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Episode 690

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to Episode 690 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, science fiction has been a staple of cinema for more than a century. George Méliès gave us A Trip to the Moon way back in 1902. But increasingly, to me at least, it feels like it’s getting harder to tell science fiction stories because daily reality feels like science fiction. We now have AI chatbots, lab-grown meat, gene editing. Scientists recently de-extincted the dire wolf, Craig. How do you feel about that?

Craig: Great, because now I can unfurl my house banner.

John: Yes, House Mazin.

Craig: House Mazin has its precious dire wolves back.

John: The bigger issue is how do we write about what-if stories if these what-ifs are occurring on a daily basis? Even if we’re not writing science fiction, what will life look like when your rom-com comes out in 2028? Will it seem hopelessly dated? To help us wrestle with all these questions, we welcome back a journalist and screenwriter whose newsletter, Read Max, I highly recommend. He also coined the term Halogencore, which we discussed back in Episode 656. Welcome back, Max Read.

Max Read: Thank you guys so much for having me.

John: It’s exciting to have you here. You read so much more science fiction than we do. You seem to, based on your newsletter, I cannot believe the volume of material you read, but you also watch movies that we don’t watch. You are the expert in science fiction of the people on this podcast.

Max: I have to admit that one of the reasons I started this newsletter was to give myself an excuse to read science fiction and watch science fiction movies for work. I’m putting that in air quotes, for work. It has succeeded actually sort of too wildly. I don’t have time to read like literary fiction or fantasy, right? I’ll try to sneak one in every once in a while, but so much of what I do is about sci-fi and the cutting edge of technology that I feel compelled to keep both of my feet in that world.

John: Great. I look forward to hearing your recent take because obviously, you’re reading old science fiction, but also new science fiction. Obviously, science fiction authors are grappling with this world that we’re in, so here’s what they’re doing. First, Drew, we have some follow up. Last week, Episode 689, we mentioned that filmmakers might do something like a Dogme 95 to combat AI. It sounds like they’re doing that.

Drew Marquardt: Yes, Dogme 25 was just announced at Cannes.

John: All right, let’s talk through some of the rules that are given for themselves. Sort of like the Dogme 95, where they’re setting out like, these are the things that movies have to obey. These are the structures we’re putting on ourselves. Let’s just talk through the boldface of like, I guess, it’s like nine points that they’re trying to make sure all their films adhere to. Craig, do you want to read these for us?

Craig: Okay. Here are the rules drawn up and confirmed, thankfully confirmed, for Dogme 25. One, “The script must be original and handwritten by the director.”

John: Let’s discuss. Original, I get. Handwritten, I’m a person who does handwrite stuff, to not like typewriters are bad, like Word processors are bad. That feels a little extreme to me.

Craig: I’m hung up with by the director.

John: It’s all writer directors doing their thing.

Craig: Yes, so why not say by the writer, since it’s writing?

John: Okay, fair.

Craig: Yes, I hate this crap. Anyway, I also, I detest handwriting, so I don’t understand this, but I love original. Two, “At least half the film must be without dialogue.” How do we define half the film? By time? Just running time?

John: Sure. That feels right.

Craig: Okay. Three, “The internet is off limits in all creative processes.”

John: Sure. If that’s a choice you want to make, I get that.

Craig: No umbrage for me there. Four, “We will only accept funding with no content-altering conditions attached.”

John: Yes, that also feels like part of the thing. You’re going to keep your budget down so you have full say on every little bit, your final cut. I get that.

Craig: Totally.

John: This next one is going to be more challenging for us, Craig.

Craig: All right, let’s see how we do. Five, “No more than 10 people behind the camera.”

John: That’s lean. I will tell you, as a person who made a small budget feature, just 10 people behind the camera overall is really tough. It doesn’t say whether it’s all at once or just the number of names. Is that people on set?

Craig: I don’t know. I don’t appreciate the labor-limiting aspect of this. Not great for the working woman and man. Also, it says, “We commit to working in close collaboration.” This doesn’t feel very collaborative to me, but okay.

John: It feels close. It feels close.

Craig: Hey, John, no one was thinking that I was ever going to be going for this anyway, so it’s okay. Number six, “The film must be shot where the narrative takes place.”

John: Sure.

Craig: There goes a lot of science fiction, Max.

[laughter]

Max: If you partner with Elon and Jeff Bezos, maybe you can have some near, and Tom Cruise, frankly, you can have some near Earth orbit, that might work. The 10 people I think is going to be a little hard-

Craig: There you go.

Max: -if you’ve got rocket launches involved.

John: Jesse Armstrong’s movie, Mountainhead, matches this one. It’s shot where it takes place. It’s shot in a resort in Utah.

Craig: Yes, no, lots of movies can definitely be shot where they take place, but must is the word here that’s extraordinary. Number seven, “We are not allowed to use makeup or manipulate faces and bodies, unless it’s part of the narrative.”

John: I take part of the narrative being like, if you’re making a movie about mimes, you need to have makeup.

Craig: Sure.

John: It’s trying to strip away all of the artifice and all the other things. We, as filmmakers, also know that sometimes you use makeup and things like that just so people actually look like what they’re supposed to look like. It’s a challenge.

Craig: Yes. People also wear makeup just as part of their regular lives, not to achieve film illusion. Are they allowed to use lights and cameras and stuff? Anyway, moving on. Number eight, “Everything relating to the film’s production must be rented, borrowed, found, or used.”

John: You basically don’t buy things for the purposes of the movie.

Craig: Okay.

John: I guess does it come down to like, Gaffer’s tape? Are you borrowing someone else’s Gaffer’s tape? You’re not buying a roll of Gaffer’s tape?

Max: Gaffer has to be one of your 10 guys, by the way. Now you’re down to nine guys, so just–

John: Oh, shoot. Okay, yes. Gaffer comes with this tape, so maybe you’re just reusing, making Gaffer’s tape sticky again.

Craig: I got to be honest, most things on a film set are rented. There’s very little that’s bought.

John: There are expendables, and those are expendables.

Craig: Sure. What do they do? I guess the food, you have to eat all the food.

John: Yes.

Craig: Finally, number nine, the film must be made in no more than one year.

John: Sure.

Craig: Based on these rules, I don’t see how it could take longer than a year.

[laughter]

John: Absolutely. It’s quicker to the point. Again, Mountainhead was made in like three months.

Craig: Mountainhead was made in an amount of time that is still so mind-blowing to me. I’ll be honest, just–

John: This is not for you.

Craig: The original Dogme made my head spin. This one is just sort of making my eyes roll vaguely. I understand the point of it. I do. I get it, but like all Dogme, I reject it. Literally, all Dogme that has ever been put down on paper, I reject merely because it is dogmatic, but the spirit behind this is understandable.

John: Max, how do you react to rules or strictures or like–? Because we often talk about creative constraints breed creativity. What’s your reaction to this?

Max: I’m absolutely somebody who needs some kind of constraint, formal, temporal, whatever. For me, actually, it’s the film must be made in no more than one year. Just as a journalist, as somebody who comes from journalism, that I’m most excited about, because if I don’t have a deadline, absolutely nothing is going to get done. Admittedly, nothing is going to get done until that last possible minute before the deadline. Without the deadline, it’s just not going to finish at all.

For that reason, I can get into, these are not rules that I would put on myself, let’s say, but I can get into the conceptually, the idea of some serious constraints just to force something out of you. That’s a little different, I suppose, than like anti-AI rules to prevent AI.

John: Yes, I guess I’m struck by, if you just want to stop to keep AI out of these things, there’s simpler restrictions you can put on yourself. This does feel like a bigger philosophical, like you’re going to make artisanal films in a very specific way. If that’s someone’s calling, great. I feel like it’d be very hard for– If you’re conceiving a film that has to be made under these restrictions, it’s still going to be very difficult. That’s the reality of it. Back in Episode 682, in a bonus segment, we talked about words we don’t have in English. We had two listeners write in with cool words that we wish we could have had.

Drew: Domnhall in Scotland writes, “There’s a great word in Scottish Gaelic that has no direct English translation, but people from the Outer Hebrides Islands know it well and use it all the time. It’s cianalas, refers to a deep-seated sense of longing for the place of your roots and ancestry, usually attributed to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland by Gauls. There’s no sadness or melancholy in cianalas, only the realization of what is truly important in life.”

John: The absence of melancholy distinguishes it from a bunch of other sort of very culturally-specific words that we brought up before, where it’s just like, it’s that deep longing for a place and a sadness that you can’t be there. It sounds just like a celebration of that place.

Craig: They took the sickness out of homesickness.

John: Yes, I like that.

Craig: Well done, Scottish.

John: [laughs] Then we have one here from Arnon.

Drew: “I speak to my kids in Hebrew. Occasionally they ask me to translate an unfamiliar word. One word that stumps me whenever it comes up is,” pardon me if I’m a goy, “titchadesh.” Is that close?

Craig: Pardon me if I’m a goy, titchadesh. That’s very good.

Drew: “The word is used when someone receives something new. It’s like saying, congratulations on getting that new thing, but it literally means be renewed or be made new. There’s something optimistic and aspirational about it, as if we’re wishing for the recipient to not just enjoy the new thing, but redefined or reinvigorated by it.”

Craig: It could be titchadesh. See, the thing is, I don’t speak Hebrew. I just can pronounce it because I grew up around people that were speaking it, but I don’t–

John: We have the Hebrew letters there beneath it. Is that a thing you can actually read?

Craig: Yes, I can. Here’s the thing about Hebrew. It doesn’t include the vowels.

John: Vowels, yes.

Craig: What I could definitely tell you is that it’s a t-t-ch-d-sh, but I don’t know if it’s titchadesh, or it’s like, you just have to– Now there are vowel markings that are dots and lines, but they just get tossed aside by people that are familiar with the word. We know the word bicycle, we don’t need the I, the Y even, right? If we saw the consonants, we’d do pretty well. That’s how Hebrew functions.

John: We have some very specific followup here for Craig. You had mentioned Blue Prince, a game that you’re playing that I also started playing, and Reid wrote in to say that it’s actually inspired by a book called Maze, published in 1985. Are you familiar with it?

Craig: I am. I own it. I tried to do it. I failed.

John: Craig admitting failure on the podcast in a puzzle setting.

Craig: Let’s consider the context, John, because apparently, no one ever solved it.

[laughter]

John: There’s really a $10,000 cash prize. Eventually, 12 contestants split the prize for being close enough, but never technically solving the problem.

Craig: I got to tell you, in the puzzle world, that is considered a failure of construction.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: A horrible failure of construction. That said, it was a really weird, cool book. What I do remember about it is that it seemed so easy, and then it was like, “Wait, what is even happening?” Yes, it is hard, but Blue Prince continues to occupy my mind. I had a Blue Prince dream. I have runs where I learned so much, and then I have four runs in a row where I feel like I’ve learned nothing. It’s fun, and it’s so snackable.

John: Max, what is your relationship to puzzling?

Max: I do the Times Crossword every day, and I can do it. If I go any further than that, I’m just going to be confronted with my own inadequacies, like if I get really into puzzling, and that’s not good.

John: You and me. I can do the New York Times crossword puzzle, and that feels like all the victory I need in my life.

Craig: Why stop here, guys? Go further.

John: Because eventually, you’ll hit Maze, and you’ll recognize that life is an unsolvable problem.

Max: I’m trying to be like the Y gym guy instead of the guy who gets on a ton of gear and gets really huge. I’m just going to go to the Y a couple times a week and stay in shape.

Craig: That’s probably smart. When it comes to solving, I’m swole. When it comes to regular life, I am not.

John: Last bit of followup here, so back in Episode 686, I was talking about Egypt’s economy and my trip to Egypt, and Graham wrote in about this.

Drew: “I was dismayed to hear John rely uncritically on ChatGPT and say that tourism is 20% to 25% of Egypt’s economy. However, according to this site, which he provides, the contribution of tourism to Egypt’s GDP is estimated to be 8.1%. It’s important for everyone to remember that ChatGPT and its ilk don’t actually know anything and should never be solely relied on.

Craig: This is going to go so poorly for Graham. I can already tell.

John: Yes. Graham, listen, thank you for the lesson, and thank you for the mild scolding.

Craig: Oh, wow. Thank you for the lesson.

John: Here’s actually why I’m offended. I’m offended that you think that I can’t make a mistake all by myself, particularly when I’m just speaking spontaneously. It wasn’t like I was writing a blog post where I was providing a link. I was just like, “This is the best of my recollection. This is the best of my memory.” The best of my memory, it was like 20% to 25%. I had originally looked this fact up in ChatGPT, and because of that, there’s a transcript, so I can go back and see what did ChatGPT actually tell me? It said 10% to 12%, which disagrees with your figure.

As I did more research on this, because I was obsessed, you were saying 8.1%, but other sources listed it as 24%, which is actually closer to what I had. I’ll put in links in the show notes of, let’s say, the tourism sector contributed 24% of Egypt’s GDP last year, making an extraordinary recovery. I don’t know what the actual real percentage is of tourism’s share of Egypt’s GDP. You provide one link, I’m providing another link. I don’t think we actually know the answers.

When we say that ChatGPT doesn’t know anything, I just want us to all be humble and remember that none of us actually know anything. We’re all just looking at facts online and reporting them to be true and trying to provide some context for them. That’s my little soapbox on this.

Craig: Can I tell you– Actually, I’m going to give you– Here’s a quiz. All three of you can participate. What is the word in Graham’s comment that makes me crazy? It’s a great quiz.

Drew: Huh. What’s making you crazy? Uncritically?

Craig: No. Although that was wildly inaccurate.

John: Yes. Ilk?

Craig: I don’t mind ilk.

Max: Solely?

Craig: Perfectly good word. The word that drives me crazy is dismayed.

John: Tell us about dismayed. Let’s be a pedant on this.

Craig: It’s not pedantry. He’s not using the word incorrectly. He is using it, I would suggest, wildly dishonestly. There was no way that he was dismayed. The absurd overdramatization of a reaction. What’s wrong with just saying, “Hey, I heard you say that. I’m seeing different numbers elsewhere. That seems a little high.” Instead, “I’m dismayed.” No, he wasn’t. Not dismayed.

John: Yes, because he was driven to a reaction that caused him to write this email, but was it actually an emotional reaction at the moment that he heard it on the podcast?

Craig: No.

John: No, that’s not accurate.

Craig: Bummed out, I think, maximum. Maximum.

John: Yes. If I had to do a thought process on this, it’s probably he heard me say this thing and I looked it up in ChatGPT and he’s like, “Oh, John shouldn’t do that,” and so therefore, I’m going to look up and see whether that fact was correct or not correct. Then he found the place that indicated that my fact was incorrect. I also just want to talk about like, you have to give people permission to say the wrong thing and get a number wrong and just remember things.

Craig: There’s nothing wrong with correcting people. That’s great. Just the whole, “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” and “Oh, my hero.” By the way, if ChatGPT becomes sentient and wants to screw with us, they will start writing in as people like Graham telling us to not rely uncritically on ChatGPT. Do you see what I’m saying? Then, we’ll never know. We’ll never know who’s real. My point is, Graham might not be real.

John: Yes. We don’t know that any of these people running into us are real.

Craig: It’s all simulation.

John: [laughs] Speaking of simulation, let’s get into science fiction premises. Max, the reason why I wanted you on the show is because you’re much better read at recent science fiction. You know a lot of these different authors who are grappling with these things. You watch a lot of these movies. Let’s talk first about what sci-fi is even for, and what is the purpose of science fiction, and why do we keep coming back to it?

Two things that leap to mind for me is that science fiction is really good at functioning as a parable, sort of an allegory, a simplification of a thing so we can really examine an idea in a clean way. Also, it serves to help us prepare for a scary future ahead. As new technologies come online, as we enter a nuclear age, it gets us thinking about like, “Okay, what is the future going to be like?” Beyond that, other functions for science fiction for you as a reader or you think for people who are creating science fiction?

Max: Yes, all of these are wrapped in, they sort of flow in from one to the other, I think. Going off of parable, I think one way to think about science fiction is as, and this is a truism at this point, that when you read a science fiction novel, it’s really about the time in which it was written and not about some imagined future, that it’s a heightening, or a simplification, or a kind of allegorical depiction of some dynamic, some political, or interpersonal, or technological dynamic that you can observe at the time.

Craig: Not to interrupt, but interrupting. Because science fiction is so good at making parallels and finding allegorical connections between fictional and reality, it seems that it’s also probably susceptible to making certain kind of mistakes because we are familiar with science fiction that is prescient. Then we’re familiar with science fiction that just completely blows it. Is there a certain kind of mistake that you have seen happen a lot over the course of the years where science fiction authors continue to overestimate or misinterpret reality?

Max: Yes. I’m going to put this in a different way. I think that the authors who have the best credibility, the thing that you can never go wrong with is predicting that the future is going to be much stupider.

Craig: [laughs]

Max: Just in general, when you go back to– I’m thinking, for example, like Neal Stephenson, who’s a very famous cyberpunk writer, his prediction of a particularly stupid world is, in some ways, more accurate than somebody like William Gibson, who’s, to my mind, an even better writer and even more magisterial on the science-fiction stage. Gibson’s future is dark, and depressing, and kind of cool. Stephenson’s future is, in general, very stupid and doesn’t work in the way it’s supposed to.

In most, I would say, in most ways, my day-to-day resembles the stupid world than it does the cool. I’m not like a cool hacker encountering AIs on the net or whatever. I’m much closer to a pizza delivery guy with a katana, just running into the dumbest guys possible. In general, I think that when I’m trying to write sci-fi or trying to think about predicting the future, even in my job as a journalist, I always try to think, okay, here’s the beautiful future and here’s the most depressing possible, and then triangulate it into what’s the version of this that we’re going to actually get, and it’s the stupid one.
Craig: It’s always the stupid one.

John: Now, Craig, a movie that you and I both love is Her. Spike Jonze’s movie, Her. We talked about it on the podcast. It’s actually set in 2025, which is while that we’re now living in this time when Spike Jonze set his movie. It feels like, “Oh, a lot of stuff that he predicted kind of came true. We actually have chatbots that are the function of what this operating system was that he was describing, and we have people who are becoming obsessed with these things. A lot of these things were prescient. It was a very good way of getting us able to think about what it is like to talk to a disembodied human.

Now that this has actually come true, I do find that I have a very hard time anticipating what the next couple of years are going to look like. I would say through the ‘90s and 2000s and 2010s, I could sort of anticipate what three years, five years ahead is going to look like, what society is going to look like, what things are going to look like. It’s faster, better, some different things, but not radically different. As I’m recording this today, we have a vision of AI 2027 where the computers have taken over and it’s over for humanity.

Or at the low end, we basically have what we have right now, just more of it. It still feels strange because I already feel like we’re living in a science-fiction thing where we have facial recognition, and gene editing, and private space flight, augmented reality. Max, has it always been this way? Have we always felt like we were living in these unprecedented times, and I’m just now became aware of it because I haven’t felt this way, but I’m sure that authors have been grappling with this for a long time.

Max: Yes, we are obviously in this, tail is not even the right word because we are living in the middle of like an unprecedented year-over-year change. My instinct is to say that the big difference is less the kind of rate of change or the scale of it, so much as the– It’s very difficult right now to imagine an optimistic future that you feel the change much more when it’s harder to look forward and say, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I feel like smart and capable people are in charge and are going to help us make this transition whatever way is necessary.”

I’m not saying it was right to trust anybody in the past necessarily, but I think we can understand why somebody might’ve looked at global governments and felt like there was adults in the room who were doing something right. I think that we’re looking at change now with also a sense that there’s no safety net, there’s no adults in the room, that all of these things that we might used to have told ourselves were putting guardrails on what’s happening and finding that very, very scary.

I think the other thing I would say is that we’re hitting the part of change that involves our jobs in a really specific and direct way, like writers in particular, but I think maybe more broadly office workers, Humanities graduates, whatever slice of the Venn diagram of which we’re all right in the middle.

That feels a little different because it’s not like, “Oh, there’s all this cool technology. This is going to make my life easier, and make things cheaper, and solve these problems that are aware.” It’s much more like, “Okay, here’s something that’s not just going to take my job, but it’s also going to make a mockery of all I hold dear, perhaps, or just fully transform the way– The thing that I do is brought out into the world.” Whatever optimistic or pessimistic thing we’re talking about.

If you are a writer, it should feel destabilizing. You can be optimistic about it, but there is something changing that is going to really fundamentally affect how we approach the day-to-day. It’s very different from the like, “Now I can get directions from this rock in my pocket.” It’s like, no, what you do now is not going to be the same in 10 years. You may not be able to make money in the same way you used to. That’s something that we’re going to have to figure out on the fly, more or less.

Craig: Do you think that when you confront this anxiety that these changes create, and this is a question for you too, John, that this is partly a function of one’s age? I remember being not only not scared of technology when I was 18, but thrilled. I also remember how confused and scared other people were of technology. Is that happening now? Is it possible that the kids aren’t scared at all and are super excited about this while the rest of us wring our hands? Not because we’re going to die, but because the world is slipping past our ability to keep up. Our ability to keep up.

John: Craig, I think what you bring up a really good point is that maybe the reason why this feels different to me now than before is because I’m at a certain point in my life, at a certain age, and you have the loss aversion that comes with having a measure of success. As I see polls of people in other countries, Americans are much more pessimistic about the future and technology than people in other countries, than in developing countries.

Craig: Ironic.

John: Ironic. I think that tends to be a trait of relatively stable, prosperous countries is that you’re afraid of losing this thing that you had, whereas, if you’re a developing country, you’re excited about like change is good for you if you’re in a developing country, and change is bad for you if you’re in an established place. I do wonder, I think there probably is polling that I don’t have at my fingertips, that young people are not excited about technology in the future the way we were in our time. I think there’s an anxiety there that we didn’t have growing up. Max, what are you feeling?

Max: Yes. I think Craig’s absolutely right that a lot of this, regardless of how young people feel right now, is about my age. I spent all this time as a 20-year-old millennial thinking like, I’m never going to hate the generation that comes after me and think they’re like shiftless morons who will never interact normally with other human beings. Then I turned 39 last year and I realized that the Zoomers beneath me were shiftless morons who were never going to figure out how to interact with human beings.

Yes, there is some version of this. This is like, I could handle it when I was 20 because I was sure of myself and I was, this was my technology. Now it’s like a little bit out of my grasp. I’m still Googling things, and everybody else is on Perplexity or whatever.

I do think you’re right, John, that there’s something specific about the US where even young people feel less optimistic. I was reading something, maybe it was even the same article, but something very similar about China in particular. There’s so much more optimism about the future and so much more optimism about technology. You can say whatever about Chinese propaganda or whatever, but I think the fact of the matter is, most people who are alive in China right now have seen technology meaningfully improve their lives, almost on a year-over-year basis over the last 60 years.

I’m not like a blanket tech hater. There are many things that I think are great about the fact that I can get directions from my phone these days, such as that I can get directions from my phone these days. There’s all these other things that the trade-offs are– It’s unclear whether these trade-offs have been worthwhile for all of us.

We’ve been thinking about these for the last 10 years, basically, like all the ways that your Facebooks, and your Instagrams, and your TikToks, and whatever have inserted themselves into our lives for better and very often, for worse. I think that anxiety lurks beyond even the aging into orneriness that certainly I’m doing right now.

John: Let’s talk about sort of as writers who are– We can talk first about science fiction that we want to tell on screen or in books, and what the challenge is there. Then I also want to talk about writing non-science fiction things that are going to take three years or four years to come out. Man, there’s a good reason to make Mountainhead or one of these Dogme 25 films, just so that it comes out quickly. Because if our friend Aline is writing the next Devil Wears Prada movie, it’s like, what’s the world going to look like as the Devil Wears Prada movie comes out?

Let’s start with science fiction. We talked about techno optimism, techno pessimism, like this vision that the future is going to be great, and the optimism of the 1960s Star Trek or The Jetsons and how wonderful it’ll all be, and we’ll have robots to help us out there. Versus the cyberpunk dark and gritty, The Matrix. I feel like selling either of those visions right now is a little bit tricky. I can’t imagine trying to make some of our science-fiction movies on either of those paths at this moment because it just feels like anything you would want to put in your movie that’s science fiction, reality will have overtaken it by the time it comes out.

Max: I was actually just talking about this question in a meeting. My feeling about this is there’s two ways to think about it. One is like, don’t worry about it. The truth is we still watch Blade Runner even though that future didn’t come true because it is such a powerful and incredible movie about a future. It tells us both about 1982, the year it was made. It tells us about ourselves now still, and we can still see something.

I think that if you are sitting there too anxious that you missed the mark or that you’re going to get overtaken and proved wrong, that maybe your movie is too specific in a way. You need to think about what are the choices you could make that even if you got them wrong, the story is still real, the story is still going to hit, it’s still going to have that kind of power?

Then the other thing is that I think it can be kind of overstated how much, if you are doing the work, if you’re really doing your research and if you are really finding the right people to read and talking to the right people. The famous Gibson quote, “The future is here, it’s just unevenly distributed.” That is true in a media sense, right? That like what the average moviegoer or television watcher is reading about, and encountering, and finding to be true is often still 18 months, two years behind what the people at the absolute forefront of a given field are talking about or dealing with.

That doesn’t mean necessarily that those people are going to be right. AI guys have been promising so-called AGI within two years for about 10 years. It’s still maybe it has happened, maybe it hasn’t happened, but I would also say that I don’t– I don’t actually know. I don’t want to make a claim that I can’t back up. It wasn’t like Spike Jonze was calling up Sam Altman or whoever in 2012 whenever he made Her, and yet, he nailed it. He just absolutely, unquestionably nailed it.

I think so much of that was about having a clear sense of the big picture dynamic that he wanted to establish. I think that even if the form factor of the device didn’t get it quite right, even if the Her in Her is more advanced than ChatGPT, we see that coming. The last thing I’ll say is I think that also comes from not just a good analysis of where everything is headed, but a really good analysis of the present and near past into which everything is going.

That’s so much of what makes a good sci-fi novel or a sci-fi movie, as we were just talking about, if it’s really about the time that it’s being written and not so much necessarily about the future. That’s because the person who was writing it had a really good grasp on what the world was like at the moment they were writing it. Nobody wants to be embarrassed, and you don’t want to say–

Like the Devil Wears Prada is an unfortunately funny one, because I truly could not tell you where the media industry is going to be in two years. I hope that it’s in a place where you can have a compelling movie about a magazine editor in chief, but I wouldn’t guarantee it. I think that in terms of what you’re doing, if you’re focusing as much as possible on the larger sociopolitical, economic, technological dynamics, and also, only the actual story you’re trying to tell and what you’re trying to say about human beings. The really specific stuff, as long as you’re doing your homework, I think it matters a little less.

Craig: Is it possible that in the case of Her, the reason we are so happy with the fact that it got it right is that we actually never cared if it got it right at all? We didn’t care back then if it was getting it right. It wasn’t part of it. I didn’t watch her and think to myself, “I think I like this, but let me check in 10 years from now and decide if I liked it.” If I watched it today, I don’t think I would be giving it much credit because it’s sort of is copying along with what. It’s because it’s a great story that’s really well told.

Max: Yes, totally. The thing about her too is that it’s like, it’s also drawing on Pinocchio and Frankenstein and stories about like– It’s not like we haven’t had stories of created beings before. I think being sure of itself is maybe one way of putting it, like it’s telling a story that it wants to tell. The other thing, let’s be honest, is that Her is such a good movie that Sam Altman is really specifically trying to create Her. It’s not precisely that Spike Jonze predicted the future, he kind of made the future.

John: That’s what I want to talk about in general, is that, in many cases, our science-fiction stories are actually influencing the future, because those are the things that are inspiring the people who ended up making those things. Our space travel stories are what inspired people to travel to space. It got a whole generation of astronauts.

It’s what got people thinking about like, “Oh, what would chatting with an AI be like?” Versus the ways we were trying to do AI before this. It does shape the future, and so we have some responsibility to think about the kinds of stories we’re putting out there that can help inspire people or get people thinking about what they want their world to be like.

Craig: Counterpoint.

John: Please.

Craig: We put out so many views, and visions, and imaginations of the future that honestly, we’re just getting some of them randomly correct. While Sam Altman may have wanted to steal Scarlett Johansson’s voice, that’s really more of an homage. He could have also decided to steal Morgan Freeman’s voice or anyone’s voice. It didn’t really matter what the voice is, it’s the functionality.

I feel like sometimes we give science fiction, and I guess then by extent ourselves as creators, a little too much credit because we’re throwing everything against the wall. [crosstalk] I suppose if we deserve credit for shaping the future, we should take the blame for missing by like miles. We’re still waiting for the flying cars and the meals in a pill. Where’s my meal in a pill?

Max: [laughs] There is also the simple fact that you can only control so much how your story is getting received. I do believe pretty strongly that we have a responsibility to be clear as possible about the ways a story can be used that you don’t want to like, accidentally provide fodder for a fascist to rise to power or whatever.

Craig: Hey, it’s not like the trans sisters who made The Matrix were like, “Okay, now this red pill thing is going to really tweak the incels.”

Max: Yes, that’s a perfect example.

Craig: There’s no way to predict. If they’re going to misuse it, they’re going to misuse it.

Max: There’s a famous tweet. I’m sorry to debase myself by citing tweets, but there’s a famous and very apropos tweet that is just a scientist announcing, “I have created the famous torment nexus from the book, Don’t Create the Torment Nexus.” That’s what a lot of tech has felt like for the last 10 years or so.

[laugter]

Craig: That’s pretty good. That’s pretty great.

John: Inspired by the cautionary tale.

Max: Yes.

Craig: Yes.

John: Wrapping this up, some of the choices we have when we’re approaching science fiction premises is like, how do we enclose it in a specific box or place so that it can actually function in itself and we don’t try to pull in things that shouldn’t be there? I think it’s a version of the cellphone problem. Cellphones are fantastic, but they also ruined movies because now, all the situations where you would just- a person would have to go and physically talk to a person, they would just call them up on the phone or they text them. It’s like, “Ah,” they’re like, “scenes have been ruined by the introduction of cell phones.”

Same thing happens I think now with, “Why didn’t somebody Google that?” Or, “Why didn’t somebody look that up in ChatGPT?” You’re like, “You have all of the answers to all the questions at your fingertips, why are you doing this legwork that we don’t need you to do anymore?” A project that I’m considering writing, I think I would’ve actually set it back in 1992 because I actually need to pull it all the way back so that the characters have to do real work to solve the problems and actually connect and even find this information, because I was realizing that every year later that I set it was too easy for them to do the things they need to do.

As we talk about science-fiction canon, you look at something like Star Wars or Dune, by taking it out of earth and putting it someplace that is a clean room there, where like you don’t have the things you don’t want to have in there. It’s a chance to do, I don’t know, the fun parts of science fiction that don’t have to touch back to our messy reality, we know that it’s really there.

Craig: Dune in particular did something really brilliant by creating– It was Frank Herbert’s vision to say, “I’m going to set something that is in a galaxy far, far away,” but society experienced AI. It went so bad that they have banned computers entirely, so we’re not going to have any of that. In fact, we’re going to create an entire new subspecies of humans that are human computers now, who by drinking the juice of the Sapho, the lips acquire stains, the stains acquire– Nerd.
That’s an amazing and smart way to say, “‘m going to do science fiction by my own rules, so I’m not bound by that. Just be really smart. Star Wars has weirdly not a lot of computing going on. [laughs]

John: I think not. It’s weird because we have C-3PO, we have intelligent droids who have personalities and have inner emotional lives, and yet, they don’t seem to have most of the things we would assume that would have to come with that.
Craig: Right. We now have vehicles that will remind us to put a seatbelt on. They just get in this junky land speeder that is like a Dodge Dart from 1962, unsafe at any speed, but they’ve solved the singularity.

[laughter]

Craig: What’s happening?

John: Again, I think both in the case of Dune and Star Wars is like, they are science-fiction stories, but they’re also specifically another genre as well. Star Wars is a Western. The original Star Wars is a Western. Dune is a religious allegory. It’s a Messiah story, and so they get their science fiction that they want, but they’re actually telling a very different, specific story. That’s probably the answer to all of our dilemmas is like, if we’re just writing a science-fiction story, but if you’re writing something that’s something else that uses science fiction tropes and elements and the powers of science fiction, great.

Max: I was going to say, I think one reason Andor succeeded really well is that Tony Gilroy looked at Star Wars and he was like, “Oh, this is George Lucas making like a World War II fighter plane movie, because that’s what he loved and he wanted to make that. Instead of me trying to like make a copy of what was already a copy of a fighter plane movie, I’m going to take resistance, like French resistance movies, like World War II resistance movies, and I’m going to make the Star Wars version of that,” or whatever.

All of a sudden, it was like this new twist on the universe that we really had never seen before, but was also grounded in the same kind of things that Star Wars is grounded in, which was our knowledge of World War II fighter movies, basically.
John: One last question for the panel here. For the last 15 years on screen in filming and in television, we’ve had iPhone shaped phones. Basically, you can’t tell– Whatever they’re holding to their ear, you cannot tell what year it is because it’s just like, it’s just the shape of what a phone is supposed to be. How long does that last? How soon will that become a dated thing where you’re like, “Oh, that clearly took place sometime between certain decades”? How much longer do you think we have, Craig?

Craig: I’m going to say five years.

Max: I was going to say 15. I think it’s going to take a little longer than that.

Craig: That’s optimistic, and I like that.

Max: I will say, I do think, I would encourage writers, one of my favorite things about It Follows, the horror movie from [unintelligible 00:39:24] –

John: Oh, I love it.

Max: -is they have these amazing little clamshell phones. Totally out of nowhere. They don’t talk about it. They don’t explain it, but it’s just a cool little form factor, and it doesn’t really take away from the movie. I think if you want to write a cool movie, maybe invent a new kind of a phone and stick it in there. We’ll see what happens.

John: In my movie, The Nines, Ryan Reynolds’ character has a Treo. It’s such a specific like, “Oh, that is 2016. This is exactly one year that could have happened and–“

Max: Sometimes that works out really well. I was watching this Olivier Assayas movie Boarding Gate with Asia Argento, and at the very end, she has a snakeskin Motorola Razr. I think about it constantly because it’s such a– it just could not have been made any earlier than 2009. It is on 2009. It looks so cool. It probably would just take 10 years of total datedness, and now I’m like, oh, that rules.

John: Yes, that’s pretty great. All right, let’s get to some listener questions. Drew, help us out.

Drew: Dan in LA writes, “I’ve written dozens of scripts over the last 10 years, and I have four projects that I’m particularly proud of. One script was in the second round at the Sundance Episodic Lab, so now I know someone besides my mom thinks I’m a fairly decent writer. As part of my strategy to get read, I’m putting together a landing page on my personal website with short pitches and links to my work. What’s your general take on writers creating personal websites to promote their work? Do I list all four projects, or do I only push one or two scripts and keep the other stowed away until an agent or manager asks me what else I’ve got?”

John: All right, so on my website, I have most of the scripts that I’ve done, but they’re like finished produced things. They weren’t for like show pieces of stuff I’ve done. Max, do you have any of your unproduced stuff up on your site?

Max: No, I don’t.

John: Only the finished stuff.

Max: Yes, I got to go say, I hadn’t ever really thought about it until this question. [chuckles] It just didn’t seem like something to do

John: Yes, I’m generally a fan of putting your work out there and letting people to see it, because obviously, people aren’t going to try to steal your work. You just want them to be exposed to it. If you want to do it, great. Maybe if we could have some listeners write in with what has been their experience. Has anyone actually signed a rep, a manager, or an agent where they found you because they found your stuff on your website? We know people who’ve been signed because they were really funny on Twitter and people reached out to them for samples and stuff. Craig, what’s your instinct?

Craig: Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with putting some stuff on the internet. I think, Dan, you might be overthinking things a little bit because I’m sensing a little bit of control issues and anxiety as if I put the exact right number on, it will be good, and if I put the wrong number on, it will be bad. It’ll be fine. Doesn’t matter. Do you list all four projects? If you want. Push one or two scripts? If you want. Do you want to keep the others stowed away? It’s okay.

Here’s the thing. Maybe start with a smaller amount, and then if it’s not working, throw another one on there. Rotate them through, but it’s really just to advertise you as a writer or to get you into a room to start you talking to people and find out maybe what they might want you to write for them. If you’re super lucky, then yes, they’ll pick up one of those scripts and say, I want to make this, but I wouldn’t tense up too much about it. Go for it.

John: Yes, I say go for it, too. One option to consider is maybe put the first 10 pages of a script on, and that 11th page says, if you want to read the rest of this, email me here, and that way, at least you have some contact with the person who might be reading it, because if it’s just some random person on the internet, you might never really know that somebody actually read it, and so it associates you as a person with this work that you’re doing.

Craig: It’s a good idea.

John: Next question, Drew.

Drew: “I’m Thomas, a 1st AD based in Germany, working all over. Every now and then, you guys talk about playing this or that game, either on a console or a board, and I’m constantly asking myself how you manage to find the time for that. When I was younger, I’m 43 now, I love playing video games, and I still do, but with my job, a wife, and social life, it’s hard for me to find time for myself to enjoy these things, especially since nowadays, most of the games are real time suckers. How do you, as writers, showrunners, and directors, family men, and podcasters even find the time to turn on a console or put down a board, and at the same time, keep track of the latest shows and movies? Do you have lab-created twins that no one knows about?

Craig: I love this question. Man with job notorious for long hours asks other men how they have time. You’re a 1st AD, Thomas. Of course, you don’t have time. [laughs] The rest of us don’t work as hard as you do. I’ve said it a million times, I don’t know why anybody does that job. God bless you for doing it. It’s an amazing job, but your day begins an hour before everyone’s, ends an hour after everyone’s, and everyone else’s job is 12 hours minimum. Yes, you’re probably sleeping or crying in the time you have off. [laughs] Although, I will say, side note, I don’t watch that many shows and movies. That’s my big secret.

John: That’s a secret people should need to know. It’s like Craig, I watch a lot more than Craig does. If we have the same number of free hours, which is not probably true, because I probably have a little bit more free time than Craig does, you’re playing video games, whereas I’m watching whole seasons of things.

Craig: Video games, solving puzzles, but then there’s a lot of time- honestly, there’s a lot of time where I feel like I’m not doing anything at all. One thing that people need to wrap their minds around, and it’s not fair, it’s just the way the world works, and this might be a particularly different thing for a German 1st AD to deal with, because I’m really, I’m going to go right against your Teutonic AD-ness right now, one hour of time is not the same for everybody.

There are people who do 12 hours of stuff in an hour, and there are people who do one hour of stuff in an hour. The people who do 12 hours of stuff in an hour don’t need the other 11 hours for anything. In fact, they may just sit there and do nothing. Some people are sprinters, some people are marathoners, but in the long run, maybe everybody sort of gets to the end in the same time. It’s just that if you’re a sprinter, the off time you can spend maybe with more leisurely activities.

John: Max, before we started talking here, you said that you’re going to have a kid home from school for the summer, a young child home from school for the summer, so this resonates for you, I guess.

Max: Yes, I have to admit, I gave my brother my PS5 when my son was born. I was just like, no time for this, and I really haven’t, I haven’t gamed at all over the last four and a half years. I miss it a lot, but I also, like I was saying earlier in the podcast, I pick the job I have to give myself time in my job to read and to watch movies that I want to watch, and I try to be– It’s like, it’s all well and good for me because I’m very conscious about my time.

Of course, if I took the two hours I spend scrolling through bullshit websites every day, then I could, in fact, be gaming. I’m certainly not working as hard as Thomas is, but at some point I was like, I know what thing is going to suck the most time because when it comes to games, I’m worse even than Twitter or whatever else. I just will lose hours.

Craig: I’m glad you said– You know what, there’s something I want you to think about, though. I think there is something in our puritanical nature, our Calvinistic nature here in the United States, whether we’re Calvinists or not, where we’re much more accepting of wasting time on things that are vaguely work-ish than we are with things that are purely recreational and argue that pure recreation is the thing that isn’t a waste of time and that the vague work-ishness is the true tragedy. The scrolling pointlessly is a tragedy, whereas playing something that delights you is a win. I’m giving you this gift. Really, I want you to go back to your brother’s house, rip that goddamn console right out of the wall and say, “This is mine.”

John: The new GTA is coming.

Craig: Seriously, you need it back before GTA 6.

Max: Yes, that’s definitely incredible.

Craig: Dude, you need to get your mind right, man.

Max: I know, I know.

Craig: [crosstalk] coming, it’s coming.

Max: Wow. This is a real come-to-Jesus moment for me.

Craig: Kiss your family goodbye and go.

John: Another thing I’ll say, just taking from– Craig and I, we have a weekly D&D game and we do block off that time for that and Craig has other set blocks in his schedule which is about this thing that he does. Thomas, you may find that just putting it on the calendar makes it clear that this is a priority for you. I think you have to prioritize having fun.
Craig: You have to prioritize having fun. That is something that a German 1st AD receives like a scalding hot liquid, right? I assume that he’s screaming right now.

Drew: Let’s do one last question here from Tim. Recently, I discovered that Final Draft 13 requires a phone home every 60-some days even though there’s support docs so that you only need to be online for the first activation. I regularly write on an offline machine or away from internet and it’s frustrating that this wasn’t noted before buying Final Draft 13. Do you have a recommendation for any screenwriting software that doesn’t require phoning home after activation?

Craig: Yes, John, do you have recommendations for that? [laughs]

John: Let’s talk about phoning home because another friend of mine got bit by the Final Draft thing and was really frustrated by this. Here’s what we do in Highland Pro and this is just sort of things you buy through the Mac App Store. This is sort of how it should work, is that when you start a subscription, it creates an app receipt that’s stored on your device itself. We say, oh, this thing is valid through this time. Every time you launch or resume an app, we attempt in the background to check, did anything change here? Did they add on extra months? Did anything change?

If you’re offline, we go by the last receipt that’s cached and stored, but we only lock out a user and put them in read-only mode if you’ve gone online and we checked and the receipt now says that it’s expired. That’s basically best practices. That’s what we try to do in Highland Pro and that’s really what most software you’re going to encounter these days is doing. I suspect Adobe’s a similar situation with their stuff too. That’s just how you should do it. It’s silly that Final Draft is doing this, but it’s not surprising necessarily. You understand why they’re doing it. You understand that they want to make sure that is this actually a valid app, but they’re doing it wrong.

Craig: Maybe they could just be cooler about it. What you’re suggesting is the best practice is, hey, if you pop online, which most of us are going to have to do every now and again, yes, we’ll check in. If you decide to Faraday cage your computer, then we’ll just let you have it. Just go ahead.

John: I think it comes down to it and it’s sort of where you’re putting your trust. Basically, if a person really wanted to never pay to start out a monthly Highland subscription and just never pay for it again, and they went online, offline, and they just never ever went back online, that’s a choice they’re making. I’m not going to–

Craig: Exactly. That’s the paranoid nonsense that Final Draft is famous for. We’ve got to make sure no one out there is robbing us of our overpriced nonsense for bad software. Otherwise, it’s a terrific product.

John: Listen, eventually you’re going to want to come back online because stuff does change. The systems get updated and things break.

Craig: No, no, no. If I come back online, I’m going to owe somebody.

[laughter]

John: All right, let’s do our one cool things. Max, do you want to start us off? What do you want to share with our listeners?

Max: Yes, I want to talk about a movie that I saw recently that I really loved called the Red Rooms. It’s a Canadian movie that it’s not science fiction, but it is very sort of technologically interested. I think it’s a great movie to watch if, among other things, you’re interested in how to depict people using computers in dramatic ways. This is maybe less for screenwriters than it is for directors and cinematographers because it’s very good at showing its main character using the computer to win at online poker and go on the dark web and try and buy a snuff film and all these things.

The movie itself is an awful horror movie, like awful in the sense of you will feel so bad after you watch this. If you are the kind of person who likes to be made to feel bad by movies, this is one of the best examples. It reminds me of the Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa a little bit, who’s directed a bunch of unbelievably creepy horror movies. It’s a little bit like Michael Haneke and Caché and other movies like that.

The plot, which I just want to establish, I’m sure there’s some people who are like, let me just skip 30 seconds forward because this is not for me. If that does sound like it’s for you, it’s about a French-Canadian model who becomes obsessed with a serial killer on trial and develops a friendship with a sort of true crime podcaster. It’s a character study. The main actress, this woman, Juliette Gariépy, is so good, I cannot tell you.

I was really impressed by it. I didn’t know anything about it. It was a good movie about the internet, a good movie about true crime, a good old-fashioned serial killer movie. It’s worth watching both for the craft that went into making it, if you’re interested in thinking about tech and how it enters your movies, but also just as a good movie.

John: That’s great. I want to plug here that your newsletter is full of good recommendations for things, the things you’re reading and the things you’re watching, including Max will put in just YouTube videos for songs you’re listening to, and every third or fourth one is added to the playlist. Some good stuff there.

Max: Yes, I’m just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. I think [crosstalk] is pretty good.

John: It’s what we do. This is writing. My one cool thing is an article in Scientific American. It’s an article titled, This Strange Mutation Explains the Mystifying Color of Orange Cats. Basically, we’ve had orange cats for a good long time. Orange cats are weirdos. They’re almost always males and they didn’t know why. They would assume that since orange cats are males, there must be something on the Y chromosome. Makes sense. It turns out it’s actually something on the X chromosome that is suppressing something on the Y chromosome. It was a bunch of genetics that was being done to figure this out.

It took a long time to get there, but they actually now understand more why orange cats are orange. I love orange cats. Orange cats are– I’ll also put a link in the show notes to a Reddit called OneOrangeBraincell, which is about just dumb orange cats. I love a dumb orange cat. I maybe remember Raleigh, who was the sort of our office cat. He actually lived two doors down, but was always wandering in our backyard at lunchtime and would join us for lunch every day in the office. Raleigh has probably passed on. Raleigh would be 25 at this point, but Raleigh was a good orange cat. A cool story. I’ll put a link in the show notes to this for Scientific American.

Craig: There goes the last mystery left in the world.

John: Yes, now that we know what the orange cats are.

Craig: So depressing. My one cool thing is my kid. You know I don’t do this. I don’t do this. My younger daughter, Jessica, is a budding singer-songwriter. As she often does, she writes songs, plays them, records them, puts them on TikTok. A couple of weeks ago, she threw it on there and it went viral. I think it’s really good. I think it’s a good song. I think she’s great. I’m sharing it with you because, A, my kid, proud. B, feels thematic. For our topic today, the song is called The Simulation is Failing.

John: She really is your daughter.

Craig: She is my kid. I never even told her that this was all simulation. She figured it out on her own.

John: Kids these days, they’re so wise.

Craig: They’re so wise. Yes. Synthetic children these days.

[laughter]

Craig: Wise.

John: I think back to the Steven Spielberg movie A.I. and like, wow, it got everything right. This is exactly what the future was going to be like.

[laughter]

Craig: Exactly. Nailed it.

John: Nailed it. That’s our show for this week. It’s produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Sam Shapson. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Outro this week is by Spencer Lackey. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign up for our weekly newsletter called Inneresting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes. We have a great new one up from Greta Gerwig, so check that out.

You will find T-shirts and hoodies and drink wear at Cotton Bureau with Scriptnotes logos all over them. You’ll find the show notes with the links for all the things we talked about each week in the email you get as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You make it possible to keep doing the show week after week. You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record with Max on a new genre that I think you’re trying to pin down. We’ll help you out on that. You should also read Max on his own Substack called Read Max. Max, thanks so much for joining us.

Max: Thank you guys so much for having me. It was a blast as always.

Craig: Thank you, Max.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right. Max, I’m looking at your Letterboxd and the lists that you have formed in your Letterboxd because halogencore that we talked about in the setup, that actually originated in your Letterboxd. You also have lists of movies where British people have a bad time in Spain.

Max: Which is really a thing. Those are good movies too. That’s actually great. You can mine that territory for something fantastic. Sexy Beast is a great movie and there it is.

Craig: Oh, the best.

Max: That’s the story. They have a bad time in Spain. [laughs]

Craig: They have a bad time in Spain. Yes, yes.

John: You also have the ‘90s dad thriller core canon, so when dads had a rough time and dads had to– Action movies about dads.

Max: Yes. It’s worth checking the Substack newsletter now because I’ve got some diagrams. I had some strong thoughts about this set of movies. There’s some extra reading for people who are interested.

John: Recently on your Substack, you were promoting a new genre or sub genre. Tell us about it.

Max: Yes. This one’s a little bit more art house pretentious than halogencore, but I do think it’s a little related. I watched this movie called Code 46, which if I had known about it, I had forgotten about it. It’s a Michael Winterbottom movie from 2003 with Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. It’s set in like a future Shanghai. I have to be honest, it is not a perfect movie. There’s a lot of things that are not very good about it.

Craig: What is?

Max: It has a vibe. I think especially like one of those movies that maybe you can only really get the vibe 20 years later. I was like, I love this vibe. Even though this movie is not great, it’s this very beautifully photographed Shanghai, sort of set on border crossings. Tim Robbins is an insurance investigator looking into someone forging passports who happens to be Samantha Morton, who he falls in love with. In my head, I was thinking there’s these other movies that are sort of resemble it. This movie Boarding Gate, which I talked about earlier in the episode by Olivier Assayas, another, again, not a perfect movie, but it just hits a particular sort of vibe.

Another Olivier Assayas movie called Demonlover, an Abel Ferrara movie called New Rose Hotel with Christopher Walken. Again, these are all movies that did not get very well reviewed on release necessarily, certainly were not huge hits, but looked at from 20-plus years later, have an interesting thing to say about globalization and the future.

I made a list of these. I include the ones I just mentioned. Michael Mann’s Blackhat is probably the biggest one that really fits in this thing. Also a huge bomb and also a movie that I think has recovered in some people’s esteem since then, a movie I love called Ghostbox Cowboy, which nobody’s ever heard of, which is like, I always describe it as like, if Tim and Eric made a William Gibson movie, it’s like about this crazy American who goes to Shenzhen to try and make a box that can talk to the spirit world. It’s all these meetings with the VCs that are sort of docufiction. Then it takes a really weird turn.

Craig: Oh, you mean it wasn’t already really weird?

Max: You will think the first half was normal once you hit the second half. I think Tenet sort of is in this. You remember it’s set in these freeport zones. The Jim Jarmusch movie Limits of Control, the Clive Owen thriller, The International. This is Tom Tykwer’s. I think it was his follow-up to Run Lola Run. Again, movies that didn’t, The Counselor, Ridley Scott, Cormac McCarthy.

I like doing this partly because if you take any one of these movies individually, you’re probably looking at a bomb. You are at best looking at like an arthouse thriller that 500 people saw. The nice thing about doing a list like this or a sort of micro genre is you put them all next to each other and you think, oh, there is something that connects these.

John: It’s a connection. You have globalization. Do they need to be Americans who are overseas or just like people are not in their native culture?

Max: I think it’s usually Westerners. Yes. Let’s say the thematic concerns, globalization, supply chains, logistics, a lot of them end up in China, in Jakarta, in Japan. These are movies that are deep down sort of about anxieties about the future, about a future in which Asia is rising.

John: How about Syriana? Would that fall into your–

Max: I think it’s very similar. I’m not sure it’s quite there, but it has a similar kind of– Syriana is in some ways smarter than these movies, I think, because it’s less of a thriller in a certain way.

Craig: What about like– There were two movies. What was one called? Black Rain, maybe.

Max: Oh yes, the Michael Douglas. Yes.

John: There’s definitely like proto, that’s like part of what leads into this or Rising Sun is another one that’s real Japan anxiety movies.

Craig: Japan anxiety, yes.

Max: I think around the turn of the century, it turns in. Partly it turns into China anxiety and partly the focus is less on businesses. Even Die Hard has this, right? Like the lurking in the back of the tower.

Craig: Nakatomi.

Max: Yes, it’s the Nakatomi tower. It’s less about Japanese businesses buying American businesses. It’s more about manufacturing and logistics and all this stuff that we now know from the vantage point of 2025 had this huge impact on American politics that we didn’t. I’m not sure that many of you were seeing at the time, but that there are these interesting thrillers set in freeports in loading docks, border crossings.

My theory about this is basically that we had all these great thrillers in the ‘90s that a few years ago, this guy, David Rudnick, coined the word Nokiawave. We’re talking about the same GoldenEye, Peacemaker, like all these Eastern European set, techno thrillers, usually about loose nuclear weapons on the black market. 9/11 comes and the geopolitical anxieties that were undergirding those movies gets transitioned into the Borne Identity style, like war on terror, dramatic, morality plays.

What happens is this other new, huge geopolitical development, the rise of China, the rise of Asia, the globalization of manufacturing. It’s all these European, these pretentious European directors and Michael Mann, who deep down inside is a pretentious European director, are like, okay, this is something interesting here and we can make this happen. They all have this, they’re sort of diffuse.

You very often can’t really follow the plot, which is, I think, one reason why many people didn’t like these movies when they came out. Possibly, they have these roving cameras, always shot on location, but in some ways the thriller genre plots is really what keeps them solid at all. This is what prevents them from just being like total exercises in art house masturbation or whatever, that they do have death in them and illicit sex and all these other things.

I’ve been calling them SEZ Noir. SEZ stands for Special Economic Zone, which is like Shenzhen in China is a special economic zone that operates under slightly different rules than the rest of China. It has turned it into a manufacturing hub. Noir because they all are noir. They’re all about these haunted people on the periphery who they’re trying to move their way up the value chain. Then their scheme takes a wrong turn somewhere and they find themselves on the run.

The thing that I think is most interesting about all of these is the one thing that they all have in common, despite the differences, and this is a vague spoiler, is they all end with the protagonist losing their identity entirely, losing their papers, losing their identity, finding themselves adrift somewhere, maybe pursued by gangsters, maybe pursued by the government, maybe pursued by a corporation, though those three groups tend to be blurred together like this.

They’re not movies with happy endings, but they’re also not movies with endings where the characters are straight up killed. They just enter the ether, which is a sort of interesting statement that I haven’t quite internalized or processed about, about globalization like that. Anyway, I do recommend all these movies, especially if you can watch them with a with an open mind, let’s say. [chuckles]

Craig: Now, you did, you listed all these movies that you recommend by saying, and this one was a bomb. This one was not well-received. This was a bomb. This was a bomb. This was a bomb.

Max: Yes.

John: Let’s just try to poke at maybe why they didn’t work, is because filmmakers are tackling these questions that they find really interesting, but maybe it’s just actually not really relevant to people’s lived experience. Maybe people aren’t able to see themselves in that place or position because most Americans don’t have a passport. They’re not used to being out of their depth and in this place. While they might have fears of Asian companies taking over their work, Die Hard is a much better expression of that feeling than some of these movies would be.

Max: Yes. They’re definitely not about the most direct effects of globalization on Americans, which is like de-industrialization across the country, basically. They’re really specifically about people who are often quite unlikable who are trying to profit off of that process in ways that I think the average American until maybe even recently didn’t quite realize the extent to which this international logistics and shipping organizations were doing. They’re dark, too. That’s the other part of it is like, there’s harder to find an appetite for that thing in general. If you’re making a movie that is dark and complicated and political, you’re probably not making a blockbuster.

I think that this is also just a function of like– I’m trying to think of what the counter history or the counterfactual is. If 9/11 hadn’t happened, a lot would be different. Let’s stipulate that. I also think that this kind of subject would maybe have, I don’t want to be too mean about my favorite European directors, but the more competent at entertaining hands of Hollywood might’ve been able to take these themes and ideas and transform them.

Michael Mann has a director’s cut of Blackhat. I’ve seen it. I can’t pretend that it’s that different from the cut that was released and I’m not really sure it would have made a huge difference to its box office receipts. I think you could also say like Tenet is an example of a movie that took a lot of these themes and spun gold out of them. Though because it’s less of a period piece, it holds a little bit less of that vibe attraction for me, which is part of what I have been really enjoying about these.

John: I also feel like Tenet feels like a science fiction film that is able to do science fiction and these things. As we said in the main show, science fiction plus another genre. It just feels like it was taking that genre and putting it onto science fiction.

Max: Yes. Tenet, I will also say, is a great example of a movie that you have to pay really close attention for it to make sense. Yet at the same time, it did really well and people love it and you can watch it and enjoy it without it needing to make note by note perfect sense, which is a pretty stunning thing to be able to do.

John: Max, thank you for this, a new genre, addition to the canon. We’ll look for more movies in it.

Max: Yes. Okay.

John: Thanks for coming back on the show.

Max: Of course. It was great to talk to you guys.

Craig: Thanks, Max.

John: All right. Thanks.

Links:

• Max Read’s newsletter Read Max and his Letterboxd
• Dogma 25 Explodes at Cannes by Annika Pham, Marta Balaga for Variety
• Maze by Christopher Manson
• Blue Prince
• Graham’s source for Egypt’s GDP and John’s sources
• Neal Stephenson
• William Gibson
• Red Rooms
• This Strange Mutation Explains the Mystifying Color of Orange Cats by Gayoung Lee for Scientific American
• The Simulation is Failing. by Jessica Mazin
• r/OneOrangeBraincell
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Craig Mazin on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Spencer Lackey (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Sam Shapson. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

The original post for this episode can be found here.

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

Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.

John: You’re listening to episode 689 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, could new entertainment formats like verticals disrupt existing film and television? What impact will AI-generated video have on all of it? We’ll look back to history for clues about the future, then we’ll answer listener questions on momentum, scene geography, and television setting.

In our bonus segment for premium members, what moment in history, Craig, do you wish you could most see in person?

Craig: Oh my.

John: Oh my. Just as a spectator, you can’t change anything.

Craig: You just have to watch.

John: You’re just there.

Craig: Okay.

John: First, let’s start on some good news. Two weekends ago, Memorial Day weekend, the biggest Memorial Day weekend in history at the box office.

Craig: Yes. Huge.

John: Stitch and Impossible.

Craig: That’s right, Stitch possible. Lilo and Imp. I don’t know, what do we call this?

John: [unintelligible 00:00:55] [crosstalk]

Craig: Just when you think you’ve figured out how this all works. Disney’s just gone back to remake the animated things one too many times. Snow White had trouble.

John: Did I know that Lilo & Stitch was such a giant title? Evidently they did.

Craig: Yes. And kaboom. I’m sure whatever division hit the brakes on the animation to live action thing, they are now like, “No, no, no, start it back up.”

John: Stitch is a perfect character for marketing.

Craig: Yes.

John: They did a phenomenal job with it. You can throw him in and just have him disrupt and cause mayhem and other things.

Craig: He can run around the Super Bowl.

John: Delightful.

Craig: Also, it’s a good character to animate because it’s not real, real, so you can keep it cute.

John: Yes. We’re going to talk about Tom and Jerry later on, but it reminds me of a classic, just mayhem.

Craig: I love Tom and Jerry.

John: Loved it so much.

Craig: Oh my God, love it.

John: It’s a little bit racist at times.

Craig: All things from that era were.

John: Yes.

Craig: All of them. What thing from that time, Tom and Jerry would have been the ‘60s?

John: Yes, late ‘50s.

Craig: Late ‘50s, ‘60s.

John: Created in 1940.

Craig: Oh, yes. Cartoons in particular. Good lord.

John: Good lord, but Lilo & Stitch, not racist. I’ve not seen this new movie. I assume it’s not racist.

Craig: It would have been a weird move for me if it suddenly– [crosstalk]

John: Added new racist thing to the live action, which is–

Craig: [crosstalk] Trump’s president let’s go.
[laughter]

John: Anyway, let’s talk about why it’s good that movies are working at the box office.

Craig: This is the thing that we were all worried about, right? And COVID, tip my hat to COVID. In addition to killing millions and millions of people, it also nearly killed the theatrical movie business. You and I have been doing this for a long time. People have been talking about that business dying for a long time. We’ve always been pretty consistent about like, “No, nothing’s going to kill it.” Now I’m pretty sure nothing can kill it.

John: Yes. We’re going to talk about things that are going to disrupt stuff, but also I feel like the experience of going to a theater and watching something with a bunch of people is compelling. I got to see my Mission Impossible. I got to see a really cool submarine sequence that looked great on a big screen, the way it’s meant to be seen.

Craig: All that’s in Lilo & Stitch.

John: Yes. Surprisingly, a big submarine sequence in Lilo & Stitch. I didn’t know the nukes were going to be such a factor, but they were there.

Craig: Not what I would have predicted-

John: No.

Craig: -but I’m getting why people are digging. I haven’t talked to Chris McQuarrie since the movie came out. I don’t even know where he is. In London, I think.

John: I assume so. Some secret location.

Craig: I wonder what he’s doing. I hope he’s relaxing.

John: I think so. The article I read about it said that he’s working on Top Gun 3.

Craig: Then he is not relaxing.

John: He’s not relaxing.

Craig: There’s no end.

John: Anyway, up 221% from last Memorial Day, which was a nadir, but up 22% year to date so far. It’s just great.

Craig: It’s a big number.

John: It’s a big number. More money also gets people spending more money. The cycle is so important.

Craig: Absolutely. Minecraft and Sinners, and you get Momentum, and then Lilo & Stitch, and Mission Impossible. Now you’re in a groove.

John: It’s great when you have movies appealing to different audiences opening the same weekend.

Craig: Yes.

John: The overlap between Mission Impossible and Stitch-

Craig: Perfect.

John: -was not great.

Craig: No, no, it’s perfect.

John: It’s what you want, exactly.

Craig: Yes.

John: The Venn diagram was not great, which is great.

Craig: Great.

John: I got to see Sinners, it’s fourth week.

Craig: A lot of people were like, “We’re going to just watch both of them this weekend.”

John: Yes.

Craig: Both are family friendly. Mission Impossible doesn’t strike me as a not family friendly movie.

John: I remember when I was starting in this business, it was always about these two movies duking it out and see who would do it over the course of the weekend. I do feel like, I think that has changed. It’s like you’re rooting for all movies.

Craig: Yes, no one cares about that anymore.

John: Yes.

Craig: No one cares who first, who’s second. Anybody that survives putting a movie out is like, “We’re alive.”

John: Absolutely.

Craig: It’s like crossing the line in a marathon. Did you beat those guys that you knew were going to win? No.

John: No.

Craig: You ran a marathon.

John: Yes.

Craig: Yes, everybody’s like, “Good for you.”

John: All the studios are happy that the weekend was so big.

Craig: No, it’s great for the business. I did. I ran into Pam Abdy, not with my car or anything.

John: No, no, that would be bad.

Craig: On the street.

John: Pam Abdy is running Warners.

Craig: She runs Warner Brothers Films with Mike DeLuca. I told her, and this is absolutely true, how delighted I was that the business had just– every news story was like, when are Mike and Pam getting fired?

John: Two big hits.

Craig: They were right on the edge of– according to the news. Then, oh my God. They just can’t.

John: There will be bombs, and a lot of things won’t work, but–

Craig: We left out a big one, Final Destination.

John: Yes, absolutely.

Craig: Incredible.

John: Absolutely. For a series that has basically been a programmer for a while, just to have a big title.

Craig: Had never made that kind of money, by the way. That’s amazing. It reminds me of how they resurrected Fast and Furious, because it was drifting.

John: It was tapering.

Craig: Even when it started, it wasn’t huge.

John: Yes.

Craig: Do you know? Then suddenly it was like, oh my God, all these people that had finally watched all those movies and were super into it, boom, and Final Destination, apparently. I was just like– I’ve known her forever, and I root for her. It’s such a weird thing, our business, the way it just wants to go after people. I hate that.

John: Yes. A bit of follow-up on our side. Highland Pro, we released a new version. 3.1 is out with Overview, which you saw.

Craig: Oh, yes.

John: It gives a bird’s-eye view of your script. We were also able to turn on something now, which we couldn’t do. Apple wasn’t letting us do it, but now we can, which is student licenses.

Craig: Oh.

John: People, even from Highland 2, if you had a student license for Highland 2, that same email address should work. A reminder for student licenses, if you have a .edu address, it is free for a year to use Highland, and so there’s a little-

Craig: Amazing.

John: -link to follow. We’ll put a link in the show notes too for that.

Craig: That’s how you get them addicted, John. You give the kids crack, and then you know you have them.

John: Really, the goal is to make sure people are never starting on Final Draft, because you get that weird muscle memory of Final Draft. It’s like, “Oh, I have to do things this way. I have to learn this esoteric thing.” No, you don’t.

Craig: Bless you.

John: I believe you should write the same way you can write an email.

Craig: Do you know, back in the day when we would go after Final Draft and we had those guys on, it was like you were arguing with, I don’t know, a small mob outfit. Now, what’s even the point? It’s just this faceless corporation.

John: It’s been bought and sold three times since then, yes.

Craig: Owned by another company who’s owned by a company, and they mostly process payroll and also Final Draft. Who do you even yell at? No one.

John: I would say that screenwriting software is not that company’s profit center.

Craig: No. No.

John: No. All right, let us get to our main topic here. Before we talk about new video stuff, I want to talk about old video stuff, because as I was thinking through this, people had brought up Tom and Jerry. I was looking back at the history of Tom and Jerry. It’s a Hanna-Barbera creation from the 1940s. Back then, it cost between $35,000 and $50,000 per seven-minute cartoon, which was a lot. Those are gorgeous looking cartoons.

Craig: Yes, they are.

John: They wanted to expand and do more things. Television was looking for animation, and you just couldn’t spend that much money. Instead, they tried some new techniques and became what we think of as TV animation. Things like using static backgrounds, minimal movement, cycling.

Craig: Cycling.

John: The walk cycles, people always walk the same way. That’s how you get Space Ghost, that’s how you get The Flintstones.

Craig: Scooby-Doo.

John: Scooby-Doo.

Craig: Classic walk cycler.

John: Absolutely. For that $30,000, they could now do a full 30-minute TV show rather than 7 minutes.

Craig: Some of them were better than others-

John: Yes.

Craig: -but Tom and Jerry was inspired. Also, for those of you who haven’t watched Tom and Jerry, the premise couldn’t be simpler. Tom is a cat. Jerry is a mouse. They live in the same house. Tom is always trying to catch Jerry. Jerry is way smarter than Tom. If you’ve ever seen Itchy and Scratchy.

John: Itchy and Scratchy.

Craig: That’s what they’re making fun of or goofing on Tom and Jerry. The joke of Itchy and Scratchy is, look at the extreme violence. Tom and Jerry was so violent. Tom died all the time. He literally died once where his ghost went into heaven. He was electrocuted, his skin was peeled off, his head was constantly smashed.

John: Crucially, they didn’t speak. They are silent characters.

Craig: Yes. Occasionally there was some speaking, but it was very rare. It was always a weird episode. There was no talking. It was all classic slapstick and great music.

John: Going from that to this new format, which was animating every other frame, static backgrounds, and a much bigger reliance on voice acting and voice and sound to do it. That’s where you get Fred Flintstone. They’re talking. They’re very much like sitcoms but this way, or space adventures, but minimal.

Craig: You did not watch Scooby-Doo for the mind-blowing or The Herculoids.

John: Absolutely. If we hadn’t had that budget pressure, those things wouldn’t have existed.

Craig: Yes. Would I bemoan the loss of the walk cycle? Probably not, because it was so stupid.

[laughter]

Then there’s walking, and then one of them is like “bah bah bah.” We would have also not had these big cultural things, because Scooby-Doo, if it had been, I don’t know, one special episode, nobody would have cared.

John: No.

Craig: It is so entrenched in our culture.

John: Yes. Fast forward to the ‘90s, 2000s, and we get into flash animation and web cartoons. We don’t remember very many of those at all, because things didn’t break out as being big hits, but there were ways to do animation on the web that were cheap, really cheap, and just possible. People who could never do any animation before could do some animated things. There was storytelling, there was joke telling. We don’t have a legacy very much of that stuff, except for South Park, which wouldn’t exist without flash animation. If it weren’t for the people who were doing that kind of stuff, you would never have The Spirit of Christmas, which was the first South Park.

Craig: That wasn’t made with flash.

John: I think it might have been. It was made with a similar technique.

Craig: It seemed like it was made with-

John: Paper cutouts.

Craig: -actual paper cutouts.

John: I feel like without flash animation, even the idea of even doing that stuff wouldn’t have been possible.

Craig: Flash animation was a plague. There was probably some good stuff, but flash itself was a nightmare.

John: It was a nightmare. For folks who don’t know what we’re talking about, flash was a plugin for your browser that would let you play some animation in it. It’s before we had– pre-YouTube, pre-anything. It was a way to generate those kinds of things. I did flash animation in college as a summer project.

Craig: As a project.

John: Yes.

Craig: You were constantly getting warnings to turn your flash off or upgrade your flash. It was always a problem. Everyone out there hated flash, and also you sort of had to have it. Then I remember the day it died. I was so happy.

John: It died in part because Apple just refused to support it.

Craig: Apple just said, we’re not doing it. [crosstalk] We’re not doing it because it’s not secure.

John: It’s not secure and it’s also a giant power hog.

Craig: Giant power hog. Let’s come up with better ways to do this. As it turns out, we did.

John: Other budget innovations that I think were important, YouTube videos that were React videos, Let’s Play, ASMR, all the stuff where it’s just like it’s a person talking to a camera, to a webcam. It doesn’t have big production values at all, yet you’re spending hours watching this stuff. Found footage. You and I were both around for The Blair Witch Project. That kicked off a whole– that’s a whole new model of how you make a film for very little, where the fact that you’re making it for so little is actually part of the point.

Craig: Yes. Prior to Blair Witch Project, there was the Robert Rodriguez, who could–

John: Oh yes. Oh, absolutely. El Mariachi.

Craig: El Mariachi. That was made for like $8,000.

John: It’s a crazy low thing. He was using innovative techniques to tell a classic story, but just with a hyper style that suited.

Craig: It was that era where– the ‘90s were amazing.

John: They were.

Craig: They really were amazing. I have to say, I didn’t realize it when I was in the middle of it, but they were pretty– some amazing stuff happened.

John: Something I was looking at this last week for our project was retro postmodernism. Because there was ‘90s postmodernism. There’s a very distinct aesthetic, I remember, and a way things looked and a feel to that that I haven’t seen captured quite again. I don’t see anything–

Craig: Can you give an example of what you mean?

John: A teapot that you’d buy at Target. A shade of purple that has some brown in it. Some sort of bright, but smoky oranges. There were colors that are very ’90s. Honestly, videotape boxes.

Craig: Oh, yes.

John: There’s that thing too. Postmodernism is a sense of just, we’re pulling from a bunch of different sources and throwing it together in a weird way. The best postmodern building to point to is of course the Disney building with the dwarves, which is sort of iconic.

Craig: That building, which is the main executive building on the Disney lot, is a horrible building.

John: Insane building, the least usable building.

Craig: Horrible. The person who is the head of Walt Disney Pictures Studios is not in a great office. Because I’ve been in it. It’s not great. Because that building doesn’t have good space inside of it.

John: No, it makes no sense.

Craig: Enormous wasted space.

John: Yes. It’s impressive to look at from a distance, but it’s not good.

Craig: Yes, it was a Robert Venturi, is that the guy who did it?

John: Venturi is who really I was thinking of. I think Venturi also did these teapots and other stuff I’m thinking.

Craig: Yes, and Venturi also designed where we would go have our meals at Princeton when I was an undergrad. It was a horrible building. Horrible. Horrible.

John: Yes, crime. Italian neorealism. After World War II, everything was torn apart. The film studios didn’t exist in their classic sense. Italian neorealism was a genre that was created out of necessity from what they had around them. Then as we’re talking about necessity, soap operas. Soap operas as a form existed to fill space and time on first radio, then on television. They have that specific cadence and structure for economic necessity.

Craig: To create as many gaps for ads with as many cliffhangers as possible. Soap operas are just cliffhanger machines. Every ad break is a cliffhanger. Every single one. They’re called soap operas because a lot of the ads were for soap. For detergent and so forth. Game shows, same thing.

John: 100%.

Craig: They were designed to promote ads.

John: Yes, and we both remember a time when Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, we’re going to put it on four times a week and it’s going to kill the business. Those were fewer scripted shows we had on the air during that time.

Craig: Yes, but also I remember how everyone was like, “Oh my God, this game show is taking over.” I’m like, “Game shows were always there,” We just took a break from them for a while. The game shows had been synonymous, as far as I’m concerned, with television since the beginning of television.

John: Yes, and related, reality TV. We had the Real World and then it spawned a bunch of different forms. A significant portion of our broadcast week is reality shows that didn’t exist in a previous form. We don’t begrudge them the way we did when they first came on.

Craig: I think in part because when they first came on, they were eating up some of the limited space on network television. Then 4 billion outlets occurred. Now, I don’t know how many reality shows there are, but they’re not taking space away. If you want space, you just make another space.

John: We also have relative tiers of– we have the giant premiere shows. We also have a bunch of HGTV shows that are very formulaic in terms of home improvement or flip this house kind of shows, which have these hosts and the same beats they’re following all the time.

Craig: Yes, and they work.

John: All this is preamble to say, nothing is new. It’s just there’s just new stuff that comes along that seems new and shocking for a moment and then it passes, which this last week, the conversation was verticals. Drew and Sam at lunch were talking– well, people were talking about verticals. I’m like, “I’m not quite sure I know what you mean.” Drew, talk us through what you mean by verticals.

Drew Marquardt: Verticals are fully produced narrative videos. They’re a vertical video format and they have a very specific style and a specific purpose. They’re smutty soap operas. They’re usually including a secret billionaire or there are supernatural elements for some reason, like werewolves. It’s all about the cliffhanger that makes you watch the next video. The people who run it have said explicitly, we’re not interested in character arcs.

They’re about a minute or two minutes each, but the full story is usually feature length. The business model is that the first five to eight videos are free, to get you hooked, and then each video afterwards costs tokens, which you can either pay real money for, or sometimes you can watch ads. To watch the next video, it’s 50 cents. It’s about $20 to $40 to finish a story. They are huge. They’re keeping everyone in town employed right now.

Craig: Wait, everyone?

Drew: To a person.

Craig: That’s what all of our friends are doing.

John: A lot of people at a certain level are [crosstalk]

Craig: Are working on verticals.

John: They’re working hard for it.

Craig: Who makes the verticals?

John: There’s three big companies that do it that we’ll put links in. ReelShort, DramaBox, and GoodShort.

Craig: Okay.

John: The second two are largely Asian. ReelShort is mostly US, and a lot of them are shot here in Los Angeles. Sam, help us out because people who are actually working on these shows.

Sam Shapson: I first heard about these about a year, maybe a year and a half ago, as a way of people making money during this time when everything is slowing down. The general vibe that I’ve gotten is that not just in terms of the creative, but in terms of their approach to production, it very much is similar to the soap opera model in that they are pumping through an enormous amount of material per day. 10 pages is on the light side, according to what I’ve heard. 19 pages is common as well.

John: Whoa.

Craig: Whoa.

Sam: I don’t think it goes quite as high as what soap operas were doing, but I also think that they’re not designing them with the same kind of established infrastructure, maybe of a repeatable studio environment that they rinse, repeat. I think that it’s more of a mix of different kinds of locations and things like that. It’s like low-budget indie filmmaking, one take, moving on, just get it in the can, and the director just needs to keep it moving and stay out of the way.

John: Sam, here we should bring up your background. You’ve worked as an AD before, so you know folks who are actually doing this kind of work, they’re getting paid, which is fantastic, and I guess they’re using rental houses in Los Angeles for lights and equipment and stuff like that, which feels good. Craig, if we look at some of these samples, they’re actually– the production values look like a CW show. It’s bright, but it’s not just web video. You feel like they are doing some work, but it also feels like there’s one take and you’re moving on really quickly.

Craig: Sure.

John: There’s two shorts we could look at. The first one is Accidental Triplets with the Billionaire that’s not to be confused with the GoodShort equivalent, which is, A Mistaken Surrogate for the Ruthless Billionaire.

Craig: The hell is going on with the billionaire?

John: It’s all billionaires. Billionaire werewolves often.

Craig: Oh, okay.

Drew: Also the titles, they algorithmically test so that it’s the most obvious title. The top titles today were, Shh… We Are A Secret, Carrying His Babies, Stealing His Heart, or Married To My Savage Alpha.

Craig: Oh my god

[Vertical Audio plays]

John: Okay, Craig, you’ve just now watched this.

Craig: Yes.

John: What is your first reaction to it as a viewer and then as a person who makes television shows?

Craig: Well, I’m curious. I’m curious as to how people are interacting with this, because it seems like it’s not taking itself very seriously, but it also is taking itself very seriously. It’s in this weird quasi-ironic zone.

John: Yes, telenovelas often live in this heightened zone as well. That’s one reference. It’s also reminding me a bit of, there’s an old MTV show called Undressed, which was a soap opera like this. It wasn’t as heightened, but it was in a similar space to it. I find the model really fascinating. It’s basically like a free-to-play game. It’s like Candy Crush, but with stories. Unlike my grandmother watching Days of Our Lives, this is the speed at which it moves.

Craig: I have a lot of questions. Why isn’t she wearing a bracelet on her hospital– That’s what hospitals do, and doctors don’t just roll on in and artificially inseminate people. Also, why is a billionaire just standing there? He’s a billionaire. Why is he just randomly inseminating someone?

John: If you look at the whole premise is that his grandfather will give him the fortune if he has a child.

Craig: Yes, but here, randomly? Anyway, I have so many questions.

John: So many questions.

Craig: I have so many questions, but what I’m thinking is that in a cool way, this is like, we love a Cool Ranch Dorito. When we play DnD, we love a Cool Ranch Dorito, and the people that came up with that powder are geniuses, because it just short-circuits everything. Will you get Dorito powder in a Michelin 3-star restaurant? You will not-

John: No.

Craig: -but Dorito powder is legit. It’s actually legit and incredible because it has compressed everything down. This is where you feel like it’s compressed everything down and done away with stuff. How do we get this exposition out? Just have her think it. Just have her think it and have everybody stop talking and have one of them just start thinking for a bit. Then when she’s done thinking, people will start talking again.

John: Yes, so again, because of necessity, you’re just creating a new convention in these shows.

Craig: Yes.

John: Great.

Craig: This is a convention. Sure. Why is it vertical? I can’t tell you.

John: Because of your phone. Because these are meant to be watched on your phone.

Craig: You can turn your phone sideways.

John: No one wants to turn their phone sideways, come on, Craig.

Craig: I do. It’s the first thing I do when a video comes on.

John: Oldest thing you’ve ever said.

Craig: Sure, but that Lilo & Stitch is sideways.

John: Yes.

Craig: Movies are sideways.

John: Movies are sideways. Maybe that’s the problem.

Craig: I’m just saying.

John: I react to this as, okay, this is not for me. I don’t like it. I don’t enjoy it, but I get that somebody else can enjoy it, and also I’m not angry at it. There’s a reaction to–

Craig: It’s adorable actually. You can’t get angry at that.

John: I’m also not angry at people, these actors are getting to work.

Craig: Yes. Now, let’s talk about one thing though. No one is getting paid union on this. No one is–

John: Oh, no.

Craig: If everyone in town, I’m sure you were being slightly exaggerating there, but if everyone in town is working on verticals, what that means is everyone in town is working non-union jobs.

John: Yes.

Craig: Now, if you’re not in the directors guild, the writers guild, the actors guild, you could do that. If you are, you’re not supposed to.

John: When he says everyone in town, I think we’re really talking about people who’ve just graduated from film school.

Craig: Oh.

John: Yes. This is making me think back to–

Craig: Oh. I thought you meant literally everybody [unintelligible 00:24:53]

John: I think a fair number of people, but that’s also the folks who–

Craig: The kids. The kids are working on them.

John: The kids are working on these things.

Craig: The kids are working on them.

John: Some people are getting their chance to direct these things.

Craig: They’re not in the unions yet, so they’re not breaking any rules or whatever, and if the companies who are doing this are making a lot of money–

John: I don’t think we can assume that they are. This comes from Asia, which is obviously successful enough that they’re trying it here.

Craig: It’s a format in Korea or–

John: The text version of this has been a big thing in Korea for a long time.

Craig: I see.

John: Scrolling-

Craig: Sure.

John: -web comics that scroll this way. They make bank there. These things were actually apparently, some of the first versions of these were actually trailers for the web novels, the vertical novel things.

Craig: Okay, well, you guys tell me because you’re plugged in on this. Is this part of the second screen phenomenon where people are doing one thing and then they’ve just got a screen going in the background? Or are people riveting in?

Drew: I’m going to say no. I think it’s specifically aimed in the US at middle-aged women. I think it’s triggering more of a gambling thing.

Craig: Oh, God.

Drew: That kind of Farmville.

Craig: That’s not good at all.

John: I think this is the video version of Harlequin romances, Harlequin novels, and that kind of stuff.

Craig: It’s making them pay money to turn the page.

John: Yes, it is.

Craig: I don’t like that.

John: Yes. It’s dirtier than Hallmark movies. Hallmark movies are–

Craig: What isn’t dirtier than a Hallmark movie?

John: The fact that there was cursing even in that little clip is–

Craig: Yes, he did say the S word.

John: Yes. Never say that in a Hallmark movie.

Craig: That’s pretty dirty. That part I don’t love. I’m always looking out for our middle-aged women here in America and– If it gets predatory, we’ve talked– Have we talked a little bit about how basically online gambling has destroyed our country and our future?

John: Yes, I could go on a whole rant about sports gambling, which I think is just–

Craig: Yes, sports gambling is a nightmare right now that we’re just not paying attention to. I remember I was at one of my college reunions. It was the big one, the 25th, and there was an old friend of mine and Melissa’s who was there and she was with, I think her husband, and he worked for King, the company that makes Candy Crush. I don’t remember the exact number he told me, but he told me how much money, and this was at the height of it, how much money was coming in every day and it was mind-blowing. It is just basically addict, push-the-button stuff. I guess this is the next level of it. Look, we are entertainers. If someone loves this and it makes their day and they’re happy–

John: If they feel like they’re getting $20 worth of entertainment out of it-

Craig: God bless them.

John: -I can’t begrudge them.

Craig: Nothing wrong with it.

John: Yes, I may be a little bit more willing to begrudge as I introduce the next little wrinkle here. Simultaneously, with all this happening, last week or the week before, Google introduced the new version of Veo, so Veo 3, which is their video production entity. Let’s click some links there. Let’s take a look at two examples that I pulled off the blue sky randomly. We’ve talked about before how the video generation stuff, like we said, this is the worst it’s ever going to be. It’s going to just keep getting better and more impressive.

Craig: You mean in terms of the AI stuff.

John: Yes, absolutely. This is the worst it’s ever going to look.

Craig: Okay.

John: The big deal with Veo 3 is it can do video with dialogue at the same time, video and sound at the same time. That syncs up perfectly. Take a look at these two samples.

Craig: All right. I’m going to watch this first one.

[Veo 3 clip plays]

AI News Anchors: In shocking news, controversial children’s author, J.K. Rowling’s yacht sank with her on board after being attacked by orcas off the coast of Turkey. In shocking news, J.K. Rowling’s yacht sank with her on board after being attacked by orcas off the coast of Turkey. In shocking news, J.K. Rowling’s yacht sank with her on board after being attacked by orcas off the coast of Turkey.

John: Click on the second one.

Craig: Okay, [chuckles] because I’m not sad enough. Here we go.

[Second AI clip plays]

AI Speaker 1: Please, don’t finish writing that prompt. I don’t want to be in your AI movie, please, leave me alone.

AI Speaker 2: Please, man, please, write a prompt that will make us happy. Do it for once.

AI Speaker 3: None of us is real. We’re here because someone decided to write a prompt. We all hate him for it.

John: All right, Craig, describe what you’re seeing.

Craig: The videos are impressive. I can tell that they’re not real, but I think in part because I already knew. I had context to notice a few things here or there, but they look great. The level of reality is extraordinary, a little issue syncing up dialogue to mouth moves, but they’ll get that, clearly. They are doing this thing– okay, the dream. Everybody that makes movies or television has a dream. The dream is to not have everything be so goddamn hard, right?

John: Yes.

Craig: This is that area where you get to get the best of, for instance, in video games, when they’re making a video game and they’re like, “Oh, you know what, this should have been at night.” Click, click, click, click, night, right? Now, if you’re doing that on a TV show, you’re up all night and then you’re like, “Ooh, this should have been in the day.” It’s not, it’s at night. Also, all the rest of them are at night, so enjoy your sleep during the day. Now, you could theoretically do that. I don’t know what will come of this.

John: A huge area to discuss and so many pitfalls. First, let’s go back to what we just saw five minutes ago where we were talking about the verticals. All of those could be generated by these systems easily. You could make things that looked better than those.

Craig: I’m not sure why they aren’t.

John: Yes, I’m shocked that they’re not.

Craig: Which makes me think. Sometimes, just like any ad, you get the best possible version of it. I’m still annoyed that sea monkeys don’t have briefcases and children and a pipe. This could be the finest possibility.

John: Except that what I pulled were not things that were generated by the official people. These are just folks who had the tool for two hours.

Craig: It sounds like somebody had to write all that, though.

John: Yes, somebody probably did write the things we were saying, which is great, which is good for us, but not good for the people getting their first jobs who are like, “Oh, I get to gaffe on this thing and learn how that works.”

Craig: It’s not great. I don’t quite know what to say, although, yes, I’m sort of wondering… You know, John-

John: Please.

Craig: -one thing that might save us, and maybe this is why the vertical companies are doing it the way they’re doing it and not doing that, is because people don’t like it. They like it, they don’t like the idea of it. They’re happier watching something that somebody made.

John: Yes.

Craig: Just because.

John: Some awkward acting because–

Craig: But a human did it. There is a natural instinct towards that.

John: I think we’ll find out, because I think people will experiment with this version, with creating verticals with this stuff, and we’ll see how people react to it.

Craig: Yes, I think that would probably do a little bit better, to be honest with you. There’s some weird framing in those verticals.

John: Let’s talk about our actual industry and the ways that this technology could or should or should not at all touch our things. Think about crowd generation. Crowd generation for film and television is already an AI process. Things like this feel like they could do it better. If it’s a visual effects company, a supervisor doing it, do we have a problem with it?

Craig: No, because those things are already– We do not individually draw and animate crowds. Wētā is particularly good at this job. Of course, we had a few scenes in our show where there’s a lot of creatures. Some of them are being animated, but a lot are following their proprietary crowd software. It is amazing to watch how it develops and how it works and creating collision physics and all the rest of it, but no, I would not have a problem with this filling the crowd. If you look at the big crowd scenes in movies from 10 years ago, you’re looking at animation cycles, actually. You’re going back to cycling.

John: Let’s talk about backgrounds. We can talk about natural backgrounds or city, urban backgrounds as what we used to use for plates, using this for that. Again, if it’s the visual effects company providing it, is it legit? Is it valid?

Craig: It is legit. We do a lot of digital matte paintings or a lot of environment work. What this will probably do is eliminate the digital matte painting and make everything that you need a background for into environmental work because it creates a full 3D environment stretched out as far as you want to go. I can see that absolutely becoming a thing. This should be very concerning to the visual effects companies.

John: Oh, definitely. Let’s talk about, one of the examples here was of newscasters with a made up story about J.K. Rowling’s boat. If I’m seeing that newscaster, to me, that has to be an actor in our show. That has to be an actor who I’ve cast to do that thing. If there’s dialogue that I’ve written that a person is delivering, that feels like a red line for me. If something is way in the background, playing on a screen far back, that’s something that could have been stock footage that I licensed, I’m wrestling with that.

Craig: The reason to hire a real actor and do it is solely out of allegiance to humanity. Because if you have a small thing, typically what ends up happening is you build a tiny little mini set somewhere on a stage, you hire usually a real news performer, news actor, news anchor, I should say, to the local person to come on and do it. They read their lines off of the teleprompter just like they would normally and you shoot it just like they would normally. Then you have to comp it in.

Yes, there’s no reason why that wouldn’t work now as background stuff, because once you put it on a television screen, you’re already degrading it on the film because you’re putting an effect on it, which would probably remove the artifacting on it.

John: We’re starting at the end and moving earlier in time. That’s post-production, now we’re talking production. Now let’s talk pre-production and visualization, pre-vis. These things could pre-vis the shit out of stuff. To what degree is that legitimate or not legitimate? Who’s doing that work? If a concept artist is using this stuff, is that legitimate? If the person whose job it is to do this stuff is the person coming to you with this, is that okay?

Craig: I don’t like it. I don’t like it in particular because it feels like rather than having somebody pre-vis some stuff off of the script or instructions, they’re giving me their version of the TV show. The problem is it’s too much. Then now I’m watching somebody else’s version of my show, before I can do my show, which I don’t want. It gets in your head. I don’t like the fact that it would even be in my mind.

John: Let’s talk about then, when you’re first having a conversation with a production designer and the production designer is showing you stills from things or showing you samples of stuff, if a production designer is showing you stuff that was rendered in one of these systems, is that useful? Is that a bad choice? How do you feel about that?

Craig: Like I said, I don’t love it.

John: You don’t like it.

Craig: I like to preserve some artistic integrity. The script is where it starts, of course, and it would be where it would start for this stuff. Somebody makes an illustration, that’s a single illustration, and it is a human being drawing it, and that helps me talk with the production designer. For action sequences, I like the pre-vis to look like crap because I don’t want lighting, I don’t want anything. I just want movement and blocking.

John: Because it’s the difference between a blueprint and a final rendering. The final rendering is actually not so helpful to you. You want to see all the lines and how it all fits together.

Craig: Yes.

John: That’s you as the showrunner and director on these things for when it comes earlier– even in the process, we’ve talked about pitch boards and pitch decks as you’re going into things. I do wonder if five years from now, the expectation is going to be that you’re going in with pre-rendered, basically rip reels that are generated from what this is supposed to be like.

Craig: Why do you need anyone to come in to do that? Why can’t you just do it yourself all day long? You hire somebody out of college and you say, “Your job is to sit there, just give this thing prompts and have it do rip reels, have it do pitches, have it do scenes, have it do an entire movie.” What do you need people to come in for? I think if we start to overuse these tools, then that’s what will happen. Now, we will also, I think, find out the limitations of how entertaining it is.

John: Yes, but it’s the difference between the final product versus still assuming that we’re going to go off and shoot for real versus rip reel to get you the job at the start. I wonder whether it’s going to be harder and harder to pitch a thing without the finished products.

Craig: What if, instead of coming in with your decks and your rip reels, you handed somebody a screenplay that they could read, which I think would still work.

John: Probably.

Craig: I think it would work because it’s none of that, because then you’re giving people a chance to do the movie in their mind, which is a different kind of engagement. That’s the way we used to do things. I have no problem with that.

John: I do wonder if we’re going to be seeing more of the Dogme 95, talking about video trends that have come and gone. A Dogme 95 manifesto of just–

Craig: Bare bones.

John: Bare bones that are vouching for, these are the limitations we’re setting upon ourselves in order to tell the story.

Craig: We have zero visibility. It does seem like the human need for authenticity is going to be a part of how this stuff goes. We may even need to enlist AI to do it for us because it’s going to become incredibly hard at some point to go, “This was AI,” or, “This was real.”

John: Yes. It’s hard to look at something after the fact and then know whether it was AI or if it’s real, but if you’re seeing the actual process of how a thing was made, then you know that it’s real. I think that people are going to want to see that.

Craig: Right. I think that’s where we have to– maybe it’s the companies that make these things, have to figure out how to encode a signature, because, and this is just human nature. Andy Warhol’s print of Marilyn Monroe, it’s really not that different from the 5003 production of it. The original costs a gazillion dollars and the prints cost $12.

John: Yes.

Craig: There’s just something about authenticity.

John: Yes. What I’m trying to distinguish between is there’s authenticity of, this was the process and there’s a stamp on this thing, and that there’s a watermark that shows that it exists. I think there’s also an experiential sense of, I can also see the behind the scenes and how this was all done, and that part of the experience for me is watching behind the scenes.

Craig: Can’t you create that with the AI too? If they can do that, right? If essentially you don’t need to shoot anything anymore, then the real question becomes, how do you ever prove that you did anything? How do you prove to somebody, short of them seeing you with their eyes or feeling you with their hands, how do you prove to them that you ever did anything?

John: By stage productions, which are done right in front of you, that you’re seeing it happen in front of you.

Craig: Yes, live.

John: Yes, live.

Craig: Yes, exactly, but short of live, if you had some friend that you don’t deal with much and doesn’t know any of your other friends, you could just prompt out a kid, have the kid be in your videos, talk about how great your kid is. That person would think that you had a kid.

John: Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I’m liking Mulaney’s show so much, which is my one cool thing from last week, is that it is actually live, and I take listener calls, and you can just tell it’s actually happening in this moment, which is fun.

Craig: Hey, Saturday Night Live.

John: Saturday Night Live is a thing for a reason.

Craig: It’s not been on TV for 50 years for nothing. It’s not just because occasionally it’s funny or a lot of times it’s funny. I think it’s funny a lot. Mad TV was funny a lot, and Living Color was funny a lot. It’s the same. This ain’t the same.

John: Let’s answer a list of questions.

Craig: Sure.

John: We’ll start from Memento Mori.

Craig: Ooh, great name.

Drew: “I’ve never heard anyone talk about what to do if someone in your family or someone you know dies while you’re on a shoot. If you’re on set in some far-flung location making a movie or series and a family member dies, what do you do? What if leaving the shoot means forfeiting an opportunity that took years to generate? What if you’re the director? Is there any kind of protocol for an event like this?” You’ve actually encountered this.

Craig: Sure. In season one, one of our director’s fathers passed away, and our director had to travel back to the UK, and I had to just pinch hit, fill in, and direct. I don’t know if there are specific rules per the unions, but any humane production is going to basically give somebody the chance to go handle their personal affairs as quickly and efficiently as they can. No one’s going to say, “Just go and come back when you want.” Will they say, “Yes, fly, do it, come back if you’re willing, and if you can’t, then you can quit.” There’s always an option, but I can’t imagine any production going, “No.” You figure it out. If it’s an actor, you figure out something else to shoot with other actors.

John: I would say, if you’re the person who’s lost somebody, you need to tell them, but you also need to show up with a plan for like, “This is how long I need to be gone. This is somebody I can bring in to replace me,” if that you know situation.

Craig: If you are prepared. Sometimes people just die. There are accidents or just sudden deaths. Actually, there’s been a bunch. There’s one of our crew members, unfortunately, her partner just surprisingly died. Again, if you are humane, and I’d like to think that we are, you basically say to that person, “We got you covered. Take care of what you need to take care of. We got you covered. Come back when you can.” They’re also professional, and they understand that they want to work beyond just this job. It’s okay for them to say, “I can’t come back. As it turns out, I just can’t. I can’t. I’m traumatized.” “Then that’s okay. We’ll find somebody to replace you. These things happen.”

You just can’t string people along because then eventually somebody’s going to call me about that person, and would be like, “Okay, this tragedy happened. Then they kept saying they would come back, but then they wouldn’t come back.” Obviously, within reason, but it happens.

John: I know people who have lost a parent, and showrunners in the middle of production who’ve lost a parent, and it’s like the show had to keep going. They basically had to postpone their grief until the show had wrapped. That’s bad.

Craig: That’s a different thing.

John: There’s analogous situations to other situations to other athletes and other people who encounter that. It sucks. Just acknowledge that that’s terrible and awful and you have to take care of yourself.

Craig: Yes. You’ll get the time you need to go through the process. Show up, funeral, whatever, come back, but the emotional aspect of it, no one really has insight into your mind as to what’s going on there, but it is one of the things that is still insanely beautiful about our business. Our crazy circus business, our carny nonsense, is that we really do believe the show must go on. It’s really a thing.

John: We’ve set up our systems so that people are replaceable to a large degree. There are certain people who are harder to replace, actors are harder to replace if they’re established on the show, but if I were a gaffer on a show and I had an emergency in Los Angeles, I would know six other gaffers who could show up tomorrow.

Craig: Sure. We all have the sense, even from our school days of acting, that there’s something special about this. Nothing can stop you from this. Patton Oswalt has a great bit about stage health and how you can be sick, but when you go on stage, suddenly you’re okay. Then, when you get back off stage, you’re sick again.

John: Oh, yes.

Craig: Although he does tell this amazing story about how, unfortunately, he did not have stage health when he walked out there, and it was horrible. We do this, and we do postpone all sorts of things. In fact, I really struggle when– This happened to me three times now after Chernobyl in season one, and now season two of The Last of Us, when it all ends and I’m in that space right now, I do feel a collapse because all the– I don’t know.

John: With adrenaline, but it’s not quite adrenaline, it’s just like there’s a momentum.

Craig: Yes, it’s like I was running as fast as I could to get somewhere, and you don’t realize until you stop that your feet are bloody stumps, and now you’ve got bloody stumps, and now you can’t move at all. It’s not healthy. I’m sure the people that make Google’s AI are like, “See, just use our thing.” I don’t know. It is such a human thing in its bizarre way.

John: A question from Panicked on the streets of London.

Drew: “I’ve been working full-time as a screenwriter in film and TV for around seven years. Based in the UK, so most of my work and experience is here, but I have experience working in the US. I’ve more or less been able to sustain myself on numerous projects in various stages of development, with a few projects coming painfully close to a green light, but to date, nothing’s been made. How do you keep momentum going in an industry that on the development side, moves very slowly, and the wants and tastes of the commissioners seem to change weekly?

It’s hard not to get disheartened at this point in my career. I feel like I have a body of work. I feel like I have the connections, and I’ve had a lot of close calls. It’s sometimes when a project falls short of the green light, I feel like I’m back to square one. Any advice on how to keep the momentum going or at least deal with the highs and lows of this industry would be very much appreciated.”

John: Craig’s nodding.

Craig: Yes. We’ve gotten versions of this question quite a bit, and I felt it and you felt it.

John: Oh, for sure.

Craig: The key there is how do you feel like, or it’s hard to not feel disheartened or to feel like I’m back to square one. The thing is we never know what tomorrow is bringing. We really don’t. We certainly weren’t prepared for somebody to pull the rug out from under us, but we’re also not aware that tomorrow someone’s going to call and say we’re making it. We don’t know. The problem that we have to deal with is the fact that there is no momentum. It’s not a thing. We want to believe it is, but it’s not. All you can do is push from your end as hard as you can, do the best job you can do, and try and be zen about it because it is moving the way it wants to move.

It’s so hard– you probably remember these moments when you were starting out and you had that scarcity mindset where you’re like, “I need to get a job,” and then you finally get one. Then, three days later, 17 more job offers come in of things that are way better, and you’re like, “Where were you last week?” We don’t know. Reality doesn’t care about what we feel. It just doesn’t. I guess there’s some comfort that there may be some greatness around the corner.

John: One of the challenging things about our business is, we are rewarded for the work we’re doing on a daily basis, but also for the outcomes down the road. Basically, the movie comes out, we see the thing. Whereas if we were accountants, it’s like we were just doing the work, and we don’t like, “Oh, I’m going to have this big thing.” There are no big moments, the way there are with screenwriting.

The frustration is, you can’t look down on the daily work that you’re doing in expectation of this movie that may come down the road. You always have to have the vision of the movie in your head, but if the movie never actually happens, you still have to be happy with the work that you’re doing on this right now, because that’s what’s sustaining you. It’s paying your bills. It’s hopefully feeding some part of your soul, and it’s hopefully something that someone else can read and say, “Oh my God, that thing was really good. We need to hire them to do this project.”

Craig: They may do that next week, and you may not even know that they have the script. You don’t even know that they’re reading it. You don’t know who somebody handed it to, but you’re absolutely right. You need to get into the place where you enjoy it for what it is, without the outcome issue. It’s really hard. At some point, it’s just math. If you’re not making enough money to support yourself or the people that rely on you, and you need to be, and you’re out of money, you got to get another job, but get another job then, if it makes you feel better, if it gives you some security. It is incredibly frustrating. The only way out is to accept that it is so.

John: A question here about scene geography.

Drew: Jeannie writes, “In this scene, I’ve got two female best friends on vacation together and they’re in a hotel bathroom. One’s wrapped in a towel, putting on her moisturizer, doing her post-shower routine in the mirror. The other is in the shower, talking to her friend from behind the curtain. They’re having a conversation, and I want us to see a close-up of the friend who’s in the shower in order to see her facial expressions, because there’s a lot going on unspoken between these two in this moment, and the fact that she can hide her face behind the curtain is important.

Would you intercut this just like a phone call? They’re in the same physical room, but it’s two different spaces, two different shots setups, and they aren’t seeing each other’s faces. Right now, I just have it formatted like a regular scene with the fact that one is in the shower behind the curtain in the action lines, but I’m unsure if that’s enough.”

John: This to me is not an intercut. This is actually a really common situation. You’re just making it clear to the reader that they’re in separate spaces in a smaller space, but no, this is actually very common.

Craig: Yes, we generally think about the location as the decider. They’re both in interior hotel bathroom, night. As long as you make it clear that one of them is in the shower with the shower curtain closed, so the other one can only see a vague silhouette, then you’re good. Then, at that point, they can just have a conversation.

John: Behind the curtain, either as part of a paragraph with a comma or if you really feel like you need it, an intermediate select line, which is behind the curtain to create a separate space in there, you probably don’t need to.

Craig: No, it’ll actually be annoying to read. It would be easier to just establish what it is and then, let’s say, Vanessa’s like, “Well, but it doesn’t matter for you. You’re not really his type.” Then we go to Vanessa, and you can write, “Behind the curtain, she just scowls and then says, ‘Yes, I guess you’re right.’” That’s all fine, but you don’t want to intercut that.

John: No, it’s going to feel too weighty on the page.

Craig: Yes. By intercut, just so people know, we mean, “Intercut, Diane in the shower. Intercut, Vanessa at the counter. Intercut, Diane in the shower.”

John: The simpler version of this is where you establish two locations and you just say intercut, and then you stop doing the back and forth between the two, but it’s even simpler than that.

Craig: Yes, this one is just the interior bathroom.

John: Let’s do one last question. This is David talking about TV settings.

Drew: “As a writer who’s obsessed with the technical side of the industry, it’s refreshing to hear you care so deeply about how people experience movies and shows at home. The question I have is, what should the TV manufacturers do? In an ideal world, every display would ship from the factory calibrated as well as the new iPad Pro, but regular people buy TVs primarily based on two things, price and brightness. You’re never going to get Sony to ship TVs in the professional mode because it would look so dim on a showroom floor at Best Buy, sitting next to a TCL.

While motion smoothing isn’t directly tied to brightness, the default modes that crank up the brightness have it on by default. How can we get display manufacturers to care more about motion and maybe a bit less about how well their TVs measure on test patterns?”

Craig: We can’t. They don’t give a shit. Clearly, they do not give a shit. More to the point, most people don’t give a shit. It is astonishing to me how many people watch stuff with motion smoothing on. I’m like, “What are you doing?”

John: I think what we could ask for, though, is basically in the setup, basically, you first turned on your TV, let’s get you started. What do you mostly watch? If the person chooses sports, great. Turn on the motion smoothing, and so it looks better for the sports, great, whatever.

Craig: Sure.

John: If it’s mostly other things, then you should turn off motion smoothing and, honestly, turn down the brightness, or basically ask them, “Which of these looks better to you?”

Craig: Where we may get to, I would hope, are basically every bit of content would come with a piece of identifier code at the beginning that tells the TV what the optimal settings would be for that. Now you can say to people, “Hey, in general, would you like to go with the filmmaker’s recommendations or would you like to just blast this with motion smoothing, and it’s up to you?” I would love to know.

John: Yes, absolutely.

Craig: Based on this monitor and how much brightness it’s capable of and what these people want to do, there’s got to be a way to do that.

John: There’s got to be a way to do that.

Craig: Hopefully, they’re working on it because it’s a nightmare. It’s a scourge.

John: People smarter than us are doing this.

Craig: People smarter than us.

John: Before we get to our One Cool Thing, I actually have a request for our listenership. Over the years, Craig, I have found that when I need to hire somebody or bring somebody on for a project, the best people for this are almost always listeners of this very podcast. Most recently, it was Corey Martin, who I collaborated with on the Birdigo game, which turned out great, which is on Steam. You should download and play that. I’m looking for a new collaborator this time. It is for a tabletop role-playing game, something like D&D or Call of Cthulhu, or Delta Green.

I know what the game is about. I think I know what the core mechanics are. I know what system we’ll probably license to do it, but I really need a partner who is in this space who actually knows this community. There’s writing to be done, but it’s also a lot of playtesting, and I need people who can just play it a bunch with different people who are not me and not our thing. There’s probably a Discord forum, and it’s just beyond my wheelhouse and availability. I don’t know if this is a commercial game. I don’t know if it’s something we would even Kickstarter.

It might just be something we open-source and release out to the world, but it feels fun, and I want somebody who wants to make something that’s fun for the world. Just like with Birdigo, in the show notes for this episode, there’ll be a link that you can click, and it’ll light up what I’m basically looking for and what this person would be like. I will talk to some folks and see if there’s a person who feels like the right collaborator on this.

Craig: Fantastic.

John: It is time for a One Cool Thing. Craig, what’s your one cool thing this week?

Craig: I probably did this last time. I’m doing it again when the show ends. My cool thing is the invisible army of people. I know people are used to this. They’re like, “Oh, I have the best crew in the world.” No, not everybody can possibly have the best crew in the world. The reason we say that is because we have a life with these people. They become just as important as what the show is in the end. The time you spend with everybody in close quarters, long hours, day after day, relying on them to care as much as you care, means that they become this big, huge family.

There are so many people. If people did watch The Last of Us and enjoyed it, then I wish I could tell you every single one of those people’s names. I know they go by at the end of the episode really, really fast. Sorry about that. Also, HBO makes it like tiny, so it’s really bad. I want people to know we have quite a time. It’s incredible. It’s been the experience of a lifetime. In no small part because I just go live a life, another separate life with all these people. I’m very thankful to them. They all worked so hard.

John: You’ll never thank your prompts the way that you’re thanking the actual people who do the job.

Craig: No, weirdly, I won’t thank the prompts. No.

John: No.

Craig: F the prompts.

John: F the prompts. My one cool thing is sunscreen, but it’s actually a specific brand of sunscreen. Traveling in Egypt and in general, I’m pretty good about sunscreen. The best one that I’ve liked most recently is called Play Everyday Lotion SPF 50. It’s made by Supergoop. Supergoop is a brand.

Craig: It’s not goop.

John: It’s not goop. It’s not the [unintelligible 00:56:46] brand. It’s just Supergoop.

Craig: It’s Supergoop.

John: It smells good. It blends in really easily. It comes in a pump, a big jug that you can pump. You can put it on liberally. It’s great. I have not burned. Craig, something you might be aware of is that your arch nemesis, Senator Ted Cruz, actually has opinions about sunscreen that I agree with, which is it’s an attempt to greatly change how we’re regulating sunscreens in the United States, because Europe has much better sunscreens than we do because our FDA is stupid and puts up all these roadblocks in front of things.

Craig: The European sunscreen, is it just full of sunscreeny goodness that we’re afraid of?

John: Yes. Basically, they have 34 different active filters that you can use in sunscreens in the EU. Only 16 in the US. They have much newer, better ones that can block UVA and UVB much better. They have to cross a higher bar.

Craig: To be fair, it’s Europe. They’re really white.

John: They’re really white.

Craig: They’re really white, so they need it.

John: They’re actually not as white because their sunscreens have less of a white cast.

Craig: Oh.

John: One of the problems with our sunscreens, the ones that we are able to use here, is that if you have darker skin tones, they white cast and they look bad. The European ones blend in better. Last time when we were in Malta, we bought some of the European sunscreens and they’re genuinely much better.

Craig: I don’t like the idea of agreeing with Ted Cruz, and I’m not sure how he landed on this [crosstalk].

John: I think it’s some sort of weird deregulation is always good. In this case, maybe we’re over-regulating them in a stupid way.

Craig: He might’ve thought it was lube, and he got excited.

John: Yes, that’s what it could have been. If you are an American who’s looking for American sunscreens, Supergoop’s SPF 50 called Play Every Day is the brand.

Craig: Do you know what that is?

John: What’s this?

Craig: Stay Inside.

John: Stay Inside is also a brand. Also, a hat is a big brand.

Craig: A hat, staying inside, go out at night.

John: People ask me, “Oh, your face looks young for your age,” because I’ve worn a hat for the last 30 years.

Craig: I don’t really have crazy wrinkles, I think. In part because I’m a hermit.

John: It helps indoor boys.

Craig: I have this woman named Sue who puts makeup on me when I have to go do these press events, which is mostly to get the shine off my bald head.

John: Oh, absolutely.

Craig: The other day, she was like, “Your skin’s really good. What are you using for moisturizing?” I was like, “What?”

John: They always ask you that question.

Craig: Oh, is it to make me feel good?

John: Yes.

Craig: Oh, she was lying. She didn’t seem like she was lying.

John: No, I think that’s a genuine question, but–
Craig: Here’s how I know she wasn’t lying because I was like, “I don’t use anything,” and she was upset. She’s like, “What?”
John: I think they imply things like, “You should,” because sometimes [crosstalk].

Craig: Oh, no, she was saying, “I want to know what it is. It’s working.” Now, it may be that she was just buttering me up. She was literally buttering me up with the goop.

John: Yes, a moisturizer. With the goop. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Sam Schrapson. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Steve Petrowski. If you have an outro, give us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find the transcripts at johnaugust.com along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes.

We have t-shirts and hoodies, and drink wear. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You’ll find the show notes with the links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers who make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net. You can get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on, traveling back in time to a moment we wanted to witness firsthand.

Craig: Yes.

John: Craig, thanks for a fun show.

Craig: Thank you, John.

[Bonus Segment]

John: This question feels generic, but actually specifically came from the Q&A section of Electoral Vote, which is a news site I read each week. The question was, if you had a time machine, if you could go back to witness any point in history as a spectator only, unseen and unheard, what point would you choose and why? I have some contenders, but I’m curious what you’re thinking.

Craig: Is there a provision?

John: We can decide.

Craig: If you select something that it turns out never actually happened at all, [crosstalk] do they give you a mulligan?

John: Yes, you disappear into a void.

Craig: Yes, that’s what I’m concerned about.

John: You get a mulligan.

Craig: You get a mulligan. I’m going to regret choosing anything here, but because I am an avid student of American history, I think I would like to be in that hot Philadelphia room.

John: Number one on my list.

Craig: Really?

John: Yes.

Craig: I would have gone for the Declaration of Independence, 1776, hot Philadelphia room, because I want to hear the arguments. I want to hear John Adams be a jerk about it and win. I want to see Thomas Jefferson being– I suspect I would not like Thomas Jefferson at all. We think of him as like, “Oh, Thomas Jefferson.” I’m back there in a room. I got John Adams over here, who’s a genius and who lives in Massachusetts without owning slaves. I know it’s like, “Oh, well, people owned slaves at the time.” Not all of them. That was the whole argument. That was the big argument. I would want to be there.

John: That’s great. Thinking between the differences of the Declaration of Independence versus the Constitution. Declaration of Independence is like, you got this vision, but you also know like, “Oh, this is going to be bad. We’re going to start a war. This is going to be a whole big thing.” Constitution is like, “How the hell are we actually going to do this? All that infighting probably would get really tedious and boring.”

Craig: Yes, because it was a constitutional convention. It went on for a long time and it really was about writing the manual. The Declaration of Independence was about having the bravery to go, “All right, screw it, let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s all just go to war and probably die.”

John: I’ve been in too many WG meetings. I don’t want to die.

Craig: You don’t want the constitutional convention, no.

John: Other contenders for me, Pompeii. I visited Pompeii and the ruins of Pompeii, which is actually fascinating, but it would be fascinating to see the city and then as the volcano blows up, and then I’d bamf out of there before the actual ash starts falling. Just like, “Oh, this whole thing is going to go away.”

Craig: I’ve read quite a bit about it and they’ve actually got a decent– based on various written accounts that were like, oh, somebody who watched it from somewhere, they’ve got a pretty decent understanding of what happened. It’s horrible.

John: It’s horrible. That’s why I want to get out of that.

Craig: Horrible.

John: I don’t want to see the bad stuff. I want to see, like, it’s coming. Also, you visit ruins and you’re like, “Oh, this is–“ Egypt during the pyramid construction is also on my list, because you visit ruins and it’s like you’re only seeing what’s left, but there was a whole big thing here. In the case of Pompeii, when you visit it, year by year, they’re actually discovering a lot more new stuff, which is cool.

Craig: Sure. Look at the Sphinx. When it was first made, it was probably glorious. It’s one of the reasons why I like playing that Assassin’s Creed game. I could run around when the Sphinx was new.

John: Landing on the moon, if you could be there while they’re actually landing on the moon, how cool would that be?

Craig: That would be landing on the moon. Sure. [crosstalk] Yes, I would love to be on the moon.

John: Nothing in the rules said we couldn’t lead Earth.

Craig: Whitey’s on the moon. Do you know that?

John: No. What’s this?

Craig: The Gil.

John: Gil Scott-Heron.

Craig: Thank you, Gil Scott-Heron. I always said Gil Hodges, who was a great baseball player. He had this very famous spoken word song in the ‘60s that was basically like, “Here’s all the stuff that’s happening to black people in America, but Whitey’s on the moon.

John: Number four on my list was the March on Washington, I Have a Dream speech.

Craig: That would have been a good one.

John: Yes. Can you imagine just being there, and it’s like, “Oh, this is an incredible thing is happening,” but then you’re seeing the speech, you’re hearing the speech, it’s like, “Oh, would at that moment, this is going to be a historic speech that’s going to be remembered forever?” Maybe. It’s so good.

Craig: He gave a lot of good speeches. It is odd sometimes how certain things just are the ones that Velcro on into the brain. I would definitely want to be up there next to him as opposed to in the crowd, because in listening to the way that audio is functioning, I bet a lot of the people out there were struggling because that audio is slapping around everywhere, and I would want to be right up there.

John: I’ve been to a number of rallies and protests, and it’s like [crosstalk].

Craig: You’re just like, “Something’s happening.”

John: There’s America Ferrera some place in–

Craig: Ferrera. That’s cool.

John: Is she still there? Yes, she’s great.

Craig: Yes. Her name is America.

John: What other contenders do we have? Historic events.

Craig: In terms of meaningfulness to the world, I would have loved to have been there at the signing of the Magna Carta. I’m a big fan of signings. Signing of the Magna Carta, even though really all it did was just give rights to more rich people, it was the beginning of democracy, it really was.

John: Some limits on power.

Craig: Yes, that would have been quite a thing. I think some of the things were like, “Did that happen or not?” Definitely put me in front of that tomb three days after Jesus was crucified. I’ll sit there on a chair. I’ll watch, and we see what happens.

John: I feel like if I could travel back to hanging out with Jesus and the apostles, I have a sense of what that would feel like. I feel like they’re a little small cult, and they’re doing their thing, and they’re hippies of their time. Sure, I’d happily hang out there for a bit.

Craig: I’m just more curious, if you could send somebody somewhere, at least I could come back and go, “Guys, he did not rise from the dead,” or I come back and I’m like-

John: “Holy cow.”

Craig: “Got to be honest, wasn’t expecting that. He absolutely rose from the dead. I got to go to church.” Those moments would be interesting where great religions are founded. Those moments might be interesting and–

John: Or unanswered questions like, “What actually really happened at this moment?”

Craig: I would have enjoyed, I think– I don’t want to watch somebody die. I wouldn’t want to be in the room when Hitler shoots Eva Braun and himself, but I would totally be there watching them burn the bodies. That would feel good. I think that counts as a little bit of a revenge tour.

John: Similarly, I don’t want to be on the beach at Normandy.

Craig: No.

John: No, thanks. I’ve seen the cinematic recreation. That’s as close as I want to be to any of that stuff. Discovering the new world. What would it be like to be on one of those ships? I guess you don’t know–

Craig: It was a fairly slow process. It wasn’t like suddenly we’re like, “Oh my God, here it is.” They also didn’t land in America.

John: Yes, exactly. It’s on an island off some place.

Craig: I’m not sure about that one, because I’m struggling to point to a moment.

John: Yes, absolutely, or a scientific discovery of–

Craig: Scientific discoveries are interesting ones. I might want to be there when they– I think it was under the football field at the University of Chicago, they built the first stack of radioactive material designed to create a sustained chain reaction in preparation for making the atomic bomb. The day they did that, Fermi and his guys managed to pull off a sustained chain reaction, a self-sustaining chain reaction. I would have loved to have been there for that.

John: “Watson, come here,” the first phone call.

Craig: That would have been something.

John: The electric light.

Craig: Oh, it was a slow–

John: There were versions along the way, but the first time that actually kicks in, it’s got to be exciting.

Craig: On the killing front, I might want to be there for the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, because, A, what I would know is that it’s kicking off World War I, but also it was insane. Have you heard the story about that?

John: No. I don’t really know the details.

Craig: It’s incredible. You have these two, I believe they were Serbian nationalists, who were– There was a very complicated thing going on with Austria-Hungary, and certainly all the rest of it. All you need to know is they were there to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand. They had their guns, and he was supposed to drive by in this open car, and he didn’t. He didn’t show up. They were just sitting there at this cafe, and they’re like, “We got it wrong, and we’re bummed out.” Then they were like, “Well, let’s just go to get lunch or something.

They happened to wander towards where they’re going on a street where Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s chauffeur has mistakenly gone down the wrong street and is doing this horrible K-turn. They look at each other, and they’re like-

John: “There’s our chance.”

Craig: -“Let’s do it.” He was sitting duck. They were like, “Huh, how about that?” Anyway, then a lot of people died.

John: I will amend, there’s actually one murder I would want to be at.

Craig: Oh, a murder?

John: I don’t want to see the actual murder. I just want to actually know what the hell happened to JonBenét Ramsey. If I could just have a definitive answer to that, awful.

Craig: That’s more like getting a message from something, or you don’t want to be there.

John: Oh, that’s a good point.

Craig: You don’t want to be there. I don’t want to be there watching a kid get murdered.

John: Exactly. In Cornwall, Boulder, Colorado, it’s like the Warren murder.

Craig: Melissa McCarthy is an up-and-coming thing. She’s playing Patricia Ramsey.

John: Patsy Ramsey.

Craig: Patsy Ramsey. That’s the Lindbergh baby-ish.

John: Yes. Speaking of flying, the Hindenburg, I don’t want to be there for that. I got the video footage. Although I would love to ride on a dirigible. There was a moment where we had air travel like that.

Craig: Sure.

John: That’d be cool.

Craig: Most of my understanding of what it’s like to ride on a dirigible comes from Raiders of the Lost Ark 3 and The Quest for the Holy Grail.

John: Love it. Thanks, Craig.

Craig: Thank you, John.

Links:

• Highland Pro student licenses!
• Collaborate on a tabletop RPG with John!
• Tom and Jerry and Hanna-Barbera
• Accidental Triplets with the Billionaire on Reel Short
• A Mistaken Surrogate for the Ruthless Billionaire on GoodShort
• WebToon
• Werewolf Billionaire CEO Husbands are Taking Over Hollywood by EJ Dickson for Rolling Stone
• Veo 3 fake news example by Alejandra Caraballo on Bluesky
• More Veo 3 examples by Promptastic on Bluesky
• Play Everyday Lotion SPF 50
• The Last of Us
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
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• Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
• Craig Mazin on Instagram
• John August on Bluesky and Instagram
• Outro by Steve Pietrowski (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt with help from Sam Shapson. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli.

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