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The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2017/the-magic-word-is-in-this-episode).

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 312 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast, we’ll be tackling listener questions and follow up on previous discussions. And, if we have time, we may dig into the Steven Soderbergh new venture where he’s back with a new movie and a whole new way to release movies.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. Well, we’ll see if we do have time. We have a lot of questions. And I’m just going to be honest with you. I cheated. I looked ahead. Normally I don’t. Normally I just, you know me. I like to get hit in the face with these things fresh. But I cheated and I looked ahead. Really good questions today.

**John:** Really good questions. What I’m so excited about is we can finally talk about some things that you and I have both known about each other’s work that is now public knowledge. So, I want to start with congratulating you on your HBO series which is about Chernobyl.

**Craig:** Yeah. Yeah. So this has been going on in my life for years. I don’t know, about three years or more now. And this was a project that I pitched a bit ago to HBO. It was the only place I went. I went with Carolyn Strauss, who is one of the executive producers of Game of Thrones. A fantastic person. And former guest of our podcast.

**John:** Very true.

**Craig:** And HBO said, yup, go ahead, write yourself a pilot there buddy. And I did that. And then we brought on another fantastic producer from the UK named — or as they say in England, called — Jane Featherstone, who executive produced Broadchurch among other excellent programs over there. And so we have our little team here. HBO went ahead and gave us the greenlight to make the series. We have a terrific director who is going to be doing all five episodes of this miniseries. There are five of them. I’m writing all the scripts. He’s going to direct all the episodes. His name is Johan Renck. Johan Renck, I don’t know if I mentioned him by name on the podcast, but remember back when I was extolling the virtues of Jack Thorne?

**John:** That’s right. The British writer whose work you loved so much.

**Craig:** Correct. So one of the things that he wrote that I loved so much was a miniseries in the UK called The Last Panthers. And that was directed entirely by Johan Renck. He also has directed Breaking Bad episodes and Walking Dead episodes. Terrific guy. Really, really good filmmaker, so we’re really excited about that. And Jared Harris has signed on to be our — we have basically three leads of the show. He has signed on to be the main — I don’t know, they’re all main because they’re leads, right? He’s signed on to be one of them, which is fantastic because he’s an amazing actor. Did you see The Crown?

**John:** I loved The Crown. And he was fantastic in it.

**Craig:** He was. He was so fantastic that when he died — spoiler alert, the king dies — I was like, oh, I guess I’ll keep watching. But I wish that mostly he was a ghost now and could walk around a lot and talk a lot more. Just make it about him. So, he was amazing in that and he’s always been great. And, of course, he is the son of the late, great Richard Harris, the original Dumbledore.

**John:** Yeah. So you have some quality people involved in your project. And when do you start shooting this thing?

**Craig:** We start shooting it next spring. We need a pretty long run up of prep, because there’s a lot of work to do. But also it’s just the way the calendar worked out. We’re going to be shooting this series in Lithuania and the explosion at Chernobyl took place toward the end of April, April 26, 1986. And the weather in Eastern Europe is sort of rough, rough, rough, rough, rough, hot, rough, rough, rough, rough, rough. So, we kind of need to get to that summertime weather that starts happening in April around there.

There’s a few colder scenes, but it’s really a weather thing. So, that’s when we’ll be starting. The other two leads, I think we are well on the way to casting those. Very exciting names, but I cannot say anything until it is all wrapped up and done.

**John:** And so, Craig, you’re going to be filming in Europe just like I was gone in Europe for the whole year. So you’re going to be there for months making the show and we’re going to have to do this thing with like a nine-hour time delay.

**Craig:** We’re going to have to do the dance again. But I’d like to point out that I have to be there. You whimsically chose to be there. So —

**John:** Yeah, I guess it’s a difference.

**Craig:** It’s a little bit of a difference. By the way, did you see that Jack Thorne has just been hired to rewrite the screenplay for Star Wars Episode VIIII, the one that’s coming after Rian Johnson’s Star Wars?

**John:** Holy Cow. So everything fits together. You’re basically the nexus of all things happening in Hollywood, or really worldwide at this point.

**Craig:** Well, don’t you think it’s a little odd that I just happened to make him my One Cool Thing, and I don’t know, three months later or less, fewer, someone goes, “Hey, you know who we should have to write the next Star Wars movie is Jack Thorne.” I’d like to think that Jack owes me quite a bit. Quite a bit. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah. So it really wasn’t his talent that got you to notice —

**Craig:** No.

**John:** No, it was actually your singling him out that brought him to this acclaim.

**Craig:** Let me put a finer point on it. It was his talent that brought him to my notice. However, no one else appreciates talent. They simply appreciate my appreciation of talent. That’s what I’m saying.

**John:** Yeah I think in Aline Brosh McKenna’s script for Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep’s character makes a similar kind of observation. Like things are already out there, but it’s your shining a light on them that makes them valuable.

**Craig:** It’s my imprimatur. So, Jack, if you’re listening, half. I think that’s fair.

**John:** That’s totally fair. 100%.

**Craig:** Half. Yup. 50% of 100%.

**John:** 50% of 100% is what you’re asking for.

**Craig:** That’s correct. 100% of 50%. And there’s only a 20% chance of that. So, anyway, that is exciting and I’m glad I could finally tell people about it. And for anyone who is wondering, it is going to be historical drama, so it is a dramatization of what actually happened there. It’s not a documentary. It is an as true to history recounting of the events surrounding what led up to Chernobyl, the actual acts in and of itself, and then the terrible things that happened after.

It’s going to be a while before you get to see that on TV, but that’s what we’re heading into. And then you have this wonderful thing happening in London with a fantastic actor.

**John:** That’s right. So, for the last couple months we’ve been trying to put this together. Now we’re finally able to announce it. We are doing Big Fish in London. And so we’re doing a new version of Big Fish that is not what we did on Broadway. It’s not what we did in Boston. It is a third new version of Big Fish. Starting in November in London with Kelsey Grammer starring.

**Craig:** Fantastic. And now Kelsey Grammer is also starring in Billy Ray and Chris Keyser’s show The Last Tycoon. So, I guess Amazon shows they get hiatuses like everybody, so he’s doing this sort of in a hiatus. Is that the idea?

**John:** That’s the idea. So, I’ve talked to Billy and Chris about Kelsey, and they just could not be more enthusiastic about what a great person he is, but the way schedules worked out he’s able to do that, he’s able to do a movie. So, in his break he is doing our show and we are so excited to have him. So we start rehearsals in September. And first performances are in November. So I will be back and forth to London a lot. So, we get to do the time change dance as well.

**Craig:** Oh my god. The good news is that you’ll be back from London right around when I’m going to head out there to Lithuania. So the important thing is that we maintain half a planet between each other at all times.

**John:** 100%. So, in the show notes you’ll see links to the announcement of Craig’s new series, and also where you can buy tickets if you’re in London to see Big Fish with Kelsey Grammer.

**Craig:** And before people write in asking, no, I have not left movies for TV. This is the only TV thing I’ve ever done. And I’m writing movies. Movies are happening, folks. But, you know, figured why not. You know? You can’t do this story — you can’t do it in a movie. It’s too big.

**John:** All right. We’ve got some follow up from previous discussions. First off, Tim writes in with follow up on our discussion with Chris Keyser about the WGA deal. Tim writes, “You guys were talking about the possibility of moving to a weekly rate for screenwriters. We all realize this is tricky for the first draft, but maybe there’s a way to combine the two models. If studios are resistant to returning to two steps as a minimum, we should push for one step plus three weeks with some minimum per week fee. That way it helps solve the problem of producers demanding eight drafts before the studio even sees it. And it’s something the studios are familiar with, as in weeklies.

“Essentially two steps just means rewriting, so it might be worth it to try at least some sort of minimum weeklies after step one.”

Craig, what do you think of this idea?

**Craig:** Well, it certainly has its heart in the heart place, Tim. The idea of providing some sort of relief valve is exactly the kind of solution we need to find here. Now, we always have to run these things through the unintended consequences filter as well as the reality filter. So on the unintended consequences side, what we don’t want to do is get into a rut where people who are perhaps making a bit more than minimum, and that accounts for I think probably most screenwriters, would then just see that amount of this extra relief valve carved out of their quote so that it remains zero sum. And, in fact, nothing really changes.

The other issue is that we don’t also want to suggest that if you have one step and then a three-week, I guess it would be an optional relief valve, or maybe it would be a required relief valve, that the producers would then say, “I got a relief valve and weeks don’t matter. We can just do this now for three, four, or five months.” We know that that’s essentially what they want to do all the time. So, what we’re trying to figure out here really is how to get the producers out of the mindset that this is their one bite at the apple.

This would help, I think, screenwriters somewhat. I don’t know if it would address that core issue. On the reality side of things, there’s a problem here that would make it a tough hill to climb. And it’s this. Studios are very protective about what they call weeklies. In general, they have policies. They don’t hire people on weeklies for development. It is a disastrous precedent for them because all of the big shot writers make more per minute on a weekly than they do on any other kind of structured deal. So the studios limit weeklies essentially to projects that are in production that have been green lit. And those are production rewrites, production weeklies.

If something is in development, and that means to say it’s right on the edge of production where you’ll sometimes also see weeklies being given — they just want to call things polishes, or rewrites, drafts of some kind. They want to get away from that weekly because they find it horrifying and dangerous to spend that much money on something they don’t know if they’re going to make.

Now, what Tim is suggesting here isn’t that people get paid $250,000 for one of those weeks. He’s saying some minimum amount. And, sure, there is a minimum weekly. It’s very tiny, by the way. It’s about $5,800 or something. But, just violating the precedent of handing out weeklies in development will be a serious issue for them. So, couple of challenges here and I’m not sure it gets to the heart of the matter, but it’s well worth looking at as a possibility, even if it is an incremental one.

**John:** I agree it’s well worth looking at. I think what it does try to address is that sense of they keep you in this first draft forever so they can keep getting work out of you. And I think making it so that your deal said like you have a first draft and a guaranteed three weeks of rewriting, that makes it clear like we know that you’re going to be rewriting this draft and we’re going to pay you for rewriting that draft. That’s part of the process. And so studios can feel like, OK, I know I’m going to get this rewritten to my satisfaction because I have these extra three weeks tacked on.

I agree with you about the sense of weeklies as they are currently used in filmmaking are really expensive things that happen during production or right before production where expensive screenwriters are paid a lot of money to come in and fix problems in scripts. This is kind of a different thing. And it’s probably a little bit more like what happens in television right now where writers are kept on as things are going into production or like as the final episodes in a series are shot. So, there’s a precedent for it, but it’s not really a feature precedent right now. So it’s a different way of looking at stuff.

But I think it might be worthwhile, because I think it addresses something you brought up in your initial concern when we were talking with Chris was that that first draft experience is different and special. And to make that all on a time basis thing could be not great. But, the stuff that comes after that first draft, the tweaking, that really does feel kind of like weekly work and if we could get paid for that I think it could improve stuff.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, what it comes down to really is when is that draft completed. And that is the crux of the problem. What we know is that we actually on our own can determine when a draft is delivered by delivering it. So, we’re dealing with a political and human problem here which is that, yes, individually any particular employee has the ability to draw a line in the sand. But our power generally is collective bargaining power. It’s not individual bargaining power. And individually writers are scared to do that when they’re being told that there will be repercussions.

So, we have to figure out how to get to the heart of that. And there are all sorts of solutions. Some try to be magic bullets and some try to be just slight improvements. At this point, we should be talking about all of them.

**John:** I agree. All right. Another bit of follow up. So, three episodes we talked about coincidence and we brought up the new Spider Man. Chris Ford writes in, “It was great to hear a plot point I worked on discussed on the show. I’m one of the writers of Spider Man: Homecoming and a long time listener of the show. I thought a lot about the super-link coincidence and how it could hopefully work. I think two factors helped us.

“We tried to make it absolutely as shocking as fun as possible so that as the audience settled into the idea, they were delighted with the comedy and the drama, and as a result they would accept it. But I think a deeper factor is that the surprise/coincidence like that is a genre element of Spider Man movies. There have been so many at this point that as we wrote it we were always playing against or playing with the genre of ëSpider Man movie,’ almost as clearly as if it was a Western and the audience was expecting a gun fight.”

**Craig:** Well, first of all, Chris, great to hear that you listen to the show and congratulations on the success of Spider Man: Homecoming. As John knows, I have not yet seen the film, but because of this letter I went and cheated and looked at the plot. Sorry about that. But, whatever, I’m a professional man. OK. It’s like two doctors talking to each other. Right? I think I’m allowed this one.

So, anyway, now I know what that coincidence is and I know how it works. And, yeah, it makes total sense. You know, one of the things that you can get out of a late movie coincidence is the coincidence is designed not to shock the audience, or make the movie any easier. The coincidence is designed to shock the hero. And make them realize that the way things were working isn’t in fact the way they’re working at all. And that’s fun for us to watch. We don’t mind that coincidence because it’s filtered through the characters scrambling to handle it. And it is fun.

So, that’s a kind of coincidence that I think you absolutely can get away with. And I think Chris is right that Spider Man movies generally speaking do have a lot of coincidence in them. The first Spider Man movie, the Tobey Maguire one, at least, I believe his best friend’s dad was Norman Osbourne, who became the Green Goblin, which is that’s an early baked in coincidence which is very soap operatic.

I mean, look, you want to talk about soap operatic coincidence, look at Star Wars. There’s a massive galaxy. How many planets are in a galaxy? I don’t know, a billion? Some crazy number. But everybody is basically related and two droids keep showing up everywhere. So, yeah, you know. It’s fine.

This coincidence is certainly less objectionable than any of those.

**John:** Agreed. Well, there’s always that sense, especially in Star Wars, like it’s a giant universe and a very small town. And everyone is always crossing paths with each other. And a listener named Elizabeth wrote in with another follow up about Spider Man. She says, “Number one, not only does it make the situation worse for our protagonist, it makes a dilemma. And that dilemma is deeply thematic. Peter Parker wants to be, is learning to be, and is learning to value being the friendly neighborhood Spider Man.”

They actually say that in the movie. “That means everyone cannot be and will not be anonymous strangers. In fact, it’s already been set up that the reason no one else has seized on this particular bad guy situation is because it is local. Perhaps this even makes the late-breaking coincidence not fully coincidental, or at least more likely.”

So, I think that’s a really good point. The coincidence and sort of the locality of it, like, oh, it’s in my own backyard aspect of it is really a fundamental part of this Spider Man. And so it makes more sense because thematically it all fits in all together.

**Craig:** Yeah. It certainly mitigates it. Certainly. I mean, if you’re telling a story where you have a working class hero facing off against a working class villain, it is not surprising that they are both living in the same working class neighborhood. So, yeah, that all feels perfectly legal to me. Chris, you have received the perfectly legal coincidence stamp from Scriptnotes. This is given out rarely. But, go ahead and put it on the cover of your magazine, Chris Ford Weekly. Seal of approval. It’s a ribbon. It’s a shiny ribbon. Silver. Silver?

**John:** Silver foil-ish. I mean, it’s not actual silver because actual silver would tarnish. But I think it’s definitely the kind of thing you’d want to keep up for a while. And then you’d be thinking about throwing it out, but then you feel really guilty throwing it out. Like it’s a gift you got that you never really kind of wanted. But now you have it. And so that to me is the Premiere Magazine Award that I have in my library. And it’s just this sort of square block of aluminum. So, I forget who the other director was. There was a director who got it the same year. And so Tom Cruise showed up to give it to the director. And they couldn’t find anybody notable to give it to me, so Rawson Thurber ended up giving me my Premiere Magazine award.

**Craig:** Aw. That’s so sweet.

**John:** It was so nice. And Rawson is awesome. But I have this thing, and I don’t really want this thing, but I cannot bring myself to throw it out.

**Craig:** Well, that’s hopefully how Chris feels about — I mean, that’s all we’ve ever asked from anyone who receives this, not that anyone has yet until now, but we just want it to be something that you want to throw out but feel a little weird about throwing out. Yes. A silver foil. That sounds good.

I was going to say we would use a silver-like foil because it’s just cheaper. But I think your tarnish reason also makes sense.

**John:** Yeah. So we want the gift to be made of 50% pride and 50% shame, kind of.

**Craig:** And then I get 50% of both of those. Because that’s what we’ve already established.

**John:** Shame or guilt. Either one works. It’s a fusion. We have a new question from Paul and he wrote in talking about coincidence as well. So let’s start with that. Let’s take a listen to Paul’s question.

Paul: Hi guys. My question is in regards to Episode 309’s discussion on coincidences. I’m currently working on a road trip style script where the main characters go on a journey and meet a selection of other characters along the way who are either a hurt or a hindrance or some sort of complication. Basically they all become relevant to the story, otherwise we wouldn’t meet them. So my question is how do we avoid making each one of these chance meetings feel like a coincidence?”

**John:** Craig, you’ve done a road trip movie. How do you make that not be a bunch of coincidences?

**Craig:** They’re not. By definition. You’re on a road trip. You’re going to run into people. Everybody understands that that’s the nature of a road trip. Coincidence is a problem when you’ve structured a story to be non-random. For instance, bank heist. That is a planned thing. People sit in a room. They talk to each other. They come up with a target. They come up with a plan. They execute the plan. If coincidences happen along the way that will be unsatisfying, because we know that they’ve planned so well.

When you’re on a road trip, you are saying we are embracing the unknown here. There will be things that happen. It is essentially episodic. The way you get out of it being episodic is for the people to meet random people along the way who then through their actions have some kind of thematic relevance and that is at the heart of every road trip movie. Even movies that you don’t think of as road trips, like the Wizard of Oz.

**John:** Agreed.

**Craig:** It’s not coincidence that she meets the Scarecrow. It’s just something that happens. You tend to meet people along the way. And who do you keep talking to when you meet people along the way. You know, in Identity Thief, Jason Bateman meets the hotel clerk. He says three words to her and that’s the end of that because her character isn’t interesting or relevant. But then they meet other people who are and they become a huge part of the journey because the characters perceive something in them that is relevant.

So I don’t think that there is any issue whatsoever about coincidence there because that’s not what coincidence is.

**John:** I agree with you. So, the middle section of Go is a road trip, so the four guys are on a trip to Vegas. And what I think is crucial about it is the people they meet, they are meeting because they are taking actions that are bringing them to face these people. And that because of the things they’re doing, those people may be following up on them later on. And there’s repercussions and consequences of the things they’ve done earlier. But it’s not coincidence that they are in those places. They are deliberately going to those places. They’re meeting these people because they have chosen to enter these locations and that’s why it’s happening.

So, I can understand Paul’s worry because you know a lot of times it can just feel like a series of things, one after the other. That’s general plotting though. That’s trying to make sure that it feels like the characters are in charge of this road trip and that it’s not just a movie throwing a bunch of stuff at characters.

If a bunch of people walk through the door, that’s going to feel more coincidence. It’s going to feel more episodic. That’s the challenge you always have with movies that are sometimes set in one location. And it’s just a bunch of people walking through the door. Clerks could feel that way if it weren’t a great movie. And we’ve seen the bad version of Clerks a lot, where it’s just random wacky people just coming through the door.

**Craig:** Yeah. Then it’s a long sitcom. And sitcoms are amazing for 22 minutes on your television, but they don’t work on the big screen because you’re demanding something that’s a little more whole and completed. A narrative that moves in a circle and ends.

You’re absolutely right. If you’re going on a journey, theoretically you have some purpose for the journey. That’s what’s driving you through. It would be a coincidence if on your way you randomly ran into your own mom. That’s a weird coincidence. That’s bad. But, just meeting the people that you meet, and then choosing to continue to talk to them, that’s not coincidence at all.

**John:** No. The other situation which could occur, and this may be what Paul is bringing up, is you might have characters you meet and then you see them again later on and it feels really coincidental that they’re still on the same trajectory as you are. Yeah, be mindful of that. If there’s no reason why we would see that character again, you seem like you’re heading in different directions, there will need to be a cause and effect thing happening there for like why they’re suddenly on the same path.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So do work on that.

**Craig:** Yeah. For instance, in Identity Thief, they have a random encounter with Eric Stonestreet, the character that Eric Stonestreet plays. And that scene has relevance for Melissa McCarthy’s character and it makes her make a decision. And that impacts the course of her journey with Jason and her relationship with Jason and the choices she makes at the end. We see Eric Stonestreet one more time when bad guys are trying to find Melissa McCarthy and they basically put together clues that lead them to him. But that’s it. If he had shown up again randomly where they end up eventually it would have made no sense. It would have been a coincidence.

**John:** Absolutely. Do you want to take the next question?

**Craig:** Sure, Macaar writes, “I’ve just completed a first draft of a spec feature and I’m now preparing to write a second draft. I’ve never done a full on second draft before, so I’m not sure where to start, both logistically and artistically. Do I make a new document and start from page one, rewriting everything I’ve written before? Or I do just fine tune the material that I already have? What should be my main goals for the second draft? I’ve identified problems with the script, but I’m afraid that once I start rewriting the script I might lose sight of my original intention and the script will turn into something completely different from the story I wanted to tell. How does one maintain the integrity of their initial idea while working on a second draft? Are there any additional nuggets of wisdom you could give me before I embark on this journey?”

John, it’s nugget time.

**John:** It is nugget time. So rewriting is crucial and fundamental and the second draft is one of the hardest steps I find. Because often the second draft is where things kind of get worse, because you are trying to take this thing which was your initial idea and bend it into a new shape. And you’re reluctant to get rid of some things. You are still grappling with what you actually wrote versus what you meant to write. So, some general tips I can offer you is go in with a plan. And so I always approach a rewrite, a big rewrite after the first draft with this is what I’m trying to do. And I will type it up if I need to. Like these are the things I’m going to try to do. This is my intention with this draft. These are the characters I’m going to focus on. This is stuff I’m getting rid of.

If it’s a big rewrite, what I will tend to do is start with a new document and copy and paste in the scenes that are staying, even if I’m going to rewrite them, but if there’s stuff that’s going away all together, I won’t copy them into the new document. I will leave holes for where those are going and work on it that way. Very, very rarely I have I actually just like kind of started over where I have the script sitting off to the side and I’m typing a whole new script. That kind of rarely is necessary for me. But once or twice in my career I had to do that, where I’m really starting over from scratch.

What I would urge you not to do is just a Save As and it’s a new script and then you’re just sort of scrolling through it. Because I find you will just change the commas, and you won’t do the real hard work you need to do in really breaking apart the script and putting it back together properly.

**Craig:** That’s all excellent advice. Macaar, you’re asking great questions and they are reflective of a writer’s spirit. You’re panicking a little bit and you’re feeling a little overwhelmed. And that’s completely normal. John is absolutely right. The second draft is the danger zone. Which means, therefore, that you have permission to go backwards. That is not only normal, it’s probably more likely than not to occur.

With that said, when you ask do I rewrite everything I’ve written before, or just fine tune the material I already have, there is no answer we can give you. That is your answer to provide. Because you have to figure out what the purpose of the rewrite is. You’re saying what should be my main goals for the second draft. Your main goal is to have a script that is better. That is vague.

So, you can’t just start rewriting because you’re supposed to. Nobody would know what to do with that. Nor can you just start rewriting because a bunch of people told you things to do that you don’t believe in, or understand, or feel. Before you start to write your second draft you need to absorb what is actionable, what you agree with, what you don’t, challenge all of it until you feel it. In other words, don’t start writing your second draft until you know what to write. Then suddenly it’s not so scary, because now it’s not rewriting, or writing, or any of that stuff, and the mechanics of new files or old files, that will become apparent to you because you’ll know what to write, so you’ll follow the path of least resistance there. And you’ll start writing.

You are well within your bounds to be afraid that you will lose sight of things. And, again, you have permission. I am granting you permission. You have a silver foil seal of permission from Scriptnotes. We’ve got to open up a seal factory.

**John:** Totally. 100%. So they’ll be available on the store by the end of the week.

**Craig:** And we’ve got to make sure that people know like when we do open up the seal factory, we’ve got to be really clear about what kind of seals we’re talking about here.

**John:** When we break the seal on the seal factory we have to make sure that they — we could have Seal come for the ribbon cutting when we break the seal factory.

**Craig:** That’s not a bad idea. That’s not a bad idea. So, anyway, Macaar, all these questions are great, but I guess the biggest nugget I have for you is figure out what you want to write before you start. Vis-a-vis, the script you have and the script you want to have. Don’t start writing until you generally know, otherwise you will wander. Oh boy will you wander.

**John:** I agree. Our next question comes from Samantha in Brooklyn. She writes. “Simple question. Does the fact that I’m a transgender woman in my late 30s, by the way, hurt my chances of becoming a working screenwriter? Thanks for all your honest, sometimes difficult to hear advice. I feel you guys have given me a more realistic sense of what’s probable regarding breaking in. I look forward to your candid response.”

**Craig:** Well, Samantha, no doubt you did not choose to be transgender, but if you had you couldn’t have picked a better time as far as I’m concerned. In Hollywood there is an enormous awareness of transgender issues and I think there’s also for the first time in as long as I’ve been working here a legitimate acted upon desire to start varying the kinds of people that are hired to do work and that doesn’t just extend to gender, or to race, or to age, which were the prior categories and limited to those, but also gender identity and orientation as well.

And with that in mind, I would say that the fact that you’re transgender is not at all a hindrance, nor should I add is it a state that requires you to write transgender themed movies or movies that feature transgender characters. Write whatever the hell you want. If I were your agent, I would advertise to potential employers that you are transgender because you bring a perspective that is limited in this town and you bring it at a time when there is a great appetite for it. In particular, I think you would be a very attractive candidate for television rooms, because they have just more potential for diverse hiring since they have rooms of people, whereas movies just have one.

That said, if you want to write movies, you write movies. But, no, I don’t think it hurts your chances even in the slightest. John?

**John:** I wonder if we’re painting this as too rosy of a picture as like too white guys in Hollywood saying like —

**Craig:** You’re white. You’re white, dude. David Duke tells me I am not white. And I, as you know, I listen to David Duke.

**John:** As two cis white guys, I’m gay, you’re straight, so I would say being gay in my situation has not hindered me whatsoever in my thing, but that’s not the same experience as being transgender. So, I can’t pretend that I know what the obstacles could be. And so I would agree with Craig that this probably the best time that has ever happened for transgender writers who are trying to break into Hollywood, but I don’t know what some of the obstacles could be that I’m just not seeing. So, I just want to make sure that I’m acknowledging that we don’t know sort of everything that could possibly be out there.

**Craig:** I do.

**John:** Oh, you do? Craig has magic knowledge.

**Craig:** I have a palantir.

**John:** Yes, he just peers into it.

**Craig:** Yes, I do. The great eye.

**John:** But, I will say please don’t use the possibility of obstacles ahead be any sort of deterrence from trying to do it. And I think that could be the biggest obstacle is your own worry that there are going to be walls put up in front of you. So, I would say go for it, do it.

You do bring up like you’re in your 30s, and in some ways I think that could be more of a factor than you being transgender, just because as we’ve talked about before a lot of sort of getting started in Hollywood is that sort of very beginning meetings and rooms and all the sort of grunt work of getting started. And it’s a little easier in your 20s than your 30s, but I don’t think it’s going to stop you.

**Craig:** Yeah, I agree with you on that for sure. If you’re looking at three factors here that Samantha is describing, one is being transgender. One is being in her late 30s. And one is living in Brooklyn. Late 30s and living in Brooklyn probably have more of a negative impact on her prospects than being transgender.

And, you’re right, I’m guessing here. I just see an enormous amount of good will and open-mindedness right now in Hollywood and I’d like to think, perhaps I am being rosy, but I would like to think that being transgender would not negatively impact Samantha’s prospects.

Samantha, here’s another thing to consider, particularly if you write features. You can write a spec script and if it’s awesome it doesn’t really matter what name you are, what your gender status is. It doesn’t even matter if you’re a human as opposed to some kind of weird sentient rock. A great script is a rare thing. And people will want it. And unlike most gigs in the world where you first have to show yourself and then work to prove yourself, in this gig you can hand somebody paper anonymously, essentially, because they don’t know who you are, even if you give them your real name it’s anonymous to them. And you are judged by the work. You could leave a name off entirely. Put a pseudonym out. You could do whatever you want. But that’s the cool thing about it.

Then, you know, look, people then have to eventually meet you and at that point your identity collides with the reality of people’s opinions and observations, but I remain optimistic and also, according to David Duke, not white.

**John:** This past week I was talking with a young writer and she was describing the script she was writing and she was super bright. I was pretty confident that she is going to succeed in the business. And she said she was applying to some diverse writer programs, which I also encourage her to do. And we were talking about the things she was going to write next. And I strongly encouraged her to write something that had a central character that felt like her. Because there’s something wonderful when you sit down with a writer and you feel — you’ve read their voice and then you meet the person and you feel like, oh, that voice really connects well with this person. And I think that’s one of the things about Lena Dunham’s work that is great, because you meet her and you read her work. It’s like, oh, I can see the match up there. And so while I think it’s great to have a range of writing that shows your diverse sides, if Samantha is working on a new script, like a third script, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to have a character in there that feels like Samantha, because then when they’re sitting across from you to talk about this great script that they loved, they can sort of see you in that. And it feels like they kind of know you before they’ve called you in for a meeting.

**Craig:** Yeah. That can be very useful. It is a narrower target to hit for sure to be the kind of writer who says, “Don’t worry about me. Worry about what I write, because I can write anything. Or, I can write a wide variety of things that aren’t necessarily connected to me. I can be essentially that multi-tool weapon that studios are always looking for.” And that is a much narrower target to hit. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a tough one. But, if you can hit it, then you become a very — you know, like for instance, John Lee Hancock. It’s interesting. You look at John Lee Hancock’s work, when he directs, you see him in it. Right? John Lee is kind of that, he’s sort of laconic, Midwestern/Southern spirit of America kind of guy. You feel it. When he’s writing, he writes everything. Everything. So he is that multi-pronged weapon.

It depends on who you are as a writer. But, look, at that point you’ve got a high class problem there, kid.

**John:** Yeah. Like they only want you to be one thing, while if they want you be that one thing, that’s awesome for you.

**Craig:** Yep. As long as they’re paying you, you know.

**John:** So Mark wrote in with a question. Let’s take a listen.

Mark: My question has to do with screenplay competitions. I’ve placed in about a dozen competitions now with two different scripts, ranging from a first place finish in a fairly prestigious competition to quarter finalist placings in what you could call tier two or even tier three screenwriting competitions. My question is this: how much weight do these placings carry when I go to cold query my scripts later this year? Can I leverage these placings to help me get a foot in the door, or is the industry kind of wary and jaded when you bring up screenplay competitions? Also, would it be best to be more selective and only mention the more prestigious placings, or should I just go and list every single award I’ve gotten when I go to pitch and query?

**John:** Craig, what’s your advice for Mark about his screenplay competition awards?

**Craig:** Well, before I get into the advice, I have a question for you, John. And for all of our listeners at home. I say query. Mark says query. I hear that a lot. Which pronunciation do you use?

**John:** I say query like it’s the second half of inquiry.

**Craig:** Yeah. So do I. I wonder if it’s a regional thing. Anyway, Mark, I’ve procrastinated long enough. Here’s what I think. Most competitions, and when I say most I mean essentially all of them, are useless. They will not help discriminate you from other writers, nor will they make your screenplay inherently more attractive to anybody. By and large, people do not care. There are so many of these things. They are mostly designed to take your money. You yourself say that you’ve placed in, or even won, what did he say numerous of them? So, what does that tell you? The deal with screenplay competitions is the more you mention them, the more I think frankly amateurish you seem. Certainly saying that I finished in the quarter finals of the blah-blah-blah screenplay competition only makes you sound bad, as far as I’m concerned.

You know, if you say, look, this script has won first place in every single competition I’ve entered in. Here’s a list of 20 competitions it’s won first place in, then I would be like, well, maybe this is pretty good.

**John:** I agree.

**Craig:** You know, but that’s not the case. If you have performed very well in the Nicholl, I think that is well worth mentioning. If you win the Austin, that’s probably worth mentioning. But by and large, no. I think it’s far better to let the script speak for itself and not attempt to guild it with the dubious lily of screenplay competition laurels.

**John:** So, Craig and I don’t actually encounter query letters very often in our lives. And so we’re not people who would be seeing this letter that has all the awards attached to it. At some point we need to have a manager on who is like signing new clients to get a sense of whether that matters to him or to her. Because I don’t think it probably does matter. And I certainly wouldn’t list everything you’ve done. Like only hit the very, very highlights.

Like the same if you’re doing a resume, you don’t put everything on your resume, you just put the things that are applicable to the person you’re sending the resume to. And in this case, if there’s a recent award for a thing and it’s a really prestigious thing, highlight that. But otherwise I wouldn’t.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, you got to remember, Mark, that you’re sending your letter to somebody that accepts them. Everybody else that’s sending a letter to them has also entered a dozen competitions, almost certainly. So, letter after letter they’re being told look how special I am. Meaning none of us are special. These competitions are meaningless. Everybody has been a semi-finalist in four of them at this point. So, you know, they’re not looking for people that can do decently well in Single A baseball. There’s only one league here. That’s it. Majors. That’s it. No Minors. So either you are killing it out there and just crushing your competition, and hearing their lamentations, or don’t talk about it.

**John:** Mm. Yeah.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Do you want to take the next question here?

**Craig:** Timothy McGherry, that’s a great name. That’s a good song name.

**John:** 100%.

**Craig:** Timothy McGherry writes, “A Reddit user posted the following question.” Hang on, John. Hang on. I want you to grip your seat tightly now, because here we go. “So I was talking to my buddies about that screenwriting thing and turns out one of them tried this a while before quitting. He wrote a script and sent it to a few contests but didn’t place. He then told us we shouldn’t bother anyway. There’s a conspiracy to keep us out. I mean, why do you think some writers get paid over a million dollars and more for a screenplay while so many others struggle and have lousy day jobs. Well, there is a secret password you have to write within a script…”

By the way, this isn’t me talking, this is still the question. “…there is a secret password you have to write within a script and it automatically gets in front of people. Only a few people know it. It’s handed down within families who are extremely connected. They’re all trained to look for that password. Readers. Contest judges. And so on. And if they find it, you sell your screenplay for a million dollars. Otherwise, you’re rejected. And no matter how much you try, if you don’t know that password you’ll never break in. Anyway, that’s what my buddy said, and he’s a screenwriter. He knows what he’s talking about. Might just be a theory though. So, what do you think?”

Uh, John, this is provocative because we have been sitting on this for how many years now?

**John:** Well, it’s been 311 episodes, so even before the podcast, because you and I learned the password quite early on.

**Craig:** Yeah, of course, because your father was very well connected. What was his occupation again?

**John:** He was an engineer. But he was the engineer who actually invented movies.

**Craig:** Ah. And my parents were public school teachers, but my great-great-grandfather I think came over on a boat next to the boat that had Carl Laemmle on it.

**John:** Yeah. That would be amazing that he was that old and movies have only been around for a hundred years. But that’s how the conspiracy works.

**Craig:** Well, that’s how — Jews are all born elderly. That’s just a fact. And also we’re not white, according to David Duke.

Look, Timothy, this is the dumbest shit I have ever heard in my life. And normally I’m amused by these things. But it’s actually fascinating because it’s so perfectly stupid. All right, let’s just run it down. Your buddy tried this screenwriting thing a little while before quitting. But later you appeal to authority and say, well, you know, he must know what he’s talking about, he’s a screenwriter. No he’s not.

**John:** He knows what he’s talking about because he’s a failed screenwriter. So, yes.

**Craig:** No, he’s just some guy. Now, let’s analyze this. Let’s play the what-if-it-were-true game, because it is kind of fascinating. Let’s put aside the stupidity of the families and the secret password. Let’s just say that there is some way that you can automatically get a million dollars for a screenplay. How do you think business works? Because, see, the Hollywood I know, they will pinch pennies into powder. The last thing in the world they will ever do is give anyone a damn break with money. They’re brutal about it. I’m not suggesting that there isn’t occasional nepotism. There is. Maybe two people being roughly equal for the same job that actually has no real qualifications other than access, like internship or assistant, or PA, you know, starter positions.

But things like buying a screenplay, let me tell you something. If they grind us on every penny, I’m pretty sure they’re going to grind you, too. They’re not just going to go, oh shit, he put the word BALONEY in and he spelled it BOLOGNA, oh man, he knew the password. All right. Write a check. Brenda? Brenda, go get business affairs. Yeah, we got a bologna script. Yeah, no, he spelled it right. Yeah, a million. A million. Write it to, shit, Timothy McGherry. Who does he know? [laughs]

Now I want it to be true.

**John:** Yeah. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if it were true? The fascinating thing though is how do the studios decide who gets to write the check to Tim McGherry? I’m sorry, Tim, we know it’s not you. You were just asking the question.

**Craig:** It’s not you. No, you don’t know the password. And it’s not really bologna.

**John:** Who gets to write the McGherry check to buy the bologna script for a million dollars? You know what? I bet the all meet at the secret room. They meet at the secret room and they figure out who is going to pay the million dollars so that they can buy the script. And then make the — it makes sense. I don’t know why I was thinking — I was just thinking aloud.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’ll tell you the part that actually is a little concerning to me and now I’m starting to think that maybe this isn’t true. I know obviously it is true. Of course there’s a secret password worth a million dollars. But I can’t get over this one little problem, John. He says there’s a secret password and they are all trained to look for it. Password readers: contest judges and so on.

**John:** Oh, yeah, so why aren’t they using it?

**Craig:** Thank you. If they all know the password, why aren’t they using it and getting a million dollars? So my theory is that there are other families that are just essentially through time are part of a secret order, like the Knights Templar, and they are just sworn to live a life of penury. I mean, they are contest judges. They don’t get paid that much. But that’s their lot in life. They get it. They’re like, look, my point is to live in poverty and then if I read the password, someone else gets a million dollars. Yeah. I’m not sure how else it would work.

**John:** Yeah. I mean, like there’s essentially two classes of people. Like there’s the class of people who are just the reader types, sort of like the paroles, and then there’s an upper class that actually get to sell the scripts for a million dollars. But they’re sort of probably just like trading scripts among themselves for a million dollars each because they already have all the money.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** I don’t know. I just sort of feel like this Reddit user — it’s not stated, but I think they think that the word is a Jewish word. I just feel like there’s some sort of secret thing about like these are the people who control all the purse strings. There’s something hidden back there.

**Craig:** Yeah. This thing is definitely a one-nut-hair away from being some sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. Yeah. Look, it would be nice if the world functioned this way. It would certainly explain failure, wouldn’t it? Because as Tim says his buddy mentioned why do some writers get paid over a million dollars and more for a screenplay while so many others struggle and have lousy day jobs.

One answer, far-fetched and absurd, is that it’s a very hard thing to do, even though it looks easy. And so very few people are worth a million dollars or more. And most people aren’t. And so must stay in their lousy day jobs. But I grant you that’s far-fetched. Far more likely that it’s just that a few people know the magic password. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** This was real.

**John:** It was real. I also feel like this Reddit user needs to meet our previous questioner, Mark, who like won all those awards and is wondering should I say that on my awards. Because like he should have gotten all the million dollars already and yet he’s not. So something about the system is broken.

**Craig:** Yeah. Like he’s been passed through. So the scribes of the Order of Scriptus say the password obviously in his material because they read it and they gave him an award for it.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So where’s the million dollars?

**John:** I don’t know. I think the million dollars is behind the gate in the library in Old Town. And so at some point you’ve got to pick the lock and get in there and get the secret book that has the password in it.

**Craig:** Right. Right. Well, that may be the missing piece of the puzzle here. It’s all sliding into place.

**John:** That’s what we try to do. We try to answer questions and really reveal the secret passwords behind the secrets of screenwriting.

**Craig:** Yeah. If you guys were listening to this in your car and you’re contemplating driving into an abutment, don’t. I understand the impulse. But don’t. Because this will pass. Don’t worry.

**John:** We have time for one more short question. So let’s do one short question. Alan from South Carolina writes in, “Not being in LA, would you advise getting an attorney that is closer to my location, or work with one that is in Los Angeles?”

**Craig:** I would recommend that you work with one that is in Los Angeles if you have access to one. All things being equal. The entertainment attorneys in Los Angeles have generally speaking far more experience handling the kinds of transactional agreements that we get into with studios, producers, executives, and so on. And they also almost certainly will have better relationships with agencies in terms of helping you maybe get an agent. Better relationships with the business affairs people.

You know, one thing that helps you negotiate a deal is knowing what other people like you have gotten for something similar. Well, they tend to know. And probably attorneys in South Carolina, simply by dint of not having as much exposure to our business, would not.

So, I would go with LA, all things being equal.

**John:** 100%. I think you want somebody who does this every day. And so you want an entertainment attorney. The entertainment attorneys you’re going to find are going to be in Los Angeles. Sometimes in New York, but really Los Angeles. That’s the one you want.

And don’t worry that you’re not sitting down face-to-face with this person. I almost never see my attorney. It’s all done by emails and phone calls. It’s absolutely fine. So, important to check references on an attorney, but it’s going to be fine. Pick an attorney who is in Los Angeles. You’re going to be much, much happier.

**Craig:** Agreed. And — and when you do find that person, give them the password.

**John:** Yeah, yeah, it’s crucial because otherwise they won’t be able to negotiate for the million dollars.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** It’s time for our One Cool Things. So my One Cool Thing, actually have two, but my first one is a follow up One Cool Thing. So, Brent Warkentine writes, “I started listening to your podcast about a year ago. Love the info so much that I shot a PSA based on John’s One Cool Thing in Episode 267, How to Tell a Mother Her Child is Dead. Thank you for bringing this op-ed to our attention.

So, Brent sent in a link to this PSA he shot and it is terrific. And so if you remember the One Cool Thing, it’s this article that describes how an emergency room doctor prepares for telling a mother that her child has died. And this guy, Brent, he shot a PSA that’s all based around it. Sort of uses the words from it. And it’s so well done. So, congratulations, Brent. I think it’s a really great use of this idea and it ends up becoming a very effective gun violence message to send out there. So, really well done.

**Craig:** What kind of name do you think Warkentine is?

**John:** I don’t know. It sounds like it could be Middle Earthian?

**Craig:** Right. It’s possible that he is a Halfling.

**John:** Hmm-mm.

**Craig:** Possible. I don’t know. There’s something vaguely Finnish about it to me. It’s probably not. Warkentine. That’s an interesting one.

**John:** You know who knows? Brent Warkentine knows where it comes from. So, Brent, write in and let us know where it comes from.

**Craig:** But please do include the password or it goes to spam.

**John:** It goes to spam. My second and new One Cool Thing is Mouth Time by Reductress. So, it’s a podcast that Craig will never listen to.

**Craig:** Never.

**John:** But if he did listen to it he would love it. And so the folks at Reductress, and Craig, do you read Reductress? It’s sort of like The Onion for women’s stories.

**Craig:** Like Jezebel meets The Onion?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Got it. No, I don’t.

**John:** So good. But now you will. It’s so well done. So two of the editors, Nicole Silverberg and Rachel Wenitsky, they play these characters Quenn and Dikoda and they are talking through their days and sort of the things going on in their lives and it is so pitch perfect and wonderful. And like when I say pitch perfect, it is vocally fried pitch perfect.

And so the characters that they create, they’re kind of like Romy and Michelle from Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion, but they’re just great. And I just started listening to the podcast. I think it’s fantastic. So I would strongly encourage people to check it out. It is called Mouth Time with Reductress.

**Craig:** Quenn is hysterical. That name is brilliant. Quenn. Well, my One Cool Thing is for those of you who like me are avowed fans of The Room games. We are up to The Room 3. I believe Room 4 has been announced and I’m super-duper excited for that. But you know you’ve got to wait, because those games, they take a while to make. And, you know, it’s just one of those deals where at this point I mark my life in terms of time between Room games, and Bethesda games.

By the way, you realize do you know when Skyrim came out, John? Do you remember?

**John:** 2012?

**Craig:** Close. It was November 11, 2011. 11/11/11. It’s been freaking six years.

**John:** Yeah. And I’ve played the remastered version and it’s just still terrific.

**Craig:** It’s still so good. I can’t wait till they get going with Elder Scrolls 6. Anyway, while you’re waiting for The Room, there is, well, I don’t know how else to put it except there is a rip off. And generally speaking I’m not a huge fan of rip-offs. Rips-off? I’m not a huge fan of rips-off. But this is actually very well done. The knock on it is that is just straight up rip of The Room, down to the special lens that lets you see things. They add a couple of other little features, but it’s just Room-like in its sound, its design, its playability. The whole thing is just look at us, we’re The Room.

It’s called The House of Da Vinci. So, if you are a Room addict like me and you need a quick fix, something to bridge you over until you get to Room 4, you know what? House of Da Vinci, they’ve earned your four bucks. I hope they kick some of it back to I think it’s Fireproof games that makes The Room, because it really is just shameless. It’s just a shameless rip-off. But it’s very well done for shameless rip-offs.

**John:** Very nice. I shall check it out. That is our show for this week. So our show is produced by Carlton Mittagakus. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Rajesh Naroth.

If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions like the ones we answered today. For short questions, I’m on Twitter @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. We are on Facebook. Search for Scriptnotes Podcast.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts at Scriptnotes. And if you’re there, please leave us a rating or a review. That’s so lovely and it makes us happy when we read them. Craig doesn’t read them, but that’s fine.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That is also where you’ll find transcripts. We get them up about three, or four, or five days after the episode airs. If you read them really carefully, you can find the secret password buried in them. But you have to read through every transcript —

**Craig:** Every single one.

**John:** There’s some algorithms and like you have to print them out and draw things between them. And if you have string and pushpins that will help you triangulate what the secret password is.

**Craig:** And you’re going to try it, so don’t bother. It’s not UMBRAGE. Duh. We’re not stupid, OK? Otherwise we would be out of cash.

That said, there is a secret password buried in there. You get a million bucks. Your movie gets made. You know, just like the way John and I did. That’s how we got started.

**John:** You know, that system that was doing all the sort of deep machine learning on scripts, like the one that we sort of savagely tore apart and Franklin ended up taking down off the Black List. I bet that one I’m sure figured out the secret password and that’s how they got their VC money.

**Craig:** Oh god. It’s all making sense. It’s all making sense. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah. You can find that episode and all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. It is $1.99 a month. We also have a few more of the USB drives. They’re at store.johnaugust.com.

**Craig:** How much do I get from that?

**John:** You get nothing. Craig gets nothing from the John August Store. Not a bit.

**Craig:** That’s interesting.

**John:** Not a bit.

**Craig:** Well. Hmm.

**John:** But, he got a million dollars because he knew the password, so it all worked out.

**Craig:** Boom!

**John:** Boom! See you next week.

**Craig:** Bye.

Links:

* [‘Chernobyl’ Miniseries Set By HBO & Sky](http://deadline.com/2017/07/hbo-sky-chernobyl-miniseries-starring-the-crown-jared-harris-tca-1202136735/)
* Carolyn Strauss on [Scriptnotes, 127](http://johnaugust.com/2014/women-and-pilots)
* [Big Fish The Musical starring Kelsey Grammer is on its way to London](https://www.theotherpalace.co.uk/whats-on/big-fish-the-musical)
* Scriptnotes, 310: [What’s in the WGA Deal](http://johnaugust.com/2017/whats-in-the-wga-deal)
* Scriptnotes, 309: [Logic and Gimmickry](http://johnaugust.com/2017/logic-and-gimmickry)
* A Reddit user asks: [Is there a secret password for success?](https://www.reddit.com/r/Screenwriting/comments/6pu0px/is_there_a_secret_password_for_success/)
* [Every Three Hours](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X_XY-vWzKs&feature=youtu.be) on YouTube
* [Mouth Time with Reductress](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mouth-time-with-reductress/id1093619338?mt=2) on iTunes
* [The House of Da Vinci](http://www.thehouseofdavinci.com/)
* [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 Rajesh Naroth ([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_312.mp3).

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

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 309 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast, we will be standing at the whiteboard to look at how story logic in our scripts may function. And then we’ll sit down to tackle some scenes and look at a few tricks to keep them interesting. And if we have time we may even answer a few more listener questions.

**Craig:** I love those.

**John:** Sound good Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah. I think everything you just said sounded fantastic. No notes, John. No notes.

**John:** No notes. Fantastic. I love those. Before we even get started, yesterday as we were recording this the Emmy nominations came out. And I want to rant just for like maybe two minutes about Emmy nominations.

**Craig:** Go.

**John:** Not about any person who was nominated or not nominated, but the whole idea of snubs. I am so frustrated with the concept of snubs, that people who did not get nominations should feel especially bad or weird. That we need to single out the shows that did not get nominated. I find it incredibly frustrating. And I don’t know, how do you feel about that, Craig? You don’t care about awards at all, do you?

**Craig:** Well, I don’t, but you are touching a certain nerve here. And that’s — it’s not enough to say here are a bunch of people that have put their hearts and souls into making things. And when I say a bunch of people, I mean everybody that made something that year. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to pit them all together, make them compete, pick five of the best ones, then make them compete on television. And then one of them wins. It’s not enough for that. Apparently, also then you have to talk about who you said — no — you don’t get it. I’m snubbing you. No.

And now obviously no one is really actively snubbing anyone, but it’s just the media. Yuck.

**John:** Yes. So the problem I have with snubbing is like snubbing implies intention. That you deliberately did not invite someone to the party. A conscious choice was made. But, of course, a group of people all voting independently cannot make a conscious choice as one body. They can simply choose certain shows, but they cannot deliberately exclude somebody.

And so when I see intention applied to any group of voters, I find it incredibly frustrating because all people have is their own individual things. So the whole idea of snubs just drives me just really bonkers. If you’re going to make a list of other great shows that didn’t get nominations, I guess that’s fine. Because if you’re trying to single out that The Leftovers is a brilliant show, fantastic. But if you want to make us feel about The Leftovers, or feel like The Leftovers was less good because it didn’t get on that list, I’m angry with you.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree. And I think this is really just a manufactured story to sell clicks. That’s all. I mean, the whole thing, look, award shows of course exist to sell advertising. They don’t exist to actually award people. I mean, if you wanted to award people you would just do it I suppose. But primarily this is a business and they’re selling ads and they’re making money off of a show.

The secondary predatory business of making money selling ads off of things that talk about the thing that makes money from selling ads, that’s the industry that creates the snub. And people click, oh, because you know, ooh, someone in Hollywood got a snub. First of all, snub is a great word. Love that word. Just the sound of it is lovely. Snub.

**John:** It is nice.

**Craig:** Snub.

**John:** So that’s my bit of frustration. Let’s get to our actual real show. Some follow up. Our live show is coming up super, super soon and we have another guest to announce. Liz Meriwether. She is the creator and showrunner of New Girl on Fox which is entering its final season. She will be joining me, and Craig, and Megan Amram on July 25 in Hollywood. There are still some tickets left as we’re recording this. I don’t know. I need to check in with the Writers Guild Foundation to see how many are left. But if you would like to come join us, you should come join us in Hollywood for that special night.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So July 25, 8pm. Come there and see us. Talk with these two incredibly talented writers about sort of whatever. We don’t have an agenda yet.

**Craig:** No, but I will say that Liz is fantastic. Obviously I’ve already talked about Megan, my cousin. But Liz is great. You shouldn’t miss this, honestly. This is great. And it doesn’t matter if you write features or you write television. These are just two very smart people who are going to have I think tremendous insight on what’s going on. You know, I like the fact that we’re getting younger guests, also. You know, not that there’s anything wrong with bring Larry Kasdan on every now and again, but younger writers, they’re plugged in. They know what’s up.

**John:** Well, I mean, Liz Meriwether is younger than we are, but she’s also been running an incredibly popular TV show on Fox for five season now, six seasons now. So, she knows more than we do about things. And that’s my favorite kind of guest is someone who knows much more about something than I do.

**Craig:** 100%. Otherwise it’s just the two of us sitting in judgment.

**John:** Yeah. But that’s also good. But it’s not as exciting.

**Craig:** I kind of like those. Actually, those are my favorite episodes. [laughs] Yeah. I like those.

**John:** All right, so our first main topic today is about story logic. And this came up this week because so I just got back from Paris. I’ve been super jet-lagged. I’m over most of my jetlag. But this past week I went to a book signing for my friend. Julie Buxbaum has a new book out. It just came this last week, called What to Say Next. And she did a reading at the Grove, at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove. And it was my first time going to one of those events. It was cool to see how that all works.

And I was talking with another author there who was describing her new book and it’s a middle grade title. And she was wrestling with the mystery, she said. And she was talking about sort of the story logic. And we’ve been focused so much on character and motivation and other things in recent episodes, I thought we might step back a little bit and talk about the things that actually are just kind of plot. It’s the way in which pieces of information get out there and sort of how the overall shape of the plot and story work, which is sort of not always exactly driven by what the characters are doing. It’s sort of decisions that the author is making way ahead of time.

And that can be just puzzle work. It can actually a very different kind of process than sort of the writing on the page. So, today I want to talk a little bit about the mechanics and specifically one thing that I find incredibly frustrating and I think if we can focus on it you can often solve a lot of your story problems this way. Which is the difference between coincidence, correlation, and causation. The three Cs. And how you can use them to your best benefit in your stories.

**Craig:** Well this is going to be good. I mean, I will take a little something you said there and expand on it slightly. When you say it requires a slightly different way of thinking, I think it requires a completely different way of thinking. I mean, there’s this creative work that we do that’s rooted in a certain empathy. We create a human being in our minds. We must empathize with them, walk in their shoes, see the world through their eyes. Imagine how they react to the things that we throw at them.

It’s very emotional and it’s very empathetic. A lot of times we think of that as the creative meat of what we do. But then there is this other stuff that’s math. Story logic and the creation of the hardware of a plot is math. And it is a puzzle and it is a different part of your brain. I think it’s one of the reasons why so many people want to do what we do and yet so few ultimately get there. Because you can’t just be good at one of these things. You have to be good at all of them. And if you can’t quite get your hand around how to machine a plot, you end with a mess. And it is strangely the first thing that people will pick on when they walk out of a movie or they turn off a television episode. They say, “Why did that even have to happen? Couldn’t that person just have talked to the other person and then the show wouldn’t have happened?”

They notice it every time.

**John:** There’s a TV trope called Refrigerator Logic, which is as you step away from a movie and you’re getting something out of your refrigerator you’re like, wait, why did that happen? Like there’s things that sometimes will glide past you when you’re actually seeing the story up on the screen. And then later on you’re like, wait, that did not actually make sense. And so let’s talk about how those things can actually make sense.

And what you’re describing really is the different between — we talked about that metaphor about being on the train. And so as the writer, you’re responsible for like what you’re seeing out the windows, but you’re also responsible for being way up high and seeing where the train track is going. So as you’re laying out where that train track is going, you have choices about what branches and what decisions the story will make. And I was thinking back to a post I did ten years ago on the blog called the Perils of Coincidence. And that came after I watched Spider Man 3.

And Spider Man 3 is not a great movie. And there were some significant issues of coincidence where a bunch of things just had to happen in exactly a certain way. People had to be there at the same moment when this other thing was happening in ways that felt really, really unlikely. And so in that post I sort of broke through these are the coincidences. Here are some maybe ways they could have gotten out of those coincidences. Because when you see coincidences, you can always imagine at the outline phase. Like if they were turning in the treatment for that story there were a bunch of words like “at the same time, accidentally, luckily, unfortunately, meanwhile.” Those are all really signals that something is going on where it’s convenient for these things to happen but they’re not actually causing the other things to happen.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** You always get I think one coincidence in a story that can be kind of fundamental. And so a fundamental coincidence to me is like, well, in Spider Man it’s Peter Parker gets bit by a radioactive spider. Anyone else could have been bit by that radioactive spider, but then it wouldn’t be Spider Man. So the audience will always give you that one sort of fundamental coincidence.

In Die Hard, John McClane happens to be in the tower when the bad guys take over.

**Craig:** Where his wife is. Yeah.

**John:** Where his wife is. Yes. But they’ve already established that he’s there because his wife is there, so that all makes sense. If his wife happened to be in the same building, that would be too many coincidences. But it made sense because they were all kind of bundled together in one thing. You wouldn’t have the movie if you didn’t have that kind of fundamental coincidence.

And usually that movie will spend its fundamental coincidence very early in the first act. Like page 10, page 20, page 30 at the latest. It’s interesting watching the new Spider Man, which I won’t spoil, but they use their fundamental coincidence incredibly late in the story. And it was surprising but I think actually really effective. So when you see the movie you’ll say like, oh, wow, OK. And because the rest of the movie works so well they’re able to spend that coincidence quite late in the story and that was exciting.

**Craig:** The notion of coincidence and making things convenient is correct and it is connecting to the convenience of the writer. I think this is why people find it dissatisfying. It’s cheating. I mean, we want to watch these things unfold in a way that is surprising and fascinating to us, but after we are surprised we go, oh, OK, that was — that feels good. I like that this happened. I understand why it happened. It makes sense. I just didn’t see it coming. That’s the fun part.

With straight up coincidence, what the audience feels is you wanted to do a thing, or you needed to do a thing, so you just jammed it in. We don’t mind that first big coincidence because we understand that it is necessary for us to enjoy a thing. I mean, really the first coincidence of any movie is that we have shown up to see it. That’s — you know, so we’re OK with like, OK, we showed up to see your movie. You go ahead and do a thing.

But then the joy of the story is that there aren’t these things that are happening that just cheat. Because what’s the point then? We in our lives do not recognize the drama around us and the things that concern us as deriving largely from coincidence, even though I think strangely it’s probably true that most of the crazy things that happen in our lives are the result of coincidence. But the things that we’re mostly interested in, the passionate affair, the decision to steal, falling in love — these things feel volitional to us and they feel like they are arising naturally from the circumstances around us.

So those are the dramas that we like. We’re not so interested in stories where someone is walking down the street and a piano falls on them. It’s shocking, but there’s not drama to that. It’s just like, oh, how odd.

**John:** Yeah. It is. It’s surprising. And, oh, he happened to be there at that moment when the piano fell on him. And in real life sometimes the piano does just fall on a random person. But usually when we see an unexpected event or really any event, we expect there to be a cause. We expect there to be a relationship between these two events happening that is either causal, like one caused the other. It is correlated, like some outside force caused both events to happen. Or if neither of those things make sense, then it truly is coincidence. I think in the real world we tend to ascribe causal relationships to things that often are coincidence and that’s a real problem.

But in movie logic terms, these are our universes. And so we shouldn’t have to rely on coincidence for most of the work of our stories. So, if we’re not going for coincidence, we’re looking for causality. We’re looking for A causes B. Ideally, something we’ve seen already in the story has caused this effect. And now we’re in this situation and whatever the characters are doing in the situation, ideally your lead characters, not just the villains, whatever they’re doing is causing the next thing.

We talk about actions and consequences. Causality is about consequences. It’s about what this chain of events is leading to next. And how our characters are responding to that and changing their own circumstances.

**Craig:** Yeah. It does seem to me that part of the danger of what we do, the negative impact of what we do, is that we make such a big deal about very dramatic, very extreme events being caused, being purposeful. There are no coincidences, right? In life, almost all these things I think are coincidental. And then we try and put causation — every conspiracy theory that you see out there in some way or another is attempting to make sense of what may be coincidental. Sometimes there are conspiracies. We seem to be currently in the middle of one. But largely, no.

But in movies and TV, well, hey, what can we do? This is what we crave is this sense of causation. And when you think about movies — The Godfather is an incredibly complicated movie in that it’s got dozens of characters, and a lot of moving pieces in the machinery of the plot. A lot of hardware there. But everything is caused. And it all starts with a very simple thing. Someone shows up and says, “I have a business proposition.” It’s not even a coincidence. “You’re a business man. I have a business proposition.” And the Godfather says, no, I’m not interested.

And from that begins a series of caused events. And it is so satisfying to watch. Someone makes a choice. If you don’t give me what I want, I will do this. I did it. I just saw what you did. I’m now going to do this to stop you. And so on and so on. And it builds, and builds, and builds. Everything is caused. And I think it’s important when people are laying out their plots, they at least start from a place of everything — everything that happens here will be caused. Everything.

There are ways to fudge it here and there. But I think that’s probably the best ambition you can have for the machinery of your plot.

**John:** And one of the dangers here is you can fall into a trap of thinking like, oh, this is mechanical. This is a Rube Goldberg device where like once you set this ball rolling down the ramp everything will happen. In some ways that is accurate. But you want it to feel like all the characters are making individual choices that are leading to the next thing. So you don’t want just one series of events kicks off and the characters are just, again, we go back to this metaphor of being on rails. They’re just being dragged through the movie.

It needs to feel like they have volition, that they have the chance to make their own choices. But the choices they make will cause the next set of circumstances. And that can be really tricky to do.

So let’s talk about how you do that. So if I’m standing next to this writer who is working on the mystery of her story, what is some advice that we can give her to tackling the mystery of her story? Well, I would say that if you have the luxury of having a TV writing staff, that’s largely what they’re there for. So, when you see a TV room together, you know, sometimes yes they’re pitching jokes, they’re pitching storylines, they’re pitching ways to get through a scene. But a lot of what they’re doing is figuring out how are we going to get from this, to this, to this, to this. Like what are the natural causes and effects of these things.

**Craig:** Now, if you’re on your own, as I typically am — in fact, as I have always been — I think a general best principle is to start thinking about how you want to end. Because if you don’t know how you end, the danger that you will begin creating this bizarro plot to get from point A to where you eventually end up is high. If you know where you’re going to end, you can machine your plot. And remember, the point of machining the plot is not to be obvious, but rather the opposite. To be surprising. The surprises are not random. They are not derived from coincidence. They are carefully constructed. They are paying off in a satisfying way what you’ve set up.

You can’t really do that well if you don’t know where you end. So I think if you have your ending, you can create that causal chain with interesting reversals and surprises and twists and back and forths so that everything feels sort of meaningful. It is also important if you find yourself laying out your plot and suddenly there are a lot of, well, bends in the pipe. You know, a lot of strange things where you’re going, well, I got to do this so I can do that. Stop. Always stop. You may think you can get away with it. It’s just going to get worse and worse. It’s going to become byzantine.

Sometimes what happens is we fall in love with the notion that something is going to happen. And the problem is what’s come right before that something that we want to happen isn’t leading directly to the something we want to happen. So what do we do? We jam it in. We create a coincidence. Or even worse, we put in a bunch of scenes in between those things so that it will kind of get there naturally, but now there’s bloat.

Sometimes you kind of have to cut the throat of the thing that you really, really, really wanted to do because it’s not laying in properly. It may be able to happen later, but it may be the wrong thing. Your story will want things to happen naturally and then you are going to want things. And you kind of have to get your ego out of it a little bit and let your stories’ wants take precedence over yours.

Because I’ll tell you this. This the last chance you have to be clean. Outside the gate are the barbarians. That’s a little uncharitable to the people that are trying to help us make our movies. But I will tell you, for instance, Identity Thief, after I wrote my second draft, or even my first, there was a note — and it wasn’t really a note. It was sort of an order. “We want more villains.” And I don’t know why. To this day, I’m not really sure why.

And, you know, I did my very best to say that’s not — I don’t think we should. And the response back was, “Do it.” And so I did it. And it created so many coincidenty poor plotty mechanics. That stuff just — and you know, look, happily I don’t think anybody goes to a movie like that for the exciting villain plots, and yet it hurts every movie. Every movie. When there’s obvious bends and kinks because something that doesn’t belong has been put there. And nobody quite has a sense of what does and doesn’t belong to a movie that has not yet been shot than the writer does. I wish people would listen a little more carefully when the writer says that doesn’t belong.

It’s one of our Spidey senses.

**John:** Absolutely. So let’s talk about what the actual process might be for you’re the writer working by him or herself and you’re trying to figure out these plot mechanics, the story logic, before you start doing your draft ideally. So, different writers have different approaches. Some make a simple outline. Some use index cards. Some will write out a treatment.

What I would say though is no matter what your process is, if you’re describing it to somebody — basically if someone is looking at the cards with you, or if you are sharing your outline with somebody, watch out for when you’re saying these phrases that signal, OK, there’s something convenient happening here. That it’s not necessarily natural to what should be happening in the story. So when you find yourself saying “at the same time, meanwhile,” which means that you’re cutting away to something else, or “just then,” those situations — they’re unlikely and you can’t have so many unlikely things in your script.

You’re going to be running into problems if you’re saying those kind of phrases a lot.

One of the other things to really be mindful of, and I think this is partly what happened with what you described in Identity Thief is sometimes there’s mechanics happening in the story that won’t be immediately obvious to the reader and therefore the audience. Like there’s behind the scenes stuff that’s happening. And one of the real challenges for writers is all that hidden machinery has to make sense, even though it won’t surface till later on.

So, what the villain was doing those three weeks, or like why that person showed up at that point. Maybe you have a reason for why they got there. Maybe you’ll even be able to say the reason why they got there. But the minute they sort of showed up there or something happened that was not visible to the audience, that’s going to be a surprise. And figuring out how you’re going to balance what the audience knows versus what the audience is going to find out later on can be really tricky.

And so whenever I have stories that aren’t just one main trajectory that can be a lot of my planning work is figuring out how do I make it clear to the audience. Like these people were doing these things in the background. You just didn’t see them. But here we are now and the characters are doing these things now.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just continuing the Identity Thief case, there was one villain — I know, that’s crazy, right? I wrote one villain. What? Anyway, and very early on, in fact, the first time we meet Melissa McCarthy’s character, she’s on the phone with that villain and he’s upset. And she’s lying to him. And then later on when she and Jason Bateman’s character finally confronted each other and he’s kind of got her where he thinks he wants her, the bad guy shows up. It’s natural. She lied. We know she lied. He never got what she said she would send him. And he’s here. That makes sense. Meh. You know.

**John:** Well, in doing that, that initial conversation, you set the expectation that we would meet him and that he would show up. And you’re paying off that expectation. So that does not feel surprising to an audience. And it feels like, OK, this is a thing I expected to have happen. I’m happy that it’s now happening. I’m a smart person because I expected it to happen and therefore it is happening.

**Craig:** It was caused.

**John:** Yes, it was completely caused. It was not just a random fluke.

And even movies that I think are really good, like this most recent Wonder Woman movie, there will be some coincidences in there. And that’s OK. And if the movie is working really well you don’t notice it so much. A coincidence in the new Wonder Woman movie, which is not really spoiler at all, there’s a moment in the story where Diana first uses her bracers and sends off the shock wave. And like, wow, she has sort of supernatural powers.

She heads off and then like literally two minutes later while she’s standing on the cliff, Steve Trevor’s plane comes crashing down. Why did that happen at the same moment? Well, because it was convenient. There was nothing about her doing the bracers that caused his plane to fall. It just happened to happen at the same moment.

We go with it because it’s sort of the mythology and it feels OK and appropriate, but it is a big coincidence that it’s happened at the same moments. They literally coincided in ways that weren’t natural.

**Craig:** Exactly. And, look, when you’re writing, that may be where you end up. But it’s always worth in a moment like that to say am I avoiding a problem or am I avoiding a gift? Can this thing that just happened cause that thing? Wouldn’t that be satisfying? Now, it may not work. You may not be able to make sense of it. Or if you try, it may cause other problems and a ripple effect. And then you abandon it. But try. You know, I think sometimes what happens is these things happen, they emerge, and we get scared and try and run away from them when we should be running toward them.

**John:** Yep. Absolutely. Every problem is an opportunity. So take advantage of those opportunities as they come up. All right, let’s go step away from our whiteboards and go into our actual scenes. And you had a suggestion for the topic of gimmickry and the creative little tricks you can sometimes apply to keep scenes interesting. Take it away.

**Craig:** Well, it’s a little dangerous to be talking about this, because I always worry that people are going to go wee and start throwing ketchup all over their food. But these things can be great. I was thinking about it because I’ve been watching Fargo, the television series, and I should mention that one of the things that Fargo does that’s interesting is they make a little bit of a religion of coincidence. You can get away with a lot of coincidence if your show basically says around here coincidence happens all the time. Sometimes it happens to make things worse. Sometimes it happens to make things better. But that’s kind of the world we live in. We live in coincidence world.

You know, Tarantino lives in coincidence world.

**John:** Absolutely. He just happens to be crossing the street and getting hit by the car.

**Craig:** Exactly. And we’re like, yup, that’s what happens in Pulp Fiction world. That makes sense. Totally.

So, gimmickry. Sometimes you find yourself writing a scene and the general conventional way of laying things out feels a little meh. Feels a little boring. I don’t mean to equate conventional to boring, because sometimes conventional is the absolute best way to tell a scene and it is fascinating. But there are times when you’re going to want to, I don’t know, throw a little glitter on.

So, I just thought of a few of these things that we can do and at least by codifying them we know that we have these tools in our belt. And the first one is kind of radical — I mean, I guess they’re all radical in a way. Change the arrow of time. And we generally think of time as moving forward and it is linear, but of course we have seen lots of movies and lots of TV shows where things move out of order. Sometimes they move backwards. Sometimes we see something that should have happened before the thing we just saw happening after the thing we saw. But we get it.

Do you remember how in Out of Sight he did that interesting — Soderbergh and Scott Frank did that interesting trick of editing and scene design where you had Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney falling in love but we found out about it out of its time in the movie. It was just fascinating the way it worked.

There’s nothing wrong with that. You just got to be careful when you do it. It needs to be purposeful. It needs to evoke something. You can jump time in little steps. You can also jump time in big steps. You can have, you know, a scene where two people are talking at a place and then one of them turns around and it’s 20 years earlier and now they’re children talking in that place. You can do these things. You just obviously have to have a reason why.

**John:** Absolutely. And as the screenwriter, you need to make it clear on the page what you’re doing. Because some of these effects will be really obvious in the film, but will be really hard to see on the page unless you’re upfront with the reader about like this is what’s happening. And you don’t have to explain why you’re doing it, but you have to explain like what it’s going to look like and feel like if you were watching the movie. That you’re acknowledging that you’re jumping this thing. Because when you’re just reading 12-point Courier it’s easy to sort of miss and get confused by these sort of sleights of hand.

**Craig:** Yeah. Similarly, if you change the arrow time, you can kind of change the nature of space by splitting the screen. When we think of split screens, I guess what immediately comes to mind are just bad sitcom split screen kind of jokes where one person is talking on a phone and the other one is also on the phone. And it’s a split screen. Wah wah.

But split screens I actually think can be incredibly valuable when you’re trying to create tension. So, I’ll go back to Tarantino, again. Because, by the way, Tarantino the most — he goes bananas with these gimmicks and he uses them so well. There’s a moment in Kill Bill where we see that Uma Thurman is in a coma and also we see Darryl Hannah’s character coming down the hallway with a syringe to kill her. And he splits the screen. And there’s something beautiful about watching a demon essentially stalking down a hallway. And then at the same time watching this completely helpless human being. And the tension just rises because what he’s telling us is there’s no chance she’s going to open that door and our hero won’t be in the bed. She’s going to be in the bed. You see her, right there.

You can also split the screen where you see the same thing happening from two different angles at the same time, which is a fascinating thing, because in one angle somebody is walking out of a car and they’re walking into a store and they’re quite happy. In the other angle, just because of the nature of the camera, we see that someone is watching them. And they don’t know.

It is the sort of thing that I think screenwriters should be thinking more about because when we don’t there is a danger that the director will. And I don’t mean to say that like directors are bad at it. They’re not. But if the gimmick is only directorial, it will feel more gimmicky. When it is connected to an emotion or a feeling or a purpose, which is our domain when we are writing these things, I think it can be terrific.

**John:** Yeah. You’re describing using these tricks to really enhance or underline the emotion or the story point you’re trying to get there. So it is better for the gimmick. The gimmick is just not there on top of what you’re otherwise seeing. It’s not a conventional scene with a gimmick applied to it. It is a scene that is better and unique because of the gimmick. And once you see it with a gimmick, it would be hard to imagine that scene without that moment.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think when some people watch these movies, I think critics fall into this trap a lot. I don’t mean reviewers. I mean analyzers of film. They will tend to see these things as style. They will tend to see them as visual style. But when we connect to them, it’s not because they’re visually stylistic. It’s not the aesthetics. It’s what it tells us about the people involved and how it makes us feel. It is actually again an extension of character. And an extension of the empathetic connection that we have with the people on screen.

There’s another thing that happens quite a bit and I think when we watch it we don’t realize how radical it is. And that’s just bending or even breaking reality itself. Sometimes somebody should just talk to a dead person. You can have a scene where somebody is just sitting in their bed and they say out loud to the ceiling, “Oh, Edith, I wish you were here. What should I do? I don’t know what to do. I’m lost without you.” Boring.

Or maybe Edith is just there. The beginning of The Iron Lady did this beautifully. Meryl Streep plays an aging Margaret Thatcher. And when we meet her she’s talking to her husband, played by Jim Broadbent, and the two of them are having the most mundane typical breakfast conversation. And she’s telling him, “You’re putting too much butter on your toast.” I mean, you have no idea that he’s actually dead. He’s not there. He’s not there. And then you realize, oh, he’s not there. Wonderful.

You can also bend reality by just freezing the entire world except for one person. And, of course, there’s the typical breaking the fourth wall, which is always a trickier proposition. But I guess my point is you have the ability to do things that are beyond the pale of what we experience in our everyday lives in terms of reality. And you just have to make sure that there’s an in and an out. And that once we get out of it, we know we’re out of it.

That’s the key. You can surprise people. You don’t have to tell them you’re going into it. You just have to let them know that it happened and now you’re out.

**John:** Absolutely. And it’s the kind of thing which you probably try to do relatively early in your film so you get a sense of like this is the kind of thing that happen in your movie. Because if you do it quite late, then it feels like, wait, you’ve broken the rules you’ve set. There’s a social contract you’ve signed with the audience and now you’ve broken that contract.

And always be mindful of, you know, you are defining your characters and their actions on the page, but you’re also defining the character of the movie. And so the kinds of choices you’re making in terms of the gimmickry, the stylistic choices you’re making, that’s the character of the movie. That’s what your movie feels like.

And so as long as it’s consistent with what the movie feels like, you know, the way that Tarantino movies feel consistent with a Tarantino world, it’s going to be — it’s going to feel right. It’s going to feel like something that can happen in your world.

But if you’re completely straight drama and then suddenly you try to pull this thing at page 80, I think the audience is going to rebel and quite understandably for your not following the basic rules you seem to have set for yourself.

**Craig:** I agree. I mean, every time you do this, you are breaking the tone one way or another. In 500 Days of Summer, everyone slips into a musical number. That is a gimmick. And believe me, I don’t use gimmick as a pejorative. I use it as what it is. It’s an exciting, dazzling way of attracting people’s attention. We know, OK, this is the kind of movie where that can happen.

So later when they break reality, again, and show us two simultaneous evenings, expectations versus reality, we understand that can happen here. And it’s all right. Similarly when we watch Kill Bill, the fact that suddenly the movie switches into animation, acceptable. There are also moments sometimes where the break in the tone is OK because the movie is silly. There’s not a lot of gimmickry, filmic gimmicky in a movie like say Woody Allen’s Love and Death, which is one of my favorite movies. I mean, it’s broad. It’s very broad. It’s very silly. It’s wonderful. He doesn’t really mess around with reality too much. But then it does.

Then there’s a sequence that turns into a silent movie, into a silent film, which is hysterical and amazing. But you have to be aware of what John is saying here, those of you at home. Your story has to be able to survive this. And just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Gimmickry is amazing because it frees you. It gives you like these — like we used to have the box of crayons. I had the box of 16 crayons and someone showed up and they’re like, “I have the box of 64 crayons. I have seven more blues than you do.” OK. Well, gimmicks, those are the extra blues and the extra reds. It’s the big box of crayons. They tend to make us feel more creative. When you read them in scripts, they tend to make the read feel maybe more sophisticated or ambitious. But even then, that is kind of a gimmick. Because it only is ambitious and creative and advanced when it works.

So, do it if it makes something better. Don’t if it doesn’t. Just know that you can.

**John:** Absolutely. The bigger box of crayons will not make you a better artist. They will just let you do some things that you couldn’t otherwise do easily. And that’s important. That can be useful. And I think by limiting ourselves to the simplest things, sometimes you’re able to tell simple, and true, and very strong stories. There’s a reason why you may want to not use the gimmicks, not use the full set of tools that you could use.

But, there’s certainly circumstances where you want to try to do those. And I think those are great. And quite a few of my films have used some of those fancy crayons. Like my first movie Go. It restarts time twice. There’s scenes that you see from multiple perspectives. You ultimately recognize that there’s quite a bit more going on than you first thought. And that’s great.

My movie, The Nines, is sort of nothing but a bunch of crayons melting all over the screen. And it’s very deliberately playing with your expectations of what is the difference between these actors and these characters. And is there any real underlying reality behind all this. It breaks its tone. There are musical numbers. There’s reality stuff happening in there. Melissa McCarthy is playing herself. It’s a very different set of expectations than you would normally have going into a movie.

But that’s not the only way to tell a story. And I don’t try to apply as many effects as I can to every movie. Like you have to be very judicious and see what is right for the story you’re trying to tell.

**Craig:** And I think you’ll know. That’s the thing. There’s a certain sense of satisfaction. There’s a feeling, oh yes, you know, this feels so much better than just the usual way. You know, I remember Todd Phillips and I were like struggling with how to do a flashback. Like, oh, here’s a flashback scene. I was like, yeah, well, I don’t know. And then the notion that in Alan’s mind they’re all children and to do it with children, that’s a gimmick. But it made so much sense and suddenly it was a joy to write. It was exciting. You know?

And I feel like, OK, if we are chaining our hands to the keyboard and going, OK, here we go, blah, blah, blah, then it’s probably going to be a similar experience for the audience. When you get excited and it just flows, then you know you’ve got the right gimmick. But again, word of caution, most of the time it will be flowing and feeling great with no gimmicks at all.

**John:** 100% agree. All right, Craig, let’s try to answer one or two of these questions in our mailbox.

**Craig:** Let’s try, you know. Let’s try.

**John:** We have audio, so let’s first listen to Kate from Phoenix, Arizona, who wrote in with a question.

Kate: My question is about interviewing experts to create more realistic stories. The script that I’m writing deals with a crime and the legal consequences. Although I have a respectable working knowledge of these procedures for a lay person, I can tell it’s not enough. I need to find a cop and a lawyer to interview to get the details right. I found some people online who are more than willing to consult for a sizeable fee. I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but my wallet does. Do you have advice for finding and interviewing experts? Once I find them, is it customary to have them read the script and point things out? Or ask about procedures piecemeal?

Also, for a Murphy’s Law type of situation, if I change story elements based on what they say, can they claim some kind of story credit? That’s sort of the point of asking in the first place, to change the story and make it better. And I’m not opposed to giving credit if it were fair, but I would prefer not to share the story credits if I can help it.

Are there measures I should take to protect the intellectual property of my own work?

**John:** Well, that’s a great question. I don’t have perfect answers for Kate, so I’m going to preface this by saying I bet some of our listeners have good resources they might point Kate towards in terms of finding the cop and a lawyer who she could talk to.

But I can offer some general guidance which is, no, you should not be paying anybody. And, no, they should not be trying to take story credit. What you’re doing is just asking people about their jobs. And you’re asking them how they do their work and asking them some theoretical questions. That’s not story credit. You’re nowhere near that. So, anybody you’re talking to who would want to try to get that from you is not the right person for you to talk to. Craig?

**Craig:** Yeah, no question. There’s not going to be any payment here. I’m doing a project right now that has a lot of research involved. It’s more research than I’ve ever done for anything in my life. And I’ve talked to all sorts of people. But I specifically had to talk to a cop when I was working on Identity Thief, because I wanted to find out how does this all work, and how do you go through your job and deal with this stuff. If you call, I think if you just call, Kate, you say you’re from Phoenix. Call Phoenix PD up and just say, “Listen, I’m a writer. I’d love to sit down and interview an officer or a detective. Would you have somebody willing to talk with me for a half an hour? I just have questions for a story I’m writing.”

I would be shocked if no one said yes. Everybody wants to talk about their job. Everybody wants somebody to get it right. I think people are interested in being a part of something like that. I don’t think there’s any issue with credit because they’re not writing anything. They’re talking to you and you’re taking notes.

You certainly can give them an assurance that you’re not going to use their name. That you’re not going to use anything that’s identifiable to them. And if you are recording the conversation, that the recording will not be played back for anybody other than yourself. That it’s only for research purposes. But I think by and large if you just ask, same thing with law. If there’s an area of law. I mean, you must know somebody that knows somebody that has a lawyer. Have that person ask their lawyer. Who would be a good lawyer who might want to talk to you about this? Somebody sooner or later is just going to say, “I’ll do it,” because people generally want to help.

**John:** They do. So I think Kate’s social network is probably bigger than she realizes. So if she just goes on Facebook, throws it out there like, hey, I’m looking for any cop or any lawyer, does anybody know somebody? Somebody will know somebody who knows somebody who is going to be willing to talk with you about this.

Before I left for Paris, I was in an Uber. I was actually headed to Kelly Marcel’s house. And our Uber driver was from a country who was exactly the right person I needed to talk to about this project I was writing. And so I just started up a conversation with him and said like, hey, this is really crazy but would it be OK if I called you and asked you more questions about the country you’re from and when you came to the US. And he said, of course, that would be fine.

And so you will bump into people in your real life who are going to be helpful and will get you through that kind of thing. I was also years ago I was in upstate Maine doing research for this other project that never got made. And I was staying at this little hotel and whenever I would meet somebody new I was like, I would ask them about their job and I’d say like, hey, do you know anybody else who has lived here since 1970? Did you know any people who are old timers here? Because I’m trying to find out information. And so over the course of three or four days I was able to talk to ten different people about sort of what Maine was like in the 1970s. And it was great. It was fantastic. And it didn’t matter that I had credits or didn’t have credits. They were just like, well, somebody wants to know, I’m happy to talk to you about it.

So, you will find somebody who has the information you need. And if your listeners have other good suggestions for first places that Kate should look, we welcome them.

**Craig:** I talked to a detective at the Beverly Hills Police Department when I was doing research for Identity Thief. And he was describing how they work and how you deal with law enforcement when you catch them. And how you have to deal with it as a victim. And he was great. And when it was over, and I was leaving, he said, “Oh, by the way, what happens to the thief at the end?” And I said, well, I haven’t written it yet. I’m just in the research phase here. But I think she’s going to go to jail. And he said, “She should die.” [laughs]

And I said, what? And he goes, “She should die. These people are terrible.” And I thought, you know, I guess if you deal with the consequences of identity theft every day, day in and day out, and deal with the victims of it day in and day out, that’s probably how you would feel. That makes sense. Yeah.

**John:** So, useful advice for real world, but probably not useful advice for someone writing a comedy about an identity thief.

**Craig:** By the way, also, something to keep in mind, Kate. Reality is fantastic until it is not helpful. And then it is not fantastic. Especially if you’re doing something that is essentially a fictional dramatization of things that needs to be informed by reality. You know, use what helps.

**John:** Absolutely. Let’s do one more question. This is Jason from Los Angeles.

Jason: I’ve been living in LA for eight years and I just haven’t been able to break into the business the way I want to. I write consistently. I rewrite. I get notes from trusted friends. I rewrite some more. I’ve made short films. I’ve gotten into a few festivals. I recently posted a script to the Black List. And while all of these things have absolutely helped me to develop and hone my craft, they haven’t opened any industry doors for me.

I’m 33 years old. I’m married. So, jumping into something like an unpaid internship at a production company or spending five years in a mailroom doesn’t seem feasible for me. Which is why I’m considering doing something both of you have often opposed, and even more often with great umbrage. I’m considering going to a writing consultant. So, what I’m not considering doing is going to some online “guru” who has 12 tips for this and eight surefire techniques for that. No. What I’m talking about is basically a teacher. Someone who is all over YouTube. I’ve seen their ideas. I’ve seen them talk about their ideas. And they’re sound. They sound legit. It’s someone who has video testimonials on their website from current writers who are currently working in the business who are staffed on TV shows.

And I’m considering this for the same reason someone might consider hiring a tutor. This is a person outside my circle of friends who owes me nothing, knows their stuff, and best of all can give me notes face-to-face that can help me improve my script. I’ve looked into the cost and one year of meetings would run me about $3,500. Now, that’s not nothing, but it’s also not my life savings.

At this point in my life, that doesn’t seem like an unreasonable amount of money to try something new that can help me get where I want to go. Because what I’m doing right now hasn’t.

So, John, Craig, please tell me: am I crazy?

**John:** Craig, is Jason crazy?

**Craig:** No. He’s not crazy at all. He’s not crazy in the slightest. That’s why the industry of people that take money from folks like him is thriving and well, because they’re not preying on the insane. They’re preying on the sane and they’re preying on people who are scared and to some extent desperate. And I understand it. I mean, Jason has been at this for a while now it sounds like.

And he has a life. He’s created a life for himself. I assume he has a day job. Somehow he’s paying the bills. I completely agree that when you’re 33 years old and you have this life that you set up for yourself, starting in a mailroom or an unpaid internship doesn’t make any sense, and also it’s not necessary to be a writer or a director. It’s necessary if you want to be an agent or studio executive, I suppose.

So, no, Jason, you’re not crazy at all. But I’m glad that you did this — I’m glad you recorded this question because you get to listen to yourself back now. And I want to ask you — who do you sound like? Because to me, I’m concerned that you sound like the guy that’s about to lose money. And the reason why is you’re grasping at straws and I think you know you’re grasping at straws here. It’s not impossible that spending money on some outside help like this might help you improve your script. I think it’s highly unlikely it will help improve your script to the point where suddenly all those doors that have been firmly shut will fling open.

I don’t think it kind of works like that. I am concerned that after all this time it may just be that you don’t write or direct the sorts of things that the rooms you want to be in welcome. You may be a different kind of writer or director. It’s also possible that you’re not supposed to be doing this at all. I have no fear saying that. I know it is upsetting to hear and it’s particularly upsetting if next week you sign on and sell your movie and make a billion dollars and win an Oscar. Then I look like a dumb-dumb.

And I know that that’s the dream. So, I guess my advice to you would be this: think twice. $3,500 isn’t your life savings. It’s also $3,500. Think about who is asking you for that money and why they want it. Think about the nature of Hollywood. Think about predators and prey. And ask yourself if this is what’s right and best for you.

Generally speaking, as you know, I think it’s not. But, I also am aware that when I say these things, they are of no great assistance to somebody that’s trying to get one of those doors open.

John, what do you think?

**John:** Yeah. What I like about Jason, he already is thinking twice. In deciding to write into us and record his question, he is thinking twice. And he’s recognizing all of the sort of pitfalls ahead of him. So, he’s sort of done a lot of our work for us. And he’s further along in the process then somebody who says like, oh, maybe I’m going to start writing a script and I’ll hire this consultant.

So, I’m trying to step back and think about if I had $3,500 and I wanted to spend that $3,500 to improve my writing, what might I do? Well, I might take a class. I might take a UCLA Extension class. I might do something else that would sort of get me in a place where I’m around other people who are writing, who can help me focus in on what I’m doing. And so by that structure, I can’t say it’s the worst use of your money.

But I don’t know anything about this person he’s really going to. He says this person has YouTube videos, has a track record. I guess. Before I would give this person any of my money, I would want to know who has been using this person and what would they actually say. And the good thing about the Internet these days is you will find somebody who has had an experience with this person, positive or negative. Find out what that experience actually was. Because I don’t want you spending your money on just some charlatan who promises things.

I know that early in my career I was lucky to have some people who would read every draft of my stuff and would give me notes and I genuinely did get better doing that. Some of them were teachers. Others were producers who were trying to get my work on the screen. And I did get better. And so while I wasn’t paying them directly, or I was paying them indirectly through the university, it did help.

So, this could help you. I’m just concerned that it’s not the right person. I’m worried that you’re going to be writing in a year from now saying like, “Oh you know what guys? I spent that $3,500 and it was not the right choice. And I’m not any closer to what I want to be doing.”

**Craig:** Well, there is another negative outcome here. I mean, Jason mentioned that the person has testimonials on their advertising, and of course they do. The question isn’t whether or not people enjoyed working with this particular consultant. The question is whether or not this consultant got them their ultimate goal, which was to sell their screenplay or be employed to write another screenplay. And that’s not just sell it to some marginal player. There are a lot of those. But sell it to the kind of company you want to be in business with. Right Jason?

What these people do necessarily requires them to be good to you. When I say good to you, I mean, warm and fuzzy and encouraging because they want you to come back and keep paying them. They are actually less reliable, I think, then your friends in that regard. They will tell you, “Listen, this script has tremendous promise. You have tremendous promise. You can make this great. And you can get everything you want. Work with me. I will get you there.”

They will say that probably no matter what because that’s what’s going to make them the most money. And there are people who after a year or two will say, “I’m going to — I will gladly give you a testimonial because you’ve made my script better and you make me feel good in a world and business that otherwise makes me feel terrible.”

But $3,500 is a lot of money for that. And that ultimately really isn’t going to get you what you want. So, be careful of that praise. And be careful of that encouragement. They probably won’t say to you, “Hmm, I read it. This is no good. And I can’t help you with it. I don’t want your money.” You know?

The whole business is soaking in a certain kind of conflict of interest.

**John:** Yeah. It occurs to me listening to Jason’s question is that I feel like over the course of our 309 episodes we haven’t done a great job of introducing listeners to people who were sort of similarly positioned to Jason who made it. And there are some. And I’m thinking of a friend now who I can’t believe I’ve not had on the podcast who in his middle 30s, late 30, sort of finally got it started and finally got staffed on a TV show and is now running his own show.

It does happen. And because it’s rare doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. And I want to have him on the show to talk about sort of what he did and sort of the choices he made. And what he would do differently. Because he might have better advice for Jason than you or I would because we started at such a different time.

So, in hearing Jason’s question I’m recognizing that there’s probably a group of our steady listeners who we’ve never really directly addressed with how it can work. We’ve always sort of given them negative advice in a way. Like, you know, don’t do these things rather than like these are the things that actually work for people. So, that’s going to be a goal to get my friend on the show in the next couple of weeks.

**Craig:** I think that’s really smart. Because, you know, we do want to help. Obviously we want to help, because we’re trying to help people who are writing. And we’re trying to help them write better. And happily we don’t take — well, John takes their money hand over fist. I don’t get anything. But we don’t have much in the way of saying, “And we also want to help you get that job.”

We keep hitting this thing of write a great script, you’ll get the job. But, there are some practicals. It would be great to hear from somebody who has gone through it, especially somebody who is older than the typical right out of college “here I am, I want to be a writer.”

I will say that Jason sounds incredibly nice. He just sounds like a good guy and that makes me nervous. I’m nervous because sometimes it’s the good ones that end up getting fleeced the hardest.

So, you know what, Jason, talk to your wife. She knows you better than anybody. I guarantee it. I guarantee it. You say to her — I got to think of a good name for Jason’s wife. I’m going to go with Marissa. “Marissa,” so close to my wife’s name. Anyway. “Marissa, tell me something because I don’t trust myself on this issue. Does this sound like a good idea? Should I do this? Should I not do this? Give it to me straight. I know that you love me either way.”

I hope that’s true about Marissa

**John:** Yeah, you never know. Never assume how other people’s marriages work.

**Craig:** You’re right. You’re right. Like he may call in next week and say, “Well, I’m divorced now. I asked her. And apparently that was the only excuse she needed to just pack her stuff up and, yeah. So…and now I have half of that $3,500.” [laughs]

**John:** Oh, community property. California state law.

**Craig:** Ruining lives one podcast listener at a time.

**John:** Let’s move on and go to our One Cool Things before we wreck anymore havoc in the world.

**Craig:** Great idea.

**John:** My One Cool Thing this week is the bus. Which bus? Well, really any bus. But my whole year in Paris, one of my revelations was that as a tourist I was always taking the Metro to get from place to place, because Paris has a Metro, so why are you not taking the trains.

What was so great about this last year is the busses are actually fantastic. And I was always sort of scared to take the busses because I didn’t quite know where they were going, or how to use them, or how it would all work. The huge advantage, the huge change, is that Google Maps now has all of the busses in the map directions. So if you are someplace, you want to get someplace, Google Maps will tell you get on this bus, it’ll take you to the place. And it was fantastic. And the busses in Paris were great. And so convenient. And while I was on my bus I could do my Duolingo and it was a great experience.

So, coming back to Los Angeles I vowed, you know what, I’m going to start taking the bus more often.

**Craig:** Hmm.

**John:** So this last week I took the bus to Beverly Hills. It was fantastic. And Google Maps worked just as well. And so the busses in Los Angeles are not bad at all. And people are always kind of afraid of the busses and they shouldn’t be. They were the same as the busses in Paris. It got me where I needed to go. It was easy and delightful. It was cheaper because I didn’t have to park my car in Beverly Hills. So, just try the bus. It sounds so simple and obvious because obviously I grew up taking the bus in Boulder. But a bus in the big city can be really great. And if people took the bus more often, I think they would be surprised.

**Craig:** It’s true that the thing that keeps me from the bus is just general fear of where the hell I’m going. Because these busses pull up and I just don’t know the bus system well enough. Like in New York, I’m here in New York right now, that’s why this microphone sounds weird, I take the subway all the time. I take the subway everywhere I can take it. And it’s really clear. I know exactly where it’s going. And they’ve got letters on them. And they never change. And that’s that with those.

And then the busses come and they have these letters and numbers. And I just get confused. I get confused.

**John:** You know who does know? Your phone knows. Your phones knows everything. And so Google Maps, you punch it in, it will tell you exactly when that bus is coming, when to get on it. It’s great and convenient. And also because you’re not underground you don’t lose service, so you can actually do things on your phone. It’s great.

So I would just recommend people try the bus. If you haven’t tried the bus in years, take a bus sometime this month and see what it’s like.

**Craig:** Following this podcast, bus murders, up by 30%.

**John:** Ha-ha. Always the best.

**Craig:** I mean, let’s face it: our listeners are easy marks. Well, I’ll continue with the transportation theme of One Cool Thing. Hyperloop One.

**John:** I saw that. They tested.

**Craig:** And it was successful. It worked. Now, they were testing — was essentially like a chassis, like a little sled. It wasn’t the full car where you can put people. And it wasn’t at full speed either. They talk about being able to go up to 700 miles per hour. In this case, the test I think was just 70 miles per hour. But it worked. They have a tube. It’s a vacuum. And they got maglev. And it shot down the track and it worked.

So, at least you’ve got this first theory into practice mode and I got to say the way that people are jumping on board with this thing, it feels like it’s going to happen. It legitimately does not feel like bunk.

You know, look, obviously I know that what do they call them, Super Trains? What do they call the — bullet trains? Bullet trains are real. I know they’re real. I’ve ridden on a bullet train. But when California said we’re going to spend billions of dollars to make a bullet train I thought no you’re not. It’s not going to happen. You’re going to spend billions of dollars, but we’re not going to have a bullet train. And we don’t.

We have spent billions of dollars. There’s no bullet train. This thing feels like it’s going to happen. And if they can put it together, they’re saying you can get on board in Los Angeles and be in San Francisco within I think 50 minutes.

**John:** It’s crazy.

**Craig:** It’s amazing. And that’s 50 minutes without going to an airport and getting in the line. It’s just hope on a tube and you’re there.

**John:** Yeah. So we’ll hope. Yeah. I mean, we’re in a weird time when we have all these amazing things that can be happening even while the world seems to be falling apart. So, it’s going to be a real race to see which future we end up in.

**Craig:** I do believe the world is essentially separated into two tribes at this point. Builders and tearers-down. And builders, the one advantage that builders have is that they’re ingenious. And the one advantage that tearers-down have is they are indiscriminate. They’ll just tear — if it’s standing down, they’ll tear it down. They don’t care.

**John:** Yeah. Just swing that crow bar and you can just knock things down.

**Craig:** Exactly. Yeah. They’ve certainly got inertia on their side, don’t they?

**John:** They do. Gravity works. They have all the stored energy in there. They can just make things fall.

**Craig:** Exactly. And what’s the — entropy. They have entropy. Inevitably, the tearers-down win.

**John:** Well, in the end everything becomes dust. But it’s just how cool things can be before they all become dust.

**Craig:** Before the universe ends in heat death. 100%. Yep.

**John:** As we wrap up, I will remind people that the Scriptnotes Listeners’ Guide is available. It’s the first 300 episodes of the show, plus all the bonus episodes. People recommend which things you should check out. So, if you’re new to the show and you want to dig into the back catalog that is a great place to start.

You can listen to those episodes on the new USB drives. So you can go to store.johnaugust.com and get one of those USB drives. They are lovely and sturdy.

And that’s our show. Our show is produced by Carlton Mittagakus.

**Craig:** What?

**John:** It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Rajesh Naroth.

**Craig:** Of course.

**John:** If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. We are on Facebook. Search for Scriptnotes Podcast. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts. Look for Scriptnotes. And while you’re there, leave us a review.

You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you’ll find the transcripts. We try to get them up about four days after the episode airs. And you can find all the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net.

Craig, thanks for a fun episode.

**Craig:** Thank you, John. And next week, same time zone.

**John:** Oh, so nice.

**Craig:** So nice. See you then.

**John:** Bye.

Links:

* [Get your tickets now](https://www.wgfoundation.org/screenwriting-events/scriptnotes-homecoming-show/) for the July 25th Scriptnotes Live Homecoming Show, with guests [Liz Meriwether](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Meriwether), [Megan Amram](https://twitter.com/meganamram) and more!
* [Julie Buxbaum’s What to Say Next](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0553535684/?tag=johnaugustcom-20) on Amazon
* [Fridge logic](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic) on TV Tropes
* John on [The perils of coincidence](http://johnaugust.com/2007/perils-of-coincidence)
* The [Fargo TV series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_(TV_series)) makes a religion of coincidence
* Gimmickry used in Kill Bill with [split screens](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWI4G9PB31c) and [animation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQM0klOXck8), in (500) Days of Summer with [musical numbers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tJoIaXZ0rw) and [alternate timelines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fL94BTrFhs), when [talking to the dead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7xeK76cwA0) in Iron Lady, when Love and Death [becomes a silent film](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEETZTs795U&t=0m48s), and when [flashbacks become childhood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLk9y0RZSGo) in The Hangover 2
* [Go](https://www.amazon.com/Go-Katie-Holmes/dp/B008Y6YKEE/) and [The Nines](https://www.amazon.com/Nines-Ryan-Reynolds/dp/B00164LTUO/) on Amazon Video
* [The LA Metro System](https://www.metro.net)
* [Hyperloop One](https://hyperloop-one.com/) and its [successful first test](https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15958224/hyperloop-one-first-full-system-test-devloop)
* [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 Rajesh Naroth ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))

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You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/scriptnotes_ep_309.mp3).