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**Craig Mazin:** Hello and welcome. My name is Craig Mazin and this is Episode 284 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today you might sense a little bit of a change. For one, the microphone sounds weird because I’m, well, doing kind of a weird microphone thing here for a reason. And, also, there’s no John August. He’s not here.

It’s me, today, with Derek Haas, who’s been on the show twice before. Today though, special day, because today it’s Craig and Derek answering questions. Welcome to the show, Derek.

**Derek Haas:** Thank you for having me again, Craig. It is my third time.

**Craig:** Third time?

**Derek:** That makes me a friend of Scriptnotes, right?

**Craig:** Well, you’ve always been a friend of Scriptnotes, but now you’re a valuable friend of Scriptnotes, which is a little bit better. Last time we spoke with you, I think you had still only one show, possibly two, now you have 12?

**Derek:** I was in Chicago the last time, and John was in Chicago, and yeah, we had just Chicago Fire. And it had just started.

**Craig:** Amazing. And now you have Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D., and Chicago–

**Derek:** Med.

**Craig:** Med.

**Derek:** And Chicago Justice starts in a month.

**Craig:** Wow. We’re running out of Chicago nouns. It’s remarkable. Before we get into the meat of today’s show, we do have some follow up to discuss. Sundance Episodic Lab. If you are a long time listener to the show, you know that we’re big fans of the Sundance Labs. It’s where they bring in writers and filmmakers to workshop new stuff. Ilyse McKimmie was a guest on the show. And they tell us that every year a few of the projects come in because people have heard about the labs on our show, which is fantastic.

For writers interested in television, Sundance is now taking applications for the Episodic Story Lab until February 1. The application can be found at applications3.sundance.org. And, of course, we’ll put a link in the show notes.

So, the Episodic Lab, here’s what goes on there. You work with accomplished showrunners, as well as non-writing creative producers and studio network executives. And the fellows – those are the people that are picked to do this – participate in one-on-one creative story meetings, pitch sessions, writer’s rooms, and group conversations focusing on the key creative and tactical elements that are central to their success in episodic storytelling. This is pretty good.

We mostly know Sundance for their Screenwriting Lab, but they’ve also had success in a lot of other mediums. For instance, Lisa Krone won two Tony’s for Fun Home – by the way, Jeanine Tesori also won a Tony for Fun Home, but she wasn’t at the Sundance Lab. Fine.

And Barry Jenkins is having an incredible experience with Moonlight. And so there are some previous participants that we’ll throw some information on for you to take a look at. Rafael Agustin, Calvin Reeder, and Ebony Freeman, and Mike Flynn.

So, that’s our follow up. Now, we’re going to get into questions. So, Derek, I’m not going to do a lot of questions for you.

**Derek:** Great.

**Craig:** Because people have questions for us. We’ve gotten questions, of course, from our normal listeners, and then I asked some folks on Reddit to lob questions at us. So we’ll take a look through those as well. Derek, just to start with you for a second, are you ever coming back to movies, or you’re a TV guy now forever?

**Derek:** I don’t see in the foreseeable future when we would have time to write a movie, just the way Hollywood is working these days, where you are beholden to the studio for six, nine months at a time. We just don’t have time right now. We do have a movie that Brandt and I wrote prior to Chicago Fire starting that just got shot this past winter and I’m going to see a screening of it on Monday for the first time. But it was a foreign film, all shot in France, starring Scott Eastwood called Overdrive. And I, like you, am curious to see how it turned out.

**Craig:** [laughs] I’m not at all curious how it turned out.

**Derek:** Oh.

**Craig:** You’re not like me at all. No, I’m sure it will be excellent. But it sounds like we’ve lost you basically. Like we’ve lost so many people to television.

**Derek:** Yeah. Come on over, Craig. The water is fine.

**Craig:** Well…that’s what I’m hearing.

We’re going to start our questions with one from Kyle. And Kyle has an audio question that he sent in. And here’s what he asks.

**Kyle:** I’m a veteran, having served ten years honorably in the United States Navy. And I was recently awarded my MFA from a top college. I’ve been in LA since May of 2016 and I’m struggling to figure out how to get started. I’ve worked a couple feature films as a PA, but that’s not what I want to do. I want to write and direct. I volunteer at the WGA as often as I can, and I’m applying to any and every job I can find, but I’m not having much luck. What do I do? My savings are dwindling and I’m starting to worry. Is there some kind of secret? Is there some kind of website devoted just to writer’s assistants? Any advice you guys could have would be great.

**Craig:** OK. Well, Derek, what advice do you have for Kyle?

**Derek:** It’s the age-old question. It’s the hardest one to answer as a screenwriter. The most often that we talk to our friends about how they broke in we find that every story is different. In television, certainly the best thing you can do is be a writer’s assistant on a show that’s going.

**Craig:** But how do you get that?

**Derek:** It’s hard. I mean, you need to write a great spec pilot of a TV show. And then get it into as many people’s hands as possible. I’ve had four assistants since Chicago Fire started. One came as a recommendation of a friend who had gone to – like an alumni situation, where they had gone to the same college, and then slipped me her pilot. She then went on to work for NBC. She wanted to be on the producing side.

And then my second wanted to be an actor and came through from a Baylor recommendation actually. Baylor College, where I went to school.

**Craig:** Yep.

**Derek:** And then the last two have been through the Universal Writer Program and just reading resumes and reading scripts. And we’ve also promoted several of our writer’s assistants on to staff. To me, that’s the best way to break into TV. But, I mean, it comes down to write a great script and get it into as many people’s hands as possible.

**Craig:** Yeah, unfortunately that’s kind of the secret is that there’s no secret. It does come down to these things. Well, first of all, Kyle, thank you very much for your service to the Navy and to our country. I do know that the Writers Guild Foundation has a program for veterans. And I don’t know if you’ve taken a look at that, or not, but I would strongly suggest that you do. And you can speak to somebody, since you’re already volunteering at the WGA, just get in touch with somebody over at the WGA Foundation. I think their website is wgafoundation.org. They have a writing program. I think it’s called the Veterans Writing Program.

And that may be a nice entry point for you. But, yeah, I think Derek is right. Unfortunately, well, let me just say, that Kyle you’ve been LA since May of 2016. That’s not that long.

**Derek:** No.

**Craig:** You know, you do have to be a little patient here. But, also, just be aware this is not for everyone. It’s barely for anyone, frankly. Not a lot of jobs. And it’s a fairly narrow skillset. So you need to, I think, first assess your skills honestly and accurately and if you feel like, yeah, you’ve got what it takes, then you’re going to have to persist a little bit here.

**Derek:** My one thing I’ll add is I see a lot of writers who write one script in a year. And then they wait on 20 people to read the one script. And they get notes. And they go back and work on that script. And I’m just telling you the more things that you can do, there’s no reason why shouldn’t have two to three scripts written in a year. Especially if you’re writing pilots. I mean, we do 22 episodes in a year. That’s like doing 22 short films on the show. And Michael and I write six to nine of them. And so – and that’s 60 pages. That’s two-thirds of what a movie script is.

**Craig:** Right.

**Derek:** You really got to put the nose to the grindstone and write as many as you can in the genres that you like, that you actually feel passion for, not what you think that the industry wants. Don’t write a comic book movie if you don’t like comic books. If you like thriller, write a thriller. Don’t try to guess what’s going to be great and write something great.

**Craig:** I think that’s excellent advice. And, certainly, Kyle, make sure if your savings are dwindling that you also have a job. Get a job, you know. It’s good to put money in your pocket. You can write at night.

All right, next question. This is from Dave Jenkins. And he writes in and says, “I’ve been working with a team of producers for the past six years on an original script of mine. During that time, we’ve had three different directors attached, four development cycles, one financier, and more drafts than I can care to count. This was a low no dollar/no dollar option, which I agreed to due to their names and past credits. The initial contract was for two years. Subsequent extensions were granted as attachments came on board with the promise that I would be paid when financing came together. Unfortunately, this has not happened and the current extension expires later this month. So, my question is this: when is it okay to part ways? Is six years more than enough time? And how in the F did I get here? The producers still want the script but are unwilling to pay for it. They feel they’ve worked on it thus far. And as a result, should be given more time.

“I have other parties who have expressed sincere interest – producers, directors, and managers. But have warned that I would be burning a bridge were I to part ways like this. Any advice or drinking recommendations would be helpful?”

**Derek:** Wow.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, Derek?

**Derek:** My advice is that they’ve had more than adequate time to work on it. You have been way, way, way generous with them. And you should send them a letter right now and say we’re done, especially as soon as the last extension expires. And go on and feel completely unencumbered to them. You can take it wherever you want. You own it. And it doesn’t matter what work they’ve put on it. And don’t let their mafia scare tactics keep you from getting your script finally realized.

**Craig:** Wow. That was definitive. I’ll be a little more circumspect. Slightly. Not much more. I do think that Derek is right. They’ve had six years. They can’t get it done.

**Derek:** And paid zero dollars, by the way.

**Craig:** Right. So you’ve gotten no money out of it, but I understand neither have they. So, the whole point of these things is that it’s a mutual assistance society, but they haven’t gotten it done. And I think if you have other legitimate people who have expressed interest who might be able to get it done, at some point I think you do have to cut bait. And I don’t think you’d be burning a bridge. Or, hey, look at it this way: maybe you are burning a bridge. That bridge isn’t really going anywhere. So, you know, everybody in this town is always worried about burning bridges. And sometimes you just get paralyzed. You have to light one on fire every now and again. You know?

**Derek:** And movies do take a long time to get made. I mean, we’ve had movies that have been over eight years from when we started working on it, to when it got shot. And it’s true, however, after six years and four directors, they’re just flailing. And what they’re looking back at is we’ve put a lot of work into this. Now somebody else might make it and we’re going to get cut out.

**Craig:** That’s right.

**Derek:** And that’s what they’re operating from. But that’s not your fault.

**Craig:** It is. It’s not your fault. It’s not your problem. So, search your heart and ask yourself, do you still want to be married to this people or not. And if you don’t? Divorce.

We’ve got another question, an audio question, from Seth. Seth from Nashville. And here’s what he has to ask.

**Seth:** So, there’s a movie coming out that looks really good, but appears to share quite a few similarities to a movie that I’m currently writing. Is there any danger of me seeing this and it influencing what I’m writing? Would you avoid seeing it? Would you see it? Am I overthinking it? Is this really even a thing?

**Craig:** Well that’s an interesting question. Normally, people will say there’s a movie coming out that has similarities to what I’m writing, should I stop writing it. And we also say no. But this is an interesting question. Would you see a similar movie?

**Derek:** That is an interesting question. I would avoid it only – I don’t want anyone to think anything I did had anything to do with the other movie. So, I would avoid it until after you were done.

**Craig:** Yeah. I’m the same way. I feel like if you see the other movie, it’s not even that you would be tempted or would have some kind of subconscious lifting of material from that movie. More to the point that I feel like suddenly your movie would be a response to that movie.

**Derek:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** I don’t want that. I want my movie to exist as its own, honestly, and without any kind of context of the other film. So, yeah, I think I would avoid seeing it. All right, we’ve answered that. Tice from Amsterdam – now, Derek–

**Derek:** Yes.

**Craig:** Tice from Amsterdam spells his name Thijs.

**Derek:** Ooh.

**Craig:** Now, when I saw that, I thought it was maybe Thigis.

**Derek:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s not.

**Derek:** How do you know?

**Craig:** I looked it up. It’s Tice. Well, it’s Thijs.

**Derek:** OK.

**Craig:** By the way, I’m going to Amsterdam.

**Derek:** My last name is Dutch.

**Craig:** That’s right. But are you Dutch? Or did you just steal a Dutch man’s last name?

**Derek:** Well, I think we must be somewhere on the Dutch/German border, because half the world pronounces it Haas – actually most of the world pronounces it Haas, which is the German version. And my family pronounces it Haas. I actually did that test where they swab your thing?

**Craig:** Yeah. 23 and Me.

**Derek:** I did the 23 and Me. More England.

**Craig:** Oh, of course. Look at your face.

**Derek:** Whatever.

**Craig:** I say. So I’m going to Amsterdam in the summer?

**Derek:** Are you going to see Thijs?

**Craig:** Thijs. I don’t know if I’m going to see Thijs. It’s necessarily – he was not on my list.

**Derek:** Maybe if you answer his question sufficiently, you guys could have a drink.

**Craig:** He might open his home to me. Thijs from Amsterdam writes, “For various reasons, I’m a bit of a slow listener and it seems I’m getting more and more behind. I’m currently listening to Episode 173, from December of 2014, which is great so far. I have 20 more minutes to go.”

I love Thijs. He’s a good guy.

**Derek:** Why are we answering this question? He won’t get to it for another two years?

**Craig:** Well, Derek, be patient. Watch what happens.

**Derek:** OK.

**Craig:** “Every time you mention on the show things like tickets for live shows, t-shirts, and goodies, I obviously have no access to that. I know you cannot help me, but could you do me a favor? Could you leave a message for me in a future show, so I have at least something special to look forward to? I’ll probably listen to it in two to three years’ time.”

**Derek:** Wow.

**Craig:** Thijs. This is your special message. We are recording this in 2017. Early 2017. By your own reckoning, it’s probably 2019 or 2020. I hope to god the planet is still here. Right now it looks a little shaky. We love you Thijs.

**Derek:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Do you have anything?

**Derek:** I just think it’s going to be weird now when you show up on his doorstep in Amsterdam.

**Craig:** [laughs]

**Derek:** And he has no idea what’s going on.

**Craig:** Why are you here? I mean, yeah, I listen to your show, but this is weird.

All right, those were some of the questions in our hopper, but I want to switch over to some Reddit questions now. Is there anything, by the way, that you would prefer to talk about, Derek?

**Derek:** I love answering questions.

**Craig:** So do I.

**Derek:** It makes it so easy.

**Craig:** I love it when you answer questions on Twitter and then sometimes if I see you doing it, oh…

**Derek:** Yeah, so I do regularly answer seven questions on Wednesdays and Sunday mornings. And I do it in the order received after I put the notice up. Mostly it’s questions about Chicago Fire or Chicago P.D. And then every now and then Craig, who does not watch either show, starts to answer the questions as though he is an authority on the show. And so you can–

**Craig:** It’s fun.

**Derek:** Maybe he’ll do it this week. You never know.

**Craig:** You know, you never know. So here’s a question from Reddit user Fighting Against Time. He says, “In a world where people are constantly looking for original voices and turning to web series to find them, like Insecure, Broad City, High Maintenance, et cetera, how the hell do you get noticed,” and this kind of goes back to Kyle’s question, “how the hell do you get noticed when everyone and their great aunt has some original thing on YouTube? The immediacy of film equipment and editing software has made it so anyone can put their ideas from page to screen with relative ease. But the oversaturation makes it so easy to get lost in the crowd. As an insider, what advice do you have to help great content be seen in a medium where somebody screaming at a cat gets five million views?”

All right, so Derek, how do you stand out?

**Derek:** Well, it depends, what do you want to do? Do you want to have your own television series? Your own web series? You still have to be original. Or you do unoriginal really well. I started watching this show Luther. Apparently it’s been on for a few seasons already, but I am catching up to the old. And it’s a cop show. It’s even got standard cop “I’m chasing a bad guy who is murdering cops, I’m chasing a serial killer who killed her parents, and she’s a criminal mastermind.” But they do it really well. The dialogue pops. The characters are interesting.

You can take something that’s already been done. You could do your own show about weed distribution like High Maintenance, but your voice has to pop. The voice doesn’t mean the original idea. The voice is the way you tell that story.

**Craig:** I agree. Look, there are ideas that are grabby for YouTube purposes, like somebody screaming at a cat. And I get that. But that’s not a destination for anybody. It is stuff that we sort of snack on. But it’s not a meal. And so the combination of things that has to occur to stand out, Fighting Against Time, is both a quality and a sense of extensibility. That there’s actually a show worth following. That there are characters worth following. That there are people’s lives that are worth investing in.

At that, to me, is the difference. It’s not so much how do I stand out. It’s how do I stand out and appear to be something that could go on. So, Derek is right. The idea sometimes is the least important thing. I mean, look, what’s the idea of Chicago Fire? Firefighters.

**Derek:** It’s a show about firefighters.

**Craig:** Right. What’s the idea about Chicago Med?

**Derek:** It’s a show about doctors.

**Craig:** Not only has there been a show about doctors before, there’s been many shows about doctors in Chicago.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** So the idea itself, it’s the execution, and the voice, and the characters. Those are the things that make it specific.

**Derek:** I might have said this before, but to me, when you’re writing something, the goal on almost every page is you need to surprise the reader. I can’t emphasize it enough. You want them flipping the pages, but you also want them to – as they’re going, think they know where this is going, and then it zigs. Even within a dialogue line. Some sort of surprise is – when you’re dealing with these old ideas – is the way you keep it fresh.

**Craig:** Yeah. I also feel like sometimes I worry that the generation that is being raised on YouTube now, like our sons, and my daughter, that they believe that the measure of success is something going viral, or something seizing America’s imagination briefly. But that’s not the case at all.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** That, in fact, what happens is those things pop for a moment, everybody freaks out for a week or two, and then they’re gone. Forever. And the people that made them are gone. Forever. Because it was just a thing that happened in a moment. In fact, it is this kind of strange workaday stuff that stays with us and I think gives you a career. I don’t see, with rare exception, I don’t see people getting careers because they screamed at their cat.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** All right. So here’s a question specifically for you, Derek. It comes Redditer King Cartwright. And he asks, “Derek, what kind of material do you look for when staffing your television shows? Do you ask for specs or original pilots? And what important traits do you look for in writers that you want in the room?”

**Derek:** A great question. I know in the old days and some other shows might do this, they wanted you to spec their show. We don’t want that. We look at original pilots. We want to make sure that whoever is writing has their own ideas. Has their own characters. Has their own wit and can write with surprise and, for lack of a better word, write fiercely. Nothing that’s just lying on the page. And I think it’s too easy if you were just trying to write our style, the style of our show. You already have all of those characters laid out for you, so you’re just riffing off of our characters.

And we found that the people who write the excellent spec pilots end up being our best writers.

**Craig:** Makes so much sense to me. I remember when I first started in the business. It was still the era of writing specs.

**Derek:** Write a Seinfeld. Remember?

**Craig:** It was write a Seinfeld. Exactly. And it seemed to me that all this would do is just engender an employee pool of people that were doing almost parodies of your show really. Because you’re not writing the show. You’re writing a copy of the show. It’s a strange thing. So it’s like a caricature. It’s just magnifying all of these things.

So, I think it’s actually great that you guys for original stuff. And then for writers that you want in the room, I mean, personality-wise? I mean, personality is obviously a huge thing for you guys, right?

**Derek:** Yeah. It’s funny. I think the more and more I get into it, the room part of it for me, personally, is overrated. We have a lot of smart people and a lot of people throwing out great ideas. But essentially the ones who can execute the ideas are the ones that stay around. And so having good ideas is definitely one part of it, but to me it’s a third. And the two-thirds is can they write. And I’d much rather have someone who was a bump on a log in the room who turns in a script that I realize I don’t have to work on.

**Craig:** Right. Yeah, see, that’s the misery of the showrunner is that you have these people in the room, you’re relying on them, but if they don’t do the job well, you have to do it.

**Derek:** Yep.

**Craig:** And that’s just a disaster. OK. So, here’s a question from Huge 67. “What are the demographics of working screenwriters you know or know of? With a lot of fellowships specifically targeting diverse writers, have you seen a shift or predict seeing a bigger shift in the near future?”

**Derek:** Well, unfortunately in the time that I’ve been in the Guild, which is 17 years, I don’t think that there’s been much of a demographic shift. If it is, it’s been within two or three percentage points. But, I do know there are a lot of programs targeting diverse writers and a lot of programs targeting female writers, and specifically even that bilaterally, just based on gender. And so I know that it’s a problem within the Guild. And we’re certainly looking more and more for ways to diversify the staffs on the four shows that we have.

I’m hoping – hopeful – it’ll get better. It’s definitely – you definitely felt in the last three to four years a shaming that’s been going on.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Derek:** Public shaming of the Guild and staffs. And I know there’s been a positive response toward it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, in terms of the demographics of screenwriters I know, I do think there has been a notable increase in female writers. I’ve seen a notable increase. I’ve seen a notable increase just among people I’ve met, just offhand. And a notable increase of women being credited on films. So, that means that they’re being hired more frequently and writing more frequently.

So, I don’t know if the statistics yet reflect this, but it seems to me like there’s been an improvement in that area. That doesn’t mean that it’s where it should be. But, I just anecdotally I sense this. I need to look at the data to see if, in fact, that is true.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** But, in terms of seeing more black writers and more Latino writers, and more Asian writers, I have not seen.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** Now, because I’m a screenwriter, you know, I’m a lone wolf out there. You have a much better sense of it because you have staffs. So, it sounds like things are maybe slowly improving?

**Derek:** Yeah. And it’s funny, too, because when we ask for scripts when we know what are needs are going to be for the next year, we get scripts sent over from the agencies. And Michael and I and Matt Olmstead, who also is a showrunner on Chicago P.D., when we look at – we just look at the scripts with names on them. We don’t know – you know, you can usually tell what the gender is just by the name. But then once we’ve read the script, then we say, OK, these are the ten people we want to meet.

So, we’re not even thinking that way, but we do ask for the agencies to make sure you send us a diverse mix.

**Craig:** Would you ever consider something, I know some people do this, where they get scripts and they don’t see – they don’t even see the names?

**Derek:** Yeah, I’ve never thought about it, because I’ve never seen that done. I mean, we don’t ask for it that way.

**Craig:** Right. Well, that’s because you don’t care. [laughs]

**Derek:** [laughs] I just want the best.

**Craig:** I hear you, Derek. All right. Here’s a question from Redditer Bottom.

**Derek:** OK.

**Craig:** Bottom.

**Derek:** That’s the name? That’s like Shakespearean, right?

**Craig:** Bottom.

**Derek:** From Midsummer Night’s Dream.

**Craig:** I’m sure. I’m sure that’s what it means. Take that, Princeton. Baylor, woo! Here’s what Bottom wants to know. “I’ve listened for a while now. I notice that you and John are very good at having different POVs, even if you have opposing views. You’ll express them to each other clearly before dismissing John as a robot.”

Now, listen, I don’t dismiss him as a robot. I accurately label him as a robot. Bottom continues, “I direct and write, so I’m paid for my opinion. Sometimes I find myself in an awkward situation where my employer and I have opposing views, and sometimes I’m passionate about changes, or left dumbfounded about absolutely ridiculous suggestions. And it can be difficult to keep my cool. Do you guys have any suggestions, techniques that you use, either consciously or otherwise?”

Well, how do you keep your cool in these moments, Derek?

**Derek:** It’s experience. I think early on in my career, I felt the way you do, which is any change or suggestion that I didn’t feel merited a response from me would be met with haughty derision. But now I’ve just learned, one, good ideas can come from anywhere. And the best ideas should win. Two, you don’t have to get heated if your response is logically laid out. If you have the best response, it’s going to win. And if you don’t, sometimes you take one step backwards so you can take two steps forward.

I think you were the first one, Craig, to tell me that your first answer doesn’t need to be no. Your first answer should be yes, and then you take the time to figure out, OK, what’s the best way. Because maybe the way they suggested isn’t the best way.

**Craig:** Right. And so also when you say yes, even if you know the answer is no, saying yes gives you some time to then come back and say, all right, I’ve thought about it. It’s actually no, but here’s why.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** The difference is being heard. You know, so I would say, Bottom, that the key here is to first ask yourself what is it that you’re trying to achieve. Because when I’m thinking about these things, what I’m trying to achieve ultimately is make the script better, make the project better. Get it made. Right? All these things I want to do. But really at the end, get a movie made that does well.

My emotions in any given moment have nothing to do with that. Nothing. My pride and being right has nothing to do with it. My anger, my frustration, has nothing to do with that. So, what I try and do is put those in second position. I have feelings, you know, and there are times when you get that sinking feeling, and you just have to sort of say, OK, I’ll deal with that after. I will curl up in a ball after. Right now I have to be clinical about this. And I have to be part of a team that’s working on a movie together.

And if it gets to a point where they’re making suggestions that would destroy what matters, then, you know, I trot out my favorite line, which is, “I just don’t know how to write that.”

**Derek:** Uh-huh.

**Craig:** Which usually stops them in their tracks. Because I think everybody giving notes underneath it has maybe the suspicion that they’re wrong. You know? Like they’re a little worried, like, am I right?

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** So, people want to be heard. So, concentrate on hearing them and being respectful in that way. Put your feelings second. And I think you’ll find that actually you can keep your cool easier if you recognize that losing your cool has nothing to do with what you actually want.

**Derek:** And I think the moment you hit on is that time in the notes where you just say, “OK, give me time to think about that.” They’re not always expecting you to have an answer right there in that meeting. You write down the note. You say, “OK, give me time to think about that.” Then, when you come back with what you have thought about, a lot of times you’ll have solved maybe one of their problems without even knowing that that’s what it was. Oh, it’s the note beneath the note, as they say.

And, also, they really do judge you based on not only how you do on the page, but do I want to spend a year with this person? And if I’m in meeting one and that person is already fighting me tooth and nail on the most minor suggestion, then I’m going say, “When can I get rid of this person?”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**Derek:** “At what point can I get rid of this person? How much do I need them?” Anyway, it’s a collaborative business. I’ve learned that over doing this for a long time. Every part of it is collaborative. Unless you’re going to animate a movie that you’re voicing the characters, and you’re drawing the illustrations, and you’ve written it, and you’re directing it, then you’re going to have to collaborate with everyone. And so, work on it.

**Craig:** It’s so true what you’re saying that, you know, making movies, making television shows, it’s very hard. It’s arduous. The last thing you want is to be going into battle with somebody that is just fighting you all the time. There’s something that screenwriters do, or television writers, that I think is really counterproductive, and I always urge them to not do it.

Everybody involved in the making of something is talking about making the thing. A television show or movie. The only person not talking about that, at times, is the writer who is talking about their script. That script is not the thing that people are making. They’re making a television show or movie. So, I always caution writers to not get into a place where you become a defender of a document, because whether they love the document or hate the document, or love you, or hate you, the document is not the end point.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** So, everyone now shares a goal, except for you – that becomes, oh, well, yeah, OK.

**Derek:** [laughs] Right.

**Craig:** So, try and get in the same mind frame with everybody. Counterintuitively, by concentrating less on the document, you will end up being a better defender of the document. A more capable defender of the document.

**Derek:** Plus, I’ve found out that all these arguments you have in those first six months on a project, once the green light happens and you’re actually making it, all of those arguments go out the window. And now you’ve got a new thing that’s being made, which is the movie. And that argument you had six months ago about whether or not the guy would be eating a hot dog, that scene is gone. The hot dog thing that you argued for is long gone. And you will have time to put things back that you liked and all of those kind of things. But just get to that green light.

**Craig:** That’s right. You’re absolutely right. And this is something producers understand. This can be sometimes frustrating for writers when they feel like a producer is sort of going, oh yeah, we don’t have to do that. The producers just want to get to the place where they’re making the movie.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** They’re smart enough to know, and then we’ll do what we kind of want. That’s the big secret. This is the thing that studios don’t want us to know, but of course we all know it. The second that the movie gets made, you know, green light happens, they have lost a massive amount of control.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** Merely all control.

All right, so here’s a question for you, Derek. Derek, this is from Woodward or Bernstein.

**Derek:** This is Craig addresses me any time, by the way. If he calls me on the phone, “Derek! Derek!”

**Craig:** Derek! “I’d love to hear how Derek balances the demands of a career as a novelist,” oh boy, here we go.

**Derek:** Oh god.

**Craig:** “Balances the demands of a career as a novelist with those of a screen/TV writer, and especially if he has any tricks for how to easily switch between projects and mediums if he has to work on both a script and book during the same time period. I ask this as someone who has a first draft script assignment due in just a few days, and I am also handling notes from my book agent before she sends my manuscript to editors. Thanks.”

**Derek:** Great question. Yes, I’ve written five books while I’ve been doing this, and I have a sixth one that’s due in March, so I’m in the middle of that. As we speak, I don’t know how other people do it. I get up early in the mornings, before my kids get up. I get up at five in the morning. And I work for an hour and a half on writing a book. And then when that hour and a half is done, I’m done with it for the day. It’s the only way I can do it. I don’t know how other people do it.

Because then my kids get up, I make them breakfast, I get them off to school. Then I come in and I do my job that I’m supposed to do, this show-running on Chicago Fire. And I would never have somebody walking into my office and see me working on a book while I’m supposed to be working on the show.

That’s the only way I do it. I compartmentalize it. I’ve never had a problem flipping back and forth between projects, and as a TV writer, especially if you get in a position where you’re show-running, you will be flipping back and forth between episodes where something that happened in the past – you’re now in the future, then you got to go back to the past. And you have to write new scenes. And so that’s a skill that you should really try to master.

I mean, Craig, I know you’ve worked on multiple screenplays at the same time in totally different genres.

**Craig:** Yes. Yes. The only way that I’ve been able to do it is to make sure that they’re at different stages. So, every project has a lifespan. You begin breaking a story, you write a script, then there’s revisions of the script. Those are three different things. I can’t break two stories at the same time.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** I can’t write two first drafts at the same time. I can write a first draft and then do revisions on something, or break a story and write a first draft. But, it’s hard. Honestly, it’s hard. I don’t like doing it and I feel like, I don’t know, sometimes I feel stupid, like I’m probably costing myself opportunities and things by saying I’m too busy and I can’t, but then I think, no, actually the reason that you get opportunities is that you actually concentrate on the jobs you have.

**Derek:** And you do a great job on them.

**Craig:** You try to–

**Derek:** If you spread yourself too thin, then you won’t be, yeah.

**Craig:** At that point, and we know writers who kind of have famously done this. You know, they went bananas and took every job. And then suddenly they failed at every job. How could you not? I panic if I feel like I don’t have enough time to do a good job. I literally start to panic.

**Derek:** Yep.

**Craig:** All right. Well, hopefully that helps you out, Woodward or Bernstein. Here’s a question more for me, but it’s for you as well. This is from Austin B, otherwise known as Time Machine 1994. “I’m curious on your thoughts on a few things, of which could be summed up in one answer.” That is an amazing sentence.

**Derek:** I want your thoughts on a thing–?

**Craig:** I’m curious your on thoughts on a few things of which could be summed up in one answer.

**Derek:** That might be a robot that wrote that.

**Craig:** [laughs] Maybe. But the rest of it sounds right. “I’ve heard before on the podcast that you, Craig, tend to look down on screenwriting pitch festivals. Have you changed your opinion on them? As a screenwriter from Florida, it’s hard to rub shoulders to get the deal, so pitch festivals seem like a really great way to get work out there. And if nothing, just to get practice at pitching and sharing your idea with strangers. Are pitch festivals a hopeless endeavor? A business to take advantage of writers? Or can there be a differentiation between pitch festivals that offer real growth, versus ones looking to make a quick buck? What would you like to see at a pitch festival?”

All right, well that’s a good question. I generally think that in fact they are a hopeless endeavor and also a business to take advantage of writers. And the reason why is precisely for what you just said, Austin. You’re a screenwriter from a Florida. It’s hard to rub shoulders to get the deal, so pitch festivals seem like a really great way to get work out there. The keyword is SEEM. They are aware that they seem that way. That’s why they exist.

I do not know of many success stories that come out of these things, or any success stories, but regardless, I always feel like if you had something that was worthy of being purchased by reputable people, it would have been purchased anyway one way or the other. I think pitch festivals by and large are kind of hokum and bunk. And, also, that’s not really how our business works. I mean, I judged the pitch contest at the Austin Film Festival, you know, the screenwriting conference this year. And it struck me that these people were mastering an art that simply doesn’t exist in Hollywood. There is no pitch something in a minute and a half art.

People really don’t pitch that much stuff like that anywhere anyway. That’s more like what movies tell you Hollywood is like. It’s actually not like that. There are much more substantive, lengthy discussions involved than these kind of rat-a-tat advertising sales-type pitches.

Derek, what’s your feeling about all this?

**Derek:** I couldn’t agree more. It feels like that was something that was done in the ‘90s and nobody does it anymore. I mean, if you look at what the studios make, they’re not making movies off of original pitches. And they’re certainly not going to hire you unless they know you can execute that idea.

**Craig:** Right. I’m with you on this. I just feel like it’s a little bit of a blind alley. And they are taking advantage of the fact that you don’t have a lot of opportunities, so they’re dressing themselves up as one. So, I would still say, yeah, be very, very cautious about spending money on these things.

**Derek:** Do you know I’ve never been to one. Even at the Austin Film Festival, I never sat in on those. I don’t even know what it is. It sounds like you’re doing a standup comic routine for a minute thirty.

**Craig:** Almost. So I judged the final round of it with Lindsay Doran and they get a minute or something and they come up, and it is a very practiced rat-a-tat patter. And it’s at this packed bar.

**Derek:** So it’s like log lines? They’re giving you basically?

**Craig:** It’s like, Jim is da-da-da, and blah, blah, blah. And the thing is some of them are really good, but they’re really good as a kind of strange kind of haiku that isn’t necessarily, I mean, ultimately you would say, oh OK, that’s a really interesting story. You seem like a funny, interesting person. I would read five or ten pages and see if it were any good.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** But the point is, we live in a time now where you can just put your script online. You can write a synopsis. It’s there. I don’t know.

**Derek:** And it seems like buying pitches is for people who have already sold scripts. Like they know that you can execute, so then they’re apt to hear your pitch, as opposed to I’m just going to buy your idea and hope you’re a good writer.

**Craig:** That’s right. So, if I say, look, I have an idea. This is what it is. I’ll just have a casual conversation about that. But, it’s not, yeah, you’re right. It’s not like studios are saying, whereas they did in the ‘90s, “Oh sure, yeah, I’ll have a meeting with so and so because they have an idea to pitch.” That just doesn’t really work that way anymore.

I think that the benefit of crafting these pitches is just maybe forcing you to think about your story in a structured way.

**Derek:** And public speaking, nothing is wrong with trying to be better at public speaking. It will help you in life.

**Craig:** I think that’s absolutely true. All right, here’s a question from Semi-Fake. “What questions should you ask when choosing an entertainment attorney?” And his second question, or her second question is, “What’s your favorite guilty pleasure movie?” Derek, questions to ask when choosing an entertainment attorney?

**Derek:** It’s funny, I was so young, and I’ve had the same one for 17 years, that I didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t even know what to ask. I barely knew what Hollywood was, so I’m the wrong person to ask. But I feel like they should be telling you about themselves and what they’ve done and who their clients are. And so you don’t need to be asking questions. You should just know by who they’ve worked with whether or not they’re legit. That’s how I feel.

**Craig:** I agree. Same situation for me. I’ve had the same attorney for 23 years now, or 22. And, yeah, the question I asked was what can I do to thank you.

**Derek:** [laughs]

**Craig:** You know, I mean, and also what questions can you ask? Like how good are you at law? I guess do you have a degree? I mean, I don’t know.

**Derek:** Who are your other clients? That’s what I would ask.

**Craig:** Sure. But then they’re like, what do you care? You’re right. I mean, look, the thing about an entertainment attorney is if they do a good job, you keep them. And if they don’t do a good job, you change.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** It’s as simple as that. Now, what is your favorite guilty pleasure movie?

**Derek:** Oh, do I have to feel guilty about them?

**Craig:** No.

**Derek:** I love Adam Sandler movies. And I have since they started coming out. Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison and Water Boy. And it’s great because my kids are now 11 and 10 and so I’m getting to show them, again. And they hold up. My kids are dying laughing at the same stuff I was laughing at 15 years ago.

**Craig:** That’s a good one. Favorite guilty pleasures. See, I would call those non-guilty pleasure movies.

**Derek:** Yeah, I don’t feel guilty about it.

**Craig:** I will watch Battlefield Earth if it’s on TV. I will watch it. I will watch it every damn time. Because it’s incoherent, but it’s a guilty pleasure. It’s just kind of remarkable in its badness. And so I’ll just watch it. I don’t know.

**Derek:** It’s good bad, versus just painful. Painful bad.

**Craig:** It kind of is good bad.

**Derek:** Yeah.

**Craig:** All right, we’ll do a couple more.

**Derek:** Scientologists everywhere are writing in to the hotline. Do you guys have a hotline for very serious urgent questions from podcast listeners?

**Craig:** We have Twitter?

**Derek:** No, no, no, but I mean, is there a line that rings?

**Craig:** Oh, like a red phone?

**Derek:** That you pick up and they say, “Craig, how do I break into the business?”

**Craig:** Yes there is. [laughs] All right, here’s a question for Derek. This is from Ethan. “I was wondering how many drafts of a script you will go through before you are satisfied with the result? Have you ever found yourself doing too many drafts and just had to say enough is enough?”

**Derek:** Well, not the drafts that we write for ourselves. Michael and I send scripts back and forth. We typically do two to three drafts before we’re ready for somebody else to look at it. After that, you know, if it’s a manager who looks at it, or your representatives, or you’re ready to give it to a producer and you say, “Will you give this a quick read,” kind of thing. And then it’s on to notes.

But typically two or three drafts. But I’m not one of those who is doing 15 different versions of what… – If it’s not working at that point, that’s probably not the best way to spend your time.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think probably because I’m in this routine of writing screenplays for studios, I don’t really have the luxury of–

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** You know, now, interestingly when I worked this script with Lindsay Doran, I wasn’t really doing drafts as much as pages. So there was no sense of a draft thing. And we would just rework, rework, rework.

**Derek:** Right. But you were also being paid, right? That was an assignment?

**Craig:** Yeah. I was being paid.

**Derek:** So it’s not a spec situation.

**Craig:** Correct.

**Derek:** I mean, when you’re on a movie, I think on Wanted we probably had 75 drafts before, you know, as we were shooting.

**Craig:** Geez Louise.

**Derek:** Yeah, I mean, like you said, it would be a scene here. And that constitutes a new draft.

**Craig:** Oh, well sure. Yeah.

**Derek:** You know, at that point you’re on all services, so you’re just doing whatever is needed that day.

**Craig:** Right. It’s a tricky thing to know when it’s done. You know? I mean, sometimes, you just have to look out for, I think Ethan, the syndrome of being afraid to show it, which can sometimes lead you to think, oh, I’ll just keep rewriting this forever. And then I don’t have to face the music.

**Derek:** The other big thing is that you get bored with your own idea. So, the scene that you wrote that when somebody read it they were shocked, surprised, whatever, well, on draft 10 they’re not surprised anymore, and all of a sudden that becomes vulnerable. And you have to tell yourself and your producer, “Remember how you felt when you first read that? That still holds.” I’m sure that’s even more for jokes.

**Craig:** Oh yeah. For sure. Yeah, jokes, exactly.

**Derek:** People who are dying laughing on the first draft, now they’ve read it 40 times and they’re like, “Don’t you think we need a punch up here on?” That would be hard.

**Craig:** Yeah, it is unfortunate, as some of stop writing jokes now.

All right, let’s go for – we have time for a couple more. Here’s kind of an interesting little specific craft question. This is from Flirsee. “How wary or aware should you be as a script writer…“ I love it when people call it script writers.

**Derek:** I like script writer. I’m a script writer. It sounds more British.

**Craig:** Well, and it’s also accurate.

**Derek:** I’m a script writer.

**Craig:** I’m a script writer. Script writer! “How wary or aware should you be as a script writer for weird repetitions in dialogue? For example, a line like, ‘Well, that went well,’ really bothers me because of the repetition. And I spend time looking for alternate words for either ‘well.’ Is this effort worth it? Or am I wasting time I could be spending elsewhere?

**Derek:** Oh, no, it’s worth it. I can tell you, we go through the scripts on our shows and if you see the same word three times, even like alternate character’s dialogue, I just think – it hits the ear wrong. And so, you know, if somebody says, “Really?” And then the next character says, “Really.” And the next character says, “Really,” you circle that. And you give it back to the writer. Find something else there. And I know you’re using “well” and “well” differently, but even that I would be like, it would hit the ear wrong.

**Craig:** Absolutely. I think this is probably the best sign that you’re a writer, Flirsee. Because that’s exactly the kind of thing we’re constantly looking for. And if you listen to our podcast and you hear some of the Three Page Challenges we do, we call people out on that all the time. Repetitions of words feel like glitches in the Matrix. It’s supposed to seem effortless and smooth. And it’s not effortless and smooth if you hear those repetitions. It’s just, yeah, your ear snags on it.

**Derek:** This sounds so obvious, but you should read your scripts out loud to someone. Read it to your wife, or your girlfriend, or your husband, or your mom and dad. Because you will find yourself as you’re saying words that you wrote out loud that looked so good on the page, and then they just make your mouth move in weird directions. Make you mealy-mouthed is what I was trying to say. Read your scripts out loud.

**Craig:** Absolutely. We recommend this all the time. Here is an interesting one. “My question is this,” from Croon 23. “Do you find screenwriters succeed making a living purely as writers, or do they often meld into directing, producing, and other aspects of film? Is this any more beneficial to getting your work made?”

**Derek:** The writers I know, most of them make their living just as screenwriters. But, what’s your passion? Do you want to direct? If you want to direct, and write and direct, then chase that. But if you’re just doing it because you think, oh well, I could do that, too, then you’re not going to be successful.

**Craig:** I agree. I don’t think there’s much value in asking a question like is this any more beneficial to getting your work made. It’s not beneficial if you’re not supposed to be directing your own work.

You know, look, I prefer to have somebody that is a better director than I am direct the things I write. I like that. So, you know, Mark Webb is going to be directing a movie that I wrote. He’s a better director than I am.

**Derek:** Right.

**Craig:** By far. This is good news for me. Yeah, most of the screenwriters I know make their living purely as writers. A bunch of them as they get older will start to direct. Because, you know, the other thing about directing movies is you go away for a while. So, when you’re younger, you have younger kids. They’re in school still. It’s a little bit harder. But as you grow up, you know, and you grow older, then the opportunity maybe is a little more clear to direct. And there are some that are producers, too. But, yeah, there’s plenty of people that are–

**Derek:** But nobody is doing it calculatedly of career longevity. Yeah, if you don’t have a passion for doing the other things, then don’t do them.

**Craig:** I’m with you on that one. All right, let’s ask one last question here. “What’s the one thing you told yourself when you were just starting out that kept you motivated, even in the toughest of times?”

**Derek:** Let me think about that one. Do you have an answer?

**Craig:** No, because I didn’t tell myself anything. I was mostly just scared. It wasn’t like a mantra that I repeated. It was just my, “Uh…ugh.” That was it. That’s what I told myself. “Uh…ugh.”

**Derek:** [laughs] I’m trying to think. I mean, my thing is don’t be so hard on yourself. I think people try to be – they take every little slight – you have to have thick skin. I can’t say this enough. This business requires the thickest skin imaginable. The level of Internet trolling that goes on is nothing compared to just one note session on your script. And if you’re – you just have to be thick-skinned about your work and, I don’t know how else to say it.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think you said it beautifully. God, I wish I had something inspiring to say there. But the truth is, when I was first starting and I was trying to get going, I was mostly just scared. And panicky and nervous. And ambitious. And so I guess as I was telling myself was, “Mm…go. Work.”

**Derek:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Get.

**Derek:** Yes, work hard.

**Craig:** Work hard.

**Derek:** I know Michael and I were always – we were definitely always trying to do the unexpected. We were trying to zig when somebody would zag. We weren’t chasing what was the next thing that was going to be popular. You know, we weren’t trying to write a vampire movie because vampires were popular. We just tried to do things that interested us and we liked. And then always trying to surprise the reader. And then hopefully the director. And then hopefully the audience.

**Craig:** And now you have 20,000 shows on television.

**Derek:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Truly amazing.

**Derek:** We did just cross the – now Michael and I have produced over 200 hours of television.

**Craig:** Damn. That’s amazing.

**Derek:** It’s crazy.

**Craig:** You guys are like, you’re going to be in museums, right? In the Museum of Television and Broadcasting?

**Derek:** I don’t know.

**Craig:** Don’t you get like some kind of Hall of Fame thing?

**Derek:** I don’t think so.

**Craig:** A plaque?

**Derek:** No, I don’t think so.

**Craig:** Really?

**Derek:** No. I don’t think we’re going to get–

**Craig:** Do you get an island?

**Derek:** That would be…no. We were up at the Writers Guild doing that gambling, or what was that night? That poker night.

**Craig:** That was for the Veterans Program.

**Derek:** That was for the Veterans Program. We were doing this poker night. And they have a script library, which I just hadn’t been on that floor of the Writers Guild. I don’t spend a ton of time up there.

**Craig:** It’s the Foundation Library.

**Derek:** But I saw this library of all these scripts. And I’m looking, you know, and it’s in alphabetical order. And then I see the Chicago Fire pilot. And I look over and I see the Chicago P.D. pilot. And then I saw Wanted and 3:10 to Yuma. I was like, I am somewhere! I’m at least in the Writers Guild Library.

**Craig:** You’re in the Writers Guild Library. It’s huge.

**Derek:** [laughs] It’s huge.

**Craig:** That’s huge. Whenever, I don’t know why this is, but I’ll get these emails from the Motion Picture Academy saying, “We would love a copy of your screenplay for our library.” Like we would love a copy of Identity Thief for the Academy Library. And I’m like, oh OK, really?

**Derek:** [laughs]

**Craig:** All right.

**Derek:** OK.

**Craig:** All right. Did you see it? You want it for the Academy? OK. Anyway, oh, you want Scary Movie 4 in the Academy? OK.

**Derek:** Somebody is going to study this.

**Craig:** They’re completionists. You know, what can I say?

All right, well, that was an excellent show. Normally, we do a One Cool Thing, but you know, I’m always like trying to avoid the One Cool Thing.

**Derek:** Oh, OK. Well, you’re putting me on the spot.

**Craig:** No, no, no. I’m saying we don’t have to do it.

**Derek:** Don’t do it. OK. This microphone is cool.

**Craig:** This microphone is cool. Our show is produced by Godwin Jabangwe. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. And our outro this week comes from Bleak Gilliam. I feel like–

**Derek:** These are great names.

**Craig:** Like none of those names are real.

**Derek:** I want to steal some of these names.

**Craig:** Well, Godwin and Matthew are definitely real. But Bleak Gilliam. Amazing. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can send longer questions. For shorter questions on Twitter, I am @clmazin. And John is @johnaugust.

We are on Facebook, apparently, according to John. Search for Scriptnotes podcast. You can find us on iTunes at Scriptnotes. Just search for Scriptnotes. And while you’re there, leave us a comment. And, Derek, do you know why people should leave us a comment?

**Derek:** Why?

**Craig:** John loves comments. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you will find transcripts. We try and get them up about four days after the episode airs. You can find all of the back episodes of the show at Scriptnotes.net. And also on the Scriptnotes USB drive at store.johnaugust.com.

That’s where John steals money from me, Derek.

**Derek:** Wow.

**Craig:** How much money do you think he’s making on this show?

**Derek:** How much money do I think John August steals from you? Well, here’s the way – I look at the raw numbers, OK. You guys have about 400,000 regular Scriptnotes listeners.

**Craig:** I don’t think that’s accurate.

**Derek:** Yeah. 400,000. Dude, we’re in a post-fact America.

**Craig:** Oh, right. Well, make it higher.

**Derek:** 400,000 each week. For a total of about 8 billion a year users. Now, if you consider maybe 10% of those buy t-shirts.

**Craig:** Of course.

**Derek:** What’s 10% of 8 billion?

**Craig:** Derek went to Baylor University. That’s Baylor University.

**Derek:** I don’t know math.

**Craig:** In Texas. What’s 10% of 8 billion? Really?

**Derek:** 800 million? I don’t know.

**Craig:** Very good, Derek. You just move the decimal. [laughs] Well, this was the best ending of the show of all time. We’re keeping all of that in there.

**Derek:** How much do agents make?

**Craig:** [laughs] This is why Derek’s agent is taking so much of his money. Derek, 10% is all of it. Thank you very much, Derek. You were a terrific guest. Thank you to all the people who wrote in questions and all of the folks on the Reddit Screenwriting Sub-Reddit that asked questions. We hope we gave you good answers. And we will be back next week with Mr. John August.

**Derek:** Yay!

**Craig:** Bye.

**Derek:** Bye.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: And this is Episode 283 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. We are starting off the New Year with a new round of the Three Page Challenge, where we take a look at three samples from listeners and offer our honest feedback. We will also be discussing the DGA deal and its impact on writers.

Craig: Mm-hmm.

John: But first, really important follow-up. Craig, the t-shirts are back. People can order the Scriptnotes 2016 shirts for about one more week. So, they’re doing a second printing because people wanted them.

Craig: People wanted them.

John: If you want to get a replacement shirt for Melissa, this is your chance.

Craig: You know what? I probably should get a replacement shirt for Melissa. You’re right. Because I messed up that one. That’s a great point. Ah, I just got to remember now what she wanted.

John: Yes. I think she wanted a shirt that fits properly.

Craig: Yes, of course. And I like ones that are tighter. Okay.

John: Yeah. But, anyway, we’ll stop the podcast right now so everyone can order their shirts.

Craig: Yep. Good job everyone. You did it.

John: You did it. Some more follow-up. A few episodes we talked about reality and fiction and fact and our responsibilities. Will from Albany, New York wrote in to say, “One thing which drives my fiancé and I insane: empty coffee cups. It feels like on every television show and movie scene where a character has a takeaway coffee cup, the cup is so obviously empty that it’s painful to watch them pretend to drink from it.”

Craig, this annoyed you as well. I thought it had. And it turns out this was one of your previous One Cool Things.

Craig: Yes. So there’s an entire award for – Empty Cup Awards. And strangely enough I was watching television last night with Melissa, and that’s strange because I just don’t watch television, but she said, “Oh, the Menendez brothers. They’re doing a follow-up show on the Menendez brothers.” So I was like, all right, I’ll watch the Menendez brothers. Because I did in fact go to school with Lyle briefly before he got kicked out for plagiarism.

John: You went to school with everybody. It’s crazy.

Craig: Yeah, yeah. He was at Princeton. And then he got kicked out a second time for murdering his parents. Regardless, in betwixt the segments on the Menendez brothers, there was an ad for McDonald’s coffee. It was a very bad ad, I might say, because the premise was ridiculous.

There’s some sort of hip company and they’ve sent out their new intern on a coffee run. And he comes back with coffee from McDonald’s. And they’re all like, “Wow, this coffee is great and you saved us money.” No, in the world what would happen is if an intern comes back to the office with a bunch of coffees from McDonald’s, they throw them in his face and burn him.

John: [laughs] And then there’s a lawsuit, but yes.

Craig: Clearly.

John: Because the coffee was too hot. Yeah.

Craig: But the coffee cups were the most empty of all coffee cups I’ve ever seen. And Melissa said, “You know what else? Watch luggage commercials. Or just anything. Shows where people are picking up suitcases. Always empty.” Always. So, you’re not alone, Will. You’re not alone.

John: You’re not alone. Two episodes ago we talked about homeopathy and Jonathan Hall wrote in to say, “I was a little bothered by the way in which a distinction was drawn between science and other forms of knowledge. In particularly, religion and narrative. You explicitly linked homeopathy and religion, which I thought was problematic, as homeopathy makes pseudo-scientific claims about the physical world, claims which you – as you rightly pointed out – are scientifically falsifiable. But the key claims of religion are precisely not claims about empirical reality that can be falsified with physical evidence. Religious ways of knowing are rigorously distinct from scientific ways of knowing. So they shouldn’t necessarily be lumped together with pseudo-science.”

Craig?

Craig: Uh…what? I mean, look, if you are a religious person and you believe, you believe. You should not be concerned about my lack of belief. It doesn’t impact you at all. But I think it’s crazy to suggest that religion does not make claims about the physical world, or what you would call pseudo-scientific claims. Religion, in fact, claims how the world was created. It claims that the world is overseen by this presence of a god. There are an enormous amount of people in this country who believe that man and dinosaurs walked around at the same time and they were all on Noah’s Ark.

Of course, I mean, what? In Catholicism, they have an entire branch of just investigating whether miracles have occurred. The whole point of a miracle occurring is that something has happened in the physical world that is miraculous, and therefore not scientifically provable.

I’m sorry, Jonathan. I disagree.

John: I think my frustration is that when you ask people to take something on faith, they can take more things on faith and it just keeps snowballing. So, while I agree with you that people’s religious beliefs and religious faiths can be wonderful things, I think so often that same muscles that they’re using to have religious faith, they are trying to apply the things that can’t be scientifically tested, and that is my frustration with homeopathy.

Craig: Correct. I’m not really sure what a religious way of knowing is, so I don’t know how you can make it rigorously distinct from scientific ways of knowing. I know what scientific ways of knowing are, because science spells them out very clearly in steps. These are the steps you follow to pursue truth and knowledge. Religion has no such thing. I think you’re supposed to pray or look inwards, or imagine stuff. Sometimes people hear the voice of God talking to them. Sometimes they see God talking to them. Sometimes those people are highly respected, and sometimes they’re wandering around the street yelling at their own hand.

What is this religious way of knowing that’s so rigorously distinct? I don’t know what it is. That may just be my deficiency.

John: I believe there are scientists who are very, very good scientists who are also deeply religious. And they have found a way to sort of keep these worlds separate in ways that are meaningful.

Craig: Yeah.

John: Fantastic. That’s awesome. I hope that they are not practicing homeopathy, because that would make me question their scientific rigor.

Craig: Deeply. And speaking of which, we got another letter in. Letter. I’m old fashioned, aren’t I? Something else came over the transom. From Jennifer Fisher. And she writes, “If there’s an archetype for the cynic/skeptic/devil’s advocate” – three different things – “that’s me. But I think you may be wrong about homeopathy.” John, are you ready?

John: I think I might be ready. I might be wrong. So prove me wrong.

Craig: This is Jennifer now. “I’ve taken certain homeopathic potions without knowing what the side effect symptoms are or even that symptoms were to be expected. And experienced specific textbook symptoms. I’ve also had great success with Oscillococcinum, both before I knew anything about homeopathy and afterwards. Its effects then and now are exactly the same. You will probably put that down to the placebo effect.” Correct. “Which I also strongly believe in.” Not really. Sorry, I’m editorializing as I read the question.

“But when I first started taking Oscillococcinum, I highly doubted it would work. Call me an idiot, as I expect you will.” We’re almost there. “But I was surprised that as two creative beings you were so condescendingly dismissive of other folk’s beliefs and practices.” John?

John: Yeah, so I didn’t want to edit that down, because other folk’s beliefs and practices, that’s the religious aspect of it all.

Craig: Yes.

John: Yeah, come on, you’re stepping on my beliefs. It’s like, well, you know what? Science–

Craig: You’re beliefs are stupid. [laughs]

John: There’s science. And so let’s unpack some stuff in here. Placebo effect, yes, it’s meaningful. Oscillococcinum, like oh it worked for me. Well, what did it actually do? Did it cure your cold? The cold that was going to go away anyway? That is, you know, sugar pills can do that. They can do exactly nothing and that nothing will actually work because you were going to get over that cold anyway.

Craig: What do you do with this person?

John: I don’t know. I mean, here’s the frustration. She’s very bright. She’s articulate. She’s able to explain her case to a point. But at the same point I can’t do anything with this. Basically you’re saying like I know it may be a placebo, but it works for me. Well, you know what? Maker’s Mark whiskey works for me, too, but I’m not claiming it has any scientific validity. I’m just saying it’s helpful.

Craig: Well, Jennifer kind of gives it away at the end when she says, “I was surprised that as two creative beings,” and somehow being creative we should, I guess, we divorce ourselves from reason. “You were so condescendingly dismissive of other folk’s beliefs and practices.” And there it is. She felt that we were condescending to what she felt was true. This is her belief and practice.

Jennifer, you do not have a right to a belief and a practice without also somebody looking at it and saying, “That’s stupid,” if, in fact, the belief and practice is stupid. If you tell me that you strongly believe in ghosts, I’m going to tell you that is stupid. I’m not saying you’re stupid. I’m saying that is stupid. Because it is. Because there aren’t any ghosts. Nor are there Oscillococcinum shimmering microbes. Nor is there anything in an Oscillococcinum pill other than lactose and glucose.

You believe something that’s dumb. And so, yes, I am condescendingly dismissive of it because it deserves condescending dismission. Which is not a word.

John: But it should be a word, because we all know what that word means.

Craig: It should be a word. Exactly. So, first of all, you say that you’re an archetype for the cynic/skeptic/devil’s advocate. Those are three different things. Cynicism is not skepticism. Skepticism is not devil’s advocacy. You seem like a devil’s advocate, kind of, but mostly you seem like somebody who believes what you want to believe and you don’t want other people making fun of it. But we can make fun of it because it’s stupid and wrong. We’re allowed to. That’s part of our gig as reasonable people. Just as you point at other people who believe absolute nonsense and say, “That’s stupid and wrong.”

You say you’ve taken certain homeopathic potions. The use of potion is remarkable to me. Without knowing what the side effect symptoms are, or even that symptoms were to be expected. I don’t believe you. Why would you take something without knowing what it does or why it does it? Why would you do that? You just randomly drink stuff? I don’t believe you. You’re not running double-blind experiments on yourself. That’s ridiculous.

You’ve had great success with Oscillococcinum. I don’t know what that means. You can’t define it. [sighs]

John: Yeah, she’s random study out of a group of one person. Yes.

Craig: And then here’s the deal. Exactly. You are literally doing the thing that science is designed to prevent. Right? If you take a – imagine, Jennifer, a 1000-sided die. That’s a big die. Two dice. But let’s take one die. One thousand-sided die. And you roll that thousand-sided die and it comes up 1,000. And then you roll it again and it comes up 1,000 again. The odds of that happening twice in a row is a million. One in a million. It’s going to happen. Do you understand?

Science is there to aggregate an enormous amount of things to rule out these little blips and blobs. Your individual experience with homeopathy is meaningless. The fact that you think it’s meaningful is not my problem. It’s your problem. So, if you thought I was condescendingly dismissive in your beliefs and practices before, I’m sure at this point now you are ready to delete us from your podcast list.

But since we don’t get paid, it’s all right.

John: Yep. The last point I would like to make is that if a person individually chooses to take homeopathy, I think that’s really dumb. But whatever. They’re making their own choice. My frustration is sort of the whole back half of that episode which is that like there’s actually a cost to those choices. And there’s a societal and an economic cost, billions of dollars cost, to this. And it’s precluding other valid treatments from the funding and the awareness that they should be getting. And that is my real frustration with her reply here is that I’m dismissive of her beliefs. Well, I’m actually concerned that by taking homeopathy seriously, it’s like selling ghost insurance. You know what? Some people really believe in ghosts, so do we need to have ghost police out there? Because some people really genuinely believe in ghosts, so maybe the police need to start responding to ghost emergencies. I don’t think they should.

Craig: You’re being condescendingly dismissive. [laughs]

John: Yes. And so, yes, I’m being condescendingly dismissive by comparing it to ghost emergencies, but I think they’re equally real and valid.

Craig: That’s right. That’s right. Literally, there is as much chance of Oscillococcinum being an effective medicine as there is ghosts.

John: We’re going to get so many ghost emails after this.

Craig: Good. Good. By the way, let’s weed you all out. I don’t care.

Look, you know who ends up losing money on this gig? John August. Because he’s the one making all the money. We know that. This whole t-shirt thing. [sighs]

John: All right. Let’s get to happier news. Back on Episode 238, Dana Fox was our guest. And she was amazing. And so she talked about how she planned on segueing from being a writer-producer to being a writer-director. And this past week she did just that. She directed an episode of New Girl which aired this last week. And it was fantastic. So I’m just so happy and so proud of Dana Fox.

But it’s also a great segue to the other bit of news that happened this last week which was the DGA deal. So, the Directors Guild of America negotiated a new deal with the AMPTP, which is the group that represents the studios, which “more than triples residuals for members working on original content in the highest subscriber tier, among many other adjustments.” So, it’s basically how much the members are going to get paid for different things for the next three-year contract.

Craig: Right.

John: Why this matters to our listeners is the DGA deal tends to set the parameters for what the WGA deal is going to be. And that’s heading into negotiation right now.

Craig: Yeah. Well, it doesn’t tend to set it. It sets it. This is the deal. The way the AMPTP, that’s the consortium that represents the studios, they put together a package. There are all these terms in the package. Your minimum earnings. That number will raise a little bit. And how we pay out residuals. We’ll raise that a little bit. Here they’re saying instead of all these residuals getting pushed into a big pie and then split up equally among say Netflix shows, if your show gets really, really subscribed to you get more.

But all of that payment is one big number that they’re saying over the next three years, because these contracts are three-year contracts, we’re going to pay out this much money. That’s the number. Now, when the WGA sits down, it can figure out a different way to divide that number up. But that’s basically the number. You know, makes sense, because it’s not like the DGA is going to do this and then the WGA is going to get a better number, because the DGA will turn around and go, “What? What? No. Why would you give you them more?” So, that’s the number.

John: If the numbers are the numbers, what ends up being sort of fascinating about these deals are the things that aren’t about the numbers, which are about sort of specific concerns that an individual guild raises. And this is the one that sort of set off some alarm bells this last week. So, this is also from the DGA press release. “Another focus of the DGA was to address the lack of opportunities for those who aspire to become career directors by seeking to curb the practice of gifting limited first time directing experiences to individuals who are not serious about a career in directing.”

So, this is a new provision that’s in the contract that all first-time television directors in drama, who do not have prior directing experience, or who have not completed and enrolled in a studio-sponsored television director development program, or attend an orientation program provided by the DGA before their employment begins. Basically you have to be in one of these sessions in order to be a first-time drama TV director.

Craig: Yeah.

John: So, Craig, you and I don’t work in TV, but a lot of our friends do. And a lot of them were really pissed off at this.

Craig: Yeah. Well, so this is absolutely a thumb in the eye of showrunners and to a lesser extent staff writers. The DGA resents, I think, systematically the fact that writers are in charge in television. And writers hire directors, specifically the showrunners, who are this hybrid of writer-producer. So, writer and employer. They hire directors. They determine who gets a directing job. And they will often give first timers a shot, whether they are writers on staff, who they say, okay, we’re giving you an episode to direct, or sometimes the actors. They’ll say we’re giving you an episode to direct. Sometimes those actors turn out to be fantastic directors.

Jonathan Frakes, you know, who made one of the best Star Trek movies. He started by getting episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation to direct. They don’t like this so much because they feel like writers are now gifting – they’re saying – gifting these gigs. And they’re putting this in as this weird kind of roadblock. It’s a somewhat impotent roadblock. I think that there’s some nervousness about how frequently this orientation day is going to be offered. If they offer it every single day, it’s not much of a roadblock. If they offer it once a month, it’s a huge roadblock. Because they’re saying, okay, we offer this on the first of the month. If you decide on March 2 that you want your writer to direct the episode two weeks from now, they can’t until they come here and do our orientation program. And god forbid you’re shooting in Louisiana. They got to fly them to New York or LA.

So, it’s an anti-writer, anti-showrunner thing. A lot of people are concerned that it is going to basically limit the opportunities of people that could be new directors. A lot of those people are women, are people of color. It’s going to keep a lot of the jobs in the same old pool of the standard DGA director who tends to be a 55-year-old white male. We, I believe, unfortunately can do nothing about this right now. It’s done, as far as I can tell.

John: So let’s talk about a little bit more of the problem, and then we’ll talk about the remedy. So, the reason I’m bringing this up in relation to Dana Fox is like Dana Fox was a first-time director of a television show. It’s a comedy, but if the same sort of basic rules apply. She knocked it out of the park. She did a fantastic job. But she and Aline Brosh McKenna theoretically would have had to have gone through an orientation to be allowed to direct an episode of the show. In the case of Aline, to direct an episode of the own show that she has created.

So she has been supervising directors all this time, but to direct the episode she’s supposed to get clearance from the DGA and go through this orientation to do it. That’s kind of crazy.

Craig: Yep.

John: So, I tweeted about sort of my frustrations over all this and Paris Barclay, who is the head of the DGA, tweeted back at me saying like with a link to this is the sort of the backstory of why we’re doing this. And it was this diversity report the DGA did. I didn’t really buy it. They’re basically trying to claim that like, oh, because first-time directing deals are so important we need to make sure that it comes from a pool of diverse candidates. And it looked very much like a solution in search of a problem. It was a way of sort of defending what I think is ultimately going to result in fewer first-time directors being hired for these projects because it’s not just that I need to pick a director to direct that episode next week. Directors for TV series are slotted out months, and months, and months in advance. And are you going to be able to say to this first timer, like, can I guarantee that you’ll actually have had that orientation session when I’m hiring you for something that’s six months away. Maybe you can’t. And so therefore you have to go pick somebody safer. And I worry that it’s going to actually preclude opportunities rather than opening opportunities.

Craig: It certainly seems like it to me. I can’t imagine how they can argue with a straight face that this is in order to promote diversity. They’re saying we don’t want new people. We want to just use the people we have. We prefer to have the people we already have. The people you already have are not as diverse as the population of the United States. That’s a fact.

So, on its face that is just wrong. It’s a wrong claim. And there’s no possible way that this is somehow going to – I mean, they’re saying we want to make sure that the pool – what does that mean? I don’t even know what that means.

First of all, to be clear, they can’t tell the companies who they can and can’t hire. It’s not like you show up at this orientation and they go, “You’re not the right kind of person. You can’t do this.” You’re doing it. You just literally have to sit there. You can play Candy Crush on your phone all day during this thing. There’s no grade. They can’t flunk you. They’re not allowed by federal labor law to prevent you from working if you pay your dues and you sign a contract.

In fact, if they really impose this and it becomes a huge problem, I think what you’re going to see is a lot of first-time directors becoming Fi-Core non-members of the DGA. And then you don’t have to do this damn thing at all. Yes, you still need a DGA-covered contract, and you’ll have to pay a slightly reduced rate in dues. You’ll still get residuals. You’ll still be covered by the DGA contract. But you won’t have to do this other stuff. Because it’s stupid.

Sometimes unions, man, they just – argh.

John: Yeah, it is frustrating. So, let’s talk about what the remedies are here. So, because writers are the most frustrated by this development, you could imagine becoming a point of discussion in the WGA negotiations, but it’s not really part – it’s not part of our contract. So, it doesn’t seem like a useful thing to sort of try to argue with the AMPTP while we’re doing our own negotiations. If it manifests in a way that it feels like it is precluding who studios can actually hire, then that is an actionable thing. And that feels like it’s a whole separate lawsuit situation. That’s like a labor practices kind of thing.

But it’s not a negotiation you go into a room and talk it out.

Craig: No, we don’t really have standing to argue about this in negotiation. First of all, the people that are most aggrieved are the showrunners, but they’re aggrieved in their capacity as producers. A union doesn’t represent employers. It represents employees.

Now, we can certainly say on behalf of our employees, on behalf of writers who want to be first-time directors that this seems onerous. And the companies can say, “Well, sorry. We’ve done it. That’s it.” They’re not going to get involved in some sort of tit-for-tat war. They’re not going to give the WGA some sort of return clause that allows them to mess around with the directors. Frankly, the AMPTP likes the directors far more than they like us. That’s why they make the deal with them first. And these are the little kinds of rewards they get. You know?

They’re going to keep chipping away at these things. And the only way to prevent, honestly, is for the WGA and the DGA to make amends and achieve some sort of detente. I cannot emphasize how apart the two unions are right now in terms of their leadership and philosophy. So, believe me, I don’t say this lightly. I’m not saying, oh, and it could happen next week. No. No. It won’t.

John: If the same kind of thing were presented but it was the WGA rather than the DGA, there would have been fire in the streets. Like basically that any writer who is going to be hired to do something has to go through an orientation program ahead of time, no one would have put up with it. And it’s so strange that we look at directors as a different class of things. This was a thing that the DGA could do that the WGA could never do.

Craig: Well, they have been flexing their muscle about this TV director thing for a bit now. In the last negotiation they were getting terms about scripts. That the director needed a chance to have the script with enough time to prepare. They know that in features the director is treated like royalty and in episodic television, which is – as we all know – that’s where all the employment is right now, the director is not. And so they are clearly pivoting to fight on behalf of the television directors. It’s interesting how both unions are becoming more television-oriented. That is why I think you’re going to start seeing more and more of this.

The DGA does not like the fact that writers are in charge in television.

John: Yeah. So, one of our very favorite features on Scriptnotes podcast is the Three Page Challenge, where we invite our listeners to send in the first three pages of their screenplay, or their pilot, and we take a look at them and offer our honest opinions. You can read along with us if you’d like to because all of the scripts we’re going to be talking about, the PDFS can be found in the show notes links. Just keep scrolling or go to johnaugust.com. You can see these pages.

So all three of these writers or writer teams sent in these things asking for our honest feedback, so we are going to be very honest as we do it.

Now, oftentimes it’s just me and Craig talking, but it’s always much more fun when we have a very special guest on. And so I’m so excited for our very, very special guest. One of our favorite people in the world, Kelly Marcel, welcome back to the podcast.

Kelly Marcel: Thank you. Hello everybody.

John: So, Kelly Marcel, you are the writer of many movies, but the one that we sort of like all fell in love with you for was Saving Mr. Banks. What have you been working on? I hear you’re working on a project with a certain fella.

Kelly: With which certain fella?

John: A certain fella who you have romantic feelings for? A certain former Scriptnotes guest, Steve Zissis. I hear you’re working on a project with him. Is that accurate? Fair to say?

Craig: Yeah, you guys have been cooking something up?

Kelly: We’ve been working on a project together. We’ve actually been working on two projects together. So, we just finished – workwise we just finished Cruella for Disney. And in real-life we’ve been working on making a miniature Marcel-Zissis.

Craig: Oh. Mini-Ziss.

John: The product of this things is about to hit the air, and we’re so excited for you.

Craig: To extend the analogy, we are going to have some notes. Congratulations on your new baby. It’s a great start. However, we have some concerns. Is that the penis? Is that what it’s going to be? Or–?

Kelly: He’s terrible Greek-looking.

Craig: Already. But he’s not born, you know. You know what? We like the Greek. It’s just too much Greek.

Kelly: Yes, can we tone the Greek back a little bit?

John: I think really the audience testing is showing us, like the top two boxes are strong, but there’s definitely areas we can work on. We can tighten some things up.

Craig: Yeah. We love, I mean, the feet we love. So let’s not even talk about those. Those are great.

John: Oh, god. Baby feet are the best.

Kelly: Feet good. Snout good.

Craig: The snout is terrific. Tests very, very well. It’s just…it’s the Greek. So, we’ll – we have work to do. [laughs]

Kelly: I’ll let Steve know.

Craig: I hope he has Steve’s eyes. That’s really the only important thing. Honestly, you know, the blimp face eyes. I mean, for those of you who remember back in podcast whatever it was when we it was our live show in Austin and we came up with a pitch for a lonely blimp that had floated away. I think it was the best movie idea we’ve ever come up with on the fly in one of these shows.

Kelly: I still think we have to write that movie.

Craig: We probably should. And Steve did this face of the blimp. And his poor – like his puppy dog eyes. He’s blimpy dog eyes. Well, congratulations. That’s very exciting.

Kelly: Thank you.

John: We’re all very excited.

Kelly: Thank you.

John: All right. Let’s get to our work. We have listeners who have written in with some three pages for us to take a look at. Let’s start with No Man’s Land by Julian von Nagel and Gathering Marbet.

Craig: We have some amazing names today. Everyone. I think all three of them we have awesome names. I don’t know if Godwin is like, look, my name is Godwin Jabangwe, so I need people to kind of match with that. Like Julian von Nagel and Gathering Marbet.

John: So good. I went with the Marbet. But Marbet is another fair guess for that name.

Craig: It depends on how Frenchie they want to be about it.

John: Yeah. So everything is French to me now. Let me read the synopsis for this script for people who do not have it in front of them. So, we open inside a hospital room in an alternate universe with ‘80s cyber-punk feel. Rusted tubes pump a murky liquid into the back of a middle-aged woman’s head. She lies motionless, slack-mouthed, and covered in sores.

The window opens. Eli, in his 20s, enters, a satchel slung over his shoulder. He pulls a makeshift device out of the satchel, switches it on, and shows it to the woman who we learn is his mother. He mentions he is pretty damn close, thanks to the poor rats. Eli proceeds to apply medicine to his mother’s sores. He tells her how security around the hospital has tightened up, but nothing can keep him out.

He promises to get her out of the hospital soon, before slipping out a window as a nurse enters the room.

We pull back to reveal Quo has been watching Eli all along. He instructs the security officer not to block Eli’s access to the hospital. On his way up to the hospital rooftop, Quo debriefs an unseen voice on Eli’s progress with the device. The voice asks about Eli’s father. Quo assures him that Eli’s father is dead. Quo watches Eli disappear into the streets below, vowing to pick him up. And that’s the bottom of our three pages for No Man’s Land.

Kelly: Ohhh.

Craig: Mm.

John: Who wants to start? Craig, do you want to get us going here?

Craig: Happy to. Happy to. We have some issues, Julian and Gathering. I got a little tripped up right from the very first line. Alternate universe, ‘80s cyber-punk aesthetic. You don’t necessarily want to announce to me that it’s an alternate universe with an ‘80s cyber-punk aesthetic. What you want to do is put me in the middle of a movie. And I will sense from your description that I am in an alternate universe and that I’m experiencing some kind of aesthetic. Many readers will not know what ‘80s cyber-punk aesthetic is. I would like to say I am one of them. I’m pretty familiar with cyber-punk. And I’m familiar with the ‘80s. But I don’t know the specific sub-genre of ‘80s cyber punk. So, I’m not quite sure what that’s about.

So, I got a little hurky-jerky from the start there. There is this hospital room is not hospital room the way we think of them. So, that’s probably how you would get that across. You know, you’d let the reader intuit this. The window bulged, which I didn’t understand. Because that sounded sort of metaphysically weird to me. Then this kid comes in and starts doing stuff that I think is supposed to be mystery. We’ve talked a lot about mystery versus confusion. I was mostly confused here. But I understood that a lot of it was mystery. I don’t know what the device is. I don’t know what it means that it turns on, but that’s okay, I’m sure I’ll find out.

I don’t know what the deal is with the poor rats. I’m sure I’ll find out. What I do know is this. This is his mother. Okay? And she is very, very sick. And she is in a lot of pain. And this dude is chattering in a way that did not feel appropriate for that. He’s giving us a little bit of an info dump. “You never kept me out of anything. How many times did you have to look up the lighter fluid before you gave up and got me gloves and a face shield?” It’s almost bad comedy about his recklessness and how he used to be a kid. And she groans. His mother groans, still motionless. She wants to tell him something. He just keeps yapping over her. “Hey, don’t worry about me. I’m not going to blow up myself.”

Eli, shut up. Right? Your mom is very much in pain and trying to tell you something. I got very, very – the relationships were not functioning for me. I mean, it was like, okay, here’s Quo. He’s watching. But Quo is apparently going to talk to somebody on a roof. Who is on the roof? Who hangs out on a roof? So, I had many issues here.

John: Kelly Marcel, how did you read this?

Kelly: I’m in agreement with most of what Craig said. And apart from Craig said I know this is his mum, I actually didn’t know it was his mum until we were well into him talking about the lighter fluid and all of that kind of stuff.

I felt like when he came through the window, I couldn’t really discern whether he was talking to the device that he had just switched on, or whether he was talking to the mum on the bed. So that threw me completely. I didn’t know who he was talking to. And also the description of him – resilient in spite of himself, the cautious gene just isn’t there – kind of took me off the page for a bit, because I had to sit there and think about what that actually looks like. Like what is that? How do you act that? How do you play that? I’m not quite sure how that’s telling me who this character is immediately.

And then tonally, and I think Craig was just saying this, I couldn’t tell whether it was supposed to be funny or whether it was supposed to be serious because of things like the conversation about the lighter fluid and his mum trying to talk, who is clearly in an enormous amount of pain and him not allowing her to talk. So, on page two I kind of don’t know tonally where I’m at.

That said, all in all I was kind of intrigued by it and I would have continued reading, because I did want to see where it was going to go.

John: I agree with you. I was actually intrigued enough that I would have read a few more pages. I had the same issues that you guys did, especially with looking at sort of the words on the page. I wasn’t actually so bothered by alternate universe/’80s cyber-punk aesthetic, because I had a vague sense of what it was. But by highlighting that at the very start, I stated reading the things in here and reading them with this like, okay, it’s like a cyber-punky kind of feel. And it was a useful shorthand for me. I don’t think I would do this personally, but it didn’t bug me so much to call it out as cyber-punk from the very start.

What did bug me was that a lot of the descriptions – there were just a lot of extra words thrown in that I thought hurt you sentence by sentence. So, looking at this first paragraph, “The uppermost screen, ducted to the ceiling, casts a SICKLY GLOW while emitting a RELUCTANT BEEPING.” I don’t know what ducted actually means. Like attached to the ceiling? Attached to the ducts of the ceiling? Is it duct-taped? And then what is a reluctant beeping?

Craig: You know, like beep. Beep.

John: That’s what it is.

Craig: Beep.

John: It’s Steve Zissis’s not really wanting to beep but kind of has to beep.

“Rusted tubes hang.” Well, pipes rust, but do tubes rust? I think of tubes being plastic. So, word-by-word I kind of got knocked off of the track. And I think if I would ask for anything it’s just to clean up a lot of this stuff in this first bit so we can get to the business which is that this guy is coming in and he’s talking to his mother. It’s not a terrible version of like monologue-ing to somebody in the bed, but it’s not acknowledging that she’s in pain or like sort of what he’s trying to do.

Kelly: Right.

John: If he’s trying to keep the one-sided conversation going to sort of not acknowledge that she’s in a lot of pain, I get that, but I wasn’t feeling that dynamic here on the page.

Craig: Yeah. I circled reluctant beeping as well because that’s nonsense. And I think a lot of times people do this. They get a little purple with these things. They forget how they read things. You know, so, you have the first paragraph, “…a tall, bulky machine with CLUSTERS OF KNOBS, switches, and several monitors precariously stacked on top of each other.” Or, there’s a large medical machine. The uppermost screen casts a sickly glow while emitting a beep – or while beeping. You know, we don’t really need – the tubes with murky liquid. Oh, each tube administers – this is – see, I really got tripped up on this stuff. Each tube administers a specific drug through needles that puncture the back of a middle-aged woman’s head. Ooh, okay, well that’s creepy. Except she’s lying motionless on a heavy-framed hospital bed. So how do we see needles going into the back of her head?

Kelly: Mm-hmm.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And, you know, people might think, oh, it doesn’t matter. No, this is exactly the kind of conversation that people have all the time. And the conversation is entitled how do we shoot this. And believe it or not, every time you do these things and you’re not clear about them, it stops people. Even if they don’t know why they’re being stopped. Although, I have to admit, I realized I made a mistake. Quo – there is no one on the roof. Someone is talking in his ear in an ear piece. But I think Voice (O.S.) is the wrong thing. That should be Voice and then in parenthesis it should say (earpiece). O.S. means off-screen but present, to me.

John: That is a fair assessment. So, let’s talk about Quo here at the end, because we get to the surveillance footage and then we’re seeing his perspective on all this which in general can work. So, you established your main character and you establish the people watching the main character. But Quo’s first dialogue here frustrated me. He says, “However he’s getting in, don’t block it. I don’t have room for oversights.”

Craig: What?

John: I have no idea what that sentence could mean.

Craig: It’s contradictory.

Kelly: Well, also we just saw how he got in. He’s watching him.

Craig: [laughs] And then there’s that. So, there’s like, wow, there’s many, many sins in this one bit of dialogue. Kelly is absolutely right. This guy is watching. He knows how he’s getting in. And if he’s saying, “I’m glad he’s getting in, don’t block the window.” Then it’s not – I don’t have room for oversights. That would mean… – He should say, “It’s an oversight, but I’m OK with it.” Right?

Kelly: Right.

John: Yeah. I was thinking oversights as like a different word. Like you’re assigning an oversight. It’s just weird. It didn’t feel like a good English sentence. And then Quo says, “It turns on.” “And?” “And nothing. He’s experimenting with rats. I’ll get eyes on that.” So, it turns on is the device, but like it was a weird thing. I wanted to single out that they’re really interested in the device and not the kid from the start. It tripped me up there.

Craig: John, don’t you find it a little odd that we get an enormous amount of description of the medical equipment surrounding this middle-aged woman, but this device, which is apparently important, it gets the following description: makeshift device.

John: Yeah.

Craig: I think we could do better than that, right?

John: I think we could, too.

Kelly: And also it actually turns out they are – I mean, yes, they’re interested in the device, but then it turns out that after that they’re not interested in the kid, the device, or what he’s doing. They’re interested in his dad.

Craig: And then there’s that.

Kelly: There’s a lot of misdirect in three pages in terms of what are these people actually interested in.

Craig: Well, and that, you know, this is the thing. So we’ve done an entire episode about balancing mystery and confusion. And I think that Julian and Gathering, they clearly get the difference, and they have put in a lot of mysteries without necessarily being confusing. I think they could say, look, we’ve clearly indicated that these are supposed to be mysteries, but at some point you have so many mysteries, you don’t know which one to pay attention to. And they all just mush into equal value.

John: All right. So, should we move onto our next Three Page Challenge?

Kelly: Yes.

John: Craig, do you want to do the description on this one?

Craig: All right. This is All the Ghosts are Girls by Christine Trageser. I told you, all of our names, what do you think?

Kelly: Trageser, I reckon.

Craig: Trageser. I’m going to go with that, because she reckons. All the Ghosts are Girls by Christine Trageser. Nina Ocasion, twenty-something Filipino doll designer, presenters her Marty styling head doll to the company executives. She tries to show off the doll’s functions, but the demo fails. She blames the batteries.

Nina’s boss, Val, is tired of the excuses and questions Nina’s dedication to the brand. Karen, Nina’s coworker, defends her stating how Nina was at work all through the night repainting the model. Val is not convinced, even as Nina claims to have played with her Marty dolls until the seventh grade. Nina snaps, firing back at Val, and making out with the Marty doll to prove her love for her job. Val storms out in disgust.

Back in her factory loft, Nina confides in Susan, telling her how nothing ever seems to work out for her. Susan tries to console Nina, who maintains her innocence for the demo failure. A little girl appears next to Nina, Susan perhaps, who may or may not be there, and pats her shoulder as we reach the bottom of page three.

All the Ghosts are Girls. Who wants to take a shot at this?

John: Kelly Marcel, do you want to start us off?

Kelly: Sure. I actually really like the title of this movie, for a start. And l liked that Christine started the movie with conflict. That we’re immediately into a scene where two people are having a disagreement with each other over something. And it’s big.

It was really hard for me, because we got to the bottom of page one and I got a bit umbrage-y about something and it was hard for me to move on from that. And I will tell you what it is.

Craig: Oh, goodie.

Kelly: She describes everybody – I actually really like the descriptions of all the characters. It gave me a really good visual of like who I’m seeing and what I’m looking at. So we get a good description of Nina, the petite lumberjack, and Val who is waspy. And everybody that we meet. And then we come to a character called Karen and her character description is “African American.”

Craig: That’s enough. Right? [laughs] What else do you need to say?

Kelly: And so I just wanted to talk about that for a little bit. Actually, Craig and I had a text conversation about a script recently that he had read that also had the same character description in it. And that’s not a character description. That’s the color of somebody’s skin. And it really threw me on page one and stuck in my head and made the further two pages really difficult for me to read. So, I just wanted to talk about that for a bit, because I’ve seen it a lot. And it annoys me.

John: I think it’s a great thing to talk about. So, I’ll take the defense position here, just so we can actually have a full discussion. I would say that there are certainly characters in scripts who are sort of not crucial or important. Like Karen may not show up ever again. And so often you just do Karen, 40s, and you wouldn’t put anything more for her. We’ve all done that. There’s just a character who’s only in a scene and you really don’t fully describe them out.

Craig: Sure. Bank manager. Yeah.

John: The question becomes if you do then specify a race, it makes it sound like you’re not going to give a full character description, you’re just calling her African American. I just can see the logic of like we always tell people to be specific and to sort of like not let everything be default white. Not let everything be sort of default lowest common denominator.

Kelly: Absolutely.

John: So, in this case, Christine is saying like, no, Karen is not white. But it bugged you because it felt like you didn’t get the rest of your character description there. And you felt like it was a shortcut. Is that right?

Kelly: I did. And I totally agree with everything you said, but Karen then goes on to have quite a lot to say. So, she does need a character description.

John: You want something to give us a sense of her personality and who she is in this world other than just African American.

Kelly: Absolutely. Because she says as much as anybody else, and all those other people got a character description. And they didn’t get, I mean, apart from Nina who is Filipina, I don’t know what color Val is. I don’t know what color John is.

Craig: Well, Val is white.

John: Val is white. She’s waspy.

Kelly: Oh, okay. OK. All right. I’ll let that go.

Craig: You know, I like to think about wardrobe, hair, and makeup. That’s my first go-to when I’m introducing a character. What are they wearing? What’s their hair like? What’s their makeup like? Do they have scars? Do they have a weird eye?

You can’t – John’s right, and we all know there are sometimes when you have a character that you’re passing by and like, “Cop, black, yells at him, ‘Slow down.’” But, no, Karen clearly is a character and, yeah, she deserves more description than, you know, black. That’s not enough.

How is she dressed? Is she important? Is she thin? Is she sturdy? Is she blinged up? Does she have on like a watch with the Marty thing because she’s like a real corporate follower? We need something – especially when we have Nina as the petite lumberjack with giant glasses. I mean, that’s such an interesting way of describing somebody.

Kelly: Everybody else is really interestingly described. And I think, as well, it’s really important that, I mean, even if you just say that Karen is really good friends with Nina, because she clearly is. She totally stands up for her over the next two pages and tries to protect her from Val, who is pissed off with Nina. So, even that, you know, is important to know.

But other than that, I sort of loved it. It spoke to me about my childhood. I used to have those dolls that you’d put makeup on and stuff, so I really loved it. I was like, oh, I love those.

And then I did get very confused at the very end when Nina is in her apartment and she’s drinking and then there’s this disembodied voice talking to her. And her hair rises into the air and then falls again. So, she’s clearly talking to a ghost, which I can determine from the title of the film. But it wasn’t clear enough for me. Like, it says a girl with braids in a plain cotton dress. An apron appears next to Nina and pats her shoulder. Where does she appear from? Does she appear from thin air? Did she come from another room? Is this the voice of the person we’ve just been hearing? I got a bit confused about that. And if that’s our first introduction to these ghosts that are mentioned in the title, then I need it to be kind of a bigger moment or a clearer moment at least.

And I just, also as an addition, I didn’t really know where we were. Like what time period we were in. What year we were in. Because it seemed, the doll seemed quite modern, so I just wanted to get a sense of where I was in the world.

Craig: John, what do you think?

John: I really liked a petite lumberjack with giant glasses, but I felt like the opening sentence was really awkward. So, let me read it aloud for people here. “NINA OCASION, 20s Filipina doll designer, a petite lumberjack with giant glasses sets up her prototypes on a table at the front of a presentation theater for executive review.” That’s one hell of a sentence. It’s a long sentence. So, the problem here is that there’s two clauses and she’s basically trying to describe Nina twice, both as 20s Filipina doll designer, and a petite lumberjack with giant glasses. Break those into two sentences and make those two different ideas, because it was just one mushy thing for me. I couldn’t parse all that. And they’re both good ideas, but give us a description and then tell us what she’s actually doing.

I think like Kelly I was happy that it was starting on conflict. I didn’t believe all of Val’s lines. Val felt like she had been dialed in from a slightly harsher movie than everybody else, or a little bit more arch movie than everybody else. So, I didn’t necessarily believe Val, but I did like that there was a conflict at the center of this and that Nina was trying to stick up for herself. And once it was set up that Nina had been up all night doing this presentation, I could more believe that she would go off on her. Because we’ve all been in that situation where you’ve been shooting all night and something finally snaps and you do yell at people in front of the crew.

It felt like that kind of moment to me.

The ghost at the end. It’s in the title, so I get it. I had a hard time connecting storylines though. Like the Nina from the first part doesn’t feel like the Nina from the second part. The last thing I sort of expected in the second scene was like, oh, and now there’s a little ghost.

Craig, tell us?

Craig: Well, I think commas would be a great help here. Commas are wonderful little things and they can smooth out these issues. So, Christine is dropping some commas where she needs them. For instance, your problem, a petite lumberjack with giant glasses, if there’s a comma after glasses it helps an enormous amount. Because right now it says, “A petite lumberjack with giant glasses sets up her prototypes,” so is the lumberjack setting up the – no, no, she’s setting them up. She is a petite lumberjack.

Similarly, “VAL JEFFRIES, super WASPy 40s, queen bee marketing VP glances up from her phone.” No. Queen bee marketing VP, glances up from her phone.

So, commas will help you kind of break apart your little bits of pieces here. I had to go back and forth a bunch of times on some of the names, because we have a lot. We have a lot and we have them quickly. And they are all roughly the same length and style. We have Val, Nina, Karen, John, Susan. I think that’s all of them.

So they’re all like sort of — — — — and Karen, this is the real symptom of what happens when you under-describe somebody that’s important. So, Kelly has pointed out “Karen, 40s African American.” By the way, 40s, African American. Not 40s African American. Means you’re an African American from the 1940s. So, again, commas.

John: That would make a great character.

Craig: [laughs] 40s African American. Like where did she come from?

John: I mean, it’s impressive that Karen has become a boss of this toy company in the 1940s. So that alone is a distinction.

Craig: I mean—

Kelly: You have to say with “John, 50s, engineer” as well.

Craig: There you go. Exactly. The symptom of this is that when I got to Karen, who has her first line in the middle of page three. I had no idea who she was. I was like, who’s Karen? Who’s Karen? Karen, to the back of Val.

Kelly: Page two. Top of page two, Craig.

Craig: I’m sorry, top of page two. Oh, there it is. Sorry. Even then, “Why don’t we move on to the salon?” I kept reading and I kind of confused Karen with Nina at that point because Nina’s having a back and forth with Val. That’s what happened. And there’s this Karen. And then I got to Val. “It’s always China, China.” I’m like wait, oh, who’s Karen? And I had to look back. I couldn’t find her for a while until, oh, at the very bottom of the page, there she is, with nothing else. And, oh, she’s the boss. Okay. So, there was some confusion there.

But, my biggest issue, honestly, jibes with what John said. I don’t believe a single – it’s worse, Christine, I’m afraid. I don’t believe a single word of what anyone is saying here. Not one word. No one is speaking like an actual person in an actual situation, to me.

I don’t understand the way – why Val is overreacting. They’re at a toy company. Occasionally something fails. I mean, they all work for the same company. Things sometimes don’t work. They’re acting like the big boss has flown in from the company to make layoffs. And if you’re thing doesn’t work right, you’re fired on the spot. Everyone just seems really super keyed up over this thing because the servos aren’t working. And a lot of what Val is feeding back feels expositional. “I’m sick of product development’s excuses. You know, Nina, I thought moving you to this brand would be great for the team, but now I’m questioning your dedication.”

Okay, so I’ve learned some information and also that’s not a realistic thing to say. Why would you question her dedication? Because a servo isn’t moving? That doesn’t make any sense.

And then Nina says, “Sometimes China gets the face paint wrong.” What does that have to do with what happened here? And then Val, “Do I have to go on yet another factory trip to justify your screw-ups?”

This is crazy. You should have fired her weeks ago if this is who you feel about her. But the response is where I really started to lose touch with who this character is and the tone of this piece. Because Nina says, “I played with my Marty dolls till seventh grade. I love being on this brand.”

John: The line isn’t set up at all.

Craig: No.

John: And so the line that could get to Nina’s line is something like, you know, “Do you even understand what Marty is?” That’s the line that could feed the response.

Kelly: Right.

John: I marked the same thing. There’s no connection between these two ideas.

Craig: None. None. And then Nina’s response back is also nonsensical. Val says, “Yeah. Well I’m not seeing it.” And Nina says, “Why? Because I don’t walk around in hot pink suits and stupid heels like you?” That’s just a flat out non-sequitur. Well, A, fired. B, I would fire – if someone said that to me, and I were Val, I would fire them not for being insulting about my look. I would fire them for trotting out a non-sequitur in the middle of a business meeting.

It does not follow. It doesn’t follow. And then she says, “And I’m totally dedicated to this line. I’ll show you love.”

“Nina grabs the styling head prototype by the hair and makes out with Marty who suddenly begins to speak.” We need another comma there. And suddenly begins to speak. Who would do that? That’s insane. That’s not the kind of love you’re saying you’re supposed to have for a doll. “I played with my Marty dolls till seventh grade.” Little girls don’t make out with their Marty dolls. That’s not the connection they have to them. This is just bizarre.

John: Kelly, do little girls make out with their makeup dolls?

Kelly: I didn’t make out with mine. But I can’t speak for everybody.

Craig: There may be some girls that made out with their makeup dolls. [laughs]

Kelly: There may be some.

John: Some girls may do this.

Kelly: But then I also read this, just to go on the defense of her a little bit, I did read this as she’s totally mad, but that was the lead up to – that we were seeing that’s she’s mad. And that was leading us up to, oh, she’s seeing things. She’s seeing ghosts as well. And this is her like – she was having a mental break.

Craig: Okay, I did not see that. What I saw was this is a standard kind of working person’s movie where they’re being put down by the man. And then they go home and the twist is they share their apartment with the ghosts. And the ghosts are going to help her do her job, or something like that. But that the ghosts are real and that she’s not crazy. But the problem is she’s acting in a way that actually is crazy. Which is – see, to me, the setup here is like… – This is what I would do. I’m a doll designer. I make this doll. I’m super proud of it. It works great, but it’s kind of old fashioned. And Val is like this is boring. You don’t really know, like girls don’t like this.

And you’re saying, no, no, no, they do. I was one of them. And she’s like trust me when I tell you, your stuff is old and it’s lame. Catch up with the rest of this crew and get into the corporate mentality, or you’re going to go. It’s that simple.

And then she goes home and there’s this little girl who is like, “I love this doll.” And she’s like, “I know you do.” She’s like, “It reminds me of the doll I had when I was growing up.” And Val is like, “Yeah. But you grew up in 1883. That’s kind of my problem.”

And then you’re like, oh my god. That’s a ghost girl.

Okay, so getting back to Kelly’s point about how you introduce – you have two choices of how to introduce this ghost. Either it’s a shocking oh my god there’s a dead girl in the apartment, except that our main character isn’t shocked. Or, there’s a normal girl in the apartment and then, oh my god, she’s a ghost. You have to pick some sort of fascinating way to introduce this concept.

Anyway, that was a lot.

Kelly: I think what’s so interesting there as well is that Craig and I read this in such different ways, which is ultimately the overall problem of these three pages. You know, we’re reading two totally different movies. And that’s no good. That can’t work. We need to know what the film is.

Craig: Agreed.

John: This didn’t land as one film. So, all right, let’s get to our final entry in the Three Page Challenge. This is Escapism by Pascoe Foxell.

Craig: Pascoe Foxell. I mean, this is awesome.

Kelly: None of these people are real.

John: I think these people have figured out the secret to getting Godwin to pick their scripts.

Craig: Exactly.

John: Is an amazing name.

Craig: Pascoe Foxell.

John: So, I’ll quickly summarize this. A businessman sprints down the street pursued by a man in a tracksuit. A young woman, who we will soon know to be Zoe, watches from her apartment window, high above the action. As tracksuit guy catches up, the businessman hops onto a bus. Tracksuit guy rushes on by, not even glancing at the businessman.

Up in her apartment, Zoe takes it all in, and she brushes her teeth by the window. She goes back to her bedroom. Searches for clothes to wear. At the Rex, a rundown cinema, Zoe returns from her smoke break to witness a child mid-tantrum after dropping his ice cream. She acknowledges Callum, her coworker, as he walks through an employee-only door.

Zoe goofs off in the box office, playing with piles of brown sugar and lit matches. Her boss, Arjun, admonishes her for laziness and sends her downstairs to check on the toilets as we hit the end of page three.

Craig: Is Godwin writing these summaries?

John: Godwin is writing these summaries. And so I felt like we missed some crucial things in the summary.

Craig: So Godwin, the honeymoon with Godwin is over. Now he goes right into the way we used to talk about Stuart. [laughs] Godwin, you kind of missed the point here, buddy. The point of the pages here is that we’re in a Walter Mitty kind of thing where Zoe is seeing things that are astonishing and fantastic. And then the movie reveals actually, no, they’re quite mundane. So, for instance, at the Rex, a rundown cinema, Zoe returns from her smoke break not to witness a child mid-tantrum, but rather a child being devoured by a monster, which is then revealed to just be a child mid-tantrum after dropping his ice cream.

So, Godwin! [laughs]

John: Godwin! And we should note that this is listed as being episode one, so it’s meant to be a pilot. That doesn’t necessarily change what we read on the page, but it may change what we think about in terms of this is setting up a world for a TV show apparently.

Craig: Correct.

Kelly: [clears throat]

Craig: Oh, that sounds like – that’s the Kelly Marcel throat-clearing of doom.

Kelly: Actually it’s not. I loved – I liked this. But – but – I did. I loved it. I thought it was really beautiful if it’s a movie. I think three pages is an enormous amount of real estate to give to a lot of vignettes when you’re setting up a TV show. It’s not – you need a teaser. It needs to open with a bang. And I need to kind of know what this is about and where we’re going. You know, I need to have a cold open for a pilot. And this didn’t – this felt like a lot of pages for that.

John: Yeah. We get three of these like sort of vignettes back, to back, to back, and we still haven’t really gotten into what’s going on. Who is she?

Kelly: Is she mentally ill?

John: Yes. What is the framework around why we’re seeing what she’s seeing? So, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend that has these sort of Walter Mitty-esque breaks, where it goes into musical numbers, but it’s really clearly set up like how they function in this universe.

Kelly: Right.

John: We have three of them in the first three pages here. And I don’t understand sort of how they’re going to be driving the show, or to what degree I need to be thinking of the real world in the show being the real world.

Craig: Yes.

Kelly: They’re beautifully done. They’re really – I thought they were lovely and really beautifully done. And they kept me reading them, but I also by the end of page three was like, ugh, I don’t know what this – I really have no idea what this is, what it’s about, and I felt like am I about to just watch a pilot that’s all this?

Craig: Yeah. Yep. Yep. That is a very reasonable objection. There are too many – so the Zoe looks at the mundane world around her and then per the title Escapism she imagines something much more fantastic. And the imagination here is actually quite impressive. I thought the scene of the monster eating the kid was actually scary. And I was so relieved when it turned out that it was just a kid crying because of his ice cream. And it was a little dog slurping in his ice cream. That was wonderful.

Kelly: Yeah.

Craig: And I really enjoyed the bit with the sugar, where she is lighting sugar on fire, and it was like some incredible fantastical sand planet. But there were three such sequences in three pages. And in addition to making each one successfully less special in a row with the procession of them, we’re also starting to get concerned that Zoe is doing this 24/7. That it never stops. That would be exhausting. I mean, you’d put a bullet in your head. Especially because I think the point here is that it’s volitional. That she’s choosing to do this.

Walter Mitty, you know, makes his choices occasionally when it is well-earned. And he’s super-duper bored. The one that did not work for me annoyingly enough was the first one, which is the one you want to have work the best. In the first one, here’s what we see. “A businessman sprints down the street, panicked, ragged breaths. Head whipping back to look over his shoulder. He forces himself to speed up.

“From somewhere up above a striking, noirish 25-year-old woman, all in black, looks down on him.” Now, I’d love to know where from above, but I guess, you know, because it’s her fantasy she could be perched on a gargoyle, the edge of a roof, something, but I want to know where.

“She’s keeping track of every movement. Excited. Her gaze flicks behind the businessman where a tracksuit-wearing man is coming fast. He’s gaining with ease, a wide grin stretched across his face. The tracksuit gets closer. Closer again. The businessman pushes hard. No good though. Closer again.”

And then it’s revealed he’s just running to get on a bus, and the tracksuit guy is just jogging. Now, here’s why I was annoyed. Because it’s the first one, you’re telling me what the rules are essentially. Now, here’s some bits that she’s imagined as far as I can tell. She’s imagined the businessman looking back over his shoulder, because in reality the businessman wouldn’t do that. And she’s imagining the tracksuit guy smiling with a big, wide grin as he pursues this businessman, because there’s no reason the tracksuit guy would be smiling like a dope for no reason. Right?

So, she’s put that in there. But the real thing is they are actually running. So, I’m already confused about what I just saw. And I feel like it cheated me. I would have rathered if the guy was running, and the guy was chasing him, and then we reveal that the part that she cheated was herself. And they really are running, but for a different reason. The cheating bothered me.

The cheating doesn’t bother when I see an alien that turns out to be a kid, because obviously that’s all invented. But the opening here put me off a bit.

John: Yeah. I had the same issue with the opening. I thought the other two were much stronger. I think my biggest concern was that she is not really part of the action at all. She’s just standing at a window, brushing her teeth. And it was a really not helpful perspective on what that is. Like, I could imagine a version of this where she’s ultimately on the bus and watching the guy get on the bus. And the other guy goes running past. That I could see. This is her daily life. This is the way she sort of zones out. And she’s closer and part of the action.

But watching from a window didn’t feel like it was letting me know anything about her or her life.

Kelly: Yeah, I agree. And it is the weakest of the three. I would love if we started the pilot with the little boy on the ground, because that’s a really shocking image. And it’s really well-done the way she does it. And then because these come one after the other, I wonder if the fix is that we then build story in between these – if she thinks up a new one for the running guys, or just makes that clearer, we build story in between these three vignettes that would happen over an entire pilot.

Because those three seem enough for a pilot, to me.

Craig: Well, if they recur somehow, I mean, generally speaking, if somebody is having these flights of fancy, it needs to be either disrupting their real life, or helping their real life, or commenting on their real life. These are not. But I would absolutely open this thing with a woman, Zoe, she’s walking into a foyer. And it’s kind of creepy. And she stops and she hears a noise. And we just think we’re in a normal horror movie. And she looks around the corner and she sees this thing and she’s absolutely terrified. And she’s about to scream when someone pushes by her and goes, “Oh, morning Zoe.” And she’s like, “Oh, morning.”

And then she looks back and now we see it’s just a kid crying, and a dog, and a thing. And we go, oh, I get her.

Kelly: Yeah. And then you introduce the boss guy and you see how these fantasies that she’s having are actually affecting her work life. Because that does happen on page three. Her boss comes in. She’s been burning sugar on her desk. And he talks to her about it. But I think you bring that right up front as well and then immediately you have story and conflict and this weird thing that’s happening.

John: Yeah. I really love burning the sugar because it’s such a specific character choice. It’s a thing you see her doing, so it’s not just she’s having a fantasy. She’s lighting sugar on fire on her desk, but it tells you something about who she is and sort of how seriously she takes her job. And so that’s a nice thing to move up earlier in these three pages.

Craig: Yeah. Just as good imagination here. You know, the way that these things work best is when what we’re seeing, especially when we know that it’s not real, is surprising to us when the truth is revealed. We go, oh, that’s the that. That’s cool. So I know after I see the kid and the fake alien that when I’m in an undulating, expansive, brownish yellow dunes, and a bright fiery orb of light searing in, I know it’s not real. But I don’t know what it really is. And then when she shows me that she’s holding a lit match over piles of brown sugar, this is just really inventive and it’s satisfying. So, I guess what we’re saying, Pascoe, is that this needs to be better tied into character. And we need to see more about why she’s doing these. Why she makes the choice to slip into fancy. What choosing to slip into fancy does to the rest of her life, for better or for worse, and we need a much better way in.

Kelly: Yes.

John: Agreed. So, as always, we want to thank everybody, all these writers, for letting us take a look at their three pages. They’re so helpful. So Godwin reads everything that comes in to the account. If you have three pages you want him to take a look at, you go to johnaugust.com/threepage, and there’s a form you fill out. You attach a PDF.

He picks scripts that he thinks are most interesting for us to talk about. So, I want to stress that he’s not picking necessarily the best things he reads, but the things he thinks will be interesting for us to talk about on the air. So, if you have something you want us to read, send it in to that link and we will take a look at it.

It has come time for our One Cool Things. Craig, what is your One Cool Thing?

Craig: My One Cool Thing today is an article, eh, it’s sort of an article in the New Yorker, but it refers to another website. It’s an article about the Glossary of Happiness. So, there’s a gentleman named Tim Lomas. He is a professor at, or a lecturer, at the University of East London. Kelly, is that a good school?

Kelly: It is.

Craig: Oh, fantastic. Not like those pikers at the University of West London.

John: West London is the worst.

Kelly: Pikeys, Craig. Pikeys. Get it right.

Craig: Pikeys. Sorry. A bunch of pikeys. Anyway, Lomas has launched something called the Positive Lexicography Project, which is essentially an online glossary of untranslatable words into English. These are these compound words that describe positive feelings about things, or sometimes negative feelings about things. But, for instance, here’s a word from Yagan. I don’t know who speaks Yagan. But the word is Mamihlapinatapei, which means a look between people that expresses unspoken but mutual desire. It’s that great? Mamihlapinatapei.

And then there’s like these words from Dutch. Queesting, which means to allow a lover access to one’s bed for chit-chat. So, there’s just all these great, great words that describe these fascinating things. And some of them are incredibly specific, like Utepils, which is Norwegian for a beer that is enjoyed outside, particularly on the first hot day of the year. [laughs]

John: I am looking forward to that beer. That’s certainly a good thing.

Craig: Exactly. So, tons of these words. Describe things in one word that we don’t have one word for. So, check out The Glossary of Happiness. We’ll put a link in the show notes.

John: Fantastic. My One Cool Thing is Search Party, a show on TBS, which I devoured and loved. It is a half-hour comedy created by Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers, and Michael Showalter. Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers also directed most of the episodes. It stars Alia Shawkat, from Arrested Development. It is just terrific. So, it’s a half-hour, which really means 23 minutes if you’re watching it on iTunes, but it follows a mystery. So, it’s she and her incredibly self-obsessed friends are kind of halfway investigating the disappearance of a college acquaintance.

And it’s really just terrifically well done. And very specific and odd. And I think what I admired most is that it manages to be really funny but also does the mystery stuff really well. Like I was genuinely fascinated to see what was going to happen in the next episode as I was watching it.

Now, if you do take a look at it, really do watch the first two episodes. I almost bailed after the first episode because I hated the characters so much. And you will love them by the end of the second episode. So you have to sort of get past their uncomfortable edges, and then you will fall in love with it.

So, highly recommend it. Search Party on TBS.

Craig: Great.

Kelly: Totally agree with that. I think TBS are killing it right now, by the way. I think they’re doing some really interesting stuff over there.

John: Hooray. Kelly, what’s your One Cool Thing?

Kelly: My other half just told me about this amazing thing, which is that Sony are coming out with smart contact lenses. And basically they can record every moment of your life, which means you can relive memories through them.

Craig: Wait, like the Mission: Impossible contact lens things? They’re making those?

Kelly: Sony are making them. Yeah.

Craig: Oh, boy, the potential for abuse here is astonishing. I mean, how are they going to…? You could relive every morning of your life, and I could also relive every moment of your life. That’s terrifying.

John: Just think about the sex tapes that will be made now with this technology.

Craig: Terrifying.

Kelly: Oh, yes, let’s think about those. Yeah, no, I know, that is really terrifying, but also completely fascinating. I mean, I imagine that you could probably record stuff with those Google Glasses that came out, so it’s not–

John: Totally.

Craig: Yeah, but I know you’re wearing the Google Glasses, because I can slap those goofy things off your face. But I don’t know if you’re wearing contact lenses. So at any point anyone can be recording you surreptitiously and you won’t know.

Kelly: And that’s illegal, no? Isn’t that illegal?

John: It’s illegal, but it still happens. I would say that from now on you’re going to have to start blindfolding yourself and blindfolding your romantic partners just to make sure that they’re not recording you. That’s going to change everything.

Craig: Oh my god.

John: Now, Kelly, you wrote a movie called Fifty Shades of Grey. This could be a plot point in that, could it not?

Kelly: I mean, they have missed a trick. I’m telling you. Erika needs to write a fifth book, because, you know.

John: Yes. Definitely.

Craig: Wait, there’s four of those.

Kelly: Well, there’s Fifty Shades, Fifty Shades Darker, Fifty Shades Freed, and then she also wrote a book from Christian Grey’s point of view. So–

John: Ah.

Craig: And what was that one called?

Kelly: Uh…Grey? I think it’s called Grey.

Craig: Grey.

Kelly: Yeah. But now she could write the contact lens book.

Craig: Oh my god. This is absolutely terrifying. I’m seriously terrified and I hope that he just had a dream and thought that this happened.

John: [laughs] I think he was watching Black Mirror and he thought it was a documentary.

Craig: He thought it was 20/20?

Kelly: I think it’s not fair, because what about those of us that don’t need contact lenses?

Craig: Well, you still can get – I mean, you can wear the contact–

John: You can still wear them.

Craig: Kelly, my god. [laughs] Oh my god.

Kelly: But I don’t want to just stick things in my eyes for, you know, no reason.

Craig: Well, of course, nobody likes to. No, but you can have a reason like I’m going to, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go sit down. I’m going to have a very good open chat with somebody where they kind of spill their secrets about something to me. I’m their friend and they’re confiding in me. But I’m recording it the whole time. And then I’m going to upload that to YouTube so the whole world can see it.

This is crazy. Oh my god, I think we just caught a glimpse of how it all ends.

John: Maybe so.

Kelly: Yeah.

Craig: Ew.

Kelly: Ugh.

John: Well that’s how this show ends. Our show, as always, is produced by Godwin Jabangwe. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week comes from Adam Pasulka. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can send longer questions. But for short ones, ask us on Twitter. Craig is @clmazin. I am @johnaugust. Kelly, are you on Twitter? I forget?

Kelly: I am @MissMarcel.

John: Fantastic. We are also on Facebook. You can search for Scriptnotes podcast. You can find us on iTunes. Just look for Scriptnotes. That’s also where you can download the Scriptnotes app. Or there’s an Android app as well.

If you want to find transcripts, they are at johnaugust.com. They go up about four days after the episode airs. You can also find the show notes there.

If you want the back episodes, where we had Kelly Marcel on several times before, you can go to Scriptnotes.net and see what she talked about. There’s also a few last remaining USB drives at the store – store.johnaugust.com.

But for me, John August, for Craig Mazin, and for Kelly Marcel, guys, thank you so much. It was so nice to talk to you guys again.

Craig: Likewise. Come home soon, John.

Kelly: We miss you, John.

John: Oh, I miss you guys very much. And congratulations, Kelly Marcel.

Kelly: Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye.

Craig: Bye.

John: Bye.

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You can download the episode here.

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 279 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the podcast, we will be looking at how characters tell us what they’re after, either with or without a song. We’ll also be answering listener questions about how much despair to feel when a movie similar to your spec is announced. How to get started off an improv group. And whether Craig and I are wrong about gurus.

**Craig:** Yeah, there’s a huge question there. [laughs]

**John:** There’s a giant question mark at the end of that, because it’s possible that we’re wrong about everything.

**Craig:** Absolutely. Absolutely.

**John:** One of our listeners wrote in with a question saying like, “These other guys, they think you’re wrong.”

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** And we’ll give you the answer at the end of the episode.

**Craig:** Oh my god, good. I was hungry.

**John:** Yeah. [laughs] First off, though, we have a correction. In last week’s episode I misspoke. I said stop trying to make ___ happen was from Clueless. I was completely wrong. That’s from Mean Girls.

**Craig:** Oh. Well, you know, but Mean Girls is from Clueless. They are on a line. They’re on a continuum. So, I think you are all right.

**John:** They are on a continuum. I think you would not have Mean Girls without Clueless, but it is its own movie, and it’s wonderful in its own right. So, people wrote in with that correction and I don’t want to put false things out into this world.

**Craig:** Yeah. Because, you know, everybody else is putting out real things. All other websites and podcasts promulgate accurate information.

**John:** Yeah. We’re trying to be an accurate podcast. So, I want to make that correction. We also had a follow up from a listener. Andy [Keir] in Brooklyn who wrote in, “Thank you, John, for recommending The Good Place as your One Cool Thing. It is beyond cool. Binged it in a couple of days and I love it. It was slightly awkward to notice that on that show, which is brilliantly written, it contained two of the clams which you prescribed earlier in the same episode, which are ‘Wait, what?’ and ‘Good talk.’ I’m not saying you are wrong in any way – I would never – it was just a fun bit of cognitive dissonance. Neither of the clams took me out of the show, it’s just too good, which goes to show you if you’re really good you can get away with it. The rest of us should listen to you guys.”

So. I got to say, The Good Place, got clams in there.

**Craig:** Everybody has a clam. Everybody has a clam somewhere. They’re not something that you have to completely prescribe. I mean, there are a few that I think signify a total lack of effort or care creativity. If you’re saying, “She’s like the blankety blank from hell,” you’re advertising that you suck. But some of them are, you know, in what we’ll call early clam stage. You know, I mean, there’s grown clams, the big gnarly ones with the barnacles on them. And then there’s these baby clams. So, ‘wait what?’ and ‘good talk’ are probably still in the baby clam area. And they’re not toxic to anything.

You know, this is what happens. Sometimes you and I, we do these things, and we forget that people take us very, very seriously. And then they start thinking, oh my god, I have to take this out of script. You know, take it as advice. It’s just advice.

**John:** Yes. So, right before we went to record, I got an email from a showrunner who copied in a long thread of exchanges that happened within his writing staff. Basically he had listened to the episode and passed along to his writing staff like, hey, let’s take a look at this. And there was a considerable discussion.

So, I have not cleared with him whether we are allowed to discuss his discussion. But I thought it was fascinating that a genuine bona fide show that is on the air right now had a discussion about this clam list based on our episode. So, it’s a thing that’s out there. And we weren’t the people who came up with this list. We were just passing it along. So, I would go back to this idea that it’s not – the two clams that he mentions here in The Good Place, those are relatively fresh clams. They haven’t been lying on the beach for a long time. They don’t smell. They’re not brand new, but they’re not horrible things in there.

What you were suggesting about sort of the ‘blankety blank from hell,’ that was such a horrible one that it was not even on the list that we read aloud.

**Craig:** Cause that’s not even a clam anymore. It’s decomposed into some sort of goo.

**John:** Yeah. They grind it up and they use the shells to repave Martha Stewart’s driveway.

**Craig:** That’s right. And then whatever protein was left goes into some sort of slurry for pet food.

**John:** Yeah. It’s really good. Or, the seagulls have just picked it apart, and you don’t want that. If the seagulls are all involved with your joke, it’s a bad joke.

**Craig:** So, the writers that were discussing the clam list, without going into their specifics, where there a few of them that they were defending as maybe not so clammy or–?

**John:** There were a few that I think were being defended, but it was more the idea of whether the list was a good idea or not a good idea. Whether it was calling out a list of things not to do was a helpful or an unhelpful practice.

**Craig:** That’s interesting. I mean, look, a lot of times when we talk about things, we are doing a little bit of what Penn & Teller used to do back in the day. So, Penn & Teller, like all magicians, subscribe to a magician’s code, which is to not give away the secrets to tricks. But then there are some tricks that are so clammy they’re like, screw it, we’re going to give it away.

I remember I went to go see Penn & Teller when I was a kid and they did a trick with cups and balls and moving them around. And it was impressive. And then they said, okay, but the thing is the magic part is – obviously it’s a gimmick, right? But the skill is actually in the manipulation. You are not as impressed as you should be, so we’re now going to redo this trick with clear cups, so you can see what we’re doing. And you will be more impressed. And I was. Because there’s a remarkable amount of dexterity. But they’re whole thing there was, you know what, this trick is a clam. We’re going to give it away.

And I’m okay with that. I don’t think we should ever feel like, just philosophically speaking, you and I, as we sometimes pull the curtain aside and reveal some of the tricks of the trade. You know, it’s okay. If they are clammy, you know, what are we really – I mean, I’m not sure what the argument is for not exposing these things as goofy.

**John:** Yeah. And the other thing which came up in this thread, which I think is a good thing worth pointing out, and sort of highlighting for our readers is there are some things that become kind of a meta clam, where they’re not funny anymore, but by repeating them they kind of become funny again. Or they inform a character who thinks that that is funny. So, a great example is on the American version of The Office, “That’s what she said.”

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** It’s not actually funny, but Michael Scott thinks it’s so funny is part of the joke behind it. And so, you know, there can be reasons why you’re deliberating using one of these things so you know it’s not in itself funny because in a broader context the characters who think it’s funny makes it hilarious.

**Craig:** That’s absolutely true. I would think the audience understands the difference. Even if they intellectually aren’t quite parsing it out so specifically the way a writer would, they clearly do get it. Everybody knows what’s going on when people on The Office say, “That’s what she said.” Everybody knows that.

I mean, look, think about – when Homer started going, “D’oh,” that was him making fun of goofy sitcoms, where people go, “D’oh.” They were making fun of it. And now it’s his own thing. It’s part of his character and nobody really connects it back to a kind of, well frankly, demeaning swipe at very clunky, poorly drawn characters that had come before him.

**John:** It’s interesting. D’oh I think is a great example because it’s great when Homer says it, but if you have any other character saying it in a Homer Simpson way, it doesn’t really work. But I’ve seen it used increasingly as like a parenthetical, or as a way to express the feeling of D’oh without actually having the character say, “D’oh.” It’s that sudden realization that you’ve made a fool of yourself is well expressed by D’oh, even if you’re not having a character say it.

So, I’ve seen it in scene descriptions, even though I don’t see characters saying it who aren’t Homer Simpson.

**Craig:** Yeah. I think the official – I wish that our friend Matt was here. The official term that they use in their screenplays is something like “disappointed grunt.” They don’t actually write D’oh in Simpsons’ episodes.

**John:** Yeah. And a good lesson if you’re writing animation in general is there’s a tendency to write parentheticals for all those things that are said aloud. Basically because you’re recording lines, any sort of sound that a character makes you have to write a parenthetical for them to do that, so you actually get the sound recorded. And so you will see in animation scripts sometimes a bunch of characters talking who don’t actually have dialogue. They just have parentheticals for the sounds that they’re making.

**Craig:** That’s kind of cool. Yeah, efforts, right? I guess it all falls under efforts. Yeah.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I like that.

**John:** Our final bit of follow up is Weekend Read, which is the app my company makes for reading screenplays on your iPhone. Every year about this time we start putting up the For Your Consideration scripts. So, there are a bunch of them that are out there right now for big studio features and little independent features, all vying for Best Screenplay awards.

So, we have a new category inside the app for all those scripts. So, if you’re curious to read those scripts and would like to read them on your phone, just download Weekend Read. It’s in the app store. It’s a free download. And you can start reading the screenplays that are going to be up for awards this season.

**Craig:** That’s spectacular. First, I mean, I have to watch the movies, too, don’t I?

**John:** It’s probably a good idea to watch the movies. I think your best bet is to watch the movies and the movies that you think are really good, read those screenplays. If you don’t think the movie is good, I say don’t read the screenplay.

**Craig:** Great point. Great point. I don’t know what to do.

**John:** You don’t read screenplays.

**Craig:** You know what? I’m being honest with you. I get the screeners and there’s one person in my house who is thrilled, every year, and it’s the wife. And some of these movies I’ve never even heard of. Oh god, I’m out of it. I’m out of it, man.

**John:** So, Mike keeps a spreadsheet, because we’re a spreadsheet family, of all the screeners that come in. And because they’re coming to Los Angeles, Godwin is logging them as they come in. And then every couple weeks he sends a package of all the screeners. So, we have a bunch of screeners here now. I have not watched one of them. I’m trying to watch as many movies in the theater as I possibly can because it’s the best place to see them, and it’s also fun to see them with French subtitles. So, like I’m seeing Arrival this weekend, which is finally coming out in Paris. So I’m excited.

**Craig:** What is the French word for Arrival?

**John:** It is Premier Contact.

**Craig:** Oh, First Contact. Wait a second, they’ve already made that movie.

**John:** I know. It’s crazy. So, there was a Star Trek movie, but that wasn’t called that here I guess.

**Craig:** And then there was Contact. There were two movies.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And Contact is very, very similar – oh, French. You know that the French title for Hangover is A Very Bad Trip?

**John:** I do know that. And Another Very Bad Trip is the sequel.

**Craig:** Another Very Bad Trip. And that’s not translated from the French. They kept the title in English. They just made it A Very Bad Trip. [laughs] Well, I understand on some level the word hangover is idiomatic to English. There must be a French word for Hangover? Why didn’t they use that word? Maybe another movie had used it?

**John:** A lot of times it’s just because there’s a better term for the French market. This is actually a great segue into what we’re talking about today, because this last week I went and saw Vaiana and you’re like well what the hell is Vaiana? Well, Vaiana is Moana in places that are not the US and some other markets.

**Craig:** Do you know why?

**John:** I do know why. So, a couple of different reasons. So, first off, in Italy Moana is a famous porn star. So they couldn’t call the movie Moana there.

**Craig:** So cool.

**John:** In other parts of the world, Disney couldn’t clear trademark on Moana, so they had to use Vaiana. So, I saw this on posters and clearly it was the same movie. And so I assumed that when I watched the movie, because I watched the movie in English with French subtitles, I assumed that they would actually say Moana but then they would say Vaiana in the subtitles. But, no, they actually recorded the entire movie, every line of dialogue, every lyric, where they say Moana they say Vaiana in the version I saw.

And so in France and other markets where it’s released in English, but not in America or certain other markets, it’s Vaiana. And they sing it. 100% Vaiana when you see it in France or other markets.

**Craig:** I could see that. I mean, Disney, they’re kind of completionists. You know, they’re not going to let you sit in an Italian movie theater, and even though the movie is called Vaiana hear songs referring to their famous porn star.

**John:** Yeah. But I really liked the movie. And so this is where I have to do a full disclosure here. I have a consulting agreement with Disney animation, but I did not work on this movie at all. So this movie was a complete, you know, I had not seen a single frame of this movie. So I sat down and watched it and was surprised and delighted by how much I really enjoyed it.

And particularly I really liked how the I Want song works in this. So I thought this could be a topic for us to discuss is how characters tell us what they want. And there’s a way to do it in Disney movies, especially animation movies, that’s so literal but we also have to be able to figure out how to express what characters want in movies where they don’t have their own big number to express it.

**Craig:** It’s such a big topic because whether you’re writing a script or you’ve written a script and you’re now dealing with other people, producers, or anyone, what your character wants is the easiest, quickest, slam-dunk note you’re going to get if it’s not clear. That’s the one that they’ll just – that’s their right hook.

So, even though you and I try to not be prescriptive about things and rule-based, this is about as ruley as it gets. Your character must want something and we must know what it is.

**John:** Yeah. And so let’s talk about what that want is, and distinguish it from other wants. Because characters are going to have wants in every scene. They’re going to have motivations for what they’re trying to do next, what they’re trying to get out of this sequence, what their sort of goals are, their objectives. But what we’re talking about with want is sort of this big kind of metaphysical want. It’s like what they woke up with in the morning saying like, “This is the vision I have for my life. What is the positive outcome I sort of see for my life?”

And sometimes they won’t have full introspection. They won’t quite know what it was. They couldn’t articulate it to another character. But deep down inside there it’s there and we should be able to see it as an audience. That if the movie succeeds, they will be changed and they will get this thing that they were after. And that’s also kind of a crucial distinction between how movies work and how TV series work. Is that in a movie our expectation of an audience is we’re going to see that character get what they’re after at the end, or fail to get what they’re after.

In a TV series, that arc, that journey, is not meant to be completed. Not in the course of one episode. Or even the course of the whole series necessarily. They’re constantly on that journey towards that thing, but they’re not going to get there.

**Craig:** That’s right. Think about the opening narration to Star Trek. That’s sort of saying we have a general want, to seek out new life and go to new civilizations and boldly go where no man has gone before. Okay. I mean, I screwed that up, so sorry Trekkers, but the point is we want to explore. We want to explore the unknown. That’s what we want. But that’s vague and general. And vague and general is good, because every episode they need to discover some new challenge and overcome it. And have it end. And then a new one begins.

That’s not at all how movies work. That’s not how self-contained narratives work. There is a specific want to a specific character. And when you have the opportunity to express that through song, as musicals do, whether they’re stage musicals or film – and film musicals almost always now means animated – the character is able to sing what’s in their mind. They don’t need to have somebody else there. And in a way where a character onscreen would be a lunatic if they just started monologue-ing to nobody about what they wanted for three minutes, in a musical a character can sing it. And because they’re singing their internal voice, they can be – they don’t have to worry about subtext either. They can be on the nose.

And so you have these great songs like Part of Your World, when we did our Little Mermaid exploration. It’s harder to find a better and more specific I Want song than that.

**John:** Yeah. And you’ll notice these I Want songs, they almost always have the words I Want in them, or I Wish, or I Dream, or If Only I Could. And Part of Your World kind of does all of those things. It’s her vision of I wish I could be part of your world, up there where you can do all those things. She’s imagining her life in this other place, this better place, if only.

And so almost always this is the second song in the musical, we should say. The first song in one of these musicals tends to be this is the nature of the world, this is how the world currently functions. The second song is almost always the protagonist singing the I Want song. This is my vision for what’s going to happen next.

**Craig:** Yeah. A couple other examples from Broadway that are really clear. Wouldn’t it be Loverly, from My Fair Lady. All I want is a room somewhere far away from the cold night air. And then Corner of the Sky from Pippin. I want to be where my spirit can run free.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Got to find my corner of the sky. So, people will just say I want stuff. Now, sometimes the songs that people sing are about things they think they want, but they’re not really what they do want. And that’s part of what the show is instructing. Like, Fiddler on the Roof, the second song right there is Tevye sings If I Were a Rich Man, and it’s all about wanting to be rich. But that’s not really what he wants.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** But that’s part of the point of that show.

**John:** So, let’s take a listen to the song from Moana. It’s just her I Want song. It’s called How Far I’ll Go. It’s written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who did Hamilton, and Mark Mancina. So, let’s take a listen to three verses here and track sort of what she’s saying about where she sees herself and where she’s going. So let’s take a listen.

[Song plays]

I’ve been staring at the edge of the water
‘Long as I can remember, never really knowing why
I wish I could be the perfect daughter
But I come back to the water, no matter how hard I try

Every turn I take, every trail I track
Every path I make, every road leads back
To the place I know, where I cannot go
Where I long to be

See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me
And no one knows, how far it goes
If the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind me
One day I’ll know, if I go there’s just no telling how far I’ll go

**John:** So Craig. You have not seen the movie, but you’ve only listened to this song, and you were able to just sing it back to me just now. So, it stuck–

**Craig:** That’s right.

**John:** In your head to some degree.

**Craig:** Yeah. Lin-Manuel Miranda has some meager skill with this sort of thing. [laughs] So, the melody matches the vibe of the words beautifully. These things pair up when everything is working right and they complement each other. And so the melody kind of takes off as she takes off on what is very common in an I Want song, a flight of fancy.

So, you might think if you said to a child, “Talk about something you don’t have that you want,” it could come out whiney. I want this. I want it. And I don’t have it, and I want it. But, typically with these things, people begin to imagine having the thing they want. And you see them light up.

And inside of that is a promise for the movie. Therefore, we understand if they get it, they will be happier. Not just satisfied or not just making something go away. It’s not that whiney, greedy want. It’s this deeper spiritual aching. And we get to see the positive side, the as if.

And so you start typically with a contrast. This is what I don’t have. Dear God, you’ve made many, many poor people. I realize, of course, there’s no shame in being poor, but there’s no great honor either. And you start with the bummer. I’ve been standing on the edge of the water, long as I can remember, never really knowing why. I wish I could be the perfect daughter, but I come back to the water no matter how hard I try. Ugh, sucks.

Then, ooh, but if I were to have it. If the wind in my sail on the sea stays behind me, one day I’ll know. If I go, there’s just no telling how far I’ll go. That’s just the promise of this brave new day.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And it’s played in contrast to what she has now.

**John:** Yeah. So when you see the movie, or when you watch the screener with your wife, you will see that the song actually repeats twice. And so there’s a recall, a reprise of the song is very classically sort of a – the character has been on the journey. They’ve crossed their first trial and they sing a new version of the song. It’s really good.

This song actually reprises twice. And the last reprise, I thought, was actually fantastic in that it really plays on this idea of call. So, classically in a heroic story you have the call to adventure. In Moana, this is the water, you know, the sort of magical seashell she finds at the water, sort of coming to her when she was a baby. They do a great job sort of paying off the call at the end and her realization that the call wasn’t from out there, that the call was inside her. And it’s a really, really well done emotional amount, both how it’s animated and how it’s structured as a song.

So, this was I think just a slam dunk of an I Want song.

But we should talk about all those other movies that aren’t musicals that don’t get to have an I Want song, and how you can have the same effect, or at least some of the same thoughts behind an I Want song, even if the characters can’t sing their most innermost thoughts.

**Craig:** Yeah. So, now we get to the tricky part, right? You and I when we’re writing things that aren’t musical aren’t allowed to have our characters sing. We still, however, need to communicate this to the audience. So, there are some, well, I guess in keeping with our theme of revealing tricks and clear cups with the little balls in them, these are tricks. They’re tricks, but they work. For starters, the simplest one is to show someone longing visually. If you want to be, let’s say you want to be a great bicyclist, and I see you and you’re on a bike and you’re struggling. I don’t know anything about you yet. Just that you’re struggling on your bike and you’re going up this hill. And you’re sweating. And it’s hard. And you can barely make it. And, finally, you have to get off and walk the rest of the way. But when you get to the top of the hill, I see that you’re watching the Tour de France, and you’re seeing these great, great bicyclists go by. And in your eyes there’s just this longing. I know what you want now.

I know it as much as I would have from any song. I know why you don’t have it, and I know what you want.

**John:** Yeah. Those visuals where like the character doesn’t have to say something, but you sort of see them doing the action is fantastic. It’s weird, before you brought up the bicycle example, I was thinking of the kid who is leaning across the handlebars of his bike, watching the thing go by. That’s a very classic kind of image that we’ve seen. We saw it in the Star Trek movie, we’ve seen it in Star Wars as well.

You also see kids imitating the thing that they want to be, even though they don’t have the tools. And so they see the great violinist and they’re trying to play violin with two sticks. That’s that sense of this is a vision they see for themselves. And you’re establishing really early on who they think they could be, if only.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So that’s certainly a goal.

**Craig:** Yeah. Sometimes in comedies you’ll see characters, when you meet a character you meet them as the person they want to be. And then you realize that they’re pretending. Very common, frankly somewhat clammy way of meeting a character in a comedy.

Now, there is a helpful thing that we have that typically I Want musicals don’t have. Because the I Want musical is about the internal voice, it’s very rare for someone to sing it with someone else. Or even in the presence of somebody else. It’s almost always, you know, Ariel drifts off to her little cave of stuff and sings by herself. And Tevye is singing alone with his broken down horse. And Moana is singing alone on the beach.

Well, we have other people. And sometimes the best way to find out what our main character wants is for another character to figure it out for us. Or, for them to already know and say it. A very stark example of this is The Matrix. So, we meet Keanu Reeves, Mr. Anderson, and he’s somewhat troubled, but we’re not sure why, nor do we know what he wants. But then he is contacted by this mysterious woman, Morpheus, and then also Trinity. And she literally says, “I know what you want. You want the answer to the question, what is the Matrix.” And he says, “What is the matrix?” And I’m sitting there going, what? What is the matrix? I don’t know what the matrix is. Why do you want to know what the matrix is? Who is that? What’s happening?

These are good mysteries that will be solved, going back to our mystery versus confusion. But here’s one thing that for sure I now know that is not a mystery: that guy wants to know what the matrix is. And I know it, because somebody else said it.

**John:** Yeah. There’s another version of this which is the time traveling version of that character comes back and sort of tells him what it is you want. Basically a character who clearly can identify with this kid’s situation says like, listen, this is what you need to do next. Really it’s conflating sort of the call to adventure with the wish, basically saying the person who shows up to say to get the story started is the person who says like this is what you want, even though you don’t even know you want it yet.

**Craig:** Exactly. Exactly. And we get all this extra yummy juice out of that because we get to see our characters react. Sometimes they react like Mr. Anderson does where he just says, “Yep, you got me. That’s what I want.” Sometimes they deny it. In fact, sometimes that’s the most interesting way to reveal what a character wants is to see them say no. Somebody makes them an offer of some kind. And this is – I guess the Campbellians will call this Refusal of the Call. Refusal of the call is little different. Refusal of the call typically is will you do the following things required to maybe get what you want. And they say, no.

This is, do you want this? No. No. But we see that they do. So, that’s an interesting way, and a very, I think, real way to start to see a little bit of an insight into somebody by playing them opposite.

**John:** The other form of kind of negation to make it clear what your characters actually want is when they are offered something that any normal character should want. And so an example, the pilot for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, she’s offered a partnership at the firm. This is what she should want. She is a lawyer. She should want this. And she doesn’t want it. And she’s wrestling with herself of why don’t I want this. And that’s the moment where we break out into, again, it’s a musical, so she gets to sing her I Wish song. But even if there hadn’t been a musical, her turning this down is a way of framing what she wants. It’s a scenario in which she has a chance to explain what she actually wants. So, you’re creating a place in which it’s okay to speak things you would not otherwise say.

**Craig:** Right. So here we find out what somebody wants by hearing what they don’t want. And that’s closely related to something I call wanting by subtraction, where instead of showing what somebody wants, we show what they lack. So, there is a – if there’s a Broadway version called I Want, there’s a movie version called I Used to Have, or I’m Missing, or I Don’t Have. And it’s a slightly different vibe. But characters will reveal what they miss.

So, let’s go to our clam-o-vision here. We meet a guy and he seems bummed out and he goes home. And he looks at a picture of his dead wife and starts drinking. Lethal Weapon. It was awesome in Lethal Weapon actually. It was amazing back before it clammed up. But we see it’s not so much that they want something specifically. It’s that they – something has been taken from them. And that is a version of a want. It’s a wanting to go back, essentially.

Which is a psychologically involved one. I like that one.

**John:** Absolutely. So, in any of these wants, it’s important to remember that you are establishing a contract with the audience. So, when you make it clear that the character wants this thing, your function is to get them that thing, but to make it very difficult for them to get that thing.

And so a lot of times we get those studio notes saying like, “I don’t know what the character wants.” It’s that they thought they understood what the character wanted, and then they kept looking for the character trying to do that thing or get that thing, and they weren’t doing that thing, and then the studio got confused. And so being really clear about what your character wants is step one. But step two is actually making sure that the movie tracks towards them trying to get that thing that they want.

It doesn’t mean that every scene has to be on point for how are they moving forward to the next thing, but the overall flow of things has to be directed towards that overall want that you’ve established at the start of the story.

**Craig:** It is, I think, a very good philosophical, fundamental approach to say that when you are writing a movie, the most important thing is the character. And it’s hard for a lot of people, because the plot is the candy coating. And we get that medicine very subtly sometimes as we watch movies. And so when we sit down to write them for the first time, we’re writing candy coating. But, if you do that, then what you describe is going to happen. Your character will announce something they want and then shut up about it until the end when they go, “Wait, I want a thing. I have it now.” That’s not – you have to keep the character’s want prime in your mind. That, as you said, doesn’t mean it’s constantly being addressed, but essentially the plot that you’re building around your character is aware of that.

**John:** It’s as if the want is its own character, and you have to keep that character alive throughout the course of the story.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** We talk about keeping characters alive in that if a character hasn’t shown up for a long time, you sort of forget they exist. And you have to figure out scenes where that character can be in that scene, or else that character just doesn’t exist in your world anymore. It’s the same thing with the want. You have to find a way to bring it up again, to make it clear that it’s still in play. And so it can be directly addressing it, like, you know, the horrible clammy version is like, “Hey, didn’t you always want to do this?” Or, like, you know, “Oh, you’ll never do this thing.”

If it’s really clearly tied into the plot, where like the kid wants to be the karate champion, well that’s obviously going to be there. Except that you have to make sure that you’re not mistaking plot for this inner motivation, this inner drive. How the character sees themselves.

Because, you know, I try to distinguish between a goal, which is like I want to get this karate championship to the real wish which is like I want to prove that I am worthy of my father’s love or attention. That’s the thing you’re going to want to make sure you’re constantly tracking throughout the story, and finding those scenes which you can check in and sort of show these are the milestones we passed along that journey.

**Craig:** Exactly. See, goal versus want is a really important concept for people. A goal is a thing you can do. A want is something inside of you. It is a desire. One is action and one is psychological. In fact, I think the best wants are the ones that are disconnected from plot, meaning it’s not that they’re not related to the plot. They’re very related. The plot is there to ultimately get you to a place where you finally get what you want. But the nature of the want is not the same as the nature of the plot.

What Danny wants in The Karate Kid, ultimately, is to be worthy of respect. To grow up. To be a young man and stand on his own. His goal is kick a bunch of guys, right? Those are two different things. They’re disconnected. And I think the best – what is Luke Skywalker’s goal? Well, in the end of the movie his goal is shoot thing down hole. What is his want? His want is, well, sounds familiar, grow up. Stand on his own two feet. Be his own man.

So, that disconnection I think is vital to helping bridge the gap between the extraordinary actions that we see onscreen that are probably quite foreign to our own experience, and then our empathy for the people involved.

**John:** Yeah, it’s their wants that make them relatable. Because everybody watching the movie won’t be blowing up the Death Star, but everybody watching the movie has wanted to prove themselves worthy. Let’s take a look at what are some good wants then. So, what are characteristics of good wants for your protagonist to have?

**Craig:** Well, for starters, I think they need to be simple. And I think they need to be honest. There is no need to be tricky or clever about wants. I think plots often do well when they’re tricky and clever and twisty and surprising and intellectual. But wants are basic. It’s best if they aren’t so basic as to feel kind of elementary and easily solvable, but then again, you know, “stand on your feet/grow up” is incredibly basic and can be teased out in so many different ways.

So, for starters, I think, honest and simple.

**John:** Great. I would also say look for wants that can be looked at from multiple perspectives. Because whatever your protagonist wants, you’re going to have other characters in the movie and they’re going to want things, too. And it would be fantastic if the other characters in your movie have wants that can reflect aspects of that want. So, look at who the love interest is. Look at who the villain is. Look at ways in which the other characters in your story can reflect the broken, the damaged, the alternate versions of those wants, so that, you know, not only so that thematically everything can sort of tie into like one bigger question, but also so that you have a good reason to bring up those wants along the way, that you can see emotionally that characters are having similar journeys. And there’s ways to sort of explore how they’re impacting each other.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, when you look at the case of Lethal Weapon, Mel Gibson lives alone in a trailer by the sea, mourning his dead wife, suicidal. And his new partner lives in suburbia with his wife of many, many years, and his two children. And so the Murtaughs’ existence is kind of designed to reflect this deeper aching loss/want for Riggs. It makes their relationship interesting.

So, this is an area where you say, okay, if my character wants this, let’s provide him with somebody that has relevance to what they want.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** So if I’m this farmer who dreams of flying, you know, in space and being on my own, then pair me with a guy that basically knows everything and is telling me, “Nah, calm down. Slow down, kid.” In this sense, part of what I look for in a want is something that’s psychologically challenging for the hero to achieve. It has to be achievable, but it needs to be difficult to actually get.

If we feel like they could just get what they want fairly easily, we’re going to be wondering why the movie is struggling so hard to make it hard.

**John:** Yeah. There’s three words which are sort of the bane of every one of these kind of situations. “Comes to realize.” You’ll hear this in a pitch where two-thirds of the way through the movie, or near the end of the movie the hero comes to realize that he actually had it all this time. Or basically like, you know, the change that happens in the hero is basically like the character going like, “Oh, yeah, uh-huh. Great. I guess I don’t need that thing. Or I guess having a family is really important.” Something that is so obvious that the character could have just like stopped to think about it for a while early in the story and like, oh, it would have been done.

It has to be a real journey to get there. And they could not have done it at the start. The plot that you’re creating for them to go through has to be able to service this journey that gets them to where they need to end up.

**Craig:** Service is a great word. And I would also use the word instruct. Right, because if you end up in that horrific place of comes to realize, then you think, “Oh, okay, you wanted something. You weren’t sure how to get it.” Then a story happened. You finished the story. And then you went, “Okay, now back to – oh…”

No. The point of the story is to get them to that place. The point of the story is to demonstrate to them through the people that they meet and the situations that they’re in that what they want is achievable like this. Or, as is often the case, what they wanted was wrong. And what they really need to want is this. And you’ll see that in – a lot of Pixar movies work that way. Finding Nemo, for instance.

**John:** Absolutely. When it’s done right, it’s never simplified down to “comes to realize.” It’s that process of recognizing that what they wanted is not what they should have really been going for. That doesn’t just happen – they don’t just pivot on a dime there. It’s the ongoing journey that did it. It wasn’t like they got to one place and it was a sudden plot reveal, a twist, like, “Oh, I don’t really want that thing anymore.” That’s when the audience goes crazy on you, deservedly, because it wasn’t earned.

**Craig:** It wasn’t earned. Exactly. I guess the other huge mistake you can make is to give your character a want that is so specific that it really won’t be relevant to everyone. And you might think, well, it’s hard to be relevant to everyone. Not really. Not really. Most things that people want, most unfulfilled desires, if they are the kinds that we respect, are things we all want. Some of us have them, but we wanted them. We all want love. We all want to belong. We all want to believe in ourselves. We all want to be brave. All of these things – and grow up – we all – they’re universal.

And this is why sometimes the best way to think about what your character wants is to imagine them as a child, because most of what we want we’ve always wanted, from the start. And thinking about it from a childlike point of view keeps you out of the tricky clever zone and gets you into the honest, true, and simple zone.

**John:** I agree. Great. So, if all else fails, I would say add some songs. Because songs will do the work for you.

**Craig:** [laughs] They will.

**John:** Get Lin-Manuel Miranda in there to write you a song. It’s all done. It’s all set.

**Craig:** Throw a little Lin at it.

**John:** Let’s answer some listener questions. So, Patrick writes in. he says, “I’m a 27-year-old retail worker who has written four screenplays over the last nine years. One of the screenplays I’ve written has a specific untapped subject matter. Earlier today, it was announced that a rather prolific comedic actor is attached to star in a movie about that exact subject. This isn’t an email about what I can do from a legal standpoint or professional standpoint. I just want to ask you how I should feel personally. Have either of you spent years working on a project, only to find out that a similar idea was happening elsewhere in the industry? Should I be upset? Is heartbreak reasonable? Should I feel hopeful that a movie about a subject I’m passionate about could possibly get made?”

Craig, how should Patrick feel?

**Craig:** This is the air we breathe, sir. There is no such thing as something that doesn’t have a competing version. Everything that you’re working on, everything – if you are writing the story of your own mom, I guarantee you someone else out there is writing a your mom movie. It’s just the way it goes.

So, of course, you should feel upset. Why wouldn’t you? And, yes, heartbreak is a reasonable feeling. Any feeling is reasonable, meaning no feelings are reasonable. That’s why they’re called feelings. It’s just a feeling. So you have the feeling. Okay. But, yes, you should be hopeful, not because someone is making a movie about a subject you’re passionate about. That doesn’t necessarily validate you as a writer, you know, or anything really. I mean, lots of people look at things and go, “We’re all interested in that.”

You should be hopeful because more than one movie comes out about things. I don’t know of any one thing that has gotten one movie and then everyone else said, “Nope.” In fact, quite the opposite. Usually when movies are successful, people start hunting around for versions of it.

So, I would not be depressed about this, Patrick. And I also would say, as we’ve said many times on the show, that your screenplay as a 27-year-old guy, your screenplay is most valuable to you as an advertisement of your ability. It is less valuable as a specific piece of material to be exploited into a film. And that, no one can take away.

**John:** The other thing I would focus on is that remember that an idea is just an idea. And it’s the unique expression of an idea that gives something its value. And so, yes, this comedic actor is making a movie about whatever, but your script about that same topic may be fantastic, because it’s going to have your unique voice.

And so there are many movies about dancing and dancing competitions, but they’re each unique and they’re each specific to their own story. And that’s what’s going to be special about your movie. So, I would certainly not give up hope. Your script probably has a little bit more value today than it did yesterday, because it’s out there in the world. Like, someone is making a movie about this kind of topic, so people might read it because it seems like a topic for a movie. So, I would not despair too much.

It’s okay to feel a little hit. And I was hit personally. I’ve definitely been through situations where like clearly, well, if that movie is going to be made, then my movie is not getting made. And I had all this psychological energy pent up in my one movie that’s no longer going to exist. There’s a reason for that grief. That’s fine. It’s acceptable.

But I think you’re jumping the gun here on assuming that this other movie is going to preclude your movie from getting made.

**Craig:** Or even get made. That’s the other thing. This other movie, you’re saying that a prolific comedic actor is attached to star in a movie. Uh…

**John:** What percentage of attachments do you think result in a movie? Maybe 10 percent?

**Craig:** Maybe. I mean, attached doesn’t mean a damn thing, just so you know.

**John:** So, just this last week there’s an actor who I genuinely like. He’s a really good actor, he’s just never become a big star. But on Deadline it was announced, oh, he’s attached to this movie. I’m like, really? That’s a Deadline-worthy story? Because he’s in four movies last year that no one ever heard of.

And so it’s so weird when an actor being attached is actually news. And in some cases like writers get attached to things. I’m like, really? I know for a fact that they’re never going to write that, but it comes out as being news.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Patrick happened to notice this one thing happened and it caught his eye, but if he hadn’t noticed that story would he have felt any different about his script? No.

**Craig:** Yeah. Just so you know, for those of you who don’t know, the word “attached” in our business means that an actor said, “I’m interested in playing that part. So you agree and I agree that if this movie is going ahead, I’m playing the part.” Now, what happens is they take that actor’s attachment and use it as leverage to try and get financing or a green light from a studio. And they might. And maybe they do and maybe they don’t. But even if they do, then they have to make a deal with the actor. And the actor has to be available. That is – half the time that’s what ends up unattaching that attachment. And then the whole thing falls apart.

So, don’t fret, Patrick. Prevail.

Jonathan from Los Angeles writes, “You have touched on getting staffed as a sitcom writer. It seems like studying performing at one of the local improv theaters, UCB, IO, Second City, is the most common method right now. On the other hand, you always hear about writers who started as writers’ assistants. And as you mentioned, everyone blazes their own path up the mountain, so there are countless other ways to get read and staffed. Which do you think is most fruitful?”

**John:** Yeah, so I’ve actually heard of this staffing out of improv groups happening a lot more now. I think it’s probably because of the kinds of shows that are getting made. It’s also because some of the shows are being created by folks who grew up through that business.

You know, I think any situation in which you can throw yourself in, where you’re writing and performing things with clever people, you’re more likely to get noticed, and that’s a great thing. I wouldn’t say that it’s the right path for somebody who is looking to do non-comedic stuff, for example.

**Craig:** Yeah, I agree. And it’s also not the right path for somebody who is a very funny writer, but not a particularly good performer. That said, if you can perform, I would absolutely go the improv route because you are essentially joining an alumni network.

Very famously the Simpsons drew from Harvard, from the Harvard Lampoon. This was very frustrating to me when I moved out here. I’m like, does Princeton count? No. I would see some of these people writing for the Simpsons, and I’m like, well, they’re not funny. I guess they went to Harvard. That’s worth something. Obviously most of the people writing for the Simpsons are brilliant.

But this is a similar situation where you have these feeder organizations where their alumni have gone onto create their shows, star in their own shows, develop their own shows, and they naturally will start, even if they don’t come and look back at specific shows themselves, they talk to the higher ups at those places. They employ the higher ups at those places to be on their shows, even if it’s for guest spots or something like that.

So, they’re going to hear. And I think that makes total sense. If you can be a writer-performer, yes. I would recommend it.

**John:** Here’s my other theory, is I think it may not be that they’re looking at this pool because it’s just convenient. I think they may be looking at this pool because this pool was actually genuinely good and talented and has actually proven that they can work really hard. So, think about being in one of these groups. If you’re starting out, you’re having to write and perform a bunch of stuff all the time, you are having to really make something new every week or every couple of weeks and really show your craft. It’s really clear sort of what you can do.

Plus, a lot of these groups have kind of hierarchies. You move from one company up to the next company, to the next company. You’ve put in the time, you’ve done the work. So if you are a writer who has graduated up through that system, they’re looking at you and saying like, okay, well this person has done a certain amount of stuff and they’re going to have a good collection of samples to look at. I think they’re just going to – they’re probably going to be pretty good writers.

So I think there’s a reason why they’re looking at this group, not just because they are from this background, but because being in this background, they’ve actually done a lot more work.

**Craig:** Yeah, precisely. There’s also a certain comic philosophy that emerges from these individual organizations. The Groundlings very much jibes with the comic philosophy of Saturday Night Live and not surprisingly they’ve fed a lot of their talent to Saturday Night Live. UCB jibes more with the kind of Amy Poehler world of comedy. So, you learn a philosophy as well, kind of a school of comedy, and that also makes you more suitable for those employers.

But, you know, let’s keep it all in perspective. There are not a lot of employers, there are not a lot of jobs. You have to be really, really good. Ultimately what we’re talking about is something that gets you successful six months earlier, maybe. But if you’re really, really good, you’re really, really good.

**John:** I agree. Last question is about people who are really, really good. Eric writes, “I wanted to ask your thoughts on the fact that your peers in the industry, who you both have mentioned with admiration on your podcast, have offered advice directly in opposition to your advice. While you two have approached screenwriting books and seminars with great skepticism, mega-writer Billy Ray has said, ‘I don’t think I’d be a writer if I hadn’t taken the Robert McKee class. My debt to him is huge.’ In a long form interview with Billy, he also repeatedly extolled McKee’s book’s story and its lessons.

“And while Craig has repeatedly addressed listener questions of what topics to write about with some form of ‘write what’s in your heart,’ Terry Rossio says in his Wordplay blog that it’s a waste of time to write scripts that don’t have ‘strange attractors in the premise if you want to get executives interested in you quickly and make a sale.’ Similar to Save the Cats’ advice on aiming for high concept.

“Since these two writers are on equal footing with you two as screenwriters, I just wondered what you thought of their advice to aspiring screenwriters that runs counter to yours. Perhaps they can appear on your podcast in the future to discuss and debate with you. I think that would be super useful.”

**Craig:** Well, let me start with Billy. So Billy says he, “I don’t think I’d be a writer if I hadn’t taken the Robert McKee class.” That is absolute bullshit. Billy is my friend. I know him well. First of all, Billy’s father was a legendary agent in the movie business, so it wasn’t like Billy was growing up in Omaha, pushing grocery store carts around, dreaming of the Hollywood nights.

Listen, all of these books – it’s not like you and I didn’t read them. I mean, I didn’t read Robert McKee. But I read Campbell and Vogler and Syd Field. You know, when you’re starting out there’s a correlation, but it’s not causation. Of course you’re going to start to read some books, because you want to be a screenwriter, and people are saying read screenwriting books. And you go, okay, I’ll read some screenwriting books.

By the way, there’s probably now a correlation of people starting to be screenwriters who listen to our podcast. That’s not causation. Robert McKee did not cause Billy Ray to be the writer that he is. That’s outrageous. If that were true, then Robert McKee would be writing Billy Ray movies right now. But he’s not. Billy Ray is because Billy is really good.

In fact, I’m seeing Billy Ray in a week. I’m going to say to his face that’s a bunch of bullshit. There is absolutely no – no way.

**John:** So, on Episode 255 of Scriptnotes, Billy Ray was the guest. Craig wasn’t there. And we talked about this. And so Billy Ray started quite young in the industry and he worked his butt off. And we all read books that were incredibly important to us, and were helpful in getting us thinking about how we were going to do this job of screenwriting. So, I don’t fault him for saying that Robert McKee was a huge influence to him, but like he would be a screenwriter regardless of Robert McKee.

**Craig:** Of course. Now, the Terry Rossio advice is slightly different. Because Terry’s column was written quite a few years ago. I suspect, just knowing, because I’ve known those guys, Ted and Terry, for a long time. I’m fairly certain that that article, I don’t know if there’s a date on it, the strange attractor thing, but I think it was written in the ‘90s. In fact, it was, 1997.

My friend, that’s 20-year-old advice. Right? Now, it seems, well, yeah, but is it still? No. It’s not relevant anymore. And we know this, because we see writers selling screenplays all the time that are not what we call high concept, big hooky things. That article was written in the era of the big spec sale. And, of course, Terry and Ted wrote a certain kind of movie as well and they had a lot of success with that. And at times I think it’s a tempting thing to want to generalize your success to everybody else and say, “Here’s what I did to be successful. You should do it, too.” Doesn’t quite work that way.

I don’t think the 1997 article here would explain something like the success that Kelly Marcel had with Saving Mr. Banks, which is not a strange attractor/high concept/big gimmick plot twist. Unless, look, you can also play the game of shoving everything into that box in which case, yeah, they all are. And then what you quickly get down to is don’t write a bad script. Write a good one. But I think it’s important to keep in mind that that article is 20 years old.

**John:** Yeah, so Terry started doing his Wordplay blog even before I was doing johnaugust.com. And he and I were both sort of people who were offering advice to aspiring screenwriters online. And I totally admire what he’s done and I think Terry has a certain philosophy, and he’s sort of staked out a lot of ground that was really helpful and I love it when he talks at Austin and other places. So, his opinion is not wrong, I just don’t share his opinion that a person should aim for high concept because that’s where the sales are. I don’t think aiming for a high concept sale is the best first goal for a screenwriter right now.

I think the best first goal for a screenwriter is to write something that’s so good that people want to hire you to do things. And the thing that is so good that people want to hire you to do things is going to be something that is uniquely yours, that expresses your unique voice.

**Craig:** Yeah. You know, in 1997 the business was highly oriented around the veracious consumption of original stuff to put onscreen, not necessarily creative original, but meaning new titles and new IP. And because of video and all the rest, they were releasing an enormous amount of movies. And you had to kind of stand out from the crowd by being something that people wanted to produce. Like, great, this is a great idea. That’s how I got started. You know, my writing partner and I came up with a big hooky/strange attractor concept. We had an actor and off we went. And made the movie.

But 20 years later, the studios are equally obsessed, but in the opposite direction, with generating movies based on not-fresh IP, existing IP. And so what they’re looking for are writers that they can assign to the material they want made. And that means – and Peter Dodd said as much. They’re not necessarily looking at specs as make this, they’re looking at specs as writing samples for their things. For their big things. So, I think that Terry was probably dead spot on when he wrote that, but I would be surprised if he didn’t at least acknowledge that now 20 years gone by the situation is a bit different.

**John:** I agree. So let’s do our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is an article in The Atlantic where John McWhorter, he’s the linguist we talked about on a previous episode, he traces the evolution of the word Like. And so the word Like is really fascinating. So, it starts from an old word that was related to the word body. It then got its sense of meaning similar. I didn’t know this, but you may have known this Craig, that the LY, the adverbial LY is actually Like. It’s just a shortened form of like.

**Craig:** I did not know that. But that makes so much sense.

**John:** Yeah, so like saintly, is saint-like. All those words, it’s just an adverbial form of the adjective, and that’s how it got there. Or, noun, so, that LY is a just a Like.

So, the way that we sort of use like now and we sort of hate the way use like now sometimes is really fascinating. So, there’s the way we use it to quote speech, and so she was like, and I was like, and so it’s quoting speech but not directly quoting speech. It’s useful for that. And I kind of can’t fault it for how we use it for that.

But McWhorter singles out two other ways we do it. There’s the way we use it to hesitate, we’re sort of using as a pause word. There’s also a way where we’re using it to mean like I know this doesn’t sound true, but it really is true. I opened the box and there were like 20 scorpions inside. And so that like is meant to sort of emphasize that I’m not saying as if there were 20 scorpions, there really were scorpions inside. I know it seems unbelievable, but that like is there to make clear that it really did happen.

So, anyway, it’s a fascinating article. McWhorter is always great at identifying sort of new trends and old words. So, I point you to this article.

**Craig:** Well, that’s fascinating. I did not know the LY thing. I like things like that. I like trotting things like that out at parties, mostly to bore people, but also because somebody somewhere is going to go, you know, I’ve heard this so many times. Someone will say, “You say stuff like you know it, but you’re just making it up.” Because it does sound like something you could just make up and say, but I believe it. I believe it.

Well, my One Cool Thing is fairly mundane. Let me ask you a question, John. Do you and Mike wake up at the same time each day or not?

**John:** We wake up at the same time almost every day, but that’s partly because our daughter has to go to school. So it’s when the alarm happens.

**Craig:** Got it. So, I take the late shift in the house and Melissa takes the early shift. So, she does the drive to school, I do the “Oh, you’re vomiting at midnight, or you have a fever, whatever.” And she goes to bed before our son does, so I also handle him at night.

So, we have two different alarms. And so it was really frustrating for a long time because what I would do is I would just leave a note like set the alarm for 8:30, you know, because she’s going to get up at 6:30. But I found this clock and it’s Brookstone. You know, Brookstone, they got a bad rep, you know, because it’s a lot of plastic, junky baloney gimmicky stuff in a mall. And massage chairs and baloney. Bu this clock, it’s the only one I’ve found that does this. So, I don’t know, maybe I just haven’t looked hard enough. But it’s a Bluetooth alarm clock with two alarm settings and you can control it with an app, as long as you’re within Bluetooth range.

So, when I get into bed, I open up my iPad, the screen on dim, and she’s got alarm one set to 6:30, and I go to alarm two and make it whatever I want. And it does it. And it’s great. You’d think other people would have that. No, anyway.

**John:** Craig, right now it’s my function to be the voice of everyone listening in their cars right now, Craig, alarm clocks have done that for forever. Like, literally our 20-year-old alarm clock–

**Craig:** No, no, no, I know they have two alarms. I’m saying, it’s dark. I walk into the room. She’s asleep, right, because I’m coming in at midnight. The room is dark. The alarm is by her bed. I got to turn a light on by the clock, hit a thing. Because I change my time all the time. I change my wake up time all the time.

**John:** We have little glowing buttons. We just push the little buttons.

**Craig:** No, I don’t want to get near her face and start doing that. I want to be able to control it with my phone.

**John:** Oh, so I see. This is the crucial geography I was not understanding in the scene you were describing. So, in your scene geography, the clock is by your wife, and therefore you don’t want to be anywhere near your wife because she’s asleep and she’s like a bomb that could go off.

**Craig:** She’s like a bomb that can go off. Exactly.

**John:** So therefore you can use this device, it’s a remote control for the bomb by your wife.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so you could change the timer so it counts down differently, so that she will blow up earlier, and you could blow up at a later time.

**Craig:** I think you finally understand. First of all, you understand the danger I’m in.

**John:** Oh, I know your wife. I know you don’t want to cross her.

**Craig:** I’m not going to wake her up. I don’t want to wake her up. And this way it’s great. And also the actual process of changing an alarm on most alarm clocks is horrendous. You’re tapping buttons and you’ve got to figure out who to enter this one, this one. The app is lovely. You just go and you scroll like any other time alarm app and hit save. And so I love it personally. And it’s cheap. It’s like $60.

**John:** Craig, my question for you is you’ve already established that the iPad is in the room, so why don’t you just set the alarm on the iPad and have the iPad wake you up?

**Craig:** Okay. Great point. I will tell you why. Because sometimes my iPad isn’t plugged in and the battery is low and I’m a little paranoid that it’s going to run out, but also the iPad just does not generate a loud enough alarm for me because I have ear plugs in. And why do I have ear plugs in?

**John:** Because your wife wakes up early.

**Craig:** Well, and, you know, there’s–

**John:** She snores.

**Craig:** Meh. I don’t know what you’re talking about and I didn’t say anything.

**John:** [laughs] All right. I’m a big believer in ear plugs as well. I think ear plugs are a good invention. I remember the first time I used them on planes saying like, oh, this is so weird and uncomfortable, and then – they’re great. So, I do believe in ear plugs. I believe in eye shades. I believe in anything that helps you sleep. So, I’m fine with it.

**Craig:** Boom.

**John:** Boom. That’s our show for this week. Our show is produced by Godwin Jabangwe. 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 shorter questions on Twitter, I am @johnaugust. Craig is @clmazin. We are on Facebook. Search for Scriptnotes podcast. But don’t leave any fake news here, because we don’t want any fake news on our Facebook.

You can find us on iTunes at Scriptnotes. Just search for Scriptnotes. While you’re there, leave us a comment because that helps people find the show.

You’ll find 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.

You can find all of the back episodes at Scriptnotes.net. You can also find a USB drive in the show notes here for all the first 250 episodes of the show.

**Craig:** Wow.

**John:** Yeah. That’s a lot of episodes of the show.

**Craig:** So many episodes.

**John:** So we have to decide if we’re going to make the 300-episode USB drives. And if we’re going to make them that have the new USBCs. We just don’t know what we’re going to do.

**Craig:** Well, I know what we won’t do. We won’t funnel any of that sweet, sweet profit to me.

**John:** Uh-uh. Not a bit of it. It all stays in Godwin’s little coffers.

**Craig:** Oh, Godwin’s coffers. Godwin’s coffers sounds like some sort of Shakespearean outcry. Godwin’s coffers!

**John:** I think it’s pretty fantastic. Craig, thank you for a fun episode. I hope it was everything you wanted.

**Craig:** D’oh.

**John:** See you next week.

**Craig:** See you next time.

Links:

* Download [Weekend Read](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/weekendread/)
* Auli’i Cravalho – How Far I’ll Go from [Moana](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UpGDU9kFho)
* Terry Rossio’s [Wordplay](http://wordplayer.com/)
* [The Evolution of ‘Like’](http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/11/the-evolution-of-like/507614/)
* [Brookstone App-Controlled Bluetooth Alarm Clock](https://www.amazon.com/TimeSmart-App-Controlled-Bluetooth-Alarm-Clock/dp/B014I7N5ES/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1481561313&sr=8-2&keywords=brookstone+alarm+clock&refinements=p_89%3ABrookstone)
* [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)
* [Get your 250 episode USB](http://store.johnaugust.com/collections/frontpage/products/250-episode-usb-flash-drive)
* [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_279.mp3).