Search Results for: youtube

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/what-script-should-you-write).

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

**Craig Mazin:** My name, Craig Mazin.

**John:** And this is Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. How are you, Craig?

**Craig:** I’m doing fine, John. Enjoying a nice day of not writing. It’s my favorite kind of day.

**John:** Those can be very good days. This last week my Tuesday, for whatever reason, was spectacular and I really considered maybe just calling it a week. And it’s like — I’m just not even going to try to work the rest of the week. I’m not going to try to do anything. I’ll just say that was a really good week and it was only Tuesday. Everything was coming up roses on Tuesday.

**Craig:** I’ve done it. I’ve done it. I’ve started on a Monday morning and thought, “You know what? Don’t feel it.” And that feeling stayed with me all the way through Friday. [laughs]

You know, I sometimes feel a little weird because when I do write I’m very intense and I can write a whole lot all at one time. I can kind of sprint. And then there are times where I just do nothing. And I always feel guilty because sometimes people say, “How do you do all the stuff you do? You have a podcast. And you write…and you…”

And I go, “Well yeah, that’s true. But I must tell you I actually spend enormous quantities of time doing nothing at all.” But I don’t say that because I think that would make them feel even worse. Like not only am I lapping you but I’m sleeping for most of the race.

**John:** Yeah. What was so marvelous about my Tuesday, it wasn’t really a writing Tuesday, but it was all the other parts of screenwriting, which is like the taking the meeting and the doing the stuff and making the phone calls. And so I was over at the Fox lot for some of this, and I always forget that like when you have lunch on the lot you see all the other people there.

And so like I met Seth Grahame-Smith, who weirdly we’d worked together and we talked on the phone but I’d never met him in person, so I met him. I saw my friend Josh. I saw my friend Dana who has a TV show. I got to see her wonderful offices. It was great. So, a very fun, good afternoon spent at the Fox lot.

**Craig:** You know what? I had that experience over at Warner Bros. I was over there the other day, and normally I’ll sit in the office with Todd Phillips and we’ll eat there while we’re working, but on this particular day we decided to go out and we sat on their little dining area and Chris Nolan came by. I met Chris Nolan — how cool is that?

**John:** Oooh!

**Craig:** Let’s see…Chris Nolan. Jay Roach. Baz Luhrmann came by.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, it was so much fun for me. And, you know, they all know Todd. They don’t know me. I’m just sort of sitting there. Then at the very end I’m like, “Hi, how are you?” I get so awestruck.

I was standing in front of Todd’s office and Paul Thomas Anderson came by, which was crazy. I just love meeting people like that. If I ever don’t get star struck by these people, I’m done, as far as I’m concerned.

**John:** Yeah, it’s a different kind of thing. It’s like I’m not star struck in the way of like I want somebody’s autograph. But when you meet somebody in a social situation where they know the other person, it is a little bit unusual. Like Seth Rogan for the first time I met in a cafeteria situation. And it was like, “Oh, that’s Seth Rogan.” And he’s like, “Oh hey. I’m a big fan.”

I’m like, “Wow, you know who I am.” That’s incredibly exciting to me. So that is nice when it happens.

**Craig:** I never believe it when anybody says they even know who I am. I never believe it. I just don’t believe it. I don’t think it’s true. Jay Roach was like, “Oh hey.” He did that. And I’m like, “Nah, I don’t believe it; I don’t think you know who I am.”

But I guess the star struck part of it for me is when I meet people who are operating…who do the craft of filmmaking at a level that is just astounding to me. I’m particularly enamored of people who do things that I don’t even understand. I don’t understand how Paul Thomas Anderson does what he does. I don’t understand how Baz Luhrmann does what he does. I could never do it in a million years. It’s so much fun for me to watch. Chris Nolan.

So when I meet them I feel like I’m meeting wizards. It’s great. I just love it. I love it.

**John:** That’s nice.

So this week I thought we would talk about a couple of listener questions, just random stuff that came into the mailbag. And also talk about really an evergreen question that I often get after I’m on a panel for something, which is somebody comes up to me and asks, “Hey, I’m thinking about these two different things. I’m trying to decide which one to write.” And so I thought we would talk about which movie you should write.

**Craig:** Good idea.

**John:** So, for follow up, I have a couple things to go through. First off, last week was our first Three Page Challenge. And, Craig, how did you feel about the Three Page Challenge?

**Craig:** I enjoyed doing it. I felt a little guilty afterwards.

**John:** How so?

**Craig:** I don’t know. I just feel like, god, we were a little hard on the Beaver, but that’s kind of what people need, I think. So, I mean, I love the exercise. I was a little nervous that maybe I in particular was too harsh.

**John:** I can hear that. I temper that with the realization that everybody sent in those scripts anticipating criticism, so not just like a, “Hey — that was great.” It was, like, we were talking about what could make it better. And hopefully we had some suggestions for making it better. And most people who wrote in with responses, a lot of them on Twitter, and some on the actual blog post itself, seemed to dig the exercise, so I think we should do it again.

**Craig:** Yeah. I agree.

**John:** Not this week, but maybe every couple weeks we’ll do a few more of those. Because it is constructive and it’s very much about the words on the page which is hard to do in a podcast otherwise.

**Craig:** I also think it’s one of the only opportunities people can have to sample what’s coming. You know, if you’re not in the business you have no idea the kind of scrutiny and criticism you’re going to be in for. I’d like to think that you and are particularly good at it as opposed to what they might get at a lower level in Hollywood where ding-a-lings are reading it and giving notes. But this is what’s coming.

So, it’s probably a good thing. And I was very pleased with the feedback. I think it was sort of unanimously positive, so that’s great.

**John:** A few things to clarify. Craig and I — actually it was Stuart who picked which of the three scripts we were going to read. So, Stuart has read everything and Stuart picked three really good ones. And so that was actually a criteria going into it. Like these were three of the best ones that came in, not necessarily the very, very best, but of the sample that we had at that time those were three of the best ones.

I did write to each of the people who wrote in, each of those three guys who submitted their scripts, to let them know that they were going to be on the podcast, so it wasn’t a shock and a surprise. And two of the people wrote back after listening to the podcast and said, “Hey, that was actually really great. And it was scary but it was good.” And they thanked us for doing it.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** So good. I’m glad it was helpful for them.

So far we had 204 entries. Of those, 12% were written by women.

**Craig:** 12% were written by women?

**John:** And I don’t know quite how to process that. Is it that there are not more women writers? Is it that women don’t feel like writing into the thing?

**Craig:** No, there’s not…

**John:** I think there’s just not more women writers.

**Craig:** There’s just not more women writers. And this is, you know, I’ll go ahead and just jump on the third rail because I hate tiptoeing up to third rails; I like to hug them and let all the voltage course through my body.

You know, the Writers Guild every year does a study that tell us what we already know, which is that women are underrepresented as professional screen and television writers. Racial minorities are underrepresented. Gay people are underrepresented.

**John:** Are gay people actually underrepresented?

**Craig:** Well, nobody really knows because no one knows how many gay people there are.

**John:** Because there’s not a form to mark on the boxes.

**Craig:** Correct, that’s true. But, I’ll withdraw that. Transgendered people are underrepresented. But the argument has always been: Is this because of racism? Is it because of sexism? Is it because simply fewer of those underrepresented groups are actually going for these jobs?

The truth is, I don’t know the answer when it comes to race at all. I suspect that there’s got to be some element of racism going on. It’s just too stark. And also because I know too many black writers who tell me stories and I go, “God. Yup, that’s blatant.”

But when it comes to gender, and I’ve always said, look, women in very high positions at all these studios. There was a time when the majority of studios were being run by women, or if not run by women, women at very high levels. Women are heavily represented, I would assume equitably represented in the ranks of development executives. It seems to me that they are.

So what’s going on with screenwriters? And then we run this little…it’s not scientific, but here’s just the thing, open to anyone. And I know that we have women who listen to us and men, and only 12% of women send scripts in. — I’m sorry, 12% of scripts are sent in by women. I have to presume it’s because women just are less interested.

Am I wrong?

**John:** I don’t know that you’re wrong. And what’s interesting is I think this contest, this challenge, is really targeted at sort of new, incoming screenwriters. So this isn’t something that’s targeted towards people who may have left the industry for whatever reason. Like, is there a reason why women are coming into the industry and then leaving the industry because there aren’t opportunities there?

I would suspect most of the people who are writing into this challenge are new, young, aspiring screenwriters. And so, if there are fewer women who are new, young aspiring screenwriters that’s going to ripple up through the whole way. If there’s fewer women trying to enter the pool there’s going to be fewer women down the road.

**Craig:** No question. And, look, that’s not to say that there isn’t also sexism going on. I’m sure there is, which only makes it harder once you’re there. But, some of the numbers that you see when we say, “Why aren’t there more female screenwriters?” The kneejerk conclusion is because Hollywood is evil and hates women. And, in fact, part of the issue is women just aren’t as interested. And I don’t know why.

Are they more interested in other kinds of writing? Are they smarter because this is a really stupid thing to do?

**John:** [laughs] Because they recognize it’s a dying field that they should stay away from?

**Craig:** [laughs] Right. Exactly.

**John:** I think it’s worth studying. And I think what you’re pointing out is that we’ve always looked at the demand aspect of it as that women can’t get jobs as screenwriters, and maybe that’s true, but we should also look at is there a limitation somehow on supply of women screenwriters. And is that something that needs to be addressed as well?

**Craig:** Well, if you are one of our many female listeners, and we run this Three Page thing again, you know, come on.

**John:** And when we do this next time we’ll make sure to pick some women writers just to make sure that they are heard as well.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So after the last podcast we had a bit of bad news. Dick Zanuck died. Dick Zanuck, who is a legendary producer, who produced Jaws, Cocoon, Driving Miss Daisy. He produced Big Fish of mine and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He passed away, which was a surprise.

Dick Zanuck was 77 years old. And often when you have an older person who’s in your life, somewhere there’s like a little mental tick box on the record you keep for that person, like, “could die.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** That sounds horrible and morbid, but I think there’s a reason why it’s shocking when a…

**Craig:** It’s not horrible and morbid; it’s just so you. I just love that you have, like there’s a MySQL column. There’s a thing called “Might Die.”

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** And it’s checked “yes” or “no.” Am I still in the “no” column though?

**John:** There’s some faculty we have in us that sort of when a person is a certain age we recognize the fact that, okay, we should be ready for the fact that this person might not be around forever. And the reason why it is so shocking and surprising when a child dies, or when a younger person dies, and it’s less surprising and shocking when an older person dies. I think that’s a natural instinct.

Zanuck was sort of a weird special case because while he was 77 years old, he was like nowhere near retirement. He was one of the most fit and active people you’re ever going to meet. And a very active producer. He produced all of Tim’s movies.

And on an earlier podcast you and I talked about the different kinds of producers and the different roles that producers play. And Dick Zanuck was a protector. He was the bodyguard. He would protect Tim Burton from the studio, or whichever director of the movie from the studio, but he’d also protect the studio. The studio felt comfortable with him because he would help protect the movie to make sure it didn’t get knocked off track. He was really good that that.

And what was so fascinating about his funeral which was yesterday — we’re recording this on Friday, the funeral was Thursday — was to hear people from all parts of his life reflect on not just what his skills as a producer but sort of his skills as a person. And it was a very Big Fishy kind of funeral in the sense that you had your laughter and your tears. And you had the recognition that this is a man who lived a very, very full life and had the love of his life and the love of his life up the very last moment of his life, Lili Zanuck.

And it, I don’t know, weirdly I hadn’t gotten emotional until I’d gotten to the funeral and suddenly I’m like, “Oh my god, I won’t stop crying.” It was the recognition that, I don’t know — I don’t ever want to die, but if I were to die that would be the way to die is to, like, you have breakfast in the morning, you have lunch with friends, you talk to your kids twice a day — he talks to his kids every day — he has everything just right, and then suddenly gone. There’s not that long dragged out thing. It was like — to go out happy and on top.

**Craig:** I want to die covered in snakes, like most people.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** You know, Zanuck was — you don’t want to use the phrase dying breed when somebody just died, but it’s true, it’s a dying breed of producer. The people who understood how to do what he did and when you described protecting both the director from the studio, and protecting the studio from the studio, and protecting the movie from the director and the studio, that to me is what producing really is. It’s protecting. And it’s just gone. You don’t see it anymore. It’s so hard to find guys who really know how to do that, you know.

They’re out there. I have been lucky to work with a few of them recently. But so many fewer than used to be. And it’s a bummer. It’s a sad thing.

But you’re right. I mean, there is something to be said to kind of go out like that. Personally, I’m going to retire long before I die. That’s my whole thing.

**John:** No. I’m never going to retire. He was actually one of the people who I thought about when I recognized like, oh, do I want to retire at some point? I’m like, no. I’m not going to retire. I don’t want to golf. I don’t want to do that. I want to keep making new stuff. And he kept making new stuff until the very end.

One of the things I tweeted about right when I found out that he passed away, I got an email from my agent saying we’ve heard that Dick Zanuck died but it’s not confirmed yet. And so I was sort of sitting on it for 20 minutes, like do I say anything about that, do I acknowledge it? Or do I wait for some confirmation?

**Craig:** [laughs] Oh my god. You’re News Rooming.

**John:** I was totally News Rooming it.

**Craig:** You were News Rooming.

**John:** And then I was like, “Oh, but I hope it’s not Deadline Hollywood Daily that prints it first.” But then they did say it first. And so like it was confirmation so I could say what I wanted to say, but then it felt like I was responding to her post.

**Craig:** Yeah, god.

**John:** But what I needed to say, and what I appreciated so much about Zanuck was that he recognized the long game of it all. And he recognized that relationships were more important than any one movie. And so when we would have to call me with bad news, he would pick up the phone and call me with bad news. And he would call me to tell me that I was fired, or that they weren’t making a movie, or that stuff had fallen apart, and he was brilliant at being able to that and not making it feel like the world was going to end. And so many people are so afraid to share negative news, and you have to. And he was terrific at that.

So I will very much miss him. But I will also miss the qualities that I thought he brought to that part of the industry.

**Craig:** That was so beautiful that I can’t help but fondly imagine what it’s going to be like when I die and you do that first podcast after I’m gone.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah. The eulogy podcast will be the new trend by that point.

**Craig:** I think actually that podcast will just be like, “Hi, this is John August. This Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. I’m John August. And, anyway, today we’re gonna go on. We have some news. There’s nothing really to follow up on.”

**John:** That was the moment of silence was when you should have spoken.

**Craig:** [laughs] It’s like a weird little pause.

**John:** Let’s answer some questions, Craig.

**Craig:** Let’s do it, while I’m still alive.

**John:** Paul from Onalaska, Wisconsin — come on, Onalaska, Wisconsin? That’s a great name.

**Craig:** Onalaska.

**John:** Onalaska. “In a previous podcast you told the story about how Hayden Christensen and his brother were pitching a show to a USA studio exec. That exec turned around and developed a similar show, seemingly based on Christensen’s idea.” Emphasis on seemingly, allegedly. The court case that happened said that they did actually have to proceed and investigate further, so.

“With that in mind, what are your thoughts on pitch festivals or websites like logline.com? It seems very risky putting your ideas out there, especially at pitch festivals for aspiring screenwriters looking for a foot in the door. To me it seems like a bunch of production companies and producer wannabes are getting together to find good ideas without having to hire the creator of the ideas. Will they likely take it, put their own people on it, and develop it as their own? Is it worth it, or do we stay away from these things?”

**Craig:** And, you know, this is one thing where I think everybody involved is silly. They’re not going to steal… — Let me just say this, because I know you and I [laughs] have said this.

**John:** We’ve said it so many times. But say it again.

**Craig:** I’m gonna say it again.

**John:** Or put it on a tee-shirt.

**Craig:** Now the umbrage is coming.

No one wants to steal you idea.

This is, for our podcast, this is the “You don’t have Lupus.” It’s not Lupus, okay? Nobody wants to steal your idea people. This fantasy you have that you’ve come up with the flux capacitor and they’re going to take it from you and stick it into the DeLorean and rip you off…

**John:** Or how about the windshield wiper…

**Craig:** Is not valid. The pitch festivals — listen to me carefully — the pitch festivals are not there to steal your ideas. You know what they are there to steal? Your money. Okay? That’s what it’s about. Yes, it’s a scam and stupid — don’t do it because no movies come out of pitch festivals. The point is, they’re gathering $50 to $100 from each one of you people. That’s the thing.

Get it? It’s like Die Hard. They’re not terrorists. It’s just a bank robbery. Okay? So that’s the deal. John?

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** John? I feel good. [laughs]

**John:** Yeah, your instincts were right but wrong.

**Craig:** I feel really good about that.

**John:** Yeah, you got the umbrage out? You hulked out there?

**Craig:** [yarr] I feel good. I’m calm. I’m calm.

**John:** So, to summarize: pitch festivals — probably a bad idea because they’re a scam that wants to take your money, not because they want to take your idea.

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. I mean, this whole concern that — first of all, I’m sure they make you sign a billion waivers anyway. Yeah, of course they’re making you sign away your rights. But they’re not there for your ideas.

I mean, if John and I ran a pitch fest, we could make a lot of money, just to listen to you, right?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And these things are enormous, right? Have you ever — I’ve never gone to like whatever that one is downtown.

**John:** At one point, I think in Austin, I was on a pitch panel festival thing, and I found it painful because people were trying to pitch their ideas and there was a special format they were supposed to do and it was awkward and some of the things were terrible.

So, no, but I’ve never been paid to do this. Blech. No.

**Craig:** Yeah, no. So, anyway, the point is no they’re not trying to rip you off. No, you shouldn’t be doing them anyway. No one is trying to steal your idea. They’re just trying to make money off of you. You do not have Lupus.

**John:** Question number two. Oh, I think I should respond to this one first because you’re just going to go into full umbrage mode.

**Craig:** Oh good.

**John:** Sharice asks, “Me and a couple friends are very interested in shooting a pilot for TV show on any network about our lives and daily activities. Who should we contact? Sent from my iPad.”

**Craig:** [laughs]

**John:** So, Sharice, so here is why I’m going to treat your question seriously and sort of not mock you for it, because I think it is great that you are probably a younger person who wrote in with a question and you said, like, “I want to make a TV show and I’m going to go online and figure out who makes TV shows and ask my question.” So, I don’t want to mock you for doing that, because maybe you’re like 16, and baby, that’s awesome.

So, here is what I will say about you wanting to make a TV show with your friends: I think there’s probably never been a better time for you just to make a TV show with your friends. And that’s what YouTube is for, honestly. You should be shooting whatever you want to shoot on whatever cameras you sort of feel like shooting. Write as much as you feel like writing beforehand. And just try to make it together.

Because, if you are this 16-year-old girl who has interesting friends, maybe someone will see it and want to do something more with it. So I don’t want to sort of squash your dreams of that.

Sometimes there are really talented people who get together and it’s like, “Oh, we’re just gonna shoot something,” and it becomes something useful. Like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Those guys were smart and they wrote a show, and they shot their show, and people liked it.

What I would say, and what Craig would throw a chair at you for, is the idea that, “Oh, I have an idea. And if I have an idea then someone’s going to want to pay me to write and make this show.” That’s not going to happen because you’ve not shown that you actually have the ability to write something, to do something, to make something. So, you’re going to have to do that, and there’s probably never been a better time to do that than now.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, everybody’s experience with their friends is colored by the fact that it’s their friends. It’s, you know, “you had to be there” — you ever hear of that expression?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** My guess is that your friends, like 99.9999% of everybody’s friends, are not interesting enough to anyone else to actually pay money to watch. I mean, if you go to a restaurant and people literally all stop eating and just gather around you and listen and applaud as you and your friends do your stuff, then you’re on to something. But other than that, it’s just funny to you guys, you know.

You can be inspired by it to create characters that are universal that people might relate to, but generally speaking you don’t want to start from a position of narcissism. Very, very difficult to make a show out of yourself and your buddies.

**John:** Yeah. So Go, my first produced script, is very much influenced by people I knew and grew up with. And that said, I wasn’t trying to make a movie about them. I was just taking the very, very most interesting things I could find about them and their lives, and in most cases asking permission to say like, “Can I borrow that thing where you set the hotel room on fire?” And I put those together as a package, but it wasn’t literally about them.

You may find that you actually have a life that’s interesting enough that it’s worth becoming a TV show. You might be Lena Dunham and you just wrote kind of a lame email. Who knows?

**Craig:** Yeah. Exactly. And even in Go you took characters that were influenced by people that you knew in real life but you put them in a situation that was very compressed and very dramatic.

**John:** Yes.

**Craig:** You weren’t just sitting around Diner style. I mean, I think movies like Diner have ruined more people than anyone else. I mean, because they seem easy. They’re not. [laughs]. And it kind of helps to be really, really smart and really, really funny when you write them. But ultimately they’re about bigger things. You watch Diner, there’s quite a bit of drama in there as well, so, there you go.

**John:** There you go. Question three is actually related to this. “If someone writes a screenplay that includes characters taking part in illegal activity that’s a comedy, but part of the comedy is that the screenplay is based on true events and the writer is totally open about that, then when the film is released can the writer or their characters,” basically, the writer’s real friends, “get arrested for that illegal activity?”

**Craig:** Oh, wait, hold on. [laughs] First of all, no one’s getting arrested. But can you explain what this guy is talking about?

**John:** “Does the law look at films and can investigations get underway based simply on speculation? I may just a neurotic plagued to paranoia, but it’s a concern for me.”

Well, he answered his own question. You are a neurotic plagued with paranoia. Basically this guy is saying, “I want to write a script about some crazy stuff that happened. It’s kind of based on my friends,” and he’s worried that because everyone will know, or it will be promoted as like sort of based on some real stuff that happened, that the police could come after him for…

**Craig:** Hey listen, listen. Here they come. [police sirens] Here they come, buddy. They’re coming for your script. “Uh, we have a report of a possibly too-true-real-life scene in route.”

Yeah, listen: You can’t use someone’s life freely. They actually own their life. You have to get the rights to their life if you’re going to use their life. However, if you’re picking little incidents, things that would… — At the end of movies they say, “Any resemblance to persons living or dead are intentional,” I think is the language. You should ask for permission if there’s something specific. If you have a friend, however, that exhibits some behavior that you find interesting that other people also exhibit, it’s fair game.

If there’s something real specific though that you’re taking, then you should ask them and get permission. Either way, you’re not arrested; it’s not a crime. It’s a tort.

**John:** His concern isn’t for himself and being sued for having taken somebody’s life rights. His concern is that the people who he is fictionalizing in his story, that would become the basis for them getting in trouble.

So, the examples he brings up…

**Craig:** Oh, I see, like the law will say, “You wrote a character that did a crime; we’re going to come after this guy because of your script?”

**John:** Yeah, examples he has, like being of a foreign nationality and working under the table in the US. Collecting disability checks but working part-time as an independent limo driver.

**Craig:** No. No, it’s fiction. You’re creating fiction. Your script is evidence of nothing in a court of law.

**John:** I agree. So don’t be paranoid.

**Craig:** I mean, neither one of us are lawyers, so if somebody ends up in jail, whoops. But I just don’t see how a lawyer could possibly say, “Look, he wrote a script…”

The only instance where I could see that — now I understand the question, I’m so sorry — but the only way I could possibly see a screenplay being evidentiary is if, for instance, you killed Mike. And a week before you killed Mike you sent a spec out about how this guy kills his husband. And it was the same exact method, and motive, and all the rest. Then they would go, “Um, this is admissible.”

But if somebody reads a script and says, “Well this character reminds me a lot of his friend. And in the movie this character is doing something illegal.” No.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** No.

**John:** Don’t worry about.

So, let’s get onto our big topic this week which is what script should you write, which is kind of an evergreen question because when I was first starting to work as a screenwriter I was writing spec scripts. And so I could write anything. I could write a comedy. I could write a drama. I could write an alien western. I could do anything I wanted to do. And that freedom was great, but it was also a little terrifying because I wasn’t sure if I was spending my time writing the right thing.

That question continues throughout your whole career, because you’re always choosing, well what is it that I’m going to spend my time working on? It gets more complicated as you become a writer for hire because there could be money involved. There could be personalities involved. There could be reasons why you want to take one project or another project, or why you don’t want to take any of the projects you’re being offered and go off and write that spec script for the thing you want to do.

So, the decision about what you’re going to spend your time doing is going to be a factor in every screenwriter’s life, at every stage of the career. So I thought we’d spend a few minutes talking about that.

**Craig:** Yeah. I see this online a lot, too, where people are juggling three or four different things. I mean, I like the notion of thinking, “Which one of these ideas would actually seem most like a movie? Would people want to see one of these?” Although I still think the primary question should be, “Which one of these do I feel the most interested in writing? Which one of these ideas inspires the most passion?” Ultimately that will lead to the better script.

And I’m confused by people that are like, “I don’t’ know. I like them both the same.” And I feel like, eh, you’re not really a writer.

**John:** So here’s some criteria that I thought of and maybe we can add to this list as we go through in that sort of decision matrix of how to figure out which of these projects you want to write.

First off, people always say “write what you know,” which I think is terrible advice.

**Craig:** Totally.

**John:** From people who don’t know anything.

**Craig:** I know.

**John:** To me, the criteria should be write the movie you wish you could see. And by wish you could see, I’m literally talking like write the movie you would pay money to see opening weekend. Don’t waste your time writing a movie that you’re like, “Oh, I’d catch it on cable.” Why are you writing that movie?

If it’s not a movie that you were dying to see you shouldn’t be spending your time writing the movie.

**Craig:** Right. That’s good advice.

**John:** If you’re writing something because you think it will sell, it’s probably the wrong movie to write. And that is just personal experience. The movie that I wrote, I was like, “Oh, I’m going to do this because I think I can totally sell it and I see other movies that are like it that are selling, and I read on Deadline Hollywood that this thing sold.” Don’t. Because it’s unlikely that it’s going to be the movie you really want to make. You’re going to be thinking about the dollar signs every time you sit down at the computer. And trends change. And so by the time you finish that script six months from now, that may not be the kind of movie that’s big or selling right now.

**Craig:** Yeah, you know, the process of writing a movie, selling it, getting it into production, having it made, edited, released, marketed, that entire process after you type The End is a very cynical process. It cynicizes everything — that’s not a verb but I’m going to make it up. So if you start that cynical it’s just going to get even worse. Start pure. Let everybody else smear mud all over it because they will.

**John:** Yeah. Another question from me. If you think there’s any chance at all you might be a director or that you might want to direct a movie, or might want to direct the movie that you’re writing, write the smaller thing that you could actually direct yourself. Write the one that was in your wheel house and range ability to direct.

So, if you’re thinking about writing a giant Fast-and-the-Furious-but-with-robots movie, or Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and you want to direct, probably Sex, Lies, and Videotape would be your way to go — you know, characters in a contained setting.

I say this just because while there are rare exceptions, there’s the Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, where some guy just writes a script and somehow makes it, most cases you’re going to need to write something that’s actually of a scale that you could do it yourself if it’s really going to be your first movie.

**Craig:** Yeah, for sure. And in that case I think production experience helps, if you’ve actually spent time on movie sets you can see the dramatic difference between a day of shooting where two people are talking over a table, and a day of shooting where there is a car chase. The amount of screen minutes you can generate in a day is dramatically different. And so if, you know, “What I’d like to do is make a little movie and I have $100,000 cobbled together from various sources to spend,” write with that budget in mind. No question.

**John:** Yeah. Or do Buried. Buried was very much written as a script that the writer could direct. The writer ended up letting another director do it, but it’s a guy in a coffin. I mean, it’s obviously a huge challenge to write that movie, but it’s a very specific — it’s a script that was written to be shot, and there’s a lot to be said for that, if that’s your goal. If your goal is to direct. Or, I think in his case, he was actually an actor as well, so like in his head he might have been acting in that movie. That’s smart.

**Craig:** I have another one to add on. I don’t know if it’s on your list, but the sort of the better version of “write what you know” is “write what you’re supposed to write.” I know the kinds of movies I’m supposed to write, and I write those. And that’s not — it’s not narrow. There’s actually a pretty decent range of kinds of comedies I can do. Like for instance, Identity Theft is, I think, the closest to the sort of movie I ought to be writing more of, and I’d like to be writing more of, but I can also do this kind or that kind. But what I don’t do is I don’t write horror movies. And I don’t write romantic comedies because I don’t understand them.

There was a romantic comedy that very good directors were talking to me about, and it was a really good idea, and they had really good casting ideas, and we had lots of interesting conversations. But in the end I realized I’m actually not capable of writing a romantic comedy. It’s not what I ought to be writing. I don’t have that gear.

You have to accept the kind of writer you are. Forget writing fancier or writing less fancy, just write what you ought to be writing.

**John:** My agent has a list beside his phone, or he did at some point earlier on in my career, of like “These are the genres that John just won’t write.” And because these things would keep coming up and it’s like, no, because that’s not my kind of movie.

And so, prison movies. I like prison movies but I’m just not going to write a prison movie. That’s just not my thing. Futuristic prison movies, which is like a subcategory that was really big for a while, and so I had to keep passing on futuristic prison movies. Jewel heist movies. I don’t care. I don’t like them. I don’t like caper movies. That’s not my thing at all. And kind of war movies. There’s people who are great at writing movies, and so you should go to one of the war movie people to write the war movies because I’m just never going to be that guy.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you can try if you want. it will just come out dead. It’s just not a good idea.

**John:** So write something that intrigues you. And so often I will pick something that is like I’m a little bit nervous about writing it because it’s not exactly what I’m sort of known for, and I think I have a wider range of genres than many other screenwriters do, and so sometimes I’ll pick something that I’m a little bit scared of, but I’m not going to pick something that’s just completely out of left field.

And it’s not for fear of being pigeon-holed. It’s for fear of like I’m not going to care about that.

**Craig:** Yeah. And you want to be… — Look, the nice thing is you want to be able to have some sort of… You want to be in touch with your own voice so you know if you are straying a little bit outside of your wheel house that you’re still bringing your voice to whatever it is.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** If you can’t — I can’t bring my voice. I mean, I suppose I could. Well, I think about for instance horror movies. You know, I could take a stab at one of those, but I’d rather watch Kevin Williamson do it. He’s better at being funny horror writer than I ever could be, so what’s the point? Just let him do it. He’s really good at it.

**John:** Yeah. And potentially a controversial note, but I think one you might agree with. All things being equal, write a comedy. So, if you’re choosing between the drama and the comedy, and all the other criteria has sort of balanced themselves out, if you’re a funny person write the comedy.

**Craig:** Oh yeah.

**John:** Because you will get more enjoyment out of writing the comedy. They’re generally more fun to write. They’re generally more fun to read. It’s easier to keep the ball up in the air in a comedy than it is in a drama. And there’s a lot to kind of be said for that.

This thing I just, a friend of mine just read this last week, which is one of the first originals I’ve written in quite a long time, it’s a comedy. And he said, and he didn’t mean to say it in a bad way, he’s like, “Oh, I didn’t realize you were funny.” And I was like, “Oh, well, thanks.” But I’m not sort of known for doing comedies recently. And so it was new for him to see me writing a comedy and it made him want to write comedy more because I said, like, yeah, you know, it’s actually kind of great. And it’s like stuff is easier. It’s…

**Craig:** If you’re funny.

**John:** If you’re funny. And that’s the thing. And you may not be funny. And, you know, maybe you won’t know until you write something, until you write the first 30 pages.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, if you’re not funny it’s harder. You know, David Zucker has a great saying. “Kids, don’t try this at home.” Comedy looks easier from the outside, and in some ways there are a lot of things that work in your favor as a writer, but it’s very specialized and either you’re going to be able to do it or you’re not going to be able to do it. Your premise is well-put. All things being equal, yeah, of course.

Writing comedy in Hollywood is a little bit like being a left-handed pitcher in the major leagues. There’s fewer of you. And you’re needed more. So it’s a great thing to be. if you’re a left-handed pitcher nobody tries to make you a right-handed pitcher. Ever. It’s just a good skill. It’s a rare skill in Hollywood. So, yeah, jeez, all things being equal, if you love writing comedy and you’re good at it, absolutely.

**John:** And let’s see if we have more bullet points to add as we try to wrap these up. And the reason why this topic is on here at all is I was speaking at the Writers Guild a couple weeks ago and these two guys came up. They were writing partners. And they said — I think they may have been brothers even — “We’re considering these two things.” So I had them describe like the one sentence version of what the two projects were. And I said, “You need to write that one.”

And I could do it because I could tell there’s one they actually cared about and there’s one they were just going to write because they thought it could sell. And if you’re writing something just because you think it can sell it’s not going to be the interesting one.

And here’s the other thing: Just because you’re picking this one to write, that doesn’t mean you never get to write the other one. Write the one that is sort of most appealing to you to write, get it done, and then quickly write the next one.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So, the summary would be: Write the movie you wish you could see. And write the movie you would actually pay money, your own dollars to see in the movie theater on Friday. So, if you can’t say that you’d really see that movie, you’re probably writing the wrong movie. It’s probably not the movie for you to be writing.

And I think that’s a good criteria because if the movie you desperately want to see is the four-hour version of Pride and Prejudice done with puppets, then that’s the movie you should probably write because it’s going to be different than every other movie that’s out there right now. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy to make, but I can respect the person who writes that movie because they really want to see that movie.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Write comedy if you’re funny. And write small if it’s something you want to direct yourself. Don’t write super small if it’s something you want someone else to direct.

**Craig:** I agree with all of that.

**John:** Craig, do you have a Cool Thing this week?

**Craig:** I have a Relatively Cool Thing.

**John:** Uh-oh.

**Craig:** I say “relatively cool” because in fact it’s not cool. But it’s cooler than the alternative. I was sort of hesitating to even talk about it, but I think it’s probably a good thing to talk about.

So, I am a cigar smoker. I love cigars.

**John:** Oh no.

**Craig:** No, oh yes.

**John:** Craig, I want you to be alive for the podcast in 57 years.

**Craig:** I know. Now here’s the thing: Cigars…

**John:** Oh, they’re healthy.

**Craig:** They’re not healthy. [laughs] But on the other hand, as far as I can tell from the various research, if you smoke a cigar without inhaling any of the smoke, which is the way I smoke, and most cigar smokers do, the incidence of cancer and so forth is actually fairly low. It’s pretty close to the baseline. But that said, not a great idea anyway. There’s still carcinogens in the smoke and there’s a slightly elevated risk for lip, tongue, and so-forth cancer.

Again, if you don’t inhale at all. If you inhale even a little bit you’re in big trouble. But, given that, I wanted to sort of wean myself off. But the truth is I love nicotine. Nicotine does wonderful things to my brain. I smoked cigarettes for seven years, many years ago. I quit the week before I got married actually because I thought, can’t do that to my wife, you know. And so I haven’t smoked a cigarette in over 15 years. But what do you do if you like nicotine, which is a spectacular drug — it’s sort of like caffeine but much, much better.

What do you do? So, here’s my sort of Cool Thing for the week to help wean myself off cigars and reduce the number down to maybe one a week. They now have electronic cigarettes. Have you seen these, John?

**John:** I’ve heard of them. I’ve never seen them so I want a full description.

**Craig:** It’s actually a pretty amazing invention. And I’m talking about it mostly because I know there are people out there that smoke regular cigarettes and I want them to stop because that in fact is absolutely 100% for sure super duper bad, as we all know.

So, the idea of the electronic cigarette is: what if we could make a device that would allow you to inhale vapor that had nicotine in it and then just a bunch of inert stuff that doesn’t do anything? And typically the stuff is propylene glycol which is the inert substance that they use in fog machines or in asthma inhalers. Or, vegetable glycerin which is, again, just an inert substance. It does nothing to you.

So, we create this little device. And the only chemical that’s in it is just nicotine, which in and of itself is not carcinogenic at all. So the way it works is there is a battery and there are two kinds of batteries that they use. One is manual and one is automatic — the automatic one is the one that is sort of amazing to me. There’s a little membrane inside of it, and as you inhale the membrane moves forward and closes a circuit that then sends electricity into the next part of this thing which is what they call a cartomizer which…is bowdlerization the word when you combine words together to make a word?

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** It’s a bowdlerization of cartridge and atomizer. And all that really is is a cylinder, and inside the cylinder is cotton wadding of some kind, some fibrous wadding, and a wire. So, the battery, so you inhale, the membrane in the battery closes circuit. Electricity goes through the battery, hits the atomizer wire. Wire heats up, heats up the liquid that’s soaked up in the cotton wadding. That essentially vaporizes. You inhale the vapor. You breathe it out. It’s water vapor when you breathe it out.

**John:** So there’s no second-hand smoke?

**Craig:** No second-hand smoke. No smell. No odor. No ash. And also none of the carcinogenic byproducts of combustion, and there’s a whole big bunch of them, because as it turns out the things that kill you in tobacco are not nicotine at all.

**John:** Yeah. The tars, the resins, and everything else.

**Craig:** All of that stuff. Exactly. So then the question is: what about nicotine in and of itself? Is that bad for you? And you know, it’s kind of interesting. Some people sort of say, well, it’s a little bit bad for you the way caffeine is a little bit bad for you. And some people say, in moderation, frankly no, it’s not that bad for you. So certainly if you smoke cigarettes there’s no question that you should stop and smoke one of these things instead. No question.

**John:** Thank you for your description of the actual cigarette, because I didn’t understand how they actually worked. So, do you throw away that thing when you’re done with it?

**Craig:** Well, there’s a couple different kinds. The kind that you might see, gas stations are starting to sell these things now, these sort of disposable ones, and yes, you would throw one of those away.

For people that do this regularly you would actually buy some batteries and some cartridges that you could refill on your own.

**John:** I was thinking about throwing away the battery, it feels horrible. So that’s not a great thing for the world.

**Craig:** True. You don’t want to just chuck batteries. The batteries that you can buy for these things are rechargeable batteries, and you can use them over, and over, and over, and over, and the cartridges. And then you can even buy, there’s like a whole cottage industry — it’s one of the dumbest words I’ve ever heard: vaping. So that’s what they call it, vaping, instead of smoking, which is really annoying.

But, regardless, there’s a whole cottage industry of people that make what they call E-Juice or Electronic Cigarette Juice which comes in various flavors, some of which are to mimic tobacco flavors. Some of which are kooky flavors like chocolate, and cherry, and all this nonsense, which I don’t go near.

But, it’s so much better for you than smoking a real cigarette and I think it’s better for you than smoking a cigar. And, also, you can do it indoors because there’s no smell. You can smoke it anywhere.

**John:** Yeah. I grew up in a smoking household. And so smoking has appalled me my entire life. So, this does sound vastly better. What I wonder, and you know, there’s obviously the possibility that it becomes a gateway to like somebody trying this and then going to real cigarettes. I also wonder if there’s a happy gateway where like someone who smokes goes to this and says, “This just feels really stupid and plasticy now. I’m just going to stop doing it all together,” which could also be great.

**Craig:** That would be great. And they do have various levels of nicotine. I mean, I only use the kind that is the literally the lowest possible amount of nicotine. And there are some indications that very little bit of nicotine actually even makes it into your bloodstream by the time you heat the wire up and do all this stuff. But it is, to me, it should be viewed as a way to get yourself off of this other stuff. Because the truth is we can say to people quit smoking or smoke less, and they don’t. This is sort of like the smoking equivalent of a needle exchange.

**John:** [laughs] Yeah. A reasonable solution to a problem that is going to be there whether you like it or not.

**Craig:** Right. Exactly. I mean, we can say that people with free needles are going to go heroin crazy, but the truth is, no, they’re already kind of crazy with the heroin so you might as well keep them from getting AIDS. I mean, bottom line.

So I think that this thing is actually a spectacular invention and I urge anybody that is struggling with cigarettes to give it a shot. The version I use, a very popular one, it’s the Joyetech 510. The 510 model.

**John:** When Apple comes out with theirs it will be so much better than all the other ones.

**Craig:** Oh my god, it will be the best. It will be the best. But until that time I use the 510 with a Boge cartomizer. And I use E-Juice from Johnson. So there you go.

**John:** Good. My One Cool Thing is similar in a way in that it’s nothing I can actually fully recommend to people to use, but maybe to borrow a friend’s to see sort of what it’s like because it’s an intriguing vision of the future.

I bought one of the Nexus 7s, which is the little small Android-powered tablets that Google sells directly from their website. And I bought it because I really wanted to see what that form factor was like, because it’s a 7-inch which is sort of in-between what an iPhone size is and what a full iPad size is. And I wanted to see what that was like. I wanted to see what the most up-to-date version of Android was like, and what it felt like on the tablets. And consistent with a lot of the reviews — I didn’t read the reviews ahead of time, but now that I’ve gone back and read the reviews, I think a lot of them are largely right, is that it’s a pretty good little tablet.

And for $200 there’s actually a very valid case to be made for buying this if you can’t buy an iPad. Like if you were a kid who was using his own money to buy something, and you have $200 and you want a tablet, you can get this tablet and it would actually be pretty good.

I’m not in love with the Android of it all. And there’s stuff that gets to be very frustratingly… — I try to differentiate between stuff that’s just different from how I’m used to it on Apple stuff and stuff that it’s just like, well, that didn’t seem like a very smart decision.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And there’s some things which are interface stuff which is just really kind of random. You can’t figure out where you are at in the applications. But the size of it is actually kind of appealing. And for an e-reader, for a book, it’s actually really good. It’s a nice size. I find the iPad is really heavy to read a book on.

**Craig:** It is.

**John:** This is a much more reasonable size. So, it was interesting. Part of the reason why I bought it is I wanted to see whether we should be converting some of our apps that are on iOS over to Android and whether this is going to become a really viable tablet. I don’t feel the pressing need to be working on a Reader app, a Screenplay Reader app for this now, quite yet, because it doesn’t feel…

**Craig:** What is the app store situation for that? Because I don’t have any Android stuff. Is the app store full?

**John:** The Android app store is — here’s a difference, is that on Android platforms you can install things from multiple places, and so you’re not locked to just the one official app store. There’s Google Play which is the main app store. And installing the apps from there or from Amazon’s app stores are the most places you’d find them.

For developers, it becomes much more complicated because with an iPhone or an iPad there’s only very few number of devices you have to be able to build for. With Android you really have no idea what screen size you’re going to end up on. You have to make so many more allowances for what the actual hardware is, then it becomes much more problematic. And because of that, sometimes the apps aren’t as sort of fit and finished as they are in the iOS thing. But there are official places where you can buy apps and people could theoretically — some developers make money selling apps there.

**Craig:** It used to be when we were young, if you recall, John, that the knock on Apple was that they were restricted by the fact that they controlled the software and hardware together at the same time. And it seems — and they were restricted in part because the PC clone industry was able to essentially outsource a billion little pieces form a billion different people and reduce the price on these things. And Microsoft was sort of the king in terms of the software.

But now you can see how controlling that pipeline completely from soup to nuts has given Apple a tremendous advantage.

**John:** Yes. If you read the articles on how Apple sort of buys the future, because in success they have so much money that they are able to go to factories and say, “Hey, you are working on this new display technology. We will give you $200 billion to build a new factory, but we’re going to ask for the first 18 months of your output. We get to buy all of it.” And that’s how they sort of get the new technology before anyone else can because they have enough money and leverage to be able to do that.

So, controlling that whole thing has been amazing for them.

**Craig:** Yeah. The guy that run that is now running the whole company. Obviously they take supply chain extremely seriously. They’re clearly the best at it. No one comes close.

**John:** So, my bottom line on the Nexus 7, because also my mother-in-law has the Kindle Fire, so I’ve also been able to try that. It’s a much better device than the Kindle Fire for just using, like maps on this thing is terrific. And a couple years ago on the maps application on this all by itself would have been worth the price of admission.

The Kindle Fire has a better catalog just because Amazon has so many more movies, and shows, and books you can get on it. The Google Play thing is okay. But you also have the Amazon Kindle store is an app just on the Nexus 7 and it’s really good.

Part of the reason I also bought this is because I was curious; there’s all this talk about there’s going to be an iPad Mini probably coming down the pike, and I thought that’s going to be a terrible idea. That’s going to be a really bad size for a screen for everything. And I was wrong. And I think it’s a good size for a lot of people, especially if it comes down to price where more people can buy it. I think it can be terrifically successful.

And I definitely recognize that the iOS apps that we’re building right now, we’re going to have to plan for screens that size and I think they’ll be successful.

**Craig:** And this is the Nexus 7?

**John:** The Nexus 7. So I would recommend, like listen: If you’re really curious about where the Android platform is and sort of what the best of it is, I think it’s a good way to spend $200 because you get like the actual most recent device. You don’t have to pay for a contract if you’re buying a phone. You get a chance to play around with it.

**Craig:** Interesting.

**John:** And if this device becomes popular or if the iPad version of this becomes popular, you can definitely see like loading up schools with these, because if it’s a $200 thing you can actually afford to buy them for the whole classroom and use them as books for things. Whereas at $400 or $500 the iPad becomes too expensive.

**Craig:** Right. And do they have a Kindle app?

**John:** They do. There’s a Kindle app on it just like there’s a Kindle app for the iPad. There’s a Kindle app for this and it’s pretty good.

**Craig:** Maybe I’ll buy one for my son. Because, you know, mostly I just want him to read books.

**John:** Yeah. And the frustration that there aren’t as many great games on it will mean that he’ll read books.

**Craig:** Precisely.

**John:** Although I will say my favorite book reader device is still by far the $79 Kindle from Amazon, which is the non-backlit E-ink screen. It has ads on it but it’s a really good reader and it’s so lightweight that I’ll actually stick it in a jacket pocket and carry it around with me.

**Craig:** What about that Barnes & Noble one? Is that dead? The Nook?

**John:** The Nook? This, I think, is going to make a little bit harder case for the Nook. There’s a version of the Nook now that has lighting on it that people like a lot, that has a touch screen that has lighting on it that some people like a lot. So, god bless them, they’re still making stuff.

But I think a lot of nerds were buying the Nook and then rooting it to sort of put it back to a real Android software and they’re using that to develop and stuff. And I feel like this Nexus 7 would replace that instinct.

**Craig:** One last question about the Nexus 7. Can I smoke it?

**John:** You could totally smoke. And you put little batteries in there and the wire hits the membrane, and just inhale. It’s really good.

**Craig:** Even your pretend smoking didn’t sound right.

**John:** Yeah, god, I’m not an actor, but my fantasy is at some point when I become quite old — when I become 80-years old and have lived a good long life — I want be like the Gore Vidal who sort of like enters in and becomes the wise old man in movies. But they can’t have me smoke because I just couldn’t do it. And you can always tell when an actor has no idea how to smoke.

**Craig:** Clearly.

**John:** They hold a cigarette wrong. Everything’s just wrong about it.

**Craig:** They hold it wrong. They inhale sort of like a cigar and puff it out. I will tell you this, I’m on record: Once I cross 85 I’m going out, buying a pack of Marlboro Reds and get going. [laughs] Because I don’t care anymore.

**John:** A better idea might be to buy a pack right now and stick it in a vault, because they won’t be selling them.

**Craig:** They won’t. And I actually do believe, in all seriousness, that the electronic cigarette will kill regular cigarettes. I do.

**John:** Wow.

**Craig:** I think that — here’s the trick, not to bring it back around to that, but really it comes down to the government. If the government gets stupid in their anti-smoking zeal and bans these things, that will be a tragedy. Interestingly, there have been a number of major medical associations, I think the American Medical Association, perhaps, or the Heart and Lung — one of the larger medical associations came out and supported these things and said these should be legal for sure. This is way better than smoking for people who smoke. Way better.

**John:** Yeah, you convinced me.

**Craig:** So get smoking…

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** …and I may pick up that Nook…I mean, not the Nook, the Nexus 7 just to give it a swing and see what it’s like. And if I hate it I promise to take a video of myself smashing it with a baseball bat.

**John:** Yeah, $200, it’s not mad money. I mean, $200 is real money to be spending on something, so I don’t want people to wantonly say, “Oh, John August recommends it,” because it’s a half-hearted recommendation. But I did find it fascinating, and for people who are curious about it, I was curious and my curiosity was sated.

**Craig:** Excellent. Well that was a good Cool Thing.

**John:** Awesome. All right. Thank you so much, Craig.

**Craig:** Thank you, John.

**John:** Talk to next week.

**Craig:** Bye.

The original post for this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2012/mistakes-development-executives-make).

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

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

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

**Craig:** Yes!

**John:** Hooray, we did it right!

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** This is actually our second attempt to start the show.

**Craig:** You know, you could of course just record… — I mean, we have 50 versions of you doing that. They really should just put that on for us.

**John:** You know what? I think it should just be a simple copy and paste.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** For now on Stuart will just copy and paste it and start because it’s the same every week.

**Craig:** And you’re really consistent with the way you do it.

**John:** I really am.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Today we’re going to talk about two different topics that have nothing to do with Comic-Con. First we’re going to talk about the mistakes that development executives often make with writers and see if we can offer some suggestion for improving those mistakes, or not making those mistakes. And second we’re going to do the first couple of scripts that came in for the script challenge.

So, this Three Page Challenge that we talked about at the end of last week’s podcast, we asked readers to send in three pages of their screenplay and we would look at it and talk about it on the air. And a bunch of people did, and so many people did. And so Stuart dutifully read all of them and suggested a couple that we could look at, and we’re going to look at three of them today.

**Craig:** Fantastic. And just because I know people are going to ask: are we going to do it again?

**John:** Yes. I think we will do it again if it’s fun.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** So you have to listen through to the end of the podcast to see if we had a good time. And then if we had a good time, we’ll do it again.

**Craig:** We’ll do it again. Great.

**John:** A bit of housekeeping. On the last podcast you were going to play your guitar, but then you didn’t play your guitar because you offered your own kind of challenge, which to recap: If we were to cross over to 100,000 listeners you would play a guitar solo as our outro music. And weirdly this last week the numbers showed that we crossed over to 100,000, but I don’t think it was really an accurate number. And here’s why I think it was an inaccurate number.

This last week was the week that Apple released the podcast app for the iPhone. And the podcast app is controversial because its user interface is kind of terrible. Also, it tends to want to download a bunch of things that you’ve already downloaded before. So, people who are already subscribers to our show might suddenly find themselves with like 20 episodes of our show being downloaded to their phone. And so I think a lot of these greatly inflated numbers are because people who are already fans and subscribers to the show and have downloaded that file again even though they already listened to it. So, we’ll give it a few weeks and see how it sorts itself out.

**Craig:** And because I wasn’t ready anyway. And just to be clear, I’m actually a terrible guitarist, but it’s really more about singing a song. I mean, I can play guitar along with myself, but guitar solo sounds Eddie Van Halen-ish.

**John:** Oh yeah. That’s a good point.

**Craig:** I can’t do that.

**John:** So you’re going to give us an acoustic session.

**Craig:** There you go. It will be unplugged. Yeah.

**John:** Yes, there you go. Craig Mazin Unplugged.

**Craig:** Unplugged.

**John:** And weirdly my Cool Thing for the end of the show is also about music. So, it’s all going to kind of fit together. Even though we don’t get the Craig Mazin singing experience.

**Craig:** Not yet. But if you get… — Friends can start listening to this thing, then finally the world will be rewarded with the thing it’s been waiting for the most.

**John:** That you never knew you wanted but now you can’t live without.

Also, in a bit of follow up, which is really kind of blog follow up so I’m not sure to what degree I’m allowed to talk about it on the podcast, but really it’s our rules.

**Craig:** Do it. There’s no rules here.

**John:** There’s no rules. So, AMC Theaters, which is one of the big theater chains in the nation, but Los Angeles and California has a lot of AMC Theaters, there is a lawsuit happening where some of the employees are suing AMC theaters saying they should be allowed to sit on the job if they’re selling tickets or ripping tickets and doing that kind of stuff.

And so it’s a class action lawsuit that we’ll see how it proceeds. And so I wrote about that on the blog and it got me… I sort of offhandedly mentioned that sitting is terrible for you and that I work at a standing desk. And so a lot of people wrote in to ask, “Oh, so what is your standing desk situation?” And so I thought I would talk a little bit about that if that’s okay.

**Craig:** Yeah. Go ahead. I mean, is there much to say other than that you’re standing at a desk?

**John:** I’m standing at a desk. And actually I do all the podcasts standing up and I’ve been doing that for a couple months, and it’s just better I think. Sitting is actually really bad for your body. It sort of… — Not only is it kind of bad for your back and you’re compressing your spine and stuff, someone how it slows down certain processes and your cholesterol gets weird. People should stand up more if they have the opportunity to stand up.

So my desk situation… — And I don’t want you to feel like they should do what I do, but it’s working well for me. I use this thing called an Anthro Cart. Anthro is a furniture company and they make a bunch of different kinds of desks. The one I have is I think the older version; it’s called the Adjusta. And I originally bought this desk because I’ve had horrible carpal tunnel problems. And I use a special weird keyboard that I’ve linked to before that has sort of vertical keys on it. And I need to set the typing surface really low so that it fits nice, so that my wrists are in the right position for typing on it.

The nice thing about the Adjusta desk is it can go really low but it can also go nice and high. And so when I’m standing up at the desk I can just literally raise the whole level of the front of the table up fairly high and just tilt my monitor up and it’s quite a comfortable service for working at, for typing at.

**Craig:** My working method is to curl up in a ball, as tightly as I can. And then I cry.

**John:** If they can just make a waterproof laptop and I can just work in the shower, that would be awesome.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Be nice and clean.

**Craig:** Clean.

**John:** Clean things.

**Craig:** You know what’s so great is that all the people that sent in pages are like, “Get to my pages!”

**John:** We’re going to just keep stalling.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let’s get on to our first question, which was submitted to you by a friend or colleague I think. And he said he was talking to executives and they had a question for us which is this: What mistakes do development execs constantly make with writers?

**Craig:** Yeah. There’s quite a few, I think. You want to start? I’ve got a litany.

**John:** I’ve got a litany, too. But I have actually kind of a list whereas you’re going to have to think of them.

**Craig:** True. Well why don’t you do your list and then I’ll fill in.

**John:** Yeah. That’s pretty much how this podcast works.

**Craig:** [laughs] Because I don’t really prepare.

**John:** Here’s the first mistake I’ve noticed: not giving immediate feedback and acknowledgement. So, when a writer turns in a script to you, sends you his script, you should immediately say, “Thank you. I got your script and I will read it in this period of time and get right back to you.” So that first email just to say, “It actually came in and I got it and I’m printing it out or I’m putting it on my Kindle,” is so crucial because for the writer we’ve been working on this for days, weeks, months. We just need to know that you actually have it, that the email went through.

Because I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve sent something through on like a Thursday and then on Friday I haven’t heard anything back and I’m like, “Do they actually have it for the weekend to read? Did they really get it? Do I need to call? Do I need to resend?” And I’m going through the weekend with this question. So, email back and say, “Great. I’m so excited. And I will get back to you on Monday.”

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** Then, when you say you’re going to get back on Monday, actually call back on Monday or email back on Monday. Or if you can’t get back with feedback on Monday, send an email that says, “I’m so sorry I can’t get back to you but I enjoyed it and I will get back to you with feedback really, really soon.”

Nothing is worse for a writer than uncertainty. We’d kind of rather hear that you didn’t like some things than to just be wondering, because we are our own worst enemies.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s just simple courtesy. I mean, it’s not going to ruin anything if you act like a jerk, but if you don’t have to act like a jerk, why?

**John:** Yeah. Here’s a magnifying factor: If you have pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and pushed for the writer to turn in the script…don’t badger them for three weeks to turn in the script and then not get back to them for a week.

**Craig:** That is really annoying. And, again, this is sort of in the category of stuff that doesn’t ruin the development process because eventually they call you and then the development process begins. But I have…there’s one producer I will not mention in particular where they would do that check-in call constantly and then it would take sometimes three months for them to read the script.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Well, guys, leave me alone then.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** By the way, I’m not one of those writers that blows through deadlines. I’m really good about it. I say this plane’s landing at 6:30pm, it lands at 6:30pm. Sometimes it lands at 6:25. I am really, really good. So it’s just annoying to me, frankly, to get those constant calls. And I know why they’re doing it because not all writers are good and they’re paranoid and freaked out and their boss is saying, “Don’t let people turn stuff in late,” and I get that. But then come on, [laughs] you know? I mean, at least hold up your end of the charade.

**John:** Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with a check-in call, particularly just so both sides are sort of synchronized in terms of when we think this is going to come in. There’s nothing wrong with a check-in call as long as it’s helpful and positive and doesn’t feel like I’m setting this big timer to go off.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** But, come on, you can’t push a writer to turn something in and then not respond when they turn something in. It’s crazy.

**Craig:** It’s silly.

**John:** Then when you actually have the script and you’re ready to give feedback on the script, praise first. And I can’t tell you how often I’ll go into a meeting or go into something and they won’t tell me what they liked and what they loved. And like, yeah, I’m a grown up. I think I have a fairly thick skin as a writer, but come on, tell me what you liked first. Tell me what worked for you. Even if that’s just two minutes and then the next 90 minutes are going to be a lot of “this didn’t work,” give me some love first.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm.

**John:** And then when you start to point out things that aren’t working, avoid speaking so broadly that I want to kill myself. Sometimes the first things out of your mouth will sound like you’re just talking about a completely different movie, like, “Well what if we did this, and this, and this, and this?” And in my head I’m just shutting down because I’m like, “You want to take this thing that I wrote which was set in the Middle Ages and move it to the future.” And I’m just like, and I’m all I’m doing is just seeing how much work that is going to be to do that and how everything I’ve done has been completely undone.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So even if that is sort of your agenda, why don’t you start on something smaller. Start on something that’s kind of achievable and move us to this bigger idea.

**Craig:** Or, look, sometimes you read a script and you think it’s all wrong.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then, look, I’m a little less requiring of praise maybe than you are. I mean, I’m okay with it. I like it. It actually makes me a little uncomfortable sometimes, too many compliments, because I’m like, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Get to the stuff we have to fix here.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** But it is annoying to me…when you talk about mistakes development executives make when they talk in a big sense about the things they don’t like without acknowledging it. Because sometimes I have had the experience with development executives where they’re saying, “Look, I think what we’d like to see out of this next draft is A, B, and C.” And they’re sort of saying casually, like, “You know, we’d love it if instead if he was a plumber, wouldn’t it be better if he were an electrician?” Except that they’re saying it like that, except what they’re saying is, “We think instead of a comedy it should be a drama.”

And you’re like, wait, don’t marry huge notes with casual tone. Go ahead and acknowledge it. Just say, “Listen, the truth is we actually think this script is far afield of where we want to be.” Just set the tone so at least then when we have the discussion I’m not deciphering that while you talk. I’m not on my own thinking, “Oh wait a second, um, they hate everything.” But I have to say that myself, in my head, putting it together from what they’re saying casually like, “La di da, di da.”

Don’t do that. If you really hate everything or if you — well, not hate. I mean, if you really think the script is just not where it should be story wise or character wise or tone, just be honest about it so at least you can contextualize what’s about to come next.

**John:** I would also stress that if this is something that you you’ve worked and developed with the writer and you think you’re so far afield, you’re going to have to at least take some of the blame for it being so far afield. If you come back and say, “Oh, I think you completely missed the mark, blah, blah, blah,” and this writer was actually doing what you guys agreed he was going to do, then you’re going to have to acknowledge that, “Okay, I think we took a wrong turn here.” And include yourself in that decision process.

**Craig:** Great point. Yes. That is very annoying when development executives divorce themselves from the very things that they input into the process, or that they ask for, or that they agreed to.

You know, I always make sure that we’re all on the same page before I start writing. I like to write outlines and I like to share the outlines with everybody specifically to avoid this. And it is very annoying. And look, to the development executives listening, here’s the upshot: you’re in control anyway. You want to fire us, you fire us; hire us, you hire us. Whatever.

The only thing that really I’m saying to you is I guess the most important step for you for your job is: you want us to do well right? Because you want the script to be good; that reflects well on you. That’s your gig. If you want the script to be good then you do have to acknowledge the partnership because if you don’t we start to hate you.

And it’s fair for us to start to hate you because you’re being a jerk about it. You know, if I come in and I turn a script in and people are like, “Well, you tried this thing here, and we don’t like it.” Okay, you’re right. But, if you ask me to do something and I do it and you’re like, “Why is this here?” Oh my god, now I hate you so much. [laughs] Because I didn’t want to do it in the first place, probably. I might have even warned you.

**John:** Next point I will get to is: criticize the work and don’t criticize the writer. And only twice I think in my career have I gotten the note back saying like, “We think you rushed through this,” or, “We think you did a bad job,” and basically said, like, “We thought you were unprofessional in this.”

**Craig:** Oh, wow.

**John:** And when I hear that, I can never work with this person again. And there is a development executive who is quite well respected throughout the industry, but somehow for some reason she said that. And because of that I never want to work with her again, because I think it was very inaccurate but it was also: who are you to say what my process was or what this is?

If you’re unhappy with the script, say you’re not happy with the script. But don’t say that I didn’t do my job.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Don’t say that, like, I shouldn’t get paid. That’s a pretty crazy thing to go to.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, ultimately it’s not the development person’s job to make that call anyway. If somebody really blows it they blow it. But you’re right. I guess my point would be this to the development executive saying things like that: It might make you feel good and you might believe that that’s true, and it might even be true in some cases, but it’s not going to actually get things to be better. So just… — Just like I tell screenwriters, getting notes is hard, and it’s emotional. Keep your eye on the job.

I would say the same thing to you guys who are development executives. Getting scripts back that you don’t like is emotional and painful. Keep your eye on the job.

**John:** Next thing I’ll point to is credit where the notes are coming from. So, if you as a development executive have this opinion, but you don’t even know what the next level up’s opinion is going to be, or there is just some disagreement there, use your best judgment about how you’re going to share that information.

So I think it’s perfectly fine for a development executive to say, “Listen. I get what you’re going for here, and I really do like this. Here’s the reason why my boss doesn’t like this and that’s going to be a problem. So let’s together figure out how we’re going to get this to a stage where he’s going to respond positively to this thing.”

I will always take uncomfortable honesty over sort of a mystery.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s hard sometimes for them to do that I think though. Because look, ultimately who’s signing their check?

**John:** But the thing is we can always tell when somebody’s giving us a note that they themselves don’t believe at all.

**Craig:** Yeah, we can.

**John:** Because we’re going to be able to say…like, we will ask you three questions and you won’t be able to answer in a meaningful way. The illogic of what you’re saying will come through. And so as you’re giving notes, please before you sit down in the notes session with a writer, look through what your notes are and make sure they’re actually internally consistent, because it’s so tough to be the writer sitting on the couch giving these notes, recognizing these two things are at cross-purposes. And I’m going to point this out in the room and make everyone feel foolish, or I’m going to have to make the awkward call two days later for “classification” to point out you can’t do both of these two things you’re saying.

You can’t say, like, “We want the first act to be much funnier but we really want to feel the drama…” A lot of times you will get those things that are cross-purposes and it’s just not possible to implement them all.

**Craig:** Yeah, and you know, sometimes with those things I just sort of go, “Okay…” and I ignore one of them, you know? Because I feel like half the time really they’re struggling to figure out how to fix something and in the end it’s on our shoulders. Which leads me to one of my sort of pet peeves with development executives, and that’s when they try and fix it for you.

I do not want any development executive telling me how to fix it.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** I want them to tell me what’s wrong. They are an audience. That’s the best version of…they are an audience proxy. And they should be, hopefully, very good at explaining why it’s wrong and a general direction of what they would prefer to see.

But I don’t want them telling me what to write because in the end they’re doing themselves a disservice. If they could write it, they should go ahead and write it. But they can’t. And that requires a little bit of humility, frankly, on the part of the development executive to say, “Look. I don’t like this way. We think a better way would be something like this. Please write something like that or do you have a better idea? Let us help you fix the problem.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** When you dictate to us it makes me insane because all you’re really doing is wasting your money and your time. No writer — no writer — can write something they don’t believe in well. So don’t make us do it.

**John:** To summarize that: Tell us what’s not working for you and why. But do not try to provide the “hows.” Don’t try to provide the “whens” and the “wheres.” Don’t tell us what the solution is. Tell us what’s not working for you. Because if you tell us the problem then we can ask questions that could help root out what’s really the problem.

Because very often the thing that’s happening in the second act or like, “I don’t feel like I’m connected to this character,” the problem isn’t right there. The problem was something earlier and we’re going to have to do some detective work to figure out why you’re not getting this thing that we think is so obvious to you.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I want to get to sort of specific pet peeves, because this is a thing that came out a lot in the Charlie’s Angels movies is that sometimes you’ll get a note and it’s like, “Why am I getting this note?” And if it’s just because it’s your personal pet peeve, or someone’s personal pet peeve, that’s okay to label it as that.

So Nancy Juvonen — who I love — who is a producer on the Charlie’s Angels movies, there was this scene in one of the, I think it was the first movie, where the girls are eating and it was important for the girls to be eating because we wanted to show that girls — that the Angels actually did eat. And ketchup drips on this one file and we wipe it off. And I think I had it in there because it helped, “drops on a photo,” and it was just an easy way for me to show the villain’s face. Just a way to sort of connect who it is that we’re talking about.

And she was sort of talking through, like, “Oh, do we really need to do that?” And I’m like, “Nancy, what’s the problem?” She was like, “I hate that moment where characters are messy and stuff spills on things.” She hates the Carl’s Jr. aspect of that.

**Craig:** Yeah, that’s just…

**John:** Well I said, “That’s fine.” I mean, she’s the producer of the movie. She gets one or two of those where it’s just like, she doesn’t like that, I’ll find another way to do it. And so rather than doing the big long dance over what it is and sort of how it all… — It’s like, you don’t like it. That’s okay. Especially if you’re the director. The director is always allowed to say, “I don’t like that. I don’t get it.”

**Craig:** The director is allowed to say it. That’s exactly what I was going to say. I don’t care if a producer has some weird hang up about the color blue, or people being messy, or singing, or anything. I don’t care. The director is going to make the movie.

So my point is if you have some weird fetish, you should do what we do which is shove it aside because you’re a big boy or a big girl, and you’re making a movie. You’re not exercising your own OCD. And it’s just not cool.

If the director doesn’t like it, they get a pass on it because they have to shoot it just like we get a pass when we have to write things. You can’t tell me that I have to write a certain way because I can’t. There’s some ways I just can’t write. I don’t like certain kinds of writing and I can’t do it, so I won’t. Hire somebody else to do that. But producers and development executives don’t get that pass. Sorry.

**John:** Yeah. I would agree on development executives. A producer, especially on something like Charlie’s Angels which was such a delicate balance of personalities and everything else, I felt like she totally got that right to do that one thing. If that’s the one thing she’s standing up for, awesome.

**Craig:** I guess. Give her the one.

**John:** Every movie’s going to be a little bit different. And there are movies that are really made by the producers and sort of aren’t made by the directors. And as a writer you recognize when those situations are happening and you…

**Craig:** Well, that’s true. That’s true. I mean, if you’re doing a Jerry Bruckheimer movie and Jerry has a real bug up his butt about a thing, Jerry is kind of a director of a lot of those movies in a weird way. But my sort of corollary for that for comedy is when a producer or development executive says, “I don’t think this line is very funny.” Well, are you funny?

**John:** [laughs]

**Craig:** Because so many people that I meet in Hollywood actually are funny. They’re not funny in the sense of “I can write a funny script” or “I can write a great line here” or “come up with a great idea or situation,” but they’re just generally funny people. They laugh at things that I find funny; they don’t laugh at things I don’t find funny. And they have an innate sense of rhythm, which is what comedy is all about.

But then I meet a lot of people who don’t, you know. And when those people start telling me what is and isn’t funny, and I think to myself: “You? You’re as funny as a toothache.” Well here’s the deal: No. Absolutely not. If I say, “You know what? It’s a marginal line,” or, “Oh, yeah, you’re right,” that’s my judgment. But if I say, “Nope, I believe in this.” And then the director says, “I believe in this.” Back off.

Because, listen, nobody bats 1.000 when it comes to comedy, but I cannot — you know, Bob Weinstein comes to mind — I can’t tell you how many times he and I would fight over something that would absolutely kill in the theater, I mean, just lay people out. And I would turn to him and he would be so angry, [laughs] because he was wrong, you know. But I’m like, “But the point is you’re not funny. That’s not a shameful thing, it’s just you’re not funny. I’m sorry. What can I tell you?”

You know, know your strengths. And if you’re not a funny person and you’re dealing with a comedy script, stick to the stuff that you think you’re strong at. And then let the funny people deal with the funny stuff.

**John:** Indeed.

Television makes it a little bit easier because they split their comedy development from the drama development as two separate groups. Movies are just one big pile. And so you get a person who should never be working on a comedy working on a comedy and there you are.

**Craig:** One last thing I wanted to mention that is annoying is sometimes development people will zero in on… — Let me put it this way: We who write screenplays understand that there are some levers you push that have huge ripple effects, and others that have none at all. That’s the way screenplays are constructed. But a lot of development executives don’t understand that.

They will zero in and obsess over this little thing that we all understand is minutia, essentially, in the web of the screenplay. And they will just go over it, and over it, and over it. And all you can think in your head is, “What is this person talking about? This is something that I could just change in a minute. It’s something that could change in the day. It’s something that editorially could go away, or if it works or it doesn’t work.” Don’t get caught up on some little bugaboo that makes you nuts.

**John:** Mm-hmm.

**Craig:** Especially if it’s not pushing on the concept, the main character, the theme, the essence of the narrative. Just don’t go crazy. Lodge your complaint and move on.

**John:** Yeah. I agree. Far too often the whole meeting ends up being about this one little thing, and like that’s not the important thing at all.

**Craig:** Yeah. And then you walk out of there going, “That?! We just talked for an hour about that? Did this person see anything else, you know? I’ve built this whole thing…”

And sometimes… Here’s the most amazing thing about development executives — sorry guys. In success sometimes these things are even more annoying. I write a screenplay and everybody goes, “Wow, great job. You know what? You nailed it. We’re green-lighting the movie. And this actor is in. And this director is on. And you did it. You built a whole world for us and we’re gonna throw money into it and make it come to life. But, now let’s talk for an hour about how annoyed we are about the fact that in this one scene this one person says this stupid thing.”

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Really?! And the rest of it just sort of blew by in a blur and we’re just gonna talk for an hour about that? Cut it out. That’s what I say. Cut it out.

**John:** So, some advice for development executives.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So this is now a podcast for screenwriters and development executives.

**Craig:** Development executives. And things that are interesting to development executives.

**John:** Sure. And one thing that might be interesting to development executives is the first three pages of a screenplay, because very rarely will they read past it unless they’re really, really intrigued.

**Craig:** Correct.

**John:** So we had invited listeners to send in the first three pages, really any three pages of their screenplay. The ones we’re looking at today are the first three pages for the three samples.

And we got a lot of people wrote in, send in their scripts. And weirdly, like, right away, like within 20 minutes of the podcast going up we had like seven people had written in with their things. So, thank you everyone who sent them in. We have a bunch. We probably have plenty, but if people are still going to send some in, okay, send them in. We may get to it in a future podcast episode.

And I thought we’d start with one by — I may pronounce his name wrong — Ajay Bhai.

**Craig:** Okay. That’s the one that begins with “Fade In.”

**John:** So this one we don’t know the name of it because there wasn’t a title page, which is fine, we don’t need to know the name. But I wrote a little summary so people don’t have to — we’re not going to read his whole thing aloud because that would be awful to read it aloud. But I’ll give you a summary of what his script is about.

So, we open with a 6’5″ guy and he wakes up handcuffed naked to a railing outside a New York apartment. We don’t learn his name. The movie then cuts to 40 hours earlier just establishing NYC. We see some kids playing basketball. Both the kids say that they’re “Kevin Hayes,” and so evidently Kevin Hayes is an important basketball player, or like, a superstar.

We have a montage of short scenes with everyone talking about Kevin Hayes and a big game coming up. The last scene in this montage on page three is longer and it is set in an office, and there are two characters named Vijay and Ian. They’re talking about Kevin Hayes but they’re also talking about work. And that’s how much we get in the first three pages.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** Craig, how did these three pages work for you?

**Craig:** Not well. Not well.

**John:** Yeah, not well for me either.

**Craig:** Yeah, I’ll just sort of run through my issues. I thought the opening was nice. I mean, it was very visual, and it was a little bit of a mystery. So there’s a man. He’s handcuffed outside. I was a little confused because I’m not quite sure how you can be handcuffed outside in New York and not have anybody notice, so that was a little odd. And perhaps I was a little confused. But, it says, it looks like he’s on the concrete outside a NYC apartment. So right away I was a little annoyed.

And by the way, if sometimes you’re doing things like putting people handcuffed outside the middle of New York, okay, but then explain it for me so I don’t stop and go, “What?”

**John:** Yeah. I’m sure there’s a way geographically that could work where he’s sort of hidden behind trash cans or something so people aren’t wandering by seeing him. But otherwise I’m thinking, “Why isn’t someone seeing him?”

**Craig:** It says he’s lying under a pile of garbage. But if he’s lying under a pile of garbage, his face is still exposed. We know his face is exposed. Generally speaking it’s very hard to be handcuffed outside with your face exposed in New York and not have somebody notice. Just an aside.

**John:** That’s a personal experience — the times that you woken up naked handcuffed in New York, everyone seeing you.

**Craig:** Yeah. They wake me up. I don’t just happen to wake up. 40 hours earlier is nice. You probably want to put a title on that so we know it’s 40 hours earlier and not just people reading the script. And then here’s the problem: The next page and a half is what I just call fake dialogue. The purpose of the next page and a half is to tell us, the audience, that Kevin Hayes, who I presume is the man that’s handcuffed, is super duper popular in New York.

The problem is, it belabors it. There are kids who are practicing and talking about being Kevin Hayes and arguing about being Kevin Hayes, which is a little annoying. Then we see the only shot you need which is Madison Square Garden and all these people walking around with Hayes. Then we go to a pizzeria where this guy is saying, “Limited time Kevin Hayes specials. Knicks win tomorrow get a free championship slice all week long.”

**John:** Impossible. No one has ever said that in the history of time.

**Craig:** No one has ever — no one talks like that. Certainly no one in New York talks like that. There are no such specials that exist in New York where literally using the bathroom costs you money. [laughs] Also just as a general thing: very popular athletes are not referred to by their first and last name over and over by everybody. Usually it’s just the last name. If you’re a Jordan fan, you’re a “Jordan fan.” If you’re a Pujols fan, you’re a “Pujols fan.” Everybody doesn’t keep repeating the name, first and last, over and over and over.

We get to, I thought Middle Eastern men cooking up falafels and then occasionally if they dropped Kevin and just said, “Hayes,” that might be nice.

**John:** Yeah. That would be nice.

**Craig:** Yeah, so okay, I get it. Everybody gets it. Even people that aren’t American or have just recently immigrated. Then we have an old lady — ugh, this just gets so broad — an old lady asks for two balls of yarn, one orange, one blue. Clerk says, “Another sweater for your grandson?” So I don’t know where we are. Now we’re in middle America and not New York. And she says, “My own Kevin Hayes jersey. They’re sold out everywhere.”

“She holds the balls in her hand, as if they were a balls of golden treasure.” So first of all, typos. Second of all, no — they’re just yarn. I mean, again, people have to be normal. And also she’s not going to knit herself her own Kevin Hayes jersey. And, no, they’re not sold out everywhere. There is not a single sports jersey that has ever been sold out. Ever.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** And then this final scene where I presume we’re meeting our two main characters, Vijay and Ian, who work in an office. And there is a lot of very juvenile play acting pretending to be Kevin Hayes, which again, adults or even twenty-somethings simply don’t do. It’s the kind of thing you see the kids on Suite Life on Deck doing. But you don’t see young people, twenty-somethings or thirty-somethings in an office ever doing.

And, once again, every single person who mentions Kevin Hayes must say Kevin Hayes. [laughs] So, I didn’t like it.

**John:** I have a few additional points to yours.

I thought the opening was interesting. It was visual. And the way he’s revealing like you’re not quite sure what the situation is or what the tone is going to be. But like we leave the scene without any idea of what the tone is. And so like, well, what kind of movie are we in? There’s no dialogue being done in that. And so if this is a comedy, then that guy who presumably is Kevin Hayes needs to say something. Or he needs to respond to his situation somehow other than just like panic.

Because I don’t know what panic — is it a funny panic? It is an “Oh no, they’ve captured my wife” panic? I don’t know what kind of movie this is.

**Craig:** That’s a great point. Yeah. It felt almost like it started like Saw.

**John:** I agree with you on if you’re going to cut to an earlier time you have to show us that it’s an earlier time. You can’t just tell the reader that; it has to be shown to the audience.

I got really confused by the kids playing basketball. I had to reread it a couple of times because I thought, like, “Are they saying that their name is Kevin Hayes? Oh, no, they’re pretending that they’re Kevin Hayes but there was no setup for who that was.” If that scene came later in the montage I might get it a little better.

I also — some characters were named and some characters weren’t named. So, the old woman is Vespasian. Is she a character we’re going to see again? If she’s not a character we’re going to see again, don’t give her a name. Because every time I see a character with a name I assume it’s a person we’re going to see.

And then we finally get to the office, which like you, I guess that those characters are important people that we’re actually going to follow in the course of the story. But this is something that we talked about in the last podcast. It’s just “INT. OFFICE.” That tells me nothing. I have no idea what kind of workplace this is. And so if it’s meant to be a generic office, then just say “Generic Office” and give us, like, “The most pedestrian, ordinary cubicle farm you’ve ever seen.” Give us some sort of color so we know what kind of place this is, because “Office” doesn’t mean anything.

**Craig:** You would probably want to also do an exterior so that we understand are they working at a large corporate building, are they working in a loft, are they working in a small place, are they working in Brooklyn, are they Manhattan? Something so we know what’s going on.

But that’s a great point on tone. Because honestly the beginning I thought, “Oh, this is like Saw,” you know, a guy chained to a thing.

**John:** And, again, the writer doesn’t need to direct from the page, but give us sense of what’s important and what’s the montage. And so even if you put the “Cut To” in after his waking up and probably giving some sort of reaction line, “Cut To,” okay, now we’re going through a couple of short scenes. And then give us another “Cut To” before we get to the office. That will at least give us a sense of what the flow of this movie is and where we should put our relative weight of attention.

**Craig:** Mm-hmm. And know you’re world because when you’re writing a movie about a very specific thing that isn’t maybe something people are familiar with, like the way Special Forces teams move through the jungle, you’re allowed to kind of build your own world. Everybody knows how sports figures are discussed. Everybody. And I don’t care who you are.

**John:** Even I know that, and I can’t stand sports.

**Craig:** You know that. Exactly. LeBron James, probably the best player in the NBA. Now people will tweet back at me, but LeBron James gets ripped to shreds every day on ESPN by Stephen Smith and Skip Bayless and ding-a-lings like that.

Nobody, nobody is talked about the way this guy is. And it just seems so unreal that I’m already out. I’m out on page 3. The buy-in isn’t there.

**John:** By the way, if you’re going to talk about a sports figure, why haven’t we seen a TV talking about that? I mean, it feels like that’s the natural sort of cut, part of that montage to set up who this guy is. And I guess they’re trying to avoid showing you his face so you will be surprised that that was the guy who woke up buck naked. But it’s not a surprise.

**Craig:** Yeah. It’s not going to work.

**John:** Because you know what? We’ve seen movies before.

**Craig:** Exactly. We know it’s that guy. He’s six foot tall.

**John:** I don’t want to be completely negative. First off, Ajay, thank you for sending in the script. And I assume based on these first three pages that it’s some sort of sports comedy and that it’s going to be telling the story of that guy’s night and maybe it’s a Hangover kind of situation. It’s a promising enough idea, a major professional athlete going through some sort of spiral. I just think the scene work in setting up those first three pages can be a lot stronger.

**Craig:** Yeah. The tone of this comes off too juvenile for what the subject matter is.

**John:** Yeah. Even though like the Hangover movies, they’re kind of juvenile. I don’t mean to offend you at all. But they’re smarter and more specific than this.

**Craig:** I don’t think they’re juvenile. What I mean by juvenile is targeted towards an audience. In the Hangover movies, people behave, characters behave in juvenile ways, but the tone of the movie and the things that happen are pitched to people who are in their 20s, 30s, 40s.

**John:** Definitely.

**Craig:** And this movie feels like it’s pitched towards 10-year-olds, but it’s not supposed to be, I can tell.

**John:** Yeah. So pitch higher. If you’re going to have somebody waking up naked, it should feel like a grown up movie.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Let’s go on to the next script. This one actually has a name. It’s called Exposure. And it’s by J. Nicholas Smith.

**Craig:** No, no. It’s called “Exposusre.” Did you notice this? How do you have a typo of your title?

**John:** Where is that? On the first page?

**Craig:** On the front page. On the cover page. Do you see that?

**John:** Oh wow. I didn’t. Yeah.

**Craig:** I mean, look, I’m not a typo Nazi. But for the love of god, if you can’t get your title page right it shows a lack of regard for the reader that is astonishing to me. Just astonishing. Please, I mean look, I saw typos on all these things. Please, at the very least, spell your name right and spell your title right.

**John:** That’s the minimum we could ask.

**Craig:** Minimum.

**John:** I would say though, despite that typo which I completely ignored on the first page, I kind of quite enjoyed this. I’ll give a summary for readers so they can know what we’re talking about.

So the scene starts with blood on the snow. We crane up and we find a 17-year-old girl named Molly. She’s half-naked in a tree. She’s bleeding out. And she’s using the flash on her camera. It’s not clear if she’s trying to attract attention to herself or take photos, but we just see the flashing.

The next scene is one month earlier. There’s a super that tells us that, so thank you for giving us the super. We see Molly spying on her neighbor, Warren, and she’s using her same camera and she’s smoking a joint. They establish a bit about her neighborhood and her dog. The last scene of the three pages is Warren, the guys she’s spying on, a guy named John, and Molly’s father, Sam. They’re sitting by a fire, drinking beers, and smoking.

So, things to note: There’s no dialogue in these first three pages. It’s one of those just done visually sequences. I thought actually fairly nicely done. I enjoyed reading through every bit of it. J. Nicholas Smith does a good job of keeping scene description tight and short and like no line of action is more than three lines which is very helpful, because readers tend to skip anything that’s more than three lines. And if you see a paragraph you’re like, “Yeah, maybe I won’t read that paragraph,” but it’s two or three lines, “Yeah, sure, we’ll read that.”

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** There was good specificity. I like that. But some stuff got so specific that it was a little bit annoying. There’s a sequence on page two where she’s dealing with this red scarf and its red is way too important. It was a bit giant like underscore when she’s touching her red scarf.

But I like that he’s setting up a world, and I’d keep reading it. If I read to page three I would have read to page four.

**Craig:** I agree. I think the good news is that J. Nicholas Smith can write. So I like the way — I think there was good craft here. Certainly it’s not an easy thing to write the first three pages without dialogue. You’re forcing yourself to tell the story visually and I thought he did a pretty good job.

My issues: I was a little confused on the first page about where she was versus the camera and whether she was triggering the camera or whether the camera was on some sort of auto flash thing. I think part of it was that the Canon is nestled in the crook of a thick maple branch. “Its body, marked with bloody handprints…” And so just the word “Body” kind of through me off even though when you read it — it’s just one of those things where you have to read it twice which you don’t want.

**John:** No. You never want to read something twice.

**Craig:** Right. And then she’s bleeding out and the camera flashes, and that’s really good. I like that a lot. So the first page was exciting and had a tone. And what was nice is the second page maintained that tone even though, once again, we get a nice super of one month ago. And we see also that she’s on the roof, which I love. And I liked the way that it started with the leaves in the gutter, and then you find the legs, and you realize this girl is on the roof. I know so much about her already.

And I love the specificity of where she puts the joint and how she puts it away. And now I get she’s a voyeur. She sees this guy. And then, good lessons for screenwriters, this guy Warren Shaw, so our writer makes a choice here to demonstrate this character’s sensibility through a simple thing — not being able to leave the mailbox flag alone until it’s straight up and down. So it’s all these nice little things.

I kind of had the same issue that you had in the bedroom. I got a little confused about what was going on with the dog. I assume the red scarf is important, that’s why it’s in — that later on this red scarf will be a big deal. But the dog stuff got me a little confused. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, why she was checking the time and rolling around.

It’s a fine line between keeping me interested by building a mystery and then confusing me. And that’s where it started to tip into confusing. The only last thing I would say was I was kind of thrown off by these Djarum Black Clove cigarettes, because John Hastings, who’s the character that pulls them out, pulls up in a truck with a six-pack of Bud Light, grubby jeans, and a sweatshirt flecked with paint, which to me — so his character introduction says blue color guy, but he’s pulling out the most effete cigarettes possible.

**John:** It feels like hipster cigarettes.

**Craig:** Right. Now, by the way, that may be a point. That may be something that’s interesting about him. But then I think the author needs to acknowledge that to me so that I don’t feel like, “What?” So if he says, “John improbably pulls out a pack of Djarum Black Clove cigarettes, the last thing you’d imagine him smoking.”

And then, finally, this is a big thing that I’ve been talking about a little bit on DoneDealPro. “Sam Gray, 48, wants to be a better father to Molly but doesn’t know how.” Don’t do that.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Please let me discover that Sam Gray wants to be a better father to Molly but doesn’t know how. Don’t tell me in this. You’re cheating.

**John:** Yeah. It’s cheating. So, it’s okay to give us something that’s not quite filmable, but don’t give us something that’s unfilmable that’s also about another character who’s not in the scene. Like, you can give us an action for him to play, but you can’t just talk about how he fits into the world.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** If you wanted to give us something that says, like, “he’s a man that’s been kicked around his whole life,” or something like that is to me fine. But don’t establish important things about your entire relationship in your movie on one line of scene description.

**Craig:** Yeah. Don’t sum up what is obviously going to be an important central relationship in the screenplay with a line of action that the audience will never have access to, in no small part because by doing that you let yourself off the hook of having to do the work later through the scene work itself. And if you’re going to do the work through the scene work then it really isn’t important there. In fact, you’re just ruining the fun of us discovering that relationship. And if you’re not doing it, well then you’re blowing it. So either way it doesn’t work.

**John:** One thing I’m nervous about in this script is what the first line of dialogue is going to be, because you have two choices. Is the dialogue going to be really important because it’s the first thing that some character says? Or, maybe the better choice is that it’s something that is sort of thrown away and we don’t make a big deal of the fact that no one has spoken for three minutes.

**Craig:** That’s a really good point. I find that when you go two or three pages without dialogue because you’re being impressionistic or very visual, it’s a nice thing to ease the audience into dialogue. It’s a very jarring thing to go from this sort of silent, poetic way of revealing story to somebody blabbing. A one-word response might be a nice thing. You know? [laughs] Just something to slowly ease us back into the world of talking. Good point.

**John:** Or it could be the character of Molly might walk in on a conversation that’s already happening in the background and she actually gets something from the refrigerator, or just ease us into that world because otherwise it’s going to be too much of a big deal.

**Craig:** Yup.

**John:** Too big of a spotlight.

Let’s go to our third and final one for this week. This is a script by Bryan DeGuire. Three pages by Bryan DeGuire, called Wasteland Vacation. And I did not look at the title of the script when I first read the pages and it would have been very helpful because it would have helped set the right expectation. But let me give you a summary of what happens in these three pages.

So we start in a post-apocalyptic Hellscape. We meet Dr. Robert Fleming, who’s a scientist, and Jeremiah, who’s 27. We don’t know much more about Jeremiah. Jeremiah drives off in a 2012 minivan. So this post-apocalyptic thing is sometimes way in the future. I think we are have a super that says 2068.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** And so then Jeremiah drives off in this 2012 minivan and he honks the horn three times and travels back through time to present day suburbia which is very banal, but he thinks it’s beautiful.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** And then we meet, the movie cuts to introduce us to Bob, in his forties, and he’s a life insurance salesman. And the script tells us that he will be our hero. We see him at work and then we see him at home with his bickering kids, Lucy and Max.

**Craig:** So I’m glad you brought up the point on the first set of pages about the basketball player about aligning the tone. Because in comedy there’s a non-comedy plot against which the comedy plays. And in this case it appears from the way that the first page was written, and I enjoyed the first page until Dr. Fleming started talking — but we’ll get to that — but the first half of the first page was evocative and it was certainly not funny.

It was quite serious. It felt like Book of Eli or Mad Max or something like that. And I just want to tie that in. When Jeremiah arrives in our time, he does so as a joke. There’s a mom… — So the minivan goes racing across the desert and Back to the Future style disappears with a honking, which I did not like, and then emerges in our time. But before it emerges there is a mom saying, “What do we always do before we cross? We do we always do? Look both ways.” It’s all clear. They take a walk. And then, zoom, this minivan appears out of nowhere, almost missing them, which is now sort of a slapsticky introduction.

And my issue is, look, when you’re doing these comedies with big science fiction conceits, that stuff has to be grounded. Keep that stuff grounded. Don’t be goofy-funny with that. You can be goofy-funny, you know, have him zip off into the future and have him emerge into our present and look around, like, “Oh my god,” and it’s kind of awesome. Then when we go to Bob, that’s okay, that’s a new jump, because Bob’s a funny guy so we can now be funny with him. And we’ll know that when he runs into Jeremiah and that plot there’s something to play against that’s real. Because if everything is funny, nothing matters. You got to keep that stuff grounded.

**John:** Yeah. I didn’t like the start as much as you did. And partly because I didn’t know that it was supposed to be a comedy to start, that I was reading it as if it was — I was trying to read it as real, like it was a real Hellscape. And it felt sloppy to me. It didn’t feel like it was doing a particularly good job of setting up what this world was like. Because it’s not really giving us — it says, “Flying over a desert hellscape. Scorched earth and human skulls.” But I’m not really feeling what that world is like, and apparently it’s important, but I’m not really noticing or caring.

And then when we get to the doctor, and once it becomes clear that this is going to be a Back to the Future kind of minivan, then I just sort of checked out for awhile.

**Craig:** Yeah. I understand what you mean. I kind of just read the first half and, okay, I get it. At least I understood what was going on. Then I felt that when the minivan showed up in our time I felt the kind of torque of tone fight going on. I was not helped by Dr. Fleming’s dialogue. “There will be many distractions but you must stay focused on the mission. This is our only chance to stop the apocalypse.”

There’s no subtext whatsoever. This man literally says exactly what he thinks. And he says it to somebody that already knows the information. So, this is not good craft. There’s a way… — We will fill in all sorts of gaps. He’s older. This guy’s younger. This guy’s deferential to him. We get that Fleming’s the boss. We get that Jeremiah is doing this. He says, “It’s time,” which is movie code for something important and dangerous is going to happen. They load this minivan up and then I think it sort of, you know, “It all comes down to you. You cannot fail.” Something like that. We’ll just get it.

It’s like, okay, they’re in the middle of an apocalypse. He’s going back in time. We’ll put it together. But this kind of over-expository radio play stuff is never good.

**John:** Yeah. And we don’t anything about the relationship between them. All we know is that it’s like a boss and employee, but if Jeremiah is the more important character because we’re going to see him in the present day, we should really come to it from his perspective rather than from the doctor’s perspective.

**Craig:** I think that’s a fair point.

**John:** So if the first person we see in future time is Jeremiah, and he carries us to the doctor, that helps establish the weight between the two of them better.

**Craig:** I agree. That’s a great point.

**John:** My other issue is with Bob and his introduction at the end.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** I like the idea that the arrival into present day, either it should not be funny, it shouldn’t go for the joke, or if it does go for the joke then I feel like then you cut to the pre-title sequence or you do something else to make a clear divider so that when we get to Bob, the first thing that Bob has right now, he’s selling insurance, and the guy he’s sort of selling insurance to is talking about his mistress. It’s fine, but I’d rather Bob who’s our lead and our hero, get the first laugh.

It would be much better if our hero was the guy who owned the first joke rather than the guy who has to react to the first joke.

**Craig:** That’s right. Yes. For sure. Look, Bob is going to be Steve Carell, probably.

**John:** Yeah. That’s what I read.

**Craig:** I see these a lot. If Steve Carell is in a comedy about saving the world from Armageddon, set up the Armageddon reel and then cut to the silly mundanity of Steve Carell’s life in juxtaposition. But it has to be juxtaposed.

And, yes, he has to be the funny one. Once again we have an “INT. OFFICE.”

**John:** Yes. A generic interior office.

**Craig:** Yeah, so that’s helpful. I don’t know where it is. I don’t know what kind of office. How big? I don’t even know whose office it is, because Bob Miller, who is an insurance salesman, is selling insurance to a corporate executive. Are we in the corporate executive’s office? Are we in Bob’s office? Why is the corporate executive in Bob’s office? Why is he in the corporate executive’s office? No idea where they are or what’s going on until he looks down at the insurance brochure on his desk.

But, you know, you have to think always about how where people sit and what they look like, and how they’re dressed, and where they are. Setting, from our last podcast, can tell us so much about our characters And for comedy can add so much.

You know, when you have two people talking about a brochure, I would love for something else in that scene to be going on to just give it a little bit of life.

**John:** So, again, you don’t know what Bryan has in store for this movie, although I can kind of guess, and I think it’s going to be that these two guys are going to have to come together and stop the apocalypse. I would suggest to Bryan that he might want to do what I think we were just implying there, is set up the apocalypse, set up there’s a plan that you must do, smash cut to — have some line that takes us to, “You must go to the glorious past,” and then we see Bob who’s in the present day which is not glorious at all.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** So as an audience we’ll know that these three things are going to be related, and then we’re going to go to the future time and see the minivan or whatever mechanism it is that sends him back in time. That would probably be more rewarding for the moviegoer.

**Craig:** Yes. Without question. And it would be nice if when we see Bob we connect Bob to the activity that is ultimately going to lead to the Armageddon, if it’s some sort of petty thing like littering or whatever.

And then we see Bob return home. He’s in an upscale Kansas neighborhood. I don’t know how I know it’s Kansas. And if it’s important that it’s Kansas, show me it’s Kansas. If it’s more important that it’s just middle America, clue me into middle America but give me a sense of it. Just give me a sense of geography in one way or another.

“When he walks into his house his kids are fighting.” And this is just simple dialogue stuff. His daughter says, “I told you not to delete 30 Rock from the DVR.” Max, her brother says, “Just watch it on Hulu.” Lucy says, “It’s the principle.” Bob says, “Cool it guys. It’s not the end of the world.” Okay, so we get what that line’s about. But “I told you not to delete 30 Rock from the DVR” is not really a line that one child says to another.

**John:** No.

**Craig:** They would be more like, “Idiot, watch it on Hulu!” You know what I mean?

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** We don’t need to know the details of their fight. She could just hit him and he could say, “Just watch it on Hulu. Who cares? It’s the principle. Don’t touch the remote.”

**John:** And it’s better if they’re actually beating the crap out of each other rather than just arguing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Give the scene; we don’t need details that we don’t need. It’s more fun, frankly, to get an evocation of life in that house than the specifics of the DVR fight.

**John:** If two kids are — like — wrestling and he has to come in and break them up, it’s like, “Whoa, what happened, what happened?” It’s like, “He deleted my show. Just watch it on Hulu.”

**Craig:** “Oh my god.” And then he just walks out.

**John:** Has a reaction.

**Craig:** And he literally walks out of the room and let’s them go back to fighting because he’s given up; he doesn’t care — let them beat each other up. But that sort of thing is about building a scene that informs us. And these — listen, it’s great that people send in the first three pages because the first three pages should be beautifully crafted. They should be just jam-packed with stuff. All sorts of really good stuff about the characters, the tone, the world that the characters live in.

I want to get things from their clothes, their environment, their setting. I want to know — even the pace. Even the pacing. Everything gets set in these first three pages so you can’t be flabby or loose with it

**John:** So I want to thank, I should highlight, but I also want to end on saying Ajay, and Bryan, and J. Nicholas Smith, thank you so much for sending in your three pages. And if we were harsh at any points it’s because we love you and because we’re so very thankful that you were willing to share your three pages of script.

**Craig:** Yeah. For sure. You know what? I have to say, guys, John and I have both written pages worse than those. Guarantee you.

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** And it’s part of the deal. And the fact that you’re willing to be brave enough to go and do it speaks well to your chances. And hopefully we didn’t make too many of the same mistakes that we were telling the development executives to not make. [laughs].

**John:** Do you have a Cool Thing this week? Because I have a Cool Thing.

**Craig:** I do have a Cool Thing this week, but you go ahead and do your Cool Thing first.

**John:** So my Cool Thing this week is a book I just read this week, it’s for the iPad, so it’s through the iBook store, and it’s Hooktheory. And it’s one of the new iPad books that has built-in stuff. So it has little video clips built-in and little quizzes built-in.

And so the idea of the book is to talk through music theory in terms of how pop music is built. And a part of me bristles at the thought of me because I always rip on screenwriting theory books, because I find those frustrating, but with music I’m giving it a pass because music theory, there is actual logic behind music. There’s a reason why certain chord progressions are easy and certain chord progressions are really tough to make work. And there are reasons why you find stuff in between.

And since I’ve been working on the musical, I’ll often look over at the music department and they’re figuring out how to move from this key to this key. And they have a grammar and a way of talking about it that’s actually useful in daily life.

So what Hooktheory does is take a look at pop songs, mostly things of the last 10 or 20 years, and they’ll give you these little short 15 second snippets that will break down what the chords are and then how the melody fits into those chords. And by chords they’re not talking C, F, G, but they’re talking relative chords. So they’re teaching you sort of how relative chords work which is 1 through 7, and how you can compare sort of — and the natural ways that you can move from one chord to the next chord, and why certain things fit together really easily and certain things are harder. And it’s very good and proscriptive is saying, like, “Well, you can’t ever do this.” It’s saying these are choices that make it easier. And this is why if you go to this cadence chord you’re going to find it much easier to start your next phrase.

So it’s very, very smart. A really good use of the iPad because it’s the kind of thing that would be almost impossible to talk about in a meaningful way with a normal conventionally printed book. If you didn’t have those little examples right in front of you that you could play back through and see, it really wouldn’t make a lot of sense.

So I read through this and I found myself very intellectual satisfied because it answered a lot of those questions that I’ve always had about how music works. And also frustrated because I felt like this is stuff that I should have been taught in high school. This isn’t Music 101 stuff, but like once I knew how to play an instrument, once I knew how to play piano past a certain point, someone should have taught me how this stuff works, because a lot of things just make much more sense now.

And I’ve ranted before on music education and everyone always accuses me of hating trombones, and that’s not the case at all, but I just felt like this would be a great resource for anybody who is curious about how music works and wants to sort of see the inner workings of harmony.

**Craig:** Yeah. It is absolutely different than screenwriting books. Screenplays are of not fixed length and wildly variable length whereas most pop music songs are between three and five minutes long. And most pop music songs have verse/verse/chorus, verse/bridge/chorus, out. I mean, there’s a real rigid structure to those things and it’s beautiful.

There are some wonderful videos on YouTube where some guy on keyboards, and I think in one case a band, was just going through a very common core progression. One example is the U2 song With or Without You. [hums melody] Okay, now those are all notes, but there’s chords there. [hums again] And it keeps coming back to that same, I think it’s the diatonic or the tonic. But the point is I think it’s a four-chord progression. And that four-chord progression is used by, in these videos you will see, 80, 90 really familiar songs in different ways.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** It’s astonishing. I mean, you would never think that I’m Going Down by Bruce Springsteen is the same as With or Without You, is the same as Glycerine by Bush, is the same as Don’t Stop Believing. It’s pretty remarkable.

**John:** Yeah. Where I come out on this is that it’s not, the book isn’t trying to teach you “here’s how you write a pop song.” It’s basically saying, “These are the components.” And it’s like teaching “these are nouns, these are verbs, these are adjectives. There’s reasons why these fit together in a certain way. And it doesn’t mean you have to absolutely do them in these ways, but if you are trying to do them in different ways you are going to find some things are really natural and some things are really, really hard to do.” So it was a good introduction.

Now, I do want to stress it’s not a 101; it’s like a 201. Because if you were to approach this book and you couldn’t visualize a scale and know what are sharps and what are flats in different scales, it would be a hard book to sort of embrace. And there were times where I had to either go to the piano or pull up a little piano keyboard on the iPad to figure out what stuff was.

But, it also makes good use of sort of the quiz function of the iBooks, is that it will give you an example and you have to figure out what chords could actually fit in these blanks.

**Craig:** I like that. Yeah, put the link up to that. I’m gonna get that. That sounds great.

**John:** It’s good. And so it’s called Hooktheory and they also have a website that it’s based on and so if you don’t have an iPad go to Hooktheory.com. You can see sort of the way they built it out. And it’s very, very smart. It uses a little flash player that you can drag in notes and see sort of how things fit together.

**Craig:** Well interestingly enough my Cool Thing of the week is also music-oriented mostly. It is an app called Audio Essentials. And the internet has been sort of littered with these so-called sound enhancers for laptops.

Laptops have really tiny speakers, obviously, and the smaller that laptops get the smaller the speaker gets. Speaker science is actually pretty amazing, the way that they create speakers and the way that they can… — Because, you know, initially speakers were all about size. When we were kids in the ’70s and ’80s the bigger the speaker the better it was because the woofer was huge and the tweeter could be really big. And then you had a mid-range guy in between the tweeter and the woofer, so you’re EQ, the whole spectral band was represented beautifully, and separated, and gorgeous, and great. But, of course, you know, people don’t really listen to these massive cabinet speakers anymore so much as listen to through headphones and these tiny laptop speakers.

This company Audio Essentials put this app out that what they propose, what they allege, is that it would make your laptop speakers sound super, super better. So, I downloaded it. And, guess what? It makes everything sound super, super better.

**John:** That’s great.

**Craig:** I don’t know how their doing it just through software manipulation alone. All I can say is that there is a separation of the stereo feel that you don’t get. They’re probably doing some version of “exciting.” Exciting is basically where the human ear responds to certain frequencies — frankly, we are excited by certain frequencies more than others which is why literally cymbals are exiting to us, you know. And poor drummers start to experience deafness at certain frequencies because of the cymbals.

But they’re probably pulling out certain frequencies and exciting them. I’m not sure exactly how they’re getting that stereo spread the way that they are, but it really sounds great. And for, I don’t know, whatever it is, $30, I feel like it honestly transformed the sound that’s coming out of my laptop to something that I actually like listening to now.

**John:** That’s great. Just this last week I had people over that needed to play some songs off the laptop. And I ended up running it through separate Bluetooth speakers because it sounds so bad on a laptop. So this might have been a good solution.

**Craig:** Give it a shot. See what you think.

**John:** Cool. Well, Craig, thank you so much. And I would say, and I hope you agree, that it was actually really quite fun going through these three pages, so I would be inclined to do that again in the future.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was great. And I will say this: For those of you who listened to that and went, “Oh no, oh no,” I’ve been doing a very similar thing like this on DoneDealPro. I do it when I can. It’s occasional because we’re busy.

But I read three pages about a half a year ago or a year ago I would say, and I loved them. And I hooked that writer up. I asked him to send me the entire script. I read it. I thought it was really, really good. I gave him suggestions on what to do for a next draft. He finished that draft. I hooked him up with a manager, he has a manager now. And he has an actor attached to another script that he’s writing.

And he’s a screenwriter now. He’s actually getting paid.

**John:** Hooray!

**Craig:** So it’s not all just being smashed in your kneecaps.

**John:** [laughs] Yes.

**Craig:** But mostly it is. [laughs]

**John:** I hope we weren’t smashing in kneecaps. We were pointing out what worked and giving opportunities for improvement.

**Craig:** But I will say, honestly, please, please spell check and watch the typos. When I write I check. I really proofread. I just don’t like sending in things — it just feels unprofessional to me frankly.

**John:** Don’t do that.

Craig, thank you so much.

**Craig:** Thank you, John, that was great.

**John:** All right, have a fun time, and I will see you next week.

**Craig:** See you next week.