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The original post for this episode can be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/378-the-worst-of-the-worst).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. Today’s episode originally aired in December 2018. In it Craig and I talk about the Worst of the Worst, which we define as that need to make things not just a little uncomfortable for your heroes, but downright awful. We talk about stakes, consequences, and transformation. Mostly, this feels like a feature idea rather than a TV idea, but with the rise of short series I think you’re going to see more and more of these decisions happening on the small screen as well.

Craig and I were not prescient. We’re just feature guys in an industry that was quickly moving towards streaming. So, enjoy this episode. If you’re a premium member stick around after the credits where I’ll be talking with producer Megana Rao about what she’s been learning listening through all the back archives and what she’s seeing out there in the real world as she’s trying to be a writer getting staffed.

Enjoy.

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

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

**John:** And this is Episode 378 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the podcast we’re going to dash hopes, ruin friendships, and destroy things we love most.

**Craig:** Oh, thank god.

**John:** As we talk about why bad things need to happen to characters we love. Plus, we’ll be answering questions about WGA signatories and old TV scripts.

**Craig:** Well that sounds fun.

**John:** Yeah, Craig, it’s nice to have you back.

**Craig:** It’s good to be back. I’m so sorry I missed – since I’ve been working and traveling, you’re working and traveling, and then I had some needle shoved into my spine last week.

**John:** Oh, no, not good. Don’t do that.

**Craig:** It wasn’t an accident. It was on purpose. There was a medical professional doing it.

**John:** All the kids are doing it.

**Craig:** All the kids are doing it.

**John:** Yeah, just inject – first it was Juuls, and then they’re injecting things into their spines.

**Craig:** Exactly. So that was why. Initially it was supposed to happen first thing in the morning and our podcast interview with Phil and Matt was going to be in the afternoon, and then they had an adjustment. So when I got out of that thing I was about two hours away from doing the podcast and just feeling really weird and oogie. So, yeah, but I’m back. I’m back.

**John:** He’s back. He’s no longer oogie. He’s full of boogie. And you can see Craig in person on December 12th which is tomorrow as this episode comes out. We are doing our live show in Hollywood. Our guests are fantastic. Zoanne Clack of Grey’s Anatomy, Pamela Ribon of Ralph Breaks the Internet. Cherry Chevapravatdumrong of Family Guy and The Orville, plus Phil Lord and Chris Miller of Lego Movie and the new Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse. So we are hyping this show, but for all I know we’re sold out and it’s just–

**Craig:** We should be based on that list of people. By the way, Zoanne Clack I think is a medical doctor.

**John:** She’s a medical doctor. So if Craig has an emergency, she’s the person.

**Craig:** We’ll be talking about my spine on that show. But this is an amazing lineup of people. Totally – everybody from different places – well, we do have three representatives of animation come to think of it. All right. All right. Lord and Miller, I mean, boom, Pam Ribon has got this huge movie out. Everybody is famous. And you know what? Why would anyone not want to go to this show? Plus, me and you.

**John:** Well that’s us. I mean, that’s the other celebrities in this whole thing.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** Sometimes we like try to land a big name and then it’s like, you know what, let us be the big names sometimes.

**Craig:** We’re the big name.

**John:** Zoanne Clack, yes, she’s a medical doctor, but what I really want to talk to her about on the show is how she’s transitioned from being a doctor to writing a show about doctors. Because we get so many questions from listeners about like “I am a police detective, but I want to write detective stories.” And that’s an interesting, fascinating transition. She has done it, so she will be able to tell us what that life is like.

**Craig:** Maybe she can also chat a little bit about our episode where we went through all the mistakes that, like the fake medicine on TV. I wonder if she’s ever – well, you know what, let’s save the Zoanne questions for when we’re with Zoanne.

**John:** Absolutely. We also have another live show to announce. I’m very excited to announce that we are doing a screening of Princess Bride and an episode afterwards in which we’ll be talking about the movie we just saw. So, William Goldman passed away this past month. We are going to be doing a series of screenings for the WGA. This is going to be at the WGA Theater on January 27th. So, Craig and I will watch the movie then discuss the movie afterwards with the audience. And so this is I think going to be open up to everyone. So once there are tickets there will be a link in the show notes for that. I’m very excited to do that.

**Craig:** Yeah. Me too. It’s one of my favorite movies and William Goldman was a giant. So it’ll be nice. It’ll be nice to do that in his memory.

**John:** Absolutely. And so this will be kind of a trial run also because I’d like to do more of these on the whole. So if this goes well there’s some movies down the road I want to do a deep dive on. We’ll screen them and then do a deep dive. So we’ll let this be a test run.

**Craig:** Brilliant.

**John:** Brilliant. We have some follow up. First is from Partis about the Start Button. Craig, do you want to take this?

**Craig:** Sure. OK, so Pardis writes, “The problem with the system you outlined on the podcast where the WGA can be the bad guy if you ask them to, calling the studio on your behalf to enforce the terms of your writing agreement is that the studio knows the WGA is only calling because you, the writer, have asked them to. And since writers are more dispensable than directors, yes, you can get labeled as a diva or as a problem child or as more trouble than you’re worth and lose out on future writing assignments as a result. So, what’s the solution?”

Pardis says, “A system whereby the WGA is alerted to commencement on a feature automatically. And a system whereby the WGA checks on progress for all feature products automatically without asking the writer first. That way the studio can’t blame any specific writer for asking the guild to be the bad guy. There’s just automatic oversight across the board. But, how can we put this system into place if the guild isn’t already alerted to commencement automatically?

“Option number 1: Negotiate a meaningful financial penalty into the next contract for studios that fail to file their paperwork for new project with an X number of days of the agreement being signed. That money can go toward covering the guild’s increased oversight and enforcement costs.

“Option number 2: Create a small financial penalty for writers who fail to alert the WGA that they’ve started work on a new project. Option 2, because then the studio can’t get mad at writers for alerting the WGA about new projects because writers have no choice but to inform the WGA directly less the writers be penalized themselves.”

**John:** All right, so let’s take a look at Pardis’ suggestions here and sort of how Pardis is laying out the situation. So, I think what Pardis is suggesting overall have some merit to it. You want the WGA to be the bad guy. You want the WGA to step up and do this work on behalf of writers. And if it feels like the WGA is only calling the studio or only getting involved because the writer complained I can understand that hesitation.

That said, the goal is for this to feel like it is just automatic. It’s like changing the way we’re just doing this on a regular basis. And so that even without a financial penalty for failing to hit the Start Button and report a new project, that it will become a matter of course for writers to do this. And the WGA has increased already the number of enforcement people there are to do that work. And so they are going to be checking up on people anyway. And so regardless of hitting the Start Button or not hitting the Start Button, there’s a lot more outreach to say like, hey, what are you working on, how is this going, and are you being paid on time? Is anything going on? And that is one of the overall goals and functions of the WGA is to make sure that our members are being paid and are treated appropriately.

**Craig:** These ideas, all ideas really, have been discussed ad nauseam since I have been involved in WGA stuff, which is, you know, over 14 years ago or something. But I would say that Pardis you’re not the first person to suggest that we should maybe start penalizing writers. But good luck. It’s not a great idea, honestly, to essentially crack down on writers to solve the problem that is created by studios. We already have enough problems. You’re dealing with writers that are already being abused and now they have to send money to the guild because they’ve been abused? It’s not great.

Can you get a meaningful financial penalty for studios that fail to file their paperwork? No. Probably not. And again when things start is kind of fuzzy. So, the Start Button actually is the best idea I’ve seen to date. And I think it will bear fruit. So I would say, Pardis, patience.

**John:** Related aspect here is that when you are hitting a Start Button or even now if you’re not hitting the Start Button, you are supposed to upload your contracts. And so I have been uploading my contracts. Everyone is supposed to upload their contracts that show all the steps of your deal. When the WGA has this information they can be checking on it independently so they don’t need to necessarily wait for you to say that there’s a problem. They can say like, hey, according to what we have this is what’s happening on this project – is this accurate? And you need to answer that honestly. And so that is a way in which the WGA can become involved, even if you are not reaching out to them to say help me here.

**Craig:** Yeah. Hopefully this works the way we would want it to in an ideal situation where the guild is helping you without feeling like they’re bonking you on the head. And in getting in your work process. So, let’s see how it goes.

**John:** Second bit of follow up, a previous One Cool Thing was the show Please Like Me. And last night I was out and randomly bumped into Josh Thomas the creator and star of Please Like Me. And so I want to talk a little bit about sort of what to do when you meet somebody who you’ve only seen their work in person. Because it can be sometimes kind of awkward. So what I did is I said, “Oh hey, you don’t know me, but I thought your show was fantastic and you do great work.” I asked him if he moved to Los Angeles fulltime and is writing here and he is. And then I left him be and let him sort of go on and be about his night.

So maybe we’ll get him on the show at some point and he can talk about what he’s doing here. But as a person who gets approached like Josh Thomas gets approached in that situation I want to talk about sort of best practices when you’re going up to talk to someone whose work you admire, but it’s in a social situation. Because, Craig, you must encounter this, too.

**Craig:** Yeah, I mean, it’s not on a daily basis by any stretch of the imagination, but it does happen. And mostly people seem to do it well. You know, I haven’t had any weird encounters. Any actor that’s on television has astronomically more of these encounters than you or I. And my guess is just that numbers wise they’re going to run into some odd ducks, probably at least once a day.

**John:** Yeah. So I would just say I would encourage – if there’s a person who is doing great work and you want to say like, oh, I really like the thing you’re doing. It’s good to say that, because sometimes it’s just good to hear that you’re making stuff that the world appreciates. But I would say if you’re going to make that approach plan for an out that’s going to get you out of that conversation within 30 seconds to a minute, because they were going about their life before you interrupted them. And so you want to be able to say what you need to say and then like let them go off and do their thing. If they want to keep engaged, they can engage. But make sure you’re giving them the release to get out of the conversation.

**Craig:** And take a look at their face before you walk up to them, because listen, everybody is a person. Everybody is going through stuff. Sometimes we’re in a nice happy mood, sometimes we’re in a neutral state of mind. Sometimes we’re concerned, we’re running late, we’re sad, we’re nervous. And then we don’t want anyone talking to us. Anyone, by the way. Much less people that we don’t know. So, just take a look. I know it’s hard because – and again, this isn’t something that I think anyone has towards somebody like me – but when people see a movie star in their minds they think you know what it doesn’t matter how they’re feeling and it doesn’t matter what’s going on. This is my moment to shake Tom Cruise’s hand and I’m doing it. Because the rest of my life I shook Tom Cruise’s hand, right? I had that moment. And he’ll get over it and he will. He will. But, you know, it’s not that big – who cares? I guess that’s my whole thing is like who cares.

**John:** My ground zero for getting recognized, well of course Austin Film Festival I get recognized a lot there, which is – I sort of go there knowing that’s going to happen. The lobby of the ArcLight I get spotted a lot. And sometimes at the Grove. And there was one time I was walking through the lobby of the ArcLight and this guy goes, “Wait, you’re that writer guy. You’re good.” I’m like, OK. I guess I’m good. Thank you, random stranger. That’s nice.

**Craig:** You’re that writer guy. Well, that’s pretty much right. This is one of the nice things about living in La Cañada is that nobody cares. Nobody cares. They don’t care.

**John:** Let’s get to our marquee topic which is bad things and bad things happening to the characters that you love. This came up for me this morning because I was working through the third book of Arlo Finch and I was looking at my outline and just looking at how many bad things happen, which is just a tremendous number. I think partly because it is the third and final book, so if something could happen this is the last place where it could happen. But also the character has grown to a place where he can handle some things that he couldn’t otherwise handle. So, there’s a lot of serious stuff that happens in the third book.

But I want to talk about it because I think there’s this instinct to sort of protect our heroes, protect our characters, and it’s hard to sort of get us over the hump of like, no, no, no, you have to – not just allow bad things to happen but make bad things happen to your heroes in order to generate story. And this is really very much probably more a feature conversation than a television conversation because in ongoing series there will be conflict within an episode, but you won’t destroy everything in their life every week. But in features that’s a really important part.

**Craig:** It’s a huge part. And, yes, you’re right. In television you need to make sure that people come back the next week in roughly the same shape you found them. So there will be little mini ups and downs. But in movies we feel narratively like we have to see people torn apart. And this goes all the way back to the bible.

**John:** Oh, the bible.

**Craig:** The story of Job.

**John:** Tell me the story of Job.

**Craig:** I will. And I should mention I don’t believe in anything in the bible. However, the bible is evidence of something. And it is evidence I think of deep seeded instinctive narrative patterns in the human mind. They are expressions of these things that are in us. They are not always sensible or logical, but they are there. So, that’s how I’m going to take a look at the story of Job. It’s a very simple story. Job is a very pious guy. He believes in God. He’s just super godly. And God therefore rewards him with a fortune and health and, I don’t know, bountiful crops, or I don’t know, whatever God would give people. And God is hanging out one day with Satan, as he used to do, and Satan says, “You know, Job only loves you because you reward him.” And this is a general moral conundrum that has been dissected over time. You watch The Good Place, right?

**John:** Oh yeah. It’s fantastic.

**Craig:** Of course, so they refer to this as moral dessert. The idea that you behave well so that you get your reward from whatever metaphysical/supernatural deity you believe in. And God says, “No, no, no, no, no. Job loves me because he’s a good guy. And I’ll prove it. I will remove my protection from him and you go ahead and do whatever you want to him. And you’ll see. He’ll stand by me.” And so that’s what happens. God removes his protection and Satan begins to torment Job – torment him – torment his health, and ruin his crops, and scatter his children. It’s just awful. Like every bad thing you could do to somebody he does to Job. And Job just stands by God.

And in the end, you’re the winner Job, and God rerewards him and gives him even more crops and frankincense or whatever they had back then.

So, why am I bringing up the story of Job? Because there’s a moral inherent to it that I think is why we need, narratively, to torture our characters. And the idea is that our goodliness or our growth or whatever you want to call the evolution of our selves, the betterment of our selves, it doesn’t count to other people unless it is perceived to come at terrible cost.

Now, is that actually true? I don’t think so. I think it’s perfectly possible to become a better person without suffering. But when it comes to narrative it seems like we need it or we don’t believe the change.

**John:** Yeah. We didn’t see the work. We didn’t see the struggle. We didn’t see sort of the cost and it doesn’t feel like it was merited.

**Craig:** Exactly. So what we like to see is somebody that has experienced a trauma and they’re going to get over the trauma but only by facing it in the most hard and difficult way. They are going to repair a relationship with somebody by that person leaving them. They’re going to appreciate what they have because they lose it all. So, every character starts with this flaw and then we as the writers we torment them and force them to confront it through a series of increasingly difficult trials the way that Satan did to Job. And through that there is this falling apart. Break you down to lift you up. And we call this the low point.

The low point in a movie is the low point because the writer has tortured the hero to the point where they give up. They finally give up. That’s what you have to do is – you’ve lost your, whatever your ego is, and your hubris, and you give up and from that you will rise back. But those moments are so notable. And one of my favorite versions of that is the Team America puke scene which is just perfect. It’s perfect.

**John:** Let’s play a clip from the Team America puke scene.

[Clip plays]

So this scene classically is a character who has lost everything and then sort of loses more and in this case is literally vomiting up the last they have left. But let’s talk about some of those things that a character can lose and list off some of those classic things you’ll see characters losing here.

Some bad things might be to take away their home. So you might literally burn it down, or you might cast them out of society. You might take away their support system, so taking away their friends, their family, the institutions, the organizations that they’re a part of. You might have the rest of the world see them as the villain. And so you have a hero who is being perceived as the villain which is horrible. Incarcerate them. I have a note here sort of incarceration, also the weird case of Paul Manafort at this moment. So as we’re recording this, this is a guy who is going to probably be in jail for the rest of his life and he’s acting really strangely which leads me to believe that there’s something else he could lose, which is always fascinating to speculate on that. There’s something worse than being in prison for all this time and so he’s acting on behalf of that. So figuring out what that is.

You can kill a character. You can lop off a limb. You can force them to act against their own beliefs, so classically they have the daughter kidnapped and so therefore they have to do things that they can’t believe. You can sew tension and conflict between their allies. You can destroy the item they love most, so it’s like he finally gets that car he’s been hoping for his all his life and you destroy that thing.

So, those losses are bad things you’re doing to your character and they’re pretty crucial. If you don’t do some of those kinds of things over the course of your movie it’s probably not a movie.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, what you’re doing is burning away what needs to be burned away. And it’s unpleasant. And we need it to be unpleasant. We need to see this character suffer. What is it, hamartia I think is the Greek word for suffering. And then catharsis is essentially vomiting. Which is one of the reasons why I like that scene so much because they just did it.

Humiliation is something that we see all the time. The writer creates circumstances in which the hero is humiliated. Where they lose all sense of self-worth and pride. We can kill or harm the people they love the most. We can make them feel terribly guilty and confront them with the consequences of what they’ve done. It’s good because it’s tortuous.

There’s that scene, people of our age always remember this moment in the second Superman movie from the late ‘70s/early ‘80s where Superman willingly gives up his power so that he can marry Lois Lane. And he gets beaten up by some guy in a bar. And it’s crushing. It’s crushing because you see someone brought low. I remember seeing that scene in the theater and feeling terrible inside. And it was the same feeling I had when I watched the animated The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe when all the evil Snow Queen and her minions shave the mane off of Aslan.

**John:** Yeah.

**Craig:** Take his hair away and reduce him to just this pathetic wretch. And, yeah, it’s – you need it. You need it or else when they come back you don’t feel anything.

**John:** Yeah. So let’s talk about the timing of when these bad things happen, because there’s a couple different moments over the course of a movie where you see these things happening classically. So, the first is the inciting incident or whatever you want to call that moment early in the story that sort of kicks this story into gear. And so, you know, in the first 10 to 15 minutes of a story where a change has happened. This is the village is raided and the hero’s parents are killed. This is a big change has happened that is starting this story with this character.

Often the end of act one. So you’ve arrived at a new place. We’re not in Kansas anymore. The hero’s house has burnt down. We’re entering a new world. There’s a big change and the hero has lost something. They may be excited about what they’re headed towards, but there is a loss. They’ve crossed into a place where they can’t get back to where they were before.

There’s a lot of times, moments in the second act that are going to be losses, where allies turn on them, where new obstacles arise. There’s a plan that fails, seeing things that were important to the character that we were hoping for for the character don’t come true. And then classically the biggest of these losses, which is probably the vomit scene from Team America, is the end of act two, sort of the worst of the worst, which is you’ve gotten to this point and you’ve lost everything. It should generally be the character’s lowest point, or at least the lowest point in this character and how they’ve evolved over the course of the story. That thing that looked like it was potentially in their reach has been taken away from them. And that’s classically the end of the second act.

**Craig:** It’s the end because there’s nothing left to lose. You, the writer, have beaten it all out of them. They have no pride left. They have no resources. Or whatever it is. You’ve removed the stuff that they were relying on. Their crutches are all gone.

It’s important to note that when you visit these bad things on your character you must do so sadistically. It’s not enough to just have some bad things happen. You have to do them in a way that is deeply ironic and miserable. Especially miserable. Because then oddly the more exquisite the torture the more we feel positively when they overcome it.

So, the example I always think about is Marlin at the beginning of Finding Nemo. He’s a happy fish and he’s there with his wife and their hundreds of little babies. And they’ve found a place to live. And then his wife is eaten and all of the babies are eaten except for one. And that is very bad. But then Pixar understood it’s not bad enough. They have to make that little one disabled. They have to give him a bad fin so that he will need even more protection. And then that’s not enough. He is the one that goes missing. And so you have to go get him. And that’s not enough. In the end you have to let him go into more danger to save a friend. And then that’s not enough. You have to feel like he died there. And in that moment where Marlin thinks that Nemo is dead, he flashes back to holding him as a little egg and if you’re human you cry. Because the torture has been so exquisite. And therefore the relief and joy is beautiful and our appreciation for how far Marlin has come as a character is real.

They earned it. Did I ever tell the story of Jose Fernandez, the pitcher?

**John:** No. Tell me.

**Craig:** So this sort of goes to what I think of as the essential ingredient of character torture is irony. It’s not enough to just sort of make bad things happen. You have to do it in a way that feels ironic, as if the world had conspired against them.

So, it’s a guy named Jose Fernandez. Like a lot of baseball players he came from Cuba. So he had to escape from Cuba and he escaped on a small boat with – it was one of these crowded boats full of refugees and at some point on the voyage the boat gets tossed and turned and someone says, “Someone has gone overboard,” and without even thinking Jose Fernandez just jumps into the ocean to save whoever that person is. And he does. He grabs them. He brings them back on board. He pulls them up. They live. And it turns out that the person he saved was his own mother. He didn’t even know it.

He arrives in the United States and he becomes a baseball player. Not just a baseball player. He is an amazing pitcher. He plays for the Marlins. He is fantastic. He is going to earn many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. So, just the kind of dream come true for somebody that had to escape Cuba on a small boat and rescue his mother from drowning.

Unfortunately, two years ago he died. He died in an accident. And if I told you that he died in a car accident you would think that’s bad. But he didn’t die in a car accident. He died in a boating accident.

**John:** Oh my.

**Craig:** And that is ironic in a terrible way. It implies that the universe was doing something. It had its thumbs on the scale so to speak. It is tortuous to think of. And when we write our terrible tortures for our characters I think it’s important for us to think of that. Because – and it’s a sad thing of course – but the worse it is and the more ironic it is the better the ending feels.

**John:** Yeah. Well let’s talk about sort of how those bad things come into the story. Because I can think of three main ways you see those bad things happening. The first is an external event. So that’s the earthquake. That’s the world war. In Finding Nemo that is the – is it a shark who eats the fish originally?

**Craig:** No, he gets grabbed by some fishermen who are looking to capture fish to sell, like for aquariums.

**John:** No, but at the very start of the movie where–

**Craig:** Oh yeah, it’s like a barracuda or something like that.

**John:** So that’s really an external threat because that – so barracuda is not the primary villain of the story. I don’t remember Finding Nemo that well. That barracuda itself never comes back.

**Craig:** Correct. It was just nature.

**John:** It’s nature actually. So some external force that you cannot actually defeat comes back. But sometimes it is the villain itself who is the character who arrives who is the one who is causing the suffering. So, every James Bond movie. Many fairy tales. Die Hard is an example. So, there’s a personified threat. A villain who is doing the thing that is causing the suffering. That is beginning the suffering.

But in some of my favorite movies it is the hero themselves that is doing the action that is causing the problem. So if you look at Inside Out or Ralph Breaks the Internet or Toy Story, it is the hero who is causing the problem. The hero who is ultimately responsible for the suffering that the characters are going through. And that’s often great writing. Because it gets back to the idea of like what is the character’s flaw and something about that character’s flaw is causing the suffering. And we see them having to address that flaw in order to stop the suffering.

**Craig:** No question. It’s very common with Pixar movies. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of a Pixar movie where the bad stuff is majority villain driven other than Bug’s Life, where Kevin Spacey, a real life villain, portrayed a villainous grasshopper. But typically in Pixar films – and sort of I guess in The Incredibles, but yeah, mostly they bring it upon themselves because it is more interesting.

**John:** I mean, in The Incredibles movies there’s sort of an attenuated thing where it’s like it’s because of past actions, it’s a boomerang effect that sort of comes back in, but it’s not a thing we saw them do at the start of the movie. It’s not generally responsible for most of the suffering.

**Craig:** Right.

**John:** But movies are about consequences and if characters are allowed to freely make choices and then have to suffer the consequences of those choices, that is good and appropriate and compelling storytelling, especially for a feature which is something that is designed to happen just once.

So, a television show theoretically should be able to repeat itself ad nauseam. A feature is sort of a one-time journey for a character. And so that one-time journey is going to about big steps and big swings and big failures when they happen.

**Craig:** No question.

**John:** So some takeaway on this idea of bad things happening to your characters. I would say really as you’re breaking a story you have to be thinking about what are the biggest worst things that could happen. And when I say the biggest worst things that are in the universe of your story. So, obviously you can’t stick a tornado in space. But within the context of your movie what are those and what are the character effects for it?

I think so often when we get notes about like well the stakes feel light here, sometimes the proposed solution is to make it be – it’s the end of the world. Like if we don’t do this then everyone else around us dies. I think that sometimes that’s mistaking the bigger scale for more personal consequences for the things that the characters are going through. So, making sure that it feels like a punishment very specifically tailored to this character that you’ve created.

**Craig:** Exactly. And you don’t have to – you don’t have to substitute volume of badness for quality of badness. In the beginning of John Wick the bad guys basically kill his dog. Which in and of itself would be like OK that’s bad, except it was the last gift he received from his deceased wife. That’s all it takes. I’m good.

And, you know, it doesn’t have to be this massive visitation of problems. Sometimes it’s just the cruelty of it really. Little bits of cruelty.

**John:** The Wizard of Oz, she’s trying to take Toto away at the start. That horrible woman is trying to bicycle away with Toto. That’s horrible. And that’s absolutely the right scale of problem for that movie so before the tornado comes that is what we’re experiencing. We can see it from Dorothy’s eyes like this is one of the worst things she can imagine ever happening.

**Craig:** A lot of times I do think about The Wizard of Oz when people start harping on stakes in meetings. Because I’m like what are the stakes exactly? What are the stakes?

**John:** There aren’t stakes in a classic way. It’s not like the Lollipop Guild was being horribly oppressed. It’s not like there was – she ended up changing the world but kind of by accident.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, I guess the stakes were that she would get killed or something. I don’t know. But yeah, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it’s really more about how closely we empathize with the character and the stakes are whatever is stakey to them. It’s about what makes them feel. And if you make me feel what they’re feeling, those are stakes. That counts.

**John:** Absolutely. In a previous discussion we talked about want and want versus need, which I think is a false dichotomy. But when characters express their wants they have a positive vision of the future. So they can imagine a future and in that future their life is better because they have this thing that they want. And that’s a positive vision. Fear is a negative vision of the future. And so they are afraid. They’ve seen the future and in the future their life is worse because this thing has happened or has been taken away from them.

That’s really what we’re talking about with these things we’re trying to – these horrors we’re trying to visit upon our characters is that those things that they feared or those things they didn’t even think they had to fear, those are happening to them now in this story and they have to figure out how to deal with it.

**Craig:** Absolutely.

**John:** All right. Let’s get to some listener questions. First off is James in Napier, New Zealand. I assume it’s Napier, but maybe it’s pronounced a different way. It feels like one of those words where it could be Napier, or Napier.

**Craig:** I think it’s probably Napier.

**John:** Napier. James writes, “How in god’s name do you make sure a TV script is the right length? There’s a lot of flexibility in how feature film scripts can run. I know the one-minute per page rule is a rough guide when you’re writing. TV and radio are much more time-constrained so how do you make sure the script is exactly the right length to start with? And how do you keep it that way during production?”

Craig, you just went through TV.

**Craig:** Yeah. We’re doing this right now. Don’t panic over here, James. It’s no big deal. Generally speaking, you know, we’ve got this rough 30-page/60-page guideline for half an hour or an hour. But the truth of the matter is it’s all guess work. The pages don’t really conform clearly to one-minute per page. Things are going to get cut. Some things are going to be expanded.

The good news is that we don’t really live in the world where the vast majority of television is constrained by rigid time formats. Everything is far more loosey-goosey now which is nice. If you’re writing for network television, different story. But with that point I would say, again, don’t panic. You can edit. And you can speed things up or slow them down editorially. So just generally, you know, get roughly in that zone and that’s what it will be.

And, you know, my experience at least with Chernobyl so far is that the scripts – at least for the first four episodes – are around 59 to 63 pages and they’re all timing out to be about an hour.

**John:** It does work that way. I was talking with Rob Thomas, the creator of Veronica Mars and iZombie and other shows and Rob hates the one-page-per-minute rule because he feels that sometimes networks try to value it too much. And so the way he writes it doesn’t really match up that well. He believes that you could probably actually do a word count that would more accurately reflect how long something really will take to fill.

I don’t know if that’s true, but I think it’s an interesting experiment. The truth though is that once you start making a show, so iZombie or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or any of Derek’s Chicago shows, they know. Ultimately they get a sense of like, OK, our scripts need to be about this length because this is what the episodes cut out to be. And even then there will be episodes that are running long for a while and they have to find way to get two minutes out of it. And when we had the Game of Thrones creators on, Benioff and Weiss, they were talking about how in the first season their episodes were too short. They didn’t understand sort of how long stuff was going to play. And so they needed to add additional scenes to sort of fill them out because they just didn’t have a sense of how long an episode was going to be based on the script page.

**Craig:** Exactly. All right. Joe has a question. He writes, “I am a WGA member. I have an offer on the table from a reputable Middle Eastern production company looking to produce a more Western style show. The offer is about 15% less than WGA minimums. They won’t go any higher because they say lower budgets and the Arabic-speaking portion of the MENA territory,” Middle East, I don’t know, “simply doesn’t support it. I asked the WGA and they said flatly I cannot work for any company who is not a WGA signatory.

“I asked my reps and was told the WGA does not have jurisdiction here and becoming a signatory should not be what stands in the way of signing this deal. To be honest, the WGA response rubbed me the wrong way because it felt like they were using me to gain signatories when they didn’t have anything to lose and I did. A job.

“That said, I owe a lot to the WGA. I’m eking out a meager living as a writer and I recognize the WGA is part of that. But I don’t have so much work that I can just turn stuff down willy-nilly. So, does the WGA actually have jurisdiction here?”

John, what do you think?

**John:** I think there’s probably some situation in which you can be hired by a foreign company as a WGA member and they don’t have to pay you minimums. But this is probably not one of those situations. I know there’s international working rules, essentially one of the things the WGA needs to make sure never happens is that international companies sort of come in and sort of scoop up American writers to really write American things but try to pay them less than that. So I think that is why the WGA’s response is that.

But, Craig, you know more about the rules. Tell me.

**Craig:** Well, I have an understanding here, but it will be interesting. I would love to get the WGA’s official position on this. My understanding is that the WGA here is correct. The issue is that Joe is here and the WGA’s jurisdiction covers the United States. It is chartered by the Department of Labor. So, if you are a member of the WGA and you are writing something here in the United States it has to be for a WGA signatory. You cannot go lower than that. Period. The end. Assuming that there is an applicable collective bargaining agreement which obviously there is here.

So, no, you can’t do that. Listen, Sony, right, owns Columbia. We call them Sony now. Well obviously Sony is a Japanese company. So why wouldn’t Sony just start saying everybody who works for Columbia Pictures, we’re actually employing you under the Japanese branch of Sony, so you don’t have to do WGA. No. That doesn’t work that way. At all.

**John:** So I suspect that where we could get to with Joe is if this company was willing to fly you over to the Middle East and put you up there and you were doing your writing services there–

**Craig:** Yep.

**John:** They could pay you less than that and that would not be a great situation for you. So not only are you giving up 15% of this money, which by the way 15% of scale is not a ton of money. I just feel like they could find that money for you. But, you are giving up your credit protections. You are giving up kind of all the stuff. Health and pension. You’re giving up much more than you sort of think to take that job. So that is why we have protections like this so that you cannot be undercut by a foreign thing.

So could this company form a WGA signatory? Yes they could. It would be great if they did.

**Craig:** Yeah. I don’t think the WGA, by the way, Joe is using you to get this company to sign up as a signatory. I don’t think they care about this company. I think they care about everybody else that’s in the WGA and the value of our minimums not being degraded. So, what I would say here is you can say to them, listen, this isn’t me asking you for anything. I’m not allowed to do this. And, by the way, company, if you come here to the United States you can’t get anybody in the WGA to do this. None of us will be able to do this. You’re going to have get a non-WGA writer.

So, you know, which generally speaking won’t probably be as good. So, that’s where they’re at, Joe.

**John:** All right. Kofi from Woodbridge, New Jersey writes, “My question pertains to the release of completed scripts after a television show has aired or a movie has been released to the public. Who decides whether or not the completed script will ever be released? I’d love to read the script for every episode of my favorite shows, but usually only the scripts for the pilot and episodes selected for awards are available. Movie scripts can be hit or miss, too. Why isn’t every script made available to be read for educational purposes?”

**Craig:** Well, there are certain circumstances where the writers actually have the publication rights over screenplays. If you have separated rights in feature films that means you have a Story By or Written By credit then I believe you have the right to publish your screenplay.

But, look, by and large they don’t do it because it takes time and it costs some amount of money and it takes some tiny bit of effort and they’re just not willing. It’s no one’s job. It’s a massive company and they can look around and who wants to be the person responsible for scanning and posting 4,000 screenplays. Nobody wants to do it. And there isn’t really a huge clamoring for it, which, you know, is a bit of a bummer. That said, there are plenty of kind of underground swap meets for these things online. I’ve seen them around.

So, yeah, it would be nice. But it comes down to sheer laziness and lack of interest, I think.

**John:** So, the situation is actually a lot different than it was 25 years ago when Craig and I were starting. I remember when I arrived at USC for film school they had a script library. You could go down and could check out two scripts from this library and they were literally printed bound scripts. Not even brads in them, but these special posts that sort of like are sturdier than brads. You could check them out and read them and take them back in. And it was a great experience for me to read all of these scripts from classic movies I loved but also things that had never been produced and it was a really good experience.

So, I think reading scripts is fantastic. But, now there’s the Internet and now there are PDFs of screenplays. And so while Kofi can’t find all the screenplays he wants to read, he can find a ton of them. I mean, even just in Weekend Read we have hundreds of scripts. Things that are going for awards, those are posted online and those things are easy to find. It’s harder to find the scripts for movies that are not sort of award contenders. But, you can kind of find them.

But Kofi’s more interesting point is he wants to read the episodic scripts. Those are harder to find. You tend to find pilots or just those marquee episodes of things. And it’s great to read the normal episodes. That’s one of those things where it actually is much easier to do if you are in this town. Because then you just have networks and assistants at places who can get you copies of scripts. They’re not really under lock and key. They don’t have a lot of value in and of themselves. You can’t do anything with the scripts and so no one is trying to sort of keep them from you. But what Craig said is like it’s no one’s job to publish them or post them. That’s why they don’t happen.

**Craig:** That’s why they don’t happen. Well, keep looking. And by the way, Kofi, spent a lot of time in the mall over there in Woodbridge myself, so just waving hi to you back there in the old country.

And we’ve got one more question here from Cory right here in LA who writes, “I’ve got an award-winning short film and I just hired a screenwriter to adapt it into a feature. Though I’ve come up with much of the story, he will be hitting the keys to bring the story and script together. I am a one-man production band with a small production company. I’d like to make sure that I am setting both he and I up for success.” That should be him and I. Setting both him and me. Yeah. Because, right. Anyway.

“I’d like to make sure that I’m setting both him and me up for success and possible WGA membership or eligible points toward. First, should or must I make my company a WGA signatory? Second, since I or rather my company is self-financing his writing of the screenplay do I need to adhere to WGA payment standards to allow him eligibility? Finally, if I’m the creator of the original work and I’ve come up and will be credited with Story By is there an opportunity for me to earn WGA points or is that just for the screenwriter?”

Oh, excellent list of membership questions there, John. What do you think?

**John:** Absolutely. So, I don’t have all the answers but I will tell you that you’re not the first person to encounter this and I think the WGA has done a much better job over the last ten years dealing with these kinds of situations. I think Howard Rodman deserves a lot of the credit for that.

**Craig:** Yeah.

**John:** What you’re describing is probably a low budget independent film. And if you go to the WGA website there are resources there to talk you through what happens with low budget independent films. Classically these were done outside of WGA jurisdiction. But recognizing that some of the best work was happening there and this was obviously writer’s first work they set up these low budget agreements so that you can do this kind of stuff. That you don’t have to pay people the full amounts for writing services and other things but still allows for things like credit protections. It allows for other parts of what you get with a WGA package for these productions.

So, I suspect you will click through on the site, we’ll put a link in the show notes, and see what you need to do and how you sort of put the script into a place where it’s eligible for these low budget agreements. And I don’t think you will have to become a full signatory. I think there’s just ways you can sort of use an associate membership to get you started here. So, it’s good you’re doing it. It’s good you’re thinking about this now. But just read the stuff and then make the thing.

**Craig:** Yeah. Definitely you want to take a look at that low budget independent film agreement. To become a full-fledged WGA signatory there are quite a few hoops to jump through. I mean, it’s not trial by fire or anything, but for instance you need to show that you have enough financial resources to be able to cover your residuals obligations. So in this case because it’s just you and this is just one independent film I think that’s the way to go. Take a look at it.

In terms of credit, the original work will be considered source material. It was written outside of the WGA so it will be based on a short film by blah-blah-blah. If you want proper WGA story credit, on the title page of the screenplay it would need to say Screenplay by Jim, Story by Jim and Corey. And that, of course, requires Jim to agree. The truth is the story in the original film is essentially akin to the story in a novel. The novelist doesn’t automatically get WGA credit for the movie of it. They have to actually do some work. So in this case what you would need to do to warrant Story by credit or Shared Story by credit is to work up a written story for the new movie that you’re talking about, either on your own or with the screenwriter that you’re hiring, and then that is now part of this chain of title of the work that’s leading up to this film that would be covered by the independent film low budget agreement.

Hopefully that makes sense.

**John:** I think it makes sense.

**Craig:** Great.

**John:** All right, it’s time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing feels like a Craig One Cool Thing, but it’s the story in the New York Times by Moises Velasquez-Manoff and it’s about how emergency rooms and other medical professionals are starting to examine ketamine as a suicide prevention or a suicide drug for dealing with people who show up suicidal and it seems like it is potentially a quick life-saving drug to be using for people with severe suicide ideation.

So, it’s a really nicely written up story about the potential of a drug which we only think of in sort of bad context possibly having some really good uses.

**Craig:** Yeah. It was a fascinating article. Totally my kind of thing. Ketamine is one of these drugs that’s been around for a long time and it’s kind of one of those – I think the World Health Organization has their list of essential medicines, like if you were building your doomsday locker of medicines you’d want ketamine in there. It is a sedative. It is kind of a tranquilizer sort of thing. It can be used anesthetically, you know.

And what they found, and I didn’t realize this, but in this article they are saying that very small doses of ketamine can almost stop suicidal ideation in its tracks. So you have somebody coming in who is in severe distress who was just taken by the cops off of the side of a bridge and brought to the emergency room and you give them this tiny injection of ketamine and suddenly they don’t have that anymore. They don’t want to jump.

And, now, that doesn’t last obviously, right? So then there’s work to be done after that. But what they’re pointing out is that suicidal ideation, kind of underlying depression, to reverse that pharmacologically with say serotonin reuptake inhibitors takes weeks. Maybe months. Same thing with talk therapy. But if you need to make sure that someone doesn’t hurt themselves over the two, three, four weeks, this may be a viable deal.

Now, part of the issue is that it can be used recreationally and if there’s a certain dosage you start to have hallucinations and, you know, psychoactive effects. So, that’s why I think in general people are a little, you know, but we have to kind of get over some of this stuff. You know?

**John:** Absolutely.

**Craig:** Doctors in the emergency rooms are pretty good at figuring out who is there because they’re actually suicidal and who is pretending to be because they feel like getting a ketamine dose.

**John:** You look at sort of this work, you look at work on LSD, you look at work on ecstasy, these are clearly drugs that should be studied for what they can do in a clinical setting and sort of what good can come out of them. But instead they sort of become demonized because of dangerous uses of them recreationally.

**Craig:** Yeah. I mean, we wouldn’t use them recreationally if they didn’t work on some level. So, yeah, obviously how much we use and all the rest. So, anyway, that was really promising. So you did that and I went the other direction. I went all the way over into computer world. So I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2, of course, and I want to call out the people that worked on the environment because it’s so good. It’s the best environment experience I’ve ever had playing a videogame.

There was a moment where – it’s not just the detail of the appearance of things, which is quite extraordinary. But it’s the way it interacts sort of synergistically. Just sort of trotting along on my horse and I’m going through sort of a path with some trees on either side and the wind kind of blows and leaves rustle off the trees and kind of swirl in the air around me and then fall to the ground. And I’m like, what? This is getting good.

The wind people talked to the tree people. And then the tree people decided, you know what, some leaves come off when wind blows but not a lot of them, not all of them, and how do they come off? And what happens when they go? And it’s perfect. It’s really amazing how well they did with those little things. And you and I know because we work in movies and television how much work goes into making something look effortless.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Craig:** God only knows how many hours were spent trying to make the wind make the leaves go just right. It’s really well done. So, tip of the hat. My One Cool Thing this week the people that did the environment in Red Dead 2.

**John:** Very nice. Those leaf physicists, they did God’s work there.

**Craig:** Yes.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Our show is produced by Megan McDonnell, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Michael O’Konis. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today.

But short questions are great on Twitter. Craig is @clmazin. I’m @johnaugust.

You can find the links in the show notes for the things we talked about, so that’s at johnaugust.com. Just follow through to the links there. Or if you’re listening to this on most of the players swipe and you will see a list of links there.

You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. While you’re there, leave us a review. Those are lovely. We need to read some of those reviews aloud so we’ll try to remember to do that.

Transcripts go up within the week and so you can find transcripts for all the episodes back to the first episode. You can find the audio for all our episodes at Scriptnotes.net.

**John:** Craig, I will see you tomorrow for the live show.

**Craig:** See you tomorrow for the live show, John.

**John:** Bye.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** All right. And it is now time for our bonus segment. So bonus segments are just for you premium members who are paying us $4.99 a month. That $4.99 a month pays for a lot of things, including the salary of our producer Megana Rao who is now sitting across from me and smiling.

Megana Rao: Thank you, Premium members.

**John:** You picked this episode for our rebroadcast today. What made this stand out for you?

**Megana:** So this is a craft episode that I really like and I think it’s something that I personally struggle with is, you know, making things difficult for your characters because I think at the point that I am on a project that I’m working on it’s like, oh, I really like these characters and then making them go through conflict is something that I viscerally feel as I’m writing it. And so it’s something that I feel like I, like a lot of writers, need to push myself because that’s what makes good storytelling.

**John:** Yeah. So not only do you produce the show every week, but you actually go back and listen to earlier episodes. How much of the back catalog have you gotten through at this point?

**Megana:** I think I’ve gotten through a decent amount.

**John:** All right. A decent amount being 10%?

**Megana:** Oh, gosh, there’s a lot of episodes. No, I think over 30%.

**John:** OK, that’s really good. But of course there are premium members who have listened to every single episode and are like how could she possible produce without listening to every episode. We had Zoanne Clack on the show and she produces Grey’s Anatomy. And she was saying when they hire on a staff writer they expect them to have watched every episode of Grey’s Anatomy.

**Megana:** Well, I was really ambitious when I first started. And every time I’m like, yeah, I’m going to do it and I get through – like I’ve done the first 15 episodes of every season stack for sure.

**John:** So, what kinds of things are you learning from the show that are applying to what you’re doing now as an aspiring writer? And what stuff do you still feel like you’re still missing? What kind of advice have you not gotten on Scriptnotes that we need to make sure we start hitting?

**Megana:** So I think the craft stuff is – and as we’re working on the Scriptnotes book I’m just like, wow, what an incredible trove of information. And I should really listen to it more. But, I mean, I do read it and listen to it a lot. But I think something that I’ve been wondering and have been wanting to get your take on is when you are having a meeting in the industry what does success look like, because we work in the entertainment industry so people are very charming and great to talk to. And so it’s kind of confusing afterwards to measure how well it went or how I should be thinking about it.

**John:** Because right now you’re at a phase that I remember very distinctly when I was first starting, because you’re going to a lot of general meetings and a lot of sit-downs and hey-how-are-yous and you’re doing the water bottle tour of Los Angeles [unintelligible]. I guess actually you’re not going into people’s offices. You’re meeting for coffees? How are you doing these general meetings?

**Megana:** Some are for coffees, but I think because of the pandemic mostly Zooms.

**John:** Mostly Zooms. So a thing my first agent did which I think was a smart choice, he just sent me out on like – he just shotgunned me out into meetings. I took way too many meetings. And you just get better at taking meetings. And so it sounds like your meetings are going well, but you’re having a hard time figuring out what’s the next step, or how to go from like oh that was nice in the room but will I ever work with this person again.

**Megana:** Right. And the thing that I am sort of looking to decode is you know when you go on a date and you’re like waiting to hear what the last thing the person says, because it’s different if they’re saying, “Hey, it was really nice to meet you, or I had a really good time,” versus, “Can I get your number? I’d love to see you again.” And so what does that look like in the entertainment industry or after a general meeting?

**John:** So as you wrap up a general there will be that sense of like it was really nice to meet you, just a very classic thing, like we should look for things to do together. Great. That’s sort of the generic version. And it’s not a brush off. It’s just there’s not a specific next step they’re looking to take. If they really were intrigued by you and sort of like, “Oh, I really want to talk to you more about this specific thing,” they’ll bring up that specific thing.

**Megana:** OK.

**John:** Or if there’s something that you mentioned in the meeting and you were like, “Oh, we both really want to do something that’s based on Norse mythology.” And they’re like, “Oh, let me send you this stuff and we can keep up that conversation.” And so sometimes those will happen at the end of the general, or sort of a first meeting. Other times they won’t. You have to be comfortable with sometimes meetings are just meh.

Like when I went over to Verve. You were there for that. And I went out on a bunch of general meetings and a lot of them were just kind of, “So, we now know each other.” If something down the road comes up they actually feel like they could come out to me for a project. And a lot of what you’re doing now is sort of that.

**Megana:** So I guess also as a writer what responsibility do I have to follow up?

**John:** I think your responsibility to follow up with the good ones. The ones you actually think like oh I would like to work with this person, yeah, it’s good to reach out. And so that’s a case where it’s like, hey, can I have your email. Or you can get the email from the agents to say like, hey, I really enjoyed meeting with you about this. I wanted to talk to you about these specific things. Or this is a thing I’ve been working on that I’d love to talk with you more about.

To me, and people can disagree, I don’t think you owe a thank you note to a general meeting, or that kind of stuff. It’s just like if there was chemistry there was chemistry on both sides and it sort of is like dating. You don’t have to send a thank you for dinner at the end of it.

**Megana:** OK. That makes sense.

**John:** Now something you were talking about at lunch was when you have a meeting with somebody and they’ve read something of yours and they start giving you notes on it. And that’s a weird situation. Can you describe in a general sense what it was like?

**Megana:** I feel like in a lot of meetings there’s questions and constructive feedback or nice – I’m trying to avoid the word saying compliments – but, yeah, it’s nice that they’ll compliment my work. But then a couple of times they will have specific notes or want to do a follow up call with notes. And the notes are great, but I’m confused about whether I should act on them and what that means. Because we don’t have a clear plan forward.

**John:** And that sort of gets back into the dating. Are we actually trying to start a relationship here, or are you just sort of like giving me constructive feedback because you think it could actually think this thing and help me as a writer. And that’s a case where your reps, your agents, or your managers can sort of help suss out is this a person we really think could do this project, because if so then maybe it’s worth really investing the time with them and sort of working through that.

If not, then it’s just great to get their feedback. And if you’re getting consistent feedback about these things you could consider making those changes. But the stuff you have out there right now in the world is something that could get made but it’s really there as a writing sample for you to get hired for other jobs. So it should not be the primary focus is to be rewriting that stuff you’ve already been writing.

**Megana:** Totally.

**John:** An experience I definitely had in those early meetings is they’ll pull out a box of like these are all the things I’m working on. And have they sort of presented that list of the things that they are working on?

**Megana:** Yeah. And I’m always like – I mean, people are just so good at pitching their projects. It’s like the most fun part of the meeting to just listen to all of these great stories.

**John:** Sometimes they’re saying, “OK, we’d like to consider you for this thing,” but other times you get a sense of the kinds of things they’re looking for. Really getting the sense of like what things are going to spark for you that are really priorities for them and how you can sort of like keep that conversation going about like oh this is a thing we want to see happen together.

You’ll also be in some meetings where you’re just like this is not a fit. And the meeting should just end. Just like a bad date.

**Megana:** Yeah. Yeah. Well, thankfully they’ve all been really good so far and the people that I’ve met have been lovely.

**John:** Cool. Thank you, Megana, for producing this show every week. And thank you to our premium members for supporting the podcast.

**Megana:** Thank you guys. Thanks John.

Links:

* The Team America: World Police [puke scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKqGXeX9LhQ), with some bad language
* The opening of [Finding Nemo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG3L98NFyro)
* Aslan’s sacrifice in [The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ6VAGyhWXM)
* [Can We Stop Suicides?](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/opinion/sunday/suicide-ketamine-depression.html) by Moises Velasquez-Manoff for the New York Times
* The environment in [Red Dead Redemption 2](https://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption2/)
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Michael O’Konis ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli). And special thanks to Megan McDonnell, the original producer of this episode!

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/378rebroadcaststandard.mp3).

The original post for this episode can now be found [here](https://johnaugust.com/2021/good-news-bad-news).

**John August:** Hey, this is John. There’s a few bad words in this episode just in case your kids are in earshot and you don’t want them to hear mild swearing. This is the warning.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is Episode 506 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Craig is buried under an avalanche of preproduction on his new show. Luckily we have an amazing replacement. Please welcome back returning guest host Liz Hannah.

**Liz Hannah:** Hey.

**John:** Liz!

**Liz:** What’s up?

**John:** Hey, how are you?

**Liz:** I’m good. How are you?

**John:** Now, I called you last minute. Thank you so much for filling in on this. But then I just realized this morning you were in prep on something yourself, aren’t you?

**Liz:** Yeah. I guess this just makes me way better at juggling things than Craig, so we’ll just add that to the list. [laughs] No.

**John:** More evidence of your superiority here.

**Liz:** Obviously. But I’m in early prep. I feel like he’s diving in. We don’t start hard prep until next week. So I’m just in the getting used to my new place [unintelligible].

**John:** Now do you have any fungus-based zombies in your show?

**Liz:** I mean, I don’t really want to give it away, but hopefully. I don’t know. We’ll see.

**John:** Hopefully.

**Liz:** Yeah. We don’t have the finale written yet so you never know.

**John:** And season two is blue sky. You could do anything.

**Liz:** Exactly. I mean, why not.

**John:** Put a room together and figure it out. Now, today on the show we’re going to answer a ton of listener questions that have been backed up for a while. We’ll talk about what to do when you’re fired, or sometimes what’s harder is actually what to do when have some good news in your life, so we’ll talk about those. Plus I want to do some follow up on spoilers, living wages, multiple timelines, and Liz if you’ll stick around in our bonus segment I’d love to talk about pets because you are a dog owner if I recall correctly.

**Liz:** I am. I’m a dog and a cat owner actually.

**John:** Oh, fantastic. So you can give us both sides of that debate. I’m a dog owner but I also have experience with the pocket pets, the short-lived gerbils and hamsters.

**Liz:** Oh wow.

**John:** So we’ll talk about pet ownership as a screenwriter.

**Liz:** Love it.

**John:** All right. Let’s get right into it. If you are listening to this podcast on Tuesday, the day this comes out, June 29th, I’m going to be hosting a symposium on vaccine storylines in scripted entertainment. So we’ll have a link in the show notes to that, but it should be really great. It’s me and Vince Gilligan, the Kings, Latoya Morgan, Beth Schacter, Mike Schur, David Shore, the Spellmans, both Malcom and Nichelle are all here to talk about how we work vaccines into the storylines for the TV programs that we’re doing. So if you’re curious about how that would work please join us. That is at I think 5pm Pacific Time if you’re listening to this on Tuesday morning when this episode comes out. So please join us there.

Second, Liz, have you been following any of this stuff about the IATSE negotiations and what’s happening with IATSE. Because you’re in prep so this could actually effect you.

**Liz:** I have. I have been following it pretty closely.

**John:** So let’s remember that we often talk on the show about the Writers Guild which is the guild that represents all the writers. There’s a Directors Guild, a Screen Actors Guild. IATSE is sort of a super union that represents almost everybody below the line on a movie. So these are everything from grips and gaffers, but also script supervisors and script coordinators.

**Liz:** Writer’s assistants.

**John:** Writer’s assistants in rooms. So this is a big negotiation happening right now.

**Liz:** It is. And I believe the support staff of the room, meaning the writer’s assistants and coordinators joined I think recently. They’re the most recent additions in the last couple of years. So I think this is their first major negotiation. You know, they are probably the group that gets taken the most for granted in any group in making a television show, at least in my experience.

And it’s really unfortunate to see them under-valued when I think anybody here who has been in a room or has show-run knows that you kind of live and die by your support staff. And I really hope that they are able to get their wages up, which they are asking for. I think the average wage right now is barely livable if not livable, because we also have to keep in mind these are not normally 52-week jobs. These rooms are 20-week to 30 weeks maybe. And often they’re even smaller in the smaller run of rooms. So they need to be paid a livable wage and they need to be appreciated by obviously the room and the showrunners and the EPs, but on up to the studios and networks. They make the shows that you make possible.

So I really hope that they are getting the support they need and are getting movement in those negotiations.

**John:** Yeah. So often as we talk about #PayUpHollywood and the crisis of low wages across the board, it’s nice to always be thinking about, oh, if there were only a union that were protecting these people. And so assistants at agencies have no unions. They don’t have that support. These are people who do have that union support in theory but if their wages are not actually livable it’s not worth a whole ton. So we’ve got to get these people up below these barely survivable wages in many cases, particularly because they’re working piecemeal. They’re working from one show, to another show, to another show.

So, it’s both the responsibility of the union negotiators to make sure that these lowest paid people are getting paid a livable wage, but also on studios and showrunners and everyone else’s behalf to make sure that the people who are in their rooms are actually getting paid enough that it’s viable. Because this is often the pathway into other jobs in the industry.

**Liz:** Absolutely. It’s often the pathway into writing for television, because you have such exposure to the room, to the showrunners. And it’s not only – it is absolutely what you said. It’s jumping from show to show. Often I’ve found it’s following one showrunner, which can be at times really consistent. It can be completely inconsistent depending on what the showrunner does. You know, if they do limiteds that means maybe once a year, once every two years, three years there’s a room.

So, you know, I think there needs to be loyalty to the staff in as much as there’s loyalty the other way. And there needs to be support. And it really is something that I think I’ve seen a lot of conversation about and I’m sure you have too. These are not entry level jobs, which seems like what everybody assumes is this is an entry level job into the room. Being a writer’s assistant, being a script coordinator in no way is an entry level position. Like those are jobs that, sure, it could be your first time as a writer’s assistant, but there’s a lot of pressure in being a writer’s assistant. There’s a lot of pressure in being a script coordinator. As a script coordinator you are the gatekeeper of what is the product that goes to the studio, the network, the talent, the entire crew. If there are things wrong there that you didn’t catch that’s a real problem.

And there’s a lot of training in that. And there’s a lot of nuance in it. And so it’s not like somebody can just walk out and do it.

**John:** Yeah. Liz, just because people may not be familiar with it, can you talk a little bit about what a script coordinator would do on a show like yours? So this is a limited that you’re shooting. So what was the script coordinator’s responsibility as you’re putting together this show?

**Liz:** So we have kind of like a unique situation because we had our room during the pandemic. So we actually opened up – so we were on a Zoom room and we opened up our room to all the support staff, meaning everybody was auditing. Typically in a room you wouldn’t always have your script coordinator in your room. I think oftentimes the script coordinator is not in the room. It really depends.

But we did and we had our script coordinator there as well as our writer’s assistant and all of the showrunner’s assistants in the rooms that we were going. But to answer your question a script coordinator is in charge of all of the drafts, all of the files, coordinating every draft. Making sure that everything from character names to scene locations to scene numbers to clearances for character names, all the way down to you have one line over on an act and I know that you hate that showrunner so how can I help you bring that page up so that it’s actually 56 pages instead of 57. As I said, there’s a real camaraderie I think between the best of relationships between script coordinators and showrunners. You get to know each other’s tendencies and wants.

So it is a very sort of symbiotic relationship at times. And also as a benefit of that as the script coordinator you see every draft, from like the vomit draft to the shooting draft to the rewrites in post to everything. You see everything.

**John:** So it’s a very technical job, but there’s some creative element to it because you have to be able to anticipate what the showrunner actually wants. And you’re that last set of eyes and fingers on the keyboard for that script before it goes into the machinery of production. So it’s the last chance for the script to be perfect before it gets into the beast of production. And then once you’re in the beast of production you may be responsible for some of the updated pages and distributions that need to go out after that point.

**Liz:** Absolutely. And I have to say my script coordinator that I’m working with right now is incredible to the point where she’ll recognize when I’ve overused a word too many times and is like did you want to do this. And like, no, I didn’t. I was quite tired. Thank you so much. And, again, it’s a close relationship because particularly as a showrunner at a certain point your room wraps. And as we are right now in Covid you don’t get to have your writers on set. And so it’s really just you. And so it’s very much you and the script coordinator are kind of drilling in and making sure that it’s good as it can be.

**John:** Now that you’re in prep is the script coordinator still on the job?

**Liz:** Yeah. I still have an episode to write so yes, yes she is.

**John:** All right. Some more follow up. We always love to do our How Would This Be a Movie segment, and one of my favorite ones was at the Austin Film Festival back in Episode 222. And one of the stories was Zola. Do you remember Zola who was the stripper/sex worker who had a series of tweets that were just phenomenal and that came out the week that we recorded that show?

The Zola movie comes out this week. And I’m so excited to see it. It’s only in theaters, but I love when one of these How Would This Be a Movie is actually a movie-movie. So I’m looking forward to checking that out.

**Liz:** I’ve actually been really fortunate enough to see Zola.

**John:** All right. Tell us.

**Liz:** Get ready. It is awesome. It is so different than I think, I don’t know, than I was anticipating. I don’t know what I was anticipating. But it’s an experience. And as much as – I think Janicza Bravo directed it. Jeremey O. Harris I believe co-wrote it. And as much as – I think it’s like capturing kind of the thrill of reading that thread in a way. So it’s sort of edited that way. There’s an energy to it. There’s an excitement to it. You know, there’s a lot of ways they deal with texting which I’m dealing with currently on the show that I’m about to go into production on, but I think we’ve all been dealing with over the past ten years is like how do you show texting on television or in features and have it not just be reading on screen. You know, how do you not now do it sort of in the way that Euphoria does it? And I think they did a really amazing job. Joi McMillon edited it, who she’s an unbelievable editor.

So I think everybody is really going to be kind of blown away by this. That’s my prediction.

**John:** Great. Well I’m eager to go in cold and not have too much anticipation, because definitely whenever we do one of those segments I’m building my version of the movie in my head but I’m really curious to see what version they built. So I’m excited for that.

More follow up. We’ve been talking a lot about spoilers on the show recently. We had several listeners write in to tell us just how wrong we were about spoilers and that obviously we didn’t know anything about writing because we would understand how important it is to have surprise there at the end. And how when you tell a joke you don’t tell the punchline first.

And I’m curious to hear your thoughts on spoilers. And we’ll divide it into two sort of categories of spoilers. There’s spoilers for things like TV shows that are out on the air right now, so a spoiler for Loki, and sort of how you’re feeling about spoilers on Loki for a who that’s week to week. People may not have seen that episode. Versus The Sixth Sense or Citizen Kane or Fight Club. Older movies that everyone could have seen but doesn’t choose to see. What is your feeling of spoilers?

**Liz:** I mean, I guess breaking them into the new version of television movies, I think Loki and all of the Marvel shows have been dropping on weekdays so it’s either Wednesday night or Thursday night. And there’s a lot of people who can’t watch these till the weekend. So I feel like there should be some type of understanding that we don’t talk about the spoilers on Twitter until Monday morning or something. At the same time I just avoid Twitter. If I see somebody say something about Loki I just don’t read it. We don’t have watercoolers anymore. And we’re all still at home for the most part. So I feel like we have to understand that people want to engage and that’s what’s exciting about pop culture, right, is that we’re all engaging in it and that we’re all excited about it.

So, I don’t know, do I get pissy when I see a spoiler that was an accident? Yeah. But also I don’t know that it’s going to fully ruin the experience for me. You know, I want to watch the whole thing. I’m not sure that just because I found out something that maybe is a small spoiler or something is going to totally ruin it.

**John:** Yeah. Your point about Twitter and the watercooler I think is a good one, because if you didn’t want to hear the chitchat maybe don’t hang around the watercooler at the office. I mean, it’s natural for people to want to have those conversations.

Now let’s think about movie spoilers and the sense of like there’s a movie with a big twist in it and you don’t know what the twist is and is somebody ruining the movie for you, someone spoiling the movie by revealing the twist. And that’s where I get a little bit more my fists on my hips here.

**Liz:** Me too.

**John:** It’s not OK to – at a certain point you can’t put police tape around all of popular culture. And you need to be able to talk about the things that are in those movies. And if you’re listening to a film and television podcast like this one I think it’s pretty reasonable that we’re going to talk about those things because they are important things that happened in the course of the story. And that we can appreciate movies for more than just the plot twists that happened in them.

**Liz:** For sure. I also think there’s got to be some type of expiration date on when a spoiler is a spoiler anymore. Like I just recorded a podcast about a West Wing episode and I was like is this a spoiler. Has somebody never seen this? I guess – spoiler alert – they’re suddenly going to find out that Bartlett had MS. You know what I mean?

Also, I think this is a different conversation but to touch on it lightly. We’re all so sensitive right now and everybody is just ready to get in a fight and pick everybody apart for the smallest thing that, you know, something like that feels like everybody is going to gang up. But, you know, like I went and saw Fast 9 last night. I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know what was happening. There’s a couple things in there that I was pleasantly surprised and not spoiled by. If I’d been spoiled by them would it have changed my expectations or enjoyment of the movie? I don’t think so. I think it was fun.

**John:** Yeah. And also I think part of the reason why we go and see Fast 9 right away, or we watch the Game of Thrones finale in the taxi on the way back from the airport is because we want to be able to participate in the culture right when it happens and we know that there’s a limited window for that. So it’s not just that we have it unspoiled for ourselves, but so we can actually talk about the thing when it happens. So that’s part of the excitement of experiencing a thing when you can right when it comes out. That’s part of the joy of it, the shared experience.

**Liz:** Exactly. Exactly. Now, I will say if somebody has said I haven’t seen this don’t spoil it for me and then you spoil it for them, don’t do that. That’s not nice. That’s not a nice thing to do.

**John:** Well maybe there should be different rules for like if you and I are in a private conversation then I think to ask about like do you want me to spoil this thing, or have you seen, is absolutely totally fair and valid. Because that’s a one-on-one conversation or a small group conversation. But in popular culture you can’t sort of fragilize everyone just because they may not have seen this one thing.

**Liz:** Couldn’t agree more.

**John:** Cool. All right. Let’s get to our marquee topic here. I want to talk about good news. And I have a clip here to set this up. This is a clip from the 1994 movie Sleep with Me. And this movie if you’ve not seen it you may have seen this clip of Quentin Tarantino having a long rant about how gay Top Gun is. So he has a sort of famous monologue about how gay Top Gun is. But this is also from that same scene you recognize that this party is happening because this guy has just sold a spec script. So let’s take a listen to this clip from Sleep with Me.

[Clip plays]
**Male Voice:** [unintelligible] really hot property. So did you always know that the big guy here was going to make it so big?

**Female Voice:** Of course. It was just a matter of time before Hollywood realized [unintelligible] was the way to go.

**Male Voice:** I’m in the [unintelligible] training program.

**Female Voice:** I heard he got like half a mill. For first spec script? Not bad.

**Female Voice:** Is it Dwayne or Wayne?

[Clip ends]

**John:** All right, so Liz that is about the sale of a spec script and a party being thrown because this guy has just sold a spec script. Did you have a moment where your career changed a lot where you just got a piece of really big, good news?

**Liz:** Yeah. For sure.

**John:** Tell me about that.

**Liz:** When I sold The Post it was a spec. It was a pretty similar experience. It was a spec. I had never sold anything before by myself. And I got a call at midnight that Amy Pascal was going to buy it and she wanted to make it. It was absolutely within sort of 45 seconds of that my life completely turned upside down. And sort of became a domino effect of where I am now. And I’ve had amazing opportunities because I sold that spec.

**John:** Great. So we have a listener question here that I think ties in really well. Megana, if you could ask this listener question.

**Megana Rao:** Abby asks, “This has been a tough year for everyone. I got through relatively unscathed but I dealt with my share of anxiety and depression and to top it all off got dumped by my partner of over two years. Things seemed to be finally turning a corner this month. I just got some potentially exciting news. There’s a production company interested in one of my scripts and I just signed at a small agency. I should be feeling amazing, right? Instead I feel lonelier than ever. This is something I would have celebrated with my boyfriend. My family and close friends don’t work in the industry so it’s hard to explain what this means to them, especially since there’s nothing concrete to celebrate.

“And I feel conflicted about sharing with my friends in the industry, especially those who have been struggling professionally. It feels selfish to expect them to be happy for me. And is any of this even worth celebrating? Is this what the life of a screenwriter is like? Hustling, pitching, facing rejection, and then on the off chance something does work out waiting for years before you can actually share the accomplishment? How do you guys deal with good news?”

**John:** All right, so Liz, how do you deal with good news? And how did you deal with the good news of The Post? Just getting called that Amy Pascal wants to buy your movie and make your movie, what did you do next? What was that next week like?

**Liz:** My now husband, then boyfriend, was actually on location at the time. So I was kind of hiding in my house by myself. I definitely share Abby’s feelings at the same time I’m an incredibly superstitious person. So like I don’t share anything until it’s signed on the dotted line and there’s no way that it can ever be taken back, just because I think particularly in this industry you never know. Things can always go away. Or things can always take a turn.

So I don’t really share anything until I’m very convinced. So it wasn’t until much later, or it was like a week later that the announcement was going out that Amy had bought it that I started telling people. But the crazier one, which happened a few months later, was when Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep signed on, which happened in this 48-hour period. And I had told no one except my husband. And my mom found out on Twitter, because I didn’t know the announcement was going out. That one I’m still reaping the pain of that I did not let my mom know.

But I guess in response to Abby’s question of what do you do, yeah, I mean sometimes it can be really hard, but you have to reward yourself. And I think you real friends are able to see past whatever is going on in their lives, whatever struggle they’re having that’s personal to them, to celebrate you. You know, your success does not mean a lack of their success. Actually your success has nothing to do with them. And so I think when you have friendships that are deep and meaningful people should celebrate each other. And so I think you should be able to share and you should be able to feel proud of yourself.

And then the other thing I would say which is advice I tell everybody which is when you sell something or you get a great job or things like that buy yourself something. It doesn’t have to be like extravagant. It doesn’t have to be one of a kind. But buy yourself something you want that’s not dinner or something like that. That is something tangible that you can hang onto that you can look back on and remember I remember when I bought this for myself at this moment when it was so wonderful and so amazing and I accomplished this.

Because there are always going to be ups and downs. There are always going to be moments where potentially on this project you’re like, ugh, this is terrible and I’m so frustrated. You always want to be able to look back and be like I remember that moment when it was wonderful and how that felt and I want to get back to that.

**John:** Yeah. Something I see in Abby’s email here is that she’s worried about feeling too good about herself, or being over-excited. And it gets reasonable to sort of tap the brakes a little bit about some of the overenthusiasm.

**Liz:** Sure.

**John:** We see people who like go crazy and go nuts and they throw the party, like we just listened to in the clip, where they’re celebrating this giant win and they sort of seem like assholes. And you don’t want to be that person. And you don’t want to set yourself up for disappointment and failure. But I think there’s other extremes to underplay it to the degree which like oh I don’t deserve this, I’m worthless, they’re going to find out, they’re going to see that I’m a fraud. The imposter syndrome kicks in really hard because they’ve had this little bit of success.

And it’s finding that middle ground there can be tough. One of the things I always recommend is just remember to Abby you got there because you wrote something really good, so keep writing. Keep writing and keep up on that level. And recognize that like you’ve achieved a thing and you get to do a whole bunch of new work now because you have this agency, so now you get to go out and have these meetings.

Some of those meetings will be great. Some of those meetings will be terrible. But that’s part of the process as well. So don’t be too afraid to be happy in this moment, but also don’t be too afraid about what comes next.

**Liz:** I think that’s great. I would add I think like don’t be looking for perfection. Don’t think you’re going to go out on your first meeting be like this is it, I’ve met my collaborators for the next 20 years. I think just look at the experiences as a whole. You know, I think have sort of a holistic view about it. And don’t put so much pressure on every meeting, every moment, every conversation. Because here is a certain amount of enjoying it that you have to have. Like this is a job. This is work. We’re so fortunate to have this. But you have to have a little bit of enjoyment in it and a little bit of happiness in it. And a little bit of like this is crazy, I’m here because I sold something I wrote. Have that fun.

**John:** Absolutely. Now the second half of this email is talking about how she has friends who are struggling, or friends who are similarly placed but haven’t actually gotten that agent, or having gotten those meetings, and haven’t gotten that stuff happening. I remember that, too. And so I remember when I first got hired to write stuff and I had other screenwriter friends who were not having the same success I was it was weird, but I always remind myself that I can’t control how other people feel. All I can control is sort of what I’m doing. And so I can still be really positive for them while also doing the work that I’m doing. It’s tough.

Did you have other peers who suddenly you’re working with Spielberg and they’re still in the grind?

**Liz:** Sure. Of course. And I think you’re absolutely right. You know, you can’t control how anybody feels. At the same time I think it goes back to what you were saying before, John, which is there’s a very fine line of being proud of yourself and wanting to have that sort of pride with your friends and rubbing it in somebody’s face. And bragging about it. And I think there’s a very sensitive way to tell your friends that this happened. And I guarantee they’ll be excited for you. And if somebody isn’t excited for you then I think that’s a showing of true colors.

**John:** Yeah. Hey Megana why don’t you hop back on here. Because I’m also thinking Megan McDonnell, your predecessor here, who is also a friend of yours has obviously had a really good run and a really good year. And I’m guessing that she probably went through some of these same things and you were the friend who wasn’t quite there yet. What are you thinking about when you read Abby’s question?

**Megana:** Well, first of all, Megan is a brilliant sci-fi genius writer and so hardworking, so it’s just an absolute joy to watch her career. But to me one of the most appealing parts of this industry is the promise of making cool things with your friends or supporting your friends making cool things. And I think about those sociology network diagrams about how behaviors, habits, and emotions spread thorough those little nodes. Sorry, that’s such a scientific way of thinking about friendship and teamwork. But to me it’s like trust that positivity begets positivity. And so if it’s not happening for you, or for me right now, but it’s happening for my friends, that feels like a signal that things are trending well. Your team is doing well so be excited about that.

You know, I think any time you think of something as a zero sum game it gets you in trouble.

**Liz:** Absolutely.

**John:** That sounds great. And what you talk about in terms of like if one person is successful I think it’s giving you a template for a thing you can do. When I graduated from the Stark program at USC people would say like oh you must have had these amazing alumni who could do all these things and were so helpful, but by far the greatest resource I had coming out of Stark was that I had 24 classmates who were all striving really hard in the industry and we could help each other. And so never discount that lateral networking. That people who are the same level as you are such a great resource because they have information and they are doing the thing that you are trying to do. And you are each other’s best resource.

**Liz:** For sure. I also think that it’s really important, this is not on the question, but it’s just something I think in terms of the success that we’re talking about is have happiness outside of your job. Make sure that you have wins and celebrations and moments that are about your life, not just work, because particularly in this industry there are ups and downs and we’re going to get to the next question which is going to be a down. And I think you have to be able to find joy in your life that does not revolve around whether you sold a script or not.

And when you have that joy selling a script is so much more enjoyable because your whole life is not based on it and your whole happiness is not based on it.

**John:** Yeah. If your identity is so tied up in your being a screenwriter who just sold a script, well that is going to fade and it’s not going to last. So you have to have things that are bringing you consistent joy that is not about your career.

**Liz:** Mm-hmm.

**Megana:** Can I ask you guys a follow up question?

**John:** Please.

**Megana:** Just off of that. Because I think a part of what resonated here and seeing my friends is that there’s something like noble in being an aspiring screenwriter and hustling. And I think that that becomes the sort of identity in and of itself. So was there a moment when you guys had to deal with the identity shift of being like I’m no longer hustling, I’ve kind of tasted the success and I can own this title now?

**John:** Yeah. That’s a really good way to put it. Because I always talk about how there’s not really an experience of breaking in. it’s basically there’s not a wall around it. It’s like you’re working as fast and as hard as you can to keep stuff going. And you’re spinning so many plates. I did definitely notice that at a certain point when I stopped – just economically when I stopped having to worry about sort of like paying rent consistently, that was a real change. And I did feel just an ease and comfort that was not there before.

That’s not really tied into any sort of commercial success. Even after Go came out and was doing well and was acclaimed, that wasn’t the moment where I felt like, oh, I’m in, I’m set. How about you, Liz?

**Liz:** I agree with you, John. I think when I was able to pay rent that felt like a marked shift for me in terms of success. You know, I felt stable in a way which I’d never felt before. But I think going to your question, I still have imposter syndrome. I don’t know that you ever, at least I don’t have that moment where I feel like oh I’ve made it, nobody is going to find out. I think there’s still moments of that.

You know, maybe not every day anymore. But at least once a week that I’m like well it was a good run and I’m excited to have done what I’ve done. And I do think that also keeps me a little bit hungry and some of that energy that I did use to feel when I was scrappy and trying to sell a spec, I constantly feel like I want to prove myself. Not because somebody is disproving me, but because I feel like I want to earn it.

**John:** I’ve definitely recognized a moment where people move past their imposter syndrome and they settle into kind of complacency. And that’s no one’s friend. And I think we can all think of some writers who have become complacent and they just sort of do the thing that they do and aren’t pushing themselves. And that can be an issue, too. But I don’t think Abby needs to worry about that yet. I think she needs to just be landing that first job and getting the next job after that and making stuff. And the thing that’s probably going to improve most for her is once she sees her words on the page becoming scenes on a big screen she’ll recognize that like oh I really can do this thing and I can keep doing this thing.

**Liz:** Absolutely.

**John:** All right, let’s get to the opposite side of this, so from the good news to the bad news. We have two back to back questions. Megana, if you can help us out here.

**Megana:** All right. Kitty in London says, “Scriptnotes is my first port of call for industry advice. So when I got fired recently, or rather replaced to use industry parlance, I turn to you. But having rummaged through your entire catalog I can’t find the episode What To Do When You’re Shit-Canned. Please tell me it exists. If not, please make it exist.”

**John:** We will make it exist today. All right. And how about Erin in LA here.

**Megana:** All right. So Erin says, “I was recently working on a project for over two years with a studio and director. Then instead of telling me straight up and letting me go with a handshake and a thank you I was told to sit tight and wait to hear from them about triggering my next step. Only to then be ghosted for months. After waiting patiently and anxiously for as long as I could I finally asked my agents what the hell was going on and then found out the studio had recently hired a new writer to replace me. But never actually told me or my reps I was off the project.

“It was and still is a pretty embarrassing experience and I’ve never heard from any of the involved execs, producers, or director since again after two-plus years of working together. So obviously I think this is the wrong way to let a writer go from a project. But what is the right way? And why doesn’t anyone seem to do it? When we’re dumped in a crappy and classless way should we push back and stand up for ourselves, or does being a pro writer mean just accepting being ghosted, disrespected, or finding out we’ve been replaced on Deadline as a part of the business we’ve chosen?”

**John:** Ugh. I had such flashbacks in the second email.

**Liz:** I’m having like PTSD right now.

**John:** Yeah. So I have found out relatively recently that I’ve been replaced by a Deadline article. And it’s absolutely the worst feeling. And the reason why it happens is because producers are chicken shits and they don’t want to have a scary conversation, so they don’t call you, and they just find a replacement writer and hire that person without having a conversation with you first. It is absolutely terrible and it happens all the time.

**Liz:** It’s awful.

**John:** Liz, you’ve had something similar?

**Liz:** Oh yeah. I’ve been replaced on a number of projects before and I think – look, it’s never fun. It is a part of this business which we can talk about and unpack later. But definitely best of times is when the exec or the producer or whomever calls you and is like, you know, and your steps are done. It’s not like you’re in the middle of something. But if your steps are done and they call and they’re like, “You know, I think we want to bring somebody in to do X, Y, and Z.” And that sucks but at least they’re being honest with you.

You know, I’ve found out through arbitrations that I’ve been replaced. I’ve found out through production. I’ve found out through word around town. I think there’s a lot of different ways to find out about it. It’s really shitty and it’s exactly what you said. It’s execs or producers or whomever doesn’t want to make that phone call being chicken shit. And it’s never fun. And it’s not how it should be.

**John:** Yeah. I’m thinking back to a really terrible experience I had was on Dark Shadows. And so I was really happy with the script and everything looked like it was going fantastically well. And then I was in Des Moines for a college thing and I get this call from Dick Zanuck who was the producer for Dark Shadows. And he said, “John I’ve got terrible news for you. You’re being replaced on the movie. And I’m so sorry. I feel terrible about it. But this is what’s happening and this is why.” And he talked me through it for like five minutes. And I was so angry and I was so incredibly appreciate to Dick Zanuck for having the guts to make that call. And I told him right then on the call like thank you so much for making this call because otherwise I would have heard about it from somebody else. Or I would have read about it in Deadline. It was the right thing to do because he was a classy producer from the right era who knew how to do it. And so few producers these days are doing that.

And I don’t have great advice for how to get producers to do that because I don’t have good experience. I try to keep up conversation about like hey what’s going on on this project, but they do sort of ghost you and they say, “Oh, we’re still figuring it out,” and it happens. It’s shameful.

**Liz:** It’s shameful. It’s really shitty. It shows you I think ultimately how appreciated writers are in the film industry overall. I’m saying this not to get into the film industry, being a writer is wonderful. Being able to write movies is fantastic. But it’s pretty common knowledge and I think pretty well understood that if you’re the first writer on a feature it is very unlikely that you will be the last writer on the feature.

**John:** If they’ve hired you on to do a project, so it wasn’t your original thing but they hired you on, yeah, there comes a moment where they feel like, oh, maybe we need a new set of eyes, a new something. And it’s often–

**Liz:** Even if you are the original writer. You know, if it’s a studio in particular it’s very unlikely that you will be the last writer on the project. It’s just for whatever reason it is how the industry believes that movies should be made. You know, I think it’s pretty disrespectful to writers to not give them the same respect as any other collaborator on the project, namely producers or directors who their opinion is appreciated from day one till the end, and heard, and valued, particularly if you are the generator of the project, or the person that was hired for the project. There’s a reason they hired you for that project.

So, yeah, I’m with John. I don’t have a lot of advice on how to get over it except that it sucks. And, you know, have a drink. Or do whatever it is that you do to wallow and then get up and write again tomorrow. Because you have to.

**John:** All right. I do have some practical advice here I think.

**Liz:** Oh good.

**John:** So obviously feel your feelings. It’s fine to feel your feelings. Find somebody you can vent to. But then also take a couple steps here. First off, make sure you’re clear on what your drafts are and these are the official drafts. And set them aside because if you go to an arbitration at some point it will be important to be able to show I wrote these things along the way. And if there are emails that sort of tie into stuff that you didn’t actually implement but you had actually discussed, those can be important as well.

Then figure out – if you know who the writer is who is going to be coming onboard I reach out to that writer. And if I’m the person who is coming on to rewrite somebody I generally will reach out to the previous writer just to know this is where the bodies were buried. This is sort of what’s going on. And make it clear that you’re not mad at that writer for coming onboard. You’re mad at the situation. But you want that writer to succeed because that’s going to be the best possible movie that’s actually going to get made. So as hard as it can be to see your kid being raised by somebody else, you want your kid to thrive. And that can kid being your movie will only thrive if that writer is able to succeed. And so if I can help that writer get that movie to a place where it’s actually going to work I will do so.

And so I will try to reach out to that person. It’s not hard to find their email. It’s an awkward email to write, but all the conversations I’ve had who have come in after me, or if I’ve come in after them, have been great. And it just makes the process better and smoother. So if you can make contact with that writer do so because obviously they’re going to have to carry the ball for a while.

**Liz:** I think that’s great. I would also say this goes on the other way which is, you know, as you said if you are the writer who is coming on, which I’ve done, you’ve done John, it is your responsibility in my opinion to reach out to the previous writer and to reach out to the original writer. Because, yeah, it’s not your fault. You’re not in trouble. You’re not the problem. But, you can be the asshole who doesn’t reach out and have that conversation. And say like, hey man, I’m really sorry. This is a shitty situation. What can I do to help? Where are you at? What were you trying to do that maybe wasn’t getting across? What’s the conflict, if there is one?

I think that there’s a lot of value in that, particularly since a lot of the people who are being replaced are first time writers, are green writers. And you only learn when the writer who comes on to replace you reaches out. And has a conversation and says, “OK here’s what I’m going to do. Let me explain it to you why. And what do you think?”

So I think – and by the way, there are times when I’ve reached out and the original writer wasn’t super interested in talking, which is also totally fine. It sucks. It’s not a fun thing to be a part of. But if you are the writer who is replacing somebody I really think it is your responsibility to reach out and have a conversation.

**John:** Yeah. The times when I haven’t done that has been because it’s a weekly and I’m here in the middle of production to build a set of cabinets right there.

**Liz:** Absolutely.

**John:** And that’s not that situation. But if I’m going to be doing some major work I will do it. And also if I’m going to be coming in and doing some kind of surgical work but I’m not rewriting the whole script I will try to write in that other writer’s voice just so it reads like one continuous document.

**Liz:** Absolutely.

**John:** And we know how to do it. We’re professionals. So the underlining message of like it sucks when you’re fired, yes, it sucks. Just try not to carry that bitterness with you. And try not to carry that bitterness with you into other rooms, because you’re going to be going in on meetings on other projects and you could say that I had a great time working on this, someone else is writing this right now, or I really hope it goes into production. Don’t dwell on sort of how angry you were to be fired because that’s not a good look for anybody. It’s not going to get you your next job.

**Liz:** It’s not. And it’s also nobody is going to appreciate it in that room. So, I think, as you said, John, find the person you can vent with. Unfortunately I think every screenwriter has dealt with this, so every professional feature screenwriter has dealt with this.

The first time it happened to me I had a friend of mine reach out and was actually sitting with me while the conversation was happening on the phone. Reached out to me the next day and took me out for drinks and, you know, kind of like walked me through what had happened to him and listened and there’s not a lot to say. It sucks. But the letting go is a really important part of it.

And I also think the getting back to work is important, because if you just sit and you’re bitter, or you just sit and you wallow, or even you get to the point where you watch the movie and you’re like that’s not what I wrote and this is terrible, none of that is helpful in the ultimate goal which is having a long-lasting career.

**John:** 100%. All right, maybe we can squeeze two questions in here. Megana, do you want to start us off?

**Megana:** Great. KD Scruggs writes, “I need to differentiate two timelines a la Sliding Doors in my short script. I currently have a physical descriptor, for example red earrings, pony tail in parenthesis after a character’s first scene mention and every line of dialogue, but it’s super clunky. Thoughts?”

**John:** Oof, that sounds super clunky.

**Liz:** Yeah.

**John:** So when you have two timelines you’re going to want to do something, hopefully in the movie it becomes really clear we’re in one timeline or another timeline. You need to do something in your script to say OK these scenes are this way and those scenes are the other way. As we look at Greta Gerwig’s script for Little Women she ended up putting everything in red for the scenes that were in the past. That’s the only time I’ve seen a two-color script, but she really needed it for what she was doing. Other writers I’ve seen put scenes in italics, or in the slug line they’re say bracket past for when we’re in the other timeline.

Just you’ve got to make it read like a movie and don’t kill us on every line for these back and forths. Any thoughts, Liz?

**Liz:** Yeah. I’m actually dealing with it right now. I have three different timelines that I’m dealing with. So, you know, it’s a little different I guess because it’s not Sliding Doors, but in terms of past and present we just put it in the slug line. It’s, you know, INT. HOUSE. NIGHT (PAST). Is it like the most clever thing to do? No. But people aren’t confused.

We can throw a chyron in the script and you just say, you know, which you don’t have to put in production. But it is just helpful for people when they’re reading. They’re like, oh, this is 2014, this is 2012, whatever it is. And since we’re doing three we do have one section is italicized. I think the italicized is really helpful. It can be – you can also breeze through it at times.

Since this is a short script I actually think the coloring of the script is not a bad idea. You know, it’s clean, concise. And because it’s not past and present that might be the easiest way to do it. But I wouldn’t do the descriptors because I think that’s just going to be brutal.

**John:** It’s going to be too rough to read. All right, what else we got?

**Megana:** All right. Ryan in LA asks, “I have a writer’s group that I’ve been a part of for a few years now and over that time we’ve become really close. I value their notes immensely and I know my writing would not be where it is without them. I recently got staffed on a show and have some paid gigs coming my way. It’s exciting, but I’m the first of my group to reach this point. Is it weird for me to continue to get notes from my notes for projects that I’m being paid to write on and ask them for notes for free?”

**John:** Wow. I’ve never been in a writer’s group like this. Liz, have you?

**Liz:** No, I haven’t.

**John:** So we’re at a bit of a disadvantage here. I would say this reminds me of the sort of good news question. You have friends who are not as successful and you’re sort of coming back to them with this. But you’re still working on scripts. You’re still working on projects and they’re working on projects. I would bring it up and ask them like hey do you feel weird, this is a thing I’m being paid to write, but I would love to keep working with you as a group to do this stuff. And if they say yes then great.

You’re getting something out of them, but they’re also getting something out of you because you have experience working for money on these projects. And so I bet they want to keep you involved in that group.

But Megana you’re in a writer’s group so you tell us. Tell us what you think.

**Megana:** Yeah. I think going back to the same thing. It’s like teamwork and it’s being excited for your friend when they’re doing something and hoping that you get better as they improve in their craft as well. But I have a question, so when you guys are writing a draft or a script like who is reading your drafts before you’re submitting it?

**Liz:** For me it really depends. In TV just the room is reading it. And then we go through notes that way. And then my non-writing producers will read before it goes to the studio. In features I have like three people that I send not like my vomit draft but my first personal draft. Two of them are writers, sorry it’s four people. So two of them are writers and two of them are not writers. But that’s also been developed over the course of the last, you know, almost decade and we kind of all share with each other.

So I guess it’s kind of a writer’s group, but it’s very specific and it’s not as big.

**John:** And with my scripts obviously it’s you because you’re reading the very first things, Megana. And then Chad who is a former assistant from a zillion years ago and a good friend. And a couple other people who I will turn to for their thoughts early on. But, no, I’ve never had that sort of writer’s group where we’re constantly responsible for delivering stuff and meeting and discussing that stuff. And I’ve always envied that but it’s just never been something that’s part of my life.

So I’ll be curious whether as you and Megan and other friends of yours who are in that group become successful how that morphs and changes.

I do think also of Dana Fox and her whole group of amazing writers, you know, Diablo Cody, and Lorene and company, Liz Meriwether, and they’re sort of that same way. They’re a writer’s group but they’re also bestie friends who are reading each other’s stuff and it’s been incredibly helpful for them. So there’s precedent for it.

**Liz:** Absolutely.

**John:** Megana, thank you for these questions.

**Megana:** Thank you guys.

**John:** All right. It’s time for our One Cool Things. Liz, you start us off.

**Liz:** OK, my One Cool Thing is a book. So I recently drove across the country because my dog is five pounds too heavy to be on a plane. So, literally drove across the country. So my sweet baby trash dog could be in the car with us, being on the east coast for production. On that I heard this really interesting interview and subsequently have been reading the book. It’s called Battle for the Soul: Inside Democrats’ Campaign to Defeat Trump by Edward-Isaac Dovere. It’s super fascinating. It starts in 2016. Goes through the entire campaign on the Democrats’ side up until the 2020 election.

There’s really intimate details in there from sort of how Kamala and Biden fought at the first debate to how she was chosen as the VP candidate. It’s a really intimate and detailed book that is really interesting. And so for people who are fans of campaign books I couldn’t recommend that better.

**John:** That sounds great. It sounds like a terrific book that I cannot read right now because I cannot actually follow any political news whatsoever. My brain just broke and I cannot reengage with it.

**Liz:** Can I give you another recommendation then that has nothing to do with it?

**John:** Absolutely. We’ll take it.

**Liz:** Yearbook by Seth Rogan. I’m not sure if anybody has done it yet.

**John:** I’ve heard great things. Yes.

**Liz:** Oh my gosh. First of all, I’m sure reading the book is amazing. Listening to the book, we listened to it on the drive, is incredible. Seth reads it himself and then there’s a bunch of guest stars that come in. Lots of people who play themselves. Sasha Baron Cohen. George Lucas plays himself at some point. It’s really funny. It’s really insightful. There’s a ton of heart. I am not being facetious when I say that it truly got us through 12 hours of driving through dust and farm land and fast food.

So thank you Seth for that. I really appreciate it and I think everybody should check it out.

**John:** Excellent. That definitely is on my to read list. And probably actually my to listen list because that sounds great.

My One Cool Thing is a series of videos by Ryan George called Pitch Meetings and basically the premise is that it is the screenwriter going in to pitch a movie that is an existing, so like Army of the Dead. And so Ryan George plays both the screenwriter pitching it and the executive listening to the pitch. And so it’s the feeling of the pitch, but all of the absurdities of the movie sort of come out in the pitching process. So let’s take a listen to the pitch for Army of the Dead.

**Male Voice:** And it basically walls up the city to contain the spread.

**Male Voice:** Smart. And they declare it’s no longer part of America.

**Male Voice:** Well why was that necessary?

**Male Voice:** Unclear. So eventually the government decides to nuke the city to kill all the zombies.

**Male Voice:** OK.

**Male Voice:** But this casino owner, Tenaka, has $200 million in a vault under his casino. So he approaches this former mercenary, Scott Ward.

**Male Voice:** Oh, and he tells him to assemble a team?

**Male Voice:** He does. So Scott needs some teammates. He needs a safe-cracker obviously.

**Male Voice:** I thought it was Tenaka’s vault. Can’t he give them the code?

**Male Voice:** No.

**Male Voice:** OK.

**Male Voice:** And they also need a helicopter pilot.

**Male Voice:** Oh, they can fly in. That’ll be helpful.

**Male Voice:** No, see the government doesn’t actually allow people to fly into Vegas. It’s restricted air space. But they can fly out.

**Male Voice:** Yes, sir. I don’t care.

**Male Voice:** So Tenaka also adds his own head of security, Martin, to the team. And this guy is real suspicious.

**Male Voice:** Oh, sounds suspicious.

**Male Voice:** He is. So they head to Vegas and Scott’s estranged daughter, Kate, forces herself into the movie because she has a friend that’s inside the city.

**Liz:** Love it.

**John:** Love it. And so I bring this up because it’s easy to sort of make fun of movies and I don’t want to particularly poke at Army of the Dead. But even like the best movies have these like real implausibilities that if you were to try to pitch them would sound absurd. So I just thought that was a really performed and written piece of video on how weird pitches are.

**Liz:** Pitches are so weird, dude. They’re the weirdest.

**John:** Pitches are weird. And so, here, let’s do a quick two minutes on pitching. I always describe pitches as like I just saw the best movie and I want to convince you to see this movie. And so what’s weird is that it’s not really the plot of the movie. It’s the description of the experience of having just watched the movie to me.

**Liz:** Totally. And I think it’s also a bit about you. Like how you tell it is how you’re going to write it. So, I just did this pitch this last week and I’m doing more this week for this feature and like you know the feature itself is not necessarily funny, but like I want it to have humor in it, so I’m funny in the pitch, which feels a little off-kilter. It’s so performative. Everybody is uncomfortable.

The one thing I will say is that I don’t think I’m ever going back to pitching in person again. I’m all in on pitching on Zoom or Teams or whatever the hell that we’re supposed to do. It’s so much easier. You don’t have to do the small chat and awkwardness and memorizing lines like you’re an actor. It’s great. But that’s kind of the only good thing that has happened.

**John:** Yeah. I have a pitch this week and I, like you, I’m pretty good at pitching on Zoom, but for this one I also have a video clip I need to show.

**Liz:** Oh wow.

**John:** And going from slides to video clip is really a beast. And the amount of time that me and Megana have spent trying to optimize video performance has been a lot.

**Liz:** Break a leg.

**John:** The technical challenges. But when do we have to become TV producers, by the way? Like suddenly we’re responsible for all this technology stack in order to pitch our shows. That’s also crazy.

**Liz:** It’s pretty crazy. To the fact that I, you know, I can use my computer and I can type on it and I can do sort of the things I’m supposed to do on it. The second I’m asked to like put a slide show up or share my screen suddenly I go into a panic like I have a dream that I’m naked in my high school. Because the worst thing possible is I share my screen and something horrible is on there that I don’t want anybody to see.

**John:** Oh yeah.

**Liz:** Or like an instant message pops up or something like that. So, it’s truly – I just feel like my anxiety is already high during a pitch. It’s like at an absolute high thinking that I’m going to have to share my screen. So I just stick to reading off of pages and hopefully people have an imagination.

**John:** That’s always a good choice. I will say the one thing I have learned is that I tend to read off of the screen, but I move my pitch to the very top of the screen.

**Liz:** Totally.

**John:** Near the camera so I’m keeping eye contact a little closer there.

**Liz:** 100%. I also just cover everybody’s faces with it. So I don’t even look at anybody on there because I’m just looking at the camera ultimately. You know? But it’s also–

**John:** That’s what you want.

**Liz:** It’s that. And it’s also like I’m not then thinking about their reactions to things, you know. I’m not distracted by, oh, are they buying it or are they not buying it. It gets me a little bit more into the rhythm of my talking and then my producing partner is able to like actually gauge their faces and tell me after like oh they were really into it, or oh I don’t know, things like that.

**John:** Yeah. Another good thing about pitching on Zoom is that Megana can sit in on pitches now, because she would not normally be able to – like she wouldn’t go to Disney with me to sit in on a pitch, or other studio executive assistants can listen in. And it’s great because they get some experience there but they have their cameras off and it’s fine.

**Liz:** Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that was what was great about having the room on Zoom honestly was all of our support staff was able to be there and participate and really have the experience of being in a room that typically you don’t have when you’re in a brick and mortar.

**John:** That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao. It is edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our amazing outro this week is by Zach Lo. If you have an outro you can send us a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send longer questions like the ones we answered today. For short questions on Twitter I am @johnaugust. Liz, you are?

**Liz:** @itslizhannah.

**John:** @itslizhannah. We have t-shirts and they’re great. You can find them at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com. That’s also where you find the transcripts and sign up for our weekly-ish newsletter called Inneresting where we link to things about writing.

You can sign up to become a premium member at Scriptnotes.net where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on our pets. Liz Hannah, thank you, thank you, thank you so, so much for filling in at the last minute as co-host. You are remarkable. So thank you very much for doing this.

**Liz:** Thank you, John August. I hope that Craig unburies himself from an avalanche soon.

**John:** We’ll all hope.

[Bonus segment]

**John:** And we’re back. All right, you traveled across the country with your dog because your dog was too big to fly on a plane. So you obviously have a pet and you love a pet.

**Liz:** I do.

**John:** Was this your first dog? Have you always been a dog person? What is your relationship with animals in your life?

**Liz:** This is not my first dog. I’ve always been an animal person. I grew up with dogs and cats. I adopted – my first dog I adopted as an adult I adopted when I was 25. And he was three-legged and four-months-old and allegedly a purebred lab. And then he turned out to be a Great Dane. And so I had to move out of my studio apartment because he was 95 pounds at like a year old.

**John:** Wow.

**Liz:** And so he passed away two years ago and I spent – my husband and had like – my husband went right back into production pretty quickly and I was in a new house we moved into. And I slept one night there without a dog for the first time and I was absolutely not, we’re getting an animal. I just spent seven hours looking at our security camera.

And then we met this little trash dog. And so this is who we have now. And literally she’s five pounds over the limit. She’s 35 pounds. She’s five pounds over the limit to fly. It’s just ridiculous.

**John:** My first dog who was my own dog was my dog Jake who was a pug. And I’d wanted a pug for forever and I would say – on this show we’ve been talking about good news, bad news, when you feel like you had some success. I really felt like I had some success when I was able to get an apartment where I could have a dog. That was really to me like OK I’ve made it because I have a place where I can have my own dog who I can take care of. And that was my little boy for so many years. He was just an absolutely amazing little pug.

So before that we’d had some family dogs. Most of them died when I was really little. And then I had gerbils and hamsters who don’t live very long. They just don’t. And sometimes they let you hold them in their hands, but they’re not great pets. I’m sorry for people who are like big hamster/gerbil people. But like once you’ve had a dog it’s just really hard to really go back to a hamster or such.

**Liz:** It’s hard to ever go back. It’s hard also I think like we have a cat also who is 12 who I adopted like six months before I adopted the Great Dane, Boo, and just keep in mind I lived in a studio apartment with both of these animals for like eight months. So I definitely did not heed the warning of like this is where you get success is when you can have an apartment that can take pets. I just got pets. And it was crazy.

But Lucy is still kicking, our cat, and she is basically feral. Like hates everybody except my husband. And weirdly now the new dog, loves the new dog. Obsessed with Jonesy. Just wants to be around her. Our other dog, Boo, hated him. Never wanted to be around him. But, yeah, I think it’s like once you – it’s also really interesting because Boo was kind of a loner. He definitely loved me and wanted to be around me, but as long as he could sort of see me from his bed he was interested. Jonesy has to be touching me, like at all times.

If I’m around she’s just like I want to be on you or next to you or sleeping right beside you. It’s a very interesting – I just don’t think I could ever go to like a gerbil. There’s like an intimacy and an affection with a dog that there isn’t with other animals. And they sit at your feet while you write. I mean, it’s great.

**John:** Yeah, which is so lovely. They’re there with you, but quiet, which is terrific. I think a dog also provides structure, particularly for feature writers which you and I mostly have been. You’re mostly doing TV stuff. But providing some structure in terms of like you need to be up by a certain point so you can feed the dog and walk the dog. And the dog needs two walks and two meals a deal. It’s some good structure because otherwise my whole day could be just a blur of nothing.

And so when I was a bachelor screenwriter that was really important to have some sense of structure there and my dog provided it for me.

**Liz:** Absolutely. And you also can build in breaks of like, oh, I’m stuck on something, I just kind of don’t want to sit here and stare at my computer. OK, I’ll just go walk the dog for 20 minutes. And I also think there is a – and I’m sure this becomes exponentially more real with children – but there is a bit of life is more important than X, Y, and Z when you have something that you have to literally keep alive. And whose entire – with dogs, you know, their entire purpose is to make you happy and for you to love them and all of these things.

It kind of puts things a little bit in perspective when you’re like oh man this draft is due tomorrow and my life is going to be over if I don’t turn it in perfectly. And then you have to keep this sweet little thing alive.

**John:** And the dog doesn’t care.

**Liz:** No. They don’t.

**John:** So we got the great news of this episode of like, you know, oh you sold a script. The dog is happy, but the dog is always happy. Or you got fired and the dog is like the dog still loves you just the same. The dog has no idea that it’s happening whatsoever.

And it’s good to have – we talked about having some source of joy in your life that is not career-dependent and that can often be a dog, or a cat to some degree, but dogs are the ones providing a little bit more structure there.

**Liz:** Yeah. I’m all in. I’m staring at my sweet little trash dog right now who is passed out from the humidity. So she’s on her nap time.

**John:** And where did you find trash dog? Was it through a rescue agency?

**Liz:** So trash dog’s name is Jones, but we call her trash dog because that is literally what her DNA said she was. We got her, so I had adopted Boo, our former dog, from this place called Dogs Without Borders, which is amazing and based in LA. They were working with a family who brings strays from Iran, specifically Tehran, to Los Angeles. And puts them with families. I had reached out to them and just said like, hey, you know, we’re not ready yet but just in case let me know if you think any dogs come up that we would be right for. And two days later they sent me a picture of Jonesy and we went and met her and we adopted her instantly.

We wanted a small, hypoallergenic, really dumb, lazy dog, and we got a medium-sized shedding machine that is extremely smart and very energetic. But she’s very loving.

**John:** Yeah. My advice if people are looking for a dog is just to put out in the world that you’re looking for a dog and someone will have the dog for you. And so, yes, you can go to all of the rescue agencies and that’s phenomenal. But some of my best experiences have been sort of hey we’re in the market for a dog so if you know of a great dog let us know. Because people will know.

So in the case of Lambert who is our amazing dog right now we were just getting back from Paris and so I put that out into the world and a friend said, oh yeah, we’re actually watching my mom’s dog right now who is phenomenal, but we cannot keep him. And maybe you could come visit. And love at first sight.

**Liz:** Lambert and his human eyes. He’s got real human eyes.

**John:** Such good human eyes.

**Liz:** So real. It’s like E.T. eyes. They’re so real. Yeah, I agree. I think you can also put it up on social media, like hey guys thinking of getting a dog. There’s so many dogs that are looking for homes. And I know a lot of people did the pandemic puppies and things like that. Please don’t give them back. I know that you were home and you could take care of a dog when you were home all the time. Guess what? That’s a living, breathing thing that loves you. Please don’t give it back.

**John:** Oh yeah. Don’t do it. Liz, it is so lovely to catch up with you. It’s been a long year, but we’re coming out of it. And we’re making stuff.

**Liz:** We are. We’re coming out of it. We’re making stuff. I can’t believe we’re halfway through 2021 already. It’s pretty bananas. So, yeah.

**John:** And whenever you drive back with the dog I want to see you here in Los Angeles.

**Liz:** Absolutely. Yes sir.

**John:** Cool.

Links:

* Join John at 5pm, Tuesday the June 29th, for the Ad Council summit about [vaccine storylines in scripted entertainment](https://adcouncilevents.splashthat.com)
* [IATSE Negotiations](https://deadline.com/2021/06/hollywood-union-labor-talks-break-off-resume-july-6-1234774095/)
* [Zola Movie](https://a24films.com/films/zola)
* [Sleep with Me Film](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111218/)
* [Army of the Dead Pitch Meeting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC1LiBBkDdo&t=22s)
* [Battle for the Soul](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/607647/battle-for-the-soul-by-edward-isaac-dovere/) by Edward-Isaac Dovere
* [Yearbook](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/yearbook-seth-rogen/1138692367) by Seth Rogan
* [Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!](https://cottonbureau.com/people/scriptnotes-podcast)
* [Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/gifts) or [treat yourself to a premium subscription!](https://scriptnotes.supportingcast.fm/)
* [John August](https://twitter.com/johnaugust) on Twitter
* [Liz Hannah](https://twitter.com/itslizhannah) on Twitter
* [John on Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/johnaugust/?hl=en)
* [Outro](http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-the-outros) by Zach Lo ([send us yours!](http://johnaugust.com/2014/outros-needed))
* Scriptnotes is produced by [Megana Rao](https://twitter.com/MeganaRao) and edited by [Matthew Chilelli](https://twitter.com/machelli).

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode [here](http://traffic.libsyn.com/scriptnotes/506standard.mp3).