

**Jason:** That was not the greatest notes story of all time?

**Scott Rosenberg:** No. No. No.

**Megan:** I’m going to let you finish.

**Scott Rosenberg:** That was the best rendered notes story of all time.

**Jason:** Fair.

**Scott Rosenberg:** The best performed notes story of all time.

**Jason:** I’ll take it.

**Scott Rosenberg:** But the great William Goldman story was, you know, William Goldman notoriously only lived in New York City and hated Los Angeles, like a sickness. And he would come out for five seconds and he did his version of Maverick. He wrote his draft of Maverick, and he flew out and they took him to Warner Bros. And he had the meetings with the guys at the time, there was probably Lorenzo and Robinov. And they came in and they gave him his notes and they said, “So we really like it. Everything you’ve done is wonderful. We just wish it was smarter and funnier.”

And Bill Goldman said, “So do I.” Which is like we never turn in what we don’t think is the best, right?

**Dana:** It also dovetails with things that have happened to you in test screenings, or notes you’ve gotten in test screenings.

**Craig:** Those are the best.

**Dana:** Yeah. I had one – they give you the little forms afterwards. You fill them out. And it said, “Was there anything about the movie you didn’t like?” And this person wrote, “The movie.”

**Oren:** That’s great.

**Craig:** Somebody, I can’t remember who, has one of those cards framed and under the what would you change and somebody had scrawled, “More boobs,” but they had spelled it B-E-E-W-B-B-S. The most tortured spelling of boobs possible, so you knew it was real. They really wanted to–

**John:** Nice. John the Wizard, thank you very much for playing. You get the deck anyway.

**Craig:** Thank you, John the Wizard.

**John:** We weren’t going to let you go away without the deck. Thank you to our amazing panel. You guys were great. Thank you for playing the game with us.

**Craig:** These people want to drink. I get the sense they want to drink. Let’s wrap this up.

**John:** Let’s wrap this up. Guys, thank you for an amazing show. We need to thank some of the special people here first.

**Craig:** Thank you folks.

**John:** A little talking here. We need to thank Megan McDonnell, our producer.

**Craig:** Megan McDonnell.

**John:** We need to thank all of our amazing panelists for coming up here. Thank you guys very much for playing. And we need to thank Colin and the amazing Austin Film Festival for having us here once again. Guys, thank you very much for having us back each year.

**Craig:** Thank you, Austin.

**John:** It’s so much fun to do the show. Thanks guys.

**Craig:** Thanks guys.

Links:

* Scriptnotes T-shirts are [here](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)! We’ve got [Classic](https://cottonbureau.com/products/scriptnotes-classic) (in light and dark mode), the [Umbrage Strikes Back](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/umbrage_strikes_back_shirt.jpg), and [Umbrage & Reason](https://cottonbureau.com/products/scriptnotes-umbragereason).
* Thank you, [Austin Film Festival](https://www.austinfilmfestival.com/aff/live/)!
* [Scott Frank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Frank)’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0291082/) and on [twitter](https://twitter.com/scottfrank). And don’t miss the [trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMUiRYoc76A) for Godless, his upcoming miniseries on Netflix.
* [Guinevere Turner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinevere_Turner)’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0877587/) and on [twitter](https://twitter.com/turnerguinevere)
* Scott Alexander’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0018735/)
* [Tess Morris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tess_Morris)’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2208729/) and on [twitter](https://twitter.com/TheTessMorris)
* [Lindsay Doran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsay_Doran)’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0233386/)
* [Dana Fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Fox)’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1401416/) and on [twitter](https://twitter.com/inthehenhouse)
* [Megan Amram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Amram)’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1689290/) and on [twitter](https://twitter.com/meganamram)
* Oren Uziel’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3349927/) and on [twitter](https://twitter.com/orenuziel)
* [Jason Fuchs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Fuchs)’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0297229/) and on [twitter](https://twitter.com/JasonIsaacFuchs)
* [Scott Rosenberg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Rosenberg)’s [IMDB](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003298/)
* “The Studio Has Notes” [notes](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/Studio_Has_Notes_AFF.pdf)
* [The Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide!](johnaugust.com/guide)
* [The USB drives!](https://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/scriptnotes-300-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Craig Mazin](https://twitter.com/clmazin) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Find past episodes](http://scriptnotes.net/)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Matthew Chilelli ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_323-v2.mp3).